Sermons to the People 60.1–60.12

Every man who is in some trouble and failing in his own affairs looks for some prudent person from whom to take counsel and learn what to do. Let us suppose, then, that the whole world is as it were one man. He seeks to escape evils and is slow to do good; and so, as his troubles multiply and he fails in his own affairs, whom can he find more prudent to take counsel from than Christ? By all means let him find a better, and do what he likes. But if he has nowhere to find a better, let him come to this one, whom he may find anywhere; let him consult him, take counsel, keep the good command, and escape the great evil. For present temporal evils, which people so dread, under which they grumble so much, and by grumbling offend the one who corrects them, so that they do not find the Savior: these present evils, then, are without doubt passing. Either they pass through us, or we pass through them; either they pass while we live, or they are left behind when we die. What is short in time is not great in tribulation. You who are thinking of tomorrow, you do not call back yesterday. When the day after tomorrow comes, tomorrow too will be yesterday. Yet if people are tossed with such anxieties to escape temporal and passing, or rather flying, tribulations, what must be thought about so that a man may escape those that remain and last without end?

Mortal life is a hard case. What else is it to be born here but to enter a life of toil? Of our toil to come the infant’s very crying is witness. From this troublesome banquet no one is excused. What Adam offered had to be drunk. We were indeed made by the hands of Truth; but because of sin we were cast out into days of vanity. We were made in the image of God, but we have worn it away by the transgression of sin. That is why the psalm reminds us how we were made and where we have come. For it says: “Though man walks in the image of God.” See what he was made. Where has he come? Hear what follows: “Yet he will be troubled in vain.” He walks in the image of truth, and is troubled in the counsel of vanity. Then see his trouble: see it, and as in a mirror be displeased with yourself. “Though,” it says, “man walks in the image of God,” and so man is a great thing, “yet he will be troubled in vain.” And as if we asked, “Why, I ask you, why will he be troubled in vain?”, it says: “He stores up treasure, and does not know for whom he gathers it.” See that man, that is, the whole human race as if one man, who has failed in his case, lost counsel, strayed from the way of a sound mind: “He stores up treasure, and does not know for whom he gathers it.” What is madder? What is unhappier? Surely for himself? No. Why not for himself? Because he will die, because man’s life is short, because the treasure lasts and the one who gathers it passes quickly. So, pitying man walking in the image of God, confessing true things, pursuing vain ones, it says: “He will be troubled in vain.” I grieve: he stores up treasure and does not know for whom he gathers it. For himself? No: for the man dies while the treasure lasts. For whom, then? You have counsel: give it to me too. You have no counsel to give me; so you do not have it yourself. So if neither of us has it, let us both seek, both receive, both consider. He is troubled, he stores up treasure, he thinks, he toils, he lies awake with cares. By day you are harassed with toils, by night shaken with fears. So that your purse may be filled with coins, your soul burns with fever from cares.

I see, I grieve: you are troubled, and, as he says who does not know how to deceive, you are troubled in vain. For you store up treasure: suppose all you do turns out well; let us keep silent about losses, about so many dangers, and in each gain a death each time: deaths, I mean, not of bodies but of evil thoughts; so that gold may come in, good faith perishes; so that you may be clothed outside, you are stripped within. Let us pass over these, let us keep silent about other things, let us pass by the adverse things and think only of the prosperous: see, you store up treasure, see, gains flow in from all sides, and coins run like springs; everywhere want burns, everywhere plenty flows. Have you not heard, “If riches abound, do not set your heart on them”? See, you acquire; you are not troubled fruitlessly; still you are troubled in vain. “Why,” you say, “am I troubled in vain? See, I fill bags; my walls can hardly hold what I acquire: why, then, am I troubled in vain?” “You store up treasure, and you do not know for whom you gather it.” Or if you know for whom, I beg you, tell me too. I will listen: for whom? If you are not troubled in vain, tell me for whom you store up treasure. “For myself,” you say. Do you dare say that, you who will die? “For my sons,” you say. Do you dare say that about those who will die? A great act of piety, that a father stores up treasure for his sons: rather a great vanity; one who will die stores up for those who will die. If it is for yourself, since you leave it when you die, why do you gather? The case is the same for your sons: they will succeed, not remain. I pass over saying what kind of sons, lest perhaps what avarice gathered, luxury may squander. Another squanders by dissipation what you gathered by toil. But I pass over this. Perhaps the sons will be good; they will not be dissolute; they will keep what you left, increase what you kept, not lose what you gathered. Your sons are equally vain with you, if they do this, if they imitate you, their father, in this. To them I say what I was saying to you. I say to your son, for whom you are saving, I say to him: “You store up treasure, and you do not know for whom you gather it.” For as you did not know, so he does not know. If vanity has remained in him, has the truth failed toward him?

