Sermons to the People 341.1–341.13

Our Lord Jesus Christ, brothers, as far as we have been able to observe the holy pages, is understood and named in three ways when he is preached, whether through the Law and the Prophets, or through the apostolic Letters, or through the faith of the deeds done, which we know in the Gospel. The first way is according to God and that divinity, coequal and coeternal with the Father, before the taking of flesh. The second way is when, flesh having been taken, the same God who is man and the same man who is God is read and understood, according to a certain property of his own excellence by which he is not made equal to other men, but is the mediator and head of the Church. The third way is, in a certain manner, the whole Christ in the fullness of the Church, that is, head and body, according to the fullness of a certain perfect man, in which man we are each members. This is preached to believers and offered to the wise as something they can recognize. We cannot, in so short a time, either recall or explain all the testimonies of the Scriptures, which are so many, by which we might prove all three of these kinds; but neither can we leave them all unproved, so that, when some testimonies have been mentioned, you may be able yourselves to observe and find in the Scriptures the rest, which the shortness of the time does not allow us to mention.

To the first way, then, of presenting our Lord Jesus Christ the Saviour, the only Son of God, through whom all things were made, belongs that most noble and most glorious passage in the Gospel according to John: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God; he was in the beginning with God; all things were made through him, and without him nothing was made. What was made, in him was life; and the life was the light of men, and the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.” These are wonderful and astounding words, and they are to be embraced before they are understood. If food were set before your mouths, one would take this part of the food, another that part; one food would still reach all, but not the whole food to all. So now a kind of food and drink of words is set before your ears; and yet the whole reaches all. Or perhaps, when I speak, does one take one syllable for himself and another another? or one one word and another another? If that were so, I should have to speak as many words as I see people, so that at least single words might reach all. And indeed, look: I speak more words than there are people here, yet all of them reach all. So the word of a man is not divided up by syllables so that all may hear; and is the Word of God chopped into pieces in order to be everywhere? Do we think, brothers, that these sounding and passing words are in any respect to be compared with that Word which abides unchangeably? Or, because I have said this, have I compared them? But I wished in some way to suggest to you that what God displays in bodily things may help you to believe what you do not yet see concerning spiritual words. But now let us pass on to better things. For words sound and go away. Among spiritual thoughts, think of justice. One man thinking of justice is placed in these western parts, another thinking of justice is placed in the east: how is it that this one thinks of the whole of justice and that one of the whole? that this one sees the whole and that one the whole? For whoever sees justice, according to which he may do something, himself acts justly. He sees within, he acts without. From where does he see within, if nothing is present to him? Because he is placed in one region, will another's thought not reach that same region? But when you, placed here, see with the mind the same thing that he sees who is placed so far away, and the whole shines for you and the whole is seen by him, because things that are divine and incorporeal are everywhere whole, believe that the Word is whole in the Father, whole in the womb. For believe this of the Word of God, who is God with God.

But hear now another presentation, another way of presenting Christ, whom Scripture preaches. For the things I have said were said of him before the taking of flesh. But now notice what Scripture preaches: “The Word,” it says, “became flesh, and dwelt among us.” For he who had said, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God; he was in the beginning with God; all things were made through him, and without him nothing was made,” would have preached the divinity of the Word to us in vain if he had kept silent about the humanity of the Word. For that I may see that, he deals with me here; that he may cleanse me to contemplate that, he himself comes to the help of my weakness. By taking up from human nature that very human nature, he became man. He came with the beast of burden of the flesh to the one who lay wounded on the road, to shape and nourish our small faith by the sacrament of his incarnation, and to make our understanding clear for seeing, through what he took up, what he never lost. For he began to be man; he did not cease to be God. This, then, is the preaching of our Lord Jesus Christ according as he is mediator, according as he is head of the Church: that he is God-man and man-God, since John says, “And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us.”

