Sermons to the People 365.1–366.8

We have sung and said, "I will bless the Lord": would that it were with the heart, not only with the mouth! For if it is with the mouth and not the heart, the Lord's praise is soiled in the mouth of a sinner; nor does the confession of the mouth profit him if within there is no profession of love. See, brothers: love is not a virtue of the mouth; it fixes its seat where the bridegroom's beloved is beautiful. And where is this beauty? "All the glory of the king's daughter is within." That glory is nothing other than beauty; that beauty is nothing other than love; love is nothing other than life. So love, that you may live. If you love, you are beautiful: love is good, love is beautiful. If that beauty is absent, you do not live; you have a fair appearance, but not within. Let that tomb propped on so many columns be opened, let the marble be broken: what else will meet you but a horrible corpse, stinking bones, ashes, worms? So there is a fair appearance, but it covers a dead man, at the sight of whom you shudder and groan. And do you think a dead man says, "I will bless the Lord"? On the contrary, as Scripture testifies, "The dead will not praise you, O Lord, nor all who go down into hell." Open the gospel: you will hear the Lord rebuking the devil and saying, "Be silent." Why? Because the dead will not praise you, nor all who go down into hell. No one praises someone he does not love; or if he praises an enemy, he loves the virtue he praises in the enemy. Whoever sins carries on enmity with God; so he does not praise God, nor does he praise God's virtue; for praise is a kind of good, which does not belong to sin. Whoever praises someone and lies is slandering or mocking rather than praising. Take love away from the heart, and only falsehood is left. Do you want falsehood to praise the truth, and God to receive a eulogy from the source of blasphemy? The wise think little of being praised by the mad and the wicked: shall God be praised by an impure and utterly shameless heart, by a blasphemous and utterly senseless mind? Say, then, "I will bless the Lord, who has given me understanding." You are not mad, you have been healed, you have understanding: praise your God, who has given you understanding, who supplies the eye: understanding, that you may grasp; the eye, that you may look; that you may grasp how great is the breadth and length of the love of God, that you may look to the author and finisher of faith; that you may grasp love, that you may look to Christ; love, that you may love; Christ, that you may bless; so that by loving and blessing you may know the Lord who has given you understanding; and by knowing may live: for "this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent."

But from where, I ask, do you have this understanding? Someone will come at us from the side and say: "He who gave nature gave understanding; a good nature, a good understanding; let me be allotted this good nature, and it is enough; for the understanding will not fall short of it; and so I will bless the Lord for that from which he gave me understanding, that is, from nature." O heretic, so you have been allotted a good nature? Then let the apostle be silent and put to shame: "The good that I want," he says, "I do not do"; and yet he was allotted a good nature, and in this good nature he cannot do the good he wants to do. He wills, desires, strives: he wills weakly, desires in vain, strives fruitlessly; and he does not accomplish this good against what he wills, desires, and strives for. O good nature, whose will is feeble, whose desire is ineffectual, whose efforts are useless! Let the philosophers play their part, and they will be most grateful to you for granting them a good nature so freely. What comes of it? They know the heaven, they know the earth, they know the sea; they probe the depths, they search out the hidden things of nature; they know the distinctions, differences, and essences of things; they give an account of all these: what comes of it? Go on, say more. After so many great achievements they fail; they did not glorify him as God, and became vain in their thoughts, and became fools while they thought themselves wise, and changed the likeness of God into the likeness of a calf that eats hay, and poured themselves out in the error of the Baals; and the god of this world blinded them, and they were handed over to shameful passions, and became like the things they worshipped. And yet they rejoiced in a good nature, and through nature in understanding. O madman, do you see whether this nature grants an understanding by which they may bless God? Does it not rather grant an understanding by which they curse God and rise up against the Creator? Say rather, brothers, "I will bless the Lord, who has given me understanding": had he not given it, I would not have understood; had I not understood, I would never have blessed him. He has given understanding; he has given the eye. Blind nature does not supply what it lacks itself. Make an understanding for yourself, and you will make yourself blind. The light that is in you is darkness. Say, then, "Enlighten my darkness, lest I ever fall asleep in death." What is falling asleep in death? To hope for something from nature, to make flesh one's arm, to make up an understanding for oneself: whoever does these things is not only in death but sleeps in death; he is more than four days dead, he stinks worse. If he were only in death, he could be raised; but in death itself he sleeps a sleep heavier than iron, he rests in it. It is all over with him.

