Sermons to the People 361.4–361.18

To this discussion, then, as far as it can be undertaken or set forth by men to men such as we are and you are, I would pass at once, did not a certain anxiety for our all too carnal and almost pagan brothers force me to linger a little on that question in which it is asked whether the dead rise at all. For I think there is no pagan here now, but all are Christians. But pagans, mockers of the resurrection, do not cease daily to mutter in the ears of Christians: “Let us eat and drink; for tomorrow we die.” And because of what the apostle said, adding his anxiety and joining to this saying, “Bad conversations corrupt good morals”—fearing these evils and bearing anxiety for the weak, with not only a father's but also a mother's kind of love, we will say something on this too, as much perhaps as suffices for Christians, since a greater devotion to the Scriptures has brought all these who have gathered today. For it is not the solemnity of some feast day that has called even the theatre crowds to the church of God. For some are accustomed to flock together not out of piety but out of the occasion. This consideration has made us speak first of the resurrection of the dead; and then, if the Lord gives the opportunity, of what the future life of the just will be like afterwards.

“I fear,” says the apostle, “lest, as the serpent seduced Eve by his cunning, so your minds too may be corrupted from the chastity that is in Christ.” The minds of these people are corrupted by those conversations: “Let us eat and drink; for tomorrow we die.” Those who love these things, who follow them, who think that this is the only life, who hope for nothing of the rest, who either do not ask God or ask him for this, to whom a careful sermon is burdensome—let them hear us saying these things with great sadness. They want to eat and drink, for tomorrow they die. Would that they truly thought that they would die tomorrow! For who is so mad and perverse, who so much an enemy of his own soul, that, going to die tomorrow, he does not think that everything for which he labours has come to an end? For so it is written, “In that day all his thoughts will perish.” Even if men, because of those whom they leave here, take care of their will when the day of their death is imminent, how much more ought they to think something about their soul? A man thinks of those he is leaving, and does not think of himself who leaves all these things? Look, your children will have what you leave; you will have nothing, and your whole thought is spent on how strangers may pass on after you, not on where those passing on may arrive. Would, then, that there were thought about death. But when the dead are carried out, death is thought of, and it is said: “Alas, poor man! Such he was; yesterday he was walking about”; or, “Seven days ago I saw him, he talked with me about this and that; man is nothing.” They mutter these things. But perhaps while the dead man is mourned, while the funeral is arranged, while the rites are prepared, while he is carried out, while they go, while he is buried, this talk flourishes: but once the dead man is buried, such thought too is buried. Those deadly cares come back; he forgets whom he has escorted; one about to depart thinks about inheriting; there is a return to frauds, to robberies, to perjuries, to drunkenness, to endless bodily pleasures—which, I do not say, will perish when they are exhausted, but which perish while they are drunk; and, what is more pernicious, from the buried dead man an argument is taken for burying the heart, and it is said, “Let us eat and drink; for tomorrow we die.”

They also mock the faith of those who assert that the dead will rise, saying to themselves: “Look, this man has been laid in the tomb; let his voice be heard. But his cannot be: let me hear the voice of my father, my grandfather, my great-grandfather. Who has risen from there? Who has reported what goes on in the underworld? Let us treat ourselves well while we live: but when we are dead, even if our parents or dear ones or relatives bring things to our tombs, the living bring them for themselves, not for us the dead.” Scripture too mocked these things, saying of certain people who do not perceive present goods: “As if you were to set feasts around a dead man”; and it is plain that this does not concern the dead, and that this custom belongs to the pagans, not coming from the stock and vein of justice of our fathers the patriarchs, whose funerals we read were celebrated, but we do not read that offerings were made to them at the tomb. This can also be noticed in the customs of the Jews: for they did not keep the fruit of virtue from them, but they kept the oldness of custom in certain solemnities. And as for what some object from the Scriptures, “Break your bread and pour out your wine on the tombs of the just, and do not give it to the unjust”—this is not indeed to be discussed now, but still I say that the faithful can understand what is said. For how the faithful do these things devoutly at the shrines of their own is known to the faithful; and that these things are not to be offered to the unjust, that is, to unbelievers, because “the just man lives by faith,” this too is known to the faithful. So let no one seek a wound from medicine, and try to twist a cord from the Scriptures with which to cast the noose of death around his soul. It is plain how that is to be understood, and this celebration of Christians is open and healthful.