I pass over saying that perhaps, while you live, you are storing up treasure for a thief. He comes one night and finds ready what was gathered over so many days and nights. Perhaps you are storing up for a robber, perhaps for a plunderer. I will not say more, lest I recall and reopen the pain of what has been suffered. How many things that empty vanity gathered has the cruelty of the enemy found ready! It is not mine to wish it, but it is everyone’s to fear it. May God avert it. Let his scourges suffice. Let us all pray: may God avert it. May he whom we ask spare us. But if someone asks, for whom are we storing up, what do we answer? You, then, O man, O every man, you who store up treasure in vain, how do you answer me as I deal with you and seek counsel with you in a common case? For you were saying and answering: “I store up for myself, for my sons, for my descendants.” I have said how much there is to fear even in those sons. But I pass over sons who will live to their father’s punishment, as an enemy wishes; let them live as their father wishes. How many have fallen into these mishaps, I have said, I have recalled; you shuddered, and did not correct yourself. For what will you answer, except to say, “Perhaps not”? And I too spoke so: perhaps, I said, for a thief, perhaps for a robber, perhaps for a plunderer. I did not say “certainly,” but “perhaps.” Between them, perhaps it will happen, perhaps it will not: so you do not know what will happen; you are troubled in vain. You see how truly the Truth has spoken, how emptily vanity is troubled. You have heard; at last you have become wise; because when you say, “Perhaps for my sons,” and do not dare to say, “I am certain it is for my sons,” you do not know for whom you gather it. So, as I see, and as I said before, you have failed in your case; you do not find what to answer me; but neither do I find what to answer you.

So let us both seek, let us both ask for counsel. We have access not to a wise man but to Wisdom itself. Let us both hear Christ: “to the Jews a stumbling block, to the Gentiles foolishness; but to those who are called, Jews and Greeks, Christ the Power of God and the Wisdom of God.” Why do you prepare defenses for your riches? Hear the Power of God: nothing is stronger. Why do you prepare clever schemes for your riches? Hear the Wisdom of God: nothing is wiser. Perhaps when I speak you will be scandalized: you will be a Jew, because Christ is a stumbling block to the Jews. Perhaps when I speak it will seem foolish to you: you will be a Gentile, because Christ is foolishness to the Gentiles. You are a Christian; you have been called; and to those who are called, Jews and Greeks, Christ is the Power of God and the Wisdom of God. Do not be saddened when I speak; do not be scandalized; do not mock, with twisted mouth, what you take for my foolishness. Let us listen. For what I am going to say, Christ has said. You despise the herald: fear the judge. What, then, shall I say? The reader of the Gospel has just now almost freed me from this care. I am not reading; I am recalling what was read. You were seeking counsel, failing in your case: see what the fountain of right counsel says, the fountain from which, whatever you fill, you need fear no poison.

“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal; but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth corrupts. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” What more do you wait for? The matter is plain. The counsel is open, but greed hides; or rather it does not hide, but, what is worse, it too is open. For robbery does not cease to rage; avarice does not cease to defraud; malice does not cease to swear falsely. All for what? So that treasure may be stored up. And where is it put? In the earth. Rightly indeed: from earth into earth. For to the man by whom, as I said, toil was offered to us to drink, it was said when he sinned, “Earth you are, and to earth you will go.” Rightly the treasure is in the earth, because the heart is in the earth. Where, then, is our “We have them lifted up to God”? Grieve, you who have understood; correct yourselves, if you have grieved. How long will you praise and not do? It is true; nothing is truer. So let what is true be done. We praise one God, and we do not change, so as not to be troubled in vain in this too.

