Sermons to the People 88.20–89.7

Then, in the very correcting or restraining of others’ sins, one must beware lest he who rebukes another exalt himself; and that apostolic sentence must be kept in mind: “Therefore let him who thinks he stands see that he does not fall.” Let the rebuke sound terrible outwardly; let the love of gentleness be kept inwardly. “If a man is caught in some offense,” as the same apostle says, “you who are spiritual, instruct such a one in a spirit of gentleness, looking to yourself, lest you too be tempted. Bear one another’s burdens, and so you will fulfill the law of Christ.” Likewise in another place: “The servant of the Lord,” he says, “must not quarrel, but be gentle to all, apt to teach, patient, correcting with modesty those who think otherwise, in case God may give them repentance to know the truth, and they may come to their senses out of the snares of the devil, by whom they are held captive at his will.” So be neither consenting to the bad, so as to approve; nor negligent, so as not to rebuke; nor proud, so as to rebuke insultingly.

But whoever has deserted unity violates charity; and whoever violates charity, whatever great thing he has, is himself nothing. If he speaks with the tongues of men and of angels, if he knows all mysteries, if he has all faith so as to move mountains, if he distributes all his goods to the poor, if he hands over his body to be burned, but does not have charity, he is nothing; it profits him nothing. He has everything uselessly who does not have that one thing by which to use everything. Let us embrace charity, then, eager to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. Let them not lead us astray who understand carnally and, making a bodily separation, separate themselves by a spiritual sacrilege from the wheat of the Church spread through the whole world. For the good seed has been sown through the whole world. That good sower, the Son of Man, scattered good seed not in Africa alone but everywhere. But the enemy sowed weeds on top. Yet what does the householder say? “Let both grow until the harvest.” Grow through what? Through the field, certainly. What is the field? Is it Africa? No. What is it, then? Let us not interpret it ourselves; let the Lord say it; let us allow no one to suspect anything at his own discretion. For the disciples said to the Master: “Explain to us the parable of the weeds.” And the Lord explained: “The good seed,” he said, “are the sons of the kingdom; the weeds are the sons of the evil one.” Who sowed them? “The enemy who sowed them,” he says, “is the devil.” What is the field? “The field,” he says, “is this world.” What is the harvest? “The harvest,” he says, “is the end of the age.” Who are the reapers? “The reapers,” he says, “are the angels.” Is Africa the world? Is this time the harvest? Is Donatus the reaper? Throughout the whole world wait for the harvest; throughout the whole world grow toward the harvest; throughout the whole world bear with the weeds until the harvest. Let the perverse not lead you astray, chaff too light, which flies off the threshing floor before the winnower comes: let them not lead you astray. Hold them to this one comparison of the weeds alone, and do not let them say anything more. “That man handed over the books.” “No; but that man handed over the books.” Whoever handed them over, did the unbelief of the traditors make void the faithfulness of God? What is the faithfulness of God? What he promised Abraham, saying: “In your seed all nations will be blessed.” What is the faithfulness of God? “Let both grow until the harvest.” Grow through what? Through the field. What is “through the field”? Through the world.