But do you want to know what he did who had been allotted a good nature? Did he say, as you do, "In a good nature I have a good understanding, and he who gave the one did not refuse the other"? Let us crush the scorpion, let us grind it down; let the mouth of iniquity be stopped. Read: "I was allotted a good soul." Go on: let us hear what kind of treasure you have obtained, which perhaps will be turned into coals; and would that it were into coals which, heaped on your head, may burn away what is superfluous. "And since I was more good, I came into an undefiled body; and when I knew that I could not otherwise be continent unless God gave it, and this very thing was a part of wisdom, to know whose gift it was, I went to the Lord and besought him." Most truly you were allotted a good nature: who would deny it? For even the devil's nature is good, and all things God made are good; but in this nature, good though it is, will you have a wise understanding by which you can abstain from the lusts and desires that war against the soul, if God does not give it? Learn, heretic, learn at last. "And I knew that I could not otherwise be continent unless God gave it": and in this is the chief point of wisdom, which is wholly understanding: to know from where you are continent, and that you are not continent from any other source but God alone. O excellent nature, which can abstain from nothing, and can do nothing but fall, if God does not give the understanding by which it may not fall! Let us sing, then, brothers, let us sing: "I will bless the Lord, who has given me understanding." He gave nature, he gave understanding; he healed nature, he healed understanding. In both the good Samaritan showed mercy: he came down, bound up the wounds, cleansed them with the wine which we understand, cared for the man, carried him to the inn, that is, into the Church, and entrusted him to the innkeeper. What innkeeper? The Holy Spirit, who dwells in the holy Church. He received the coin, the coin which the one who paid for the wretched poured out from a torn purse; and with his oil, his ointment, he healed the wounds of nature lying there and dying, and with the same oil, which he lit, he enlightened my darkness and made my understanding bright. If you do not believe this, he will not be a Samaritan to you, and you will perish in your wound, since you refuse to let the healer's hand near you.

Let the apostles be asked, and let them say who gave them understanding on that fiftieth day after the Lord's resurrection. Did they perhaps raise that terrifying sound themselves, by which the place was shaken where they were waiting for the promise of the Father? Did they perhaps kindle that fire from above with which they were all ablaze? Did they perhaps create those fiery tongues themselves? Did they perhaps procure for themselves those divine gifts, of which understanding is one, and pour them into themselves according to the desires of their hearts? Whoever says this has no part in this holy fiftieth day; nor does he receive understanding who thinks that understanding is given according to nature. When, then, was understanding given, if not when the Spirit was given? Let us reason it out together: now you are confounded, now you blush; and would that you were so confounded as to be built up, and so blush as to be glorified. What is the Holy Spirit but the Father's promise, the Son's gift? If he is promised, you have someone by whom he is promised; for the things that are promised are outside us; and it would be vain to promise what is in our power when it is promised, or what could be possessed whenever one pleased. I promise you this, which you do not have, and which is in me when I promise it, so that what I promise may come down into you. The Holy Spirit is also a gift, and above every gift: a gift owed to no one, and a gift granted freely. Christ was born and laid in a manger, to become food for the devout beasts; yet he suffered thirst and weariness, was sold by his own, handed over and accused by the Jews, scourged by the Gentiles, crowned with thorns, crucified, and finally shut in by a stone. To what end all these things? To buy for you this gift, which he would afterwards dispense to you as a believer; or rather would dispense so that you might believe. For had he not given it first, you would not have believed, either before or after. So if you have this gift from nature, you make void Christ's death, his passion, his cross. For he dies in vain if he dies to acquire for you what is already in you, and to give you what you possess. Give back to the Lord the lowliness of the manger, give back the curse of the cross, give back the abundance of blood poured out: all this was in vain; you are sufficient for yourself; all this is empty; you are rich, and among the goods of a rich nature you count the understanding which nature gave, not grace, and for which you are no debtor to the Creator, except insofar as he gave the nature which made your understanding for you.

