Sermons to the People 344.1–344.7

Two loves wrestle with each other in this life in every temptation: love of the world and love of God; and whichever of the two wins draws the lover there as if by a weight. For we come to God not with wings or feet but with affections. And again, we cling to the earth not with bodily knots and chains but with contrary affections. Christ came to change love, and to make of an earthly lover a lover of heavenly life: made man for our sake, he who made us men; God taking up man, to make men gods. This is the contest set before us, this the struggle with the flesh, this the struggle with the devil, this the struggle with the world. But let us trust, since he who appointed this contest does not watch without his help, nor does he urge us to presume on our own strength. For whoever presumes on his own strength, since he is a man, presumes on the strength of a man: and cursed is everyone who puts his hope in man. Burning with the flame of this holy and pious love, the martyrs burned the hay of the flesh with the strength of the mind; but they themselves, whole in spirit, came to him by whom they were set alight. Yet to the very flesh that they despised its due honour will be given in the resurrection of the dead. For it was sown in dishonour so that it might rise in glory.

To those set on fire by this love, or rather so that it may be kindled, he says: “Whoever loves father or mother above me is not worthy of me; and whoever does not take up his cross and follow me is not worthy of me.” He did not take away love of parents, wife, children, but put it in order: he did not say, “Whoever loves,” but, “whoever loves above me.” This is what the Church says in the Song of Songs: “He set love in order in me.” Love your father, but not above the Lord; love the one who begot you, but not above the Creator. Your father begot you, but he did not form you himself: for when he sowed the seed, he did not know who or what kind of child would be born to him. Your father fed you, but your father did not make from his own resources the bread for the hungry. Lastly, whatever your father keeps for you on earth, he departs so that you may succeed; he will make room for your life by his death. But what God the Father keeps for you, he keeps with himself, so that you may possess the inheritance with the Father himself, not wait for him as a successor waits for his predecessor, but cling to him who will abide for ever, yourself to abide in him for ever. Love your father, then, but not above your God. Love your mother, but not above the Church, which bore you to eternal life. Indeed, weigh from your love of your very parents how much you ought to love God and the Church. For if those who begot one who would die are to be loved so much, with how much love are those to be loved who begot one who would come to eternity and abide in eternity? Love your wife, love your children according to God, so that you may provide for them to worship God with you; when you are joined to him, you will fear no separation. So you ought not to love them more than God, whom you love quite wrongly if you neglect to bring them with you to God. Perhaps the hour of martyrdom will come. You want to confess Christ. Having confessed, you will perhaps receive a temporal penalty, you will receive temporal death. Father or wife or son coax you not to die, and by coaxing they bring it about that you die. If they do not bring it about, this will come into your mind there: “Whoever loves father or mother or wife or children above me is not worthy of me.”

But fleshly affection is bent by the coaxing of one's own, and human softness in some way slips. Gather up the folds of your flowing garment; gird yourself with strength. Does love of the flesh torment you? Take up your cross and follow the Lord. Your Saviour himself, though God in the flesh, though God with flesh, nevertheless showed human affection for you when he said, “Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me.” He knew that this cup could not pass; he had come to drink it. That cup was to be drunk by will, not by necessity. He was almighty: if he wished, it would certainly pass, since he is God with the Father, and he and God the Father are one God. But from the form of a servant, from what he took from you for you, he uttered the voice of a man, the voice of the flesh. He deigned to transfigure you in himself, so that you might speak weak things of him and grasp strong things in him. He showed the will by which you could be tempted; and at once he taught what will you ought to prefer to which. “Father,” he says, “if it can be, let this cup pass from me.” This is a human will: I bear man, I speak from the form of a servant. “Father, if it can be, let this cup pass.” It is the voice of the flesh, not of the spirit; the voice of weakness, not of divinity. “If it can be, let this cup pass.” This is the will of which Peter too is told: “But when you are old, another will gird you and take you and carry you where you do not wish.” How, then, did the martyrs win? Because they put the will of the spirit before the will of the flesh. They loved this life, and they weighed it. From this they considered how much eternal life is to be loved, if this perishing one is loved so. One who is going to die does not want to die; and yet he will necessarily be dying, however continually he does not want to die. You achieve nothing by not wanting to die, you accomplish nothing, you extort nothing: you have no power to remove the necessity of death. What you fear will come though you do not want it; what you put off will be present though you refuse it. You busy yourself to postpone death; surely not to remove it? If, then, lovers of this life busy themselves so much about postponing death, how much should one labour about removing it? You certainly do not want to die. Change your love, and a death is shown you, not one that will come though you do not want it, but one that, if you will, will not be.