Here they say: “Both had indeed grown through the world, but now the wheat has diminished and been brought back to this region of ours and to a few.” The Lord does not let you interpret as you like. He who explains this parable shuts your mouth, a sacrilegious mouth, an ungodly mouth, a profane mouth, a mouth set against yourself, you who contradict the testator who is calling even you to the inheritance. How does he shut your mouth? By saying, “Let both grow until the harvest.” If the harvest has already come, let us believe that the wheat has diminished. Though not even then will it be diminished, but stored in the barn. For so he says: “Gather first the weeds and bind them in bundles to burn them; but store the wheat in my barn.” If, then, they grow until the harvest, and after the harvest are stored, when, you wicked and ungodly man, are they diminished? I grant that, compared with the weeds and chaff together, the wheat is fewer; yet both grow until the harvest. For when iniquity abounds, the charity of many grows cold: the weeds grow, the chaff grows. But because the wheat cannot be lacking in the whole field, the wheat which, persevering to the end, will be saved, both grow until the harvest. And if, because of the abundance of the bad, it was said, “When the Son of Man comes, do you think he will find faith on earth?”—and by this name are signified all who by transgressing the law imitate him to whom it was said, “You are earth, and to earth you will go”—yet, both because of the abundance of the good and because of him to whom it was said, “So will your seed be, like the stars of heaven and like the sand of the sea,” this too has not been passed over in silence: “Many will come from east and west and will recline with Abraham and Isaac in the kingdom of God.” Both, then, grow until the harvest; and the weeds or chaff have their own sentences in the Scriptures, and the wheat has its own. Those who do not understand them confuse them and are confounded; and they make such a din with blind desire that they will not fall silent even when the truth has been laid open.

“See,” they say, “the prophet says: Depart, go out from there, and do not touch what is unclean. How, then, shall we tolerate the bad for the sake of peace, when we are commanded to go out and depart from them, lest we touch what is unclean?” We understand this departure spiritually; they, bodily. For I too cry out with the prophet—and whatever kind of vessels we are, God uses us for the ministry to you—we too cry out and say to you: “Depart, go out from there, and do not touch what is unclean”; but by contact of the heart, not of the body. For what is touching the unclean but consenting to sins? And what is going out from there but doing what belongs to the correction of the bad, as far as can be done according to each one’s rank and person, with peace preserved? What someone sinned displeased you: you did not touch the unclean. You rebuked, reproved, admonished, and also applied, if the matter required it, a fitting discipline that does not violate unity: you went out from there. Look at the deeds of the saints, lest perhaps the interpretation seem to be ours. As the saints understood these words, so certainly they are to be understood. “Go out from there,” says the prophet. First I support this sentence from the ordinary usage of the expression itself, and afterward I show that it is not mine. People are often accused; and when they have been accused, they defend themselves; and when the man who is accused has defended himself reasonably and justly, those who hear say, “He has got out of it.” Where has he got out to? Staying in his place, he has got out of it. How has he got out of it? By giving an account and a most just defense. This is what the saints did when they shook the dust off their feet against those who did not receive the peace announced to them. That watchman got out of it to whom it was said, “I have made you a watchman for the house of Israel.” For it is said to him: “If you tell the wicked man, and he does not turn from his iniquity and from his way, that wicked man will die in his iniquity, and you will deliver your soul.” If he does this, he goes out from there, not by separation of body but by the defense of his own work. For he did what had to be done, even if the one who should have obeyed did not obey. This is “Go out from there.”

Moses cried this out, Isaiah cried it, Jeremiah cried it, Ezekiel cried it. Let us see whether they themselves did this, whether they left the people of God and transferred themselves to other nations. How many things and how vehemently Jeremiah rebuked the sinners and criminals of his people! Yet he was among them; he entered one temple with them; he celebrated the same sacraments; he lived in that congregation of wicked men; but by crying out he went out from there. This is going out from there; this is not touching the unclean: both not consenting with the will and not sparing with the mouth. What shall I say of Jeremiah, of Isaiah, of Daniel, of Ezekiel, of the other prophets, who did not depart from a bad people, lest they desert the good mixed with that people, among whom they themselves could be such as they were? Moses himself, brothers—when he was receiving the law on the mountain, the people below made an idol. The people of God, the people led through the yielding waves of the Red Sea, which had overwhelmed the pursuing enemies; after so many signs and miracles, in the plagues of the Egyptians for their death and in its own protection for its salvation, yet it demanded an idol, extorted an idol, made an idol, worshipped an idol, sacrificed to an idol. God tells his servant what the people had done, and says that he will destroy them from his face. Moses intercedes, about to return to that people; and he had an occasion of departing and going out from them, as these men understand it, so as not to touch the unclean, so as not to live with such people; yet he did not do it. And lest perhaps he seem to have done this from necessity rather than charity, God offered him another people: “I will make you,” he says, “into a great nation,” so as to destroy them. But he did not accept; he clings to the sinners, he prays for the sinners. And how does he pray? A great proof of love, brothers! How does he pray? See that motherly charity, so to speak, of which we have often spoken. When God threatened the sacrilegious people, Moses’ godly heart trembled; he set himself against the wrath of God on their behalf. “Lord,” he says, “if you forgive them their sin, forgive; but if not, blot me out of your book which you have written.” With what fatherly and motherly heart, and how securely, he said this, considering the justice and the mercy of God: that since God is just, he would not destroy the just man; since he is merciful, he would pardon the sinners.

