Sermons to the People 46.4–46.19

And indeed, although the apostle chose to make his living with his own hands and did not seek even the milk from the sheep, he nevertheless said that he had the right to receive the milk, and that the Lord had so arranged it, that those who announce the Gospel should live by the Gospel. And he says that the other apostles, his colleagues, used this right, not usurped but given. He did more, in not receiving even what was owed him. He forgave even the debt; the others did not demand what was not owed; he did more. Perhaps he was signified by the one who, when he brought the sick man to the innkeeper, said, “Whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I return.” Of those, then, who do not need the milk of the flock, why should we say more? They are more merciful, or rather they carry out the very office of mercy more generously. For they are able, and what they are able to do, they do. Let these be praised, and let the others not be condemned. For the apostle himself did not seek the gift; yet he wanted the sheep to be fruitful, not barren and without abundance of milk. So when at one time he was in great want, in chains for confessing the truth, something was sent to him by the brothers to relieve his necessity and want. He answered them with thanks and said: “You did well to share in my necessities. For I have learned to be content in whatever state I am; I know how to abound and how to suffer want; I can do all things in him who strengthens me. Yet you did well to send to meet my needs.” But to show what he himself was seeking in their good deed, so as not to be among those who feed themselves and not the sheep, he rejoices not so much that his necessity was relieved as he congratulates them on their fruitfulness. What, then, was he seeking there? “Not that I seek the gift,” he says, “but I seek the fruit.” Not so that I may be filled, he says, but so that you may not remain empty.

Let them take the milk in such a way as to benefit the sheep; let them not take the milk and neglect the sheep. Those, then, who cannot do as Paul did and support themselves with their own hands, let them receive some of the milk of the sheep and provide for their need, but let them not neglect the weakness of the sheep. Let them not seek this for themselves as their own advantage, so as to seem to announce the Gospel because of the necessity of their poverty; but let them offer the light of the word of truth to enlighten people. For they are like lamps, as it is said, “Let your loins be girded and your lamps burning”; and, “No one lights a lamp and puts it under a bushel, but on a lampstand, so that it may give light to all who are in the house: so let your light shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven.” If, then, a lamp had been lit for you in your house, would you not add oil, so that it would not go out? But if the lamp, having received oil, gave no light, it would certainly not be fit to be placed on a lampstand, but to be broken at once. That they receive what they live on is a matter of necessity; that it is given them is a matter of charity. The Gospel is not for sale, as if its price were what those who announce it receive to live on. For if they sell it like that, they sell a great thing cheap. Let them receive the support of their need from the people, and the reward of their stewardship from the Lord. For the people are not able to give the reward to those who serve them in the light of the Gospel. Let them expect their reward only from where the people expect their salvation. Why, then, are those shepherds rebuked? What are they reproved for? For consuming the milk and clothing themselves with the wool while neglecting the sheep. They sought only their own, then, not the things of Jesus Christ.

But since we have said what consuming the milk is, let us ask what clothing oneself with the wool is. Whoever offers milk offers food; whoever offers wool offers honor. These are the two things that those who feed themselves and not the sheep seek from the people: the advantage of having their needs supplied, and the favor of honor and praise. For clothing is rightly understood as honor, because it covers nakedness. For every man is weak. And what is the one who is set over you, but what you are? He bears flesh, he is mortal, he eats, he sleeps, he gets up; he was born, he will die. If, then, you consider what he is in himself, he is a man; but you, by honoring him as though he were an angel, cover what is weak.

The same Paul had received a garment of this kind from God’s good people, when he said: “You received me as an angel of God: I bear you witness that, if it had been possible, you would have plucked out your eyes and given them to me.” But when such great honor had been shown him, did he, for the sake of that honor, spare those who were going astray, lest perhaps, if he rebuked them, the honor would be withheld and the apostle himself praised less? For if he had done that, he would have been among those who feed themselves and not the sheep; he would have said to himself, “What does it matter to me? Let each do what he likes; my living is safe, my honor is safe; I have milk and wool, and that is enough for me: let each go where he can.” So everything is fine for you, if each goes where he can? I do not even make you one set over others; I make you one of the people: “If one member suffers, all the members suffer together.” So the apostle himself, when he recalled how they had been toward him, so as not to seem to have forgotten the honor they had shown him, testifies that they received him as an angel of God, and that, if it had been possible, they would have wanted to pluck out their eyes and give them to him; and yet he goes to the sick sheep, the festering sheep, to cut into the wound, not to spare the rot. “Have I then become your enemy,” he says, “by telling you the truth?” See, he both received some of the milk of the sheep, as we mentioned a little before, and was clothed with the wool of the sheep; yet he did not neglect the sheep. For he did not seek his own, but the things of Jesus Christ.

