Sermons to the People 361.19–362.13

It remains for us to say what the life of the just will be like in the resurrection. But since you see that a reasonable amount of time has already been taken today, ruminate on what we have paid: as for what we owe, pray that we may pay it some day. Hold above all why we have spoken, especially because of these feast days, my brothers, which the pagans celebrate. Look to yourselves: this world passes; remember the Gospel where the Lord foretells that the last day will come as in the days of Noah. They ate and drank, they bought and sold, they married, they were given in marriage, until Noah entered the ark; the flood came and destroyed them all. You have the Lord most plainly warning beforehand, and saying in another place, “Let not your hearts be weighed down with gluttony and drunkenness. Let your loins be girded and your lamps burning; and be like servants waiting for their master, when he returns from the wedding.” Let us wait for him to come; let him not find us sluggish. It is shameful for a married woman not to long for her husband: how much more shameful for the Church not to long for Christ? A husband comes for fleshly embraces, and is received with great longing by his chaste wife: the bridegroom of the Church is to come to give eternal embraces, to make us his everlasting co-heirs, and we live in such a way that we not only do not long for his coming but even fear it! How true it is that that day will come as in the days of Noah! How many will he find so, even of those who are called Christians! That is why the ark was built for so many years, so that those who do not believe might wake up. It was built for a hundred years, and they did not wake up to say, “Not without cause does the man of God build an ark, but because destruction threatens the human race”; and they did not appease God's wrath, turning to the conduct that pleases God, as the Ninevites did. For they brought forth the fruit of repentance and propitiated God's wrath.

Jonah announced not mercy but wrath to come: for he did not say, “Three days, and Nineveh will be overthrown; but if you do penance in these three days, God will spare you”: he did not say this. He threatened and foretold only overthrow: and yet they, not despairing of God's mercy, turned to repentance; and God spared them. But what shall we say? That the prophet lied? If you understand it carnally, he seems to have said something false; if you understand it spiritually, what the prophet said came about. For Nineveh was overthrown. Consider what Nineveh was, and see that it was overthrown. What was Nineveh? They ate and drank, they bought, sold, planted, built, they were given to perjuries, lies, drunkenness, crimes, corruptions: this was Nineveh. Now look at Nineveh: they lament, they grieve, they are sorrowful, in sackcloth and ashes, in fasts and prayers. Where is that Nineveh? Surely it has been overthrown, because it is no longer set in those former deeds.

So, brothers, now too the ark is being built, and those hundred years are these times: this whole stretch of time is signified by that number of years. If, then, those deservedly perished who ignored it while Noah built the ark, what do those deserve who, while Christ builds the Church, ignore salvation? There is as much difference between Noah and Christ as between servant and Lord; or rather, as between God and man. For servant and master can also be called two men. And yet, because men did not believe while a man built the ark, an example to beware of was given from them to those who came after. Christ, God, made man for us, builds the Church; he laid himself as the foundation of that ark: every day incorruptible timbers, faithful men renouncing this world, enter the fabric of the ark; and is it still said, “Let us eat and drink; for tomorrow we die”? You, then, as I said, brothers, say against them, “Let us fast and pray; for tomorrow we die.” For those say, “Let us eat and drink; for tomorrow we die,” who do not hope for the resurrection: but we who already believe and proclaim the resurrection, as the prophets spoke and Christ and the apostles preached, who hope that we shall live after this death, let us not live in luxury, nor weigh down our hearts with gluttony and drunkenness; but anxiously waiting, with loins girded and lamps burning, for the coming of our Lord, let us fast and pray, not because tomorrow we shall die, but so that we may die secure. What remains, then, brothers, demand from us at another time in the name of the Lord. Turning to the Lord, etc.

Keeping our promise in mind, we have also had suitable readings read from the Gospel and the apostle. Those of you who were present at the previous sermon remember with us that the question set before us about the resurrection was divided by us into two discussions: first we would discuss, for the sake of those who doubt or even deny it, whether there will be a resurrection of the dead; afterwards we would inquire, as far as we can and according to the Scriptures, what the life of the righteous will be like in the resurrection. In the first part, then, where we treated the rising of the dead, we lingered so long, as you are good enough to remember, that time ran out for treating the second question, and so we were forced to put it off to this day. Your attention, then, demands this debt of us, and we recognize the time for paying it. Let us therefore pray to the Lord together with devout attention of heart, that we may pay the debt opportunely and you may receive it to your salvation. For this is, it must be admitted, the greater question; but love is stronger than all difficult questions, love which we all ought to serve, so that God, who commanded it, may turn all our difficulties into ease and joy.

