Sermons to the People 82.1–82.15

Our Lord admonishes us not to neglect one another’s sins, not by looking for something to find fault with, but by seeing something to correct. For he said that the eye of one who has no beam in his own eye is sharp enough to remove the speck from his brother’s eye. What this means I will briefly suggest to your Charity. The speck in the eye is anger; the beam in the eye is hatred. So when one who hates rebukes one who is angry, he wants to take the speck from his brother’s eye, but he is hindered by the beam that he carries in his own eye. The speck is the beginning of a beam. For when a beam is born, it is first a speck. By watering the speck you bring it to a beam; by feeding anger with evil suspicions you bring it to hatred.

But there is a great difference between the sin of one who is angry and the cruelty of one who hates. For we are angry even with our children: who is found to hate his children? Even among cattle, a mother cow sometimes, in anger, turns away her suckling calf as if weary of it; but she embraces it with a mother’s heart. She seems weary of it when she butts it away; yet she looks for it if it is missing. And we do not discipline our children except by being somewhat angry and indignant; yet we would not discipline them unless we loved them. So far is it from true that everyone who is angry hates, that sometimes one is rather proved to hate if he is not angry. For suppose a boy wants to play in the water of a river by whose current he would perish: if you see it and patiently allow it, you hate him; your patience is his death. How much better if you are angry and correct him than if, by not being angry, you let him perish! Hatred, then, is to be avoided above all; the beam must be cast out of the eye. For it is a very different thing when someone, being angry, oversteps the measure in some word, which he afterward wipes out by repentance, and another thing to keep plots shut up in the heart. There is, finally, a great difference between these words of Scripture: “My eye is troubled because of anger.” But what is said of the other? “Whoever hates his brother is a murderer.” There is a great difference between a troubled eye and an extinguished one. The speck troubles; the beam extinguishes.

So let us first persuade ourselves of this, so that we may be able to do well and fulfill what we have been admonished today: above all, not to hate. For then, when there is no beam in your eye, you see rightly whatever is in your brother’s eye; and you are uneasy until you cast out of your brother’s eye what you see harming his eye. The light that is in you does not let you neglect your brother’s light. For if you hate and want to rebuke, how will you mend his light, when you have lost your own light? For the same Scripture said this too openly, where it is written, “Whoever hates his brother is a murderer.” “Whoever hates his brother,” it says, “is in darkness until now.” Hatred is darkness. And it cannot be that one who hates another does not first harm himself. For he tries to injure the other outwardly; he lays himself waste inwardly. And as much as our soul is greater than the body, so much more ought we to take care that it is not injured. But he injures his own soul who hates another. And what will he do to the one he hates? What will he do? He takes away money; does he take away faith? He injures reputation; does he injure conscience? Whatever harm he does, he does outwardly: consider what harm he does himself. For inwardly he who hates another is his own enemy. But because he does not feel what harm he does himself, he rages against another, living all the more dangerously because he does not feel what harm he is doing himself; for by raging he has lost his feeling. You raged against your enemy: by your raging he has been stripped, and you have become wicked. There is a great difference between the stripped and the wicked. He lost money; you lost innocence. Ask who suffered the heavier loss. He lost a thing that would perish; you have become one who will perish.

So we ought to rebuke in love, not from eagerness to harm but from zeal to correct. If we are such, we do very well what we have been admonished today: “If your brother sins against you, rebuke him between you and him alone.” Why do you rebuke him? Because you are grieved that he sinned against you? Far from it. If you do it out of love for yourself, you do nothing. If you do it out of love for him, you do very well. Finally, notice in the very words for love of whom you ought to do it, yourself or him. “If he listens to you,” it says, “you have gained your brother.” So do it for his sake, that you may gain him. If by doing it you gain him, he would have perished had you not done it. Why is it, then, that most people treat these sins lightly and say, “What great thing have I done? I sinned against a man”? Do not treat it lightly. You sinned against a man: do you want to know that by sinning against a man you perished? If he against whom you sinned rebukes you between you and him alone, and you listen to him, he has gained you. What is “he has gained you,” unless that you had perished if he had not gained you? For if you had not perished, how has he gained you? Let no one, then, treat it lightly when he sins against a brother. For the Apostle says in a certain place: “But when you sin thus against the brothers and wound their weak conscience, you sin against Christ”; because we have all been made members of Christ. How do you not sin against Christ, when you sin against a member of Christ?

