Sermons to the People 352.4–353.2

Since the matter has come up, I want to say something too about the doubting of God's servant Moses. For this too was a figure of the ancient saints. Moses doubted at the water; when he struck the rock with the rod so that water might flow, he doubted. Anyone reading of his doubt might perhaps pass over it and not understand, because he would not dare even to inquire. But that doubt displeased the Lord God, and he marked it, not only by rebuking but also by punishing. For because of this doubt it is said to Moses, “You will not lead the people into the land of promise. Go up the mountain and die.” Here God certainly appears angry. What, then, of Moses, my brothers? Was all that labour of his, all his zeal for the people, and that love which said, “If you forgive them their sin, forgive; but if not, blot me out of your book,” condemned by this sudden and unexpected doubt? And what is it that the reader concluded with when he read the apostle, “Love never falls”? While I was setting out certain things to be solved, your eagerness made me set out something else too, which perhaps you would not have asked. Let us see, then, and let us still try as far as we can to penetrate the mystery. God is angry, he says that he will not lead the people into the land of promise; he orders him to go up the mountain and die. And yet he enjoins many things on the same Moses to be done: he orders what he is to do, how he is to arrange the people, how not to leave them at random and carelessly. He would never deign to enjoin these things on one condemned. Hear something more wonderful. Since it was said to Moses (for this pleased God for the sake of a certain mystery and dispensation) that he himself would not lead the people into the land of promise, another is chosen, Jesus son of Nun; and this man was not called by that name, he was called Hoshea. And when Moses entrusted to him the leading in of the people, he took care and changed his name, and called him Jesus: so that not through Moses but through Jesus, that is, not through the law but through grace, the people of God might enter the land of promise. But as that Jesus was not the true one but a figure, so too that land of promise was not the true one but a figure. For that was temporal for the first people: what has been promised to us will be eternal. But by temporal figures eternal things were promised and foretold. As, then, he was not the true Jesus, nor that land of promise the true one, but a figure; so the manna was not truly heavenly food, but a figure; so that rock was not truly Christ, but a figure; and so with everything. What consideration, then, does the doubting of Moses demand? Whether perhaps some figure was expressed there too, hinting to the one who understands, and stirring and provoking the mind to inquire. For I see that after that doubt, and after God's anger, and after the threat of death, and after his removal from leading the people into the land of promise, God speaks many things to Moses as to a friend, as he spoke before; so much so that Moses is set before Jesus son of Nun himself as an example of obedience, and God admonishes him to serve him as Moses served, and promises to be with him as he was with Moses. Clearly, dearly beloved, God himself constrains us not to blame Moses' doubt at random but to understand it. The rock lying is a figure, the rod striking is a figure, the water flowing is a figure, and Moses doubting is a figure too. And he doubted precisely where he struck. Moses' doubt arose when the wood came to the rock. Now the quick ones fly ahead; or rather, let them wait patiently for the slow. Moses doubted when the wood came to the rock: the disciples doubted when they saw the Lord crucified. Moses bore the figure of these. He was a figure of Peter denying three times. Why did Peter doubt? Because the wood came near the rock. When the Lord foretold the manner of his death, that is, the cross itself, Peter himself was terrified: “Far be it from you, Lord; this shall not be.” You doubt, because you see the rod hanging over the rock. So then the disciples lost the hope they had in the Lord: it was in some way cut off when they saw him crucified, when they lamented him slain. He found them after the resurrection talking among themselves about this in sad conversation; and holding their eyes so that he would not be recognized by them—not withdrawing himself from believers but delaying the doubters—he joined in the talk as a third speaker, and asked them what they were talking about. They are amazed that he alone does not know what had been done in the very one who was asking. “Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem?” they say. And they recount what had been done concerning Jesus. And at once they lay bare the marrow of their despair, and show the wound to the doctor, though without knowing it: “But we hoped,” they say, “that in him was the redemption of Israel.” Look, doubt arose, because the wood came to the rock: the figure of Moses was fulfilled.