You remember that on that day we answered certain people who say, as the apostle rebukes them, "Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die"; he adds, "Bad conversations corrupt good morals," and so concludes, "Be sober, you righteous, and do not sin; for some have no knowledge of God; I say this to your shame." May we all have heard these apostolic words and committed them to heart; and whoever has heard them and committed them to heart, let his works show it. For one who hears is like a field receiving the sower's seed; one who commits it to heart is like a man breaking the clods and covering what has been sown; but one who acts on what he has heard and committed to heart is the one who rises up into the harvest and bears fruit with endurance, some thirtyfold, some sixtyfold, some a hundredfold. For him not fire, as for chaff, but barns, as for wheat, are made ready. In those hidden barns, then, in the resurrection of the dead, is that everlasting blessedness, itself the secret place of the righteous, into which Scripture tells us they are to be received.

Scripture has also referred to them in another place by the name of vessels, when the Lord Jesus Christ says that the kingdom of heaven is like a sagena, that is, a net; for a certain kind of net is called a sagena. "The kingdom of heaven," he says, "is like a net cast into the sea and gathering fish of every kind; when it was full, they drew it out, and sitting on the shore they chose the good into vessels, but threw the bad away." Our Lord meant to signify that the word of God is now sent out over peoples and nations as a net is cast into the sea. It now gathers both good and bad by the Christian sacraments; but not all whom the net takes up are also stored in the vessels. For the vessels are the dwelling places of the saints and the great secret places of the blessed life, which not all who are called Christians will be able to reach, but only those who are so called in such a way that they are what they are called. Good and bad fish do indeed swim inside the net, and the good bear with the bad until they are separated at the end. It has also been said in a certain place, "You will hide them in the hiding place of your face"; for he was speaking of the saints. "You will hide them," he says, "in the hiding place of your face": that is, where the eyes of men cannot follow, nor the thoughts of mortals; meaning certain secret places, very hidden and very concealed, he said "in the hiding place of the face of God." Are we to think carnally that God has some great face, and that in his face there is some bodily receptacle where the saints are to be hidden? You see, brothers, how carnal these thoughts are, and how they are to be rejected from the hearts of all the faithful. What then should "the hiding place of God's face" be understood to mean, except what is known only to the face of God? Since, then, they are called barns, to signify secret places, and in another place they are called vessels, they are neither the barns we know nor the vessels. For if it were some one such thing, some other thing would not be named. But because unknown things are conveyed, as far as they can be, through likenesses known to men, take it that both were named for this purpose: that by the name of barn and by the name of vessels you may understand a secret place. But if you ask what kind of secret place, hear the prophet saying, "You will hide them in the hiding place of your face."

Since this is so, brothers, we are still pilgrims in this life; we still sigh by faith for that homeland, I know not what. And why "I know not what," when we are its citizens, unless because, wandering far away on pilgrimage, we have forgotten it, so that we can speak of our homeland as "I know not what"? This forgetfulness the Lord Christ, the king of that homeland, drives out of our heart, coming to the pilgrims; and by his taking of flesh his divinity becomes for us the way, so that we may travel on through Christ the man and abide in Christ who is God. What then, brothers? That secret which "eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it gone up into the heart of man": with what eloquence are we going to explain it to you, or with what eye are we going to see it? We can sometimes know something which we still cannot express; but what we do not know we can never express. Since, then, it could be that even if I knew those things I could not express them to you, how much harder will speaking be for me when I too, brothers, walk with you by faith, not yet by sight? But is this only I, or the apostle himself too? For he consoles our ignorance and builds up our faith, saying: "Brothers, I do not consider that I have laid hold of it. But one thing: forgetting what lies behind, stretched out toward what lies ahead, I press on in purpose toward the prize of the upward calling"; and so he shows that he is on the way. And in another place: "As long as we are in the body," he says, "we are on pilgrimage away from the Lord; for we walk by faith, not by sight." And again: "For in hope," he says, "we have been saved. But hope that is seen is not hope; for why does anyone hope for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience."