Let no one say, then, “I did not sin against God; I sinned against a brother, I sinned against a man: it is a light sin, or no sin.” Perhaps you say it is light because it is quickly cured. You sinned against a brother: make amends, and you are healed. You quickly did a deadly thing, but you have quickly found the remedy. Which of us, my brothers, would hope for the kingdom of heaven, when the Gospel says, “Whoever says to his brother, Fool, will be liable to the hell of fire”? A great terror; but see the remedy there: “If you are offering your gift at the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar.” God is not angry because you delay laying down your gift: God seeks you more than your gift. For if, bearing an evil mind against your brother, you come with a gift to your God, he answers you: “You have perished; what have you brought me?” You offer your gift, and you yourself are not God’s gift. Christ seeks him whom he redeemed with his blood more than what you have found in your barn. So “leave your gift there before the altar, and go first to be reconciled to your brother; and then come and offer your gift.” See how quickly that liability to hell has been loosed. Not yet reconciled, you were liable to hell; reconciled, you offer your gift at the altar securely.

But people are quick to inflict injuries and slow to seek concord. “Ask pardon,” one says, “of the man you offended, of the man you hurt.” He answers: “I will not humble myself.” If you despise your brother, at least hear your God: “He who humbles himself will be exalted.” Will you not humble yourself, you who have fallen? There is a great difference between one who humbles himself and one who lies fallen. You are already lying on the ground, and you will not humble yourself? You would do well to say, “I will not go down,” if you had not been willing to fall.

This, then, is what the one who did the injury ought to do. But the one who suffered it, what ought he to do? What we heard today: “If your brother sins against you, rebuke him between you and him alone.” If you neglect it, you are worse. He did an injury, and by doing the injury he struck himself with a grave wound: do you disregard your brother’s wound? Do you see him perishing, or perished, and neglect it? You are worse by keeping silent than he is by reviling. When, then, someone sins against us, let us take great care, not for ourselves—for it is glorious to forget injuries—but forget your injury, not your brother’s wound. So “rebuke him between you and him alone,” intent on correction, sparing his shame. For perhaps out of embarrassment he begins to defend his sin, and the one you want to make better you make worse. So “rebuke him between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother,” because he had perished if you had not done it. “But if he does not listen to you,” that is, if he defends his sin as if it were righteousness, “take with you two or three, because in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word stands. If he does not listen even to them, refer it to the Church; if he does not listen even to the Church, let him be to you as a heathen and a tax collector.” Do not count him any longer among your brothers. Yet his salvation is not to be neglected on that account. For the heathen too, that is, the Gentiles and pagans, we do not count among the brothers; yet we always seek their salvation. This, then, we have heard the Lord warning and commanding with such care that he even added at once: “Amen I say to you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound also in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed also in heaven.” You have begun to hold your brother as a tax collector: you bind him on earth; but see that you bind justly. For justice breaks unjust bonds. But when you have corrected him and come to agreement with your brother, you have loosed him on earth. When you have loosed him on earth, he will be loosed also in heaven. You do a great service, not to yourself, but to him; because he did great harm, not to you, but to himself.