Far be it from us, then, to say to you: “Live as you like; do not worry; God will destroy no one; only hold the Christian faith. He will not destroy those whom he redeemed; he will not destroy those for whom he shed his blood. And if you want to amuse yourselves at the shows, go: what harm is there? And these festivals that are celebrated throughout all the cities in the merriment of banqueters, who enjoy themselves, as they think, at public tables, but in reality rather destroy themselves: go, celebrate them; great is the mercy of God, which forgives everything. Crown yourselves with roses before they wither. Feast in the house of your God whenever you like; fill yourselves with food and wine with your friends: for this creation was given so that you might enjoy it; God did not give it to the ungodly and the pagans and not give it to you.” If we said these things, we might perhaps gather larger crowds; and if there are some who see that in saying these things we do not think rightly, we offend a few but win over the multitude. But if we did this, speaking not God’s words, not Christ’s words, but our own, we should be shepherds feeding ourselves and not the sheep.

Having said what these shepherds love, he also says what they neglect. For the faults of the sheep are widespread; healthy and fat sheep are very few, that is, sheep solid in the food of truth, making good use of the pastures by God’s gift. But those bad shepherds do not spare even these. It is not enough for them that they do not care for the sick, the weak, the straying, and the lost; as far as it lies in them, they even kill these strong and fat ones. These live by the mercy of God; yet, as far as the bad shepherds are concerned, they kill them. “How,” you say, “do they kill them?” By living badly, by giving a bad example. Or was it said in vain to the servant of God, eminent among the members of the chief Shepherd, “Show yourself in all things an example of good works,” and, “Be a pattern to the faithful”? For even a strong sheep often notices its leader living badly; if it turns its eyes away from the Lord’s rules and looks at a man, it begins to say in its heart, “If my leader lives like this, who am I not to do what he does?” He has killed a strong sheep. And if he has killed a strong sheep, what will he do to the rest, he who by living badly has killed one that he had not made strong himself but had found strong and robust? I say to your Charity, and I say it again: even if the sheep live, even if the sheep are strong in the word of the Lord and hold to what they have heard from their Lord, “Do what they say, but do not do what they do,” yet the one who lives badly in the sight of the people kills, as far as it lies in him, the one who is watching him. So let him not flatter himself because that sheep has not died. The sheep lives, and he is a murderer. Just as when a lustful man looks at a woman to desire her: see, she is chaste, and he is an adulterer. For the Lord’s sentence is true and plain: “Whoever looks at a woman to desire her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” He has not reached her bedroom, and already he is wallowing in his own inner bedroom. So everyone who lives badly in the sight of those over whom he is set kills, as far as it lies in him, even the strong sheep. Whoever imitates the bad leader dies; whoever does not imitate him lives; yet, as far as the leader is concerned, he kills both. “And what is fat,” he says, “you kill, and my sheep you do not feed.”

Now you have heard what they love; hear what they neglect. “The weak you have not strengthened; and what was in bad health you have not made strong; and what was broken” (that is, shattered) “you have not bound up; and what was straying you have not called back; and what was lost you have not sought; and what was strong you have destroyed,” that is, killed and slain. A sheep has a weak mind when it does not believe that temptations will come to it. The negligent shepherd, when such a weak one believes this, does not say to it, “Son, coming to the service of God, stand in justice and fear, and prepare your soul for temptation.” For whoever says this strengthens the weak and makes him firm instead of weak, so that when he has come to faith he will not hope for the prosperity of this world. But if he has been taught to hope for the prosperity of this world, he is corrupted by that very prosperity; and when adversities come upon him, he is wounded, or perhaps destroyed. Whoever builds in this way does not build him on the rock, but on sand. “But the rock was Christ.” Christ’s sufferings are to be imitated; a Christian is not to seek out pleasures. The weak man is strengthened when he is told, “Expect the temptations of this world, but the Lord will deliver you from them all, if your heart does not turn back from him.” For to strengthen your heart he came to suffer, he came to die, he came to be smeared with spittle, he came to be crowned with thorns, he came to hear reproaches, he came at last to be nailed to the wood. All this he did for you; you do nothing for him, but for yourself.