Let us look at this too: “Go up the mountain and die.” By the bodily death of Moses was figured the death of that very doubt; but on the mountain. O wonderful mysteries! This, certainly, once expounded and understood, how much sweeter than manna! At the rock doubt was born; on the mountain it died. When Christ was lowly in his passion, he lay like a rock before their eyes: rightly he was doubted; that lowliness displayed nothing great. Rightly by that very lowliness he became a stone of stumbling: but glorified by the resurrection he appeared great; now he is a mountain. So now let that doubt which was born at the rock die on the mountain. Let the disciples recognize their salvation, let them recall their hope. Watch how that doubt dies; watch how Moses dies on the mountain. Let it not enter the land of promise: we do not want doubt there; let it die. Let Christ show it to us dying. Peter trembled, and denied three times. For the rock was Christ. He rose, he became a mountain: he made Peter firm too. But the doubt dies. How does it die? “Peter, do you love me?” The inspector of the heart, the knower of the heart, asks; and he wants to hear that he is loved, and once is too little. He asks this, he hears it, almost to Peter's own weariness: for he wonders that he is asked by one who knows beforehand, and asked so many times when it would be enough to answer once even someone who did not know. But as if the Lord said to you, “I am waiting: let the lawful number be filled up: let him confess three times through love, because he had denied three times through fear.” So in asking so many times, the Lord was killing that doubt on the mountain.

What, then, dearly beloved, if these things are open? They were closed not to deceive but to delight. For they would not be taken so sweetly if they were cheap by being ready to hand. Let the one seeking baptism, whom I had begun to address, look then to his own business. The Red Sea was baptism; the people crossing were being baptized: the crossing itself was baptism, but in the cloud. For what was foretold was still clouded; what was promised was still hidden. Now the cloud has withdrawn; the clear sky of manifest truth has come: because the veil too has withdrawn, through which Moses spoke. This veil hung in the temple too, so that the secrets of the temple might not be seen; but at the Lord's cross the veil was torn, so that they might lie open. Come, then, to baptism: enter fearlessly the way through the Red Sea; do not be anxious about past sin as about an Egyptian pursuing you. Your sins pressed you with the hard burden of slavery, but in Egypt, in the love of this world, in a far-off pilgrimage; they forced you to pursue earthly works, as if making bricks; you were doing works of clay. Your sins press you: come confidently to baptism: the enemy will be able to follow as far as the water; there he will die. Fear something from your past life, believe that something of your sins will remain, if any of the Egyptians remained. I hear the voice of the lazy: “I am not afraid,” he says, “of past sins; I do not doubt that all are forgiven me in the holy water, through the love of the Church too; but I fear future sins.” Do you want, then, to stay in Egypt? Meanwhile escape the present enemy, who has already pressed you and already subjugated you. Why do you imagine future enemies for yourself? What you have already done will be, even if you do not want it; what you think you will do will not be, if you do not want it. “But the way is dangerous: for when I have crossed the Red Sea I shall not yet be in the land of promise: that people was led through long deserts.” Meanwhile be freed from Egypt. What, then, do you think he will fail to help you on the way, he who rescued you from the old captivity? Will he not restrain your new enemies, he who freed you from the old ones? Only cross fearlessly, walk fearlessly, be obedient: do not embitter that Moses, whose type he bore in this obedience. I admit, enemies are not lacking. For as there were not lacking those who pursued them as they fled, so there were not lacking those who hindered them as they walked. Indeed, dearly beloved, they were figures of us. Meanwhile let there be nothing in you to grieve Moses: do not be the bitter water which after the Red Sea that people could not drink. For there too there was temptation. And yet when these things happen, when the people grow bitter, we show them Christ, what he bore for them, how he shed his blood for them: and they grow sweet, as if we were throwing wood into the water. Clearly you will have Amalek as an enemy opposing your journey. Then Moses prayed, then he stretched out his hands: and when he lowered his hands, Amalek grew strong; when he stretched out his hands, Amalek failed. Let your hands too be stretched out, let Amalek fail, the tempter and hinderer of this journey: be watchful and sober in prayers, in good works, yet not apart from Christ, because that stretching out of the hands was the cross of Christ. On it the apostle is stretched out when he says: “The world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.” So let Amalek fail, let him be conquered, and not hinder the passage of God's people. If you let your hands drop from good works, from the cross of Christ, Amalek will prevail. Yet do not think that you will be strong in every way or continually, nor fail by despairing utterly. For that alternation of failing and strength in the hands of God's servant Moses was perhaps your alternation. For sometimes you fail in temptations, but you do not succumb. He lowered his hands a little; he did not fall altogether. “If I said, My foot has slipped, look, your mercy, Lord, helped me.” Do not fear, then: on the journey there is a helper, who in Egypt did not fail as liberator. Do not fear; set out on the way; be confident. Sometimes he lowered his hands, sometimes he raised them; yet Amalek was conquered. He could rebel; he could not overcome.