Hear now both in that very well-known chapter of the apostle Paul: “Who, being in the form of God,” he says, “did not think it robbery to be equal with God.” This is: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” How could the apostle say, “He did not think it robbery to be equal with God,” if he is not equal to God? But if the Father is God and he is not God, how is he equal? So where the one says, “The Word was God,” there the other says, “He did not think it robbery to be equal with God.” And where the one says, “The Word became flesh, and dwelt among us,” there the other says, “But he emptied himself, taking the form of a servant.” Listen: through this, then, that he became man, through this, that the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, through this he emptied himself, taking the form of a servant. For in what did he empty himself? Not so as to lose his divinity, but so as to put on humanity, appearing to men as what he was not before he was man. So by appearing he emptied himself, that is, keeping the dignity of majesty and offering the flesh, the garment of humanity. Through this, then, that he emptied himself, taking the form of a servant (not taking the form of God: when he spoke of the form of God he did not say “he took,” but, “When he was established in the form of God, he did not think it robbery to be equal with God”; but when he came to the form of a servant, he said, “taking the form of a servant”): through this, then, he is the mediator and head of the Church, through whom we are reconciled to God, through the sacrament of his humility and passion and resurrection and ascension and the judgment to come, so that those two things may be heard, since God has spoken once. Where are two things heard? Where he renders to each according to his works.

Holding to this, then, do not marvel at the questions of men, which creep like a cancer, as the apostle said; but guard your ears and the virginity of your mind, as those betrothed by the friend of the bridegroom to one husband, to present a chaste virgin to Christ. For your virginity is in the mind. Virginity of body is in a few in the Church; virginity of mind ought to be in all the faithful. This virginity the serpent wishes to corrupt, of whom the same apostle says: “I have betrothed you to one husband, to present a chaste virgin to Christ. And I fear lest, as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, so your senses too may be corrupted and fall from the chastity that is in Christ Jesus.” “Your senses,” he says, that is, your minds. For this is the more proper meaning. For senses are also understood as those of this body: of seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching. The apostle feared that our minds would be corrupted, where the virginity of faith is. Now, soul, keep your virginity whole, to be made fruitful afterwards in the embrace of your bridegroom. Hedge your ears, then, as it is written, with thorns. The question of the Arians troubled the weak brothers of the Church; but by the Lord's mercy the Catholic faith overcame. For he did not abandon his Church; and if for a time he troubled it, he troubled it for this reason, that it might always pray to him by whom it would be made firm on the solid rock. And still the serpent mutters and is not silent. By a kind of promise of knowledge he seeks to cast us out of the paradise of the Church, so as not to let us return to that paradise from which the first man was cast out.

Pay attention, brothers. What was done in that paradise is being done in the Church. Let no one lead us astray from this paradise. Let it be enough that we fell from that one; at least let us be corrected by experience. It is the same serpent who always suggests iniquity and impiety. Sometimes he promises impunity, as he promised there too, saying, “Will you really die?” He suggests such things now, so that Christians may live badly. “Will God destroy everyone?” he says; “will God condemn everyone?” God says, “I will condemn; I will pardon those who have changed themselves; let them change their deeds, I change my threats.” It is he, then, who murmurs and mutters and says: “Look, where it is written, ‘The Father is greater than I’; and you say he is equal to the Father?” I accept what you say; but I accept both, because I read both. Why do you accept one and refuse the other? For you have read both with me. Look: “The Father is greater than I.” I accept it, not from you but from the Gospel; and you, accept from the apostle that the Son is equal to the Father. Join both together, let both agree: because he who spoke through John in the Gospel is the one who spoke through Paul in the Letter. He cannot disagree with himself; but you do not want to understand the agreement of the Scriptures, since you love to quarrel. “But I prove from the Gospel,” he says, “‘The Father is greater than I.’” And I prove from the Gospel, “I and the Father are one.” How are both true? How does the apostle teach us “I and the Father are one”? “Who, being in the form of God, did not think it robbery to be equal with God.” Hear: “The Father is greater than I”; “but he emptied himself, taking the form of a servant.” Look, I show why he is greater; you show in what he is not equal. For we read both. He is less than the Father in so far as he is son of man; equal to the Father in so far as he is Son of God, because the Word was God. Mediator, God and man: God equal to the Father, man less than the Father. He is therefore both equal and less: equal in the form of God, less in the form of a servant. You then say how he is equal and less. Is he equal in one part and less in another? Look, leaving aside the taking of flesh, show me him equal and less. I want to see how you will demonstrate it.