But what kind of shepherds are those who, afraid of offending those to whom they speak, not only do not prepare them for the temptations that threaten, but even promise them the happiness of this world, which God did not promise to the world itself? He foretells labors upon labors that will come upon the world itself until the end; and do you want the Christian to be exempt from these labors? Because he is a Christian, he will suffer something more in this world. For the apostle says, “All who want to live a godly life in Christ will suffer persecution.” Now, if you please, O shepherd who seeks your own and not the things of Jesus Christ, let him say, “All who want to live a godly life in Christ will suffer persecution,” and you say, “If you want to live a godly life in Christ, all good things will abound for you; and if you have no children, you will have them, and you will bring them all up, and none of them will die on you.” Is this your building? Consider what you are doing, where you are placing him. The one you are setting up is on sand: the rain will come, the river will flood, the wind will blow, and they will beat against that house, and it will fall, and great will be its ruin. Lift him from the sand; place him on the rock: let the one you want to be a Christian be in Christ. Let him look to the sufferings of Christ; let him look to him who, without any sin, paid back what he had not stolen; let him look to the Scripture that says to you, “He scourges every son whom he receives.” Either prepare to be scourged, or else do not seek to be received. “He scourges,” it says, “every son whom he receives”; and will you perhaps be the exception? If you are excepted from the suffering of the scourge, you are excepted from the number of sons. “Does he really,” you will say, “scourge every son?” He certainly scourges every son, even as he did the Only Son. That Only Son, born of the Father’s substance, equal to the Father in the form of God, the Word through whom all things were made, had nothing for which to be scourged: he put on flesh for this purpose, so as not to be without the scourge. Will he who scourges the Only Son without sin leave the adopted son with sin unscourged? The apostle says that we have been called to adoption. We have received the adoption of sons, so that we might be co-heirs of the Only Son and also be his inheritance. “Ask of me,” he says, “and I will give you the nations as your inheritance.” He has set us an example in his sufferings. But so that the weak man may not fail in the temptations to come, he must neither be deceived by false hope nor broken by terror. Say to him, “Prepare your soul for temptation.” But perhaps he begins to slip, to tremble, to be unwilling to come forward; you have something else to say: “God is faithful, who will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear.” To promise and to foretell sufferings to come is to strengthen the weak. But to promise the mercy of God to one who is too fearful and terrified by this, not that temptations will be lacking, but that he does not allow anyone to be tempted beyond what he can bear, is to bind up the broken. For there are those who, when they hear of tribulations to come, arm themselves the more and as it were thirst for their drink: for they think the medicine of the faithful too little for them, and seek the glory of martyrs as well. But there are others who, when they hear of temptations to come and bound to come, which must properly come to a Christian, and which no one feels except one who wants to be truly a Christian, are broken and limp when some of them threaten. Bring the bandage of consolation; bind up what is broken. Say: “Do not fear; he in whom you have believed does not desert you in temptations. God is faithful, who does not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear.” You do not hear this from me; the apostle says it, who also says, “Do you want proof of him who speaks in me, Christ?” When you hear these things, then, you hear them from Christ himself; you hear them from the Shepherd who shepherds Israel. For it was said to him, “You will give them tears to drink in measure.” For what the apostle says, “He does not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear,” the prophet says with “in measure.” Only do not abandon the one who reproves and exhorts, who terrifies and consoles, who strikes and heals.

“The weak,” he says, “you have not strengthened.” He says it to bad shepherds, false shepherds, shepherds who seek their own and not the things of Jesus Christ, who enjoy the advantage of the milk and the wool and do not care for the sheep at all, and who do not make strong what was in bad health. Between the weak (that is, the not firm, for the sick too are called weak), between the weak and the sick, that is, one in bad health, this seems to me to be the difference. For these things, brothers, which we are trying to distinguish as best we can, perhaps we could distinguish better with greater care, or someone else more skilled or fuller of the light of the heart could do so; meanwhile, so that you may not be cheated, I say what I think as far as the words of Scripture are concerned. With the weak man, it is to be feared that temptation may come and break him; but the sick man is already ill with some desire, and some desire is keeping him from entering the way of God, from taking up the yoke of Christ. Consider people who want to live well, who have already resolved to live well, but are less fit to suffer evil than they are ready to do good. It belongs to Christian firmness not only to do what is good but also to endure what is evil. Those, then, who seem fervent in good works but are unwilling or unable to endure the sufferings that threaten are weak. But those who, as lovers of the world, are drawn back by some evil desire from good works themselves lie sick and ill: by that very sickness, as though without any strength, they can do nothing good. Such in soul was that paralytic whom those who were carrying him, when they could not bring him in to the Lord, let down through the roof they had opened. That is, it is as if you wanted to do this in the soul: to open the roof and let down to the Lord a paralyzed soul, loosened in all its limbs and empty of every good work, weighed down indeed by its sins and languishing with the disease of its desire. If, then, all the limbs are loosened and there is an inner paralysis, so that you may reach the physician (for perhaps the physician is hidden and inside; that is, the true meaning is hidden in the Scriptures), open the roof by explaining what is hidden, and let down the paralytic. As for those who do not do this and neglect to do it, you have heard what they are told: “What was in bad health you have not made strong; and what was broken you have not bound up.” We have already spoken of this. He was broken by terror of temptations; there comes something by which what is broken is bound up, the consolation, “God is faithful, who will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear, but with the temptation will also make a way out, so that you may be able to endure it.”