Now it is surely plain to your discernment how all such testimonies of the Scriptures are to be taken: when Scripture says that we ought to depart from the bad, we are bidden to understand nothing else than that we should depart in heart, lest by separating from the good we commit a greater evil than the one we flee in being joined with the bad, as the Donatists themselves have done. If they had truly, as good men, rebuked the bad, rather than, being bad themselves, defaming the good, they would have tolerated anyone at all for the sake of peace—they who have received back the Maximianists as sound, whom earlier they had condemned as lost. Certainly the prophet said plainly, “Depart, and go out from there, and do not touch what is unclean.” To understand what he said, I look at what he did. By his deed he explains his saying to me. He said, “Depart.” To whom did he say it? To the righteous, certainly. From whom did he tell them to depart? From sinners and the wicked, certainly. I ask whether he himself departed from such people. I find that he did not. So he understood it otherwise. For surely he would have been the first to do what he commanded. He departed in heart; he reproved and rebuked. By keeping himself from consent he did not touch the unclean; by reproving he went out free in the sight of God, who imputes to him neither his own sins, because he did not commit them, nor others’ sins, because he did not approve them, nor negligence, because he did not keep silent, nor pride, because he remained in unity. So, my brothers, however many you have among you who are still weighed down by love of the world—the avaricious, perjurers, adulterers, spectators of frivolous shows, consulters of astrologers, of fanatics, of augurs, of soothsayers, drunkards, the luxurious, whatever evil you know to be among you—disapprove of it as much as you can, so that you may depart in heart; and rebuke it, so that you may go out from there; and do not consent, so that you may not touch what is unclean.

The most recent reading of the holy Gospel has admonished and frightened us, lest we have leaves and not have fruit. This is briefly explained: lest words be present and deeds absent. A great terror! Who would not fear, when in the reading itself he sees with the eyes of the heart the withered tree, and hears it said to it, “Let no fruit grow from you ever again”? Let terror correct, and let correction bring forth fruit. For without doubt the Lord Christ foresaw a certain tree that would deservedly be made to wither, because it had leaves and did not have fruit. That is the synagogue—not as called, but as rejected. For from it too was called the people of God, which truly and sincerely awaited in the prophets the salvation of God, Jesus Christ. And because it waited faithfully, it deserved to recognize him present. For from there came the apostles; from there the whole crowd going before the Lord’s beast and saying, “Hosanna to the son of David; blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.” It was a great crowd of faithful Jews, a great crowd believing in Christ before his blood was shed for them. For not in vain had the Lord himself come only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. And in others, after he had been crucified and was now exalted in heaven, he found the fruit of repentance: he did not make them wither, but cultivated them in the field and watered them with the word. From there were those four thousand Jews who believed after the disciples, filled with the Holy Spirit, and those with them, spoke in the tongues of all nations, and by that diversity of tongues in a way foretold the Church that would be in all nations. They believed then, and they were the lost sheep of the house of Israel; but because the Son of Man had come to seek and to save what was lost, he found them too. But they were lying hidden somewhere in the brambles, as if plundered by wolves; and because they lay hidden in the brambles, he did not reach them to find them except torn by the thorns of the passion; yet he reached them, found them, redeemed them. They had killed—not him more than themselves. They were saved through the one killed for them. For when the apostles spoke, those who had pierced him with the lance were pierced, pierced in conscience; and pierced, they sought counsel, received what was given, repented, found grace, and as believers drank the blood which in their rage they had shed. But those who remained, an evil and barren offspring, until today and until the end, were figured in that tree. Now you come to them and find among them all the words of the prophets. But these are leaves: Christ hungers; he seeks fruit; but he does not find fruit in them, because he does not find himself in them. For he who does not have Christ does not have fruit. And he does not have Christ who does not hold to Christ’s unity, who does not have charity. So, by this chain, he who does not have charity does not have fruit. Hear the Apostle: “But the fruit of the Spirit is charity”—commending, as it were, a cluster, that is, fruit. “But the fruit of the Spirit,” he says, “is charity, joy, peace, patience.” Do not wonder at what follows, where charity has begun.