Notice that stupid impiety has a fleshly mind, as it is written: “To be minded according to the flesh is death.” Stop here. I set aside for now, and do not yet speak of, the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ, the only Son of God; but, as though what has already been done were not yet done, I consider with you: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God; he was in the beginning with God.” I consider with you: “Who, being in the form of God, did not think it robbery to be equal with God.” There show me both greater and less. What will you say? Will you divide God by qualities, that is, by certain bodily or mental affections in which we perceive one thing and another? I can indeed speak in terms of nature; but whether you also understand it so, God will see. So, as I had begun to say, before the taking of flesh, before the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, show him less, show him equal. Is God one thing and another, so that in one part the Son is less than he and in another part equal to him? As if we said, there are certain bodies: you can say to me, “It is equal in length but less in strength.” For often two bodies are found such that they are equal in height of stature, but one is less in strength and the other greater. Shall we then think of God and his Son as such bodies, as it were? Shall we think so of him who was whole in Mary, whole with the Father, whole in the flesh, whole above the angels? May God turn such thoughts away from the hearts of Christians. Again, perhaps you will think so as to say: “Equal both in strength and in length, but different in colour.” Where is colour except in bodily things? But there is the light of wisdom. Show me the colour of justice. If these things have no colour, you would not say such things of God, if you had the colour of shame.

What then will you say? That they are equal in power but the Son is less in wisdom? Then God is unjust, if he gave equal power to lesser wisdom. If they are equal in wisdom but the Son is less in power, God is envious, who gave lesser power to equal wisdom. But in God whatever is said is the very same thing. For in God power is not one thing and wisdom another, fortitude one thing and justice another, or chastity another. Whatever of these you say of God, neither is one thing understood and then another, nor is anything said worthily: for these belong to souls, which that light in a certain way floods and affects according to their qualities, as when this visible light rises on bodies. If it is taken away, all bodies have one colour, which ought rather to be called no colour. But when it is brought in and has lit up bodies, though it is itself of one kind, yet according to the different qualities of the bodies it sprinkles them with different brightness. So these affections belong to souls, which are well affected by that light which is not affected, and formed by that which is not formed. [9] Yet we say these things of God, brothers, because we find nothing better to say. I say God is just, because in human words I find nothing better: for he is beyond justice. It is said in the Scriptures, “The Lord is just, and has loved justice.” But there it is also said that God repents; there it is also said that God does not know. Who would not shudder? God does not know, God repents? Yet Scripture healthfully comes down even to these words, which you shudder at, so that you may not think those you consider great to be worthily said. And so if you ask, “What then is said worthily of God?”, someone may perhaps answer you and say that he is just. But another who understands better than he may say that even this word is surpassed by his excellence, and that even this is said unworthily of him, although it is said fittingly according to human capacity; so that when the first wants to prove from the Scriptures that it is written, “The Lord is just,” he may rightly be answered that in the same Scriptures it is stated that God repents; so that, just as he does not take this according to ordinary usage, as men usually repent, so he may understand that what is called just also does not match God's pre-eminence: although Scripture has rightly put it, so that the mind may be led step by step, through words of whatever kind, to what cannot be spoken. You do indeed call God just; but understand something beyond the justice you are accustomed to think of in a man. But the Scriptures called him just; for that reason they also called him repenting and not knowing, which you no longer want to say. Just as you understand that those things you now shudder at were said because of your weakness, so these things that you value highly were said for a somewhat stronger firmness. But whoever has gone beyond these too, and has begun to think worthily of God as far as is granted to man, will find a silence to be praised by the ineffable voice of the heart.

Therefore, brothers, since in the Lord power is the same as justice (whatever you say of him, you say the same thing, though you say nothing worthily), you cannot say that the Son is equal to the Father in justice and not equal in power, or equal in power and not equal in knowledge: for if he is equal in any one thing, he is equal in everything, since all the things you say there are the same and have the same meaning. It is enough, then, that you cannot say how the Son is unequal to the Father unless you posit certain differences in the substance of God. When you posit them, the truth puts you outside, and you do not approach that sanctuary of God where it is seen most purely. But since you cannot say that he is equal in one part and unequal in another, because there are no parts in God; since you cannot say that he is equal in one respect and less in another, because there are no qualities in God; since according to God you cannot say he is equal unless equal in every way: from where can you say he is less, except because he took the form of a servant? So, brothers, always attend to this. If you have received a certain rule in the Scriptures, the light itself will show you everything. Wherever you find it said that the Son is equal to the Father, take it according to the divinity. According to the form of a servant that he took, take him as less: as it is said, “I am who I am,” and as it is said, “I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” So you will hold both what is in his nature and what is in his mercy. I think enough has been said also of that way in which our Lord Jesus Christ, our Saviour, made head of the Church and mediator, through whom we are reconciled to God, is presented in the Scriptures as God and man.