Hear from me, then, brothers, the voice that is in the Psalms: devout, humble, gentle, not proud, not turbulent, not headlong, not rash. For a psalm says in a certain place: "I believed, therefore I have spoken." And the apostle inserted this testimony and added: "We too believe, and therefore we also speak." Do you want me, then, to tell you what I know? I am not deceiving you: hear what I have believed. Do not think it cheap that you are hearing what I have believed; for you are hearing a truthful confession. But if I said, "Hear what I know," you would be hearing rash presumption. If then, brothers, all of us, and, as we believe from the writings of the saints, all who lived in the flesh before us, through whom the Spirit of God, speaking, gave out to men as much as was enough to be made known to pilgrims, all of us speak what we believe, while the Lord himself spoke what he knew: what then? If only the Lord could know what he was saying about the life to come for ever, while the others followed the Lord because they believed? We find our Lord Jesus Christ himself knowing what to say and yet not saying it. For in a certain place he says to his disciples: "I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now." He put off saying what he knew because of their weakness, not because of any difficulty of his own. But we, because of the weakness common to all of us, do not attempt to express worthily what we know, but explain as we can what we worthily believe; and you, take it in as you can. And if perhaps one of you can take in more than I can say, let him not attend to the little stream, but run to the richest fountain; for with him is the fountain of life, in whose light we shall see light.

Since, then, we have argued that there is a resurrection, so we believe, so we ought to believe, so we speak, because so we have believed, if we are Christians: looking at the power of the Lord's arm laying low the pride of the nations everywhere, and building up this faith as widely through the world as was promised long before it happened. Looking at these things, we are built up to believe what we do not yet see, so that we may receive sight itself as the reward of faith. Since, then, the future resurrection of the dead is plain to our faith, and so plain that whoever doubts it calls himself a Christian most shamelessly, the question is what kind of bodies the saints will have, and what their life will be. For many have thought that there would indeed be a resurrection, but of souls only.

That bodies too rise again there is no need to discuss at length after the previous sermon. But a question of this sort is raised: if there are to be bodies, what will they be like? Such as they are now, or of another kind? If of another kind, what is that kind? If such as now, then for the same works? But the Lord does not prescribe the same, the apostle does not teach such. For it is not for the same life, not for the same deeds, mortal and corruptible and perishing and passing, not for carnal joys, not for carnal consolations. If, then, not for the same things, then not such bodies either. If not such, how then will the flesh rise? Yet we have the resurrection of the flesh in the rule of faith, and we are baptized confessing it. And whatever we confess there, we confess from the truth and in the truth, in which we live and move and are. For we are instructed for eternal life by temporal events and by certain transient and passing deeds. All the things that were done so that we might hear something saving, that miracles might happen, that our Lord might be born, hunger and thirst, be arrested, be insulted, be scourged, be crucified, die, be buried, rise again, ascend into heaven: all have passed; and when they are preached, certain temporal and transitory actions are preached to our faith. Because they pass, does what is built by them likewise pass? Let your Holiness attend, so that you may see this through a likeness. An architect builds a lasting house by means of passing machines. For in this great and spacious building that we see, while it was being built there were machines which are not here now, because what was being built by them now stands complete. So then, brothers, something was being built in the Christian faith, and certain temporal machines have done their work. For that our Lord Jesus Christ rose is finished; he is not still rising; and that he ascended into heaven is finished; he is not still ascending. But that he is in that life where he no longer dies, and death will no longer have dominion over him; that in him human nature itself, which he deigned to take, and in which he deigned to be born, to die, and to be buried, lives for ever: this has been built, this abides always. But the machines by which it was built have passed. For Christ is not always being conceived in the virgin's womb, or always being born of the virgin Mary, or always being arrested, or always being judged, scourged, crucified, buried. All these are reckoned as machines, so that by these machines what abides for ever might be built. And this resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ has been placed in heaven.

Let your Love attend to a marvelous building. These earthly buildings press on the earth by their weight, and the whole downward thrust of the weights in such a large structure strains toward the earth, and unless it is held in check it tends toward lower places, where the weight draws it. Because it is built on earth, then, the foundation is laid first in the earth, and on the foundation the builder may build securely. So he places very firm masses at the bottom, so that they can adequately carry what is put on top, and the size of the foundation is prepared in proportion to the size of the building; in the earth, however, as I said, because what is built on top is also placed on the earth. That Jerusalem of ours, now a pilgrim, is being built in heaven. That is why Christ, the foundation, went ahead into heaven. For there is our foundation and the head of the Church; for he is called both foundation and head, and so indeed he is. For the head of a building too is its foundation: the head is not where it ends but where it begins to rise upward. The tops of earthly buildings are raised high, yet they set their head in the solidity of the earth. So too the head of the Church went ahead into heaven and sits at the right hand of the Father. As men work to haul something to set firm at the bottom to make a foundation, for the security of the mass that is to come on top in building the future structure, so through all the things that happened in Christ, being born, growing, being arrested, suffering insult, being scourged, crucified, slain, dying, being buried, a mass, as it were, was hauled up to the heavenly foundation.