“And what was straying you have not called back.” See where our danger lies among the heretics. “And what was straying you have not called back; and what was lost you have not sought.” Hence we live somehow between the hands of robbers and the teeth of raging wolves; and we ask you to pray for us in these dangers of ours. And the sheep are stubborn: because they are sought when they stray, they say, in their error and perdition, that they do not belong to us. “What do you want with us? Why are you looking for us?” As if this were not the very reason why we want them and look for them: because they are straying and perishing. “If I am in error,” he says, “if I am perishing, what do you want with me? Why are you looking for me?” Because you are in error, I want to call you back; because you are lost, I want to find you. “This is how I want to stray; this is how I want to perish.” So this is how you want to stray, this is how you want to perish! How much better that I do not want it! I will say it outright: I am importunate. For I hear the apostle saying, “Preach the word; be urgent in season and out of season.” In season for whom, out of season for whom? In season, surely, for the willing; out of season for the unwilling. I am entirely importunate, I dare to say it. You want to stray, you want to perish: I do not want it. And in the end, he who frightens me does not want it. If I wanted it, see what he says, see how he rebukes: “What was straying you have not called back; and what was lost you have not sought.” Shall I fear you more than him? “We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ.” I do not fear you; for you cannot overturn the judgment seat of Christ and set up the judgment seat of Donatus. I will call back the straying; I will seek the lost; whether you like it or not, I will do it. And if the brambles of the woods tear me as I search, I will squeeze through every narrow place; I will shake every hedge; as far as the Lord who frightens me gives me strength, I will go through everything: I will call back the straying, I will seek the perishing. If you do not want me to suffer, do not stray, do not perish.

It is not enough that I grieve over you as you stray and perish; I fear that by neglecting you I may also kill what is strong. For see what follows: “And what was strong you have destroyed.” If I neglect the one who is straying and perishing, even the one who is strong will be pleased to stray and perish. I desire the gains outside, but I fear more the losses within. If I treat your error with indifference, the one who is strong notices it and thinks it is nothing to go over to heresy. When some worldly advantage shines out that would make him change, that strong man, now about to perish, says to me at once, since I do not seek you who are lost: “God is on this side and on that; what difference does it make? Men quarreling among themselves did this; God is to be worshiped wherever one is.” If perhaps some Donatist says to him, “I will not give you my daughter unless you join my party,” he needs to take notice and say, “If there were nothing wrong with belonging to their party, our shepherds would not say so much against them and would not take such trouble over their error.” But if we stop and keep silent, he will say the opposite: “Surely, if it were wrong to be in the party of Donatus, they would speak against them, refute them, take trouble to win them: if they were straying, they would call them back; if they were perishing, they would seek them.” Not in vain, then, after saying above, “What was fat you have slaughtered,” did he put this again at the end: “And what was strong you have destroyed.” It is the same sentence repeated, except that here it arises from what he said just before: “What was straying you have not called back; and what was lost you have not sought”; and by doing this, you have killed what was strong.