The third way is how the whole Christ is preached according to the Church, that is, head and body. For head and body are one Christ: not because he is not complete without the body, but because he deigned to be complete with us too, he who even without us is always complete, not only in that he is the Word, the only-begotten Son equal to the Father, but also in the very man whom he took up, and with whom he is at once God and man. Yet, brothers, how are we his body, and with us one Christ? Where do we find this, that the one Christ is head and body, that is, the body with its head? The bride speaks with her bridegroom as one person in Isaiah; certainly it is one and the same who speaks; and see what he says: “Like a bridegroom he has bound a turban on me, and like a bride he has clothed me with ornament.” As bridegroom and as bride: he calls the same one bridegroom according to the head, bride according to the body. They seem two, and he is one. Otherwise how are we members of Christ? since the apostle says most plainly, “You are the body of Christ and its members.” We are all together the members and body of Christ; not only we who are in this place, but also throughout the whole earth; nor only we who are at this time, but—what shall I say? From Abel the just to the end of the world, as long as men beget and are begotten, whoever of the just makes his passage through this life, whatever is now—that is, not in this place but in this life—whatever is to come among those born later, all this is the one body of Christ, and individuals are members of Christ. If then all are the body and individuals members, there is surely a head whose body this is. “And he is,” it says, “the head of the body, the Church, the firstborn, he who holds the first place.” And because it also says of him that he is always the head of every principality and power, this Church which is now a pilgrim is joined to that heavenly Church, where we have the angels as fellow citizens; we would be impudently claiming that we shall be equal to them after the resurrection of bodies, had not the Truth promised it, saying, “They will be equal to the angels of God”; and there comes to be one Church, the city of the great King.

So, then, Christ is sometimes presented in the Scriptures in such a way that you understand the Word equal to the Father. Sometimes in such a way that you understand the mediator: when the Word became flesh in order to dwell among us, when that only-begotten through whom all things were made did not think it robbery to be equal with God, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, becoming obedient even to death, the death of the cross. But sometimes in such a way that you understand head and body, the apostle himself expounding most plainly what was said of husband and wife in Genesis: “The two,” it says, “will be in one flesh.” See him expounding it himself, so that we may not seem to have dared to say anything by our own guesses. “For the two will be in one flesh,” he says; and he added, “This is a great sacrament.” And lest anyone should still think it was in husband and wife according to the natural coupling of each sex and bodily union, he says, “But I say in Christ and the Church.” According to this, then, which is taken of Christ and the Church, what was said, “The two will be in one flesh”: now not two but one flesh. And as bridegroom and bride, so head and body: because the head of the woman is the man. Whether then I say head and body, or bridegroom and bride, understand one thing. And so the same apostle, while he was still Saul, heard: “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” because the body is joined to the head. And when, now a preacher of Christ, he suffered from others what he himself had done as persecutor, he says, “That I may fill up what is lacking of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh,” showing that what he suffered belonged to the afflictions of Christ. This cannot be understood of the head, which in heaven now suffers nothing of the kind, but of the body, that is, the Church: which body with its head is one Christ.

Show yourselves, then, a body worthy of such a head, a bride worthy of such a bridegroom. That head cannot have any but a fitting body, nor does so great a husband marry any but a fitting wife. “That he might present to himself,” it says, “a glorious Church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing.” This is the bride of Christ, not having spot or wrinkle. Do you not want to have a spot? Do what is written: “Wash yourselves, be clean, take away wickedness from your hearts.” Do you not want to have a wrinkle? Stretch yourself out on the cross. For it is not only necessary that you be washed, but also that you be stretched out, so that you may be without spot or wrinkle. For through the washing sins are taken away; through the stretching comes the desire for the world to come, for which Christ was crucified. Hear Paul himself washed: “Not by works of justice which we have done,” he says, “but according to his mercy he saved us, through the washing of regeneration.” Hear the same man stretched out: “Forgetting what lies behind,” he says, “stretched out to what lies ahead, I follow in intent towards the prize of God's upward calling in Christ Jesus.”