Sermons to the People

Whoever remembers his debt, and the apostle's saying, "Owe no one anything, except to love one another," ought to compel himself to pay it. And indeed, however loudly the terror of the collectors may press upon debtors, love demands far more strongly: it takes the weight of fear out of the demand and lays a greater weight on one's sense of shame. I remember that I promised your Charity that, so far as the Lord deigns to grant, a reply from us to the foolish and pernicious slanders of the Manichees, with which they lie in wait for the Old Testament, would not be lacking. Pay attention, then, and see the serpent's snares, and so put your necks, drawn out of them, under the yoke of Christ. For they dare to hold out snares of this sort to the unwary, saying that the Scriptures of the New and the Old Testament are at odds with each other, so that one cannot keep both with a single faith; and, trying to persuade people that the very beginnings of the book of Genesis and of the Gospel according to John are hostile to each other, they set them against one another as though face to face in battle.

"Moses," they say, "says, 'In the beginning God made heaven and earth,' and does not name the Son, through whom all things were made; whereas John says, 'In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him nothing was made.'" Is this a contradiction, or are they rather in contradiction with themselves, who have preferred to find fault blindly with what they do not understand rather than to seek it with reverence? For what will they say when I answer that the Beginning itself, in which Genesis says that God made heaven and earth, is the Son of God? Or perhaps I shall not be able to prove this, when I know that I have witnesses ready to hand from the New Testament itself, to which, like it or not, they bow, their proud neck broken? For the Lord says to the unbelieving Jews, "If you believed Moses, you would believe me also; for he wrote of me." Why then should I not understand the Lord himself to be the Beginning in which God the Father made heaven and earth? For Moses certainly wrote, "In the beginning God made heaven and earth," and that he wrote of the Lord is confirmed by the voice of the Lord himself. Or is he perhaps not also himself the Beginning? We need not doubt this either, for the Gospel says that when the Jews asked the Lord who he was, he answered, "The Beginning, who also speak to you." See the Beginning in which God made heaven and earth. God therefore made heaven and earth in the Son, through whom all things were made and without whom nothing was made; so that, with the Gospel agreeing with Genesis, we may hold the inheritance in accordance with the agreement of both Testaments, and leave the quarrelsome slanders to the disinherited heretics.

But it ought in no way to disturb your good sense that, whereas John the evangelist did not say, "All things were made in him," but "All things were made through him," we do not read in Genesis, "Through the beginning God made heaven and earth," but "In the beginning God made heaven and earth." For the Apostle says, "That he might make known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in him, in the dispensation of the fullness of times, to restore all things in Christ, the things in heaven and the things on earth, in him." Just as here, then, you hear him say "in him" in such a way that you also understand "through him," so in John's words, "All things through him," you are obliged to understand "in him" as well. And just as here I am not robbed of the understanding by which I take all things to have been made in him, when I read "through him," so in Genesis, when I read that heaven and earth were made in him, who forbids me to understand "through him" too? Unless perhaps the Manichees shift the quarrel away from the two Testaments and set it up between the most blessed witnesses of the New Testament, that is, between Paul and John, because the one says "in him" and the other "through him." But just as we do not believe that Paul and John contradict each other, so we compel them to confess the agreement of Moses and Paul as well.

And since, just as these two agree with each other, so John also agrees with both (for he said "through him" in such a way as not to forbid our understanding "in him"), all the divine writings stand at peace among themselves. But just as it commonly happens that when we watch clouds passing through the darkness of the night our sight is so confused by their gloom that the stars seem to us to run the opposite way, so these heretics, because they find no peace in the cloud of their own error, think that the divine Scripture is quarrelling.

Perhaps they will say that "In the beginning God made heaven and earth" was not said of the Word of God. Suppose it so: suppose it is not "in the beginning" which is the only-begotten, but that what is written, "In the beginning God made heaven and earth," is to be understood as said of the beginning of time; not because time already existed before there was any creature (for no one would say that time is coeternal with God, who is the maker of times), but because time began to exist with heaven and earth. If anyone understands it this way, provided he recognizes the distance between the creature and the Creator and does not say that what God made is coeternal with the God who made it, then at least in that saying the number of the persons will shine out, where it is said, "Let us make man in our image and likeness," and "God made man in the image of God." Yet even if it did not appear, and the Trinity were conveyed to those who understand under the name of unity, the beginning of the Gospel ought not on that account to have seemed contrary to the beginning of Genesis to the wise; indeed it could seem so only to the unwise. For we have countless examples of such expressions in the Scriptures. The Lord himself says, "But I say to you, do not swear at all, neither by heaven, for it is the throne of God, nor by the earth, for it is the footstool of his feet." Will they perhaps deny, because he does not name himself there, that Christ sits in heaven? Again, the Apostle says, "O the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments, and how inscrutable his ways! For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor? Or who has first given to him, and it shall be repaid him? For from him and through him and in him are all things: to him be glory for ever and ever." Here too no mention of the Son is made by name. The Apostle says that there is one God and Lord, from whom are all things, through whom are all things, in whom are all things. Why, then, did these people choose Moses to set against John the evangelist, and were unwilling to set the apostle Paul against him? Plainly because they wanted to persuade the unlearned that the two Testaments are contrary to each other, so that they might use one witness and reject the other. For that is what their error professes. For if there were someone else whose utterly demented frenzy tried to show the unlearned that the New Testament itself contradicts itself, what else would he do but set Paul and John before them as enemies and quarrellers, just as these men do with Moses and John? But just as the most sincere and true faith commends the agreement of Paul and John, and in the blessed Paul's words, "From him and through him and in him are all things," teaches us to understand not only the Father but also the Son and the Holy Spirit, so the faith that looks at the peace between Moses and John, in Moses' words, "In the beginning God made heaven and earth," either recognizes, if it takes "beginning" as the beginning of time, nothing else in the word "God" than the unity of the Trinity, or without hesitation embraces the Son himself as the Beginning in which God made heaven and earth. There are many other things that we could mention according to these rules of expression of the divine Scriptures; but so as not to burden the memory of your Holiness, let it suffice to have mentioned these. We urge you to look for the rest yourselves, or to notice them when the Scriptures are read, and to consider and discuss them among yourselves in harmony. Turning to the Lord, etc.

The well-known devotion of our father Abraham has been brought back to our memory by the reading just now; and it is indeed so wonderful that no heart should be thought so forgetful that it could ever slip from it. Yet somehow, whenever it is read, it moves the minds of the hearers as though it were happening then. Great faith, great devotion, not only toward God but also toward his only son himself, to whom the father believed no harm could come, whatever he who created him had ordered concerning him. For Abraham could be the father of his son by the working of the flesh, but not his creator and maker by the working of majesty. And indeed, as the Apostle says, Isaac was born to Abraham not according to the flesh but by promise: not because Abraham had not begotten him in the flesh, but because he had received him out of utter hopelessness; and had God who promised not been present, so old a man would not have dared to hope for any offspring from the womb of his aged wife. But he believed that he would be born, and he does not mourn that he is to die. His right hand is chosen for the sacrifice, that the son might die, whose heart was chosen for faith, that the son might be born. Abraham did not tremble to believe when the son was promised; he did not tremble to offer him when he was demanded; and the devotion of the believer was not contrary to the devotion of the one who obeyed. I say this: Abraham did not say to himself, "God spoke to me; when he promised a son, I believed that God would give me offspring; and what offspring? Such that he said to me, 'In Isaac shall your seed be called'; and lest perhaps my seed should be called in Isaac in such a way that my son should die before me, he said, 'In your seed all nations shall be blessed.' So he who spoke to me promised a son, and does he himself demand that I kill him?" He did not raise a question for himself, as though about contrary and conflicting words of God, who promised that a son would be born and afterwards said, "Kill your son for me"; but in his heart was a faith always unshaken and in no way failing. For Abraham reasoned that God, who had granted that he who did not exist should be born of old people, could also restore him from death. For what God had already done was greater, when Abraham saw a son given to him who had not existed, after so great a hopelessness, and, if you consult human weakness, impossibly. So he set his mind to faith; he did not believe that anything was impossible for the Creator. Having received his son as he had believed, he afterwards believed God when he commanded: in the son he had received he had already proved God. He believed when he was to receive his son; he believed when he was to kill him. Faithful everywhere, cruel nowhere. He led his son all the way to the place of sacrifice; he even armed his right hand with the knife. You notice who is striking and whom he is striking: notice who is commanding. Abraham, then, is devoted in obeying; what is God in commanding? Let not the one who commanded displease minds that are weak, not to say sacrilegious. But if the one who obeyed pleases, how can the one who commanded displease? For if Abraham did well in obeying, God did much better, far better, incomparably better, in commanding.

Perhaps the hidden meaning will be sought. For God would not have commanded this for nothing; or else it is to be taken carnally, this reading that has perhaps disturbed the hearts of some who understand less. "God tempted Abraham," it says. Is God, then, so ignorant of things, so unaware of the human heart, that he finds a man out by tempting him? Far from it: it is so that the man may find himself out. First, then, brothers, on account of those who oppose the old Law, holy Scripture (for some who do not understand would sooner attack what they do not understand than seek to understand it, and become not humble inquirers but proud slanderers): on account of these, then, who want to accept the Gospel and reject the old Law, thinking they can be on God's way and walk properly on one foot, since they are not scribes trained in the kingdom of God, who bring out of their treasure things new and old; on account of such people, then, in case any are hiding here, or, if they are not here, so that those who are present may have an answer to give such people, this question must be briefly resolved. We say to such people: You accept the Gospel and do not accept the Law; but we say that the same one who is the most merciful giver of the Gospel was also the fearsome giver of the Law. For by the Law he terrified, and by the Gospel he healed those who had turned, whom he had terrified with the Law so that they might turn. An emperor gave a law, and many offenses were committed against the law; the law that the emperor gave knew only how to punish offenders; so it remained that he who had sent the law ahead should himself come with pardon to wipe out their offenses. But what does the perverse heart say, which says it accepts the Gospel but rejects the Law? Why does it reject it? "Because it is written," he says, "'God tempted Abraham.' Am I to worship a God who tempts?" Worship Christ, whom you have in the Gospel. He himself calls you back to understand the Law. But because they did not pass over to Christ, they remained in their own phantom. For they do not worship Christ as he is preached in the Gospel, but such a Christ as they had invented for themselves. Therefore on top of the veil of their natural folly they add another veil of perverse opinion. And when, through a double veil, will they be able to see what shines in the Gospel? If God tempting displeases you, let Christ tempting displease you. But since Christ tempting pleases you, let God tempting please you. For Christ too, the Son of God, is God; with the Father, Christ is one God. Where then do we read of Christ tempting? The Gospel says it: he says to Philip, "Where shall we buy bread, so that these may eat?" And the Evangelist continues: "But he said this tempting him; for he himself knew what he would do." Now turn your mind to God tempting Abraham. For God too said this tempting Abraham: for he himself knew what he would do. Christ is recognized as a tempter, God is recognized as a tempter: let the heretic tempter be corrected. For the heretic does not tempt as God tempts. God tempts in order to open a man to himself; the heretic tempts in order to shut God out from himself.

Let your Charity know, then, that by temptation God does not act in order that he himself may come to know something he did not know before, but in order that, by his tempting, that is, his questioning, what is hidden in a man may be brought out. For a man is not as well known to himself as to his Creator, nor is a sick man as well known to himself as to his doctor. A man is sick; he is the one who suffers; the doctor does not suffer; and the one who suffers waits to hear from the one who does not suffer. That is why in the Psalm a man cries out, "Cleanse me from my hidden faults, Lord." For there are things in a man hidden from the very man in whom they are; and they do not come out, nor are they opened, nor found, except in temptations. If God stops tempting, the teacher stops teaching. But God tempts in order to teach; the devil tempts in order to deceive. Yet unless the one who is tempted gives him room, his temptation is empty and is driven off with scorn. That is why the Apostle says, "Do not give room to the devil." And people give room to the devil out of their own desires. For people do not see the devil with whom they fight; but they have an easy remedy. Let them conquer themselves within, and they triumph over him outside. Why do we say this? Because a man does not know himself unless he learns himself in temptation. But once he has learned himself, let him not neglect himself. If he neglected himself when he was hidden, let him not neglect himself now that he is known.

What, then, do we say, brothers? Even if Abraham knew himself, we did not know Abraham. He had to be brought out either to himself or certainly to us: to himself, that he might know what to give thanks for; to us, that we might know either what to ask of the Lord or what to imitate in a man. What, then, does Abraham teach us? To put it briefly, that we should not put what God gives before God. This is meanwhile at the level of the letter of the events, before the hiding place of the sacred sign is examined, that is, what lies hidden in this mystery in which Abraham was ordered to kill his only son. So do not put even what God grants you as a great gift before him who granted it; and when he wishes to take it from you, let him not become cheap to you: for God is to be loved freely. For what reward from God is sweeter than God himself?

God is said to learn when he makes us learn. So when Abraham had fulfilled the obedience of his devotion, he hears from God, "Now I know that you fear God." This is understood to mean that God made Abraham known to himself. Just as when a prophet speaks (I am speaking to Christians, to those advancing in God's school; what I say is not raw or new, but most familiar and most obvious to your Holiness and to us): when a prophet speaks, what do we say? "God said," we plainly say. We also say, "The prophet said." And we say both rightly, and we find both in the authoritative writings. And the apostles understood the prophets so that they said, "God said," and in another place, "Isaiah said." Both are true, because we find both in the Scriptures. Let a Christian solve for me the question I have just put, and he will solve for himself the question I put a little earlier. How? Because what a man says by God's gift, God says, according to the words, "For it is not you who speak," and the rest; and again, "Behold, I Paul say to you"; and again, "Christ who speaks in me." Apply this rule, then, brothers, to what once seemed crooked, and it will be straight.

Let us all, then, look to him, that he who was hungry for our sake may feed our hungry souls; who, though he was rich, became poor, that by his poverty we might be made rich. A little while ago we fittingly sang to him: "All things wait upon you, that you may give them food in due season." If all things, then all people; if all people, then us too. So if we are to give anything good in this sermon, we shall not be the ones giving it, but he from whom we all receive, because we all wait upon him. It is time: let him give. But let us do what he said, so that he may give; that is, let us wait upon him and look to him with the heart; for as the eyes and ears of the body are turned to us, so the eyes and ears of the heart are turned to him. With the ear of the heart open, hear a great sacred mystery. All the mysteries of the divine Scriptures are indeed great and divine; yet some are more striking and more important, which require us to be most attentive, and which more than the others build up the fallen and satisfy the hungry: they are not so satisfied that they feel disgust, but so that there is satisfaction without disgust, driving out want without bringing in contempt. Whom would it not move that an only son was ordered to be sacrificed by him who had promised him? And above all, the thing happening as we have heard makes minds eager to seek the explanation of the mystery.

Before everything, however, brothers, we urge and command this in the name of the Lord as strongly as we can: that when you hear the hidden meaning of a passage of Scripture that narrates events being explained, you first believe that what was read happened as it was read; lest, with the foundation of the actual event taken away, you try to build as if in the air. Our father Abraham was a man faithful in those times, believing God, justified by faith, as Scripture says, both old and new. He received a son from Sara his wife when both were already in old age, out of great hopelessness, but hopelessness by human reckoning. For what is not to be hoped for from God, to whom nothing is difficult; who makes great things as he makes small ones, who raises the dead as he creates the living? If a painter paints a mouse by the same art as an elephant (different works, but one art), how much more God, who spoke, and they were made; who commanded, and they were created? What does he do with difficulty, who does it by a word? With the same ease with which he created the angels above the heavens, he created the lights in the heavens, the fish in the sea, the trees and animals on the earth: great things with the same ease as small ones. Is it to be wondered at, then, that he for whom it was entirely easy to make all things from nothing gave a son to old people? Such were the men, such the human beings, that God had in that time, and such heralds had he made of them for the Son who was to come, that Christ is to be sought and found not only in what they said but also in what they did, or in what happened to them. Whatever Scripture says of Abraham both happened and is prophecy; as the Apostle says in one place, "For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by a slave woman and the other by a free woman; which things are an allegory. For these are the two covenants."

So it is not unwise of us to say that Isaac was both born to Abraham and signified something. So too, when Abraham was ordered to sacrifice his son, he obeys God, leads him to the place, arrives on the third day, leaves his two servants with the donkey, and goes himself where God had commanded; he lays the wood on the altar, lays his son on the wood. Before the son comes to the place of sacrifice, he carries the wood on which he is to be laid. Then, when he was almost struck, a voice sounds that he should be spared; and yet they do not leave without a sacrifice and without blood shed. A ram appears caught by its horns in a thorn bush; it is sacrificed, the sacrifice is completed. When the sacrifice was completed it is said to Abraham: "I will make your seed like the stars of heaven and the sand of the sea; and your seed shall possess the cities of their enemies; and in your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed, because you have obeyed my voice." See, then, when it was done, and when the remembrance of the deed itself takes place. When that Ram says, "They have pierced my hands and my feet," and the rest; when that sacrifice in the Psalm was accomplished, then in the same Psalm it was said, "All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord, and all the families of the nations shall worship in his sight; for the kingdom is his, and he shall rule over the nations." If "they shall remember" was said, then what we now see happening was signified beforehand at some time.

Let us see, then, how it was fulfilled, and from what source it was fulfilled, and by what preceding sacrifice there was fulfilled what was said to Abraham, "In your seed all nations shall be blessed." Happy the nations, which did not hear that, and now, reading it, have believed what he who heard it believed. For "Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness, and he was called the friend of God." That he believed God, within, in the heart, lies in faith alone; but that he led his son to be sacrificed, that he fearlessly armed his right hand, that he would have struck had he not been held back by the voice, is certainly great faith and a great work; and God praised the work itself when he said, "Because you have obeyed my voice." Why then does the apostle Paul say, "We hold that a man is justified by faith without the works of the Law," and in another place, "And faith which works through love"? How does faith work through love, and how is a man justified by faith without the works of the Law? How? Pay attention, brothers. Someone believed, received the sacraments of faith on his bed, and died: he lacked time to work. What do we say? That he was not justified? We plainly say that he was justified, believing in him who justifies the ungodly. So this man was justified and did not work; and the saying of the Apostle is fulfilled, "We hold that a man is justified by faith without the works of the Law." The thief who was crucified with the Lord believed with the heart unto righteousness and confessed with the mouth unto salvation. For faith which works through love, even if it has nothing in which to work outwardly, is still kept glowing in the heart. For there were some under the Law who boasted of the works of the Law, which perhaps they did not out of love but out of fear; and they wanted to seem righteous and to be preferred to the Gentiles, who had not done the work of the Law. But the Apostle, preaching faith to the Gentiles, when he saw that those who were coming to the Lord were justified by faith, so that those who had believed might then work well, not that they should earn believing because they had worked well, cried out confidently and said that a man can be justified by faith without the works of the Law: so that rather those were not righteous who did what they did out of fear, since faith works through love in the heart, even if it does not go out in a work.

For carnal benefits were promised because spiritual ones were not grasped. That earthly kingdom and earthly life were utterly cast down and handed over to subjection to enemies. They hoped for everything from the Lord carnally, and served him for the sake of these things. Let Christians be questioned, whether there are none such now. Such people belong to the Old Testament. For I am not asking about the name, but about the life. From such as these come heresy and schism. She fled from Sara's presence, and Sara afflicted her. What is surprising in that? She afflicted her bodily. If Donatus's party has suffered any affliction, it is because of its pride, as Hagar the slave woman suffered from Sara. Let Hagar hear the voice of the angel: "Return to your mistress." "But as then he who was born according to the flesh persecuted him who was born according to the Spirit, so it is now." We do not find that Isaac was bodily persecuted by Ishmael; only that the Apostle spoke of persecution. Note where he said, "But as then he who was born according to the flesh persecuted him who was born according to the Spirit, so it is now." But what does Scripture say? "Cast out the slave woman and her son; for the son of the slave woman shall not be heir with the son of the free woman." So let us look where Scripture says this. What does it say in Genesis? "And it happened, when Ishmael and Isaac were playing, she saw them playing." Who persecuted? Whom did he persecute? Sara saw them playing and said, "Cast out the slave woman and her son." Why? Because she saw them playing. But Paul calls that play persecution, because that play was mockery. If it was mockery, it is seduction and deception. Every game of children is an imitation of some greater business; and when an older child plays with a younger one, as if to be led on, knowing that he has other business he is aiming at, he also pretends certain things to the child, that is, to the weak one, while he plays with him. Ishmael was older and strong in malice; but playing with the child Isaac, he was leading Isaac astray, and practising certain frauds in his play with the weak one. His mother saw that this play was persecution. Understanding it so, Sara his mother said of that play: "Cast out the slave woman and her son; for the son of the slave woman shall not be heir with my son Isaac." And the Church says: "Cast out the heresies and their sons; for heretics shall not be heirs with Catholics." But why will they not be heirs? Are they not born of the seed of Abraham? And how do they have the Church's baptism? They have baptism: the seed of Abraham would make them heir, if pride did not shut them out of the inheritance. You are born of the same word, of the same sacrament; but you do not come to the same inheritance of eternal life unless you return to the Catholic Church. You are born of the seed of Abraham; but the son of the slave woman is outside because of pride.

We remember that we are debtors for yesterday's reading; but just as we owe a sermon, so you owe a hearing. That reading, indeed, sounds carnal; but whoever has received the Spirit of God understands it spiritually. For the Apostle said, "To be carnally minded is death." And for this purpose the Lord promised the Paraclete, the Spirit of truth. So, just as he promised, he also sent him, so that each one who has now received that Spirit may not be a slave of temporal pleasures, but, made master of his body and servant of the Creator, may direct himself into the way of God's commandments: that his steps may not falter nor his eyes waver, but that he may advance in the purpose of faith, so as to come to that which "eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it gone up into the heart of man": which is believed before it is seen, so that when it comes, he who believed may not be put to shame. Let him then press on, walking in hope, hoping for what he does not yet hold, believing what he does not yet see, loving what he does not yet cleave to. The exercise of the soul in faith, in hope and in love makes him fit to receive what is to come.

So while Peter was still minded carnally, troubled by the question of a servant girl, he denied the Lord three times. For the doctor had foretold to the sick man what would happen in him; the sick man did not know the course of his illness and had presumed too much about himself, but the true doctor saw it. For he had said that he would die with the Lord and for the Lord. But he could not yet do so, because he was weak. But when the Holy Spirit afterwards came, sent from heaven, and strengthened those to whom he came, Peter, filled with spiritual confidence, began to be truly ready to die for the one he had denied before. Filled with this confidence, all the martyrs, holding the right faith, dying and suffering not for a false faith, not for an empty phantom, not for a vain hope, not for an uncertain thing, but for the promise of the truth, holding it certain that he who promised is able to perform, despised all present things and burned for the things to come, which, when they become present to them, will never become past.

Remember, then, you who were here yesterday, the two sons of Isaac, Esau and Jacob, how the younger is set before the elder: so that you may belong to Jacob and not love Esau. Esau will be the one who wants to live carnally, or to hope for carnal things in the world to come. Whether, then, someone lives carnally and delights in such things in this time, and hopes from God for such things as the wicked also have, and places his whole happiness in that in which the unrighteous also delight; or whether he despises this present happiness but hopes for the same kind in the future: he is carnal, having a carnal faith, a carnal hope, a carnal love. But spiritual faith is to believe that the Lord is your protector in time, so that you may come to what will not be temporal; and to hope that you will have the life of the angels, not in the corruptions of the flesh, not in pleasures and enticements, not in sexual immorality and drunkenness and the joy of carnal feasts, not in the pride of possessions and earthly power, but only as the angels live.

And the angels live in joy, not in the creature but in the Creator. For the joy of the creature is whatever is seen; the joy of the Creator is what is seen not with the eyes of the body but with the purified sight of the mind. "Blessed are the pure in heart." For what vision are they blessed? "For they shall see God." For do not think, brothers, that the angels rejoice because they see the earth or the heaven or whatever is in them. They do not rejoice because they see heaven and earth, but because they see him who made heaven and earth.

But he who made heaven and earth is neither heaven nor earth; you cannot think of anything earthly, nor anything heavenly, nor anything bodily or spiritual that you can conceive: that is not God. Do not make for yourself some great and beautiful man: God is not bounded by a human form; he is not contained in a place, not held by space. Do not make for yourself a sort of golden God: that is not God. For the gold from which you want to make yourself a God, God himself made; and it is weak, because it is on earth. Do not picture to yourself that God is anything such as you see in the sky, the moon or the sun or the stars or whatever gleams and shines in the sky: that is not God. But again, do not therefore think that God is not like the sun merely because the sun is like a kind of wheel and not an immense expanse of light, and say to yourself, "So God is of infinite and immeasurable light," as though you were stretching the sun itself and making it have no end, neither this way nor that, neither up nor down, and picturing God to yourself as an immeasurable light: that is not God either. God indeed "dwells in light unapproachable"; but such light is not known, and cannot be known, to the eyes of the flesh.

But if you can see what truth is, what wisdom is, what justice is, as it was said, "Come to him and be enlightened"; how that is the true light of which John says, "He was the true light, which enlightens every man coming into this world"; how John the Baptist himself was not the true light. For John the evangelist says, "He was not the light, but came to bear witness to the light." And not only was John the Baptist not the true light, but neither was Paul the true light, nor was Peter the true light, nor were any apostles the true light. For the true light is that which enlightens every man coming into this world. They were lights, because they were enlightened. For the eyes of our flesh too are called lights, and everyone swears, "By my lights." What are these lights? If the sun is lacking, if the moon or a lamp is lacking, surely they remain in darkness. Where there are lights, let them see what is before them, let them guide the feet, if they are lights: and yet they are lights. Why are they lights? Because they can receive light. For when light is brought in, your forehead does not perceive the light itself, nor your ear, nor your sense of smell, nor your hand, nor your foot: only the members in you that are called eyes perceive the light brought in. When the light is absent they are darkened; but when the light is brought in, they alone are illuminated, that is, because they alone perceive the light. Your other members too are illuminated, but so that they can be seen, not so that they can see. For the light that rises, or that is brought in, floods all the members: the eyes, that they may see; the rest, that they may be seen. So all the saints were enlightened, that they might see, and preach what they saw. That is why it was said to them, "You are the light of the world." But a light, not the true light. Why? Because there was the true light, which enlightens every man. He said "every man": if he were speaking of this sun, he would not say "every man," because this sun is not seen by men alone. Cattle see it, and the tiniest creatures, and flies see this sun; but that light which is God no one sees, except those of whom it was said, "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God."

Try to think, brothers, of the light of truth, the light of wisdom, how it is present everywhere to all; try to think of the light of justice, for it is present to everyone who thinks. For what is it that he thinks? He who wants to live unjustly sins. He deserts justice: is it diminished? He turns to justice: what then? Is it increased? He deserts it and leaves it whole; he turns to it and finds it whole. What, then, is the light of justice? Does it rise in the east and go to the west? Or is there some other place from which it rises or to which it goes? Is it not present everywhere? Certainly a man who is in the west, if he wants to live justly, that is, according to justice, does he lack justice to look at and see, so as to live according to it? Again, someone placed in the east, if he wants to live justly, that is, according to the same justice, does he lack it? For justice is there: it is present to the one who lives justly. By its rule those others too see how they should live justly: as the just, by living well, see it, so the unjust, by living badly, do not see it. For the one lives justly when he sees it, and the other sees it in order to direct his actions by it; because unless he directs his actions by the rule of justice, he runs into the error of iniquity. Since, then, it could be present to this man too, standing there, it is in no place, and it is everywhere: so is justice, so wisdom, so truth, so chastity. Try, then, to see such a light: but you cannot; the eye of the mind trembles. Let it be purified, that it may see. And that it may be purified and see, let it believe, that it may be found worthy to be purified. So what you cannot see, put off, that you may be healed, and be able to see.

Yet do not think of anything in the world to come such as you see now: for if you think of something of that kind, you will also love something of that kind; you want to go out of the world with the world itself, you want to take the world with you. These things will not be there. There will be a certain light there, from which there trickles down this something-I-know-not-what which we now understand and rejoice in. But if we have the blessing from the dew of heaven, we have the abundance from the fertility of the earth: for so Jacob was blessed. Let us belong to him, and not live carnally. Because each one begins by living carnally, the elder was called Esau. Two Testaments are spoken of in the Law, one Old and the other New. The Old had temporal promises but spiritual meanings. Let your Charity pay attention. If the land of promise was promised to the Jews, the land of promise signifies something spiritually; if the city of peace, Jerusalem, was promised to the Jews, the name of the city of Jerusalem signifies something; if circumcision of the flesh was given to the Jews, it signifies some spiritual circumcision; if the Jews were ordered to keep one day of the seven as a sabbath, it signifies spiritual rest, which has no evening. For in those very seven days, in Genesis, it was said on all the days, "And there was evening": on the seventh day it is not said, "And there was evening." By the seventh day, which has no evening, everlasting rest is signified to us, where there is no setting. If carnal sacrifices were given to the Jews, through the victims of animals they all signify spiritual sacrifices. So those who understood it as though something were given them in the present as a great thing, and sought nothing future, and could not understand spiritually what was done carnally, belong to the elder son; they belong to the Old Testament.

For the Old Testament is the promise in figure; the New Testament is the promise understood spiritually. For while the Jerusalem that was on earth belongs to the Old Testament, it bears the image of the Jerusalem that is in heaven, and that belongs to the New Testament. Circumcision of the flesh belongs to the Old Testament; circumcision of the heart belongs to the New Testament. According to the Old Testament the people is set free from Egypt; according to the New Testament the people is set free from the devil. The Egyptians and Pharaoh pursue the Jews as they come out of Egypt as persecutors; their own sins and the devil, the prince of sins, pursue the Christian people. But just as the Egyptians pursue the Jews as far as the sea, so sins pursue Christians as far as baptism. Pay attention, brothers, and see: the Jews are set free through the sea, the Egyptians are overwhelmed in the sea; Christians are set free in the forgiveness of sins, sins are blotted out through baptism. After the Red Sea they come out and walk through the desert: so too Christians after baptism are not yet in the land of promise, but are in hope. This world is a desert; and truly, for a Christian after baptism, it is a desert, if he understands what he has received. If not only bodily signs are performed in him but there is also a spiritual effect in his heart, he understands that this world is a desert for him; he understands that he lives as a pilgrim, that he longs for his homeland. And as long as he longs, he is in hope. "For in hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is not hope; for what a man sees, why does he hope for? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience." This patience in the desert makes one hope for something: if he thinks he is already in the homeland, he does not reach the homeland; if he thinks he is already in the homeland, he stays on the road. But that he may not stay on the road, let him hope for the homeland, long for the homeland, so as not to stray. For temptations come: so they come after baptism. For just as the Egyptians who pursued them from Egypt were not the Jews' only enemies (they were past enemies, as each person is pursued by his past life and his past sins, with their prince the devil), but others arose in the desert who wanted to block the way, and there was fighting with them, and they were beaten: so after baptism, when a Christian has begun to walk the way of his heart in the hope of God's promises, let him not stray. For temptations come suggesting something else, the delights of this world, some other life, to twist each one from the road and draw him away from his purpose. But if you overcome these suggestions by that longing, the enemies on the road are beaten, and the people is brought to the homeland.

Hear the Apostle, that these things were figures for us. "For I do not want you to be ignorant, brothers," he says, "that all our fathers were under the cloud." If they were under the cloud, they were in darkness. What does "they were in darkness" mean? That they did not understand spiritually what was done with them bodily. "And all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses, and all ate the same spiritual food." For manna was given them in the desert, as the sweetness of the Scriptures is given to us, so that we may endure in this desert of human life. And Christians know what manna they receive, to whom the Psalm itself said, "Taste and see how sweet the Lord is." "And all," he says, "ate the same spiritual food." What does "the same" mean? Signifying the same thing. "And all drank the same spiritual drink." And notice how he explained one thing and kept silent about the rest: "For they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them; and the rock was Christ." "But these things were figures for us." They were displayed to them, but they were figures for us: because they were displayed to them bodily, but signified to us spiritually. So those who held them bodily belonged to the Old Testament.