Since our foundation, then, has been laid on high, let us be built upon it. Hear the apostle: "No one can lay another foundation," he says, "than the one that has been laid, which is Christ Jesus." But what follows? "But let each one see what he builds upon the foundation: gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw." Christ is indeed in heaven, but he is also in the heart of believers. If Christ has the first place, the foundation has been rightly laid. So let the builder build securely, if he builds gold, silver, precious stones, in keeping with the dignity of the foundation. But if he does not build in keeping with the dignity of the foundation, but builds wood, hay, straw, let him at least hold to the foundation, and because of the dry and fragile things he has built up, let him prepare himself for fire. But if it is the foundation, that is, if Christ has won the first place in the heart, and worldly things are loved in such a way that they are not put before Christ, but the Lord Christ is put before them, so that in the building of the heart he holds the foundation, that is, the first place: "he will suffer loss," he says, "but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire." This is not the time now to urge you to build gold, silver, and precious stones rather than wood, hay, and straw upon so great and strong a foundation; but take what has been said briefly as though it had been said at length and in many words. For we know, brothers, that if any of you were sent to prison by the threats of some judge because of the things he now loves, to suffer nothing but smoke, he would rather lose all those things than suffer that dungeon. Yet somehow, when fire is named as coming on the day of judgment, all despise it, and while they fear the flames of the hearth, they count the flame of Gehenna as nothing. What hardness is this? What great perversity of heart? If men feared what the apostle says, "through fire," even as each one fears being burned alive, which happens to him in a single moment, until sensation leaves the limbs and makes all those flames superfluous, he would still fear it, and would not do anything that is rightly forbidden, so as not to come to that torment, though it were of a single moment.

But, as I said, brothers, there is no room now to discuss this matter. This I say: in the resurrection of the dead we ought to hope for what has been shown in our head, what has been shown in the body of our Lord Jesus Christ. Whoever hopes for something else no longer builds upon the foundation, not only not gold, silver, and precious stones, but not even straw. For he puts the whole outside, because he does not put it in Christ. Our Lord, then, rose in the body in which he was buried. Resurrection is promised to Christians. Let us hope for such a resurrection as went before the faith of all of us in our Lord. For he went before for this reason, that our faith might be built upon it. What then? In what way shall we not be such as we are now? For the flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ rose, but it ascended into heaven. On earth he kept to human functions, to convince people that what had been buried had risen. But is there such food in heaven too? For we read that angels too performed human functions on earth. They came to Abraham and ate; and an angel was with Tobias, and ate. What do we say: that that eating was an illusion and not real? Is it not plain that Abraham killed a calf, made loaves, and set them on the table; he served the angels, and they ate? All these things were done most plainly and recorded most plainly.