Let us look, then, as I had begun to say, at that, because of the men who mutter in the ears of the weak, “Let us eat and drink; for tomorrow we die”: because they say, “No one has risen from there; I have not heard anyone's voice since my grandfather was laid there, since my great-great-grandfather, since my father; I have heard no one's voice.” Answer, Christians, if you are Christians: lest perhaps, when you want to get drunk among the crowds, it irks you to answer the corrupters. You have something to answer: but you toss about with the desire for pleasures, and want to stuff yourselves and be buried alive. The desire for drunkenness rises, and like a wave rushes on the soul, drawn by the breath of the evil persuader. You suffer a great storm, then: you do not want to answer the corrupter, since you favour the one who pours the drink; but the wave of desire rises too high and wants to overwhelm your heart like a ship. Christian, Christ is asleep in that ship: wake him; he will command the storms, so that everything becomes calm. For at that time, when the disciples were tossing in the ship while Christ slept, they signified that Christians toss about when Christian faith is asleep. For you see what the apostle says: “That Christ may dwell,” he says, “through faith in your hearts.” According to the presence of his beauty and divinity he is always with the Father; according to his bodily presence he is now above the heavens at the right hand of the Father; but according to the presence of faith he is in all Christians. And so you toss about because Christ is asleep: that is, you do not overcome those desires which are stirred up by the breath of evil persuaders, because faith is asleep. What is “faith is asleep”? It has been lulled. What is “it has been lulled”? You have forgotten it. What, then, is waking Christ? Waking faith, remembering what you have believed. So recall your faith, wake Christ: your faith itself will command the waves by which you are troubled, and the winds of those who persuade to evil: at once they will depart, at once all will be still; because even if the evil persuader does not stop talking, he no longer shakes the ship, does not raise a wave, does not sink the vessel in which you are carried.

What, then, do you do when you wake Christ? What had that evil talker said to you? What had that corrupter said, corrupting good morals through bad conversations? What had he said? Certainly he had said this: “No one has come back from there; I have not heard my father, not my grandfather; let someone come back from there and say what goes on there.” You, now that Christ is awake in your ship, recalling your faith, answer him and say: “Fool, if your father rose, you would believe; the Lord of all has risen, and you do not believe?” For why did he will thus to die and rise, except that we might all believe one, so as not to be deceived by many? And what would your father do, if he rose and spoke, to die again? See with what power he rose, who now dies no more, and death will no longer have dominion over him. He showed himself to his disciples and faithful: the solidity of his body was handled, since for some it was too little to see what they remembered unless they also touched what they saw. Faith was confirmed not only in the hearts but also in the eyes of men. He who showed these things ascended into heaven, sent the Holy Spirit to his disciples; the Gospel was preached. If we are lying about these things, ask the whole world. Many things that were promised have been done: many things that were hoped for have been fulfilled: the whole world flourishes in the Christian faith. Not even those who have not yet believed in Christ dare to disparage the resurrection of Christ. Testimony in heaven, testimony on earth: testimony from the angels, testimony from the underworld. What remains that does not cry out? And you say, “Let us eat and drink; for tomorrow we die”!

But you are sad about your dearest one who has been buried, because you did not at once hear his voice. He was living, he has died: he used to eat, now he does not eat: he used to perceive, now he does not perceive: he takes no part in the joys and gladness of the living. Would you lament the seed when you were ploughing? If, then, there were someone so ignorant of things that when seed is poured out on the field and put into the earth and buried under the broken clod—if, then, there were someone ignorant even of things soon to come, who lamented the wheat because he remembered the summer, and thought within himself, saying, “This grain, which has just been buried, with how much labour it was harvested, carried in, threshed, cleaned, kept in the barn; we saw its beauty and rejoiced; now it has been taken from our eyes; I see the ploughed earth, but the grain I see neither in the barn nor here”: he would mournfully lament the grain as if dead and buried, he would weep abundantly, looking at the clods and the earth and not seeing the harvest: how he would be laughed at by any unlearned people, who are yet not unlearned in that matter; ignorant indeed of other things, but expert in that matter which he so unbecomingly ignorant lamented! And what would they say to him, those who knew, if perhaps he lamented because he knew none of this? “Do not be sad; what we have buried is certainly no longer in the barn, not in our hands: we will come to this field, and it will delight you to see the beauty of the crop where you now lament the bareness of the ploughing.” He who knew what would come of the grain would rejoice even in the ploughing; but that unbelieving, or rather foolish, or, to say it more truly, inexperienced man would perhaps lament at first, but believing the experienced man he would go away consoled, and would hope for the future harvest with the experienced man.

