Sermons to the People 48.1–49.11

We have heard the readings of the divine words as they were recited. They have been set before us as the subject of our speaking; from them we ought to draw our wisdom, and from them we ought to sow what we understand, with the help of him in whose hand, as it is written, are both we and our words. Nor is it in vain that it is written in another place, “In the Lord I will praise the word, in the Lord I will praise the saying.” What is praised in the Lord is what the Lord gives. Though we are weak, then, we are his vessels: we take in as much as we can, and we share without envy what we take in. May he supply in your hearts whatever we have done too little; for even what we work in your ears, what is it, unless he does the whole of it in your hearts?

Recall, as I remind you, what the first reading, from the prophet, commended to us. “What worthy thing,” he says, “shall I offer to the Lord?” A man was looking for a sacrifice with which to appease God, or with which to please God. “Shall I bow the knee,” he says, “to God most high; shall I appease him with thousands of bulls, or with tens of thousands of fat goats, or shall I offer to God the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?” “Shall I offer my firstborn,” he says, “to my God for the sin of my soul?” You are answered, O man. O man, by whom are you answered, if not by him by whom man was made? You are answered, then, O man, as you ask what to offer God and how you may appease God or how you may please God. You are told what is good, or what else the Lord requires of you, but that you do judgment and justice, and love mercy, and be ready to walk with the Lord your God. You were asking what to offer for yourself: offer yourself. For what does the Lord seek from you but you? For in all earthly creation he made nothing better than you. He seeks you from yourself, because you had lost yourself. But if you do what he commanded, he finds in you judgment and justice: judgment first in yourself, justice toward your neighbor. How is there judgment in yourself? That you should be displeased with what you were, and be able to be what you were not. Judgment, I say, about yourself within yourself, without regard to your own person, so that you do not spare your sins, nor are they pleasing to you because it is you who commit them; and so that you do not praise yourself in your good deeds and accuse God in your bad ones. For this is perverse judgment, and therefore not judgment at all. For to show that perverse judgment is not judgment, God did not say, “What does the Lord require of you but to do right judgment,” but “to do judgment.” For if it is right, then it is judgment; but if it is perverse, it is not judgment but vice. What, then, were you doing when you had lost yourself and were following your own ruin, going and not coming back? What were you doing? I know what you were doing: in your good deeds you praised yourself; in your bad ones you blasphemed God. This is perverse judgment, and therefore, as I said, not judgment. Do you want, then, to do right judgment, which is judgment? Correct what you were doing: it is back to front; turn it round, and it will be right. What does “correct it” mean? Praise God in your good deeds; accuse yourself in your bad ones. So when, being perverse, you have become displeasing to yourself, and with the help of him who created you have corrected yourself, being upright you will keep justice. For God will please you if you are upright. You will not be at odds with the Upright unless you are crooked and perverse; but being upright you will agree with the Upright, and without doubt God will please you. For when he displeased you, it was your perversity that he displeased.

Hear the holy psalm: “How good is the God of Israel to the upright in heart!” Had God displeased this man who says this in the psalm? Far be it from me to accuse him rather than believe him as he confesses. See, listen with me and consider what he said. “How good is God,” he says, “to Israel!” To whom? “To the upright in heart.” “But as for me” (when I was not upright in heart, he means), “my feet were almost moved; my steps had nearly slipped.” “My feet were moved” is the same as “my steps slipped.” “Almost” is the same as “nearly.” What, then, is he saying with “almost, nearly my feet were moved, my steps slipped”? “I almost slipped,” he says, “I almost fell.” How did you come into such danger? “Because I was jealous of sinners,” he says, “seeing the peace of sinners.” “I was jealous of sinners,” he says, “seeing the peace of sinners”: that is, seeing wicked men happy, I wavered under God, I almost fell away from God. See why God had displeased him: because the wicked have good things. Then see the words of the waverer, what he said to himself: “See, these are sinners.” In that same psalm are the words of the waverer: “See, these sinners have obtained riches in the world. And I said: How has God known? Is there knowledge in the Most High?” He himself says this in the psalm; he himself speaks, he whom God had displeased while he was not yet upright, because the wicked abounded in good things. “How,” he says, “has God known, and is there knowledge in the Most High?” See what he adds further; see how, by wavering, he comes close to a fall and is near to ruin; see, I say, what he adds: “Have I justified my heart in vain, and washed my hands among the innocent?” “I have lost,” he says, “all my good living. I justified my heart, I washed my hands among the innocent, only so that the wicked may be happy and I may be afflicted.” “And I was scourged,” he says, “all day long.” They rejoice, and I am scourged; those who blaspheme God rejoice, and I who worship God am scourged. “How has God known?” Hence he wavered, hence he almost fell, hence he thought that human affairs are of no concern to God.