Since this is so, what does Solomon mean by what we heard first today in another reading: “He who winks with his eyes deceitfully heaps up sorrow for men; but he who reproves openly makes peace”? If, then, he who reproves openly makes peace, how is it “Rebuke him between you and him alone”? We must fear lest the divine commands contradict each other. But let us understand that there is the highest harmony there, and let us not think foolishly like certain vain people who, in their error, suppose that the two Testaments in the old and the new books contradict each other, so that we should think this a contradiction because the one is in Solomon’s book and the other in the Gospel. For suppose some ignorant slanderer of the divine Scriptures were to say: “See where the two Testaments contradict each other. The Lord says, Rebuke him between you and him alone. Solomon says, He who reproves openly makes peace. Does the Lord, then, not know what he commanded? Solomon wants the sinner’s brazen forehead struck; Christ spares the shame of one who blushes. For there it is written, He who reproves openly makes peace; but here, Rebuke him between you and him alone—not openly, but in secret and privately.” Whoever you are who think such things, do you want to know that the two Testaments do not conflict because the one is found in the book of Solomon and the other in the Gospel? Hear the Apostle. Certainly the Apostle is a minister of the New Testament. Hear, then, the apostle Paul commanding Timothy and saying: “Rebuke those who sin before all, so that the rest also may have fear.” Now it is not Solomon’s book with the Gospel, but the apostle Paul’s epistle that seems to conflict. Let us set Solomon aside for a little, without doing him wrong: let us hear Christ the Lord and Paul his servant. What do you say, Lord? “If your brother sins against you, rebuke him between you and him alone.” What do you say, Apostle? “Rebuke those who sin before all, so that the rest also may have fear.” What do we do? Do we hear this dispute as judges? Far from it. Rather, placed under the judge, let us knock, so that we may obtain its being opened to us: let us flee under the wings of the Lord our God. For he did not speak contrary to his Apostle, because he himself spoke in him too, as the Apostle says: “Or do you want proof of him who speaks in me, Christ?” Christ in the Gospel, Christ in the Apostle: so Christ said both, the one with his own mouth, the other with the mouth of his herald. For when a herald says something from the tribunal, it is not written in the court record, “The herald said,” but the one is recorded as having said it who commanded the herald what to say.

Let us hear these two commands, then, brothers, so as to understand them and be at peace between both. Let us be in harmony with our own heart, and holy Scripture is at odds in no part. It is altogether true; both are true: but we must discern that sometimes the one is to be done, sometimes the other; sometimes a brother is to be rebuked between you and him alone, sometimes a brother is to be rebuked before all, so that the rest also may have fear. If we do sometimes the one and sometimes the other, we shall hold to the harmony of the Scriptures, and we shall not err in doing and obeying. But someone says to me: When do I do the one, when the other, so that I do not rebuke between me and him alone when I ought to rebuke before all, or rebuke before all when I ought to rebuke in secret?

Your Charity will quickly see what we ought to do and when; but would that we may not be slow to do it! Pay attention and see: “If your brother sins against you,” he says, “rebuke him between you and him alone.” Why? Because he sinned against you. What is “he sinned against you”? You know that he sinned. For since it was in secret when he sinned against you, seek secrecy when you correct his sin. For if you alone know that he sinned against you, and you want to reprove him before all, you are not a corrector but a betrayer. Notice how the righteous man Joseph spared with such kindness so great a crime as he had suspected of his wife, before he knew whence she had conceived: for he had perceived that she was pregnant, and knew that he had not gone in to her. There remained, then, a sure suspicion of adultery; and yet, because he alone had perceived it, he alone knew it, what does the Gospel say of him? “But Joseph, since he was a righteous man and did not want to expose her.” The husband’s grief did not seek vengeance; he wanted to help the sinner, not to punish the sinner. “Since he did not want to expose her,” it says, “he wanted to put her away secretly. While he was thinking of this, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in sleep,” and showed what the matter was: that she had not violated her husband’s bed, because she had conceived of the Holy Spirit the Lord of them both. So your brother sinned against you; if you alone know it, then he has truly sinned against you alone. For if he did you an injury in the hearing of many, he sinned also against those whom he made witnesses of his iniquity. For I tell you, dearest brothers, what you yourselves can recognize in yourselves. When someone does an injury to my brother in my hearing, far be it from me to think that injury foreign to me. He has certainly done it to me too; indeed he has done more to me, whom he thought what he did would please. So the sins committed before all are to be rebuked before all; the sins committed more secretly are to be rebuked more secretly. Distinguish the occasions, and Scripture is in harmony.