You recognize the error, I think; and would that your reins may correct you, so that you may recognize it better, and recognizing it may ask, and asking may obtain the spirit of understanding and counsel and fear, by which you may come out wiser and become more cautious and more subject to the Lord. Even if I did not treat these matters, brothers, there would still be another to instruct you, and you would be expounders of them within yourselves. For if, God forbid, you had slipped into so gross and stupid an error as to think that understanding is granted you by nature, when you have it from the grace and mercy of God alone, your reins would correct you and cry out, "Why do such thoughts rise up in your hearts?" Let each one consult himself, feel himself, examine himself, and not look for himself outside; let him question his reins, and they will tell him: "There was a law in my members contrary to the law of my mind; I am prone to every shameful deed; the waves of lust so overwhelm me that I am daily submerged and plunge into the depth of sins. Envy rises up, pride rises up, lust rises up; in a column they attack the wretch: if I avoid Charybdis, I run into Scylla; if I drive off lust, I succumb to anger; if avarice does not master me, drunkenness strikes me down; if I keep from robbery, I close my hand and my heart to the poor; if I shut my ears to slanders, death enters through the windows, that is, through the eyes I drink in the incitements of lusts and pleasures; in short, if I stop up one crack, a hundred lie open, through which I take in a hostile rain, and at last I give way." These are the things your reins discuss with you; conscious of their own weakness, they instruct you, rebuke you, correct you, even into the night. What night? The night of your darkened conscience, wrapped in whose darkness you would like, if you could, to hold these things up as a shield against the light of truth and to hope well of your own strength. But your reins correct you. In the reins and in the loins is strength, as it says somewhere in Scripture; but since your loins are so feeble and your reins so slack, they instruct you and say: "If in the reins, the source of strength, there is such debility, such weakness, what will become of the rest?" When, then, our loins have instructed us and taught us how vain is the salvation of men, what remains but to gird up our loins so that they do not fall apart? When at home our floorboards come apart through great age, or great heat, or the battering of storms, or for some other cause, we at once fasten them with nails and cords: let this be done with your loins, that is, with your strength. They are slackening, collapsing, giving way; the whole frame is coming loose: you have nails in the Crucified; drive them in firmly, and the deeper the better; do not merely set a prop against what is tottering to hold it up: so the loosened frame will be made firm. The nails of the cross have the power to raise up those who lie fallen, to restore the weak, to hold back those who are slipping. Drive them in, hammer them home, to the marrow, to the soul itself: by this correction you will be healed, and when healed you will say to the Lord, "I will keep my strength for you": from you is my strength, for you is my strength. Turning to the Lord, etc.

To you, dearly beloved, who are hastening to the baptism of Christ, we hand over in the name of the Lord a psalm to be committed to memory; and we must expound its mystery, with divine grace enlightening us. For this psalm contains in a special way the restoration of the fallen human race, the discipline of the holy Church, and its sacraments as well. Let the ears of your heart, then, be open in silence to hear, so that the seed of the word may more securely find the furrows of your attention prepared, and that what the thirsty earth has now received may, at the acceptable time, drenched with the blood of Christ, spring up on a tall stalk and bear abundant fruit.