So we are now urged to speak of the second repentance. For I proposed that there is a threefold consideration of it in holy Scripture. That first is that of the candidates for baptism and of those thirsting to come to baptism: this I have shown from the holy Scriptures. There is indeed another, the daily one. And where do we show this daily repentance? I have nowhere better to show it than in the daily prayer, where the Lord taught us to pray, showed what we should say to the Father, and put it in these words: “Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors.” What debts, brothers? Since debts here can be understood only as sins, which debts he forgave in baptism do we pray that he forgive again? Certainly every Egyptian who was pursuing died. If nothing was left of the pursuing enemies, what do we pray to be forgiven, except because of the hands failing against Amalek? “Forgive us, as we also forgive.” He established a medicine, he confirmed a covenant. Here he dictates the prayers; there he answers the one praying: he knows by what right the matter is conducted in heaven, how what is desired can be obtained. Do you want to be forgiven? Forgive, he says. For what do you have to offer God, from whom you want something offered to you? Does Christ the Saviour still walk on earth? Does Zacchaeus now receive him into his house rejoicing? Does Martha prepare lodging and a meal for him? He needs none of these; he sits at the right hand of the Father. But “when you did it to one of the least of mine, you did it to me.” This is the stretching out of the hands under which Amalek failed. And indeed you pay out to the poor when you give something to the hungry: perhaps you will have less of what you gave, but in your house, not in heaven. But here too on earth he at whose command you gave makes up what you gave. When the apostle was speaking of this, he said: “He who supplies seed to the sower will also supply bread for food.” For you are God's labourer when you give to the needy: you sow in winter what you will reap in summer. Why, then, do you fear, unbeliever, that in this great house so great a householder will not feed his labourer? There will be enough there too, but what suffices you. God will give everything to need, not to greed. Work, then, fearlessly; stretch out your hands; let Amalek fail. But, as I said, when you have given something from your house, you either see less there than you used to see: you do not see there what you gave until God gives again. Tell me: when you forgive from the heart, what do you lose? When you pardon one who sins against you, what will you have less of in your heart? For from there you forgive, but you lose nothing. On the contrary, a kind of wave of love was flowing in your heart, and as it were welling up from an inner spring: you hold hatred against your brother; you have blocked the spring. So you not only lose nothing when you forgive, but are watered more abundantly. Love is not cramped. You put a stone of stumbling there, and you make straits for yourself. “I will avenge myself, I will take revenge, I will show him, I will do it”: you seethe, you toil, when you could by forgiving be secure, live secure, pray secure. For look: what are you going to do? You are going to pray. What shall I say: when? Today you are going to pray. Or are you not going to pray? Filled with anger and hatred, you threaten revenge: you do not forgive from the heart. Look, you are praying; look, the hour of prayer comes; you begin either to hear or to say those words. When the earlier parts have been said and heard, you will come to this verse. Or if you are not going to come to it, where are you going to go? So as not to pardon your enemy, will you turn aside from Christ? Clearly if you turn aside in the prayer, so as not to want to say, “Forgive us our debts,” because you cannot say, “as we