So when he thought this, with a heart not upright but perverse, and was led, as if by a plausible reason, because of this incongruity, to believe that the governance of human affairs is of no concern to God, he had resolved to preach this, to assert this, to teach this; but he was called back by the authority and preaching of the saints. For see his words: “If I said,” he says, “I will tell it thus”: I will preach it thus, I will teach it thus, I will tell people that the care of human affairs is of no concern to God. “If I said, I will tell it thus: see, I would have condemned the generation of your children.” How, then, shall I tell it thus? Moses did not tell it thus; Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob did not tell it thus; Jeremiah did not tell it thus, nor Isaiah, nor the other prophets. And they are all your children. So if I tell it thus, I shall condemn the generation of your children. What, then, shall I do? “I undertook to understand.” “I undertook,” he says, “to understand”; but this is a great thing to understand, hard to understand. “This,” he says, after he said, “I undertook to understand”, “this is labor before me”: how I may understand both that God is just and that he knows human affairs, and that it goes well with the perverse and sometimes badly with the upright. How this is just, “I undertook to understand, and it is labor before me.”

How long is the labor? “Until I enter the sanctuary of God, and understand the last things.” Enter, then, the sanctuary of God, faithful soul; enter the sanctuary of God, devout soul, you to whom God is not displeasing in your misfortunes, nor displeasing in the good fortune of the wicked. And if you do not know by what reason it happens, believe that what God permits or does is not done unjustly. You were being led by human reason; be called back by divine authority, and believe that there is something there hidden from you. For it must be believed with the most certain faith that God cannot be perverse and unjust. So, entering the sanctuary of God by faith, entering by believing, you learn by understanding. For so he says: “Until I enter the sanctuary of God”, where faith enters; and after faith, what? “And understand the last things.” The last things will come, when it will go badly with no good person and well with no bad person. The last things will come, I say, when the godly will be separated from the ungodly, the just from the unjust, those who praise God from those who blaspheme God. They will come when these are separated, so that, as was said, it may go badly with no good person and well with no bad person. Why, then, is it not so now? Perhaps it is so even now; but what is now hidden will afterwards be made manifest.

Come in with me, if you can, into the sanctuary of God; perhaps there, if I can, I shall teach you; or rather, learn with me from him who teaches me, that even now it does not go well with the wicked, and that it is better with the good than with the wicked, although the full happiness of the good has not yet come, nor the final punishment of the wicked. Perhaps you will understand with me that it does not go well with the wicked. For I ask you, I inquire of you, why it goes badly with you. You will answer: “Want distresses me, hardship presses on me; perhaps pain in my limbs, fear of an enemy.” It goes badly with you because you suffer evils; and it goes well with him who is himself evil? There is a great difference between being evil and suffering evil. You are not what you suffer: you suffer evil, but you are not evil. You suffer evil, I say, but you are not evil; he, however, does not suffer evil, and he is evil. Do not be deceived, then, do not be deceived: it cannot be that it goes badly with you who suffer evil, and well with him who is evil. Since he is evil, do you think that he does not suffer evil, when he suffers himself? It goes badly with you because you suffer an evil not your own in your body; and it goes well with him who suffers his own evil self in his heart? It goes badly with you because you have a bad farm; and it goes well with him who has a bad soul? Be good, you who have good things. Riches are good, gold is good, silver is good, households are good, possessions are good: all these are good, but they are things with which you may do good, not things that make you good. Have the good things that make you good. “What are these?” you say. Do judgment, do justice. The things you have are good: do judgment, do justice; be good yourself among your good things. Blush before your good things: be good, so as to remain among good things that will perish. Blush before your good things: do not be bad among them, lest you perish with them. As for the rest, my brothers, how justice is to be kept, how mercy is to be loved, and how each one ought to be ready to walk with the Lord his God, we shall discuss with you another time, the Lord granting. Hold me as your debtor, so that you may not have me for long as one who tires you, but as a helper as far as my strength allows.