Now see that Isaac had grown old. Whose person did Isaac represent when he wanted to bless his elder son? He had already grown old: where there is old age, there is oldness; by old age I understand oldness, and by oldness I understand the Old Testament. Because those who were under the cloud did not understand this Old Testament, Isaac's eyes are therefore said to have grown dim. The dimness of Isaac's bodily eyes signifies the dimness of the minds of the Jews; Isaac's old age signifies the oldness of the Old Testament. What then, brothers? He nevertheless wants to bless his elder son Esau. The mother loved the younger, and the father the elder, as the firstborn: for his justice was equal toward both, but his affection was greater toward the firstborn. He wants to bless the elder, because the Old Testament made its promises to the first people. It speaks its promises only to the Jews: to them it seems to promise, to them it seems to pledge everything. They are called out of Egypt, set free from their enemies, led through the sea, fed with manna; they receive the covenant, receive the Law, receive the promises, receive the very land of promise. No wonder he wanted to bless the first son: but under the figure of the elder the younger is blessed. For the mother bears the type of the Church. And understand the Church, brothers, not only in those who began to be saints after the Lord's coming and birth; but all who were ever saints belong to that same Church. For father Abraham does not fail to belong to us because he lived before Christ was born of the Virgin, and we became Christians so long after, that is, after Christ's passion; since the Apostle says that we are sons of Abraham by imitating Abraham's faith. Are we, then, admitted to the Church by imitating him, and shall we shut him out of the Church? This Church is signified in Rebecca, Isaac's wife; this Church was in the holy prophets too, who understood the Old Testament, that those carnal promises signified something spiritual. If spiritual, then the spiritual belong to the younger son: because the carnal comes first, and afterwards the spiritual.

We already put it to your Holiness yesterday that the elder son is called Esau because no one becomes spiritual except from being carnal: but if he persists in the prudence of the flesh, he will always be Esau; if, however, he becomes spiritual, he is the younger son; but this younger will be the greater: for the one comes first in time, the other in virtue. For when Jacob had cooked lentils, Esau wanted to have them before he came to that blessing; and Jacob said to him, "Give me your birthright, and I will give you the lentils I have cooked." He sold his birthright to the younger: the one carried off a temporal pleasure, the other carried off an everlasting dignity. So those in the Church who are slaves to temporal pleasures eat lentils. Jacob, indeed, cooked them, but Jacob did not eat them: for idols had flourished above all in Egypt. The lentil is the food of Egypt. By the lentil are signified all the errors of the Gentiles. Since, then, the Church that was to come from the Gentiles, more eminent and more manifest, was signified in the younger son, Jacob is said to have cooked the lentils and Esau to have eaten them. For the Gentiles abandoned the idols they worshipped; but the Jews served idols: for, turned back in heart to Egypt, they were being led through the desert; and when their enemies had been killed in the sea, and their foes overwhelmed by the waves, they desired to make an idol because they did not see Moses; and they did not understand that God was present with them, but, setting their hope on the presence of a man, they did not see the man with their eyes and began to think that God was not there, though he alone was doing such great things through Moses. They sought a man with the eyes of the flesh, because they did not have eyes of the heart with which to see God in Moses. So they lost their primacy, because, turned back in heart to Egypt, they ate the lentils. Take this to heart. It is the Christian people; but within the Christian people itself those hold the primacy who belong to Jacob, while those who live carnally, believe carnally, hope carnally, love carnally, still belong to the Old Testament, not yet to the New; they are still in Esau's lot, not yet in Jacob's blessing.

Let your Holiness pay attention. The old man Isaac, with dim eyes, wanted to bless his elder son, because the Old Testament was addressed to the Jews. Because the Old Testament was not understood by them, his eyes are therefore said to be dim. As I said, brothers, he speaks to the elder; the blessing comes to the younger. For this mother, who is understood in all the saints, that is, the Church, which understood the prophecy, herself gives counsel to the younger son and says to him: "I myself heard your father saying to your brother, 'Go and bring me game, that I may eat and my soul may bless you before I die.' Now, then, son, listen to me." And she counselled him to go and bring two kids from the flock nearby, and that his mother should prepare them as his father liked them, and that he should eat and bless his younger son in the absence of the elder. But he was afraid, and said, "My brother is hairy, but I am smooth; lest my father touch me and feel me, and know that I am Jacob, and I get not a blessing but a curse." But she said, "Go, son, listen to me: your curse be upon me." He went and brought two kids; they were prepared, and he set them before his father; and, as she had foretold, because Isaac did not recognize him by his voice, he touched him and found hair, because his mother had covered his arms with the skins of the kids: he believed he was the elder, and blessed him. In the blessing he had the elder in mind, and the blessing came to the younger. What does it mean, then, that the younger is blessed under the appearance of the elder, except that under the figures of the Old Testament promised to the Jewish people the spiritual blessing came to the Christian people? Pay attention, brothers: they hear of the land of promise, and we hear of it too: Scripture seems to speak of the land of promise as if to the Jews, and the understanding of the land of promise has come to us, who say to God, "You are my hope, my portion in the land of the living." But that we might say this, our mother taught us; that is, the Church herself in the holy prophets teaches us how we are to understand spiritually those very carnal promises.

But the blessing could not come to us unless, already cleansed from sins by the birth of regeneration, we bear the sins of others by forbearance. For the mother bore both sons. Pay attention, brothers: she bore one hairy, the other smooth. The hairs signify sins, the smoothness gentleness, that is, cleanness from sins. Two sons are blessed, because the Church blesses two kinds. As Rebecca bore two, two are begotten in the womb of the Church, one hairy, the other smooth; we have explained the difference between them. For there are people who even after baptism will not give up their sins, and want to do what they did before. For example, if they used to commit frauds, they want to defraud again; if they used to swear falsely, they still want to perjure themselves; if they used to cheat the innocent by tricks, they still want to cheat them; if they used to plot murders, they plot the same; if they used to commit sexual immorality, if they used to get drunk, they do the very same things all the same. There is Esau, born hairy. What does Jacob do? His mother says to him, "Go, let your father bless you." And he says, "I am afraid; I will not go near." For there are people in the Church who are afraid to mix with sinners, lest by a sort of partnership with sinners they be stained in the unity, and perish through heresies and schisms.

What, then, is said of this hairy Esau, who did not live well in the house? For this too is said of them: "He was a rough hunter, but Jacob lived without deceit in the house." And so his mother loved him, because she felt how gentle his way of life was. This is the Jacob who was afterwards called Israel, when he wrestled with the angel: and this in a great mystery. Blessed, he was called Israel: and that because he was without deceit. Pay attention, my brothers, and see how without deceit he was. When the Lord saw Nathanael, because he knew what he was, he said: "Behold, truly an Israelite, in whom there is no deceit." If, then, this man is an Israelite because there is no deceit in him, there was certainly no deceit in Israel himself. What, then, does it mean when it is said, "Your brother came with deceit and took away the blessing"? Scripture commends him as living in the house without deceit; the Lord too bears witness that he was without deceit, when he says of Nathanael, "Behold, truly an Israelite, in whom there is no deceit." What, then, does it mean when it is said, "He came with deceit and took away the blessing"?

Let us meanwhile consider what the deceit signifies, and see what Jacob ought to do. He carries the sins of others, and carries them with forbearance, though they are others': for this is what it is to have kids' skins: that is, he carries others' sins patiently and does not cling to his own. So all who for the sake of the Church's unity bear the sins of others imitate Jacob. For Jacob himself is in Christ, since Christ is in the seed of Abraham. For it was said, "In your seed all nations shall be blessed." So our Lord Jesus Christ, who committed no sin, carried the sins of others: and does he whose sins have been forgiven disdain to carry the sins of others? So Jacob passes over to Christ by way of others' sins, that is, the kids' skins. And what is the deceit?

For that one comes late and brings what his father ordered, and finds his brother blessed in his place: and he is not blessed with another blessing. For those two men were two peoples; one blessing signifies the unity of the Church. And the two peoples are the very ones that are also Jacob. But in another way the two peoples belonging to Jacob are figured. For our Lord Jesus Christ, who had come to Jews and Gentiles, was rejected by the Jews who belonged to the elder son; yet he chose some who belonged to the younger son, who had begun to desire and understand the Lord's promises spiritually, not desiring carnally that land they were receiving, but desiring that spiritual city where no one is born carnally; because no one is born there carnally, no one dies there spiritually.

So when they had begun to desire this city, those who believed in Christ began to belong to Jacob, and the Lord's flock was formed in Judea itself. But what does the Lord say of that flock? "I have other sheep, which are not of this fold; I go, I will bring them, and there will be one flock and one shepherd." What other sheep does the Lord Jesus Christ have, if not from the Gentiles? The sheep from the Gentiles were joined to the Jewish sheep. For the apostles were from the Jews. From there too were the five hundred brothers who saw the Lord after the resurrection. From there was Nathanael himself, to whom the Lord bore witness that there was no deceit in him. From there were the hundred and twenty upon whom, when they were in the house, the Holy Spirit came to pour himself over them, the Spirit whom he had promised to the disciples. From there were the many thousands of people whom we read of in the Acts of the Apostles as baptized in the name of Christ, from among those who had crucified Christ. So from there were sheep, and many sheep; but not they alone: the Lord had others from the Gentiles. These two peoples, coming as it were from different directions, are also signified by two walls. For the Church of the Jews came from the circumcision; the Church of the Gentiles came from the uncircumcision: coming from different directions they were joined in one house. That is why the Lord was called the cornerstone; for the Psalm says, "The stone which the builders rejected has become the head of the corner"; and the Apostle says, "Christ Jesus himself being the chief cornerstone." Where there is a corner, two walls are joined; at a corner two walls do not meet unless they come from different directions: for if they come from one side, they do not make a corner. So the two kids are the two peoples, they are the two folds, they are the two walls; they are the two blind men who sat by the road; they are the two boats into which the fish were hauled. In many places of the Scriptures two peoples are understood: but they are one in Jacob.

Why kids, someone will say? You know that kids are sinners: for the kids will be on the left, and the lambs on the right. But those who persist as kids will be on the left. For if they had not first been kids, the Lord would not say, "I came not to call the righteous, but sinners." For when the Lord kept company with sinners and ate with tax collectors, the Jews, as though lambs, that is, as though righteous, but through pride rather he-goats, made it a charge against the Lord, or rather said to his disciples, "Why does your master eat with tax collectors and sinners?" How did the Lord defend himself in reply? "Those who are well," he said, "have no need of a doctor, but those who are sick: I came not to call the righteous, but sinners." So he calls kids, but so that they may not remain kids. For Jacob killed them and prepared a feast from them for his father; that is, for the spiritual understanding which was to be understood in that blessing, though it was figured in the elder son: for this the kids were killed and eaten and passed into one body. So sins are killed in sinners, and, slain, they pass into the one body of the Church; of which Church Peter bore the figure when it was said to him, "Kill and eat." So the one was rough, the other gentle at home; the one elder, the other younger: the blessings seemed to look to the one, they came to the other. They looked to the one, because carnal promises were made to the Jews; they came to the other, because they were to be understood and received spiritually by Christians. The blessing would not have come to him unless he carried the sins which he himself no longer committed.

So let your Holiness understand how sins are to be borne. For there are some who think they are bearing sins and keep silent toward sinners: that pretence is to be detested. Bear with the sinner, not so as to love the sin in him, but so as to pursue the sin for his sake. Love the sinner, not insofar as he is a sinner, but insofar as he is a human being. As when you love a sick man you go after the fever: for if you spare the fever, you do not love the sick man. So tell your brother what is true; do not keep silent. For what else are we doing but telling you what is true? Do not speak falsely; tell what is true with open truth: but until he is corrected, let him be borne with. The killing of the kids and the carrying of the skins could take place at different times; yet they signify something that can be done at one time. For at the same time the righteous man both rebukes sinners, which is killing the kids, and mercifully bears with their sins, which is carrying the skins. As far as it lay with him, he killed the kids, he killed the sinners; but he carried others' sins, and carried them with forbearance; he deserved to be blessed, because "love bears all things." This love was in the mother, and the mother bore the figure of that love: she, who was a figure of all the saints, bore the figure of love; for none are saints except those who have love. "For what will it profit, if I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love? I have become sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal. And if I have all faith, so that I move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. And if I know all mysteries and all prophecy, and give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing." What kind of thing, then, is love, which alone profits much, and without which the rest profit nothing? So love itself gives counsel, and the son of love obeys.

What counsel does she give? That he take the kids' skins and go to his father. The father looks for the elder and blesses the younger: the Old Testament looks to the Jews through the letter, and through its spiritual understanding Christians are blessed in it. Let your Holiness pay attention: a great mystery, a great sacred sign. Isaac says, "Your brother came with deceit," of a man without deceit. Without doubt Isaac, being in the prophetic spirit, knew what was being done, and was himself acting in figure; he sets everything in a great depth of mysteries: for if he had not known what he was doing, he would have been angry with the son who deceived him. The elder comes and says, "Here, father, eat: I have done as you ordered me." He says, "Who are you?" He answered, "I am your elder son Esau." "And who is he," he says, "of whose food I have already eaten; and I blessed him, and he shall be blessed?" He seemed to be angry; from Esau's own mouth he expected some curse on his brother: while the one expected a curse, the other confirms the blessing. Oh, what anger! Oh, what indignation! But he knew the mystery; and the dimness of his bodily eyes signified the dimness of the mind of the Jews, while the eyes of his heart saw the depth of the mysteries.

"Your brother came with deceit," he says, "and took away the blessing." We were saying: see what "with deceit" means: this deceit is not deceit. How is deceit not deceit? How is a rock not a rock? How is something called sea and not the sea? Because it signifies something else: so a rock is spoken of, and it is not a rock, because it signifies something else. A mountain is spoken of, and it is not a mountain; the Lord Jesus Christ is called the lion of the tribe of Judah, and he is not a lion; he is called a lamb, and he is not a lamb; he is called a beast of the flock, and he is not one; he is called a calf, and he is something else. So deceit is spoken of, and it is not deceit. Let us ask, then, why it is called deceit. Let us ask why all those things were said. Why was he called a lion? For his strength. Why was he called a rock? For his firmness. Why was he called a lamb? For his innocence. Why was he called a calf? Because he was a victim. Why was he called a mountain? For his greatness. Why manna? For his sweetness. Why, then, deceit? Let us first see what deceit is, and find out why it was called deceit. For we know what a rock is: yet a senseless, hard man is called a rock, and a strong, immovable man is called a rock; and you have taken firmness from it for praise and hardness for blame. We recognize firmness in the rock, and we have taken Christ as the rock: "And the rock was Christ." We know strength in the lion: and yet the devil too has been called a lion. What do we know in deceit, that we should take deceit in a figure, as a mountain is taken, as a lion is taken, as a lamb is taken, as a rock is taken, and the rest?

What, then, is deceit? Deceit is when one thing is done and another is feigned. So when there is one thing in the intention and another in the deeds, it is called deceit. Deceit, then, in its proper sense is blameworthy, as a rock is a rock in its proper sense. Whoever says that Christ is a rock in the proper sense blasphemes, just as whoever says that Christ is a calf in the proper sense blasphemes. In its proper sense a calf is a beast; in figure, a victim. In its proper sense a stone is hardened earth; in figure, firmness. Deceit in its proper sense is fraud; in figure, it is the figure itself. For every figurative and allegorical reading or expression seems to sound one thing carnally and to suggest another spiritually. So he called this figure by the name of deceit. What, then, does "He came with deceit and took away your blessing" mean? Because what was being done was figurative, it was therefore said, "He came with deceit." For Isaac would not have confirmed the blessing for a deceitful man, to whom a curse was justly due. So that deceit was not real; above all because he did not lie in saying, "I am your elder son Esau": for he had already made a bargain with his brother, and his brother had sold him his birthright. He told his father that he had what he had bought from his brother: what the one had lost had passed to the other. For the honor of the firstborn had not been shut out of Isaac's house: the honor of the firstborn was there; it was not in him who had sold it: where was it, if not in the younger? So Isaac, knowing this as a mystery, confirmed the blessing, and said to his son: "What shall I do for you?" And he: "Bless me too, father: for you have not only one blessing." But Isaac knew only one.

Why only one? The Holy Spirit will be present so that I may tell it and you understand. Let us look at the blessings themselves: what kind of blessing Jacob received, and what kind Esau received. Isaac himself says to Jacob, "Are you my son Esau?" Jacob answered, "I am." And he said, "Set it before me, and I will eat of your game, son, that my soul may bless you before I die; but come near and kiss me." Him, the other, he did not kiss: this one's blessing began with peace. Why did he confirm peace with a kiss? Because this one too bore others' sins for the sake of peace. And he came near and kissed him; and he smelled the smell of his garment. For he had his brother's robe on, that is, the dignity of the firstborn, which the one had lost and the other had. In this one what the other had wickedly lost now smelled good. He smelled the smell of his garment, and blessed him, and said, "See, the smell of my son is like the smell of a full field, which the Lord has blessed." He received the smell of the garment, and spoke of the smell of a field. Understand Christ in the inner mystery, and understand the garment of Christ as the Church.

Let your Holiness understand. For one thing is signified in many ways: that is, the Church, which those two kids signify, this garment also signifies. For one thing is signified in many ways, being none of these by essence, and all of them by figure. A lamb cannot be a lion, a lion cannot be a lamb: but our Lord Jesus Christ could be both lion and lamb; because he is neither lion nor lamb by essence, he is both lion and lamb by figure. So kids cannot be a garment, and a garment cannot be kids: but the Church, because she is neither kids nor garment by essence, is both kids and garment by figure, and whatever else can be said.

"He smelled his garments, and said: See, the smell of my son is like the smell of a full field, which the Lord has blessed." This field is the Church. Let us prove that the Church is a field. Hear the Apostle saying to the faithful: "You are God's farm, you are God's building." Not only is the Church a field, but God is also the farmer. Hear the Lord himself: "I am the vine, you are the branches, and my Father is the farmer." Working in this field, then, and hoping for an everlasting wage, the Apostle himself claims nothing for himself except what befits a workman. "I planted," he says, "Apollos watered; but God gave the growth. So neither he who plants is anything, nor he who waters, but God who gives the growth." How he kept humility, so as to belong to Jacob, to that field, that is, the Church, so as not to lose the robe whose smell was like the smell of a full field, and pass over to the pride of Esau, who understood carnally and was full of conceit! The field, then, smells of the son's garment: but that field is not anything of itself; so he added, "which the Lord has blessed." "And the Lord will give you of the dew of heaven from above, and of the fatness of the earth, and plenty of grain and wine; and nations shall serve you, and you shall be lord of your brother, and the sons of your father shall bow down to you. Whoever curses you shall be cursed, and whoever blesses you shall be blessed." This is the blessing of Jacob: if Esau were not also blessed, there would be no question; he too is blessed, but not with this same blessing; and yet not with one wholly foreign to it.

Let us hear, then, how Esau is blessed, and see what difference there is between the spiritual and the carnal sons of the Church, between those who live spiritually and those who always delight in carnal joys. "And Isaac answered and said to Esau: Who then is it who hunted game for me and brought it to me? Let him be blessed. And it happened, when Esau heard the words of Isaac his father, that he cried out with a loud voice and said: Bless me too, father. And he said to him: Your brother came with deceit and received your blessing."

And Esau said: "Rightly was his name called Jacob." For Jacob means "supplanting." And this supplanting is not empty either, because it is taken in figure, like the deceit. For there was not yet so much malice in the brother that he wanted to supplant his brother. For he was called the supplanter when, at birth, he held his brother's foot with his hand: that was when he was called the supplanter. But the supplanting of the carnal is the life of the spiritual. For all the carnal, when in the Church they envy the spiritual, are tripped up and become worse. Hear the Apostle saying this very thing, especially since he mentioned there the smell that Isaac expressed here when he said, "See, the smell of my son is like the smell of a full field, which the Lord has blessed." The Apostle says, then, "We are the good fragrance of Christ in every place"; and he added, "to some a fragrance of life unto life, to others a fragrance of death unto death: and who is sufficient for these things?" That is, to understand how we are a fragrance of death unto the death of men through no fault of ours. For the spiritual walk their own ways, they know nothing but to live well; and those who envy people who live innocently commit grave sins for which God punishes them; and that fragrance becomes to them a fragrance unto death which to others is a fragrance unto life. For the Lord himself first became a good fragrance unto life to those who believed and an evil fragrance unto death to those who persecuted him. For because many had believed in him, the Jews envied him and committed so great a crime in killing the innocent one, the Holy of holies: had they not done this, the good fragrance of Christ would not have availed to their death. So Esau was supplanted in his father's blessing.

And Isaac answered and said to him: "I have made him your lord": for Esau could not take otherwise what was said, "And all his brothers shall serve him": "but for you, what shall I do, son?" And Esau said to his father: "Bless me too, nevertheless." When Isaac was pressed hard, that is, when he was constrained. A great thing, a great sacred sign; would that we may grasp it: he blesses under constraint, and yet he blesses; and what he blesses is true, but still he blesses under constraint. Pay attention to what this means. Let us look at the blessing itself and understand what blessing under constraint is. First, what is common to Jacob and Esau. Isaac answered (the father, indeed, did not kiss Esau), saying to him, "See, your dwelling shall be of the fertility of the earth and of the dew of heaven from above." He said this to the other too, "of the fatness of the earth and of the dew of heaven": this, then, is common to Jacob and Esau. What is proper to Jacob? "Nations shall serve you." What is proper to Jacob? "All your brothers shall serve you: and whoever blesses you shall be blessed, and whoever curses you shall be cursed." This one too has something proper to him, which was not said to Jacob: "And by the sword you shall live, and you shall serve your brother." But so as not to take away free choice (we have already spoken of this, yesterday as well), he added, "But it shall be, when you lay down and loose the yoke from your neck." What does "But it shall be, when you lay down and loose the yoke from your neck" mean? You are free, if you will, to be converted: not as though you will be two, but one Jacob. For all who are converted from Esau belong to Jacob. Likeness makes one; unlikeness makes difference. What, then? "Of the dew of heaven and the fertility of the earth": both have this. "Nations shall serve you, and your brothers as sons of your father": Jacob alone has this. "By your sword you shall live": Esau alone. They have something in common, and some things each alone.

There are wicked people in the Church who belong to Esau: for they too are sons of Rebecca, sons of mother Church, born of her womb, and though hairy, persisting in carnal sins, still born of her womb. So they have of the dew of heaven and of the fertility of the earth: of the dew of heaven, all the Scriptures, all the divine word; of the fertility of the earth, all the visible sacraments; for a visible sacrament belongs to the earth. Good and bad in the Church have all these things in common. For they too have the sacraments and share in them: and the faithful know what this means, "of grain and wine." And they have of the dew of heaven, because the word of God comes down upon all from heaven. The word of God comes and waters: but notice whom it waters and what it waters. For it waters both these and those, good and bad; but the one sort turn the good rain into the root of thorns, while the others draw the rain to good fruit. For the Lord rains at the same time upon the crop and upon the thorns; but upon the crop he rains for the barn, upon the thorns for the fire: and yet the rain is one. So the Word of God rains upon all. Let each one see what kind of root he has; let each one see where he draws the good rain: if he draws it to produce thorns, is the rain of God to be blamed for that? Before it comes to the root, that rain is sweet; the word of God is sweet, until it comes to an evil heart, and the heart turns God's rain to its own fraud, turns it to hypocrisy, turns it to the roots of evil desires, to its own perversities and depravities. It begins indeed to produce thorns, but from good rain: for it has of the dew of heaven. And since not all the wicked are shut out from God's sacraments, it has also of the fatness of the earth, which those know who have already wished to share in the mysteries of the faithful.

Though these things belong to both, all the nations nevertheless belong only to the spiritual, because they belong to the Church, which has filled the whole world. Pay attention, brothers, and discern as far as you can, or as far as the Lord gives you. Every spiritual person sees that the Church throughout the whole world is one, true, catholic, and claims nothing for itself, and bears with the sins of people whom it cannot purge from the Lord's threshing floor before that last winnower comes, who cannot be deceived, to purge his threshing floor and put the grain in the barn, but give the chaff to be burned: because it is he who is to remove the chaff and separate it from the grain, and prepare the barn for the wheat and fire for the chaff. So, because the spiritual person knows this, he bears with sinners who are to be separated at the end. Throughout all the nations sinners and all the carnal are mixed with the spiritual and serve them; but the spiritual do not serve, because they profit from them while the others fall away. Pay attention, my brothers: I will say it, if I can, and not be afraid; I will not keep silent, for I am pressed to say it, even if some perhaps are angry with me; but let them pardon me, for I am afraid, as I said: let them pardon my fear. Christ feared no one: but we, fearing Christ, do not spare, lest, while we are unwilling to sadden such people, he does not spare us. Be pleased to hear what I mean, and attend most carefully. Both Jacob and Esau received of the dew of heaven and of the fatness of the earth; both have what we have already said, what we know, what you know: but that the nations should serve him, only Jacob received; because throughout the whole world the carnal in the Church serve only the spiritual. Why? Because the spiritual profit from them. For that is why carnal people are called servants: even if they do what they do not want, the bad conduct of the carnal still benefits the spiritual; for they both profit from that very conduct and are crowned through forbearance.

Let your Holiness pay attention to what we are saying. The nations were not given to Esau: because all the carnal who are in the Church are either divided or easily brought to division. See, Donatus's party arose from there, it is from there, from those carnal people who think carnally. They were carnal: but because they sought their own honor, or lost their patience, they found an opening and were divided: they loved their own honor, gave it great weight, swelled with the conceit of pride, did not have forbearance, that is, did not have love. For it is written: "Love bears all things, endures all things; it is not jealous, is not puffed up, does not act wrongly." And so, whatever else they had, because they did not have that through which whatever one has is of use, they divided themselves. And all the heresies and cuttings-off and schisms that have arisen have arisen through these carnal people. For either they thought carnally and made for themselves images of their own fancies, and went astray, and the Catholic faith rebuked them, and when they were refuted they were driven outside by their own weight; or, finding quarrels and grudges with people, they divided themselves. Who, then, divided themselves, if not those to whom belongs that sword of which it was said, "By your sword you shall live"? Not that the sword is not taken in a good sense: for as was said of those things above, how a stone is taken both for firmness, on account of Christ, and for reproach, on account of the fool; how Christ was called a lion for one reason, and the devil was called a lion for another: so the sword is sometimes taken in a good sense, sometimes in a bad one. But here it was not without reason that the sword was not given to Jacob but given to Esau, except that some mystery is signified in the sword. Just as the servitude itself is not foreign to the mystery, that is, what was said, "You shall serve your brother"; for this too was said in a great mystery.

So, brothers, those who divide themselves have the sword of division, and they die by their own sword, as they live by their own sword. But because the Lord had spoken truly, "He who strikes with the sword shall die by the sword," look, my brothers, at those who have cut themselves off from unity, into how many pieces they have been cut. You know how many parts Donatus's party has made, and I think it is not hidden from your Holiness that he who strikes with the sword shall perish by the sword. It was said to him, "By your sword you shall live." So too those who have not left the Church and are such as they would be if they were outside. For those who love their own honors in the Church are altogether such; those who love their worldly advantages in the Church are chaff too; but the wind is lacking, so they do not fly off the threshing floor: that is, to put it briefly, temptation is lacking, or they would fly off the threshing floor. In fact, when the Church takes any action against them, how easily they cut themselves off! How easily they gather people outside, and will not give up their leadership! How they are willing to die for that leadership! How they want to keep congregations under themselves, and not release the congregations to the unity of Christ! How they want to make their own the sheep they did not buy with their own blood, and therefore hold cheap, because they did not buy them! What need is there to argue about this any longer? Look at such people throughout the whole Church; see them, both those who are inside and those who, having found an occasion, have flown off the threshing floor and want to drag grains with them; but the true and full grains bear with the chaff and remain on the threshing floor to the end, until the last winnower comes: just as Jacob with the kids' skins bore others' sins and was found worthy to receive his father's blessing.

But why did Isaac, pressed hard, bless him? For now under necessity, now constrained, his father said to him, "See, your dwelling shall be of the fatness of the earth and of the dew of heaven." And lest you think yourself good on that account: "By your sword you shall live, and you shall serve your brother." But lest you despair of yourself, since you can correct yourself: "But it shall be, when you lay down and loose the yoke from your neck." See, he will receive of the fatness of the earth and of the dew of heaven; but Isaac, pressed hard, throws him the blessing rather than giving it. Does it not happen now in the Church with wicked people who want to throw the Church into turmoil, that they are tolerated out of the necessity of peace itself, that they are admitted, that they have the sacraments in common? And sometimes it is known that they are wicked, and perhaps they cannot be convicted so as to be corrected and degraded; they cannot be convicted so as to be excluded, so as to be excommunicated. If anyone were to insist, sometimes it leads to ruptures in the Church. The pilot of the Church is constrained, as it were, to say, "See, you shall have of the fatness of the earth and of the dew of heaven: use the sacraments; you eat judgment to yourself, you drink judgment to yourself." "For he who eats and drinks unworthily eats and drinks judgment to himself." You know that you are admitted out of the necessity of the Church's peace; you have nothing in your heart but turmoil and divisions. So by your sword you shall live: for in what you receive of the dew of heaven and of the fatness of the earth, you will not live; for this does not delight you, nor is the Lord sweet to you. For if this delighted you, and the Lord were sweet to you, you would imitate the humility of the Lord, not the pride of the devil. Though you have this communion of the dew of heaven and of the fatness of the earth, you still live by your sword; you either delight in or are frightened by seditions and dissensions. Change yourself, then, and take the yoke from your neck.

These things, brothers, have been said to you: few, perhaps, for the greatness of the mysteries; but many for the time, and for our strength and yours. And if perhaps this question has not been discussed in finer detail, still there are great mysteries in part, which will be found if they are treated later. Pardon both the shortness of the time and our strength and your capacity. You want to take in more: grow. You want to grow: live well. For whoever does not want to live well does not want to grow. Such is the feast that the Lord our God has set before you through the birthday of his martyr Vincent. Vincent is a name of victory. Love, then, that you may conquer: for persecution is not lacking; the devil is a persecutor; the occasion of a crown is never lacking: only let the soldier of Christ understand the battle, and know whom he is conquering. Because no open enemy of the body presses you, does the hidden persecutor not press you with the enticements of the flesh? How many evils he suggests! How many through desire, how many through fear! With what enticements he persuades you to go to sorcerers, to astrologers, when your head aches! Those who abandon God and go to the devil's amulets have been conquered by the devil. On the other hand, suppose it is suggested to someone that the devil's remedies are perhaps effective for the body, since another man is said to have been healed by them, because the devil, having received his sacrifice from him, stops attacking the body, since he has won the heart: then whoever has had these wicked remedies suggested to him and says, "I would rather die than use such remedies; if God wills, he scourges and frees me; if he knows it is necessary, let him free me; but if he knows that I must depart from this life, whether I am saddened or gladdened, I will follow the Lord's will. For see, after a short time, with what face shall I go out to the Lord? For the devil's remedies do not give me what God gives, eternal life. Why then should I buy a few days for my body at the cost of my soul?" Whoever says this, and does not go, nor sets his heart on using evil remedies, certainly conquers. I have mentioned one thing by way of example; you surely see now how much the devil suggests. You see that man lying sick, you see him gasping in bed, you see him barely moving his limbs, barely moving his tongue: this exhausted man conquers the devil. Many were crowned in the amphitheatre fighting with the beasts; many are crowned in bed conquering the devil: they seem unable to move, and within, in the heart, they have such strength, they wage such a fight. But where the fight is hidden, the victory is hidden.

Why have we said these things, brothers? So that when you celebrate the birthdays of the martyrs, you may imitate the martyrs; and not think that occasions of a crown can be lacking to you because such persecutions are lacking now. For even now persecutions from the devil are not lacking daily, whether through suggestion or through some bodily afflictions. Only know that you have a Commander who has already gone ahead into heaven: he has given you the way to follow; keep close to him. When you have conquered, do not credit it to yourself through pride, as if you had wrestled by your own strength; but rely on him who gave you strength to conquer, because he himself has conquered the world: and you are always being crowned, and you will go out of here a martyr, if you overcome all the temptations of the devil.