Let us act thus, and thus one must act, not only when sin is committed against us, but also when someone sins in such a way that another does not know of it. We ought to rebuke in secret, reprove in secret, lest by wanting to reprove publicly we betray the man. We want to rebuke and correct: what if an enemy is seeking to hear something to punish? For example, a bishop knows of some murderer, and no one else knows of him. I want to rebuke him publicly; but you are seeking to bring a formal charge. In fact I neither betray nor neglect: I rebuke in secret; I set the judgment of God before his eyes; I terrify the bloodstained conscience; I persuade him to repentance. With this charity we ought to be endowed. Hence people sometimes blame us as though we do not rebuke: either they think we know what we do not know, or they think we keep silent about what we know. But perhaps what you know I know too; but I do not rebuke in front of you, because I want to cure, not to accuse. There are men who are adulterers in their own homes; they sin in secret; sometimes they are betrayed to us by their wives, mostly from jealousy, sometimes in seeking their husbands’ salvation: we do not betray them openly, but we reprove them in secret. Where the evil happened, there let the evil die. Yet we do not neglect that wound; above all we show the man who is in such sin, bearing a wounded conscience, that that wound is deadly. Those who commit it sometimes make light of it by I know not what perversity; and from I know not where they gather testimonies that are worthless and vain, saying, “God does not care about sins of the flesh.” Where is what we heard today: “God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterers”? See, pay attention, whoever of you suffers from such a disease. Hear what God says, not what your own mind says to you in favor of your sins, or your friend bound with you in the same chain of iniquity—or rather your enemy and his own. Hear, then, what the Apostle says: “Let marriage be honorable in all, and the bed undefiled. But God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterers.”

Come, then, brother, be corrected. You fear lest an enemy bring a charge against you; and do you not fear lest God judge you? Where is faith? Fear while there is time to fear. The day of judgment is indeed far off; but each man’s last day cannot be far off, because life is short. And since that very shortness is always uncertain, you do not know when your last day will be. Correct yourself today, for tomorrow’s sake. Let even a rebuke in secret now profit you. For I speak openly, and I reprove in secret. I knock at the ears of all; but I address the consciences of some. If I said, “You, adulterer, correct yourself,” perhaps, first, I would be saying what I did not know; perhaps I would be suspecting what I had heard rashly. I do not say, “You, adulterer, correct yourself,” but, “Whoever among this people is an adulterer, correct yourself.” The rebuke is public, but the correction is secret. I know that the one who fears will correct himself.

Let him not say in his heart, “God does not care about sins of the flesh.” “Do you not know,” says the Apostle, “that you are the temple of God, and the Spirit of God dwells in you? If anyone violates the temple of God, God will destroy him.” Let no one deceive himself. But perhaps someone says, “My soul is the temple of God, not my body,” and adds as testimony, “All flesh is grass, and all the glory of flesh like the flower of grass.” Unhappy interpretation! A thought deserving punishment! The flesh was called grass because it dies; but let what dies for a time not rise again with guilt. Do you want to know an open sentence on this too? “Do you not know,” says the same apostle, “that your bodies are a temple in you of the Holy Spirit, whom you have from God?” (Do not make light of bodily sins, then: see, your bodies too are a temple in you of the Holy Spirit, whom you have from God.) You made light of bodily sin: do you make light of sinning against a temple? Your very body is a temple of the Spirit of God in you. Now see what you do with the temple of God. If you chose to commit adultery in the church, within these walls, what would be more wicked than you? But now you yourself are the temple of God. You go in a temple, you go out a temple, you remain a temple in your house, you rise a temple. See what you do; see that you do not offend the inhabitant of the temple, lest he desert you and you fall into ruin. “Do you not know,” he says, “that your bodies”—and the Apostle was speaking of sexual immorality, so that they would not make light of bodily sins—“are a temple in you of the Holy Spirit, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? For you were bought at a great price.” If you despise your body, consider your price.