But harvests are usually seen year by year; but of the human race one last harvest will rise at the end of the world. It cannot be shown to the eyes now: but a proof has been given from one principal grain. The Lord himself says, “If the grain remains so and is not put to death, it will remain alone,” speaking of his own putting to death, because the resurrection of those believing in him is to be manifold. An example was given from one grain, but such an example that all who wanted to be grains should believe it. Although every creature too speaks of resurrection, if we are not deaf: from which we ought to infer what God will do once at the end with the human race, since we see so many similar things every day. The resurrection of Christians will be once; the sleep and waking of living creatures is daily. Sleeping is like death; waking is like resurrection. From what happens daily, believe what is to happen once. The moon is born every month, grows, is completed, wanes, is used up, is renewed. What happens in the moon month by month will happen once in the resurrection in the whole of time. As what happens daily with sleepers, so with the moon month by month. Where do the leaves go from the trees, where do they come back from? Into what secret places do they depart, from what secret places do they come? It is winter: certainly the trees, now like dry ones, grow green in spring. Has this happened now for the first time, or was it so last year too? Indeed it was so last year too. It was cut off from autumn into winter; it returns through spring into summer. So the year returns in time, and will men, made in the image of God, perish when they have died? [11] But someone may say to me, inspecting the changes and renewals of things less carefully: “Those leaves rotted; new ones are born.” But one who considers more fully sees that even those which rot go into the strength of the earth. For how is the earth fattened, except from the rotting of earthly things? Those who farm notice these things; and those who do not farm, because they always live in the city, let them at least learn from the gardens near the city with what care all the contemptible refuse of the city is kept, by whom it is even bought at a price, where it is carried. Certainly these things, now contemptible and emptied of all usefulness, might be thought so by the inexperienced. And who deigns to look at dung? What man shudders to look at, he takes care to keep. So what seemed already used up and thrown away returns into the fatness of the earth, the fatness into sap, the sap into the root; and what passes from the earth into the root moves by invisible passages into the trunk, is distributed through the branches, from the branches into the buds, from the bud into fruit and leaves. Look, what you shuddered at in the rottenness of dung you admire in the fruitfulness and greenness of the tree.

I do not want you now to object to me what you usually object: “The body of the buried dead does not remain whole; for if it remained, I would believe it would rise.” Then only the Egyptians believe in the resurrection, because they take careful care of the corpses of the dead. For they have the custom of drying bodies and making them as if of bronze: they call them gabbarae. So, according to these people, who do not know the secret recesses of nature, where all things are safe for the Creator even when they are withdrawn from mortal senses, only the Egyptians rightly believe in the resurrection of their dead, but the hope of other Christians is in straits? For often, when tombs have been opened or laid bare, whether by age or by some necessity that is not sacrilegious, bodies have been found to have rotted, and men who are accustomed to delight in bodily appearance have sighed and groaned, and said in their hearts: “Will this ash then one day have that appearance of beauty, be restored to life, be restored to light? When will that be? When shall I hope for something living from this ash?” You who say this, you see in the tomb even ash: turn back your age, if you are, for example, thirty, fifty or more years old: in the tomb there is even the ash of the dead man; what were you fifty years ago? Where were you? The bodies of all of us who now speak or listen will be ash after a few years; a few years ago they were not even ash. Will he, then, who could make what was not, fail to remake what was?

Let the mutterings of evil speakers cease, then, and of those who corrupt good morals by bad conversations. Fix your feet on the way, fix them: so as not to leave the way, not so as to stay still on the way, but as it is said, “So run that you may obtain.” Let Christ always flourish in your heart, who willed to show in the head what the other members hope for. On earth indeed we labour; our head in heaven now neither dies, nor fails, nor suffers anything: yet it suffered for us. For he was handed over for our sins and rose for our justification. This we know by faith: those to whom he showed himself learned it by their eyes. Yet we are not rejected because he rose and we could not see him with fleshly eyes. We have for us the testimony of the Lord himself, which he gave to the doubting disciple who sought by touch what he might believe. For when he had cried out, convinced by handling the scars, and had said, “My Lord and my God,” he in reply said, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who do not see and believe.” Wake up, then, to your blessedness; let no evil persuader shake out of your hearts what Christ has fixed there.