This rule of discipline is above all necessary for a Christian man: that he hear the word of God while he is in this world, that he attend to him who came first to save the world by mercy, and afterwards to examine it by judgment. And so our Lord Jesus Christ offered himself to us to be imitated; so that, since we are Christians, we may imitate either him or others who have imitated him. For there are some of those who are called Christians and are not, some of whom the Church has expelled like dung, such as all heresies and all schisms, which are also compared to fruitless branches cut off from the vine, and to chaff that the wind snatches from the threshing floor before the winnowing; but there are others who are wicked within and are held in the Catholic communion itself, whom the good Christian must bear with until the end, because the winnowing of this harvest's threshing floor will be only on the day of judgment. We have always sung this to you, and in the name of Christ we think it clings to your hearts. These readings that are read to you, are they read to you now for the first time, and are not the same ones repeated daily? And just as God's readings need to be repeated daily, lest the evils of the world and thorns spring up in your hearts and choke the seed that has been sown there, so the word of God must always be repeated to you, lest, having forgotten, you say you did not hear what we say we have said.

Many are coming forward, and now is the time when in God's name they hasten to receive the grace of baptism, believing that all the sins they committed before are forgiven them, absolutely all, and that they come out from it owing the Lord nothing: like that servant who was rendering account to his lord, and the lord found that he owed ten thousand talents; yet he went away owing nothing, not because he himself owed nothing, but because his lord was merciful, forgave everything, and released the debtor. And yet, brothers, how fiercely that same servant frightened us! Because he would not forgive his fellow servant, or put off the payment of a hundred denarii, his lord charged him again with the ten thousand talents he had forgiven him. So those who are to come out of baptism owing nothing, and released from all sins, must beware lest, if anyone sins against them and they will not forgive, not only will they not be forgiven thereafter, but even everything that had been forgiven is charged again. So let no one say, "Who does that, or who has done it?" By saying this to themselves people die. "Love your enemy," says the Lord; and you say, "Who does that?" Because he himself has not done it, he thinks no one could do it. The matter is in the heart: how do you see who does it? For do you think that the man who shouts has not forgiven? For sometimes someone shouts and orders a man to be beaten, and you think he has not forgiven. Why? When you beat your son, do you hold hatred in your heart? So the matter is in the heart: God alone sees whether it has been forgiven. For sometimes someone does not beat, seems to spare with his hand, and rages in his heart, and wishes the man ill within, and wants him killed: he holds an evil will against him, though he seems to repay him nothing bodily. On the other hand there are those who seem as it were to repay bodily; but that bodily correction is a kind of love: he wants him to come to a good life, and the more he loves him, the more he wants him corrected. So too God: does he not love us? Does he not urge us to love our enemies so that, as far as we can, we may be like him? For he said this: "Be perfect, then, as your Father who is in heaven, who makes his sun rise on the good and the bad, and rains on the just and the unjust." How great, then, is the love in the Lord, when for sinners and the ungodly he sent Christ to be crucified, and redeemed us at the price of his blood, we who were his enemies, loving what he hated? When we were doing these things, God sent, as the Apostle says, his Son, and handed him over for us ungodly to be killed by other ungodly men. And if so great a gift has been given to those not yet faithful, what then is kept for the faithful? See how God loves human beings. Let us pay attention, brothers: does he not scourge them? Does he not correct them? If he does not correct them, where do famines come from? Where do sicknesses, plagues and diseases come from? For all these are corrections. So just as he loves and yet corrects, so you too, if you have someone in your power, though you keep the affection of love, do not withhold the scourge of correction. For if you withhold it, you will not keep love: because he dies in his sins who perhaps, if corrected, would have left them; and rather true hatred is charged to you.

So let no one say, "Who can do that?" Strive to fulfil this in your hearts; hold fast, so that you may love. Wrestle, and you will conquer. For Christ conquers there. What do you wrestle against? You wrestle against sin, against the words of people who say mockingly, "So you don't avenge yourself? So you will stay undefended and not show him? Oh, if only he had me to deal with!" Wrestle, and conquer. For if Christ, when he suffered so much from the Jews, had wanted to command the earth to open and swallow his persecutors, could he not have done it? If, then, he who had the power bore with them until he was lifted onto the cross, and hanging on the cross said, "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing," will you, a servant redeemed by the blood of your crucified Lord, not imitate your Saviour? What need was there for him to suffer so much, who was free not to suffer? For he said, "I have power to lay down my life, and I have power to take it up again: no one takes it from me, but I lay it down, and I will take it up again." And so he did. For what happened, brothers? He was hanging on the cross, as we read to the candidates for baptism: and when he saw that all the Scriptures had been fulfilled in him, so that they even gave him vinegar, "It is finished," he said; and he bowed his head and gave up his spirit, as if he had remained there only for this, that it might be fulfilled. So he laid down his life when he willed. And that is why he was God, and they were men, who were crucified beside him. He dies more quickly, they more slowly. And when it was ordered that the bodies be taken down from the cross because of the sabbath, to be buried, they found those robbers alive and broke their legs; but the Lord was already dead, and yet one of them pierced his side with a spear, and blood and water flowed out. See your price. For what flowed out of his side, if not the sacrament which the faithful receive? Spirit, blood, and water: the Spirit which he gave up, and the blood and water which flowed from his side. By that blood and water is signified the Church that was born. And when did the blood and water come out of his side? When Christ was already sleeping on the cross: because Adam received sleep in paradise, and so Eve was brought forth from his side. See, then, your price. Imitate the humility and the footsteps of your Lord, and do not say, "Who does that?" Perhaps there is someone near you who does not do it. But if you do it in that crowd, it will be counted to you as if you found one grain on the threshing floor and endless chaff. You hardly find two grains joined together; but chaff is mixed in among the grains. So among those who want to serve God there is a din and a multitude of wicked people surrounding them on all sides; for wherever they turn, they find only wicked advisers. Be, then, like the grain, and do not worry about the chaff. The time will come for it to be separated. That is why we sang, "Judge me, O God, and distinguish my cause from an unholy nation." The Church says this, groaning among sinners. Do you think, brothers, that the Church wants to be distinguished in order to be separated from the heresies as from branches cut off? She is already separated from them. Does the Church say, "Judge me, O God, and distinguish my cause," in order to be separated from Donatus's party, or from the Arians or the Manichees? She asks to be distinguished only from those who are mixed with her, whom she must bear with until the end. But this is what she says, "Judge me, O God, and distinguish my cause": that is, let me not be judged with them and perish on the day of judgment. For now it has been said, "Let the weeds grow": and the wicked are now borne with by the good, to be separated on the day of judgment.

And so that Jacob who has just been read signifies the Christian people: for he is the younger son, while the Jewish people is Esau. The Jewish nation was indeed born of Jacob, but in the figure the Jews are rather understood as Esau, because the elder people was rejected and the younger people received the primacy. When they were struggling even in the womb, and the mother was distressed because her insides were being pushed about, she said, "Why is it thus with me? Barrenness would have been better for me than to suffer this." The Lord told her that two peoples were clashing in her womb, and two nations, and that the elder would serve the younger. What was said when they were in the womb was said again in Isaac's blessing, when he blessed the younger, though he thought he was blessing the elder. Isaac bore the person of the Law. The Law seems to have been given to the Jews, and the kingdom itself has been given to the Christians. Notice that the Law seems to promise a kingdom. It is said to the Jews, "Therefore the kingdom will be taken from you and given to a nation that does justice." It will be taken from Esau and given to Jacob. Esau had been born shaggy and hairy, that is, full of sins; sins clung to him: but the other, in order to receive the primacy, took kids' skins on his arms; and so his father blessed him, feeling his arms and finding them shaggy. But those hairs and sins were carried by Jacob, they did not cling to Jacob. So too the Church of God carries others' sins, not her own, bearing with them until the end; just as the Lord Jesus Christ too carried others' sins. And the father blessed the younger. And how did he bless him? A holy mystery of what they were to be. For the Scriptures want sharp eyes. He blessed his younger son, and seems to have been deceived, as it were, into blessing one in place of the other. The one who had gone hunting comes, bringing what his father had ordered, and says, "Father, eat, as you wished." Isaac said, "Who are you?" And he: "I am Esau, your elder son." And he says, "So you are Esau? Then who is it that brought me food, and I ate, and blessed him, and he is blessed?" Be angry with the deceiver! Be angry with the cheat! Rather say: "Why did he deceive me? Why did he trick me? Let his brother take that blessing away, and let him be in misfortune." Does not this thing, done in mystery, cry out that the elder is to serve the younger? So he too receives such a blessing. But he added, "You shall be your brother's servant." When the other said, "Are the blessings exhausted? Bless me too," he said, "Since I have made him such, what have I to give you?" And he said, "Bless me too, father." And he wrung it out and received a nearly similar blessing, all abundance of the dew of heaven and the fertility of the earth. And he immediately added, "And you shall serve your brother. And it shall be so for you when you loose his yoke from your neck." What does it mean, "And it shall be so for you when you loose his yoke from your neck," except that it shows that those whom Esau prefigured are sinners in such a way that they have it in their power and in their free choice to be changed and joined to their brother?

Pay attention to the mystery. See, the Jew is the servant of the Christian. And this is plain, and Jacob has filled the world, as you see. And so that you may know that these things were said of the future, consider the history itself, and see that "The elder shall serve the younger" was not fulfilled in those two themselves. For we read that Esau became very rich and began to reign in all abundance. But Jacob went off to pasture another man's sheep. And when he had begun to return and to fear his brother, as was being read just now, he sends I know not how great gifts of cattle, and sends a servant too to say, "See, gifts from your brother." He would not see him before he had appeased him with gifts; and afterwards, when the gifts had been accepted, he saw him. And when Jacob had come to him, he bowed down to him from afar. How, then, "the elder shall serve the younger," when the younger is seen to bow down to the elder? But these things were not fulfilled in the history precisely so that they might be understood as said of the future. The younger son received the primacy, and the elder son lost the primacy. See, Jacob has filled the earth; he holds nations and kingdoms. A Roman emperor, already a Christian, ordered that the Jews should not approach Jerusalem itself. And scattered through the world, they have become as it were the keepers of our books. As slaves, when their masters go into the lecture hall, carry the books behind them and sit outside, so the elder son has become to the younger. For sometimes people raise questions about the Scriptures, and something certain is learned from the Jews' copies. So they have been scattered for this purpose, to keep the books for us. So the elder serves the younger. For see with what dignity the Christian people stands, and in what decline the Jewish people is. When they have perhaps dared to stir even a little against the Christians, you have heard what happened to them recently. So now it is true: "The elder shall serve the younger." How, then, that blessing, "You shall have of the dew of heaven and of the fertility of the earth"? He blessed the elder as he blessed the younger. But to the elder it was said, "And you shall be your brother's servant. And this shall be when you loose his yoke from your neck." How many there are who have loosed the yoke from their neck and become our brothers! Consider how many Jews have believed. And now, if you find a Jew and preach the Lord Jesus Christ to him, and he believes, does he not loose the yoke from his neck? And how many thousands did this in the first times of the faith? All who believed then, as we read, became from servants brothers and fellow heirs.

So the Church, which says, "Judge me, O God, and distinguish my cause from an unholy nation," does not want to be distinguished from Esau, from whom she is already distinguished, but from wicked Christians. For you have heard how this Jacob, in whom the Christian people is figured, wrestled with the Lord. For the Lord appeared to him, that is, an angel bearing the person of God: he wrestled with him, and wanted to hold him and seize him. He wrestled; he prevailed and held him; when he held him, he did not let him go unless he was blessed. The Lord grant, brothers, that I may unfold so great a mystery. He wrestles, he prevails; and he wants to be blessed by the one he has prevailed over. What does it mean, then, that he wrestles and wants to hold? The Lord says in the Gospel, "The kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent seize it." This is what we were saying a little while ago: Wrestle, so that you may hold Christ, so that you may love your enemy. For you hold Christ here if you love your enemy. And what does the Lord himself say, that is, the angel in the person of the Lord, when Jacob prevailed and held him? He touched the broad part of his thigh, and it withered, and so Jacob limped. He says to him, "Let me go, for it is already morning." And he: "I will not let you go unless you bless me." And he blessed him: how? By changing his name. "You shall not be called Jacob, but Israel; for since you have prevailed with God, you shall prevail with men also." This is the blessing. See one man: in part he is touched and withers; and in part he is blessed. The one same man has withered in part and limps, and in part is blessed. But what does it mean (we say it as far as the Lord suggests, without prejudice to a better understanding), what does it mean, "See, morning has come, let me go"? It is what the Lord says after his passion to the woman who wanted to hold his feet: "Do not touch me; for I have not yet ascended to the Father." What does this mean? For when that very reading was read, I once discussed how it was said, "Do not touch me; I have not yet ascended to the Father." Why? Did no one touch him bodily except when he had ascended to the Father? He was still here; the disciple who did not believe felt his scars. How then did he not want to be touched, unless this was said figuratively? That woman was the Church: and this is, "Do not touch me": do not touch me carnally, but as I am, equal to the Father. "Do not touch me": because you are touching not me but my flesh. For Paul says, in the advance of his progress, "Even if we once knew Christ according to the flesh, we know him so no longer"; and, "The old things have passed away; see, new things have come; and all things are from God." What does "Even if we once knew Christ according to the flesh, we know him so no longer" mean? That when we knew him carnally, we thought him only a man; but after his grace shone on us, we understood the Word equal to the Father. So he was holding him and wrestling, Jacob wishing as it were to embrace him in a carnal way. But he said, "Let me go": that is, let go of the carnal way, because see, it is already morning, so that you may be enlightened spiritually: that is, do not think me a man. "Let me go, for it is already morning." Morning we understand as the light of truth and of wisdom, through which all things were made. You will enjoy it when this night has passed, that is, the iniquity of this world. For it will be morning then, when the Lord comes, so that he may be seen by us as he is seen by the angels. For now we see through a mirror in a riddle, but then face to face. Let us hold fast, then, brothers, to what was said, "Let me go, for it is already morning." But what did Jacob say? "I will not let you go unless you bless me." Because the Lord first blesses us through the flesh. The faithful know what they receive, because they are blessed through the flesh; and they know that they would not be blessed unless that flesh had been crucified and given for the life of the world. And how is he blessed? Because he prevailed with God, because he held on strongly, and persevered, and did not let go from his hands what Adam lost. Let us hold, then, believers, what we have received, so that we may be found worthy to be blessed.

The withered part of Jacob signifies wicked Christians; so that in the one Jacob there is both blessing and limping. He is blessed in the part of those who live well; he limps in the part of those who live badly. But as yet both are in one man: afterwards there will be a separation and a sorting out; which the Church longs for in the Psalm, saying, "Judge me, O God, and distinguish my cause from an unholy nation." So it is indeed, for the Gospel says, "If your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it from you. For it is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one foot than to go with two feet into the eternal fire." These wicked people, then, are to be cut off at the end. Now the Church is lame: she puts one foot down firmly and has the other weak. Consider the pagans, brothers. Sometimes they find good Christians serving God, and they admire them, and are drawn, and believe. Sometimes they notice those who live badly, and say, "Look at the Christians!" But those who live badly belong to the broad part of Jacob's thigh that was touched and withered. And the touch of the Lord is the hand of the Lord, correcting and giving life. So in part he is blessed and in part he withers. And the Lord has shown these people who live badly in the Church; for this is why it is written in the Gospel that when the blade had grown, the weeds appeared: because when people begin to make progress, then they begin to notice the wicked. These things are known to you; it is by God's gift that they are recognized. But for now the weeds must be borne with until the end of the harvest, lest perhaps in rooting up the weeds the wheat be rooted up with them. But the time will come when the Church will be heard as she says, "Judge me, O God, and distinguish my cause from an unholy nation": when the Lord comes in his glory with the holy angels, and all nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate them as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats; and the righteous will be put on the right, and the goats on the left; and to the one it will be said, "Come, blessed of my Father, receive the kingdom"; but to the others, "Go into the eternal fire, which is prepared for the devil and his angels."

While the holy readings were being read, we turned our minds to what is written in the first reading that was recited to us, and we take care to share briefly with your Holiness what the Lord suggests, lest, taking the divine mysteries carnally, you not only fail to advance but even fall away. What first meets our eyes in that divine reading is that God appeared to Moses. But to appear through his own substance, as he is, he deigns only to pure hearts. For so it is written in the Gospel: "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." But if ever God willed to appear to the bodily eyes of the saints, he appeared not through himself but through a visible and perceptible creature, so far as it can be perceived by this flesh: either through a voice sounding in the ears, or through fire to the eyes, or through an angel appearing in some visible form but bearing the person of God. So we understand, brothers, that God appeared to Moses. For that majesty which made heaven and earth, and which rules the whole universe, to which the angels always cleave, contemplating its beauty with pure minds, could not appear to the mortal eyes of man except by taking up a visible and perceptible creature belonging to these visible eyes of the body; since even the Wisdom of God itself, through which all things were made, would not have appeared to human eyes had it not taken human flesh. So just as the Word of God, that is, the Son of God, took flesh in order to appear to eyes, so God has always, in order to appear to the eyes of men, deigned to appear in some visible creature. For you have it most plainly in the Acts of the Apostles that an angel appeared to Moses in the bush. Is that Scripture true and this false? Or that true and this false? What then? If we are Christians, if we believe rightly, both are true. If, then, both are true, how did God appear here, and how is an angel said to have appeared there, unless that Spirit who said in the Acts of the Apostles that an angel appeared explained this reading of how God appeared? That statement is the explanation of this obscurity: so that you would not understand that God appeared through himself, it is explained to you there how God appeared through a creature, an angel. Why, then, are you surprised that, when an angel appears, it is said, "God said," and "God called Moses, and he came to the place," and "the Lord said to Moses"? Because the angel, the temple, is not what is attended to, but the one who dwells in the angel. For the angel himself was the temple of God. For if he deigns to dwell and speak in a man, so that when a prophet speaks it is said, "God said," how much more through an angel? And when it is said, "God said through Isaiah," what was Isaiah? Was he not a man bearing flesh, born of father and mother, like all of us? And yet he speaks, and what do we say in his utterances? "Thus says the Lord." How, then, is it God, if it is Isaiah, unless because it is God through Isaiah? So here too, when the angel speaks, God is said to speak. Why, if not because God speaks through the angel?

Now that the question is solved, notice also this: of what thing it seems to have been made a sign, that he appeared in a bush; and the bush was not burned, not set on fire: it appeared as fire, and did not set the bush on fire. Do we think the bush signifies something good, when it is made of thorns? For if the fire had consumed the thorns, it would signify that the word of the Lord spoken to the Jews had consumed their sins too, and that that light had ended their iniquities. For if the fire is in the bush as the Law is in the Jews, the thorns of the bush are as the sins of the Jews: so here the fire did not burn up the thorns, as the Law did not burn up sins.

And the Lord speaks to Moses (you know these things already, and we should not keep you longer because of the shortness of time): "I am who I am"; "He who is has sent me." For when he asked God's name, this was said: "I am who I am. You shall say this to the sons of Israel: He who is has sent me to you." What does this mean? O God, O our Lord, what are you called? "I am called Is," he said. What does "I am called Is" mean? Because I remain for ever, because I cannot be changed. For things that are changed are not, because they do not remain. For what is, remains. But what is changed was something and will be something; yet it is not, because it is changeable. So God's unchangeableness deigned to make itself known by this name, "I am who I am."

What does it mean, then, that afterwards he again gave himself another name, when it was said: "And God said to Moses: I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob; this is my name for ever"? How is it that there I am called this, "because I am," and see, here another name, "I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob"? Because, as God is unchangeable, he made all things in mercy, and the Son of God himself deigned, by taking changeable flesh while remaining what the Word of God is, to come and help man. So he who is clothed himself with mortal flesh, so that it could be said, "I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob."

Next, consider the signs that he gave Moses, when he said, "If the people say to me, 'God did not send you,' by what signs shall I show that you sent me?" It was said, "Throw down the rod you have in your hand"; and he threw down the rod, and it became a serpent, and Moses shuddered. The Lord said again, "Take hold of its tail"; he took hold of it, and it became a rod as it was. He gave another sign too: "Put your hand into your bosom"; and he put it in. "Bring it out"; he brought it out, and it became white as snow, that is, leprous. For a white color in human skin is a disease. "Put it into your bosom again"; he put it in, and it recovered its color. He gave him a third sign: "Take water from the river and pour it on the dry ground"; he took it and poured it, and it was turned into blood. "By these signs the people will hear you: if they do not hear at the first, at the second and third they will hear."

Let us try, as far as God helps, to state what these things signify. The rod signifies kingship; the serpent, mortality. For death was served to man by the serpent. The Lord deigned to take that death upon himself. So the rod, coming to earth, took the form of a serpent, because the kingdom of God, which is Christ Jesus, came to earth. He was clothed with mortality, which he nailed to the cross. Your Holiness knows that when that stiff-necked and proud people murmured against God in the desert, they began to be bitten by serpents and to fall from the bites. In his mercy God gave a remedy, a remedy that brought health in the present but proclaimed a wisdom to come. He said to Moses: "Hang a bronze serpent on a pole in the middle of the desert, and say to the people, 'Whoever is struck, let him look at this serpent.'" And those who were struck looked at the serpent and were healed. And the Lord bears witness in the Gospel to such a sign. For when he was speaking with Nicodemus, he said: "As Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of man be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life." That is: whoever is struck by the serpents of sins, let him look to Christ, and he will have health in the forgiveness of sins. So, brothers, this is the mortality which was taken up by the Lord, which his body must have, whose head is a man in heaven. So the Church has mortality, because the wound was inflicted through the serpent's persuasion. For we owe death on account of the sin of the first man: but through it we shall come to eternal life, through Jesus Christ our Lord. But when does it come to life, and return to the kingdom? At the end of the world. That is why he held the tail, where the end is, so as to restore it to what it was before.

What is that hand? It is certain that that hand too signifies the people itself. What is a man's bosom? The bosom of Moses is the secret place of God. While man was in the secret place of God, he was unharmed and of good color. He went out of the secret place of God; Adam went out of paradise, having offended God, and became diseased. So that hand became white: but it returned to the bosom, through the bosom of our Lord Jesus Christ, and recovered its color. And what is that water? That water signifies wisdom. For water has often been used as a likeness of wisdom; and it was said, "There shall be in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life." But that water, wisdom, which on the earth became blood, does it not show us the Word made flesh and dwelling among us? Certainly it does. So all things of the people to come are signs and mysteries of our Lord Jesus Christ. And if there are any other sacred signs in the ancient books, whether we understand them or do not understand them, they want one who seeks, not one who finds fault. Let us ask, then, seek and knock, that it may be opened to us. To them the sacred signs were foretold as future: we see them present in the Church.

When the divine reading was being read, we too waited in our hearts on the great miracle which had made Moses, the servant of God, most attentive; for we too were made attentive to how fire appeared in the bush and the bush was not burned. Next we noticed that holy Scripture first said that the angel of the Lord appeared to Moses in the bush. Then Moses spoke no longer as with an angel, but as with the Lord. Thirdly we noticed that when Moses asked God's name, so as to have something to say to the sons of Israel when they asked what was the name of the God who had sent him to them, he answered: "I am who I am." And not in passing, but commending it by repetition, he added: "So you shall say to the sons of Israel: He who is has sent me to you." Finally, having stated his name, he added further: "You shall say this to them: The Lord God of your fathers, the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you. And this is my name for ever." Hear about these things what the Lord grants. They are great, indeed, like the wrappings of God's mysteries: if we tried to unroll them fittingly and sufficiently, neither strength nor time would suffice.

What, then, we can say briefly is this: not in vain, not emptily, not without signifying some hidden thing, was there a flame in the bush, and the bush was not burned. For the bush is a kind of thorn plant; and what the earth produced for the sinner could not be set down in any praise. For it was said at the very beginning to the man who sinned, "The earth shall bring forth thorns and thistles for you." Nor ought we to think it something good that the bush was not burned, that is, was not caught by the flame. For if the flame in which the angel, or the Lord, appeared signifies something good (which is why, when the Holy Spirit came, divided tongues as of fire were seen by them), we ought to be caught by this fire, not to escape burning because of our hardness. The bush which it did not burn was a people that struggled against God. So the bush signified the thorny people of the Jews, to whom Moses was being sent. And so the bush was not burned, because the hardness of the Jews, as I said, struggled against the law of God. For if that people were not signified by thorns, Christ would not have been crowned with thorns by it.

That the same one who spoke to Moses is called both the angel of the Lord and the Lord is a great question, and it ought not to have a rash asserter but a cautious inquirer. There are two opinions that can be put forward on it, and whichever of them is true, both are in accordance with the faith. When I said, "whichever of them is true," I meant: which of them the writer intended. For when we, examining the Scriptures, perceive something that the writer perhaps did not intend, we still must not perceive anything that is at odds with the rule of faith, the rule of truth. So I put forward both opinions; perhaps there is also a third, which escapes me. Of these two that I set out, choose which you like. Some say that he was called both the angel of the Lord and the Lord because he was Christ, of whom the prophet openly says that he is the Angel of great counsel. For "angel" is the name of an office, not of a nature. For "angelos" in Greek is what is called "messenger" in Latin. "Messenger," then, is the name of an activity: by acting, that is, by announcing something, one is called a messenger. Who would deny that Christ announced to us the kingdom of heaven? Further, an angel, that is, a messenger, is sent by the one who announces something through him. And who would deny that Christ was sent? He who says so often, "I came not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me": he is properly the one sent. For Siloam, that pool, means "Sent." That is why he told the man whose eyes he had anointed with mud to wash his face there. For no one's sight is opened unless he is cleansed by Christ. So the same is angel and the same is Lord.

But here something comes up that must be guarded against. For there is no lack of heretics who say that the natures of the Father and the Son are distinct and discordant, and that they are not of one and the same substance. But the Catholic faith believes the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit to be one God, a Trinity of one substance, inseparably, equally, not confused by mixture, not separated by distinction. Those, then, who try to persuade people that the Son is not of the same substance as the Father argue from the fact that the Son was seen by the fathers. "The Father," they say, "was not seen; and the invisible and the visible are different natures." "And that is why," they say, "it was said of the Father, 'whom no man has seen or can see.'" So that he who was seen not only by Moses but also by Abraham, and not only by Abraham but even by Adam himself and the other fathers, should be believed to be not God the Father but rather the Son, so that he may be understood to be a creature. The Catholic Church does not say this. But what does it say? God the Father, God the Son; the Father unchangeable, the Son unchangeable; the Father eternal, the Son coeternal; the Father invisible, the Son invisible. For if you say the Father is invisible and the Son visible, you have distinguished, or rather separated, the substances. How have you found grace, you who have lost the faith? This question is solved, then, as follows: God, Father and Son and Holy Spirit, is invisible in his own nature; but he appeared when he willed, to whom he willed, not as he is but as he willed, he whom all things serve. For if your soul, though it is invisible in your body, puts forth a voice in order to appear, and the voice in which your soul appears when you speak is not the substance of your soul (the soul is one thing, the voice another), and yet it appears, and in a thing that it is not itself: so too God, if he appeared in fire, is not fire; if he appeared in smoke, is not smoke; if he appeared in sound, is not sound. These things are not God, but they point to God. Holding this fast, we believe without anxiety that the Son who appeared to Moses could be called both Lord and angel of the Lord.

But those who think that the angel of the Lord truly was an angel, not Christ, but an angel sent, must be asked for an account of why he was called Lord. For just as those who say it was Christ are asked why he was called an angel, so those who say it was an angel are asked why he was called Lord. Now I have already mentioned how those who say it was Christ get out of the question why he was called an angel: because the prophet openly called the Lord Christ the Angel of great counsel. Those, then, who say it was an angel must answer why he was called Lord. They too answer: just as in the Scriptures a prophet speaks and it is said that the Lord speaks, not because the prophet is the Lord, but because the Lord is in the prophet; so too when the Lord deigns to speak through an angel, as through an apostle, as through a prophet, he is rightly called both an angel on his own account and the Lord on account of God dwelling in him. Certainly Paul was a man and Christ is God; and yet Paul himself says, "Do you want to have proof of him who speaks in me, Christ?" The prophet too said, "I will hear what the Lord God will speak in me." He who speaks in a man speaks in an angel. So the angel of the Lord appeared to Moses and said, "I am who I am." It is the voice of the indweller, not of the temple. For if he was Christ because he was called an angel, since he was one, what do we do when three appeared to Abraham? What do we say here? Three appeared, and Abraham, as if speaking to one, said, "Lord." What do we say? Why three? Was it the Trinity itself? Why then "Lord"? Because the Trinity is one Lord, they are not three lords; and the Trinity is one God, not three: one substance, three persons. For the Father is not the Son, nor the Son the Father, nor is the Holy Spirit either the Father or the Son. But the Father is Father only of the Son; the Son is Son only of the Father; the Spirit is of both the Father and the Son. Some, however, say that among those three one stood out, whom Abraham called Lord, when he had appeared with two, as Christ with his angels. But what do we do, since when two were sent to Sodom, appearing to Lot, Abraham's brother, he too recognizes divinity in them; and though he sees two, he calls them Lord? The one called the three Lord, and the other called the two Lord. So that we may not divide the Trinity and make a duality in Sodom, I think we understand it better in this way: that our fathers recognized the Lord in the angels, understood the one dwelling in his dwelling place, and gave glory not to the bearers but to the one seated in them. This opinion is confirmed not only by the Epistle written to the Hebrews, where it is said, "For if the word spoken through angels was made firm" (for he was speaking of the Old Testament, and he made the point that angels spoke there; but God was honored in his angels, and through the angels the inner indweller was heard); but also in the Acts of the Apostles Stephen says, accusing and rebuking the Jews, "Stiff-necked, and uncircumcised in heart and ears." Stiff-necked: thorns not burned. "You always resist the Holy Spirit." That is why the bush was not burned, because the flames of the Spirit were resisted by the thorns of sins: "You always resist the Holy Spirit. Which of the prophets did your fathers not kill?" And here is the point at issue: "you who received the Law at the decrees of angels, and did not keep it." If he had said "of an angel," and not "of angels," there would be no lack of people to say, "It is Christ, because he was called the Angel of great counsel." Christ is an angel; is Christ angels? The apostle Paul too says that the seed of Abraham was dispensed: "ordained," he says, "through angels by the hand of a mediator."

So the angel, and the Lord in the angel, said to Moses when he asked his name, "I am who I am. You shall say to the sons of Israel: He who is has sent me to you." "To be" is the name of unchangeableness. For all things that are changed cease to be what they were and begin to be what they were not. True being, pure being, genuine being, belongs only to him who is not changed. He has being to whom it is said, "You will change them, and they will be changed; but you are the same." What is "I am who I am" but "I am eternal"? What is "I am who I am" but "I cannot be changed"? No creature can say it, not heaven, not earth, not an angel, not a Power, not Thrones, not Dominions, not Authorities. Since, then, this is the name of eternity, it is something more that he deigned to have a name of mercy: "I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob." The one is in himself, the other is toward us. For if he wished to be only what he is in himself, what would we be? If Moses understood, or rather because Moses understood, when it was said to him, "I am who I am," "He who is has sent me," he believed this was a great thing for men, he saw that this was far removed from men. For whoever has worthily understood this which is, and truly is, and has been touched in any way by the light of the most true being, even fleetingly, as by a flash, sees himself far below, far, far removed, far unlike; as that man says, "I said in my ecstasy." For with his mind caught up he saw I know not what, which was beyond him. It was what was true. "I said," he says, "in my ecstasy." What? "I am cast away from the sight of your eyes." So when Moses saw himself far unequal to what was being said, not to what was being seen, and as it were less able to take it in, and so, inflamed with the very desire to see what is, said to God with whom he was speaking, "Show me yourself": as if, then, he despaired, being so far unlike that excellence of being, God raises him up in his despair, because he saw him afraid; as if to say: Because I said, "I am who I am," and "He who is has sent me," you have understood what it is to be, and have despaired of grasping it: lift up your hope: "I am the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob"; I am what I am in such a way, I am being itself in such a way, I am with being itself in such a way, that I do not wish to be lacking to men. If in any way we can seek the Lord and search for him who is, and who is indeed not far from each one of us: for in him we live and move and are: let us, then, praise his being beyond words and love his mercy. Amen.