So, “Do not store up for yourselves treasure on earth,” whether you have experienced how what is stored in the earth perishes, or have not experienced it but at least fear to experience it. Let experience correct one whom words do not correct. No one gets up, no one goes out, without everyone saying with one voice, “Woe to us, the world is falling down.” If it is falling down, why do you not move out? If an architect told you your house was going to fall down, would you not move out before grumbling? The Builder of the world tells you the world is going to fall, and you do not believe? Hear the voice of the one who foretells, hear the counsel of the one who warns. The voice of the one who foretells is: “Heaven and earth will pass away.” The voice of the one who warns is: “Do not store up for yourselves treasure on earth.” So if you believe God foretelling, if you do not despise him warning, let what he says be done. For he who gave such counsel does not deceive you. You will not lose what you have given; you will follow where you have sent it. So I give counsel: “Give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven.” You will not remain without treasure; but what you have anxiously on earth you will have securely in heaven. So move it. I give counsel for keeping, not for losing. “You will have,” he says, “treasure in heaven; and come, follow me,” so that I may lead you to your treasure. This is not a loss but a saving. Let people wake up. Let those who have experienced what they fear hear, let them do what will leave them nothing to fear, let them move to heaven. You put grain in the ground; a friend of yours comes, who knows the nature of grain and of earth, teaches your inexperience, and says to you: “What have you done? You have put the grain in the earth, in the lower ground: the place is damp; what you have put there is rotting; you will lose your labor.” You answer: “What, then, shall I do?” “Move it,” he says, “to higher ground.” Do you, then, listen to a friend giving counsel about your grain, and despise God giving counsel about your heart? You are afraid to put your grain in the earth, and you lose your heart in the earth? See, the Lord your God gives you counsel about your heart: “For where your treasure is,” he says, “there will your heart be also.” “Lift up your heart to heaven,” he says, “so that it does not rot in the earth.” It is the counsel of one who wants to keep, not to lose.

If this is so, how those who did not do it regret it! What do they say to themselves now? “We would have in heaven what we have lost on earth. The enemy invaded the house; would he invade heaven? He killed the servant who was guarding; would he kill the Lord who keeps it, where no thief comes near and no moth corrupts?” How many are saying: “There we would have had it, there we would have stored our treasures, where after a little while we would have followed them securely! Why did we not listen to our Lord? Why did we despise the Father warning, and experience the enemy invading?” So if this is counsel, let us not be lazy in such good counsel; and if what we have must be moved, let us transfer it to that place from which we do not lose it. What are the poor to whom we give, but our porters, through whom we move from earth to heaven? Give: you give to your porter; he carries to heaven what you give. “How,” you say, “does he carry it to heaven? See, I see that he uses it up by eating.” Exactly: he carries it across, not by keeping, but by eating. Have you forgotten, “Come, blessed of my Father, receive the kingdom: for I was hungry, and you gave me to eat”; and, “When you did it to one of the least of mine, you did it to me”? If you did not despise the beggar before you, see to whom what you gave has come. “When you did it,” he says, “to one of the least of mine, you did it to me.” Christ received what you gave. He received it who gave you what to give; he received it who at the end will give himself to you.

For I have sometimes reminded your Charity of this too, brothers, something that, I confess, moves me very much in God’s Scripture, and that I ought to remind you of more often. I ask you to think about what our Lord Jesus Christ himself says: that at the end of the world, when he comes to judgment, he will gather all nations before him and divide people into two parts, placing some on the right and others on the left, and will say to those on the right, “Come, blessed of my Father, receive the kingdom prepared for you from the origin of the world”; but to those on the left, “Go into the eternal fire, which is prepared for the devil and his angels.” Look for the reasons either of so great a reward or of so great a punishment: “Receive the kingdom,” and “Go into the eternal fire.” Why will these receive the kingdom? “For I was hungry, and you gave me to eat.” Why will those go into the eternal fire? “For I was hungry, and you did not give me to eat.” What is this, I ask? I see, regarding those who will receive the kingdom, that they gave as good and faithful Christians, not despising the Lord’s words, and, hoping with confidence for what was promised, they did this; because if they had not done it, this barrenness would certainly not have suited their good life. For perhaps they were chaste, not cheats, not drunkards, keeping themselves from evil works. If they had not added this, they would have remained barren. For they would have done “Turn away from evil,” and would not have done “and do good.” Yet even to them he does not say, “Come, receive the kingdom, for you lived chastely, you cheated no one, you oppressed no poor person, you encroached on no one’s boundary, you deceived no one by oath.” He did not say these things, but, “Receive the kingdom, because I was hungry, and you gave me to eat.” How this surpasses all, when the Lord said nothing of the rest and named this alone! Again to the others: “Go into the eternal fire, which is prepared for the devil and his angels.” How many things he could say against the ungodly, if they asked, “Why are we going into the eternal fire?” Why, you ask, adulterer, murderer, cheat, sacrilegious man, blasphemer, unbeliever? None of these: but, “Because I was hungry, and you did not give me to eat.”

