Sermons to the People 79.1–80.8

We heard, when the holy Gospel was read, of the great vision on the mountain, where the Lord Jesus showed himself to three disciples, Peter, James, and John. His face shone like the sun: this signifies the brightness of the Gospel. His garments became white as snow: this signifies the cleansing of the Church, to which it was said through the prophet, “And if your sins are like scarlet, I will make them white as snow.” Elijah and Moses were talking with him, because the grace of the Gospel has testimony from the law and the prophets: in Moses the law, in Elijah the prophets, to speak briefly. For there are benefits of God given through the holy martyr which will be read out; let us listen. Peter wished three tents to be made, one for Moses, one for Elijah, and one for Christ. The solitude of the mountain delighted him; he was weary of the tumult of human affairs. But why did he seek three tents, unless because he did not yet know the unity of the law, prophecy, and the Gospel? Finally, he was corrected by the cloud. “While he was speaking,” it says, “behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them.” See, the cloud made one tent: why were you seeking three? And a voice from the cloud: “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear him.” Elijah speaks; but hear him. Moses speaks; but hear him. The prophets speak, the law speaks; but hear him, the voice of the law and the tongue of the prophets. He sounded in them; he appeared in himself when he deigned to. Hear him; let us hear him. When the Gospel was speaking, think that it was the cloud: from there a voice sounded to us. Let us hear him: let us do what he says, let us hope for what he promised.

Our Lord Jesus Christ rebuked unbelief even in his own disciples, as we heard just now when the Gospel was read. For when they had said, “Why could we not cast it out?”, he answered, “Because of your unbelief.” If the apostles were unbelieving, who is a believer? What are the lambs to do, if the rams totter? Yet the Lord’s mercy did not despise them in their unbelief, but rebuked, nourished, perfected, and crowned them. For they themselves, mindful of their weakness, said to him in a certain place in the Gospel, as we read: “Lord, increase our faith.” “Lord,” they say, “increase our faith.” The first benefit was knowledge, knowing that they had less; a greater happiness was knowing from whom they were asking. “Lord,” they say, “increase our faith.” See whether they were not carrying their hearts as if to a fountain, and knocking that it might be opened to them, so that they might fill them from it. He willed to be knocked at, not to repel those who knock, but to exercise those who desire.

For do you think, brothers, that God does not know what you need? He who knows our need anticipates our desires. Indeed, when he taught prayer and warned his disciples not to use many words in prayer, he said: “Do not use many words; for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.” The Lord says something else here. What is it? Not wanting us to speak much in prayer, he said to us: “Do not speak much when you pray; for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.” If our Father knows what we need before we ask him, why do we speak even a little? What is the reason for prayer at all, if our Father already knows what we need? He says to someone: “Do not ask me at length; for I know what you need.” If you know, Lord, why should I ask at all? You do not want me to make a long petition; rather, you bid me make almost none. And where does that saying in another place come in? He who says, “Do not speak much in prayer,” says in another place, “Ask, and it will be given to you.” And lest you think you had been told to ask only in passing, he added, “Seek, and you will find.” And lest you think this too was said in passing, see what he added, see how he concluded: “Knock, and it will be opened to you.” See what he added. He wanted you to ask, so as to receive; to seek, so as to find; to knock, so as to enter. Why, then, since our Father already knows what we need, do we ask? Why seek? Why knock? Why weary ourselves in asking, seeking, and knocking, to instruct one who knows? In another place the Lord’s words are: “One ought always to pray and not lose heart.” If one ought always to pray, how does he say, “Do not use many words”? How do I always pray, if I finish quickly? Here you bid me finish quickly; there you bid me always pray and not lose heart: what does this mean? To understand this too, ask, seek, knock. For it is closed not so that he may spurn you, but so that he may exercise you. So, brothers, we ought to exhort to prayer both ourselves and you. For we have no other hope amid the many evils of this present age than to knock in prayer itself, and to believe and hold firmly in the heart that your Father does not give you this or that because he knows it is not good for you. For you know what you desire; he knows what profits you. Suppose that you are under a doctor and are sick, as is true; for all this life of ours is sickness, and a long life is nothing but a long sickness. Suppose, then, that you are sick under a doctor. You took a fancy to ask the doctor for a drink of new wine. You are not forbidden to ask, in case it does you no harm and it is good for you to receive it. Do not hesitate to ask: ask, do not delay; but if you do not receive, do not be saddened. If this is so under a human doctor of your flesh, how much more under God, the doctor, the creator, and the restorer of both your flesh and your soul?