also forgive our debtors,” lest the answer come quickly, “I forgive as you forgive”: so because you cannot say this and do not want to forgive, you will turn aside from this verse and pass it over, and say what follows, “Do not let us be led into temptation”: there your creditor will catch you, whose face you were, as it were, avoiding. As anyone in a street, when he meets someone to whom he owes something, if there is a side lane at hand, leaves the way he was going and goes another way, so as not to see his creditor's face. This is what you thought you had done in this verse: you avoided saying, “Forgive, as I forgive,” lest he forgive in the same way, that is, not forgive, because you do not forgive; and you did not want to say it, avoiding the creditor's face. Whom are you avoiding? Who are you that avoid? Where will you go, where you can be and he cannot? You will say, “Where shall I go from your spirit? And from your face where shall I flee? If I go up to heaven, you are there; if I go down to hell, you are present.” How far can a debtor flee from Christ, further than going into hell? This creditor is present there too. What will you do, except what follows? “If I take my wings straight forward and fly to the farthest parts of the sea”: that is, in my hope I will meditate on the end of the world, I will live in your commandments, I will be lifted by the two wings of love. Fill out, then, the two wings of love. Love your neighbour as yourself; and do not hold hatred, which makes you flee your creditor.

There remains repentance: the third kind, of which I shall say something more briefly, so that with the Lord's help I may pay what I proposed and promised. There is a heavier and more mournful repentance, in which people are properly called penitents in the Church, removed even from partaking of the sacrament of the altar, lest by receiving unworthily they eat and drink judgment to themselves. That repentance, then, is mournful. It is a grave wound: perhaps adultery has been committed, perhaps homicide, perhaps some sacrilege; a grave thing, a grave wound, lethal, deadly: but the doctor is almighty. Now after the suggestion of the deed, and the delight and the consent and the commission, he stinks like one dead four days: but the Lord did not abandon even him, but cried out, “Lazarus, come forth.” The weight of the tomb yielded to the voice of mercy; death yielded to life, hell yielded to the one above. Lazarus was raised; he came out of the tomb: and he was bound, as people are who do penance in the confession of sin. They have already come out from death: for they would not confess unless they came out. To confess is itself to come out of the hidden and dark. But what does the Lord say to his Church? “What you loose on earth,” he says, “will be loosed in heaven too.” So when Lazarus came out, since the Lord had fulfilled the good of his mercy, bringing the hidden, stinking dead man to confession, the ministry of the Church now does the rest: “Loose him, and let him go.” But, dearly beloved, let no one set this kind of repentance before himself, let no one prepare himself for this kind; yet if it should happen, let no one despair. It was not so much the crime that Judas the betrayer committed as despair of pardon that made him perish utterly. He was not worthy of mercy; so the light did not shine in his heart, so that he might run to the pardon of the one he had betrayed, as those did who had crucified him; but by despairing he killed himself, and hanged himself with a noose, he choked himself. What he did in his body was done in his soul. For this wind of the air is also called spirit. As, then, those who bind their neck kill themselves because the spirit of this air does not enter them, so those who despair of God's pardon choke themselves inwardly by that very despair, so that the Holy Spirit cannot visit them.