With the firmness of the events first laid down as a foundation, we ought to seek their meaning; lest, with the foundation taken away, we seem to want to build in the air. But what was done first, as a sign, that the rod was turned into a serpent, does not belong to the ten plagues. For it was the very approach to Pharaoh, by which Moses was accredited as the one who would lead God's people out of Egypt: the stubborn were not yet being struck, but were already being frightened by a divine sign. The rod signifies the kingdom of God; and the kingdom of God is, of course, the people of God. The serpent is the time of this mortality; for death was served by the serpent. So falling, as it were, from the hand of the Lord to the earth, they were made mortal: hence the rod, thrown from the hand, became a serpent. Pharaoh's magicians did the same; when their rods were thrown down they became serpents: but first Moses' serpent, that is, Moses' rod, swallowed all the magicians' serpents. Then at last, when its tail was grasped, it became a rod again, and the kingdom returned to the hand. So the magicians' rods are the peoples of the ungodly, conquered by the name of Christ; when they are brought over into his body, they are as it were swallowed by Moses' serpent: until the kingdom of God returns to the hand of God, but at the end of the mortal age, which the serpent's tail signifies, and a great sign is made. You have heard what you ought to desire: hear what you ought to avoid. The first commandment in the Law is about worshipping one God: "You shall have," it says, "no other gods besides me." The first plague of the Egyptians: water turned into blood. Compare the first commandment with the first plague: understand the one God, from whom are all things, in the likeness of water, from which all things are generated. And what does blood refer to, if not to mortal flesh? What, then, is the turning of water into blood, except that "their foolish heart was darkened"? "For claiming to be wise they became fools, and they changed the glory of the incorruptible God into the likeness of an image of corruptible man." The glory of the incorruptible God is like water; the likeness of an image of corruptible man is like blood. And this happens in the heart of the ungodly. For God remains unchangeable. Nor was God changed because the Apostle said, "They changed."

The second commandment: "You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain." For whoever takes the name of the Lord his God in vain will not be cleansed. The name of the Lord our God, Jesus Christ, is truth: for he himself said, "I am the truth." So truth cleanses, vanity defiles. And since whoever speaks the truth speaks from God, while whoever speaks a lie speaks from his own: to speak the truth is to speak rationally; to speak vanity is rather to make noise than to speak. Rightly, since the second commandment is the love of truth, to which the love of vanity is contrary, and truth speaks while vanity makes a din: see the second plague, contrary to this second commandment. What is that second plague? An abundance of frogs. You have vanity plainly signified, if you attend to the croaking of frogs. See the lovers of truth, who do not take the name of the Lord their God in vain, speaking wisdom among the perfect, and also among the imperfect. Not, indeed, speaking what they cannot grasp; yet not departing from the truth and going over to vanity. For though the imperfect do not grasp it if anything a little loftier is discussed about the Word of God, God with God, through whom all things were made, and though they can grasp what Paul speaks among them as among little ones in Christ, Jesus Christ and him crucified, yet the one is not truth and the other vanity. But it would be vanity if we said that Christ did not really undergo death but feigned it; if we said those wounds were a phantom, that the blood that flowed from the wounds was not real but simulated; that he showed false scars as after false wounds. But when we say all these things are true, say they really happened, believe and preach them as certain, plain and accomplished, then, even if we do not speak of his sublime and unchangeable truth, we still do not go into vanity. But those who say that all those things in Christ were false and simulated are frogs croaking in the marsh: they can make a noise with their voices, they cannot convey the teaching of wisdom. In fact, in the Church those who cling to the truth speak of the Truth through which all things were made; the Truth, the Word made flesh and dwelling among us; the Truth, Christ born of God, one from one, only-begotten and coeternal; the Truth, who took the form of a servant, born of the virgin Mary, who suffered, was crucified, rose again, ascended: Truth everywhere, both what the perfect grasp and what a little one can grasp; Truth both in bread and in milk: in the bread of the grown, in the milk of little ones. For the same bread passes through flesh in order to become milk. But those who contradict this truth, and, deceived in their vanity, deceive others, are frogs bringing weariness to the ears, not food to minds. Hear, finally, men speaking rationally: "There are no speech nor words in which their voices are not heard": but voices that are not empty; for "their sound has gone out into all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world." And if you want to understand the frogs on the other hand, recall that verse of the Psalm: "They have spoken vanities, each to his neighbor."

The third commandment: "Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy." In this third commandment there is conveyed a certain proclamation of rest, which is tranquillity of heart and mind, produced by a good conscience. There is holiness there, because the Spirit of God is there. See, then, what rest, that is, quiet, is. "Upon whom," he says, "shall my Spirit rest? Upon the humble and quiet one, who trembles at my words." So the restless leap away from the Holy Spirit: lovers of quarrels, sowers of slanders, more eager for contention than for truth; by their restlessness they do not let into themselves the spiritual quiet of the sabbath. Against their restlessness it is said, as if so that they may have the sabbath, the holiness of God's Spirit, in their hearts: "Be gentle," it says, "in hearing the word, that you may understand." What am I to understand? God saying: Cease from your restlessness; let there be no tumult in your heart, with fancies flitting about through corruption and stinging you: let there be none. For so you will understand God saying to you, "Be still, and see that I am God." You will not be still because of your restlessness; blinded by the corruption of your contentions, you demand to see what you cannot. For consider the third plague, contrary to this third commandment. Gnats were born from the mud in the land of Egypt: they are tiny flies, most restless, flying about without order, rushing into the eyes, not letting a man rest; while they are driven off they rush back, when they are chased away they return again; just like the utterly empty fancies of the hearts of contentious people. Keep the commandment; beware of the plague.

The fourth commandment is, "Honor your father and your mother." Contrary to this is the fourth plague of the Egyptians, the kynomyia. What is kynomyia? The dog-fly: it is a Greek word. It is doglike not to acknowledge one's parents. Nothing is so doglike as when those who begot us are not acknowledged. Rightly, then, are the puppies of dogs born blind.

The fifth commandment is, "You shall not commit adultery." The fifth plague is death among the cattle of the Egyptians. Let us compare: take a man contemplating adultery, not content with his own marriage: he will not tame a certain appetite of the flesh in himself, which we have in common with cattle. For to lie together and to beget belongs also to cattle; to reason and to understand belongs to man. So reason, which presides in the mind, ought, as ruling and governing, to rein in the lower movements of the flesh, not to let them loose without measure and unlawfully, here and there, wandering at large. And so it has been given by nature to cattle themselves, by the Creator's ordering, that they are not stirred toward the females and to mating except at certain times: for at other times the beast does not restrain itself by reason, but becomes sluggish altogether as the impulse itself cools. Man, however, can always be stirred precisely because he can also rein the impulse in. The Creator gave you the rule of reason; he granted you commandments of continence, like reins on lower beasts. You hold what a beast cannot; and so you hope for what a beast cannot. You toil somewhat in restraining yourself; the beast does not toil: but you will rejoice for ever in an eternity to which the beast does not come. If the work wearies you, let the wage console you: for it is itself patience, to rein in the inner impulse, and not to let loose in every direction, like a beast, what you have in common with a beast. But if you despise yourself, and neglect in yourself the image of God in which he made you, overcome by desire for things suggested to you, then, as if you had lost the man, you will be a beast; not as though changed into the nature of a beast, but having in the form of a man the likeness of a beast, you who do not listen to him who says, "Do not be like the horse and the mule, which have no understanding." But perhaps you choose to be a beast, and to roam with free lust, reining in the appetite of the flesh by no law of continence. Consider the plague: if you are not afraid to be a beast, at least be afraid to die.

The sixth commandment: "You shall not kill." The sixth plague: sores on the body and blisters boiling and festering, and burning wounds from the ashes of the furnace. Such are murderous souls; they burn with anger, because through the anger of murder brotherhood has perished. People burn with anger; they burn also with grace: but the heat of health is one thing, the heat of a sore another. Murders conceived everywhere bubble up like burning pustules, and there is nothing sound: it burns, but not from the Spirit of God. For both he who wants to help burns, and he who wants to kill burns: the one by the commandment, the other by disease; the one with good works, the other with festering sores. If we could see the souls of murderers, we would lament them more than the rotting bodies of the ulcerated.

There follows "You shall not steal," the seventh commandment; and the seventh plague, hail on the crops. What you take away against the commandment, you lose from heaven. For no one has an unjust gain without a just loss. For example, he who steals gains a garment, but by heaven's judgment loses his faith. Where there is gain, there is loss: gain visibly, loss invisibly; gain from his own blindness, loss from the Lord's cloud. For nothing happens without providence, dearly beloved. Or do you really think that what people suffer they suffer while God sleeps? These things seem to happen at random: clouds gather, showers pour, hail is hurled, the earth is shaken by thunder, terrified by lightning; they are thought to happen at random and as if they did not belong to divine providence. Against such thoughts that Psalm keeps watch: "Praise the Lord from the earth" (after praises had been spoken from heaven), "dragons and all deeps, fire, hail, snow, ice, stormy wind, which do his word." So those who steal outwardly from their evil desire are hailed on inwardly by the just judgment of God. Oh, if they could look into the field of their heart, they would surely mourn, finding nothing there to put into the mouth of the mind; even if in their theft they found something to put into the greed of the belly, the hunger of the inner man would be greater: a greater hunger, a more dangerous plague, a heavier death. Many walk about dead, and many criminals exult in empty riches. Finally, Scripture calls the servant of God rich within: "The hidden man of your heart," it says, "which is rich before God." Not rich before men, but rich before God; and where God sees, there he is rich. What good is it to you, then, if you steal where man does not see, and are hailed on where God sees?

The eighth commandment: "You shall not bear false witness." The eighth plague: the locust, a creature harmful with its teeth. And what does a false witness want, if not to harm by biting and to consume by lying? Finally, the Apostle, warning men of God not to attack one another with false accusations, says, "If you bite and devour one another, see that you are not consumed by one another."

The ninth commandment: "You shall not covet your neighbor's wife." The ninth plague: thick darkness. For there is a kind of adultery against which a commandment was given above, and there is also one in not seeking to violate the chastity of another man's wife. For a man is an adulterer who does not go to another man's wife, merely because he is not content with his own. But now, not only to sin beside one's own wife, but even to make an attempt on another's: that is truly thick darkness. For nothing so pains the heart of the one who suffers it; and whoever does this to another would want to suffer nothing less. Every man is readier for another's wife; but I do not know whether there is anyone who would bear this tolerably. Oh, the thick darkness of those who do such things, who covet such things! Truly they are blinded by a horrible madness. For it is an untamed madness to trample on a husband's wife.

The tenth commandment: "You shall not covet anything of your neighbor's; not his cattle, not his property, not his beast of burden; you shall covet nothing at all of your neighbor's." Opposed to this evil is the tenth plague, the death of the firstborn. When I look for some comparison in this plague, nothing occurs to me for the moment; perhaps it will occur to those who search better and more carefully: unless it is that the one who keeps all the things he has for his heirs is blamed. But here the one who covets his neighbor's goods cries out, and the one who takes them by theft, and the one who steals something of his neighbor's can steal nothing but his neighbor's goods. But a commandment about theft has already been given above, in which you are to understand robbery too. For Scripture would not give a commandment about theft and keep silent about robbery, had it not wanted you to understand that if it is punishable to take things secretly, it deserves a much greater penalty to seize them by violence. So taking from an unwilling person, whether secretly or openly, has its own commandment. But to covet your neighbor's goods, which God marks in the heart, is not allowed, even if you seek a lawful succession to them. In fact, those who want to possess others' goods as if lawfully seek to be made heirs by the dying. For what seems so just as to possess a thing left to oneself, to have it by common law? What does a man do before you? "It was left to me; I came into it by inheritance; I read the will." Nothing seems more just than this voice of avarice. You praise him as one who possesses by right; God condemns him as one who covets unjustly. See what kind of man you are, who wish to be made someone's heir. You do not want him to have heirs. And among heirs nothing is dearer than the firstborn. So you will be punished in your firstborn, you who, by coveting the goods of others, seek under a shadow of right what was not due to you by right. And indeed, brothers, it is easy to lose firstborn sons bodily. For people die, whether before their parents or after their parents; they die who were going to die: what is grievous is that through this hidden and unjust covetousness you lose the firstborn of your heart. For the firstborn in us bears the image of the grace of God; newly born, born first, among all, as it were, the children of our heart, the firstborn is faith. For no one works well unless faith has gone before. All your good works are your spiritual children, but among them faith is your firstborn. Whoever you are who secretly covet another's goods, inwardly you lose your faith. For you will first, without doubt, be a pretender, attentive not out of love but out of fraud; as if loving the one by whom you want to be made heir, you seek his death while you love him, and in order to see yourself the possessor of his goods, you begrudge him a successor.

Well then, brothers, having run through the ten commandments and the ten plagues, comparing those who despise the commandments with the stubbornness of the Egyptians, we have made you careful, so that you may keep your goods safe in the commandments of God; your goods, I say, your goods of your inner coffer, of your inner treasury; your goods, which neither thief nor robber nor powerful neighbor can take from you; where neither moth nor rust is to be feared; with which even a rich man who is shipwrecked goes out. For so you will be the people of God among the wicked Egyptians, while they suffer these things in their hearts and you remain unharmed in your inner selves, until the people is led out of Egypt by its own exodus; and this happens: for that was done once, this never ceases to be done.

There is no divine and true sanctification except from the Holy Spirit. For it is not without reason that the Holy Spirit is so called in a proper sense; though the Father is holy and the Son is holy, yet the Spirit received this as his proper name, so that the third person in the Trinity should be called the Holy Spirit. He rests upon the humble and quiet person, as in his sabbath. For this reason the number seven is also assigned to the Holy Spirit, as our Scriptures sufficiently show. Let better people see better things, and greater people greater things, and say and explain something subtler and more divine about this number seven; but I, as is enough for the present, see this and remind you to see it: that this sevenfold principle is found to be assigned properly to the Holy Spirit, because sanctification sounds on the seventh day. And how do we prove that the sevenfold principle of number is assigned to the Holy Spirit? Isaiah says that the Spirit of God comes upon the believer, upon the Christian, upon a member of Christ: the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, of counsel and strength, of knowledge and godliness, the Spirit of the fear of God. If you have followed, I have run through seven things, as if the Spirit of God were descending to us from wisdom to fear, so that we may ascend from fear to wisdom: "The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom." So the Spirit is sevenfold and one Spirit, one in a sevenfold working. Do you want something more evident? Holy Scripture records that the feast of Pentecost was made up of weeks. You have it in the book of Tobit, where it is plainly said that this day was made up of weeks. For seven times seven come to forty-nine in all. But as if so that there might be a return to the head: for by the Holy Spirit we are gathered into unity, not scattered from unity; so one, the one of unity, is added to forty-nine, and it makes fifty. It is not without reason, then, that the Holy Spirit came on the fiftieth day after the Lord's "ascension." The Lord rose again, ascended from the underworld, not yet into heaven: from that resurrection, from that taking up from the underworld, fifty days are counted, and the Holy Spirit came, as it were keeping his birthday among us in the number fifty. For the Lord lived here with his disciples for forty days; on the fortieth day he ascended into heaven, and when ten days had been completed there, as if by the sign of the ten commandments, the Holy Spirit came; because no one fulfils the law except by the grace of the Holy Spirit. So, brothers, it is plain that this number seven belongs to the Holy Spirit. And whoever does not cling to the unity of Christ, and barks against the unity of Christ, must be understood not to have the Holy Spirit. For only the unspiritual make contentions and dissensions, of whom the Apostle says, "But the unspiritual man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God." Then it is also written in the letter of the apostle Jude, "These are they who separate themselves"; he was speaking in rebuke: "These are they who separate themselves, unspiritual, not having the Spirit." What is clearer? What is more evident? Rightly let them come, even though they believe the same things as we do, to receive the Holy Spirit, whom they cannot have as long as they are enemies of unity. The Apostle compares them rather to Pharaoh's magicians ("Having," he says, "the form of godliness, but denying its power"), who failed at the third sign.

Now see why they failed at the third sign. Remember that those who oppose unity do not have the Holy Spirit. Those first three commandments in the Decalogue are understood to belong to the love of God, so that the other seven are understood to belong to the love of neighbor; so that with the two tables of the Law and the ten commandments, those two summary commandments, as it were, are held: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength; and you shall love your neighbor as yourself: on these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets." Let us, then, refer the first three commandments to the love of God. What are the first three? The first, "You shall have no other gods besides me": the plague contrary to it is water turned into blood, because the supreme principle, the Creator, was brought down to the likeness of human flesh. The second commandment, "You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain," belongs, as I think, to the kingdom of God, which is the Son of God. For there is one God, and one Lord, our Jesus Christ, through whom are all things. Against the Word, frogs: see frogs against the Word, din against reason, vanity against truth. The third commandment, about the sabbath, belongs to the Holy Spirit because of sanctification, which was first spoken of on the sabbath, as we commended to you strongly a little while ago, as much as we could. Contrary to this commandment is restlessness in the flies born of corruption and rushing into the eyes. So at this third sign those failed who, as enemies of unity, did not have the Holy Spirit: for the Holy Spirit does this to them as a punishment. For grace does one thing, punishment another: he does one thing by filling, another by forsaking. Finally, so that we may recognize it plainly by the very confession of Pharaoh's magicians, let us see how the Spirit of God is named in the Gospel, what name he received. When the Jews, reproaching the Lord, had said, "This man casts out demons only by Beelzebub, the prince of demons," he answered, "If I cast out demons by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you": which another evangelist relates thus: "If I cast out demons by the finger of God." What one evangelist called the Spirit of God, the other called the finger of God. So the finger of God is the Spirit of God. That is why the Law was given written by the finger of God, the Law which was given on Mount Sinai on the fiftieth day after the slaughter of the lamb, when the Passover had been celebrated by the Jewish people. Fifty days are completed after the slaughter of the lamb, and the Law written by the finger of God is given; fifty days are completed after the slaying of Christ, and the Holy Spirit comes. Thanks be to the Lord, who hides with foresight and reveals with sweetness. See now this too, brothers: that Pharaoh's magicians most plainly confess it. Failing at the third sign, they said, "This is the finger of God," etc.

Our Lord and God is merciful and compassionate, long-suffering and very merciful, and true; as generously as he offers mercy in the present age, so severely does he threaten judgment in the age to come. The words I have spoken are written and contained in the divine authorities: "The Lord is merciful and compassionate, long-suffering and very merciful, and true." It greatly delights all sinners and lovers of this world that the Lord is merciful and compassionate, that he is long-suffering and very merciful. But if you love so many gentle things, fear also the last thing it says there: "and true." For if it said nothing else but "The Lord is merciful and compassionate, long-suffering and very merciful," you would turn yourself, as it were, to security and impunity and the licence of sins; you would do what you liked, enjoy the world, either as much as you were allowed or as much as your lust commanded; and if anyone, admonishing you well, rebuked and frightened you, so that you would restrain yourself from an unbounded rush in following your desires and deserting your God, you would stand against him in the middle of his rebuke, with a shameless face indeed, as if you had heard a divine authority, and you would read from the Lord's book: "Why do you frighten me about our God? He is merciful and compassionate and very merciful." So that people would not say such things, he added one word at the end, "and true"; and he shook off the gladness of those who presume wrongly, and brought in the fear of those who grieve. Let us rejoice in the Lord's mercy; but let us fear the Lord's judgment. He spares while he is silent. He is silent, but he will not always be silent. Listen while he is not silent in words, lest you have no leisure to listen when he is not silent in judgment.

For now you are allowed to settle your case. Settle your case before the last judgment of your God. There is nothing to presume on: when he comes, you will not bring false witnesses to deceive him, nor will you employ an advocate with fraudulent tricks and wordy arts, nor will you canvass in any way so as to be able to bribe the judge. What, then, will you do before such a judge, whom you can neither deceive nor bribe? And yet there is something you can do. For then he will be the judge of your case who is now the witness of your life. We have cried out, and praised: let us settle our case. He who is witness of our deeds is himself witness of these voices: let them not be empty; let them be turned into groaning. It is time to agree quickly with your adversary. God is so long-suffering in seeing wicked things and not punishing them that the judgment will nevertheless come quickly. For by the measure of human life what is brief to God is long. But even for the world and the human race, what seems far off, what consolation is that? If the last day of the whole human race is far off, is the last day of each person far off? I say this: since Adam many years have rolled by, many years have flowed, and will flow hereafter; not indeed so many, but still years will pass until the end of the world, as those passed: what remains seems long (although it will not be as much as what has passed), and yet, once that past time is over, the end of the remaining time is to be expected. There was then a certain day which was called "today"; from it until this "today," has not whatever was to come become past? It is held as though it had not been. So will be whatever remains to the end. But let this too be long, let it be drawn out as much as you think, as much as you say, as much as you imagine, as much as not Scripture informs you but your thought invents; prolong the day of judgment as much as you like: will you prolong your own last day, that is, the last day of your life, on which you are to go out of this body? Let old age be certain for you, if it can be: but for whom can it be? Is it not so that from the moment a man begins to live he can already die? The beginning of life brings the possibility of death. In this land and in the human race only he cannot yet die who has not yet begun to live. So the uncertain day is to be expected as if it were any day. And if the uncertain day is to be expected as if it were any day, let there be agreement with the adversary while he is with you on the way. For this life is called the way, along which all pass; and this adversary does not withdraw.

But who is this adversary? This adversary is not the devil: for Scripture would never urge you to come to agreement with the devil. So there is another adversary, whom a man makes his adversary for himself: for if the devil were the adversary, he would not be with you on the way. But this one is with you on the way, so as to come to agreement with you. For he knows that unless you come to agreement with him on the way, he will hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the officer, and the officer to prison. These words are from the Gospel; those who have read them, or who have heard them, recall them with us. So who is the adversary? The word of God. The word of God is your adversary. Why is it an adversary? Because it commands the opposite of what you do. It says to you, "Your God is one; worship one God." You, having abandoned the one God, as the soul's lawful husband, want to commit fornication with many demons; and what is worse, not as if openly deserting and repudiating him, as apostates do, but, as if remaining in your husband's house, you let in adulterers: that is, as a Christian you do not leave the Church, but you consult astrologers or soothsayers or augurs or sorcerers; as if not leaving her husband's house, the adulterous soul, remaining in his marriage, commits fornication. It is said to you, "Do not take the name of your God in vain." Do not think that Christ is a creature because he took up a creature for you: and you despise him who is equal to the Father, and one with the Father. It is said to you that you should keep the sabbath spiritually: not as the Jews keep the sabbath in carnal idleness; for they want to be free for their trifles and their excesses. For a Jew would do better to do something useful in his field than to be a rioter in the theatre; and their women would do better to make wool on the sabbath day than to dance shamelessly all day on their balconies. But it is said to you that you should keep the sabbath spiritually, in the hope of the future rest which the Lord promises you. For whoever does whatever he can for the sake of that future rest, however laborious what he does may seem, yet if he refers it to faith in the promised rest, does not yet have the sabbath in reality, but has it in hope. But you want to rest in order to labor, when you ought to labor in order to rest. It is said to you, "Honor your father and your mother." But you heap insults on your parents which you do not want to suffer from your children. It is said to you, "You shall not kill." But you want to kill your enemy; and perhaps you do not do it because you fear a human judge, not because you think of God. Do you not know that he is the witness of thoughts? While the man you want dead is alive, God holds you a murderer in your heart. It is said to you, "You shall not commit adultery": that is, you shall not go to any other woman besides your wife. But you demand this from your wife, and do not want to render it to your wife; and though you ought to go before your wife in virtue, since chastity is a virtue, you fall under one onset of lust, and you want your wife to be the victor while you lie conquered; and though you are your wife's head, she goes before you to God, she whose head you are. Do you want your house to hang head downward? For "the head of the woman is the man": but where the woman lives better than the man, the house hangs head downward. If the man is the head, the man ought to live better and go before his wife in all good deeds, so that she may imitate her husband and follow her head. As Christ is the head of the Church, and the Church is commanded to follow her head and walk in her head's footsteps, so every house has the husband as its head and the wife as its body, as it were. Where the head leads, the body ought to follow. Why, then, does the head want to go where it does not want the body to follow? Why does the husband want to go where he does not want his wife to follow? In commanding these things the word of God is an adversary. For people do not want to do what the word of God wants. And why do I say that the word of God is an adversary because it commands? I fear that I myself am an adversary to some, because I say these things. What is that to me? Let him who frightens me into speaking make me strong, so that I do not fear people's complaints. For those who will not keep chastity toward their wives (and there are plenty of them) do not want me to say these things. But whether they like it or not, I will say them. For if I do not urge you to come to agreement with the adversary, I shall remain in a lawsuit with him. He who commands you to act commands us to speak. If by not doing what he commands you to do you are his adversaries, by not saying what he commands us to say we shall remain his adversaries.

Did I dwell long on the other things I mentioned above? For we take this for granted of your Charity, that you worship one God. We take this for granted of the Catholic faith that is in you, that you believe the Son of God equal to the Father, and do not take the name of the Lord your God in vain by thinking that the Son of God is a creature; since "every creature has been subjected to vanity." But you believe him to be equal to the Father, God from God, the Word with God, the Word God, through whom all things were made, light from light, coeternal with him who begot him, one with him who begot him; and you believe that this Word took a creature, took mortality from the virgin Mary, and suffered for us: these things we read, and we believe them, so that we may be saved. Nor did I dwell on this, that whatever you do, you should do it for the hope to come. For I know that the minds of all Christians think about the world to come. For whoever does not think about the world to come, and is not a Christian in order to receive what God promises at the end, is not yet a Christian. Nor did I dwell on what the word of God says, "Honor your father and your mother." For many honor their parents, and we rarely find parents complaining of their children's wickedness; though such are not lacking: but as rarely as it happens, so briefly did I have to warn about it. Nor did I want to dwell on what was said, "You shall not kill": for I do not believe there is a crowd of murderers here. But that other evil, creeping widely, has taken hold more, and on it that adversary is more vehemently provoked, who cries out for this reason, that he may one day be a friend. The complaints are daily, although the women themselves no longer dare to complain about their husbands. Custom, invading everything, is so observed as law, that perhaps women too have now been persuaded that this is allowed to men and not allowed to women. For they are used to hearing that women have been brought into court who were perhaps found with slaves; they have never heard of a man being brought into court because he was found with his slave woman, though the sin is equal. In an equal sin it is not divine truth but human perversity that makes the man seem more innocent. And if perhaps today someone finds his wife sharper, and grumbling more freely, a man to whom it seemed that this was allowed to a man, and he has heard in church that it is not allowed to a man: if, then, he finds his wife, as I said, now grumbling more freely and saying to him, "What you are doing is not allowed; we heard it together; we are Christians; what you demand of me, give back to me: I owe you fidelity, you owe me fidelity, we both owe fidelity to Christ; and if you deceive me, you do not deceive him to whom we belong, you do not deceive him who bought us": hearing these and similar things, which he is not used to hearing, while he does not want to be made sound in himself, he becomes unsound against me; he is angry, he curses; perhaps he even says, "How did it happen that that man came here, or that my wife went to church on that very day?" And this, I believe, he says in his thoughts: for he does not dare to break out freely into speech, except perhaps before his wife alone. For perhaps if he did break out and say this, she could answer and say: "Why do you curse the man you were acclaiming a little while ago? We are certainly husband and wife: when you are at odds with your own tongue, how will you be able to live in harmony with me?" We, brothers, look at your dangers; we do not pay attention to your wishes: for a doctor too, if he paid attention to the sick man's wishes, would never cure him. What ought not to be done, let it not be done; what God forbids, let it not be done. Whoever believes God hears from him what we say. Certainly, for some who do not want to be corrected, it would have been better either that we did not come here, if we were going to say these things, or, since we have come, that we did not say them.

I remember that the day before yesterday I said to your Holiness that if we were lyre-players, or offering something of that kind publicly for the pursuits of your frivolity (which we now beg you to give up), you would have held us to give you a day, and each of you would contribute a fee to us according to his means. Why should we go about delighted by empty songs that profit nothing, sweet for a time, bitter afterwards? For human minds, enticed by such shameful songs, are made effeminate and fall away from virtue, flowing down into shamefulness; and because of those very shameful things they afterwards feel pain, and with great bitterness digest what they drank with temporal sweetness. Better, then, that we sing to you bitter things for a time, which afterwards grow sweet in you. Nor do we demand any fee, except that you do what we say: or rather, do not do it if it is only we who say it; but if he says it to all, he who fears no one, and through whom it comes about, in his name and in the glory of his mercy, that we too fear no one, let us all listen, let us all do it, let us all come to agreement with our adversary. Suppose me to be a lyre-player: what more can I sing to you? See, I bring a psaltery; it has ten strings: you sang this a little while ago, before I began to speak; you were my choir. Did you not sing a little while ago, "O God, I will sing a new song to you; on a psaltery of ten strings I will play to you"? I am now striking those very ten strings. Why is the voice of God's psaltery bitter? "I will play to you on a psaltery of ten strings." I am not singing to you something that you should not do. For the Decalogue of the Law has ten commandments; and these ten commandments have been so distributed that three belong to God and seven belong to human beings. Three belong to God, which I have already mentioned: our God is one, we ought to make no likeness of him, and not to commit fornication after other gods, departing from God, who is one: because God, and Christ the Son of God, is one with the Father. And so he ought not to be taken by us in vain, so that we think that he through whom all things were made was made, that is, is some creature: because the one God himself is Father and Son and Holy Spirit. In the Holy Spirit, that is, in the gift of God, everlasting rest is promised us. Of it we have now received a pledge. For so the Apostle says: "Who has given us the pledge of the Spirit." If we have received a pledge, so that we may begin to be at peace in the Lord our God, so that we may be gentle in our God, patient in our God, we shall also be at rest for ever in him from whom we have received the pledge; which will be the sabbath of sabbaths, on account of that rest which belongs to the gift of the Holy Spirit. So let us recognize spiritually the third commandment, about the sabbath, which we have mentioned, which the Jews celebrate carnally. For because he is called the Holy Spirit, therefore God sanctified the seventh day, when he had made all his works, as we read written in Genesis. You do not find sanctification named there except on that day where it is said, "God rested from his works." For God was not tired, that it should be said, "God rested from his works": but by that word he promised rest to you who labor; so that, because he made all things very good, and so it is said, "God rested," you may understand that you too will rest after good works, and rest without end. For all the earlier days that were spoken of have an evening: this seventh day has no evening, where God sanctified rest. It is said there, "There was morning," so that the day itself might begin. It was not said, "There was evening," so that the day might end; but it was said, "There was morning," so that there might be a day without end. So our rest begins as it were in the morning, but it does not end, because we shall live for ever. If whatever we do we do in this hope, we keep the sabbath. This is the third string of this decalogue, that is, of the ten-stringed psaltery: for in three strings the commandments belong to God.

If it were said to us, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind," and nothing were said about our neighbor, it would not be a ten-stringed but a three-stringed instrument. But because the Lord added, "And you shall love your neighbor as yourself," and joined it together, saying, "On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets": the whole Law is in two commandments, in the love of God and the love of neighbor; and so the Decalogue belongs to two commandments, that is, to the love of God and of neighbor. Three strings belong to the first commandment, because God is a Trinity. To the other commandment, that is, to the love of neighbor, belong seven strings: how one is to live among human beings. For the number seven itself, like seven strings, begins with honor of parents: "Honor your father and your mother." For it is to his parents that a man first opened his eyes, and this life takes its beginning from their friendship. And whoever does not pay honor to his parents, whom will he spare? "Honor your father and your mother." And the Apostle says: "Honor your father and your mother, which is the first commandment." How the first, when it is the fourth commandment, unless because it is the first in the number seven? In the love of neighbor it is the first, on the second table. For that is why two tables of the Law were given. For God gave his servant Moses on the mountain two tables, on which two stone tables were written the ten commandments of the Law (which is the psaltery of ten strings): three on one table belonging to God, seven on the other table to the neighbor. On the other table, then, the first is, "Honor your father and your mother." The second, "You shall not commit adultery." The third, "You shall not kill." The fourth, "You shall not steal." The fifth, "You shall not bear false witness." The sixth, "You shall not covet your neighbor's wife." The seventh, "You shall not covet your neighbor's goods." Let us join these to those three belonging to the love of God, if we want to sing a new song on the ten-stringed psaltery.

