Sermons to the People 278.1–278.14

Today this reading from the Acts of the Apostles was proclaimed, where the apostle Paul from a persecutor of Christians was made a herald of Christ. Today in those regions the very places bear witness to what was done then; and now it is read and believed. And the usefulness of this event is the one the Apostle himself mentions in his Letters. For he says that he was given pardon for all his sins, and for that fury and madness by which he dragged Christians to death, when he was the minister of the fury of the Jews, whether in the stoning of the holy martyr Stephen or in presenting and bringing others to punishment, for this purpose: that no one should despair of himself who has been wrapped in great sins and entangled in great crimes, as though he would not receive pardon, if he has turned to him who, hanging on the cross, prayed for his persecutors, saying: “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” From a persecutor he was made preacher and teacher of the Gentiles. “I was formerly,” he says, “a blasphemer and a persecutor and insolent; but I received mercy for this reason, that in me first Christ Jesus might display all his patience, as an example for those who were to believe in him for eternal life.” For by the grace of God we are saved from our sins, in which we are sick. His, his is the medicine that heals the soul. For the soul could wound itself; it could not heal itself.

For in the body too a man has it in his power to fall sick, but he does not have it in his power in the same way to recover. For if he exceeds the measure and lives intemperately, and does the things that are bad for health and assault soundness, in one day, if he wishes, he falls into diseases; but when he has fallen, he does not recover. For to fall sick he applies himself to intemperance; but to recover he applies a physician for his health. For he cannot, as we said, have it in his power to recover health as he has it in his power to lose it. So also with regard to the soul: that man should fall into death by sinning, that from immortal he should become mortal, that he should be subjected to the devil, the seducer, was in his free choice; by it, turning to lower things, he abandoned higher ones, and by giving ear to the serpent he shut his ear to God; and set between the commander and the seducer, he chose to obey the seducer rather than the commander. For with the same ear with which he heard God, he heard the devil. Why then did he not rather believe the better one? And so he found true what God had foretold, false what the devil had promised. This is the first origin of our evils, this the root of all miseries, this the seed of death, from the own and free will of the first man: who was so made that, if he obeyed God, he would always be happy and immortal; if he neglected and despised the command of him who wished to keep perpetual health in him, he would rush into the disease of mortality. Then, therefore, the physician was despised by the healthy man; now he heals the sick. For the precepts which medicine gives for keeping health are one thing (for they are given to the healthy so that they may not fall sick); those which the sick receive so that they may recover what they lost are another. It was good for man to obey the physician when he was healthy, so that he would not need a physician. “For those who are well do not need a physician, but those who are sick.” For he is properly called a physician by whom health is recovered. Though God the physician is always needed even by the healthy, so that health itself may be kept. So it was good for him to keep the perpetual health in which he was made. He despised it, abused it, by his intemperance fell into the bad health of this mortality: let him at least now hear the physician commanding, so that he may rise from where he himself lay down through sin.

But plainly, brothers, as in medicine itself a healthy man, by doing what the wisdom of health commands, remains in what he has; but if he begins to be sick, he begins to hear the precept, and begins to do it, if he truly cares to recover good and whole health; but when he has begun to do it, he is not at once healthy; but by observing it long he arrives at that health which he had lost by being less temperate; yet it profits him that he now begins to observe it, so as not to increase the sickness, and so that he not only does not become worse but also begins to be better, he who becomes healthy little by little: for there is hope of perfect health when a man begins to be less and less sick. So also living justly in this life, what is it but to hear the precepts of the law and to do them? Are all who do the precepts of the law, then, already healthy? Not yet: but they do them so as to become healthy. Let them not fail in doing them: for what was once lost is recovered little by little. For if man returned quickly to his former happiness, it would be a game for him to fall into death by sinning.

Someone has fallen, for example, into a disease of the body through intemperance; something has grown in his body which needs even to be cut: without doubt he will suffer pains; but the pains will not be fruitless for him. If he does not want to suffer the pains of cutting, he will suffer the worms of decay. So the physician begins to say: “Observe this and that, do not touch this, do not use this food or drink, do not be restless about that matter.” He begins to do it; he is now observing the precepts; but not yet healthy. What, then, is his observance worth? That the plague that has befallen him may not increase, and may even diminish. What then follows? There must be added to the observance of the precepts the hands of the physician too, cutting and inflicting healthful pains. If, then, he, lying with a festering ulcer, says, “What good is it to me that I observe the precepts, if I suffer the pains of cutting?” he is answered: “But you will be cured by both, by the observance of the precepts and by the endurance of pains. For so much is what you did to yourself by not observing them when you were healthy. So acquiesce in the physician until you are healed: for whatever troubles you suffer, your ulcer deserved it.”