"The Lord rules me, and I shall lack nothing." A great beginning, beloved, for one who makes confession. For he has made firm the confidence of protection, and he has established an infinite wealth of riches. "The Lord rules me": he has made firm the confidence of protection. "And I shall lack nothing": he has established an infinite wealth of riches. But let us ask whose this confession is, how great, and of what kind. It belongs, beloved, to the man who, going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, fell among robbers. Stripped of the dignity of his first origin and laid low by the blow of death, he lay on the ground naked and without strength. When the trumpet of the Law and the Prophets sounded and he tried to rise by his own strength, he was pulled back by the pain of his wound and fell more heavily into the fall in which he lay; for the Law, as the apostle says, brought nothing to perfection. Our Samaritan, namely Christ, who was called a Samaritan by the Jews (the name means "guardian"), taking pity on him as he passed by the same way, that is, when he, the righteous one, had come in the flesh to die for us sinners, lifted him from the ground and set him on his own beast; and carrying him on his own shoulders like a straying sheep, he brought him back to paradise, from which he had fallen, to the hundred, that is, to the perfect number. For he himself, as the prophet says, bore our sins and suffered for us. Say now, man, say, as you sit on the beast of mercy and on the shoulders of the Lord's love, now that you have come to know him and recognize your maker and Lord: "The Lord rules me." You certainly could not say it lying down, unless you had been raised by the Lord. He who carries you is the one who rules you. For when you say, "The Lord rules me," there is nothing of your own in which you may trust. So beware of being lifted up by your merits; for there were none when the Lord came to raise you up. He found you naked, not clothed; wounded, not sound; lying down, not standing; straying, not returning. Beware of boasting, beware; for he who in mercy lifted you half-dead from the ground carries the humble and throws down the one who exalts himself. For when, fearing and walking in innocence, you have said, "The Lord rules me," you will confidently add, "and I shall lack nothing." For nothing is lacking to those who fear him; and the Lord will not deprive of good things those who walk in innocence.

For so that you may know that you will lack nothing, add what follows: "In a place of pasture, there he has set me; by the water of refreshment he has brought me up." Recognize, man, what you were, where you were, under whom you were. You were a straying sheep; in a pathless and waterless place you were feeding on thorns and thistles; placed under a hireling, you were not safe when the wolf came. But now, sought out by the true shepherd and carried lovingly on his shoulders, you have been brought back to the fold, that is, to the house of God, which is the Church, where Christ your shepherd and the sheep dwell gathered together. This shepherd is not like the hireling under whom you toiled in misery, under whom you feared the wolf. Do you want to know how much care this good shepherd has for you? He laid down his life for you. For he says in the gospel: "The good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep." This he did. For when the wolf lay in wait for you, he offered himself to be killed for you. Now, then, you remain safe in the fold. Nor do you need anyone else to shut and open the gate of your fold, because Christ is for you both shepherd and gate; he is both pasture and provider. "I am," he says, "the door of the sheep. If anyone enters through me he will be saved; he will go out and come in and will find pasture." The pastures, then, which this good shepherd has prepared for you, in which he has set you to be filled, are not a variety of green grasses, some with sweet juice and some most bitter, which with the changing seasons are sometimes there and sometimes not. Your pastures are the words of God and his sweet commandments sown abroad. Of these pastures he had tasted who said to God: "How sweet are your words to my palate, sweeter than honey and the honeycomb to my mouth!" Of these pastures the same man cries out to the Lord's sheep and says: "Taste and see how sweet the Lord is." Read, then, the decalogue of the Old Testament: "You shall not kill, you shall not steal, you shall not bear false witness," and the rest. Read the praise of the precepts in the New Testament: "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are the meek, for they shall possess the earth as their inheritance," and the rest that follow, or similar ones, and the many more sown through the prophets and apostles. Of these pastures the shepherd cries out to the sheep, "Work for the food that does not perish." And it does not perish because the word of the Lord abides for ever. The word of the Lord is your food, and not only food but drink as well. Hear him saying through the prophet to the ancient people, "Those who eat me will hunger still, and those who drink me will thirst still." Likewise in his own person: "My flesh," he says, "is true food, and my blood is true drink." And these pastures are not far from the water of refreshment. Their one place is the catholic Church of God, where the commandments of life are your pastures, and the spring of water leaping up to eternal life, by whose streams you will be refreshed when you are baptized to be renewed in Christ. Unless your pastures are watered by this water, then, you cannot be brought up; for the commandments of God cannot sprout without the baptism of Christ, nor be eaten to the soul's satisfaction.