We have heard many holy readings as they were recited, and we ought to speak about them as the Lord deigns to grant. But every hearer of the readings remembers best what was read most recently, and expects the expounder of the word to say something about it. Since, then, the holy Gospel was recited last, I do not doubt that your Charity expects to hear something about that vineyard, and the laborers hired, and the wage of a denarius. But I remember what I promised last Lord’s Day. For I wanted to expound something of what had been read from the holy prophet; and it had been read that when a man asked by what sacrifices he might appease God, the answer came back that God requires nothing of him but to do judgment and justice, and to love mercy, and to be ready to walk with the Lord his God. I treated of judgment as far as I could; and the sermon ran on so long that no time was left in which I could discuss the rest. So I promised to speak today about justice. But you who were expecting me to speak about the Gospel, do not think yourselves cheated. For the work in that vineyard is justice itself.

Think, then, that you have been hired. Let those who came as boys think they were brought in at the first hour; those who came as youths, at the third; as young men, at the sixth; as older men, at the ninth; as the very old, at the eleventh. Do not complain about the time. Hear the work you are to do; wait for the wage without anxiety. And if you consider what kind of Lord you have, do not be envious if the wage is equal. What the work is, you know; but still I will remind you. Hear what you know, and do what you have heard. We have said that the work of God is justice. But the Lord Jesus, when asked what the work of God was, answered: “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.” He could have said, “Justice is the work of God.” Have we, then, hired men as we are, dared to presume anything against the householder? If justice is the work of God, as I said, how will the work of God be what the Lord said, that one believe in him, unless believing in him is itself justice? “But see,” you say, “we heard from the Lord, This is the work of God, that we believe in him; from you we heard that the work of God is justice: prove to us that believing in Christ is this justice.” It seems to me (since I am now answering one who asks and makes a just demand), does it seem to you that believing in Christ is not justice? What is it, then? Give this work a name. No doubt, if you consider well what you have heard, you will answer me: “This is called faith; believing in Christ is called faith.” I accept what you say: believing in Christ is called faith. Now you too hear another passage of Scripture: “The just lives by faith.” Do justice: believe. “The just lives by faith.” It is hard for one who believes well to live badly. Believe in him with your whole heart; believe without limping, without hesitating, without arguing against faith itself with human suspicions. Faith (fides) was so called because what is said is done (fit quod dicitur). Two syllables sound when one says fides: the first syllable comes from “done” (facto), the second from “said” (dicto). So I ask you whether you believe. You say, “I believe.” Do what you say, and it is faith. For I can hear the voice of one who answers; I cannot see the heart of one who believes. But was it I who hired you for the vineyard, I who cannot see the heart? I do not hire, I do not assign the work, I do not get the wage of a denarius ready. I am your fellow worker; with the strength he deigns to give, I labor in the vineyard; but with what mind I labor, he who hired me sees. “For to me,” says the Apostle, “it is a very small thing to be judged by you.” You too can hear my voice; you cannot see my heart. Let us all set our hearts before God for him to see, and let us do the work from the heart. Let us not offend the one who hires us, so that we may receive our wage with an unashamed face.