So Christ the physician came to one afflicted and laboring, who says: “Those who are well do not need a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.” He calls sinners to peace, he calls the sick to health. He commands faith, he commands continence, temperance, sobriety; he reins in the lust of avarice: he tells us what to do, what to observe. Whoever observes these things can now be said to live justly according to the physician’s precept; but he has not yet received that health and that whole soundness which God promises through the Apostle, saying: “This corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal put on immortality. Then will come to pass the word that is written: Death is swallowed up in victory. Where, O death, is your contention? Where, O death, is your sting?” Then there will be full health, and equality with the holy angels. But now, before it comes about, my brothers, when we have begun to observe the precepts which the physician prescribes, when we also suffer some temptations and tribulations, let us not think that we observe them without cause because a greater pain seems to follow the precepts you observe. For that you suffer tribulations is the hand of the physician cutting, not the sentence of a judge punishing. This is done so that health may be perfect: let us suffer, let us bear the pains. Sin is sweet: so let the ruinous sweetness be digested through the bitterness of tribulation. It delighted you when you did evil; but by doing it you fell into infirmity. Medicine works by the opposite; it causes you pain for a time so that you may recover perpetual health. Use it, and do not repel it.

Above all, let that antidote not depart which avails most against all corruptions, against the poisons of all sins: that you say, and say truly, to the Lord your God: “Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors.” For this is the covenant the physician wrote and confirmed with the sick. Since there are two kinds of sins: one by which one sins against God, the other by which one sins against man. Hence too there are those two commandments on which the whole Law and the Prophets hang: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind; and you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” And in these is contained also the Decalogue of the commandments of the Law, where three commandments concern the love of God, seven the love of neighbor: of which we have treated sufficiently at another time.

As, then, there are two commandments, so too two kinds of sins. For one sins either against God or against man. And one sins against God also by corrupting his temple in yourself: for God redeemed you with the blood of his Son. Though even before you were redeemed, whose servant were you, if not his who made all things? He willed to have you in a particular way, redeemed by the blood of his Son. “And you are not your own,” says the Apostle; “for you have been bought at a great price: glorify and carry God in your body.” So he by whom you were redeemed has made you his house. Do you want your house to be overthrown? Neither does God want his, that is, you yourself. If you do not spare yourself for your own sake, spare yourself for the sake of God, who made you his temple. “For the temple of God is holy,” he says, “which you are”; and “whoever corrupts the temple of God, God will corrupt him.” When men commit these sins, they think they are not sinning, because they harm no man.

So this is what I want to make known to Your Holiness, as far as the short time allows: what evil those do who corrupt themselves by gluttony, drunkenness, sexual immorality; and to those who rebuke them they answer: “I acted on my own account, with my own property. From whom did I seize anything? From whom did I take anything away? Against whom did I act? I want to be well off from what God has given me.” Such a man seems innocent, because he seems to harm no one. But how is he innocent who does not spare himself? For he is innocent who harms no one, because the rule of love of neighbor is taken from himself. For God said this: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” How, then, is love of neighbor safe in you, when love of yourself is wounded by intemperance? Then God says to you: “When you want to corrupt yourself by drunkenness, you are overthrowing not just anyone’s house, but my house. Where shall I dwell? In these ruins? In this filth? If you received some servant of mine as a guest, you would repair and clean the house for my servant to enter: do you not clean the heart, where I want to dwell?”

I have mentioned one thing, then, brothers, so that you may see how those sin who corrupt themselves while they seem to themselves innocent. But since in the very frailty and mortality of this life it is hard for a man not to exceed the measure somewhat in the things he uses for necessity, that remedy must be applied: “Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors,” if it is said, and truly said. You are forbidden to commit adultery, lest you harm your neighbor. For as you do not want anyone to approach your wife, so you ought not to approach another’s. But if you have used your own more intemperately, do you seem to harm anyone because you use your own? But by using even what is permitted immoderately you corrupt the temple of God in yourself. No outsider accuses you; but what answer will your conscience give to God, who says through the Apostle: “Let each of you know how to possess his own vessel in sanctification and honor, not in the disease of desires, like the Gentiles who do not know God”? And who is there, having a wife, who uses his wife in such a way as not to exceed the law of begetting children? For this she was given: the tablets that are written at marriage convict you. You made an agreement on how you would marry: the writing of the agreement sounds out to you, “for the sake of begetting children.” So do not approach her, if you can, except for the sake of begetting children. If you exceed the measure, you will act against those tablets and against the agreement. Is it not plain? You will be a liar and a violator of the agreement; and God seeks in you the integrity of his temple and does not find it; not because you used your own, but because you used it immoderately. For you drink wine from your own storeroom too, and yet if you drink so as to get drunk, it is not because you used your own thing that you have not sinned: for you have turned God’s gift to your own corruption.