So, when the disciples marveled at the tree’s withering, he commended faith and said to them: “If you have faith and do not doubt”—that is, if you believe God in all things; do not say, God can do this, he cannot do that, but rely on the omnipotence of the Almighty—“not only will you do this, but if you say to this mountain, Be taken up and cast into the sea, it will be done. And whatever you ask in prayer believing, you will receive.” We read of miracles done by the disciples, or rather done by the Lord through the disciples: “For without me,” he says, “you can do nothing.” The Lord could do many things without the disciples; the disciples nothing without the Lord. He who could make the disciples themselves was certainly not helped by them in making them. We read of the apostles’ miracles, but nowhere do we read of a tree withered by them, or a mountain moved into the sea. Let us look, then, for where it was done. For the Lord’s words could not be empty. If you look at these ordinary, familiar trees and these mountains, it was not done. If you look at the tree of which he spoke, and at that mountain of the Lord of which the prophet said, “In the last days the mountain of the Lord will be manifest”—if you look at these, if you understand these, it both happened and happened through them. The tree is the Jewish nation—but, I say again, as rejected, not as called; that tree we mentioned is the Jewish nation. The mountain, as the prophetic testimony taught, is the Lord himself. The withered tree is the Jewish nation without the honor of Christ; the sea, this world with all the Gentiles. See now the apostles speaking so as to make the tree wither, and casting the mountain into the sea. In the Acts of the Apostles they speak to the Jews who contradicted and resisted the word of truth, that is, who had leaves and did not have fruit, and they say to them: “It was necessary that the word of God be spoken to you first; but since you have rejected it”—you speak the words of the prophets and do not recognize him whom the prophets foretold, that is, you have leaves—“see, we turn to the Gentiles.” For this too was foretold through the prophet: “See, I have set you as a light of the Gentiles, that you may be salvation to the ends of the earth.” See, the tree has withered; and Christ has gone to the Gentiles, the mountain moved into the sea. For how would the tree not wither, planted in the vineyard of which it had been said, “I will command my clouds not to rain rain upon it”?

That the Lord did this prophetically—that is, that in the case of this tree he wished not merely to show a miracle but by the miracle to commend something future—many things admonish us and persuade us, or rather extort it from the unwilling. First, what sin had the tree committed in not having fruit? Even if it did not have fruit in its own season, that is, the season of those fruits, there would certainly be no fault in the wood; for wood without sense had no fault. Add to this that, as we read in another evangelist narrating the same thing, “It was not the season for those fruits.” For it was the time when the fig puts forth tender leaves, which we know grow before the fruit. We prove this because the day of the Lord’s passion was approaching, and we know at what time he suffered; and even if we did not consider this, we ought to believe the evangelist who says, “It was not the season for figs.” So if a miracle alone had been to be commended, and not something to be figured prophetically, it would have been much more merciful of the Lord, and more worthy of his mercy, if he had found a withered tree and made it green, as he healed the sick, cleansed lepers, raised the dead. But then, on the contrary, as if against the rule of his clemency, he found a green tree that did not yet have fruit because it was out of season, though it was not denying its farmer the fruit, and he made it wither; as if saying to man: “The withering of this tree did not delight me; but I wanted to suggest to you that I did not do this without reason, except that I wanted to commend to you something to attend to more. I did not curse this tree; I did not inflict punishment on a tree without feeling; but I frightened you, if you notice, so that you would not despise the hungry Christ, and would love to be enriched with fruit rather than shaded with leaves.”