What then does the angel say in the book of Tobias? "You saw me eat, but you saw with your own sight." Was it that he did not eat but only seemed to eat? No, he truly ate. What then does "you saw with your own sight" mean? Let your Holiness attend to what I say; attend in prayer more than to me, so that you may understand what we say, and that we may say it to you in the way you ought to hear and understand what you hear. As long as our body is corruptible and going to die, it suffers the need of refreshment; and from this hunger arises. That is why we hunger and thirst; and if we put off our hunger and thirst longer than the body can bear, it is brought to a wasting leanness and a kind of sickly thinness, as strength departs and is not replaced; and if this goes further, death too will follow. For something is always departing from our body in a kind of stream of departure, but we do not feel our strength departing, because through refreshment we take in strength to replace it. For what comes in abundantly departs little by little: that is why we take refreshment in a short time, while over a longer time the strength we received when we took refreshment leaves us. It is like oil in a lamp, which is poured in in a short time and is used up slowly, little by little. But when it is nearly used up, the feebleness of that little flame, the lamp's hunger as it were, warns us, and at once we come to its help, so that its brightness may be restored and the light may stay in the lamp, refreshed by its food when we add oil. So our strength, which we receive by eating, goes and leaves us in continual departure, but little by little. For this very thing is happening in us now, and in all our actions; even in all our rest what was received does not stop going; and if it is entirely used up, a man dies just as a lamp goes out. But so that he may not die, that is, not go out (not because we die in the soul, but so that this bodily life of ours may not go out and a kind of wakefulness may continue in this body), we hurry to supply what has gone, and we are said to "refresh" ourselves. Whoever speaks of refreshing, what does he refresh if nothing is failing? Through this need and corruption, then, we are all going to die as well, because this body is such that death is kept in store for it as its due. For this mortality is signified by the skins with which Adam and Eve were clothed when they were sent out of paradise. For skins point to death, since they are usually stripped from dead animals. As long, then, as we carry this failing weakness, which, even if food never fails it but keeps restoring its strength, still is not kept from coming to death (for that whole condition of the body, through the succeeding ages of life, even if one lives here a long time, will come at some point to the limit of old age, and beyond it will find nothing to reach to but death; for the lamp too, even if you keep adding oil, cannot burn for ever, because, even if it is not put out by some other mishap, the wick itself fails and is consumed by a kind of old age): as long, then, as we bear such bodies, from failing we are in need, from need we hunger, from hunger we eat. But the angel does not eat from need. For it is one thing to do something from power, another from necessity. Man eats so as not to die; the angel eats so as to suit himself to mortals. For if the angel does not fear death, he is not refreshed because of failing; if he is not refreshed because of failing, he does not eat from need. But those who saw the angel eating thought he was hungry. This is what he means by "you saw with your own sight." For he did not say, "You saw me eat, but I did not eat"; "You saw me eat," he says, "but you saw with your own sight"; that is: I ate to suit myself to you, not because I suffered any hunger or need, which compels you to eat as you are accustomed to do; and so, when you see someone eating, you suppose that it is done from need, measuring what you see by your own habit. This is "you saw with your own sight."

What then, my brothers? We know, as the apostle says, that Christ, rising from the dead, no longer dies, and death will no longer have dominion over him. For in that he died to sin, he died once; but in that he lives, he lives to God. If, then, he no longer dies, and death will no longer have dominion over him, let us hope that we shall rise in such a way that we shall always be in the state into which we shall be changed by rising. And even if there will be the power to eat and drink, there will be no necessity. But at that time there was a reason why the Lord did this: there were still people in the flesh with whom he wished to fit in, to whom he also wished to show his scars. For he who made eyes for the blind man, which he had not received in his mother's womb, was not unable to rise without scars. And if he had wished to change the mortal need of his own flesh before death so that it would have no want of necessity, he certainly could have; for it was in his hand, because he was God in the flesh, and the almighty Son, as the Father is almighty. For even before death he changed his very flesh into what he wished: when he was on the mountain with his disciples, his face shone like the sun. And this he did by power, wishing to show that he could also change his very flesh from all need, so that he would not die if he did not wish to. "I have power," he says, "to lay down my life, and I have power to take it up again. No one takes it from me." Great is this power, by which he could also not die; but greater the mercy by which he willed to die. For he did through mercy what by power he could also have left undone, in order to lay for us the foundation of the resurrection: so that what he bore as mortal for our sake should both die, because we are going to die, and rise to immortality, so that we may hope for immortality. Therefore before his death it is written not only that he ate and drank, but also that he hungered and thirsted; after the resurrection only that he ate and drank, not that he hungered and thirsted; because in a body that would no longer die there was not that need belonging to corruption, which would make refreshment a necessity, but there was the power to eat. It was done for the sake of fitting in with them, not to relieve a want of the flesh, but to convince them of the reality of the body.

Against such great evidence some raise a question for us from the apostle: see what they object to this argument. "The flesh," they say, "will not rise; for if it rises, it will possess the kingdom of God; but the apostle says openly, Flesh and blood will not possess the kingdom of God." You heard it when the apostle was being read. We say that the flesh rises, and the apostle cries out, "Flesh and blood will not possess the kingdom of God." Are we then preaching against the apostle, or did he preach against the gospel? The gospel testifies with a divine voice, "The Word became flesh, and dwelt among us." If he became flesh, he became true flesh. For if not true flesh, then not flesh. As Mary's flesh is true, so the flesh of Christ, which was taken from her, is true. This true flesh was arrested, scourged, struck with fists, hung on the cross; this true flesh died, this true flesh was buried; this true flesh also rose from death. The scars bear witness; the disciples' eyes see, and still their wonder wavers; the hand handles, so that the mind may not doubt. Against such great evidence, brothers, by which our Lord Jesus Christ wished in this way to convince the disciples who were to preach it throughout the world, against this evidence does the apostle seem to fight when he says, "Flesh and blood will not possess the kingdom of God"?