See, then, if love has woken up somewhat in your heart, if a spark has flashed out of the ash of the flesh, if something of strength has caught in your heart, so that by the wind of temptation it is not only not put out but kindled more fiercely: if you do not burn like tow, so as to be put out by one light breath, but burn like oak, glow like charcoal, so as to be stirred up rather by the breath: see two deaths, one temporal, which is also the first; the other everlasting, which is also the second. The first death is prepared for all; the second only for the wicked, the impious, unbelievers, blasphemers, and whatever else opposes sound teaching. Attend; set these two deaths before you. If it can be, you do not want to suffer either. I know: you love to live, you do not want to die; and you would like to pass from this life into another life in such a way that you would not rise again having died, but would be changed for the better while living. This you would like; human affection has this; the soul itself somehow has this in its will and desire. For by loving life it hates death; and since it does not hate its flesh, it does not want what it hates to happen to it. For no one ever hated his own flesh. The apostle shows this affection when he says: “We have a dwelling from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this we groan, longing to put on over it our dwelling which is from heaven.” In which, he says, “we do not wish to be stripped, but to be clothed over, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life.” You do not want to be stripped: but you must be stripped. Yet you must so act that, stripped of the tunic of flesh by death, you may be found clothed in the breastplate of faith. For following this up he adds: “If indeed, being clothed, we are not found naked.” For the first death will strip you of the flesh, to be laid aside for a while and received back in its time. This whether you will or not. For you will not rise because you want to, or not rise if you do not want to, or not rise because you do not believe in the resurrection. What you need rather is to act so that you, who will rise whether you will or not, may rise in such a way as to have what you want. For the Lord Jesus himself said: “The hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come out,” whether they are good or bad; all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come out, and be sent out from their hiding places. No creature will hold a dead man under the voice of the living Creator. “All,” he says, “who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come out.” By saying “all” he made, as it were, a confusion and mixture. But hear the distinction, hear the separation too: “Those who have done good,” he says, “to the resurrection of life; those who have done evil, to the resurrection of judgment.” This judgment, which the wicked will rise to undergo, is called the second death. Why, then, Christian, do you fear this first one? It will come though you are unwilling, it will be present though you refuse. Perhaps you ransom yourself from barbarians so as not to be killed: you ransom yourself at a great price, you do not spare your goods at all, you strip your children; and ransomed, you will die tomorrow. You must be ransomed from the devil, who drags you with him to the second death, where the wicked placed on the left will hear: “Go, you cursed, into the eternal fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels.” From this second death you must be ransomed. You will answer, “With what?” Do not look for goats and bulls; lastly, do not shake out your chest and say in your mind, “To ransom myself from the barbarians I had money.” To ransom yourself from the second death, have justice. The barbarian himself could first take your money and afterwards lead you captive, so that you would have nothing with which to ransom yourself, since he who possessed you also possessed all your goods: justice you do not lose against your will; it remains in the innermost treasury of the heart; hold it, possess it; by it you are ransomed from the second death. If you do not want that death, it will not be, because that by which you ransom yourself from it will be, if you will. The will obtains justice from the Lord, and drinks it as from its own fountain. No one is forbidden to approach that fountain, if he approaches worthily. Lastly, see your help. Your silver ransomed you from the barbarians; your money ransomed you from the first death; the blood of your Lord has ransomed you from the second death. He had blood with which to ransom us; and he received blood for this purpose, that he might have something to shed to ransom us. The blood of your Lord, if you will, was given for you; if you will not, it was not given for you. For perhaps you say: “My God had blood with which to ransom me; but when he suffered he gave it all; what has he left to give for me?” This is the great thing: that he gave it once, and gave it for all. The blood of Christ is salvation to the willing, punishment to the unwilling. Why, then, do you hesitate, you who do not want to die, to be freed rather from the second death? You are freed from it if you will take up your cross and follow the Lord, because he carried his and sought his servant.