Pagans usually mock Christians for this, over the repentance that is established in the Church; and against some heresies the Catholic Church has held fast this truth about doing penance. For there were those who said that for certain sins penance should not be granted; and they were excluded from the Church and became heretics. In whatever sins, Mother Church does not lose her loving heart. So pagans usually mock us for this too, not knowing what they say, because they have not yet come to the word of God, which makes the tongues of infants eloquent. “You,” they say, “make men sin, when you promise them pardon if they do penance. This is laxity, not admonition.” They pile up words to this effect, as much as each can; whether with a resounding or a stammering tongue, they are not silent; yet even when we speak to them, though they are beaten, they do not agree. But let your Charity hear briefly how they are beaten, because the Lord's mercy has arranged everything excellently in his Church. They say we give licence to sins because we promise the door of repentance. If the entrance to repentance were closed, would not the sinner add sins to sins the more, the more he despaired of being pardoned? For he would say to himself: “Look, I have sinned, look, I have committed a crime; now there is no room for pardon for me; repentance is fruitless; I am to be condemned: why do I not now live as I please? Since I do not find love there, here at least I will feed desire. For why should I abstain? There every place is closed to me; here whatever I do not do I lose, because the life that will come after this will not be given me. Why, then, do I not serve my lusts, so as to fulfil and sate them, and do whatever is not lawful but pleases?” Perhaps it might be said to him: “But, wretch, you will be caught, accused, tortured, punished.” Bad men know that these things are said by men and observed among men; they see that many who live wickedly and criminally have their sins unpunished: they can hide them, buy off what they cannot hide; buy off up to old age a wanton, blasphemous, sacrilegious, ruined life. They count off to themselves: “What? Did not that man who did so much die old?” Do you notice that that sinful and wicked man died old for this reason, so that God might show patience in him, waiting for repentance? Hence the apostle says: “Do you not know that the patience of God leads you to repentance? But he, according to the hardness of his heart and his impenitent heart, has stored up for himself wrath on the day of wrath and of the revelation of the just judgment of God, who will render to each according to his works.” So it is necessary that this fear take possession of minds; it is necessary that he who does not want to sin think of God as present to him, not only in public but also at home; not only at home but also in the bedroom, at night, in his bed, in his heart. So if you take away the harbour of repentance, they will increase sins through despair. Look, those who think that sins are increased because the harbour of repentance is offered in the Christian faith say nothing. What then? Ought not God, lest sins be increased again by that hope of pardon, to have provided against this too? For as he provided that sins be not increased by despairing, so he ought to have provided that they be not increased by hoping. For as one who despairs really does increase sins, so one who hopes for pardon can increase sins too, saying to himself, “I will do what I want; God is good; when I turn, he will pardon me.” Say this to yourself plainly, “When I turn, he will pardon me,” if tomorrow is certain for you. Does not Scripture admonish you to this, saying: “Do not delay to turn to the Lord, and do not put it off from day to day; for his wrath will come suddenly, and in the time of vengeance he will destroy you”? Look, the providence of God has watched on both sides for us. So that we may not increase sins by despairing, the harbour of repentance has been offered; again, so that we may not increase them by hoping, the day of death has been made uncertain.

The word of an anxious shepherd addresses the ears and minds of all whom our care embraces; yet it is now directed properly to you, whose recent infancy of spiritual birth is marked by the cradle of the sacraments. For to you most of all the divine word speaks so tenderly through the apostle Peter: “So, putting away,” he says, “all malice and all guile and flattery and envy and slander, like newborn infants long for the reasonable and innocent milk, that by it you may grow up to salvation, if you have tasted that the Lord is sweet.” That you have tasted, we are witnesses: we ministered this sweetness to you in the office of a nurse. So, admonished after the likeness of holy infancy, put away malice, guile, flattery and envy and slander. You must hold this innocence in such a way that you do not lose it by growing. What is malice, but love of harming? What is guile, but doing one thing and pretending another? What is flattery, but seduction by false praise? What is envy, but hatred of another's happiness? What is slander, but reproach more biting than true? Malice delights in another's evil; envy is tormented by another's good; guile doubles the heart; flattery doubles the tongue; slander wounds a reputation. But the innocence of this holiness of yours, since it is the daughter of love, does not rejoice over iniquity, but rejoices with the truth. Simple as a dove, and cunning as a serpent, not from eagerness to harm but to beware of the one who harms. To this I exhort you. “For of such is the kingdom of heaven,” that is, of the humble, of the spiritually little. Do not despise it, do not shrink from it. This littleness belongs to the great. But pride is the deceptive greatness of the weak; when it has taken possession of the mind, it casts down by raising up, empties by inflating, scatters by swelling. One who harms cannot be humble; one who is proud cannot be innocent. I speak of that humility which does not want to excel in perishing things, but truly thinks on something eternal, which it may reach not by its own strength but helped. This cannot want evil for anyone, by which its own good is in no way increased. But pride at once gives birth to envy. And who is envious and does not wish evil to the one by whose good he is tormented? So envy in turn gives birth to malice: from which proceed guile and flattery and slander, and every evil work that you would not want to suffer from another. So, keeping devout humility, which in the holy Scriptures is approved as holy infancy, you will be secure about the immortality of the blessed: “For of such is the kingdom of heaven.”