We too, dearly beloved, shall see one another’s hearts, but afterwards; now we still carry about the darkness of this mortality, and walk by the lamp of Scripture, as the apostle Peter says: “We have the more certain prophetic word, to which you do well to attend as to a lamp in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.” Accordingly, dearly beloved, because of the very faith by which we believe in God, we are day compared with unbelievers. In unbelief we were night along with them; now we are light, as the Apostle says: “You were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord.” Darkness in yourselves, light in the Lord. Likewise in another place: “For you are all children of light and children of the day; we are not of the night nor of darkness.” “Let us walk honorably, as in the day.” Day, then, compared with unbelievers. But compared with that day when the dead will rise, and this corruptible body will put on incorruption, and this mortal body will put on immortality, we are still night. To us, as if already in the day, the apostle John says, “Beloved, we are now children of God.” And yet, because it is still night, what follows? “And it has not yet appeared what we shall be. We know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is.” But that is the wage, not the work. “We shall see him as he is”: this is the wage itself. Then it will be day, a day that could not be brighter. Now, then, in this day that we already are, let us walk honorably; in this night that still remains, let us not judge one another. For see that the apostle Paul himself, who said, “Let us walk honorably, as in the day,” does not clash or disagree with his fellow apostle Peter, who says, “to which you do well to attend” (that is, to the divine word) “as to a lamp in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.”

See the apostle Paul himself saying this: “Therefore do not judge anything before the time.” And when will the time be? “Until the Lord comes and lights up what is hidden in darkness and discloses the thoughts of the heart; and then each will have his praise from God.” What does “before the time” mean, if not before you see one another’s hearts? Consider whether this is what I said: attend for a moment to all the words of that sentence. “Do not judge anything before the time.” And when will the time be? “Until the Lord comes and lights up what is hidden in darkness, and he will disclose the thoughts of the heart; and then each will have his praise from God.” How will the darkness find fault with you, when you are praised by the light? Then hearts will lie open; now they are hidden. Someone or other is suspected of being an enemy, and perhaps he is a friend; another seems to be a friend, and is perhaps a hidden enemy. O darkness! One rages, and loves; another flatters, and hates. If I judge by words, I avoid calm water and run onto a rock; I flee from a friend and cling to an enemy. The hidden heart has done this. There one must believe, there within, where it lies hidden, where it is secret. It is to cultivate this that you were hired. There work along by believing, where your fellow worker does not see you, but your Lord sees you. “The just lives by faith.” Do this.

I have already discussed judgment last Lord’s Day: that you should judge yourself, and when you found yourself crooked, you should not flatter yourself but correct yourself, and become upright, and the upright God would please you. For the upright God does not please the crooked. Do you want the upright God to please you? Be upright. Judge yourself; do not be pleased with yourself. What rightly displeases you in yourself, chastise, amend, correct. Let holy Scripture be to you like a mirror. This mirror has a brightness that does not lie, a brightness that does not flatter, that favors no one’s person. If you are beautiful, you see yourself beautiful there; if you are ugly, you see yourself ugly there. But when you come to it ugly and see yourself ugly there, do not accuse the mirror; return to yourself. The mirror does not deceive you; do not deceive yourself. Judge yourself; be saddened by your ugliness, so that when you have gone away and departed sad and ugly, you may come back corrected and beautiful. When, then, you have judged yourself without flattery, judge your neighbor also, with love. For there is something for you to judge: what you see. For it may happen that you see something bad that might soil you. It may happen that your neighbor himself confesses his evil to you, and reveals to a friend what he had hidden from an enemy. What you see, judge; what you do not see, leave to God. But when you judge, love the man, hate the vice. Do not love the vice because of the man, nor hate the man because of the vice. The man is your neighbor; the vice is your neighbor’s enemy. You love your friend truly if you hate what harms your friend. If you believe, you do this; for the just lives by faith.