Nor let that be said to me. For this is said by all who have now yielded, even unwillingly, to the authority of Christ. For almost all pagans, even those who do not want or put off embracing Christ with devotion, do not dare to find fault with him: although they dare to find fault with Christians, they do not dare with Christ; they yield to the head, and still insult the body. But let the body, hearing the insults of those who already yield to the head, not think itself cut off from the head, but supported. For if we were cut off, we ought to fear the voices of those who insult: but that we are not cut off he himself testifies who said to Paul, while still Saul persecuting the Church, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” He had already passed through the hands of the impiety of the Jews, had already penetrated the underworld, had already risen from the tomb, had already ascended into heaven, had already enriched and strengthened the hearts of believers with the gift of the Holy Spirit, sitting at the right hand of the Father interceding for us: not to hand himself over again to death, but to free us from death—what could he suffer from Saul's raging? How could that hand touch him, though he was, as it is written, breathing slaughter? He could make an attack on Christians labouring on the ground: but on Christ, when and how? Yet he cries out for the other members, and does not say, “Why do you persecute my own?” For if he said, “Why do you persecute my own?”, we would think of servants. But servants do not cleave to a master as much as Christians to Christ. This is another kind of bond: another order of members, another unity of love. The head speaks for the members, and does not even say, “Why do you persecute my members?” but says, “Why do you persecute me?” He did not touch the head, but he touched what is joined to the head. We have often said it already, but because the comparison is apt and conveys the thing well, it must be repeated. Whoever treads on you in a crowd presses your foot, but does nothing to the tongue. What does it mean, then, that the tongue cries out, “You are treading on me”? The pressure is on the foot, there is no hurt to the tongue, but there is one bond. “And if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it; and if one member is glorified, all the members rejoice with it.” If, then, your tongue speaks for your foot, does Christ in heaven not speak for Christians? So your tongue does not speak for the foot so as to say, “You are treading on my foot,” but, “You are treading on me,” though it itself has not been hurt. Recognize him as your head when he speaks for you from heaven and says, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” So, brothers, why have we said this? Lest perhaps those creep up on you of whom the apostle says, “Bad conversations corrupt good morals,” because they say, “Let us eat and drink; for tomorrow we die”: so that they may say to you (for they do not dare to find fault with Christ; they tremble at the authority of his majesty founded throughout the world; but, as it is written, “The sinner will see and be angry, he will gnash his teeth and waste away”: he can gnash, and he can waste away; but he does not dare to blaspheme Christ); lest perhaps, then, they speak thus and say, “That was allowed to Christ alone.” For sometimes they say it from the heart, and sometimes from fear: but you, attend both to what they dare to say and to what they do not dare.

They will say, then: “You tell me that Christ rose, and from this you hope for the resurrection of the dead; but it was allowed to Christ to rise from the dead.” And he now begins to praise Christ, not to give him honour, but to make you despair. The cunning destruction of the serpent: in order to turn you from Christ by praise of Christ, he deceitfully proclaims him whom he does not dare to censure. He magnifies his majesty in order to make him unique, so that you may not hope for anything like what was shown in him rising. And he appears more devout towards Christ when he says: “Look who dares to compare himself with Christ, so as to think that because Christ rose, he too will rise.” Do not be disturbed by the perverse praise of your Emperor; the enemy's snares disturb you, but the humility and humanity of Christ console you. He proclaims how high Christ has been raised above you: but Christ says how far he came down to you. Answer him, then: wake that faith; there is a storm, there are waves, the ship labours, Christ sleeps; wake that faith; do not forget what you have believed. At once you will answer, when the faith of the Gospel begins to be awake in you. You will not be at a loss in answering: for it will not be you who speak; Christ dwelling in you will take up his instrument, your tongue, like his sword, using your heart and your voice as an indwelling owner; he will resist the adversary; he will make you secure: you only wake the sleeper, that is, remember the forgotten faith.