Let your Charity pay attention, so that I may say what the Lord suggests. The Jewish people received this Law in the Decalogue: they did not keep it. And whoever obeyed obeyed out of fear of punishment, not out of love of justice: they carried the psaltery; they did not sing. For to one who sings it is a pleasure; to one who fears it is a burden. So the old man either does not act, or acts out of fear; not out of love of holiness, not out of delight in chastity, temperance, love, but out of fear. For he is the old man; and the old man can sing an old song, not a new one. But to sing a new song, let him be a new man. And how he can be a new man, hear, not me, but the Apostle saying, "Put off the old man, and put on the new." And so that no one might think, when he said, "Put off the old man, and put on the new," that something had to be laid down and something taken up, since he was commanding a change in the man, he added and said, "Therefore, putting away falsehood, speak the truth." This is what he meant by "Put off the old man, and put on the new": he said this: Change your ways. You loved the world: love God. You loved the trifles of iniquity, temporal pleasures: love your neighbor. If you act out of love, you sing the new song; if you act out of fear, you still act; you carry the psaltery, but do not yet sing; but if you do not even do this, you throw the psaltery away. It is better at least to carry it than to throw it away: but again, it is better to sing with pleasure than to carry with a burden. And no one reaches the new song unless he is already singing with pleasure. For he who carries with fear is still in oldness. And pay attention, brothers, to what I mean. He who still acts out of fear has not come to agreement with his adversary: for he fears that God may come and condemn him. For chastity does not yet delight him, justice does not yet delight him; but dreading God's judgment, he holds back from deeds, without condemning the desire itself, which rages in him. What is good does not yet delight him; he does not yet have sweetness there, so as to sing a new song; but from his oldness he fears punishment: he has not yet come to agreement with the adversary.

For such people are often tripped up by a thought like this, saying to themselves: "If it could be, God would not threaten us, he would not say such things through his prophets to frighten people; but before he came he would give indulgence to all, forgive all, then come, and send no one into hell." Because he is unjust, he wants God unjust. God wants to make you like himself, and you try to make God like yourself. Let God please you, then, as he is, not as you want him to be. For you are perverse, and you want God to be such as you are, not such as he is. But if he pleases you as he is, you will be corrected, and you will direct your heart to that rule from which you are now estranged and twisted. Let God please you as he is; love him as he is: he does not love you as you are, but hates you as you are. That is why he has mercy on you, because he hates you as you are, so as to make you what you are not yet. To make you, I said, what you are not yet. For he does not promise you that he will make you what he is. For you will be what he is, but in a certain measure; that is, an imitator of God as an image, but not such an image as the Son is. For even among human beings images differ. A man's son has the image of his father, and is what his father is, because he is a human being as his father is. But your image in a mirror is not what you are. Your image is one way in your son, another way in a mirror: in your son your image is according to equality of substance; in a mirror it is far from the substance, and yet it is a kind of image of you, though not such as is in your son according to substance. So in a creature the image of God is not what it is in the Son, who is what the Father is, that is, the Word of God, through whom all things were made. Take back, then, the likeness of God, which you lost by evil deeds. For just as the emperor's image is one way on a coin and another way in his son (for an image is an image, but it is impressed one way on a coin, another way in a son, another way on a gold piece): so you too are God's coin, better in this, that you are God's coin with understanding and with a kind of life, so that you may know whose image you bear and in whose image you were made: for a coin does not know that it has the emperor's image. So, as I had begun to say, God hates you as you are, but loves you as he wants you to be: and that is why he urges you to change. Come to agreement with him, and begin first to will well, and to hate yourself as you are: let this be the beginning of your agreement with the word of God, that you first begin to hate yourself as you are. When you too have begun to hate yourself as you are, as God hates you as you are, you are already beginning to love God himself as he is.

Consider the sick man. A sick man, being ill, hates himself as he is: from there he begins to agree with the doctor. For the doctor too hates him as he is: for he wants him well precisely because he hates him feverish; and the doctor is the persecutor of the fever so as to be the liberator of the man. So avarice, so lust, so hatred, desire, luxury, so the frivolity of the shows are the fevers of your soul; you ought to hate them with the doctor: so you agree with the doctor, you strive with the doctor, and you gladly hear what the doctor orders, gladly do what the doctor orders, and as health advances, the prescriptions even begin to delight. How burdensome food is to the sick when they are being restored! The sick reckon the hour of their meal worse than the hour of their fever fit; and yet, agreeing with the doctor, they force themselves, and though unwilling and struggling, they overcome themselves so as to take something. With what eagerness will the healthy take larger portions of what the sick barely take in small amounts? But how did this come about? Because they hated their fever and agreed with the doctor, and doctor and patient pursued the fever together. So when we too say such things, we hate nothing but your fevers: or rather, in us the word of God itself, with which you ought to agree, hates your fevers. For what are we but people to be set free with you, to be healed with you?

Now do not look at me, but at the word of God. Do not be angry with your medicine; for I found no other way to pass by. I, a man who plays the ten-stringed psaltery, have come to the fifth string; was I going to pass over the fifth? No, I am going to strike it again and again. For on it I see almost the whole human race lying, on it I see more of them struggling. In striking it, what do I say? Do not commit adultery against your wives, since you do not want your wives to commit adultery against you. Do not yourselves go where you do not want them to follow. It is pointless to try to excuse yourselves when you say, "Am I going to someone else's wife? I am going to my own slave woman." Do you want your wife to say to you, "Am I going to someone else's husband? I am going to my own slave"? You say, "It is not someone else's wife I go to." Do you want it said to you, "It is not someone else's husband I go to"? Far be it from her to say this. For it is better that she grieves over you than that she imitates you. For she is a chaste and holy woman and truly Christian who grieves over a husband committing fornication, and grieves not on account of the flesh but on account of love; she does not want you to do it, not because she herself does not do it, but because it is not good for you. For if she does not do it so that you will not do it, if you do it, she will do it. But if she owes it to God, if she owes to Christ what you demand, and renders it because he commands it, then even if her husband commits fornication, that woman offers chastity to God. For Christ speaks in the hearts of good women; he speaks within, where the husband does not hear, for he is not worthy, if he is such a man: so he speaks within, and says, and consoles his daughter with words like these: "You are tormented by your husband's wrongs; for what has he done to you? Grieve; but do not imitate him so as to do wrong, but let him imitate you in good. For in what he does wrong, do not think him your head, but me, your God. For if he is the head even in what he does wrong, and the body is to follow its head, both go over the precipice." But so that she does not follow her evil head, let her hold fast to the head of the Church, Christ: owing her chastity to him, paying her honor to him, whether her husband is absent or present, she does not sin; because he to whom she owes it not to sin is never absent.

Do these things, then, my brothers, so that you can come to agreement with the adversary. See, what I say is not bitter; or if it is bitter, it heals. If this draught is bitter, let it be taken: because the inner organs are in danger; it is bitter, let it be drunk. Better a little bitterness in the throat than eternal torment in the inner parts. Change yourselves, then. Whoever of you did not practise this good of chastity, practise it now. Do not say, "It cannot be done." It is disgraceful, my brothers, it is shameful, that a man should say that what a woman does cannot be done. It is a crime for a man to say, "I cannot." What a woman can do, a man cannot? What then, does she not carry flesh? She was deceived first by the serpent. Your chaste wives show you that what you do not want to do can be done, and you say it cannot be done! But perhaps you will say that she can do it more easily because she has many guards: the precept of the law, her husband's watchfulness, the fear of the public laws too; there is also the great protection of her modesty and shame. Many guards make a woman more chaste; let manliness itself make a man chaste. For the woman has a greater guard because she has a greater weakness. She is ashamed before her husband; are you not ashamed before Christ? You are freer because you are stronger: because you conquer easily, you have been entrusted to yourself. Over her are her husband's watchfulness, the fear of the laws, the custom of morals, and a greater modesty: and over you is God, God alone. For you easily find men like yourself before whom you need not fear to blush, because many do it. And so great is the perversity of the human race that sometimes one must fear that the chaste man will be ashamed among the unchaste. That is why I do not stop striking this fifth string, because of that perverse custom and stain, as I said, of the whole human race. If one of you commits murder, which God forbid, you want to drive him from the country and, if possible, shut him out at once. If someone commits theft, you hate him and do not want to see him. If someone bears false witness, you abhor him, and he does not seem to you a man. If someone covets the goods of others, he is reckoned a robber and unjust. If someone wallows with his slave women, he is liked and received with smiles; the wounds are turned into jokes. But if someone appears who says he is chaste, and does not admit adultery, and it is known that he does not commit it, he is ashamed to go near those who are not like him, lest they jeer at him, laugh at him, say he is not a man. Human perversity has sunk so low that a man is held to be a man when he is conquered by lust, and a man is not held to be a man when he is the conqueror of lust. Do those who triumph exult and are not men, and are those who lie prostrate men? If you were watching a show, would the man who lay under the beast seem stronger to you than the one who killed the beast?

But because you neglect the inner fight, and outward fights delight you, you therefore do not want to belong to the new song, in which it is said, "Who trains my hands for battle and my fingers for war." For there is a war that a man wages with himself, fighting against evil desires, reining in avarice, crushing pride, stifling ambition, slaughtering lust. These fights you wage in secret, and you are not conquered in the open. For this your hands are trained for battle and your fingers for war. This is not in your shows. In those shows the hunter is not the same as the lyre-player; the hunter does one thing, the lyre-player another: in God's show they are one. Touch the same ten strings and you will kill the wild beasts; you do both at once. You touch the first string, by which one God is worshipped: the beast of superstition has fallen. You touch the second, by which you do not take the name of the Lord your God in vain: the beast of the error of the abominable heresies that thought so has fallen. You touch the third string, when you do whatever you do for the hope of future rest: the love of this world, crueller than the other beasts, is killed. For people labor in all their business for love of this world: but you, labor in all your good works, not for love of this world, but for the everlasting rest which God promises. See how you do both at once: you touch the strings and kill the beasts; that is, you are both lyre-player and hunter. Do not such shows delight you, where we earn the eyes not of the giver of the games but of the Redeemer? "Honor your father and your mother": you touch the fourth string, paying honor to your parents: the beast of impiety has fallen. "You shall not commit adultery": you touch the fifth string: the beast of lust has fallen. "You shall not kill": you touch the sixth string: the beast of cruelty has fallen. "You shall not steal": you touch the seventh string: the beast of rapacity has fallen. "You shall not bear false witness": you touch the eighth string: the beast of falsehood has fallen. "You shall not covet your neighbor's wife": you touch the ninth string: the beast of adulterous thought has fallen. For it is one thing not to do any such thing beside one's wife, another not to desire another man's wife. That is why there are two commandments, "You shall not commit adultery," and "You shall not covet your neighbor's wife." "You shall not covet your neighbor's goods": you touch the tenth string: the beast of greed has fallen. So, with all the beasts falling, you live secure and innocent in the love of God and in human society. Touching ten strings, how many beasts do you kill? For there are many heads under these headings. On each string you will have killed not single beasts but herds of beasts. So you will sing the new song with love, not with fear.

Do not say to yourself, when perhaps you want to do something wanton, "I have no wife; I do what I like; for I am not sinning against my wife." You already know your price; you already know what you approach, what you eat, what you drink; or rather, whom you eat, whom you drink. Keep yourself from sexual immorality. Lest perhaps you say to me: "I am going to the brothel, I am off to a harlot, I am going to a prostitute: I do not violate the commandment in which it is said, 'You shall not commit adultery,' because I do not yet have a wife, nor do I do anything against her; nor do I violate the commandment in which it is said, 'You shall not covet your neighbor's wife.' I who go to a public woman, what commandment do I run foul of?" Do we not find a string to touch? Do we not find a string? With what cord shall we bind this runaway? Let him not flee; there is something to bind him with: but let him love, and it will be not a bond but an ornament. For in those ten strings we find not a bond but an ornament. For the ten commandments are referred to those two, as we have heard, that we love God and our neighbor; and those two to that one. And the one is: "What you do not want done to you, do not do to another." In it the ten are contained, in it the two are contained.

But you say: "If I steal, I do what I do not want to suffer; if I kill, I do what I do not want to suffer from another; if I do not pay honor to my parents, when I want it paid to me by my children, I do what I do not want to suffer; if I am an adulterer and attempt anything of the kind, I do what I do not want to suffer, for if anyone is asked, he says, 'I do not want my wife to do any such thing'; if I covet my neighbor's wife, I do not want anyone to covet mine; I do what I do not want to suffer; if I covet my neighbor's goods, I do not want mine taken away; I do what I do not want to suffer: but when I go to a harlot, to whom do I do what I do not want to suffer?" What is worse: to God himself. Let your Holiness understand. For "What you do not want done to you, do not do to another" belongs to the two commandments. How does it belong to the two commandments? If you do not do to a human being what you do not want to suffer from a human being, it belongs to the commandment about the neighbor, to the love of neighbor, to the seven strings; but if what you do not want to suffer from a human being you want to do to God himself, what is this? Do you not do to another what you do not want to suffer? Has a human being become dearer to you than God? "So how," he says, "do I do it to God himself?" You corrupt yourself. "And how do I do wrong to God by corrupting myself?" How does someone wrong you who perhaps decides to stone your painted portrait, a portrait with your image in your house, set up idly for your empty honor, neither feeling nor speaking nor seeing? If anyone stones it, is that not an insult to you? But when you corrupt in yourself the image of God, which you are, through sexual immorality and the dissipations of lust, you notice that you have not gone to anyone's wife, you notice that you have done nothing against your wife because you have no wife; and do you not notice whose image you have violated through lusts and unlawful sexual immorality? Finally, God, who knows what is useful for you, who truly governs his servants for their benefit, not his own (for he does not need servants as if for help, but you need the Lord's help): the Lord himself, then, who knows what is useful for you, has allowed a wife, nothing more. This he has ordered, this he has commanded, so that his temple, which you have begun to be, may not fall into ruin through unlawful pleasures. Am I the one saying this? Hear the Apostle: "Do you not know that you are the temple of God, and the Spirit of God dwells in you?" He says this to Christians, he says this to the faithful: "Do you not know that you are the temple of God, and the Spirit of God dwells in you? If anyone corrupts the temple of God, God will corrupt him." Do you see how he threatens? You do not want your house to be ruined; why do you ruin God's house? Certainly you do to someone what you do not want to suffer. So there is no escape: he is caught who thought he was not caught. For all human sins belong either to the corruption of shameful acts or to crimes of harming. Since you cannot harm God by crimes, you offend him by shameful acts, you offend him by corruptions, in yourself you do him wrong. For you do wrong to his grace, to his house.

If you had a slave, you would want your slave to serve you: serve, then, a better Lord, your God. You did not make your slave; he made both you and your slave: you want the one with whom you were made to serve you, and you do not want to serve him by whom you were made? So when you want your human slave to serve you, and you do not want to serve the Lord your God, you do to God what you do not want to suffer. So that one commandment contains the two, those two contain the ten, those ten contain everything. Sing, then, a new song on the ten-stringed psaltery. And so that you may sing a new song, be new people. Love justice: it has its own beauty. You do not want to see it because you love something else. For if you did not love something else, you would surely see it. Why do you see it when you demand it? Why do you praise fidelity when you demand it from your slave? What a beautiful thing fidelity is! But it is beautiful when it is demanded from a slave; it is seen when it is required of another: when it is demanded of you, it is not seen. You see gold, you do not see fidelity. As gold shines to the eyes of the body, so fidelity shines to the eyes of the heart. You open the eyes of the heart to it when you want your slave to show it to you. If he shows it to you, you praise the slave, and extol him, and say, "I have an excellent slave, a great slave, a faithful slave." What you praise in your slave you do not show to the Lord: and all the more wickedly, because you want to have a better slave than God has in you. God commands your slave to be good toward you. As he commands your wife that, even if you commit adultery, she should not commit adultery, so he commands your slave that, even if you do not serve your Lord, he should serve you. But see that all this serves to admonish you, not to destroy you. For that slave owes it to God, not to you, that he serves you, unworthy as you are, worthily; that is, that he serves you, who are unworthy, well, and serves faithfully, and loves you sincerely. It is just, then, that you too should notice that you are under the Lord, to whom he too looks in order to serve you. Fulfil, then, what was said, "What you do not want done to you, do not do to another." But when you say "another," consider both, the neighbor and God. Sing on the ten-stringed psaltery, sing a new song: agree with the word of God while it is with you on the way. "Agree with your adversary quickly," lest you come before the judge in discord. If you do what you hear, you have come to agreement with him; but if you do not, you are quarrelling with him, and you have not settled until you do it.

And so that you may come to agreement, keep yourselves from detestable corruptions and from detestable consultations: from astrologers, soothsayers, sorcerers, augurs, from sacrileges; keep yourselves, as far as you can, from frivolous shows. If any delights of the world creep into the soul, exercise yourselves in mercy, exercise yourselves in almsgiving, in fasting, in prayer. For by these the daily sins are cleansed, which cannot but creep into the soul, because of human frailty. Do not despise them because they are smaller; but fear them because they are more numerous. Pay attention, my brothers. They are tiny, they are not great. It is not a beast like a lion, which breaks the throat with one bite: but often many tiny beasts kill. If someone is thrown into a place full of fleas, does he not die there? They are not, indeed, larger beasts: but human nature is weak, and can be killed even by the tiniest beasts. So too small sins: you notice that they are small; beware, because they are many. How tiny the grains of sand are! If too much sand is put into a ship, it sinks it so that it perishes. How tiny the drops of rain are! Do they not fill rivers and bring down houses? So do not despise these. But you will say: "And who can be without them?" Lest you say this (for truly no one can), the merciful God, seeing our frailty, has provided remedies against them. What are the remedies? Those of almsgiving, fasting, and prayer: these are the three. And so that you may speak the truth in prayer, perfect almsgiving must be fulfilled. What is perfect almsgiving? That from what you have in abundance you give to him who does not have; and when someone hurts you, you forgive him.

But do not think, brothers, that adulteries may be committed daily and cleansed by daily almsgiving. Daily almsgiving is not enough to cleanse those greater crimes. It is one thing where you change your life, another where you put up with your life. That life must be changed: if you were an adulterer, do not be an adulterer; if you were a fornicator, do not commit fornication; if a murderer, do not be a murderer; if you used to go to the astrologer and the other sacrilegious plagues, stop now. Do you think these things, unless they stop being done, can be cleansed by daily almsgiving? I am speaking of those daily sins which are easily committed either by the tongue, such as a harsh word, or when someone slips into immoderate laughter, or into daily trifles of this kind. There are sins even in things allowed. Even with one's own wife, if the measure of intercourse owed to the procreation of children is exceeded, it is already a sin. For this is the purpose for which a wife is taken: the marriage contract itself shows it, where it is written, "for the sake of procreating children." When you want to use your wife more than the need of procreating children requires, it is already a sin: and daily almsgiving cleanses such sins. In food itself, which is certainly allowed, if perhaps you exceed the measure and take more than is necessary, you sin. These things I speak of are daily: but still they are sins; and they are not light, because they are many. And since they are daily and very many, the ruin of their multitude is to be feared, even if not of their magnitude. Such sins, brothers, we say can be cleansed by daily almsgiving. But give alms, and do not stop. Look at your daily life, teeming with these sins; tiny ones, I mean.

And when you give alms, do not give proudly, nor pray as that Pharisee did. But still, what did he say there? "I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess." And the Lord's blood had not yet been shed. We have received so great a price for us, and we do not pay out even as much as the Pharisee. And you have the Lord saying openly in another place, "Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven." So they give tithes; if you give a hundredth, you boast that you have done something great. For you notice what another does not do, not what God commands you to do. You measure yourself by comparison with someone worse, not by the command of someone better. It is not because he does nothing that you do something great: but because there is rejoicing at certain very small works of yours (since your barrenness is so great that there is rejoicing at little things), you flatter yourselves, as though secure, about tiny grains of almsgiving, and forget the heaps of your sins. Perhaps you have brought out some little thing that another either did not have, or did not bring out when he had it. Do not look behind you at who does not do it, but at what God commands you to do. Finally, why, in these worldly concerns, are you not satisfied with those you have outstripped, but want to be rich, equal to those richer than you? You do not notice how many poorer people you surpass: you want to beat the richer. But in almsgiving there is a measure. Here it is said, "How far am I to go?" and there it is not said, "Than how many rich men am I richer?" The needs of countless beggars are not noticed, the multitudes of poor people behind are not looked back at: but the few rich men ahead are set before the eyes. Why, in good works, is that Zacchaeus not looked at, who gave half his goods to the poor? But we are forced to wish that at least that Pharisee might be looked at, who gave a tenth of all that he possessed.

Do not spare perishable treasures, empty treasures. Do not, under a show of devotion, increase your money. "I am keeping it for my children": a great excuse, "I am keeping it for my children." Let us see: your father keeps for you, you keep for your children, your children for their children, and so on through all of them, and no one will do the commandments of God. Why do you not rather spend everything on him who made you out of nothing? He who made you feeds you from what he made; he feeds your children too. For you do not entrust your children better to your patrimony than to your Creator. And indeed people lie. Avarice is evil: they want to cloak it with the name of devotion and whitewash it, so that people may seem to keep for their children what they keep out of avarice. For so that you may know that this is often what happens, it is said of someone: "Why does he not give alms?" "Because he is keeping it for his children." It happens that he loses one of them: if he was keeping it for his children, let him send his share after him. Why does he keep it in his purse, and drop the son from his mind? Give him what is his; give what you were keeping for him. "He is dead," he says. But he has gone ahead to God; his share is owed to the poor; it is owed to him to whom he has gone: it is owed to Christ, for to him he has gone: and he himself said, "Whoever did it to one of these least, did it to me; and whoever did not do it to one of these least, did not do it to me." But what do you say? "I am keeping it for his brothers." If he were alive, would he not have shared it with his brothers? O dead faith! Is your son dead, then? Whatever you say, you owe to the dead what you were keeping for the living. "My son is dead, but still I am keeping my son's share for his brothers." Do you believe like that that he is dead? If Christ has not died for him, he is dead; but if there is faith in you, your son is alive. He is altogether alive; he has not departed but gone ahead. With what face will you come to your son who has gone ahead, when you do not send his share into heaven for him who has gone before? Or can it not be sent into heaven? It certainly can. Hear the Lord himself saying, "Store up for yourselves treasures in heaven." If, then, that treasure is better kept in heaven, should it not be sent to the son, when if it has been sent, it will not perish? Will it be held here, where it can perish, and not sent there, where Christ is the keeper? Certainly the things you keep here and will not send after your son, to whom do you entrust them? You entrust the share of him who has gone ahead to your stewards, and do not entrust it to Christ, to whom he has gone ahead? Is your agent fit for you, and Christ less fit?

You see, brothers, that what people say, "I am keeping it for my children," is a lie. It is a lie, my brothers, it is a lie: people are avaricious. At least in this way let them be forced to confess what they do not want to, when they are ashamed to keep silent about what they are: let them pour out, let them vomit up in confession what they carry. The breast is weighed down by the surfeit of iniquity; let confession vomit it up: but let there be no returning to the vomit in the manner of a dog. Be Christians. It is very little to be called Christians. How much you give to actors! How much you give to hunters in the arena! How much to disreputable people! You give to those who kill you. For through those very displays of pleasures they slay your souls: and you are mad about who gives more. If you were mad about who keeps more, you would be unbearable. To be mad about who keeps more belongs to avarice; to be mad about who gives more belongs to extravagance. God wants you neither avaricious nor extravagant. He wants you to invest what you have, not to throw it away. You compete over who will win at what is worse; you take no pains over who will be better: and would that you took no pains over who will be worse. And you say, "We are Christians." For the favor of the people you throw your goods away; against Christ's commands you hold on to your goods. See, Christ does not command, Christ asks, Christ is in need. "I was hungry," says Christ, "and you did not give me to eat." He willed to be in need for your sake, so that you might have somewhere to sow the earthly things he gave, and reap eternal life. Do not be lazy and wrongly secure. Amend your ways, redeem your sins. And when you have done these things, give thanks to God, from whom you have received the power to live well. And give him thanks in such a way that you do not insult those who do not yet live well; but encourage them by your conduct. Doing these things, you have perfect righteousness, as far as it can be had in this life. Busying yourselves in good works, in prayers, in fasts, in almsgiving on account of small sins, and keeping yourselves from those great sins, you come to agreement with the adversary: and you say securely in prayer, "Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors." For you have something to be forgiven you daily, you who have something to forgive daily. Walking securely on the way like this, you will not fear the devil's robberies: because Christ has made himself the way and the great highway by which he leads to the homeland. There is all security, all rest: where even the works of mercy will cease, because there will be no need among the wretched there. There, then, will be the sabbath of sabbaths; so that what we long for here, we may find there. Amen.

The Scripture of the Kingdoms proclaims Solomon's wonderful judgment between two women contending over a little son. For it is written: "Then two women who were harlots came to King Solomon and stood before him, and one woman said: Hear, my lord: this woman and I lived in one house, and I gave birth in the house; and it happened on the third day after I gave birth that this woman also bore a son; and we were together, and there was no one with us except the two of us in the house: and this woman's son died in the night, because she lay on him; and she got up in the middle of the night and took my son from my arms and laid him in her bosom, and laid her dead son in my bosom; and I got up in the morning to give my son milk, and he was dead: I looked at him in the morning, and behold, it was not my son whom I had borne. And the other woman said: No, the living one is my son, and the dead one is your son. And she said: No, the dead one is your son, and the living one is my son. And they spoke before the king. And the king said to them: You say, This is my son who lives, and her son is dead; and you say, No, but my son lives, and her son is dead. And the king said, Bring me a sword. And they brought a sword before the king. And the king said: Divide the living child in two, and give half of him to this one, and half of him to that one. And the woman whose son was the living one answered and said to the king, for her womb was troubled over her son, and she said: Hear, my lord, give her the child, and do not put him to death. And the other said: Let him be neither mine nor hers, but divide him. And the king answered and said to the woman who said, Give him to her, and do not put him to death: Because this is his mother." The king's wisdom, granted by God's gift, stands out wonderfully in this judgment. For it was not fitting nor right to judge any other woman to be the child's mother than the one who in a way conceived him again when she learned he had been taken away, and gave birth again while she defended him from the false mother, and bore him again when she did not allow him to be killed. Yet as the ancient divine books are accustomed to convey not only the truth of what happened but also a mystery of what was to come, this Scripture must be considered, whether in these two women it shows us something signified and figured.

And the two women first present themselves, at first glance, as the Synagogue and the Church. For the Synagogue is shown to have killed, while sleeping, its son Christ, born of the Jews according to the flesh; that is, following the light of the present life, and not understanding the manifestation of the truth in the Lord's words: indeed it is also written, "Arise, you who sleep, and rise from the dead, and Christ will give you light." That the two lived alone in one house signifies, not absurdly, that apart from circumcision and uncircumcision no kind of religion has been found in this world: so that in the person of one woman you may set the one race of the circumcised, comprised under the worship and law of the one God; and in the person of the other woman you may understand the whole Gentile world of the uncircumcised, given over to the worship of idols. Both were harlots: for the Apostle says that Jews and Greeks are all under sin. For every soul that has deserted the eternity of truth and delights in earthly filth commits fornication away from the Lord. And that the Church, coming from the fornication of the Gentiles, did not kill Christ is plain; but how she too is Christ's mother must be considered. Attend to the Gospel, and hear the Lord saying, "Whoever does the will of my Father, he is my mother and brother and sister." Where, then, did this woman sleep, not so as to smother the child in her sleep, but so that the dead one could be put in her bosom and the living one taken away? Perhaps it is this: that the very sacrament of circumcision, which had remained dead among the Jews, because they understood it wholly carnally (this sacrament of circumcision, then, which did not live among the Jews, who had killed Christ, who is the life of all sacraments, since in him is understood in a living way what is celebrated visibly among the Jews), this sacrament of circumcision, then, like a lifeless body, certain Jews wanted to press upon the Gentiles who had believed in Christ, as is written in the Acts of the Apostles, saying that they could not be saved unless they were circumcised? And they pressed this on people ignorant of the Law, as if putting the dead son in her place in the darkness of night. Yet that persuasion could have no force except when the sleep of folly crept over the Church of the Gentiles in some part. The Apostle seems to wake her, as if sleeping, crying out, "O foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you?" and a little later, "Are you so foolish," he says, "that having begun in the Spirit, you are now being completed in the flesh?" As if he said: Are you so foolish that, though you first had a living spiritual work, having lost it you now accept a dead one that is not yours? For the Apostle himself says elsewhere, "The Spirit is life because of righteousness"; and elsewhere, "To be carnally minded is death." At these and similar cries that mother wakes up; and it becomes morning for her when, through the word of God, that is, through Christ, who was rising, that is, speaking in Paul, the darkness of the Law is lit up. For he lit it up when he said, "Tell me, you who want to be under the Law, have you not heard the Law? For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by a slave woman and one by a free woman; but the son of the slave woman was born according to the flesh, the son of the free woman through promise; which things are an allegory. For these are the two covenants: one from Mount Sinai, bearing children for slavery, which is Hagar. For Sinai is a mountain in Arabia, which corresponds to the present Jerusalem: for she is in slavery with her children. But the Jerusalem above is free." It is no wonder, then, if on account of dead works the dead child belongs to the one who is below, and on account of spiritual works the living child belongs to the Jerusalem which is above. For the underworld is below, to which the dead belong; the realms above are above, to which the living belong. By this illumination, as when morning has come, the Church understands spiritual grace, rejecting from herself the carnal work of the Law as a dead child not her own, and claiming for herself living faith, since "the righteous lives by faith": which she obtained in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit; and so she recognizes with certainty her three-day-old son and does not let him be snatched from her.

Now let that other woman cry out that the Gospel is hers, as owed to her and born of her. For this is what was said to the Gentiles in that very dispute by those from among the Jews who, thinking carnally, dared to call themselves Christians. For they said that the Gospel had come as something owed to their righteousness. But what they did not know spiritually was not theirs. So, in that they were called Christians, boasting in a name not their own, they even dared, like that woman over the son she had not borne, to contend; whereas they themselves, having shut out spiritual understanding from the works of the Law, had as it were cast the soul out of the body of their own work, and, extinguishing the living spirit of prophecy, had remained with carnal works without life, that is, without spiritual understanding; and these works they wanted to substitute among the Gentiles too, and to take from them the Christian name as a living son. The Apostle refutes them by saying that Christian grace belongs to them the less, the more they claim it for themselves as owed, and boast that it is theirs as of right by works. "For to him who works," he says, "the reward is not reckoned as grace but as debt. But to him who does not work, but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is reckoned as righteousness." And so he excludes them even from the number of those from among the Jews who had rightly believed and held on to living and spiritual grace. These he calls the remnant of the Jewish people that has been saved, while the multitude went to perdition. "So too at this present time," he says, "a remnant has been saved by the election of grace. But if by grace, then no longer by works: otherwise grace is no longer grace." So that those are excluded from grace who claim the reward of the Gospel as their own, that is, as owed and given to their works; as if the Synagogue were crying out, "The son is mine." But she was lying; for she too had received him; but sleeping on him, that is, being proud-minded, she had killed him. But this mother was now awake, and understood that it was not by her merits, since she was a harlot, but by the grace of God that a son had been granted her, namely the work of evangelical faith, which she wished to nourish in the bosom of her heart. And so the one sought human glory in another's son; the other kept the affection of love for her own.