I am speaking of something that abounds in human affairs. Sometimes someone becomes the enemy of your dearest friend, someone who was a friend of you both. Of three friends, two begin to be enemies of each other: what is the one left in the middle to do? One of them wants, demands, insists that you hate along with him the one he has begun to hate, and he says these words to you: “You are not my friend, because you are the friend of my enemy.” What this one says to you, the other says to you too. For you were three. You were three; two began to be at odds; you remained. If you join yourself to this one, you will have that one for an enemy; if to that one, this one; if to both, both will grumble. See the temptation; see the thorns in the vineyard in which we were hired. Perhaps you are waiting to hear from me what to do. Remain the friend of both. Let those who are at odds with each other be reconciled through you. If you hear anything bad from one about the other, do not betray it to the other; lest perhaps those who are enemies now become friends afterwards, and betray their betrayer to each other. But I have said this with men in view, not the eyes of him who hired us. See, suppose no one betrays you: God, who sees, himself judges you. You have heard a word from someone angry, grieving, inflamed: let it die in you. Why is it betrayed, why is it brought out? For if it stays in you, it will not burst you. By all means speak to your friend who wants to make you the enemy of your friend: address him, and handle his mind, as a sick one, with the gentleness of medicine. Say to him: “Why do you want me to be his enemy?” He answers: “Because he is my enemy.” “Do you want me, then, to be the enemy of your enemy? I ought to be the enemy of your vice. This man whom you want to make my enemy is a man; you have another enemy, whose enemy I ought to be if I am your friend.” He will answer: “Who is this other enemy of mine?” “Your vice.” He will answer: “What vice of mine?” “The hatred with which you hate your friend.” Be, then, like a doctor. A doctor does not love the sick man if he does not hate the sickness. To set the sick man free, he hunts down the fever. Do not love the vices of your friends, if you love your friends.

But I who say this, do you think that I do what I say? My brothers, I do it, if I first do it in myself. And I do it in myself if I receive the power to do it from the Lord. I hate my vices; I offer my heart to my physician to be healed. I hunt them down as far as I can; I groan over them; I confess that they are in me; and see, I accuse myself. You who were finding fault with me, correct yourself. This is justice, so that it may not be said to us: “You see the straw in your brother’s eye, and you do not see the beam in your own eye? Hypocrite, first cast the beam out of your own eye, and then you will see to cast the speck out of your brother’s eye.” Anger is a speck; hatred is a beam. But if you nourish the speck, it becomes a beam: anger grown old becomes hatred; a speck nourished becomes a beam. So that the speck may not become a beam, “let not the sun go down on your anger.” You see, you feel yourself livid with hatred, and you rebuke someone who is angry? Take away the hatred, and you rebuke rightly. There is anger in his eye; in yours there is a beam. For if you hate, how can you see what to pull out? There is a beam in your eye. Why is there a beam in your eye? Because you disregarded the speck that grew there. You slept with it; you got up with it; you cultivated it in yourself; you watered it with false suspicions; you nourished it by believing the words of flatterers and of those who bring you bad reports about your friend. You did not pull out the speck by your diligence; you made it a beam. Take the beam out of your eye; do not hate your brother. Do you shudder, or do you not? I say to you, “Do not hate,” and you are unconcerned; and you answer me, you say to me, “What is it to hate? And what evil is there in a man’s hating his enemy?” You hate your brother; but if you think little of hatred, hear what you do not attend to: “Whoever hates his brother is a murderer.” Whoever hates is a murderer. Can you now say, “What is it to me that I am a murderer”? Whoever hates is a murderer. You did not prepare poison; you did not go out with a sword to strike your enemy; you did not get ready an accomplice in the crime, nor a place, nor a time; finally, you did not commit the crime itself: you only hated, and you killed yourself before you killed him. Learn, then, justice, so that you hate nothing but vices, and love men. If you hold to this, and do this justice, so that you would rather have even vicious men healed than condemned, you have done good work in the vineyard. But exercise yourselves in this, my brothers.