What shall I say now, from which you may answer such people? I shall not say anything new, but what you have believed. Wake your faith, then, and answer the one who says, “Christ alone could; we cannot.” Answer and say: “Christ could because he is God; he certainly, because he is God. If because he is God, because he is almighty; if because he is almighty, why shall I despair that he will be able to do in me what he showed in himself for my sake?” Then I ask from what Christ rose. He will answer: “From the dead.” I ask why he died. For can God die? Could that divinity, the Word equal to the Father, the art of the almighty craftsman, through whom all things were made, the unchangeable wisdom, abiding in itself, renewing all things, reaching mightily from end to end and ordering all things sweetly—could it die? “No,” he says. And yet Christ died. From what did he die? Namely, that he did not think it robbery to be equal with God, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant. But what does he say before? “Who, being in the form of God.” Had he received the form of God, or was he in it by nature? The apostle distinguishes. When he spoke of the form of God, he said “being”; when he named the form of a servant, he said “taking.” So Christ was something, he took something, so that what he had taken might be one with him. In the form of God he was equal to God, as that fisherman evangelist says: “The Word was in the beginning, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God”: that is, “Being in the form of God, he did not think it robbery to be equal with God.” For what is not present by nature but is usurped unlawfully is robbery. An angel usurped equality with God, and fell and became the devil; man usurped equality with God, and fell, and became mortal. But he who was born equal, because not born in time, but the everlasting Son of the everlasting Father, always born, through whom all things were made, was in the form of God. But in order to be mediator between God and men, between the just and the unjust, between the immortal and mortals, he took something from the unjust and mortals, keeping something in common with the just and immortal. For keeping justice in common with the just and immortal, and taking mortality from the unjust and mortals, he became the reconciler in the middle, throwing down the wall of our sins; hence his people sing to him, “And in my God I will leap over the wall”: rendering to God what sins had alienated, redeeming by his blood what the devil possessed; he died for us and rose for us. He bore our sins, not clinging to them but sustaining them: as Jacob wore the skins of kids, so as to seem hairy to his father as he blessed him. Esau, the bad, had his own hair; but Jacob, the good, wore another's. For sins cling to mortal men. But they did not cling to him who had said, “I have power to lay down my life, and I have power to take it up again.” So death in our Lord was a sign of others' sins, not the punishment of his own. But in all men mortality is the punishment of sin: for it is drawn from the origin of sin, from which we all come; from the fall of that man, not from the descent of this one. For it is one thing to fall, another to come down. One fell wickedly; the other came down mercifully. “For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive.” Bearing, then, others' sins, he says, “What I did not steal, I then paid back”: that is, having no sin, I was dying. “Look,” he says, “the prince of this world will come, and he will find nothing in me.” What is “he will find nothing in me”? He will not find in me the desert of death. For the desert of death is sin. Why, then, will you die? It follows, and he says: “But so that all may know that I do the will of my Father, rise, let us go from here.” And he rises, going to his passion. Why? Because he was doing the will of his Father, not because he owed anything to the prince of sins, in whom there was no sin. So our Lord Jesus Christ brought his divinity with him, but took mortality from us. This he received in the womb of the virgin Mary, the Word of God joining himself to human nature, like a bridegroom to a bride in the virginal bridal chamber, so that he himself might come forth like a bridegroom from his chamber.

Return, then, to what I was saying. Mortality came into all men from sin: but in the Lord it was from mercy, and yet it was real; because such flesh was real, and was truly mortal, having the likeness of sinful flesh; not the likeness of flesh, but the likeness of sinful flesh: for it was real flesh, but not sinful flesh. For he had not received that mortality, as I said, by the desert of sin, who emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, and became obedient even to death. What, then, was he, and what did he have? He was divinity having mortality. And from what he died, from that he rose. Look now to those who say: “Christ alone could rise, but not you.” But answer and say: “Christ rose in that which he had received from us. Take away the form of a servant, and there would be nothing in which he might rise; because there would be nothing in which he might die. Why, then, do you want to destroy, by praise of my Lord, the faith that my Lord has built in me? For from that which he took, the form of a servant, he died. And he rose in that in which he died. So in no way shall I despair of the servant's resurrection, since the Lord has risen in the form of a servant.” Or if they attribute to a man's power that Christ rose from the dead—for they are accustomed to say this too, that he was so just a man that he could even rise from the dead—so that I may speak for the moment according to them, and not speak of the divinity of our Lord: he who was so just that he deserved even to rise from the dead could in no way deceive us when he promised resurrection to us too.

All that has been said, then, brothers, serves this purpose: that you may be equipped if any say that the dead do not rise. And there have been said, if you remember, as far as God deigned to suggest what was necessary, testimonies drawn from the nature of things and from daily examples; and from the very almightiness of God, to whom nothing is difficult, who, if he could make what was not, can much more remake what was; and from the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ himself, who is agreed to have risen, and whose resurrection took place only in the form of a servant, since death too, from which there was need to rise, could not take place except through the form of a servant. Hence, since we are servants, we ought to hope in our form for what he deigned to show beforehand in the form of a servant. Let the tongues, then, of those who say, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die,” fall silent. Indeed, you too answer and say: “Let us fast and pray; for tomorrow we shall die.”