And that royal judgment between the two warns us of nothing else than that we should contend for the truth, and drive out hypocrisy, like the false mother, from the spiritual gift of the Church, as from a living son not hers; and not allow her who could not keep her own to lord it over the grace granted to others. But let us do this, defending and contending, not to the point of the danger of division. For that sentence of the judge, when he ordered the little one to be divided, is not the cutting off of unity but the proving of love. For the name Solomon, as the Latins interpret it, means "Peaceful." And a peaceful king does not tear apart members which, by unity and concord, hold the spirit of life: but by threatening he finds the true mother, and by judging he separates the false one. If, then, it comes to a trial of this kind, we are taught to say, so that the unity of Christian grace may not be divided, "Give her the child; only let him live." For she who is the true mother seeks not a mother's honor but her son's safety. Wherever he is, the sincere love of the mother will possess him more than the usurpation of the false one.

Again, I see that these two women in one house signify two kinds of people in one Church: one of those in whom true love reigns, the other of those in whom pretence rules. So that we may regard these two altogether as two women: love and pretence. For pretence deceitfully imitates love. And that is why the Apostle guards against it when he says, "Love without pretence." For although they live in one house as long as that net of the Gospel is in the sea and encloses good and bad fish together until it is drawn to the shore, yet each does her own works. And both were harlots, because all are converted to the grace of God from worldly desire, and no one can truly boast of previous merits of righteousness. And that a harlot commits fornication is her own doing; that she has a son is God's. For all human beings are formed by the one God the Creator. Nor is it to be wondered at that God works well even in people's sins. For even from the crime of Judas the betrayer our Lord worked the salvation of the human race. But there is this difference: that when God has made something good out of someone's sin, the sinner generally did not want it: not only because, when he sins, he does not sin with the intention with which God by his providence works righteousness from his sin (for Judas did not betray Christ with the intention with which Christ allowed himself to be betrayed), but also because, when he learns that the outcome of his sin has turned to something better, which he did not want, he grieves rather than rejoices. As if someone wanting to give poison to a sick enemy were deceived by the look of a medicine and offered something healthful instead; and the sick man is made well by the kindness of God, who willed to turn his enemy's crime into healing: and yet when that wicked man learns of it, he is tormented by the man's recovery, which was brought about by his own hands. But if a harlot willingly keeps the son she has conceived, and is not driven by lust or by greed for a shameful wage to cast out of her womb by a drink for abortion what she had conceived, lest fruitfulness stand in the way of her sinning; then that desire which flowed out to many, turned to the one gift of God, will no longer be called desire but love. The harlot's son, then, is rightly understood as the grace given to a sinful woman. And from the old shame the new man has been born by the forgiveness of sins.

So the Lord, in the very number of his disciples, though he chose them all from sinners, still chose first those who would persevere in love, rather than Judas the pretender. It is not written in what order he was chosen; but it is known that good men were chosen before him; and not without reason is he numbered last. And after the Lord's ascension the Holy Spirit, sent from above according to the Lord's promise, was poured out on all who were together in one place: those from whom the Church began were good and loved without pretence. Afterwards, then, pretence began to work in the Church: and that is why love gave birth first. And the fruit of love is three days older, so that self-control, and righteousness, and the expectation of things to come can now be recognized. But pretence, even if it has given birth, that is, even if it has rejoiced for a short time in the forgiveness of sins, as if overcome by the sleep of worldly desire, when, cast down from the hope of heavenly rewards, it sinks with a heavy heart into earthly rest, as if sleeping it smothers the forgiveness which it had earned by believing. Such people prefer to rejoice in the name of righteousness rather than in its truth; and by obscure deceptions, as if by night, they try by lying to transfer to themselves another's good work, like a living son. And not only do they usurp the good works of others, but they also charge others with their own crimes, as if putting the dead son in their place.

But when will pretence be allowed so much that it boasts of a false name of righteousness with no one forbidding it, and claims for itself, in deceitful pretension to the name of mother, the living spiritual work which it did not beget, and which it had once begotten in itself and smothered by the weight of a most cruel sleep, and substitutes its own crimes by charging them on the good and innocent? When will pretence reign like this, if not when iniquity abounds, that is, when the darkness of sins prevails as in a blind night; and the love of many grows cold, that is, falls asleep over the spiritual work as over the living child? Yet because love will grow cold in such a way that it burns more negligently (for it was not said that it will be utterly extinguished so as not to exist at all), so this mother slept without killing her son; but still she gave room to the frauds of pretence. But when she wakes, and sees herself charged by those who commit it with an impiety she did not commit, and sees pretence daring to boast of the spiritual work of grace which she has kept, herself being called the worker of iniquity and pretence the mother of the good work, she implores the help of the peaceful Judge. For Solomon means Peaceful. We see that he delivered two sentences: the first as though not knowing, the last as judging with clear knowledge. The first sets the contest of devotion; the second gives the prize to the victor: in the first the mother is tested, in the last she rejoices; in the first, weeping, she sows her seed; in the second, with exultation, she brings back her sheaves. This belongs to the two times of the Church, which the Lord Christ, the peaceful judge, governs: one which is now, the other which is to come; in this one we are tested, in that one we are crowned.

But there is no greater proof of love in Christ's Church than when even the honor that seems to exist among men is despised, so that the little one's limbs may not be divided and Christian weakness torn apart by the rending of unity. For the Apostle says that he showed himself like a mother to the little ones in whom he had produced the good work of the Gospel; not he, but the grace of God with him. For that harlot could call nothing her own but her sins: the gift of fruitfulness was from God. And the grace of the giver is loved the more, the more punishment was due. And the Lord well said of the sinful woman, "He to whom more is forgiven loves more." So the apostle Paul says: "I became a little one among you, like a nurse cherishing her children." But when it comes to the danger that the little one may be divided, when pretence claims a false honor for itself and is ready to split unity, let the mother despise her own honor, so long as she sees her son whole and keeps him alive; lest, by claiming too stubbornly the honor due to her womb, she give pretence room to divide the weak limbs with the sword of schism. So let mother love say, "Give her the child." "Whether in pretence or in truth, let Christ be proclaimed." In Moses love cries out, "Lord, either forgive them, or blot me out of your book." But in the Pharisees pretence speaks: "If we let him go, the Romans will come and take away our nation and place." For they wanted to have not the truth but the name of righteousness, and desired to hold by deceit the honor due to the righteous. Yet the pretence reigning in them was permitted to sit in the chair of Moses, so that the Lord could say, "What they say, do; but what they do, do not do." So that, though holding a false honor, they still nourished the little ones and the weak with the truth of the Scriptures. For pretence has its own crime, by which it smothered with the weight of its sleep the new man it had received by the grace of the giver; but the milk of faith which it has is not its own. For even when the little one, who signifies the life that is reborn, has been killed, pretence, now settled in bad ways, still keeps in its memory, as in its breasts, the words of faith and Christian teaching which are handed on to all who come to the Church. From this milk even the false mother could give the sucking infant the nourishment of the true faith. Hence the true mother is secure when, even through pretenders in the Church, her little one is nourished with the milk of the divine Scriptures and of the Catholic faith, when division has been prevented and unity is safe; and by the judge's last sentence, by which the last judgment of Christ is figured, love that has been proved, which for the little one's safety and the strength of unity yielded honor even to pretence, holding love and the embrace of living grace, enjoys the everlasting reward of a devoted mother.

The Lord our God, not wanting any of us to perish, tending his Church like his field, seeking fruit from his trees before the time of the axe comes, when it will be necessary to cut down the fruitless trees, does not stop warning us to do good works while there is time and while, with God's help, it lies in our power. For when the time for doing good has passed, nothing remains but the time for receiving. No one will say to you after the resurrection of the dead, in the kingdom of God, "Break your bread to the hungry," because you will not find anyone hungry. No one will say, "Clothe the naked," where everyone's tunic will be immortality. No one will say, "Take in the stranger," where all will live in their own homeland. For now we are strangers from there. No one will say, "Visit the sick," where there is everlasting health. No one will say, "Bury the dead," where death dies. All these duties of devotion will not be necessary in eternal life, where there will be only peace and everlasting joy. But in this time, so that we may know how much God commends works of mercy to us, he has made even his saints to be in need; so that when friends are made here by means of the mammon of iniquity, they too may receive their friends into the eternal tabernacles: that is, so that when those who have the riches of the world give alms to the servants of God, who, while they are constantly free for God, are sometimes in need, then, as they make them sharers in earthly goods, so they may be found worthy to have a share with them in eternal life.

I said this because of the reading from the Kingdoms which we heard first. Had God failed to feed his servant Elijah? Did not birds serve him, since men were lacking? Did not a raven bring him bread in the morning and meat in the evening? So God showed that he can feed his servants from wherever he wills and however he wills: and yet, so that he might feed him with a devout widow, he made him be in need. The want of a holy soul was turned into abundance for a devout soul. Could Elijah not have given himself, from the mercy of God, what he gave to the little jar? You surely see, and it is plain, that sometimes the servants of God do not have, precisely so that those who have may be tested. And yet that widow had nothing: what she had left had run out, and she was about to die with her children. So she went out to gather two sticks to make herself bread: and then Elijah saw her. The man of God saw her just when she was looking for those two sticks. That woman bore the type of the Church: and because two pieces of wood make a cross, she, about to die, was looking for that by which she would live for ever. So, with the mystery foreshadowed, Elijah speaks to her what he heard: she tells her situation, says she will die when she has used up what remains. Where, then, is what the Lord had said to Elijah, "Go to Zarephath of Sidon; for I have commanded a widow there to feed you"? You see how God commands: not in the ear, but in the heart. Do we read that some prophet was sent to that woman and it was said to her, "Thus says the Lord: My servant will come to you hungry; serve him from what you have: do not fear want; I will make up what you give"? We do not read that this was said to her. Nor do we read that an angel was sent to her in her sleep and announced that Elijah would come hungry, and that someone admonished that woman about feeding him. But God, who speaks in thoughts, commands in wonderful ways. We say that God commanded by speaking in the heart, suggesting what was needed, persuading the rational soul of the widow woman of what was useful. So too we read in the Prophets that the Lord commanded a worm to gnaw the root of the gourd. What does "commanded" mean, if not "prepared its heart"? So by the Lord's inspiration that widow woman had a heart prepared to obey. Such she had come, such she spoke with Elijah. He who was in Elijah to command was himself in the widow to obey. "Go," he says, "first make something for me from your want; your riches will not fail." For the widow's patrimony was a little flour and a little oil: this little did not fail. Who has such an estate? The widow gladly fed the hungry servant of God, because her patrimony hung on a nail. What is happier than this poverty? If she receives such things here, what will she hope for at the end?

I said this so that we may not hope for the reward of our sowing in this time in which we sow. For here we sow the harvest of good works with toil, but in the future we shall gather its fruit with joy; as it is written, "Going, they went and wept, scattering their seeds; but coming, they will come with exultation, carrying their sheaves." For that was done as a sign, not as a payment. For if that widow received here for feeding the man of God, what she sowed is not great, because she did not reap a great crop. What she received is temporal: flour that did not run out and oil that did not diminish, until God gave rain upon the earth. And so she began to be in greater need just when God deigned to send rain: for then she was going to toil, to wait for the fruits of the field and gather them. But when it was not raining, her food came easily. That very sign which God granted her for a few days was a sign of the future life, where our reward knows no failing. God will be our flour. As those did not fail during those days, so he will not fail for ever. Let us hope for such a reward when we do good; lest perhaps one of you be tempted by a thought like this, saying, "I will feed some hungry servant of God, so that my jug may not run out and I may always find wine in my vat." Do not look for this here. Sow without anxiety; your harvest will come later, it will come more slowly: but when it comes, it will have no end.

We are confident, dearly beloved brothers, that it has already been sufficiently proved to your good sense that the Manichees lie in wait against the divine and sacred ancient books with most fraudulent deceit. Yet we offer still more of their tricks for the eyes of your heart to inspect: so that not only may you avoid them as far as you are concerned, but you may also teach others, who are weak and unskilled in the divine readings, to avoid and despise them, as each of you can. "In Job," they say, "it is written: Behold, the angels came into the sight of God, and the devil in their midst. And God said to the devil: Where do you come from? He answered and said: I have come here going around the whole world. Here," they say, "it is shown that the devil not only saw God but even spoke with him. But in the Gospel he says, Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God; and again he says, I am the door; no one can come to the Father except through me." Then they add a piece of reasoning, saying: "If, then, only those who are pure in heart see God, how could the devil, with a most filthy and unclean heart, see God? Or how does he enter through the door, that is, through Christ? Again," they say, "the Apostle testifies and confirms, saying that neither Principalities, nor Powers, nor Virtues have known God." Their slander is set out in exactly these words up to this point, and it is indeed a question to be discussed by a prudent Christian. But it is the intention of those who put forward the slander that makes it slander, in that they likewise twist the unlearned away from the most wholesome authority of the Scriptures to believe them. But first I should like to ask these people where Adimantus read this in the Apostle; for he is the writer of such slanders: I should like him, then, to say where he read the Apostle testifying and confirming, as he says, that neither Principalities, nor Powers, nor Virtues have known God; since the Lord says that even the angels of people who believe in him see the face of the Father daily. Unless perhaps it is what the apostle Paul says: "We speak wisdom among the perfect, yet not the wisdom of this world, nor of the princes of this world, who are brought to nothing; but we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, which is hidden, which God foreordained before the ages for our glory, which none of the princes of this world knew. For if they had known it, they would never have crucified the Lord of glory"? If this is the passage he meant to write down, why did he add "Powers and Virtues," which is not said there, and take away "of this world," which is said? But would that he did this by error rather than malice. Yet even if the Apostle had spoken in that way, does it follow that the devil could not hear God's voice? For it is written that he came into the sight of God; it is not written that he himself saw God. For by "the princes of this world" are understood either proud men, puffed up with the empty pomp of boasting, or the devil himself and his angels. For the Lord most plainly calls him the prince or ruler of this world: because by the name of "this world" sinners are understood, whose only hope is in this world. For just as a house is called bad when its inhabitants are meant, so we call this world bad when we mean those who inhabit this world with their hearts, that is, whose way of life is not in heaven. "For our way of life," says the Apostle, "is in heaven." But all sins serve the devil, who by free choice wanted to be the prince of sin; that is why he is called the prince of this world. I urge you to fix this rule of understanding in your hearts: by it the Lord will help you to discuss and solve many things in the Scriptures out of which they weave the snares of their error.

Since, then, it is not written that the devil saw God, but only that he came with the angels into the sight of the Lord and heard his voice, why are these wretched people so eager to slander the Scriptures about the vision of God, and to pervert the unlearned? So this proposition of theirs is overcome by the briefest answer. However talkatively they inquire how the devil saw God, we answer: The devil did not see God. They will say: "How then did he speak with him?" Here the blindness of their heart is to be refuted not by us but by blind men. For those who are blind in their bodily eyes can daily speak with those they cannot see. "How then," they say, "did he come into his sight?" As a blind man comes into the sight of one who sees, whom he himself does not see. And these comparisons, dearly beloved brothers, are given so that the wickedness of carnal people may be refuted; so that, if possible, repulsed in this way, they may turn their impious hearts to the gentleness of learning. For is God contained in a place, he whom every angelic and human conscience has present, not only of the good but also of the wicked? But there is this difference, that he is present to good consciences as a father, to wicked ones as a judge: as it is written, "The Lord questions the righteous and the ungodly." Again it is written, "In the thoughts of the ungodly there will be questioning." Nor does God question more forcefully in the ears of the body than in the secret of thought, where he alone hears and alone is heard. Do not even wicked people, when they speak the truth and are not believed, swear and say, "God is my witness," and say it most truly? Where, I ask, is he witness? In the tongue, or in the heart? In the sound of the voice, or in the silence of the conscience? And why are they generally annoyed at not being believed, when they know they are telling the truth, except that they cannot open their heart to us, where God is witness?

There are many ways in which God speaks with us. He speaks sometimes through some instrument, as through the book of the divine Scriptures; he speaks through some element of the world, as he spoke to the Magi through a star. For what is speech but the signifying of the will? He speaks through the lot, as he spoke about Matthias being appointed in Judas's place; he speaks through a human soul, as through a prophet; he speaks through an angel, as we accept that he spoke to some of the patriarchs and prophets and apostles; he speaks through some vocal and sounding creature, as we read and hold that voices came from heaven when no one was seen with the eyes. Finally, to man himself God speaks not outwardly through his ears or eyes but inwardly in his mind, and not in one way only: either in sleep, as to Laban the Syrian, that he should not harm his servant Jacob in anything, and as it was shown to Pharaoh about the seven fruitful years and the same number of barren ones; or when the human spirit is caught up, which the Greeks call ecstasy, as when to Peter at prayer a vessel full of likenesses of the Gentiles who would believe appeared to be let down from heaven; or in the mind itself, when someone understands the majesty or the will of God, as Peter himself, from that very vision, came to know by thinking it over within himself what the Lord wanted him to do. For no one can recognize this unless within him there sounds a kind of silent cry of the truth. God also speaks in the conscience of the good and the wicked. For no one can rightly either approve what he does well or disapprove where he sins, unless the voice of truth either praises or cries out against those very things in the silence of the heart. And truth is God: and since it speaks to human beings, good and bad, in so many ways (although not all to whom it speaks in so many ways can also behold its substance and nature), which human being can gather, by guessing or thinking, in how many and what ways that same truth speaks to the angels: whether to the good, who enjoy in contemplation its ineffable form and beauty through wonderful love; or to the wicked, who, depraved by their own pride and set by the truth itself in lower places, can hear its voice in certain hidden ways, though they are not worthy to see its face?

So, dearly beloved brothers, faithful of God and truest sons of the Catholic mother, let no one deceive you with poisoned food, even if you still need to be fed with milk: walk now perseveringly by the faith of the truth, so that at a sure and fitting time you may come to the sight of that same truth. For, as the Apostle says, "while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord; for we walk by faith, not by sight." And Christian faith leads to the sight of the vision of the Father. That is why the Lord says, "No one comes to the Father except through me." So it is pointless for these people to ask how the devil could come to God through Christ. For the devil cannot reach that blessedness of contemplation to which Christian faith leads those who are pure in heart. Yet the devil was not on that account unable to hear the voice of God speaking; just as many people who did not believe in Christ were able to hear the voice of God speaking from heaven, "I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again," when the Lord had said, "Father, glorify your Son."

And as for its being written that the devil came into God's sight: it was not written because anyone can ever escape God's sight, to whose eyes all things are subject and to whom the depth of every heart lies open; but because the things that Scripture narrated were done in the hidden part of creation, therefore it is written, "And behold, the angels came into the sight of God"; though they never withdraw from God's sight. For wherever they are sent, there too God's sight is present. But that is properly called God's sight which human sight cannot penetrate, such as the secrets of conscience. That is why, when we refute a liar, we do not say that he spoke in God's sight; because he did not say what God sees in his mind, where man cannot direct his sight. So, because these things were done so hiddenly that they could not be shown to human beings through the holy Scriptures except by the revelation of the Holy Spirit, they are narrated as having come into God's sight and having been done there.

As for the devil being in the midst of the angels: if you understand good angels, understand the devil in their midst as a defendant stands in the midst of the court officers to be heard by the judge. For Scripture does not declare what kind of angels they were. But if in the midst of wicked angels, what wonder is it that the prince and leader should be surrounded by a crowd of his servants? And if you take "into the sight of God" to mean that they come into God's sight who are not only seen by him but also see him, then the devil must be understood to have been in their midst in such a way that he did not see God, whom they saw; so that God even spoke to the devil through one of the holy angels. And yet the book says only, "God said." Just as in public business, although the judge says most things through a herald, still when the record is written down, the judge's name is entered, not the herald's too. And just as a man unworthy of prophetic vision can nevertheless stand in the midst of prophets, so as only to hear what the Lord says through them, without seeing what they see: so too the devil could be in the midst of the holy angels who see God, and through them hear the voice of God, whom he himself could not see.

And you see that the contrivances of the Manichees, as far as this question is concerned, have been undone in many ways, so that you will no longer think, dearest brothers, that the devil really spoke with God in such a way that he could even see the face of truth, which pure hearts behold; or that he came to that contemplation of blessedness to which no one is allowed to come except through the Lord Jesus Christ. But I am greatly amazed at the shamelessness of these people, who want to slander us about the vision of the divine substance, and tell lies about our Scriptures, saying what is not written, that the devil saw God; and try to stir up so much odium from this, that whoever is horrified, and judges it unfitting that the devil should have seen God, may be turned away entirely from the authority of the divine Scriptures, through a suspicious ignorance that does not understand what is written: whereas they themselves do not deny that our Lord Jesus Christ is God, and invent the story that he appeared to human beings without taking a human body.

So when the devil dared to tempt the Lord, when he saw him, what did he see? If he saw his body, then the Lord had a body, which the lost wretches will not confess. But if he did not have a body, then the divine substance itself lay open to the devil's eyes: which none see but the pure in heart, as they themselves remind us from the Gospel. O troublesome blindness of the heretics! Why do you falsely accuse our Scriptures of saying that the devil saw God, and by denying Christ's body are shown to want to display his divine substance to the devil's eyes? Or perhaps, as they are accustomed to say, he did not have a human body in such a way that he still showed himself as if he had one? Who then, you madmen, thinks more truly and rightly: he who believes that God spoke with the devil, or he who believes that God not only spoke with the devil but even lied to the devil? For Scripture records that certain angels appeared to human eyes; but certainly the Lord so subjected bodily creation to their power that they adapted it to their will. Hence they too, though not born of a woman, had a real body, which they could change from any form into any form according to the purpose of their ministry and duty; yet from a real form into a real form. For we cannot say that when the Lord himself turned water into wine, either the water or the wine was false.

So every body, whose nature and order are changeable at the nod of the most almighty Creator, into whatever forms it is changed, does not depart from truth in its own kind: since by whatever variation it is changed, it still does not cease to be a body and a real body. But since these people invent the idea that all bodily nature is not from God the almighty Creator but from some race of darkness or other, we ask them where our Lord Jesus Christ took his body from. For if they say he took no body at all, what was it that appeared to human and bodily eyes? Either it was the lie of a phantom, which is abominable to believe; or, if they contend that he showed his divine substance itself to human eyes without taking any body, then the devil also saw this; and where is what they proclaim with slanderous voice in this question, "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God"? But if perhaps they say that the Lord's divine and proper substance is not the same with the Father as he wished to show himself on earth without taking a body, what else have these wretches believed than that he is changeable by places and times? For they do not want to read, nor can they easily understand, what is said through the prophet, "You will change them, and they will be changed; but you are the same, and your years will not fail"; and what is written about Wisdom itself in the books of divine Wisdom: "Remaining in itself, it renews all things."

But according to their way of thinking, if someone says to them, "Why then are you surprised if God too changed the form of his divinity so that the devil, who is of a most filthy heart, could look on him, as you think of Christ, God?", I do not know what they will answer. For they have never dared to say that the Father and the Son are not of one substance: and if they said the Son was of another substance, it could be answered to them, "How then do you know whether that old Scripture records that the devil spoke with the Father or with the Son?" Next we ask: does the devil see this sun, or not? If he sees it, how then is the sun God, when the devil sees it? If he does not see it, still wicked people see it; how then is it God, when those who are not pure in heart see it? Or if, in order to be seen, it too was changed, and is not what is seen, what if you too show one thing and are another, so that you may also imitate the sun, not only worship it? And yet if you ask them whether the divine substance is changeable or unchangeable, they can only say unchangeable, led not by reason but confounded by shame. It remains, then, that they are forced to confess that our Lord Jesus Christ took a body from somewhere so as to appear to human eyes. And if they confess this, I ask where he took it from. If they say from this world, I ask where the body of the world itself comes from. At once they answer me: "From the race of darkness." O wonderful madness! Why then, wretches, in the body of the Saviour do you fear the womb of a virgin, and do not fear the race of demons?

We, for our part, profess that the whole nature of body is from God the almighty Creator: and so, from wherever our Lord took a body, he would certainly take it from his own creation: but he chose in humility to take it from a woman, he who had come to set free the lost creation, which fell through a woman. Hence, wishing to bring both sexes into the hope of renewal and restoration, he chose the male sex in which to be born, the female through which to be born. But you, who shudder at the chaste womb of the virgin, choose, I beg you, where the Lord should take a body from. You say that every body is the substance of the race of darkness. Choose, then, as I said, where the Son of God ought to take a body from. Or have you lost the light to answer, because darkness meets you wherever you turn your eyes? "But mortal flesh," they say, "seems more unclean." Read them the Apostle: "To the pure all things are pure"; and read against them the Apostle: "But to the unclean and unbelieving nothing is pure; but both their mind and their conscience are defiled." But if they do not say "more unclean" but "weaker," we fully agree: and that is why Christ is our strength, because our weakness did not change him. Here I recognize that saying of the prophet: "You will change them, and they will be changed; but you are the same, and your years will not fail." For not only did the weakness of the flesh not change him for the worse, but it was itself changed by him for the better. This bodily sun, which they think is not a body (so little do they understand what a body is, who boast falsely of spiritual discussions): this bodily sun, then, merely because it is a heavenly body, lights the earth and is not darkened by it; dries water and is not moistened by it; melts ice and is not chilled by it; hardens mud and is not softened by it. And our Lord Jesus Christ, the Word of the Father, through whom all things were made, the power and wisdom of God, everywhere present, everywhere hidden, everywhere whole, nowhere enclosed, reaching from end to end mightily and ordering all things sweetly: do the unhappy people fear that he could not take up a man in such a way as to give life to mortal things and not be put to death by them; to sanctify the flesh and not be defiled by it; to dissolve death and not be bound by it; to change man into himself and not be changed into man? We have been compelled to argue one thing from another because of the wavering of some and their dangerous weakness of faith. But as for the question set before us, although that Scripture (which they preferred to lie in wait against rather than be enlightened by) does not prove that God was seen by the devil, let them see for themselves how the race of darkness could see the divine substance, when before the battle in which they say good and evil were mixed, the divine substance had not yet taken any body so as to be seen by its enemy. From this let them recognize that they want in vain to overturn the foundations of the Catholic faith, since they cannot prop up their tottering fables with any supports of answers.

"Be instructed, all you who judge the earth." To judge the earth is to tame the body. Let us hear the Apostle judging the earth: "I do not fight," he says, "as one beating the air; but I chastise my body and bring it into subjection, lest perhaps, having preached to others, I myself become reprobate." So hear, earth, one judging the earth; and judge the earth, so that you may not be earth. For if you judge the earth, you will be heaven, and you will tell the glory of the Lord done in you. For "the heavens tell the glory of God." But if you do not judge the earth, you will be earth. And if you are earth, you will belong to him to whom it was said, "Earth you shall eat." Let the judges of the earth hear, then: let them chastise the body, rein in lusts, love wisdom, conquer desire: and that they may do this, let them be instructed.

And this is the sum of instruction: "Serve the Lord in fear, and rejoice in him with trembling." Rejoice in him, not in yourself: in him from whom you have it that you are, and that you are a man, and that you are righteous, if indeed you are already righteous. But if you think that you are a man from him, but righteous from yourself, you are not serving the Lord in fear, nor rejoicing in him with trembling, but in yourself with presumption. And what will happen to you but what follows? "Lest the Lord be angry," it says, "and you perish from the just way." For it does not say, "Lest the Lord be angry, and you do not enter the just way," but, "and you perish from the just way." For you already seem to yourself righteous, not seizing another's goods, not committing adultery, not committing murder, not bearing false witness against your neighbor, honoring father and mother, worshipping one God, not serving idols and demons: you will perish from this way if you attribute these things to yourself, if you think these things are from yourself. For unbelievers do not enter the just way; the proud perish from the just way. For what does it say? "Be instructed, all you who judge the earth." And lest perhaps you attribute to yourselves the strength and power by which you judge the earth, and believe you have it from yourselves, do not do so: "Serve the Lord in fear; rejoice," not in yourselves with presumption, but "in him with trembling. Lest the Lord be angry, and you perish from the just way, when his anger is quickly kindled." What, then, must be done so that we do not perish from the just way? "Blessed are all who trust in him." If those who trust in him are blessed, those who trust in themselves are wretched. For "cursed is every man who puts his hope in man." So not in yourself either, since you too are a man. For if you put your hope in another man, you will be wrongly humble; but if you put your hope in yourself, you are dangerously proud. What difference does it make? Both are ruinous: neither is to be chosen. The wrongly humble is not lifted up; the dangerously proud is thrown down.

Finally, so that your Holiness may know that these words, "Serve the Lord in fear, and rejoice in him with trembling," were said to refute and do away with this attitude by which each one trusts in himself, hear the Apostle saying these very words and explaining why they were said. See, these are the Apostle's words: "With fear and trembling work out your own salvation." Why then do I work out my salvation with fear and trembling, when it is in my power to work out my salvation? Do you want to hear why with fear and trembling? "For it is God who works in you." That is why with fear and trembling: because what the humble obtains, the proud loses. If, then, it is God who works in us, why was it said, "Work out your own salvation"? Because he works in us in such a way that we also work. "Be my helper." He who calls on a helper shows that he too is a worker. "But the good will," he says, "is mine." I admit it: yours. But by whom was it given, by whom aroused? Do not listen to me: ask the Apostle. "For it is God," he says, "who works in you both to will and to work for his good will." What is it, then, that you claimed for yourself? Why were you walking proudly and perishing? Return to your heart, find yourself bad; and so that you may be good, call on the good one. For nothing in you pleases God except what you have from God: what you have from yourself displeases God. If you think of your good things, "what do you have that you did not receive? And if you received it, why do you boast as if you had not received it?" He alone knows nothing but giving. He who has no one better has no giver. And if you are inferior to him, or rather because you are inferior, rejoice that you were made in his image; that you may be found in him, you who perished in yourself. For in yourself you could do nothing but lose yourself; nor can you find yourself unless he who made you seeks you.

Let us also address those who judge the earth according to the visible and popular understanding. For kings, generals, princes, judges judge the earth: each judges the earth according to the office he has received on earth. And what does "judges the earth" mean, but "judges the people who are on the earth"? For if you take the earth properly only as what you tread on, then it was said to farmers, "You who judge the earth." But if kings judge the earth, and whoever under kings has received power from kings, let them too be instructed: because earth judges earth; and earth judging earth ought to fear him who is in heaven. For a man judges his equal: man judges man, mortal judges mortal, sinner judges sinner. For if that saying of the Lord comes into the open, "Let him who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her," does not everyone who judges the earth suffer an earthquake? Let us recall the Gospel passage. The Pharisees, testing the Lord, brought before him a woman caught in adultery; for which sin a punishment had been laid down by the Law, the Law given through Moses the servant of God. So the Pharisees came to the Lord with this deceitful and fraudulent dilemma: that if he ordered the defamed woman to be stoned, he would lose his gentleness; but if he forbade what the Law had ordered, he would be held to have sinned against the Law. But just as, when they asked about paying tribute to Caesar, he caught them by their own mouth, asking in turn whose the coin they produced was, whose image and inscription it had (for when those who had asked answered that the image on the coin was Caesar's, he answered them according to their own mouth, "Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's," to remind them that the image of God in man must be rendered to God just as his image on the coin is rendered to Caesar): so too in the case of this adulteress he questioned the questioners, and so judged the judges. "I do not forbid," he says, "that she be stoned whom the Law ordered stoned; but I ask by whom. For I do not resist, but I look for a minister of the Law." Finally, hear: "Do you want to stone her according to the Law? Let him who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her."

But when he heard this, he wrote with his finger on the ground, to instruct the earth. And when he said this to the Pharisees, he raised his eyes, and looked at the earth, and made it tremble. Then, when he had said this, he began again to write on the ground. And they, pricked and made to tremble, went away one after another. O earthquake, where the earth was so moved that it even changed its place! So when they had gone away, the sinful woman and the Saviour remained: the sick woman and the doctor remained: misery and mercy remained. And looking at the woman, he said, "Has no one condemned you?" And she: "No one, Lord." But still she was anxious. For sinners did not dare to condemn her: those who, looking at themselves, found themselves like her did not dare to stone the sinful woman. But the woman was still in great danger, because that judge who was without sin had remained. "Has no one," he says, "condemned you?" And she, "No one, Lord: if you do not either, I am safe." To this anxiety the Lord answered with a quick word: "Neither will I condemn you." Neither will I, though I am without sin, neither will I condemn you. Their conscience held them back from punishment; mercy inclines me to help.