What then, brothers? Certainly it is plain, and everyone’s conscience reports it, that it is hard so to use things permitted that the measure is not exceeded a little. But when you have exceeded the measure, you offend God, whose temple you are. “For the temple of God is holy, which you are.” Let no one deceive himself: “Whoever corrupts the temple of God, God will corrupt him.” The sentence has been spoken; you are held guilty. What will you say in your prayers, when you ask God, whom you offend in his temple, whom you drive out of his temple? How will you clean God’s house in you again? How will you bring him back to you? How, except by saying from your true heart, with words and deeds, “Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors”? For who will accuse you of using your food, your drink, your wife immoderately? No man will accuse you; but since God reproves you, demanding of you the integrity of his temple and the incorruption of his dwelling, he has given you a remedy, as if saying: “If by exceeding the measure you offend me, and I will hold you guilty where no man accuses you, forgive a man what he has sinned against you, so that I may forgive you what you sin against me.”

Hold this firmly, brothers. For whoever renounces even this kind of antidote will have no hope of salvation left at all. Whoever says to me, “I do not forgive the sins which men perhaps commit against me”: I have no ground on which to promise him salvation. For I cannot promise what God does not promise. For I would be a dispenser not of the word of God but of the serpent. For the serpent promised good to the sinner, but God threatened death. For what befell him except what God threatened? And what the serpent promised was far from happening. Do you want me, then, brothers, to say to you: “Even if you have sinned, even if you have not forgiven men their sins, you will certainly be saved; when Christ Jesus comes, he will give pardon to all”? I do not say it, because I do not hear it; I do not say what is not said to me. God indeed promises pardon to the sinner, but forgiving all past sins to those who are converted, who believe, who are baptized. This I read, this I dare to promise, this I promise, and what I promise is promised to me. And when it is read, we all hear it: for we are fellow disciples; there is one teacher in this school.

So all past sins are forgiven to those who are converted; but in this life there are certain grave and deadly sins, which are not released except through the most intense distress of humiliation of heart, contrition of spirit, and the tribulation of penance. These are forgiven through the keys of the Church. For if you begin to judge yourself, if you begin to be displeasing to yourself, God will come to have mercy. If you are willing to punish yourself, he will spare. And whoever does penance well is himself his own punisher. He must be severe with himself, so that God may be merciful to him: as David says, “Turn away your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities.” But by what merit? He says in the same psalm: “For I acknowledge my iniquity, and my sin is always before me.” If, then, you acknowledge, he pardons. But there are light and tiny sins, which cannot be avoided at all, which indeed seem minor, but weigh down by their number. For a heap of grain too is gathered from the tiniest grains, and yet ships are loaded with it; and if they are loaded more, they sink. One thunderbolt strikes someone down and kills him; but if the rain is excessive, it still kills many, though by the tiniest drops. The one destroys by a single blow, the other extinguishes by number. Great beasts kill a man with one bite; but tiny ones, when many are gathered, often kill, and bring such destruction that the proud nation of Pharaoh deserved to be judged by punishments of this kind. If, then, though these sins are tiny, yet because they are so many that gathered together they make a heap to weigh you down, God is good, who forgives even them, without which this life cannot be led. But how does he forgive, if you do not forgive what is committed against you?

This sentence is in a man’s heart like the bucket with which a ship is bailed at sea. For the ship cannot help taking in water through the cracks of its joints. Yet little by little, by admitting a thin trickle, it makes a great collection, so that if it is not bailed out, it sinks the ship. So too in this life we have certain little cracks of our mortality and frailty, through which sin enters from the waves of this world. Let us seize this sentence like a bucket, so that we may bail, lest we sink. Let us forgive our debtors their debts, so that God may lessen our debts. Through this sentence (if it is done, so that it is said truly) you bail out whatever had flowed in. But be careful: for you are still at sea. For when you have done this once, it is not enough, until, having crossed this sea, you arrive at that solidity and firmness of the homeland, where you are shaken by no waves, and neither forgive what is not committed against you nor want forgiven to you what you do not commit.

I think I have commended this enough to Your Love, and I commend it: because of these waves in which we are in danger, let us hold the saving remedy. And see also how much he sins who strives to harm an innocent man, when one who does not forgive what anyone has done to harm him is already not to be borne. Let our brothers, then, attend, and see against whom they held some bitterness of hatred. If they have not let it go, let them at least in these days see what it does to their hearts. Or certainly, if they think themselves safe, let them put vinegar in the jars in which they are accustomed to keep good wine. They do not put it, and they are careful, lest the jar be spoiled: and do they put hatred in their heart, not fearing that it may work some corruption there? Take care, then, brothers, to harm no one, as far as you can; and if any immoderation in the use of things permitted creeps in through the weakness of human life, since it concerns the corruption of God’s temple, hold and turn over this: that you quickly forgive men what is committed against you, so that your Father who is in heaven may forgive you your sins.