See, after the sermon the catechumens will be dismissed; the faithful will remain; we shall come to the place of prayer. You know what we are going to approach, what we are going to say to God first? “Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors.” See to it that you forgive; see to it. For you will come to these words of the prayer: how do you say them? How do you not say them? Finally, I ask: do you say them, or do you not? You hate, and you say them? You will answer me, “I do not say them.” You pray, and you do not say them? You hate, and you say them? You pray, and you do not say them? I answer quickly: if you say them, you lie; if you do not say them, you gain nothing. Watch yourself, attend to yourself: you are about to pray; forgive from your whole heart. You want to quarrel with your enemy; first quarrel with your heart. Quarrel, I say, quarrel with your heart. Say to your heart, “Do not hate.” But your heart, your mind, still hates: say to your mind, “Do not hate.” “How shall I pray, how shall I say, Forgive us our debts? I can say this, certainly; but how shall I say what follows: As we also? What? As we also forgive. Where is faith?” Do what you say: “As we also.” … your soul, and it is saddened because you say to it, “Do not hate.” Answer it: “Why are you sad, my soul, and why do you trouble me?” Why are you sad? Do not hate, lest you destroy me. Why do you trouble me? “Hope in God.” You are languishing, gasping, wounded by sickness; you cannot take the hatred away from yourself. “Hope in God”: he is a physician. For you he hung on the tree, and he has not yet been avenged. Why do you want to be avenged? For you hate in order to be avenged. See your Lord hanging; see him hanging, and giving you commands from the tree as from a judgment seat. See him hanging, and making medicine for you in your sickness from his own blood. See him hanging, if you want to be avenged. You want to be avenged: see him hanging; hear him praying, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do.”

“But he could do this,” you tell me; “I cannot. For I am a man, he is God.” I am a man; he is a man, God-man. Why then was God made man, if man is not to be corrected? But see, I speak to you: O man, if it is too much for you to imitate the Lord himself, look at Stephen, your fellow servant. Surely Saint Stephen was a man, or was he God? He was a man. Plainly he was a man: he was what you are. But what he did, he did only by the gift of him whom you too ask. Yet see what he did. He was speaking to the Jews; he was fierce, and he loved. I must show both, because I said, “He was fierce,” and I said, “And he loved”: I must demonstrate both, his fierceness and his love. Hear him being fierce: “Stiff-necked.” These are the words of Saint Stephen when he was addressing the Jews: “Stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit. Which of the prophets did your fathers not kill?” You have heard him being fierce: I owe you the other; hear him loving too. They, made angry and burning more fiercely, returning evil for good, ran for stones and began to stone the servant of God. Here, Saint Stephen, prove your love; here, here let us see you, here let us watch, here let us behold the victor over the devil and his conqueror. We have heard you fierce against those who were silent; let us see whether you love those who are fierce. You were fierce against those who were silent; let us see whether you love those who stone you. For if you hate, and if you were able to hate, now is the time, when you are being stoned; then above all you ought to hate. Let us see whether you repay hard stones, the stones that stone you, with hardness of heart. For stones throw stones; the hard throw hard things. Those who received the Law on stone throw stones.

Let us see, dearly beloved, let us see, let us watch a great spectacle: let us watch it, and it is also to be set before us again tomorrow. Let us see. See, Stephen is being stoned; let him be placed as it were before our eyes. Come, member of Christ; come, athlete of Christ; look upon him who hung for you on the tree. He was crucified; you are stoned. He said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do.” What do you say? Let me hear. Let me see you, in case perhaps I cannot imitate even you. First blessed Stephen, standing, prayed for himself, and said: “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” Then, kneeling down and praying for those who were stoning him, he said: “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” And when he had said this, he fell asleep. O happy sleep, and true rest! See what it is to rest: to pray for one’s enemies. But for a moment, I ask you, Saint Stephen, explain to me this something or other: why did you pray for yourself standing, and kneel for your enemies? He answers, perhaps, what we understand: “I prayed for myself standing, because in praying for myself, who had served God rightly, I did not labor in praying and obtaining. He who prays for a righteous man does not labor.” That is why he prayed for himself standing. When it came to praying for the Jews, for the killers of Christ, for the killers of the saints, for those who were stoning him, he considered that their impiety was excessive and great, such as could only with difficulty be forgiven; and he knelt. Kneel in this vineyard, O strong laborer; kneel, I say, in the work of this vineyard, most strong laborer. Great is your work, outstanding and much to be praised. You have dug deep, you who rooted out from your heart the hatred of your enemies. Turning to the Lord, and so on.