When, then, through the water of Christ's refreshment you have begun to be fit to be filled with the savor of the sweet pastures, then you will know, and will cry out rejoicing and saying, "He has converted my soul; he has led me along the paths of righteousness for his name's sake." The devil through sin overturned your soul and turned it away from God; God the Father through Christ has turned it back to himself, not for your merits but for his name's sake. Now, then, enlightened, converted, believing, filled with the divine pastures through the water of refreshment, you will say, "He has converted my soul." The glory of your confession is empty if there is no change of your conscience. For you will say this truly and with an unchanging conscience when you say it not because of your merit but for his name's sake. And what are the paths of righteousness along which he has led you? Hear your guide. "How wide," he says, "and spacious is the way that leads to perdition; but narrow and strait is the way that leads to life." For every path is short and direct. It is not, then, through the delights of the world, through wealth of gold and silver, conspicuous with precious stones and garments, endowed with every honor and nobility, swelling with all the wisdom of the philosophers, that God has ordained you to go to the kingdom of heaven: because all these things, and things like them, become the wide and spacious way for those who use them badly, though it is given them to use them well; that is, a way in the hope only of what is seen; and when they have been deprived of the present life, it leads them not to hope, in which they had no hope, but to perdition. For they have slept their sleep, and all the men of riches have found nothing in their hands. He has arranged for you to go along the paths of righteousness, that is, through mercy and truth. For all the ways of the Lord are mercy and truth. Having rejected the wide and spacious way, he wants you to walk the narrow and direct paths, that is, through hunger and thirst, nakedness, fasting, obscurity, poverty, patience, through contempt of all present things, but holding fast the promised hope. Do you want to know clearly the shortcut of the paths by which you are commanded to walk? "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul; and your neighbor as yourself. For on these two commandments hangs the whole Law and the Prophets." So that you may arrive quickly, then, if you are hurrying to the kingdom of heaven, walk in these two paths, which are the head of all and make one way; so that, when you arrive, you may rejoice that you have passed through all of them diligently and without fatigue.

Keep to these paths, then; let your steps stay in them amid the snares of the raging devil, so that here you can sing securely and say: "For even if I walk in the midst of the shadow of death, I will fear no evils, for you are with me." The shadow of death is the way of sin, in which the devil, that rogue and pirate, spreads nets of deception for those who walk rightly. It is a shadow, because light has nothing in common with darkness. The apostle teaches that the works of this shadow are to be rejected, saying: "Let us cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light; let us walk decently as in the day, not in revelings and drunkenness, not in bedrooms and wantonness, not in strife and jealousy." As long, then, as you remain in this present life, you walk in the midst of vices and worldly pressures, which are the shadow of death. Let Christ shine in your heart, he who lights the lamp of our mind through love of God and neighbor; and you will fear no evils, since he himself is with you. "I will not forsake you," he says through the prophet, "nor abandon you." Likewise in the gospel: "Behold, I will be with you all days, until the end of the age." Your guardian is equal to the task. The Lord your God is with you. Beware lest through boasting you forsake your companion, and remain forsaken in the shadow of death.