Do not those who so love temporal life urge you most of all, my brothers, to love eternal life? How much do men do so as to live a few days? Who could count the efforts and exertions of all who want to live and will die a little later? How much do they do for those few days? What do we do that is so much for eternal life? What shall I say of ransoming a few days, and those on earth? For I say a few days, if the one set free grows old; I say a few days, if the boy set free becomes decrepit. I do not say that one ransomed today will perhaps die tomorrow. Look how much they do for an uncertain outcome, for those few uncertain days! What do they devise! If through a bodily illness they come into a doctor's hands, and all hope of health is given up by those who examine and pronounce on them; if some doctor is promised who is able to free even one given up, how much is promised! how much is simply given for an uncertain outcome! In order to live a little, they give up what they would live on. And if one falls into the hands of an enemy or a robber, so as not to be killed, so as to be ransomed—even if a father has been seized, the sons run and spend what he would have left them, to ransom one they may soon carry to burial. What canvassing! what pleas! what efforts! who could describe it? And yet I want to say something more serious, and, were it not done, more incredible. For why do I say that men give money to live, that they leave nothing for themselves? To live a little for a few days, and those uncertain, to live with fear, to live with toil, how much do they spend! how much do they give! Woe to the human race! I said that to live they spend what they live on: hear what is worse, what is more serious, what is more criminal, what is, as I said, incredible, were it not done. To be allowed to live a little, they give even that by which they could live for ever. Hear what I have said, and understand. For it is still closed, and yet it moves many to whom the Lord has already opened it when it was closed. Leave aside those who give and lose what they can live on, so as to be granted to live a little. Attend to those who lose that by which they could live for ever, so as to be granted to live a little. What is this? It is called faith, it is called piety: all this is like the money by which eternal life is acquired. The enemy will come from the side, terrifying, and he will not say to you, “Give me your money, so that you may live,” but he will say to you, “Deny Christ, so that you may live.” If you do this, in order to be allowed to live a little, you will lose that by which you could live for ever. Is this loving life, you who feared death? Good man, why did you fear death, except by loving life? Christ is life. Why do you seek a small life so as to lose the secure one? Or perhaps you have not lost faith, but did not have it to lose? Hold, then, that by which you may live for ever. Look at your neighbour, how much he does to live a little. Look too at the one who denied Christ, how great an evil he did for a few days of life. And will you not despise those few days of life, so as to die on no day, and live in the everlasting day, be protected by your Redeemer, be made equal to the angels in the eternal kingdom? What did you love? What did you lose? To follow the Lord, you did not take up your cross.

See how wise he wants you to be, who said to you: “Take up your cross and follow me.” “Whoever finds his life,” he says, “will lose it; and whoever loses it for my sake will find it.” Whoever finds it will lose it; whoever loses it will find it. In order to lose it, you must first find it; and when you have lost it, last of all you find it again. There are two findings: between them passes one losing. No one can lose his life for Christ's sake unless he has first found it; and no one can find his life in Christ unless he has first lost it. Find, so as to lose; lose, so as to find. How will you first find it, so as to have something to lose? When you think of yourself as partly mortal, when you think of him who made you and created your soul by breathing into you, and you see that you owe it to him who gave it, must return it to him who lent it, must have it guarded by him who established it: you have found your life, finding it in faith. For you believed this, and you found your life. For you were lost before you believed. You found your life: for you had been dead in unbelief, you came back to life in faith. You are such that it could be said of you, “He was dead, and has come back to life; he was lost, and is found.” So you have found your life in the faith of the truth, if you have come back to life from the death of unbelief. This is finding your life. Lose it, and let your life be seed to you. For the farmer too finds the wheat by threshing and winnowing, and loses the wheat again by sowing. What had perished in sowing is found on the threshing floor. What is found in the harvest perishes in sowing. “Whoever finds his life, then, will lose it.” Whoever labours to gather, why is he lazy to sow?

For how would you have found it, unless he lit the light for you to whom it is said, “You will light my lamp, Lord”? You have found it already, then, since he lit your lamp for you. See why you should lose it. For what has been found so carefully is not to be lost just anywhere. He does not say, “Whoever loses it will find it,” but, “Whoever loses it for my sake.” Perhaps when you look at the body of a shipwrecked merchant on the shore, you shed tears in pity and say: “Woe to this man! He lost his life for gold.” You lament rightly, you pity rightly. Give him your tears, since you cannot give him help. For he could lose his life for gold, but he could not find it for gold. He was fit for the loss of his life; he proved unfit to gain it. For one must think not of what he lost but of why he lost it. If for avarice, look where the flesh lies; where is what was dear? And yet avarice gave the order, and for gold the life was lost; and for Christ the life does not perish, nor may it perish. Fool, do not hesitate: hear the Creator's counsel. He who made you before you were someone who could be wise has himself instructed you to be wise. Listen; do not hesitate to lose your life for Christ. You entrust to a faithful Creator what you are said to lose. You indeed will lose it; but he takes it up, for whom nothing perishes. If you love life, lose it so as to find it: because when you have found it, there will no longer be anything to lose, there will be no reason to lose. For that life is found which is found so as to be wholly unable to perish. Because Christ too, who gave you an example by being born, dying, and rising, rising from the dead dies no more, and death will no longer have dominion over him.