This is one thing by which the Lord shows that he wished to signify something. What else? Hungry, he approaches the tree and seeks fruit. Did he not know that it was not yet the season? What the cultivator of the tree knew, did the Creator of the tree not know? So he seeks fruit on the tree which it did not yet have. Does he seek, or rather pretend to seek? For if he truly sought, he erred. But far be it that he erred. So he pretended. Fearing to say that he pretended, you confess that he erred. You turn away from error and run into pretense. We are scorched between the two. If we are scorched, let us long for rain, so that we may grow green, lest by saying something unworthy of the Lord we rather wither. The evangelist says: “He came to the tree and did not find fruit on it.” Certainly “he did not find” would not be said of him unless he had either sought to see, or pretended to seek, what he knew was not there. So we do not doubt; let us in no way say that Christ erred. What then—do we say he pretended? Do we say this? How shall we get out of this? Let us say what the evangelist said of the Lord in another place, which we would not dare to say of ourselves. Let us say what the evangelist wrote; and when we have said it, let us understand. But to understand, let us first believe. For “unless you believe, you will not understand,” says the prophet. After the resurrection the Lord Christ was walking on the road with two of his disciples, by whom he was not yet recognized, accompanying them as a third traveler. They came to the place to which they were going, and the evangelist says: “But he pretended to go farther.” But they held him back in the way of human kindness, saying that it was already evening and asking him to stay there with them: received as a guest, he breaks bread; when the bread is blessed and broken he is recognized. Let us not fear, then, to say that he pretended to seek, if he pretended to go farther. But another question arises. Yesterday we commended truthfulness in the apostles at length; how do we find pretense in the Lord himself? It must be said, then, brothers, and suggested to you according to our modest strength, which the Lord gives us for you, and commended to you, what you should hold as a rule in all the Scriptures. Everything that is said or done is either understood in its proper sense, or signifies something figuratively, or certainly has both, a proper meaning and a figurative signification. I have set out three things; examples must be given, and from where but from the holy Scriptures? A saying that we take in the proper sense: that the Lord suffered, that he rose and ascended into heaven, that we shall rise at the end of the age, that we shall reign with him forever if we do not despise him. Take this saying in the proper sense; do not look for figures: as it was said, so it is. So also with deeds. The Apostle went up to Jerusalem to see Peter; the Apostle did this, it happened, it is proper to him. He tells you a thing done: the deed itself in the proper sense. Said figuratively: “The stone which the builders rejected has become the head of the corner.” If we understand the stone in the proper sense, what stone did the builders reject that became the head of the corner? If we take the corner in the proper sense, at the head of what corner did this stone become? If we admit that it is said figuratively and take it figuratively: the cornerstone is Christ; the head of the corner, the head of the Church. Why is the Church a corner? Because he called the Jews from one side and the Gentiles from the other, and, as two walls coming from different directions and meeting in him, he bound them together by the grace of his peace. “For he is our peace, who made both one.”