Hear, then, what follows from this negligence of bad, or rather false, shepherds: “And my sheep were scattered because there was no shepherd, and they became food for all the beasts of the field.” Lurking wolves steal, roaring lions seize, when the sheep do not cling to the shepherd. For the shepherd is present, but for those who act wickedly there is no shepherd. And they cling to shepherds who are not shepherds, who feed themselves and not the sheep; and deadly error follows. They go to beasts that prey on them and want to be filled with their death. For all who rejoice in other people’s errors are such: beasts fed on the deaths of the scattered. “And my sheep were scattered and strayed on every mountain and on every high hill.” The mountains and hills are the swelling of earthly things and the pride of the world. The pride of Donatus exalted itself and made itself a party; Parmenian, following him, confirmed his error. That is a mountain; that is a hill. So every author of any error, swelling with earthly elation, promises the sheep rest and good pastures; and sometimes the sheep do find pastures there, from God’s rain, not from the hardness of the mountain: for they too have the Scriptures, they have the sacraments. These things do not belong to the mountains; but when they are found on the mountains, it is bad to remain on the mountains. For by straying on mountains and hills they desert the flock; they desert unity; they desert the folds fortified against lions and wolves. From there, then, let God call them back; let him himself call them back. You will hear him now calling them back: “My sheep,” he says, “strayed on every mountain and on every high hill”: that is, on every swelling of earthly pride. For there are good mountains too: “I lifted up my eyes to the mountains, from where my help will come.” And see that your hope is not in the mountains: “My help,” he says, “is from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.” Do not think you are wronging the holy mountains when you say, “My help is not from the mountains but from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.” The mountains themselves cry this to you. He was a mountain who cried, “I hear that there are divisions among you, and each of you says, I am of Paul, I of Apollos, I of Cephas, and I of Christ.” Lift your eyes to that mountain, hear what it says, and do not remain even on that mountain. For hear what follows: “Was Paul crucified for you?” So, when you have lifted your eyes to the mountains, from where your help will come, that is, to the authors of the divine Scriptures, pay attention to one crying with all his marrow and all his bones, “Lord, who is like you?”, so that without fear and without wronging the mountains you may say, “My help is from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.” Then not only will the mountains not be angry with you, but they will love you then, and favor you the more; if you place your hope in them, they will be grieved. An angel who was showing a man many divine and wonderful things was worshiped by the man, who was, as it were, lifting his eyes to a mountain. But the angel, calling him away from himself to the Lord, said, “Do not do it; worship him; for I am your fellow servant and the fellow servant of your brothers.”

“On every mountain and on every hill, and over the whole face of the earth they were scattered.” What does “they were scattered over the whole face of the earth” mean? Pursuing all earthly things, they love and cherish those things that shine on the face of the earth. They do not want to die, so that their life may be hidden in Christ. “Over the whole face of the earth”: by their love of earthly things; and also because straying sheep are found over the whole face of the earth. Not every heresy is over the whole face of the earth; but still there are heretics over the whole face of the earth. Some here, some there; yet nowhere are they lacking; and they do not know one another. One sect in Africa, another heresy in the East, another in Egypt, another in Mesopotamia, for example. In different places they are different; but one mother, pride, bore them all, just as our one mother, the Catholic Church, bore all the faithful Christians spread through the whole world. No wonder, then, if pride gives birth to division and love to unity. Yet the Catholic mother herself, and the Shepherd himself in her, seeks the straying everywhere, strengthens the weak, heals the sick, binds up the broken, some from these sects and some from those, who do not know one another. But she knows them all, because she is spread out among them all. For example, there is the party of Donatus in Africa; the Eunomians are not in Africa; but alongside the party of Donatus the Catholic Church is here. In the East there are Eunomians, but the party of Donatus is not there; but alongside the Eunomians the Catholic Church is there. She is like a vine, spread everywhere by growing; they are like useless branches, cut off by the farmer’s knife because of their barrenness, so that the vine might be pruned, not cut down. Those branches, then, have remained where they were cut off. But the vine, growing through all places, knows both its branches that have remained in it and, beside it, those that have been cut off from it. Yet from there it calls back the straying; for of the broken branches the apostle says, “For God is able to graft them in again.” Whether you speak of sheep straying from the flock or of branches cut off from the vine, God is no less able to call back the sheep or to graft the branches in again, because he is the supreme Shepherd, he is the true farmer. “And they were scattered over the whole face of the earth, and there was none to seek them, none to call them back.” There was none, that is, among those bad shepherds; there was none, that is, no man, to seek them.

“Therefore, shepherds, hear the word of the Lord: As I live, says the Lord God.” See how he began. It is, as it were, God’s oath, the witness of his life. “As I live, says the Lord.” The shepherds are dead, but the sheep are safe: the Lord lives. “As I live, says the Lord God.” Which shepherds are dead? Those who seek their own, not the things of Jesus Christ. Will there, then, be shepherds, and will they be found, who seek not their own but the things of Jesus Christ? There certainly will be, and they will be found; certainly they are not lacking and will not be lacking. Let us see, then, what the Lord says, who declares that he lives: whether he says that he will take the sheep away from the bad shepherds, who feed themselves and not the sheep, and give them to good shepherds, who feed the sheep and not themselves. “As I live, says the Lord God, because my sheep have become food for all the beasts of the field, because there was no shepherd.” Again he says “shepherd,” both a little before and now. He does not say, “because there were no shepherds.” For to such sheep, wickedly straying and wickedly perishing, there is no shepherd, even if the shepherd is present; just as, even when light is present, there is no light for the blind. “And the shepherds did not seek my sheep, and the shepherds fed themselves, but my sheep they did not feed.”