So, since in this passage the Lord exhorted to prayer, where he said, “Because of your unbelief you could not cast out this demon”—for he exhorted to prayer, concluding thus: “This kind is not cast out except by fasting and prayer”—if a man prays to cast out another’s demon, how much more to cast out his own avarice? How much more to cast out his own drunkenness? How much more to cast out his own luxury? How much more to cast out his own uncleanness? How many things there are in a man which, if they persist, do not admit him to the kingdom of heaven! See, brothers, how a doctor is begged for temporal health; how, if anyone is desperately sick, is he ashamed or reluctant to hold a man’s feet, to wash the footsteps of some most skilled chief physician with tears? And what if the doctor says to him, “You cannot be healed otherwise unless I bind you, cauterize you, and cut you”? He answers: “Do what you will; only heal me.” With what ardor he desires the health of a few days, fleeting as vapor, so that for it he is willing to be bound, cut, and burned, and to be watched lest he eat what he likes, drink what he likes, or when he likes! He endures everything so as to die later; and will he not endure a little so as never to die? If God, who is the heavenly physician over us, says to you, “Do you want to be healed?”, what will you say but “To be healed”? Perhaps you do not say it, because you think yourself healthy; and that is why you are sicker.

For if you suppose two sick men, one who begs the doctor with tears, and another who, out of his mind in his sickness, laughs at the doctor, the doctor promises hope to the one weeping and laments over the one laughing. Why, except that the latter is sick the more dangerously, the more he thinks himself healthy? So too were the Jews. Christ came to the sick; he found all sick. Let no one flatter himself on his health, lest the physician give him up. He found all sick; it is the apostolic sentence: “For all have sinned and lack the glory of God.” When, then, he had found all sick, there were two kinds of sick people. Some came to the physician, clung to Christ, listened, honored, followed, were converted. He received them all without any disdain, to heal them, he who healed freely, because he cured by almighty power. So when he received them and joined them to himself to be healed, they exulted. But the other kind of sick, who had already lost their minds through the sickness of iniquity and did not know that they were sick, insulted him because he received the sick, and said to his disciples: “See what kind of master you have, who eats with sinners and tax collectors.” And he, who knew what they were and who they were, answered them: “It is not the healthy who need a physician, but those who are ill.” And he showed them who were healthy and who were sick: “I came,” he said, “not to call the righteous, but sinners.” If sinners do not come to me, he says, why did I come? For whom did I come? If all are healthy, why did so great a physician come down from heaven? Why did he make a medicine for us not from his store but from his own blood? So that kind of sick who were less gravely sick, who felt that they were sick, clung to the physician to be healed. But those who were more dangerously sick insulted the physician and slandered the sick. To what point did their frenzy finally go? To seizing the physician, binding him, scourging him, crowning him with thorns, hanging him on wood, killing him on a cross. Why do you wonder? The sick man killed the physician; but the physician, by being killed, healed the frenzied man.

First, not forgetting his own person on the cross, and showing us his patience, and giving us an example of loving our enemies, seeing them raging around him, he who knew their disease, because he was the physician, who knew the frenzy in which they had lost their minds, said at once to the Father: “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do.” Do you think that those Jews were not malicious, savage, bloody, turbulent, enemies of the Son of God? Do you think that that voice was idle and empty: “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do”? He saw them all, but he recognized there those who would be his. Then he died, because it was expedient that by his death he should kill death. God died, so that an exchange might be made, a kind of heavenly trade, so that man might not see death. For Christ is God, but he did not die in that by which he is God. For the same is God, the same is man: for there is one Christ, God and man. A man was assumed, so that we might be changed for the better; he did not drag God down to the worse. For he took on what he was not; he did not lose what he was. Since, then, he was God and man, wishing us to live from what is his, he died from what is ours. For he had nothing from which he could die; but neither did we have anything from which we could live. For what was he, who had nothing from which to die? “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Look in God for something from which he might die: you will not find it. But we die, who are flesh, men bearing the flesh of sin. Look in sin for something from which it might live: it has nothing. So neither could he have death from what was his, nor we life from what was ours; but we have life from what is his, he death from what is ours. What an exchange! What did he give, and what did he receive? Merchants come to trade, to exchange goods. For ancient trade was the exchange of goods. A man gave what he had and received what he did not have. For example, one had wheat but did not have barley; another had barley and did not have wheat: the one gave the wheat he had and received the barley he did not have. How simple that a larger quantity should make up for a cheaper kind! So, see, another gives barley to receive wheat; finally, another gives lead to receive silver, but gives much lead against a little silver; another gives wool to receive a garment. And who can list them all? Yet no one gives life to receive death. So the voice of the physician hanging on the wood was not in vain. For in order to die for us, since the Word could not die, the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. He hung on the cross, but in the flesh. There was the lowliness that the Jews despised; there the charity by which the Jews were set free. For it was for them that it was said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do.” And that voice was not idle. He died, he was buried, he rose again; having spent forty days with his disciples, he ascended into heaven and sent the Holy Spirit on those who were waiting for the promise. Having received the Holy Spirit, they were filled and began to speak in the tongues of all nations. Then the Jews who were present were amazed, terrified that unschooled, unlearned men, whom they knew had been brought up among them in a single language, were speaking all languages in the name of Christ; from Peter’s speech they learned where this gift came from. He gave it who hung on the wood. He gave it who was mocked as he hung on the wood, so that he might give the Holy Spirit as he sat in heaven. They heard and believed, those of whom he had said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do.” They believed, they were baptized, and the conversion took place. What conversion? The blood of Christ, which they had shed in their rage, they drank as believers.