You have heard a saying in the proper sense, a deed in the proper sense, and a saying in the figurative sense: you are waiting for a deed in the figurative sense. There are many, but for now what occurs, prompted by the cornerstone: Jacob anointed the stone which he had put at his head when he slept, in which sleep he had seen a great dream—a ladder rising from earth to heaven, and men going up and coming down, with the Lord leaning upon the ladder. He understood what it was meant to figure, and, to prove to us that he had not been a stranger to the understanding of that vision and revelation, he figured Christ by the stone. Do not wonder, then, that he anointed it, because Christ took his name from anointing. Now this Jacob was called in Scripture a man without guile. And Jacob himself, you know, was called Israel. That is why the Lord in the Gospel, when he saw Nathanael, said: “See, truly an Israelite in whom there is no guile.” And that Israelite, not yet knowing who was speaking with him, answered: “How do you know me?” And the Lord said to him: “When you were under the fig tree, I saw you”; as if he said, “When you were in the shade of sin, I predestined you.” And he, because he remembered that he had been under the fig tree where the Lord was not, recognized divinity in him and answered: “You are the Son of God, you are the king of Israel.” He who had been under the fig tree did not become a withered fig tree: he recognized Christ. And the Lord said to him: “Because I said, When you were under the fig tree I saw you, you believe; you will see greater things than these.” What are these greater things? “Amen I say to you”—since he is an Israelite in whom there is no guile, look back to Jacob in whom there is no guile, and recall what he is speaking of: the stone at his head, the vision in sleep, the ladder from earth to heaven, those descending and ascending; and see what the Lord says to the Israelite without guile—“you will see heaven opened.” Hear, Nathanael without guile, what Jacob without guile saw: “You will see heaven opened, and angels ascending and descending”—to whom?—“to the Son of Man.” So he was anointed at the head, the Son of Man, because the head of the woman is the man, and the head of the man is Christ. Yet he did not say, “ascending from the Son of Man and descending to the Son of Man,” as if he were only above; but “ascending and descending to the Son of Man.” Hear the Son of Man crying from above: “Saul, Saul.” Hear the Son of Man below: “Why do you persecute me?”

You have heard a saying in the proper sense, that we shall rise again; a deed in the proper sense, that, as was said, Paul went up to Jerusalem to see Peter; a saying in the figurative sense, “The stone which the builders rejected”; a deed in the figurative sense, the anointed stone that was at Jacob’s head. Let your expectation now be given something that is from both: done in the proper sense and signifying figuratively. We know that Abraham had two sons, one by a slave woman, the other by a free woman: done in the proper sense, not only narrated but also done. Do you expect a figure there? “These are the two covenants.” So what is said figuratively is in a certain way fiction. But since it has to have an outcome in what it signifies, and the signification itself keeps faith with the truth, it avoids the charge of falsehood. “See, a sower went out to sow; and in sowing, some fell on the road, fell on rocky places, fell among thorns, fell on good ground.” Who went out to sow, or when did he go out, or into what thorns, onto what stones, onto what road, or into what field? If you hear it as fiction, you understand it as signifying: it is fiction. For if a real man went out as a sower and threw seed, as we heard, on these different places, it would not be fiction, and so not a lie either. But now it is fiction, yet not a lie. Why? Because what is feigned signifies something and does not deceive you. It looks for one who understands; it does not make anyone err. Christ, wishing to commend this, sought fruit: he was commending there a figurative, not a deceitful, fiction; and so a praiseworthy, not a criminal, fiction; not one in which, on examination, you find falsehood, but one in which, by searching, you find truth.

I see what someone is going to say: “Explain to me what it signified that he pretended to go farther. For if it signified nothing, it is a deception, it is a lie.” By our explanations and most careful rules we ought to say this: what that feigning of going farther signified. He pretended to go farther, and he is held back so that he will not go farther. As regards bodily presence, then, the Lord Christ was thought to be absent; he was thought absent, as if he would go farther. Hold him faithfully; hold him to the breaking of bread. What shall I say? Have you recognized him? If you have recognized him, there you have found Christ. One must not speak longer of the sacrament. From those who put off knowing this sacrament, Christ is farther away. Let them hold it, let them not let it go; let them invite him to their hospitality, and they are invited to heaven.