Further, one who is not proud towards men ought most of all not to be defiant against God: for if one must not do to anyone what one does not want to suffer from another, and no man wants to suffer disobedience from one who is subject to his authority, how much more must one beware of being towards God the kind of person one does not want a man to be towards oneself? They therefore deceive their own souls who think it enough if they do to no man what they do not want done to themselves, and corrupt themselves with a luxurious life in such a way that they try to do to God what they do not want done to them by a man. For they do not want their house to be ruined by anyone, who in themselves ruin the house of God in pitiable blindness, deaf to the apostle crying out, “Do you not know that you are the temple of God, and the Spirit of God dwells in you? But if anyone corrupts the temple of God, God will corrupt him. For the temple of God is holy, which you are. Let no one deceive himself.” Why, then, do they think they keep their innocence towards other men, when they harm themselves so that they lack God as their indweller and are punished by him as avenger? Hence it also happens that, having slipped and poured themselves out through harmful pleasures, they not only cease to be temples of God but even become ruins, in which evil demons dwell, whom they begin to supplicate and worship: and, as it is said, their last state becomes worse than the first. So to you, reborn of immortal seed—as above because of the malicious desires of harming, by which men suffer what they hate, so now because of shameful and unlawful pleasures of the flesh and impious sacrileges, by which men do not seem to harm men, not doing to them what they do not want, but by not obeying God, to whom all things are subject, they themselves do to the Lord of lords what they do not want done to them by their little slaves—to you the same apostle Peter speaks, saying: “Since Christ has suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves also with the same thought: for whoever has died in the flesh has ceased from sin, so as to live the rest of his time in the flesh no longer by human desires but by the will of God. For the time past is enough for having accomplished the will of the Gentiles in lusts and pleasures and revelries, drinking and abominable idolatries.” For the time past is enough for having served the muddy works of sins as under the domination of the Egyptians. Now the Red Sea, that is, baptism consecrated by the blood of Christ, has truly overthrown Pharaoh and destroyed the Egyptians: fear nothing from past sins as from enemies pursuing you from behind. For the rest, consider that you are crossing the desert of this life and coming to the land of promise, the heavenly Jerusalem, the land of the living: lest through contempt of God's word, as through loathing of the manna, your hearts, like inner mouths, lose their taste; lest, desiring the foods of Egypt, you murmur about the heavenly nourishment; lest you commit fornication, as some of them committed fornication; and lest you tempt Christ, as some of them tempted him. If, as you thirst for the faith of the Gentiles, some bitterness of those who resist meets you, like those waters which Israel could not drink, then, imitating the Lord's patience, let them grow sweet as if the wood of the cross had been thrown in. If the serpent's temptation bites, let it be healed by the same medicine of the cross, by looking at the lifting up of that serpent, as at death conquered and triumphed over in the Lord's flesh. If the adversary Amalek tries to block and hinder your way, let him be overcome by the most persevering stretching out of the arms, by the sign of the same cross. Be true and genuine Christians: do not imitate those who are Christians in name and empty in deed. I say again, and it must be said often: “The time past is enough for having accomplished the will of the Gentiles.” Detest and turn away from dogs that have returned to their vomit; detest and turn away from the house swept and empty, into which seven other more wicked spirits are brought, so that the last state of the man becomes worse than the first. Hold fast your cleanser as your indweller. For “we urge and beg you not to receive the grace of God in vain.” “For the time past is enough for having accomplished the will of the Gentiles.” Hear the apostle Paul too: “I speak in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh. For as you presented your members to serve uncleanness and iniquity for injustice, so now present your members to serve justice for sanctification.”