So, to conclude our sermon where we began, let us pray and rely on God; let us live as he commands, and where we totter in this life, let us call on him, as the disciples called on him, saying, “Lord, increase our faith.” Peter too relied on him, and tottered; yet he was not despised and sunk, but lifted up and raised. For that on which he relied, where was it from? It was not from himself; it was from the Lord. How? “Lord, if it is you, bid me come to you on the water.” For the Lord was walking on the waters. “If it is you, bid me come to you on the water.” For I know that if it is you, you bid and it is done. And he said, “Come.” He went down at his command and trembled in his own weakness. Yet when he trembled, he cried out to him: “Lord,” he said, “save me.” Then the Lord took his hand and said: “O you of little faith, why did you doubt?” He himself invited him; he himself rescued him as he wavered and tottered, so that what was said in the psalm might be fulfilled: “If I said, My foot has slipped, your mercy, O Lord, helped me.”

There are, then, two kinds of benefits, temporal and eternal. Temporal ones are health, property, honor, friends, home, children, wife, and the other things of this life, in which we are pilgrims. Let us place ourselves, then, in the inn of this life as pilgrims who will pass on, not as owners who will stay. But eternal benefits are, first, eternal life itself, the incorruption and immortality of flesh and soul, the fellowship of the angels, the heavenly city, unfailing dignity, the Father and the fatherland: he without death, it without an enemy. Let us desire these benefits with all ardor, let us ask for them with all perseverance, not with long speech but with groaning as our witness. Desire always prays, even if the tongue is silent. If you always desire, you always pray. When does prayer fall asleep? When desire has grown cold. So let us ask for those everlasting benefits with all eagerness, let us seek those goods with all our intent, let us ask for those goods without anxiety. For those goods profit the one who has them; they cannot harm. But these temporal ones sometimes profit, sometimes harm. Poverty has profited many, and riches have harmed them; a private life has profited many, and high honor has harmed them. And again, money has profited some, dignity has profited some: it profited those who used it well; but for those who used it badly, its not being taken away harmed them more. And so, brothers, let us ask for these temporal things too, but in moderation, secure that if we receive, he gives who knows what is good for us. You asked, and what you asked was not given you? Trust the Father, who would give it to you if it were good for you. See, judge from your own case. What your son, who does not know human affairs, is to you, that you, who do not know divine affairs, are to the Lord. See, your son weeps before you all day for you to give him a knife, that is, a sword: you refuse to give it, you do not give it, you disregard his weeping lest you lament his death. Let him weep, torment himself, throw himself about, for you to lift him onto a horse: you do not do it, because he cannot control it; it will throw him and kill him. When you refuse him a part, you are keeping the whole for him. But so that he may grow up and possess the whole securely, you do not give him a small thing that is dangerous.

So we say, brothers: pray as much as you can. Evils abound, and God willed that evils should abound. Would that evil people did not abound, and then evils would not abound. “Bad times, troublesome times”: that is what people say. Let us live well, and the times are good. We are the times: as we are, so are the times. But what are we to do? Can we not convert the multitude of men to a good life? Let the few who listen live well; let the few who live well bear with the many who live badly. They are grains; they are on the threshing floor: they can have chaff with them on the threshing floor; they will not have it in the barn. Let them bear what they do not want, so that they may come to what they want. Why are we saddened and blame God? Evils abound in the world so that the world may not be loved. Great men, faithful saints, despised the world when it was beautiful; we cannot despise it even when it is foul. The world is bad; see, it is bad, and yet it is loved as if it were good. But what is the bad world? For the sky is not bad, nor the earth, nor the waters, nor the things in them, fish, birds, trees. All these are good; but bad people make the world bad. But since we cannot be without bad people as long as we live, let us, as I said, groan to the Lord our God, and bear evils, so that we may come to goods. Let us not reproach the householder, for he loves us. He carries us, not we him. He knows how to govern what he made: do what he commanded, and hope for what he promised.