When, therefore, you find yourself attacked and frightened in the shadow by the enemy's snares, take hold of the rod of discipline and lean confidently on the staff of mercy, so that when Christ, the sun of righteousness, has shone out to help you, you may truly say, "Your rod and your staff, they have comforted me." For the rod rules the proud, as is said of Christ in the second psalm: "You will rule them with a rod of iron, and shatter them like a potter's vessel." But the staff supports the weak and weary. Remember, then, the rod of correction and discipline, so that when you have been filled with the good things of God's gifts, you may not be lifted up with pride and murmur against him; for in his anger he will shatter you in it like a potter's vessel. Remember also the help of the staff: do not strike yourself against it in your own strength, nor say, "I am holy, I cannot stumble." Our weakness has many falls; and while it is still placed on an earth that yields thorns and thistles, it is neither governed by the holiness of its own works nor does it possess the glory of purity. Until it returns to the earth from which it was taken, then, it cannot stand unless it is governed by the staff of divine grace. So whether you prosper in God or are troubled by the storm of temptations, throw yourself wholly on the staff of God's mercy, so that, when you have reclined to be fed by him with spiritual gifts, delighted by the taste of his sweetness, you may fittingly say, "You have prepared a table before me against those who trouble me. You have anointed my head with oil, and your cup that inebriates, how excellent it is!" This the whole Church sings throughout the world, propped on the staff of grace. This she proclaims against heretics, Jews, and Gentiles, who trouble her with their mockery, glorying not in herself but in the Lord. For the table of joy is the passion of Christ, who on the table of the cross offered himself for us as a sacrifice to God the Father, giving to his catholic Church a life-giving banquet, namely satisfying us with his body and inebriating us with his blood. Fed and given life by this table, the Church exults against those who trouble her, having the hope of eternal life through her life, the Lord Christ, who anointed her abundantly with the oil of gladness through the Holy Spirit. Because of this table the apostle rebuked the Corinthians who reclined at table in an idol's temple, saying: "You cannot share in the table of the Lord and the table of demons; you cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons."

When, then, the divine grace to which you are hastening has brought you there, you will know the table of the spiritual banquet, so that, having recognized the truth, each of you, exulting and giving thanks to God, may now fittingly and confidently say, "And your mercy will follow me all the days of my life." A great consolation of glory goes with you. Because of the misery of your weakness, God's mercy follows you. But first, so that it may show you the way of eternal life, it goes before you, that is, precedes you, as he says in another psalm, "My God, his mercy will go before me." His mercy, then, goes before you, that is, it leads you into the way when you do not know the way; it calls you to God when you have gone far from God; it draws the slave of sin to make him free, so that, walking on the way all the days of your life, you may not go astray. It also follows you, guarding your back, so that the serpent, the devil, who lies in wait for your heel and with whom you are at enmity, may not trip you up. For a robber kills either by meeting you face to face or by rising up behind your back. For this reason God's mercy goes before you and follows you, so that you may walk in the middle, safe and secure, all the days of your life. Place your hope and your glory, then, not in yourself but in the mercy of God that goes before and follows: by it you were anticipated as a sinner so that you might be saved; you were not found righteous, that you might boast of having pleased.

See where he leads you, if you do not abandon your guide. Not into the field of worldly misery, to get your bread among thorns and thistles in toil and sweat; not into the perils of the sea, to chase uncertain profits for the sake of trade on fragile timber, where many have drowned in their eagerness for gain. He leads you to the house of God, not as a guest for a time, to move out of it, but as a dweller, to remain in it. For it goes on: "And that I may dwell in the house of the Lord for length of days." This house of the Lord is paradise; length of days is eternal life. There you will not hunger, you will not thirst, nor will you toil in the heat of sun and moon; you will not feel the cold and the storms of winter. Sadness and grief are not there. You will always be blessed in the fellowship of the saints. You will rejoice and exult with them, living and praising God for ever and ever. For he says in another psalm, "Blessed are those who dwell in your house; for ever and ever they will praise you." This is the hope of your faith, beloved. You have come to the Lord to believe; hasten and strive to lay hold by good conduct of what you have believed. For you become Christians not for the sake of the present life but for the sake of the life to come, which the Lord Christ himself grants to you as you believe and persevere in him, he who lives and reigns with God the Father in the unity of the Holy Spirit, for ever and ever. Amen.