I see that you are moved as I am moved. And truly it is a wonderful thing. But I gather the reason for this wonderful thing as best I can, and I will not hide it from you. It is written: “As water quenches fire, so alms quench sin.” Again it is written: “Shut up alms in the heart of the poor, and it will pray for you to the Lord.” Again it is written: “Hear my counsel, O King, and redeem your sins by alms.” And there are many other proofs from the divine word, showing that alms avail much to quench and blot out sins. Accordingly, to those whom he will condemn, and still more to those whom he will crown, he will count only alms, as if saying: “It is hard, if I examine you and weigh you and search out your deeds most carefully, not to find a reason to condemn you; but go into the kingdom: for I was hungry, and you gave me to eat. So you go into the kingdom, not because you have not sinned, but because you have redeemed your sins by alms.” And again to the others: “Go into the eternal fire, which is prepared for the devil and his angels.” And they, guilty, long guilty, trembling too late, considering their sins, when would they dare to say that they are condemned undeservedly, that this sentence is pronounced against them undeservedly by so just a judge? Considering their consciences, considering all the wounds of their soul, when would they dare to say, “We are condemned unjustly”? Of them it was said before in Wisdom: “Their iniquities will convict them to their face.” Without doubt they will see that they are justly condemned for their crimes and offenses; and it is as if he said to them: “No, not for what you think, but because I was hungry, and you did not give me to eat. For if you had turned away from all those deeds of yours and turned to me, and redeemed all those crimes and sins by alms, those very alms would now free you and absolve you from the guilt of such great crimes. For blessed are the merciful, for mercy will be shown them. But now go into the eternal fire. Judgment without mercy to one who has shown no mercy.”

May I have commended this to you, my brothers: give earthly bread, and knock for the heavenly. The Lord is bread: “I am the bread of life,” he says. How will he give to you, who do not give to the needy? Another is in need before you; you are in need before another; and since you are in need before another and another is in need before you, he is in need before one who is himself in need. For the one before whom you are in need needs nothing. Do what you want done to you. For it is not as friends usually reproach one another in a way with their kindnesses (“I did this for you”; and the answer, “And I did this for you”): he does not want us to do him a service because he too did one for us. He needs nothing; that is why he is truly Lord. “I said to the Lord: You are my God, for you do not need my goods.” So though he is Lord and true Lord and does not need our goods, yet, so that we might do something for him too, he deigned to be hungry in his poor. “I was hungry,” he says, “and you gave me to eat.” “Lord, when did we see you hungry?” “When you did it to one of the least of mine, you did it to me.” In short, let people hear and rightly consider how great a merit it is to have fed Christ hungry, and how great a crime to have despised Christ hungry.

Repentance for sins does change people for the better; but even it seems likely to profit nothing if it is barren of works of mercy. The Truth testifies to this through John, who said to those coming to him: “Brood of vipers, who showed you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear, then, fruits worthy of repentance. And do not say, We have Abraham as father. For I tell you that God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. For the axe is already laid at the root of the trees. Every tree, then, that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.” Of this fruit he said above, “Bear fruits worthy of repentance.” So whoever does not bear these fruits thinks in vain that he earns pardon of sins by a barren repentance. What these fruits are, he himself then shows. For after these words of his, the crowds asked him, saying, “What, then, shall we do?”, that is, what are these fruits that you exhort us, and frighten us, to bear? He answered and said to them: “Whoever has two tunics, let him give to one who has none; and whoever has food, let him do likewise.” What is plainer, my brothers? What more certain? What more express? What else, then, does what he said above mean, “Every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire,” but what those on the left will hear: “Go into the eternal fire; for I was hungry, and you did not give me to eat”? So it is too little to withdraw from sins if you neglect to heal the past, as it is written: “Son, you have sinned; do not do it again.” And lest he think himself secure by this alone, it says: “And for your former sins pray that they may be forgiven you.” But what will it profit to pray, if you do not make yourself worthy to be heard by not bearing fruits worthy of repentance, so that you are cut down like a barren tree and thrown into the fire? So if you want to be heard when you pray for your sins, “Forgive, and you will be forgiven; give, and it will be given to you.”