Pay attention to these things, and be instructed, all you who judge the earth. "All," that is, because it is also to be understood of those of whom the Apostle says: "Let every soul be subject to the higher authorities. For there is no authority except from God; and those that are, are ordained by God. Whoever resists the authority resists the ordinance of God. For rulers are not a terror to good work, but to evil. Do you want not to fear the authority? Do good, and you will have praise from it." And if not from it, still out of it. For either you act justly, and a just authority will praise you; or, if you act justly, even if an unjust authority condemns you, the just God will crown you. And so, you hold fast to justice, you live well: and whether it condemns or acquits, you will have praise out of it. That blessed man whose blood was shed here: did he not find praise out of that very authority, before and by which he seemed to be judged? He made his confession, he persevered in the faith; he did not fear death, he shed his blood, he conquered the devil.

So, so that you may not be under an unjust authority, whoever of you wants to have power over people, be instructed, lest you judge perversely, and perish in soul before you destroy anyone in the flesh. You want to be a judge (you cannot be one by merit), or by money; I do not yet find fault. For perhaps you want to benefit human affairs, and you buy so that you may benefit; to serve justice, you do not spare money. First, for your own sake, be a judge within yourself: first judge yourself, so that from the inner chamber of your conscience you may go out secure to another. Return into yourself, attend to yourself, examine yourself, hear yourself. There I want to find you an upright judge, where you seek no witness. You want to go out with power, so that one person may tell you about another what you do not know; first judge within. Has your conscience told you nothing about yourself? If you do not want to deny it, it certainly has. I do not want to hear what it said: you judge, who heard it. It told you about yourself what you did, what you took, how you sinned. I should like to know what sentence you pronounced. If you heard well, if you heard rightly, if in hearing yourself you were just, if you mounted the tribunal of your mind, if you hung yourself on the rack of your heart before yourself, if you applied the heavy torturers of fear; you heard well if you heard like this; and without doubt you punished your sin by repenting. See, you have both examined, and heard, and punished; and yet you have spared yourself. Hear your neighbor too in this way, if you are instructed as the Psalm warned: "Be instructed, all you who judge the earth."

If you hear your neighbor as you hear yourself, you will pursue the sins, not the sinner: and if perhaps someone is hard about correcting his sins, turned away from the fear of God, you will pursue this very thing in him, try to correct this very thing, labor to destroy and remove this, so that the man may be saved and the sin condemned. For there are two names, man and sinner: God made the man, man made himself a sinner; let what man made perish, let what God made be set free. So do not go as far as death, lest in pursuing the sin you destroy the man. Do not go as far as death, so that there may be someone to repent: let the man not be killed, so that there may be someone to be amended. Keeping this love for human beings in your heart, O man, be a judge of the earth; and love to strike fear, but love. If you are proud, be proud against sins, not against the man. Rage against what displeases you in yourself too; not against him who was made as you were. You have come from one workshop, you have had one craftsman, one clay is your material. What do you lose by not loving the one you judge? You lose justice, you lose it by not loving the one you judge. Let penalties be applied, I do not refuse, I do not forbid; but in the spirit of one who loves, in the spirit of one who cares, in the spirit of one who corrects.

For you do not fail to discipline your son. And first you act so that, if possible, he may be disciplined by shame and generosity, may blush to offend his father, not fear him as a stern judge; you are glad of such a son: but if perhaps he despises these things, you also apply blows; you inflict punishment, you cause pain, but you seek his welfare. Many have been corrected by love, many by fear: but through the trembling of fear they have come to love. Be instructed, you who judge the earth. Love, and judge. For innocence is not sought in such a way that discipline perishes. It is written, "He who rejects discipline is unhappy." To this saying it can well be added: As he who rejects discipline is unhappy, so he who refuses discipline is cruel. I have dared to say something, my brothers, which the obscurity of the matter itself compels me to explain to you a little more fully. I repeat what I said, "He who rejects discipline is unhappy": this is plain. "He who does not give discipline is cruel": I hold it entirely, I hold it and show one who is devoted in striking, cruel in sparing; I set an example before your eyes. Where do I find one devoted in striking? I do not go to others; I go to father and son: the father loves even when he strikes; and the boy does not want to be beaten: he disregards his wish, he considers his good. Why? Because he is a father, because he is preparing an inheritance, because he is raising a successor. See, the father is devoted in striking, merciful in striking. Give me a man cruel in sparing. I do not leave these persons; I set the same before your eyes. But if the boy, unpunished and undisciplined, lives in such a way as to perish, and the father pretends not to see; if the father spares, if the father is afraid to offend his lost son with the harshness of discipline, is he not cruel in sparing? So be instructed, all you who judge the earth: and in judging well, expect a reward not from the earth but from him who made heaven and earth.

We have sung to the Lord and said, "The poor man is left to you; you will be the helper of the orphan." Let us seek the poor man; let us seek the orphan. And let it not be surprising that I urge us to seek those whom we see and feel to be so abundant. Is not everything full of poor people? Is not everything full of orphans? Yet among them all I seek the poor man, I seek the orphan. And first I must show your Charity that what we suppose is not what we are seeking. For those who are called poor and are, to whom alms are made at God's command, of whom we confess it is written, "Shut up alms in the heart of the poor, and it will plead with the Lord for you": this kind of people is indeed abundant; but this poor man is to be understood at a deeper level. This poor man is of that kind of which it was said, "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." There are poor people who have no money, who barely find their daily food, who so need the help and mercy of others that they are not even ashamed to beg: if it was of them that it was said, "The poor man is left to you," what do we do, who are not such? Are we, then, who are Christians, not left to God? And what other hope do we have, if we are not left to him who does not leave us?

Learn, then, to be poor and left to God, my fellow poor. "He is rich, he is proud." For in these riches too, which are commonly called riches, to which this common poverty is the opposite: in these riches, then, nothing is so much to be guarded against as the disease of pride. For whoever has no money, has no great resources, has nothing to lift himself up with. If, then, someone who has nothing to lift himself up with is not praised for not lifting himself up, let him who has something be praised if he does not lift himself up. Why then do I praise a humble poor man, who has nothing to be proud of? But who would put up with someone both needy and proud? Praise the humble rich man, praise the poor rich man. The apostle Paul wants such people, writing to Timothy and saying: "Command the rich of this world not to be proud-minded." I know what I am saying: "Command them this." For they have riches that persuade them to pride from within; they have riches in which they struggle to be humble. Give me Zacchaeus, who had great riches, the chief of the tax collectors, the confessor of his sins, short in stature, shorter in spirit, climbing a tree to see passing by the one who was to hang on a tree for him. Give me the man who said, "Half of my goods I give to the poor." But you are very rich, O Zacchaeus, you are very rich. See, you will give half: why will you keep half? "Because if I have taken anything from anyone, I restore fourfold."

But some beggar says to me, exhausted by infirmity, covered in rags, faint with hunger; he answers me and says: "The kingdom of heaven is owed to me; for I am like that Lazarus who lay full of sores before the rich man's house, whose sores the dogs licked, and who sought to be filled with the crumbs that fell from the rich man's table: I am more like him," he says. "The kingdom of heaven is owed to our kind, not to the kind who are clothed in purple and fine linen and feast splendidly every day. For such was that man before whose house the poor man lay full of sores: and see the end of both. For it happened that the poor man died and was carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom. And the rich man died, and was buried." For the poor man was perhaps not even buried. "And what then? When the rich man was in torments in hell, he lifted up his eyes and saw the poor man whom he had despised resting in Abraham's lap: he longed for a drop from the one who had longed for a crumb from him; and since he loved opulence, he found no mercy. He wanted help for his brothers, always senseless, merciful too late: he received nothing at all of what he asked."

"So let us distinguish," he says to me, "poor and rich: why do you urge me to understand other things? The poor are obvious, the rich are obvious." Hear me, then, about what you have put forward, my lord poor man. When you say that you are that holy man full of sores, I fear that by being proud you may not be what you say. Do not despise the merciful rich, the humble rich; and to put it more quickly, as I said a little before, do not despise the poor rich. O poor man, be poor too; poor, that is, humble. For if a rich man has become humble, how much more ought a poor man to be humble? The poor man has nothing to be puffed up with; the rich man has something to wrestle with. Hear me, then. Be truly poor, be devout, be humble. For if you boast of this ragged and sore-covered poverty, because such was the man who lay needy before the rich man's house, you notice that he was poor, and you notice nothing else. "What," you say, "do I notice?" Read the Scriptures and you will find what I am saying. Lazarus was poor: he into whose bosom he was carried was rich. "It happened," it says, "that the poor man died and was carried by the angels." Where to? "Into Abraham's bosom," that is, into the secret place where Abraham was. Do not understand carnally that the poor man was carried as it were into the fold of Abraham's tunic. It was a bosom because it was a secret place. Hence it is said, "Repay our neighbors into their bosom." What does "into their bosom" mean? Into their secret places. What does "Repay into their bosom" mean? Torment their conscience. Read, or if you cannot read, listen when it is read, and see that Abraham was very wealthy on earth, in gold, silver, household, livestock, property: and yet this rich man was poor, because he was humble. For "Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness." He was justified by the grace of God, not by his own presumption. He was faithful, he did good works. He was ordered to sacrifice his son, and he did not hesitate to offer what he had received to him from whom he had received it. He was proved by God, he was made an example of faith. He was already known to God: but he had to be shown to us. He was not puffed up as if in his own good works, because this rich man was poor. And so that you may know that he was not puffed up as if in his good works (for he knew that whatever he had, he had from God; and he boasted not in himself but in the Lord), hear the apostle Paul: "For if Abraham was justified by works, he has glory, but not before God."

You see that, although the poor are abundant, we are right to seek the poor man: we seek him in the crowd, and we scarcely find him. A poor man meets me, and I am seeking a poor man. Meanwhile, you, stretch out your hand to the poor man you find. With your heart you seek the one you seek. You say, "I am poor like Lazarus": this humble rich man of mine does not say, "I am rich like Abraham." So you lift yourself up, he humbles himself. Why are you puffed up, and do not imitate? "I," he says, "a poor man, am carried into Abraham's bosom." Do you not see that a rich man received the poor man? Do you not see that a rich man is the receiver of the poor man? For if you are proud against those who have money, and deny that they belong to the kingdom of heaven, when perhaps there is found in them the humility that is not found in you, are you not afraid that when you die Abraham may say to you, "Depart from me, for you have blasphemed me"?

Let us, then, admonish our rich as the Apostle admonished. We have been admonished not to be proud-minded, nor to hope in the uncertainty of riches. Those riches, which you think are full of delights, are fuller of dangers. He was poor, and slept more securely: sleep came more easily to the hard ground than to a silver-plated bed. Look at the cares of the rich, and compare them with the security of the poor. But let this rich man hear, so that he may not be proud-minded nor hope in the uncertainty of riches. Let him use the world as though not using it. Let him know that he is walking a road, and that he has entered these riches as into an inn. Let him refresh himself; he is a traveller: let him refresh himself and pass on; he does not take away with him what he found in the inn. Another traveller will come, and he too will have them, but will not take them away. All are going to leave here what they acquired here. "Naked," he says, "I came out of my mother's womb; naked I shall return to the earth. The Lord gave, the Lord has taken away." He did not take away "the poor man left to you." "Naked I came out of my mother's womb; naked I shall return to the earth."

Hear another poor man: "We brought nothing into this world; and we cannot take anything out: having food and clothing, let us be content with these. For those who want to become rich fall into temptation and many desires, foolish and harmful, which plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the root of all evils is avarice: and some, coveting it, have strayed from the faith and pierced themselves with many sorrows." Who are these who have strayed from the faith and pierced themselves with many sorrows? "Those who want to become rich." Now let that ragged man answer me. Let us see whether he does not want to become rich; let us see, let us ask him whether he does not want to become rich: let him answer, and not lie. I hear the tongue, but I question the conscience. Let him say whether he does not want to become rich. But if he does, he has already fallen into temptation and many desires, foolish and harmful. For I am not speaking of wealth but of desires. Whence? Because he wants to become rich. What follows? "Many desires, foolish and harmful, which plunge people into ruin and destruction." Do you see where you are? Why do you show me your lack of resources, when I convict you of such great greed? See, now compare the two. This one is rich, that one is poor: but this rich man already is rich; he does not want to become so. He is rich either from his parents, or from gifts and inheritances. Let us suppose, let us grant it: he is rich even from iniquities. He no longer wants to add; he has set a measure, fixed a limit to greed; he now serves devotion with his heart. "He is rich," you say. I answer, "He is rich." Again you, the accuser, answer and say, "He is rich from iniquity." What if he makes friends by means of the mammon of iniquity? The Lord knew what he was saying; certainly he was not mistaken when he commanded, "Make friends for yourselves by means of the mammon of iniquity, so that they may receive you into the eternal tabernacles." What if this rich man does this? He now puts an end to greed and practises devotion. You have nothing, but you want to become rich: you will fall into temptation. But perhaps you have become very poor and very needy because you had something or other from your father to support you, and some false charge of a rival took it away. You groan, I hear; you blame the times: what you groan about, you would do if you could. Do we not see it? Is not everything full of daily examples? Yesterday he was groaning because he was losing his own; today, attached to someone more powerful, he seizes what belongs to others.

We have found the true poor man, we have found the devout, humble man; not trusting in himself, a true poor man, a member of the poor man who for our sake became poor when he was rich. See our rich man, who for our sake became poor when he was rich; see that rich man: "All things were made through him, and without him nothing was made." It is more to make gold than to have it. You are rich in gold, silver, livestock, household, estates, crops: you could not create these for yourself. See that rich man: "All things were made through him." See that poor man: "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us." Who can worthily think of his riches? How he makes, who is not made; creates, uncreated; forms, unformed; the changeless making changeable things, the eternal making temporal ones? Who can worthily think of his riches? Let us think of his poverty, if perhaps we can grasp at least that. He is conceived in the virginal womb of a woman, enclosed in his mother's insides. O poverty! He is born in a narrow lodging, wrapped in infant's swaddling clothes, laid in a manger, becomes as it were the fodder of poor beasts; then the Lord of heaven and earth, the creator of the angels, the maker and founder of all things visible and invisible, sucks, wails, is fed, grows, bears the passage of years, hides his majesty: afterwards he is seized, despised, scourged, mocked, spat upon, struck with fists, crowned with thorns, hung on a tree, pierced with a lance. O poverty! See the head of the poor whom I am seeking, of which poor man we have found the true poor man as a member.

Let us briefly seek the orphan, since we have grown tired in seeking the poor man. Lord Jesus, I seek the orphan; tired, I seek him: answer quickly, so that I may find him. "Do not," he says, "call anyone your father on earth." The orphan on earth has found an immortal Father in heaven. "Do not," he says, "call anyone your father on earth." This orphan has been found. Let this orphan pray: let us hear him and imitate him. What is his prayer? "For my father and my mother have forsaken me." "My father," he says, "and my mother have forsaken me; but the Lord has taken me up." If, then, "blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven," "the poor man is left to you." If "my father and my mother have forsaken me, but the Lord has taken me up," "you will be the helper of the orphan."

We love the beauty of God's house and the place of the tabernacle of his glory, if we ourselves are that too. What, then, is the beauty of God's house and the place of the tabernacle of his glory, if not his temple, of which the Apostle says, "For the temple of God is holy, which you are"? So, just as in buildings made by hand, when they are built elegantly and magnificently, our bodily sight is charmed, so when living stones, the hearts of the faithful, are held together by the bond of love, that is the beauty of God's house and the place of the tabernacle of his glory. Learn, then, what you ought to love, so that you may be able to love. For whoever loves the beauty of God's house undoubtedly loves the Church: not in skilfully made walls and roofs, not in the sheen of marbles and gilded ceilings, but in faithful, holy people, who love God with all their heart and with all their soul and with all their mind, and their neighbor as themselves.

But in the Christian congregation, as far as participation and communion in the sacraments are concerned, they have multiplied beyond number. So the number is one thing; those beyond the number are another. The number are those of whom the Apostle says, "The Lord knows those who are his." Beyond the number: "For in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and silver, but also of wood and earthenware; some for honor, some for dishonor." So the number are the vessels for honor; beyond the number, the vessels for dishonor. Since, then, there are these two kinds of vessels, do we doubt where the beauty of God's house is? If, then, you want to love, doing what you have sung, the beauty of God's house and the place of the tabernacle of his glory, seek the vessels for honor. And I do not want you to say, "I have sought, and not found." For you sought and did not find because you yourself were not what you sought. Like clings to like; the unlike shuns the unlike. If you are a vessel for dishonor, without doubt a vessel for honor will be burdensome to you even to look at. Do you not hear how some people say of someone, "He is burdensome to us even to look at"? What is burdensome for you to look at, when will it be open for you to find? For these vessels belong to the inner man. Certainly when a righteous man has been seen, he is not yet recognized as righteous. The righteous and the unrighteous have the same appearance: both are men, but not both the house of God. And if both are called Christians, both are vessels, but not both for honor; but one for honor, the other for dishonor.

Must the great house be deserted because of the bad vessels? God, that is, the Lord of the great house, knows how to use both vessels for honor and vessels for dishonor. Just as it belongs to the wicked to use even good things badly, so on the contrary it belongs to God to use even bad things well. How many good things the wicked use! For "every creature of God is good." How do the wicked use them badly? As Scripture rebukes them, saying, "You ask and do not receive, because you ask badly, to spend it on your desires." What name have these received who use God's good things badly? It goes on and says, "Adulterers." Why adulterers? "Do you not know that a friend of this world is made an enemy of God?" "Adulterers," it says. There are adulterous souls, there are fornicating souls: let us examine them. Fornicating souls are those prostituted, as it were, to many false gods: adulterous ones, those already joined in lawful marriage, and yet not keeping the chastity of the soul for that lawful marriage. To put it more expressly, the soul of a pagan is a fornicator, the soul of a bad Christian an adulteress. The pagan's soul, a fornicator, has no lawful husband, and is corrupted, prostituted through various demons: but why is the soul of a bad Christian an adulteress? Because she neither loves chastity nor leaves her husband. So do not say, "Why are these people in God's house?" The answer to you is: "They are vessels for dishonor." God knows how to use them: he who created does not err; for he who could create knows how to order: they have their place in the great house. But if you ask me how God uses them well, I confess that, as a man, I cannot explain God's counsel. For I know how to tremble with the apostle Paul, who also trembled when he considered it, and trembling cried out: "O the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments, and how inscrutable his ways! For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor? Or who has first given to him, and it shall be repaid him? For from him and through him and in him are all things: to him be glory for ever and ever." To us belong consideration, wonder, trembling, exclamation: for there is no penetrating it. And to him what? "Glory for ever and ever." Whether concerning the vessels for honor or the vessels for dishonor, "to him be glory for ever and ever." Some he crowns, others he condemns, nowhere does he err: some he approves, by others he tests, all he orders.

"What," someone says, "are wicked people doing in this world?" Answer me: in a goldsmith's furnace, what is the chaff doing? I think the chaff is not there without reason, where gold is purified. Let us see what is all there: there is the furnace, the chaff, the gold, the fire, the craftsman: but those three, gold, chaff, fire, are in the furnace; the craftsman is at the furnace. Look at this world too: the world is the furnace; the chaff, wicked people; the gold, good people; the fire, tribulation; the craftsman, God. Look and see: the gold is not purified unless the chaff is burned. See the gold in this very Psalm, where we love the beauty of God's house and the place of the tabernacle of his glory. See the gold there, see the voice of the gold; it longs to be purified: "Prove me, Lord, and try me; burn my reins and my heart." "Prove me," he says, "Lord, and try me." He who ought to have dreaded temptation asks for temptation. "Prove me," he says, "Lord, and try me." And see whether he does not seek fire: "Prove me, and try me; burn my reins and my heart." Are you not afraid of failing in the fire? "No," he says. Why? "Because your mercy is before my eyes." See, he says, why I say securely, "Prove me, Lord, and try me; burn my reins and my heart": not because I am able by my own strength to bear the fire of temptation, but because your mercy is before my eyes. You who have granted me, he says, to be proven gold, will you let me perish in the furnace? Surely you put me in to be purified, and take me out purified. "May the Lord guard your going in and your going out." See the going out itself, see the entering into the furnace. "Count it all joy, my brothers, when you fall into various temptations." See, you have heard the entering; look for the going out. For it is easy to go in: to go out is a great thing. But do not fear: "God is faithful." Clearly, because you had gone in, you were thinking about the way out. "God is faithful, who will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear; but with the temptation will also make a way out." What is the way out? "That you may be able to bear it." You have gone in, you have fallen into it; you have borne it, you have come out.

The abundance of the wicked is great material for the purification of the good. For although the good lie hidden, mixed in the multitude of the wicked, the Lord knows those who are his. Under the hand of so great a craftsman, a speck of gold cannot perish in a great deal of chaff. How much chaff there is, and how little gold! But do not fear: the craftsman is so great that he can purify and cannot lose. See how the gold, the blessed Apostle, is proved by dangers in this furnace of the world: so that we may come to the dishonored vessels that are within, which the Lord of the great house knows how to use well. So when the Apostle was being proved by dangers, what did he say? "In dangers at sea, in dangers in the desert, in dangers from my own race, in dangers from the Gentiles." All these are outside. Look within: "In dangers among false brothers." So I address the gold of God, I address the vessels made for honor, I address the grains laboring among the chaff in the threshing of the floor. I say to you, whoever hears, not me but through me: Be good, bear with the bad. I do not want you to say, "Who is good?" Or rather, I do want you to say this: since however good you are, you will not be without some bad. Hence it is most rightly said, "No one is good but God alone." But that good one who does good things is God. If, then, God is good who does good things, and he alone is good, the maker of good things, how is he the maker of good things if no human being is good? So, according to his measure, a good man too is near. If there were none, the Lord himself would not say, "A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good things."

So be good, and bear with the bad. Be good in one way, and bear with the bad in two ways. Good only within: for if not within, good nowhere. So be good within; bear with the bad both outside and within. Outside, bear with the heretic, bear with the pagan, bear with the Jew; bear also within with the bad Christian. For "a man's enemies are those of his own household." Putting up with many troublesome bad people within, you are irritated and indignant, as if the time of winnowing had already come. You are placed on the threshing floor; you are still on the threshing floor; the floor is still being threshed; grains and sheaves are still being gathered to the floor as the nations believe. Do you think you can have only wheat on the floor? You are mistaken. Groan on the floor, so that you may rejoice in the barn. Many evils are done by bad Christians: those who are outside, and do not want to be Christians, find occasions for excuses. To someone urging him to believe, a man answers: "Do you want me to be what that man and that man is?" And he names this one and that one: and sometimes he tells the truth. And when the truth cannot be found, what great thing is it to slander? Since he does not hesitate to slander, he makes another suspect what he did not see. And you, when you hear a man saying these things, perhaps because you know your bad brothers, say to yourself, "He is telling the truth": "Dangers among false brothers." But do not lose heart; what he is looking for, be that. Be a good Christian, so that you may refute the slandering pagan. But he slanders, and says false things even about the good, and he is often believed. What does the gold do? Chaff is all around, and fire. Put away your dross, not your faith: be cleaner, be cleaner by this very exercise; let him avail for you who takes away what makes you dirtier, not who crushes the gold that you are. For if you fail, you perish in the chaff: and if you perish in the chaff, you were not gold, but were pretending to be gold. "The Lord knows those who are his." As for those who are bad, on whose account you blush when you are among the bad who are outside, remember that they are in the great house where you are, not vessels for honor, but for dishonor. The Apostle has instructed you; God rules you. If there were no bad people for us to pray for, when would it be said to us, "Pray for your enemies"? Or would we perhaps want to have good enemies? How can that happen? You will not have a good enemy unless you are bad: but if you are good, your enemy will be none but a bad one. "Pray for your enemies." So, good people, pray for the bad. Return to your heart. O you who are being purified in this furnace, if your voice could be, "Prove me, Lord, and try me; burn my reins and my heart: for your mercy is before my eyes": see, return to your heart. You are under God, you are about to pour out a prayer; there comes to your mind the one who hurt you, the one who oppressed you, the one who robbed you, the one who put you in prison: come now, attend to your heart, look to your Lord. See, your enemy is bad, see, your Lord is good: your bad enemy harms you; "Pray for your enemy," says your good Lord to you. Between your bad enemy and your good Lord, what are you going to do? Pray against the one, or obey the other?

You undertake, at your Lord's command, to pray for that malicious enemy of yours: what are you going to do? The Lord has commanded: he has commanded hard things, but he has promised great things. What hard things has he commanded? "Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who persecute you." They are hard: but "because of the words of your lips I have kept hard ways." How could you keep hard ways by your own strength, unless "your mercy is before my eyes"? See, he has commanded hard things, bitter things; see what he has promised. "Pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven." If he said to you, "Pray for your enemy, so that you may be your father's son, so that your carnal father may not disinherit you," who is going to leave you what he will not take away from here, you would be afraid, and you would do it: for these hard things you are promised that you will be a son of the Most High; think of the Father, and recognize the inheritance. Say, then: begin to pray for that great enemy of yours, who has done you many wrongs, who has heaped many hard things on you: begin to pray for him, and see your heart quarrelling with you. So that you want it, that it pleases you, that you delight in it according to the inner man, that you obey your Lord and pray for your enemy: that is gold. But that, when you begin to pray, the weakness of the flesh begins to quarrel with you: that is the dross from which God wants to purify you in the furnace.

So exercise yourself in the midst of the wicked, O good man, if you are good: not good of your own, since you were bad, but of his who is never bad: exercise yourself in the midst of the wicked. And I do not want you to say to me: "At least, if it was necessary for our exercise that there should be bad people, there should be few bad and many good." Do you not notice that if they were few, they would not harm many? Surely consider, prudent man, that if the good were many and the bad few, the few bad would not dare to harm the many good. If they did not dare, they would not exercise them. But now, because the bad are many, the few good labor among the many bad: and when there is labor, there is sweat; and when there is sweat, the gold is purified. So be part of the beauty of God's house. Your weakness has already quarrelled with you in your heart; call on God, so that you may win: may God be with you; may he who commands help you. You have already become the victor over your weakness, you have already taken up the spirit and the fruit of praying for your enemy: see what a good thing it is; compare him with yourself. He plots temptations, you pour out prayers: if he harms, he harms openly; that you pray for him, God knows: he does not believe it, because he has not examined your heart. So while he harms openly, you pray secretly: in this press (for the Church too has been compared to a press), see whether he who harms openly is not the dregs running through the public street. The dregs run through the street, but the oil has hidden passages to its own vat. And though it passes secretly, it appears in its abundance. For how many, my brothers, how many in this conflict of affairs, in the malice of this world, in this abundance of the wicked, have withdrawn and been converted to God, and said farewell to the world, and suddenly begun to give their goods to the poor, who shortly before were seizing other people's! But many robbers, invaders, plunderers appear in public; that is the dregs running through the streets: but these, one here, one there, joined in heart, ashamed to remain bad and doing bad things, asking for God's counsels, laughing at the hope of the world, waiting for the heavenly hope, changing their loves and their ways: they are the oil of holiness in the press, the vessel for honor in the great house, the gold in the furnace, the grain in the barn. There is the beauty of God's house.

The Spirit of God, calling the human race, commanding what we ought to do and promising what we ought to hope for, first inflames our mind toward the reward, so that we may do what is commanded more by loving the good than by fearing the bad. "Who is the man," he says, "who wants life and loves to see good days?" The question is asked who he is, as if one could be found who was not such. For who does not want life? Who does not love to see good days? Hear, then, what follows, you man, whoever you are who want and love this; hear what follows, every man: "Keep your tongue from evil, and let your lips not speak deceit. Turn from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it." Of all these, the rest, which come before, are in the command; the last is in the reward. For that we should keep our tongue from evil, and our lips not speak deceit, that we should turn from evil and do good, that we should seek peace, is commanded us; but that we should pursue it is promised us. What is this peace, if not that which the world does not have? What is this peace, if not that which this life does not have, which in comparison with that life is not life? For he would not say of this life, "Who is the man who wants life?" and urge us by the following commands either to keep this life or to prolong it, as if anyone did not want even this life. For even this life is desired, at least to be long, since it cannot be eternal: and through this life a man can come to that one, if as he wants this life long, so he wants it good too. And how long is anything in this life, which will one day be ended? And what was long will be nothing: because even when it was, it did not stand; when it was being prolonged, it was not being increased; nor did it grow by adding, because by coming it was going away.

Whoever you are, then, who love a long life, love rather a good life. For if you choose to live badly, a long life will not be a true good, but a long evil. And see how absurd and perverse you are: though you admit that you love life more than your estate, you would rather have a good estate than a good life. For in order to get a good estate by gaping after it and coveting wrongly, you make your life bad by fraud. Yet if it were said to you, if you were asked, whether you would rather lose a good estate or a bad life by dying, you would answer that, if you could not keep both, you were readier to have the estate taken from you. Why, then, is life not so loved that it is also good, when you prefer it, even bad, to all your goods? You certainly want it to be long, even though it is bad: rather, make it good, and do not fear that it will be short. For if, with you careful, it goes well, with you careless it will soon end. For eternal life will succeed it, happy without fear, long without end. It is about that life that he asks who says, "Who is the man who wants life and loves to see good days?" But in this life the Apostle commands us to redeem the time, because the days are evil. And what is redeeming the time, if not, when necessary, buying stretches of time for seeking and seizing eternal things even at the cost of temporal advantages? Hence the Lord too commands, saying, "If anyone wants to go to law with you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak too": so that, losing some temporal thing, you may spend on peace what you were going to spend on a lawsuit.

That the Spirit of God is not speaking of the life and days of this time when he says, "Who is the man who wants life and desires to see good days?", what follows shows. For he adds commands by obeying which we may have life and good days, such that this life which we now lead, and these days, must often be given up for the sake of fulfilling those same commands. So if we understand this life in which we now are in the words, "Who is the man who wants life?", and do the commands joined to it for the sake of having this life, what shall we do when someone powerful in malice threatens us with death unless we bear false witness? For certainly, if we do what is commanded here, "Keep your tongue from evil," so that for the sake of this command we refuse false testimony, we shall seem to have been deceived: because we undertook to keep the command out of desire to have life, and by keeping the command we have rather lost it. But if we understand the life that is happy for ever, which God will give after this one to those who obey him, of which the Lord said to someone, "If you want to come to life, keep the commandments": then indeed, when we are asked, "Who is the man who wants life?", we answer that we want life; and if, even under the blow of the executioner, we keep to the truth in testimony, we despise death in the world, we obtain life in heaven.

Let us understand this of the good days. For if, for the sake of the days of the present age, which are called good and are not, buried in the heart under heaps of feasts, in whirlpools of luxury and drunkenness, in the most shameful pleasures of gluttony: if, then, for the sake of these days, as though for good days, we undertake the command that our lips should not speak deceit; often such days force their lovers to speak deceit, and such days are denied to those who do not speak deceit. For what else is speaking deceit but putting forth one thing with the lips while another is shut up in the breast? This is why the business of flatterers has flourished most; because almost always, so as not to be shut out from rich tables and elaborate banquets, they do not keep silent about what is false in their flattery: and they are shut out from them if, loving God, they speak the truth. So for these days, which they think good, they speak deceit so that the days may be provided for them; and the days are denied them if they do not speak deceit. There are, then, other good days, about which we are admonished that, if we love to see them, we should keep our tongue from evil and not speak deceit. Those days are not of this world: the heaven that will pass away does not have them, but the heaven that will remain; the land of the dying does not know them, but the land of the living. Whoever has understood and loved them keeps his tongue from evil: and if the terror of death drives him to evil, his lips do not speak deceit; and if he is invited to deceit by deceptively good days, he turns from evil even among good things, he does good even among evil things; he seeks peace, which is not on earth, and pursues it in him who made heaven and earth.