I know, and with me everyone who has considered it a little more attentively, that no one who fears God fails to correct himself at his words, except one who thinks he has more time to live. That very thing kills many, when they say, “Tomorrow, tomorrow” (cras, cras): and suddenly the door is shut. He has remained outside with the raven’s voice, because he did not have the dove’s groan. “Cras, cras”: the raven’s voice. Groan like the dove, and beat your breast; but in giving yourself blows on the breast, be corrected, lest you seem not to strike your conscience but to pave a bad conscience with your fists, making it more solid, not more corrected. Groan with no empty groan. For perhaps you say to yourself: “God has promised me pardon when I correct myself; I am secure: I read divine Scripture: On whatever day the wicked man turns from his iniquities and does righteousness, I will forget all his iniquities. I am secure; when I correct myself, God gives me pardon for my evils.” And what am I to say? Shall I protest against God? Shall I say to God, “Do not give him pardon”? Shall I say that this is not written, that God did not promise this? If I said that, I would be saying what is wholly false. You say well, you say true: God promised pardon to your correction; I cannot deny it. But tell me, I beg you: see, I agree and grant and acknowledge that God has promised you pardon; but who has promised you tomorrow? Where you read to me that you will receive pardon if you correct yourself, read me there how long you will live. “I do not read it,” you say. So you do not know how long you will live. Be corrected and always ready. Do not fear the last day as a thief who digs through the wall while you sleep; but watch, and correct yourself today. Why put it off till tomorrow? “Life will be long.” If it is long, let it be good. No one puts off a good long lunch; and do you want to have a bad long life? Certainly, if it is going to be long, it had better be good; if it is going to be short, it is well done that it be prolonged as a good life. But people neglect their life in such a way that the one thing they want bad is their life. You buy a country estate: you look for a good one. You want to marry a wife: you choose a good one. You want children born to you: you wish for good ones. You order boots, and you do not want bad ones; and you love a bad life! What has your life done to offend you, that it is the only thing you want bad, so that among all your good things you alone are bad?

So, my brothers, if I wanted to rebuke one of you privately, perhaps he would listen to me: I rebuke many of you publicly; all praise me; let someone listen to me. I do not love one who praises with his voice and despises in his heart. For when you praise and do not correct yourself, you are a witness against yourself. If you are bad and what I say pleases you, be displeased with yourself; because if, being bad, you are displeased with yourself, once corrected you will be pleased with yourself—as I said, unless I am mistaken, the day before yesterday. In all my words I set up a mirror. Nor are these my words; but I speak at the Lord’s command, and since he threatens, I do not keep silent. For who would not choose to keep silent and not give account for you? But we have now taken up the burden, which we cannot and ought not shake off our shoulders. You heard, my brothers, when the Epistle to the Hebrews was read: “Obey those placed over you, and be subject to them; for they keep watch over your souls as those who will give account for you, so that they may do this with joy and not with grief; for that would not be good for you.” When do we do these things with joy? When we see people making progress in the words of God. When does the worker labor in the field with joy? When he looks at the tree and sees fruit; when he looks at the crop and foresees the abundance of grain on the threshing floor: he has not labored for nothing, not bent his back for nothing, not worn out his hands for nothing, not endured cold and heat for nothing. This is what he says: “So that they may do this with joy and not with grief; for that would not be good for you.” Did he say, “It would not be good for them”? No; he said, “It would not be good for you.” For when those placed over you are grieved at your evils, it is good for them; that very grief profits them; but it is not good for you. And we want nothing to be good for us that is not good for you. So, brothers, let us work good together in the Lord’s field, so that together we may rejoice in the reward.