So, brothers, desire life, and love to see good days where there will be no night: a life in which no bad day is feared; good days in which life will never end. But if you love this reward, beware of refusing the work of which it is the reward. For seek that peace and pursue it: and seek it with your hands, at night, before God, and you will not be deceived. For what is "with your hands" but by your works? What is "at night" but in tribulation? What is "before God" but in purity of conscience? Living thus and loving this, you will have God in contemplation, and in him life without failing, good days without darkening, peace without dissension.

We have sung, brothers, "God will come manifestly, our God, and will not keep silent." Scripture foretold that God, Christ, will come to judge the living and the dead. For when he came before to be judged, he was hidden: when he comes to judge, he will be manifest. How hidden he was then, understand from what the Apostle says: "For if they had known it, they would never have crucified the Lord of glory." Then he kept silent when questioned, as the Gospel says, and the prophecy of Isaiah was fulfilled in him, saying: "He was led like a sheep to the slaughter, and like a lamb before its shearer he was without voice, so he did not open his mouth." So he will come manifestly, and will not keep silent. "He will not keep silent" was said for this reason, because he kept silent when judged. For as regards his words necessary for us, when has he kept silent? He did not keep silent through the patriarchs, he did not keep silent through the mouth of his flesh: and if he kept silent now, Scripture would not speak. The reader goes up, and he does not keep silent. The preacher speaks; if he speaks the truth, Christ speaks. If Christ kept silent, I would not be saying these things to you. Nor has he kept silent through your mouth: for when you were singing, he was speaking. He does not keep silent; we need to hear, but with the ear of the heart: for it is easy to hear with the ears of the flesh. We ought to hear with those ears which the Master himself was looking for when he said: "He who has ears to hear, let him hear." For who stood before him, when he was saying this, without fleshly ears? All had ears, and few had them: not all had ears to hear, that is, to obey.

How terribly he spoke through the prophet Ezekiel! I believe you paid attention; I believe you heard how he said, "I will send you to the house of Israel, not to a people of a deeper language will I send you. But that people will not listen to you, because they will not listen to me." What does this show but that God himself was speaking through the prophet? But because we, above all, were terrified by those very prophetic words, that is, the overseers whom he set to speak to his people, we first see our own face in those words. For a mirror, as it were, was shown to us as the reader read, in which we might look at ourselves; and we have looked at ourselves: you look at yourselves. See, I am doing what I heard there. "If you do not warn," he says, "the righteous; if you do not say to the sinner, 'You shall surely die,' and show him so that he turns from his iniquities, he will indeed die in his sins, but his blood I will require from your hand. But if you have spoken, and he has despised it and not obeyed, he will die in his crimes, but you will have freed your soul." I tell you, I am freeing my soul. For if I keep silent, I am placed not in great danger, but in ruin. But when I have spoken and fulfilled my duty, you now attend to your danger. What do I want? What do I desire? What do I long for? Why do I speak? Why do I sit here? Why do I live? If not with this intention, that we may live together with Christ? This is my longing, this is my honor, this is my glory, this is my joy, this is my possession. But if you do not hear me, and still I have not kept silent, I shall free my soul. But I do not want to be saved without you.

So do not make light, my brothers, of the sins that you have perhaps already made a habit of. For every sin becomes cheap through habit, and becomes to a man as though it were nothing: he has grown hard, he has already lost the pain. What is very rotten does not even hurt: what does not hurt is not to be held sound, but to be counted dead. Pay attention to what Scripture says, and see there how you ought to live. Who does not make light of the sin of drunkenness? Such a sin abounds, and is made light of. The drunken heart has already lost its feeling; it has no pain, because it has no health either. When something is pricked and hurts, either it is sound or there is some hope of health in it: but when it is touched, pricked, plucked at, and does not hurt, it is to be held dead and cut off from the body. But sometimes we spare, and know only how to speak: we are slow to excommunicate, to cast out of the Church. For sometimes we fear that the one who is beaten will become worse by the very scourge. And although such people are already dead in soul, still, because our Doctor is almighty, we must not despair of them, but beg with all our strength that the Lord may deign to open the ears of the heart which they are shown to have closed. But will he whom we ought to fear spare, will he keep silent? You heard in that same Psalm, my brothers, when he listed the sins of the sinner, he said, "These things you have done, and I kept silent." Against this it was said, "He will come, and will not keep silent." By his presence he will not keep silent. For apart from the fact that the Lord Christ is signified, because he kept silent at his trial, so that that prophecy too might be fulfilled in him which I mentioned a little before; apart from this, God himself, the Lord Christ, in his own person, now keeps silent. For he has ascended into heaven, and sits at the right hand of the Father, whence he will come to judge the living and the dead: as long as he is there, until he comes, he keeps silent. We hear his voice in the books; we do not hear it from his mouth. You heard his voice from the holy Scriptures in this passage: you hear it when you remind yourselves of these things, and perhaps talk about them among yourselves.

Whoever wants to be heard by God, dearly beloved, let him first hear God. Do you hear him when you commit adultery, and think you are hidden because no man sees you? He sees you, but he keeps silent. When you steal, you watch the eyes of the one you are robbing; and if you escape his notice, you do it: if you do not do it only because you are afraid of being seen, you have done it within, you have done it in your heart; you are held a thief, and you have taken nothing: but you too, if opportunity were given to carry out your evil deed, would steal, and you are glad because he keeps silent. So hear the Psalm: it has warned you, you, whoever you are, who perhaps stand here today and did something last night; it has warned you, it has said to you, "These things you have done, and I kept silent. You suspected iniquity, that I would be like you." O people, you who have these words I am about to say neither in your mouth nor in your heart, you are happy. Do not people who do evil every day, or who regret having done good, and by a perverse repentance pour out what they had milked, do they not say every day, and gnaw these murmurs among themselves: "Truly, if these things displeased God, would he allow them to be done, or would those who do them be happy on earth? We see robbers, we see oppressors of the weak, we see men who drive out their neighbors, we see violent invaders of boundaries, we see slanderers; and yet they are powerful, rich, happy in this land. If God truly saw these things, if he cared about them, would he spare them?" They add this too, which is worse: "Only the wicked are pleasing." And if it happens that someone does good, and perhaps some trial follows, he has it ready to hand at once: "It does not pay to do good; whoever does good gains nothing by it." Is it not enough for you that you want to do evil, but you curse those who do good? "These things you have done," he says, "and I kept silent. You suspected iniquity, that I would be like you." What does "that I would be like you" mean? That evil pleases me as it pleases you: this is what you suspected. You said this in your heart: but I heard, when you said it in your heart. What is worse, they go so far in these words that they are not even afraid of being heard.

So you suspected wickedly that I would be like you. "I will rebuke you": in a way you do not expect, and when you do not expect it, I will rebuke you. I keep silent when you act: but I do not keep silent when I judge. "I will rebuke you." What will I do to you when I rebuke you? "I will set you before your face." For now, when you do evil, you think you are good, because you do not want to see yourself. You blame others, you do not look at yourself; you accuse others, you do not think about yourself; you put others before your eyes, you put yourself behind your back. When I rebuke you, I do the opposite; I take you from behind your back and put you before your eyes. You will see yourself, and lament yourself; and then there will be no way for you to correct yourself. So you despise the time of mercy; the time of judgment will come: because you sang to me in church, "Mercy and judgment I will sing to you, Lord." It comes out of our mouth, and churches everywhere resound to Christ, "Mercy and judgment I will sing to you, Lord." It is the time of mercy, so that we may be corrected: the time of judgment has not yet come. There is room, there is space: we have sinned, let us be corrected. The road is not yet finished, the day not yet closed, the last breath not yet drawn; let there be no despair, which is worse: since for those human and tolerable sins, which are the more frequent the milder they are, God has established in the Church, in the time when mercy is offered, a daily medicine, that we should say, "Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors": so that with our faces washed by these words we may approach the altar, and with our faces washed by these words we may communicate in the body and blood of Christ.

But what is more serious, people so despise this very medicine that they not only do not give pardon when they are sinned against, but will not even ask for it when they themselves sin. Temptation has come in, anger has crept in; wrath has gained as much mastery as it could, so that not only was the heart in turmoil, but the tongue also vomited insults and accusations. Do you not see where it drove you? Do you not see where it threw you headlong? At last correct it; say, "I did wrong, I have sinned." For you will not die if you say it: believe, not me, but God. What am I? I am a man, I am your equal, I carry flesh, I am weak: let us all believe God. Take heed to yourselves. The Lord Christ himself says, "Take heed to yourselves: if your brother sins, rebuke him between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother: if he does not listen to you, take with you two or three. On the mouth of two or three witnesses every word shall stand. If he does not listen even to them, refer it to the Church. If he does not listen even to her, let him be to you as a heathen and a tax collector." A heathen is a Gentile; the Gentile is one who does not believe in Christ. If he does not listen even to the Church, count him dead. "But see, he is alive, see, he comes in, see, he signs himself with the cross, see, he kneels, see, he prays, see, he approaches the altar." But let him be to you as a heathen and a tax collector. Do not attend to false signs in him: living, he is dead. How does he live? In what way does he live? If I say to someone in your presence, "You did this," he will answer afterwards, "How much was it? He should have warned me privately, told me privately that I did wrong, so that I might see my sin privately: why does he rebuke me before the people?" What if you did it, and did not correct it? What if you did it, and still persist? What if you did it, and still think in your heart you did well? Because he keeps silent, are you righteous? Because he does not now take vengeance, have you done nothing wrong? Are you not afraid of "I will rebuke you"? Are you not afraid of "I will set you before your face"? Are you not afraid?

"But the judgment is far off," you say. First, who told you that the day of judgment is far off? Even if the day of judgment is far off, is your own day far off? How do you know when it is? Have not many fallen asleep healthy and grown stiff? Do we not carry our falls with us in this flesh? Are we not more fragile than if we were made of glass? For glass, though it is fragile, lasts a long time if it is kept carefully: and you find cups from grandfathers and great-grandfathers from which grandsons and great-grandsons drink. Such fragility has been preserved through the years. But we human beings walk about fragile amid so many daily accidents; and even if those sudden accidents did not happen, we still could not live long. The whole of human life is short; from infancy to decrepit old age it is all short. If Adam were still alive and died today, what good would the length of life have done him? Add to this that the very day which seems to serve us naturally becomes uncertain when disease strikes. Every day people die: and those who are alive escort them to burial, celebrate their funerals, and promise themselves life. No one says, "Let me correct myself, lest tomorrow I be what this man is whom I have escorted to burial." Words please you; I look for deeds. Do not grieve me with your bad ways: for my delight in this life is nothing but your good life.

To encourage the minds of your Charity, receive gladly a few things from the present Psalm, which the Lord grants. It was prophesied of our Lord Jesus Christ in this Psalm, where we heard and sang, "God will come manifestly, our God, and will not keep silent." For the Lord Christ himself, our God, the Son of God, came hidden at his first coming; he will come manifest at his second coming. When he came hidden, he was known only to his servants: when he comes manifest, he will be known to good and bad. When he came hidden, he came to be judged: when he comes manifest, he will come to judge. In fact, when he was judged, he kept silent, and the prophet had foretold his silence: "Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter, and like a lamb before the shearer, so he did not open his mouth." But "our God will come manifestly, our God, and will not keep silent." As he kept silent when he was to be judged, so he will not keep silent when he is to judge. And now he does not keep silent, if there is anyone to hear: but it was said, "Then he will not keep silent," when even those who now despise him will recognize his voice. For now, when the commandments of God are spoken, some people laugh at them: and because what God promised is not now shown, and what he threatens is not now seen, what he commands is mocked. For now the bad also have what is called the happiness of this world; the good also have what is called the unhappiness of this world. People who believe in the present and do not believe in the future notice that good and bad alike have these goods and evils of the present age. If they want riches, they see that both the worst men and good men have riches; they also see, if they shudder at the poverty and miseries of this world, that not only the good but also the bad toil in these miseries: and they say in their hearts that God neither looks on human affairs nor governs them, but has left us altogether to be rolled about by chance in some deep pit of this world, and shows us no providence. And because of this, contempt for the commandment arises in them, because they do not see the manifestation of judgment.

Yet even now each one ought to notice that when God wills, he looks and judges, and does not delay for an hour; and when he wills, he delays. And why this? Because if he never judged in the present, it would be believed that there is no God: if he judged everything in the present, he would reserve nothing for the judgment. For many things are kept for the judgment, and some are judged in the present, so that those who are put off may fear and be converted. For God does not love to condemn, but to save: and so he is patient with the wicked, so as to make the wicked good. But the Apostle says that the wrath of God will be revealed against all ungodliness, and God will render to each according to his works. And he admonishes and rebukes the man who despises, and says, "Or do you despise the riches of his goodness and long-suffering?" Because he is good to you, because he is long-suffering toward you, because he is patient with you, because he puts you off and does not take you away, you despise him, and think there is no judgment of God at all: "not knowing that the patience of God leads you to repentance? But according to the hardness of your heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath and of the revelation of the just judgment of God, who will render to each according to his works."

Whatever a man does now, then, he puts into a treasury, but he does not know what he is gathering: just as the rich, who put into an earthly treasury, as it were know what they are gathering, but do not know for whom they are gathering. For they have no idea at all who will possess their riches after their death: and sometimes their riches come to their enemies. And so a man cheats himself, unwilling to eat, in order to grow rich, so that another may wallow and indulge and dissolve himself on his labors. So as they gather knowing what, but not knowing for whom, so on the contrary in the heavenly treasury the good know what they gather, the wicked do not know what they gather. For the good man puts in the heavenly treasury all the works of mercy that he has done for the people he has helped; and he knows that the keeper is faithful, who keeps for him everything he deposits. And he does not see them, but he is sure of his treasure, that nothing is stolen by a thief, nor seized by an enemy, nor taken by a hostile, wicked and powerful man as from one defeated; but it will always remain, because it is guarded by the most powerful Lord. For if people entrust money to a faithful servant and are secure, do they entrust their acts of mercy to the powerful Lord and remain anxious? So they know that whatever they deposit is all safe there: those who are faithful join their faith to the power of their Lord. For they believe that he keeps it, and they find what he keeps. For do even people who gather money always see the chest itself, or always gather and put money into the chest, or bury and keep it? They do not see it; and yet their conscience, as it were, knows that it is there in the place where they put it. And perhaps a thief has already taken it, and the empty man rejoices who has kept it in vain. But if we put anything in the heavenly treasury, we are secure in the Lord's keeping, and suffer no thief at all, nor sustain any loss. But the wicked too put all their evil works into the treasury, and God keeps them for them. This is what the Apostle said: "You are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of the wrath of the just judgment of God."

But since whatever the wicked do is kept, and they do not know it, when our God comes manifestly and does not keep silent, he will call all nations to himself, as he says in the Gospel, and separate them, putting some on the right, some on the left: and he will then begin to go through the treasuries of both, what each has put in to find again. "Come," he says to those on the right, "you blessed of my Father, receive the kingdom that has been prepared for you from the beginning of the world." The kingdom of heaven, the everlasting kingdom, fellowship with the angels, eternal life, where no one is born and no one dies: receive this. For when you were putting your works into the treasury, you were buying the kingdom of heaven. "Receive the kingdom that has been prepared for you from the beginning of the world." He even shows them their treasuries: "I was hungry and you gave me to eat; I was thirsty and you gave me to drink; I was naked and you clothed me; I was a stranger and you took me in; I was in prison and you came to me; I was sick and you visited me." And they answer: "Lord, when did we see you in these needs and minister to you?" And he: "When you did it to one of the least of mine, you did it to me." Since, then, when you did it to one of the least of mine you did it to me, receive what you sent ahead, possess what you bought. For that is why you trusted me, the Keeper. Then he will turn to those who are on the left, and show them their treasuries empty of good works: "Go," he says, "into the eternal fire, which is prepared for the devil and his angels. I was hungry and you did not give me to eat." Or if you have found anything in this treasury, or sent anything ahead, think, and it will be given back to you. "But we never," they say, "saw you hungry." And he: "When you did not do it to one of the least of mine, you did not do it to me." Perhaps you did not do it for me because you did not see me walking on earth? You are so wicked that if you had seen me, you would have crucified me like the Jews. For today, wicked people who try, if it were possible, to have no churches where the commandments of God are preached to them, would they not kill Christ himself if they found him living on earth? But they will dare to say, as if to one who does not know human thoughts: "Lord, when did we see you hungry?" And he: "When you did not do it to one of the least of mine, you did not do it to me." "I had placed my least ones, needy, among you on earth: I, as the head," he will say, "was sitting in heaven at the right hand of the Father; but my members were toiling on earth, my members were in need on earth; you should have given to my members, and what you gave would have reached the head. And you should have known that when I placed my needy least ones among you on earth, I appointed them as porters for you, to carry your works into my treasury: you put nothing into their hands, and so you have found nothing with me." Then, therefore, he will not keep silent, but will appear: that is why it was said, "He will not keep silent." But now the reader says this from the book, and it is despised; the preacher or disputing bishop says it from his own mouth, and it is mocked. Will it be mocked like this when it is spoken by the most powerful Judge himself? "Each will receive what he has done, good or bad." Then people will say, in late and fruitless repentance: "Oh, if we could live again, and hear and do what we despised!" Then those whom their iniquities set on the other side will say, as is said in the book of Wisdom: "What did pride profit us? And what did the boasting of riches bring us? All those things have passed away like a shadow." You see that they will repent: but that repentance will torment, not heal. Do you want a useful repentance? Have it now. For if you have it now, you will be corrected: when you have been corrected, that treasury of yours where your evil works were gathered will be emptied, and your other treasury will be filled, where your good works are gathered. "But perhaps, as soon as I turn to God, I will die; will no works of mine perhaps be found in that treasury?" Certainly you will find your works there, for it is written, "Peace on earth to men of good will." God does not note your means, but crowns your will. He knows that you willed and could not; he notes you as if you had done what you willed. So it is necessary for you to be converted, lest by delaying you die suddenly, and nothing at all be found for you to have in the present and possess in the future. Turning to the Lord, etc.

In singing we asked the Lord to turn his face from our sins and blot out all our misdeeds. But you can notice, brothers, that in the same Psalm we heard, "For I acknowledge my iniquity, and my sin is always before me." And elsewhere it is said to God, "Do not turn your face from me": to whom we said, "Turn your face from my sins." Since, then, man and sinner are one person, the man says, "Do not turn your face from me": the sinner says, "Turn your face from my sins." So this is what is said: Do not turn your face from what you made; turn your face from what I did. Let your eye, he says, distinguish the two, lest because of the fault the nature perish. You made something, and I too made something: what you made is called nature; what I made is called fault: let the fault be healed, so that the nature may be preserved.

"I acknowledge my misdeed," he says. If I acknowledge it, then you forgive. Let us live well, and, living well, let us by no means presume that we are without sin: let our life be praised in such a way that pardon is asked for. But hopeless people, the less attentive they are to their own sins, the more curious they are about others'. For they seek not what to correct but what to bite: and since they cannot excuse themselves, they are ready to accuse others. Not so has this man shown us an example of praying and making satisfaction to God, saying: "For I acknowledge my misdeed, and my sin is always before me." This man was not intent on the sins of others: he summoned himself to himself; he did not stroke himself, but penetrated himself, and went down deeper into himself. He did not spare himself: and so he was not shameless in asking to be spared. For sin, brothers, cannot go unpunished: if sin remains unpunished, it is unjust: so without doubt it must be punished. This is what your God says to you: Sin must be punished either by you or by me. So sin is punished either by man repenting or by God judging. So it is punished either by you without you, or by God with you. For what is repentance but anger against oneself? He who repents is angry with himself. For if it is not done feignedly, why is there beating of the breast? Why do you strike, if you are not angry? So when you beat your breast, you are angry with your heart, so that you may make satisfaction to your Lord. For what is written can also be understood in this way: "Be angry, and do not sin." Be angry because you have sinned, and, punishing yourself, do not sin. Rouse your heart by repenting, and this will be a sacrifice to God.

Do you want God to be appeased? Know what you must do with yourself, so that God may be pleased with you. Notice in the same Psalm: for there we read, "For if you had wanted sacrifice, I would surely have given it; you will not delight in burnt offerings." Will you then be without sacrifice? Will you offer nothing, appease God with no offering? What did you say? "If you had wanted sacrifice, I would surely have given it; you will not delight in burnt offerings." Go on, and hear, and say: "The sacrifice to God is a troubled spirit; a contrite and humbled heart God does not despise." Having thrown away what you used to offer, you have found what to offer. For among the fathers you used to offer victims from the flocks, and they were called sacrifices. "If you had wanted sacrifice, I would surely have given it." Those you do not seek, then, and yet you seek a sacrifice. Your people says to you: "What shall I offer, since I do not offer what I used to offer?" For it is the same people, some passing away and others being born. The sacraments have been changed, not the faith. The signs by which something was signified have changed, not the thing that was signified. For Christ a ram, for Christ a lamb, for Christ a calf, for Christ a goat: everything is Christ. A ram, because he leads the flock: he is the one found in the thorn bushes when father Abraham was ordered to spare his son and yet not to depart from there without offering a sacrifice. Both Isaac was Christ and the ram was Christ. Isaac carried the wood for himself: Christ carried his own cross. A ram for Isaac; not, however, Christ for Christ. But in Isaac both the ram and Christ. The ram was held by its horns in a thorn bush: ask the Jews with what they then crowned the Lord. He is a lamb: "Behold the Lamb of God, behold him who takes away the sins of the world." He is a bull: look at the horns of the cross. He is a goat, because of the likeness of sinful flesh. These things were veiled until the day should breathe and the shadows be removed. So in the same Lord Christ, not only as the Word but also as the mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, the ancient fathers too believed, and passed on the same faith to us by preaching and prophesying. Hence the Apostle says, "Having the same spirit of faith, as it is written, I believed, therefore I spoke." Having the same spirit that those also had who wrote, "I believed, therefore I spoke." "Having, then, the same spirit of faith," he says, as it was written by the ancients, "I believed, therefore I spoke; we too believe, therefore we also speak." So when holy David said, "For if you had wanted sacrifice, I would surely have given it; you will not delight in burnt offerings," then those sacrifices were offered to God which are not offered now. So when he was singing, he was prophesying, both scorning present things and foreseeing future ones. "You will not delight," he says, "in burnt offerings." So when you do not delight in burnt offerings, will you be left without sacrifice? Far from it. "The sacrifice to God is a troubled spirit; a contrite and humbled heart, O God, you do not despise." You have something to offer. Do not look around at your flock, do not fit out ships and travel to the farthest provinces to bring back spices: seek in your heart what is pleasing to God. The heart must be crushed. Why are you afraid that being crushed it will perish? There you have, "Create a clean heart in me, O God." So that a clean heart may be created, let the unclean one be crushed.

Let us be displeased with ourselves when we sin, because sins displease God. And since we are not without sin, let us at least be like God in this, that what displeases him displeases us. In some part you are joined to God's will, because what he who made you hates in you displeases you too. He is your maker: but look at yourself, and destroy in yourself what is not from his workshop. For God, as it is written, made man upright. "How good is the God of Israel to the upright of heart!" If, then, you are upright of heart, God will not displease you, God will be good to you, you will praise God. Altogether, both in what he grants and in what he chastises, you will praise God. For he who said, "How good is the God of Israel to the upright of heart!" had looked at himself, who once was not upright of heart, and God displeased him; but afterwards he came to his senses, and saw that God was not perverse, but that he himself had not been upright: and recalling the time of his perversity and the present time of his correction, he said: "How good is the God of Israel!" But to whom? "To the upright of heart." For what about you? "But my feet," he says, "were almost moved; my steps had nearly slipped": that is, I almost fell. Why was this? "Because I was jealous of sinners, seeing the peace of sinners." So why his feet were moved and his steps nearly slipped, he did not keep silent; he warned us to beware. He was expecting from God, according to the Old Testament, not knowing that there were signs of things to come there; he was expecting, then, from God the happiness of the present life, and seeking on this earth what God was keeping for his own in heaven. He wanted to be happy here, though happiness is not here. For happiness is a good and great thing; but it has its own country. Christ came from the country of happiness, and he did not find it here either. He was mocked, reproached, seized, scourged, bound, struck with palms, subjected to the insult of spittle, crowned with thorns, hung on a tree: at the last, "the Lord's departure was death." In the Psalm it is written (those who recognized it acclaimed), "And the Lord's departure was death." Why then, servant, do you seek happiness here, where even the Lord's departure was death? So when that man of whom I had begun to speak was seeking happiness in a country not its own, and in order to obtain it in this life was devoting himself to God and serving him, and doing his commands as he could, he saw that this great thing, or what he held great, which he was seeking from God and for which he was serving God, was found among those who did not serve God but worshipped demons and blasphemed the true God. He saw, and was shaken, as if he had lost the fruit of his labor. This is what it means that he was jealous of sinners, seeing the peace of sinners. Finally you have there: "See, these sinners, abounding in the world, have obtained riches. Was it for nothing that I justified my heart and washed my hands among the innocent, and was scourged all day long?" I worship God, they blaspheme God: happiness for them, calamity for me; where is fairness? Hence his feet were moved, hence his steps nearly slipped, hence ruin was near. See what danger he came to: there he says, "And I said, How does God know, and is there knowledge in the Most High?" See what danger he came to by seeking earthly happiness from God as a great reward. Learn, then, dearly beloved, to despise it if you have it, and not to say in your hearts, "Because I worship God, therefore it goes well with me." For you will see that it goes well, as you think it goes well for you, for those also who do not worship God; and your steps will be moved. For either you have it, worshipping God, and you will see that one who does not worship God has such things; and so you will think that you worship God in vain, because he too has happiness who does not worship God: or you do not have it, and you will accuse God all the more, who gives it to his blasphemers and refuses it to his worshippers. Learn, then, to despise earthly things, if you want to serve God with a faithful heart. Do you have happiness? Do not think that this makes you good; but make yourself good with it. Do you not have it? Do not think that this makes you bad; but beware of evil, where the good man does not go.

For this man, coming to his senses and rebuking himself because he had begun to think badly of God, panting after the sinner and seeing the peace of sinners; rebuking himself, then, he says: "For what is there for me in heaven, and what have I wanted from you on earth?" Now come to his senses, now with his heart corrected, he recognized how much the worship of God is worth: the worship of God which he had sold at the cheapest price when he sought earthly happiness for it. He recognized what is owed above to the worshippers of God, where we are commanded to have our hearts and answer that we have them there: and would that we did not lie, at least at that very hour, at least at that very moment, at least at that very point of time when we answer. So that man, looking back, and correcting his heart, rebuked himself for having once sought earthly happiness on earth as the wage of the worship of God. And rebuking himself he says: "For what is there for me in heaven?" What is there for me? Eternal life, incorruption, the kingdom with Christ, the fellowship of the angels; where there is no disturbance, no ignorance, no danger, no temptation; true, certain, fixed security. See what is there for me in heaven. "And what have I wanted from you on earth?" What have I wanted from you on earth? What have I wanted? Riches that flow away, fall, fly off. What have I wanted? Gold, the pallor of the earth; silver, the bruise of the earth; honor, the smoke of time. See what I wanted from you on earth. And because I saw this among sinners, my feet were moved, and my steps had nearly slipped. "O how good he is to the upright of heart!" What, then, are you seeking, faithful prophet? Gold, and silver, and earthly riches? Is the faith of a faithful matron worth as much, then, as what a harlot also has? Is the faith of a faithful man worth as much as what an actor, a charioteer, a beast-fighter, a robber also has? Far from it, my brothers, far be it that your faith should be worth so little. May God turn this away from your hearts. Do you want to know how much it is worth? Christ died for it. Why then do you seek an earthly wage, sold to gold and coins? You insult the faith for which Christ died. "And what is it," he says, "how much is it worth?" Look at the one who says: "For what is there for me in heaven?" He did not state what that will be. He says this: "And what have I wanted from you on earth?" Praising the one, rejecting the other, he still spoke of both. What is that? "What eye has not seen." What is this? What the faithful eye does not thirst for. What is that? What Lazarus, full of sores, found. What is this? What the puffed-up rich man had. What is that? What cannot perish. What is this? What cannot be held. What is that? Where there will be no toil. What is this? What fear does not leave. "For what is there for me in heaven?" What? He himself who made heaven; the price of your faith is your God; you will have him himself; he prepares himself as the reward for his worshippers. Consider, dearly beloved, the whole creation, heaven, earth, sea, what is in heaven, what is on earth, what is in the sea: how beautiful, how wonderful, how worthily and orderly arranged. Do these things move you? They certainly move you. Why? Because they are beautiful. What is he who made them? I think you would be dazzled if you saw the beauty of the angels. What, then, is the creator of the angels? He himself is the reward of your faith. You greedy, what will satisfy you, if God himself does not satisfy you?

Let us live well, then, and so that we may be able to do so, let us call on him who commanded it. And let us not demand from the Lord an earthly reward for our good life. Let us stretch our intention toward the things that are promised. Let us put our heart there, where it cannot rot with worldly cares. These things that occupy people pass away, they fly off; human life on earth is a vapor. There are added, too, the so great and so daily dangers of this fragile life itself. Great earthquakes are reported from the East; some great cities have suddenly collapsed. At Jerusalem the Jews, pagans and catechumens who were there were terrified, and all were baptized. Perhaps seven thousand people are said to have been baptized. The sign of Christ appeared on the clothes of the baptized Jews. These things are reported by the most consistent account of faithful brothers. The city of Sitifis too was shaken by a very severe earthquake, so that everyone stayed in the fields for some five days, and nearly two thousand people are said to have been baptized there. God terrifies on every side, because he does not want to find anyone to condemn. Something is being done in this press. The world is a press; its pressures abound: be oil, not dregs. Let each one turn to God and change his life. The oil has a hidden path; it makes for its own secret place. Another sneers, mocks, blasphemes, shouts through the streets: the dregs flow away. Yet the Lord of the press, through his workers, through his holy angels, does not stop working. He knows his oil, he knows what he receives, under what weight of pressure it is to be drawn out. For "the Lord knows those who are his." Be oil, flee the dregs; "let all who name the name of the Lord depart from iniquity." And do not conceive hatreds, or end them quickly. For those are not the things to be feared. Are you afraid of earthquakes? Afraid of the roaring of the sky? Afraid of wars? Fear a fever too: suddenly, while those great things are feared, they do not come, and from the side a little fever carries a man off. And if that Judge finds him such as he does not know, such as those to whom he will say, "I do not know you, depart from me," what will happen afterwards? Where will he go? Through whom will he canvass? With what will life be bought back to be restored? Who is allowed to live again, so as to amend what he did badly? It is finished. You have gathered in small numbers: but if you have heard well, you are abundant. Let not the deceiver deceive you: because he who does not deceive does not mislead you.

With one voice, with harmonious hearts, praying to the Lord for our very heart, we said: "Create a clean heart in me, O God, and renew a right spirit within me." So we shall show you a few things that the Lord has given, to his grace. It is the Psalm of a penitent, longing to recover lost hope, lying in his fall, and pressing God with great entreaties, as one who was able to wound himself but is not able to heal himself. For just as we can strike and wound our own flesh when we want to, but to be healed we seek a doctor, and we are not saved by our own power as we are wounded by our own power: so for sinning the soul is sufficient to itself; for healing what sin has hurt, it implores the healing right hand of God. That is why it says in another Psalm: "I said, Lord, have mercy on me; heal my soul, for I have sinned against you." He says "I said" so as to set before our eyes that the will and choice to sin arise from the soul, and that it is sufficient to itself to destroy itself; but that it belongs to God to seek and save what had wounded itself. "For the Son of man came to seek and to save what was lost." Pouring out this prayer, then, we say: "Create a clean heart in me, O God, and renew a right spirit within me." Let the soul that has sinned say it, so that it may not perish more by despairing than it destroyed itself by transgressing.

Before everything, effort must be given not to sin, not to make a kind of familiarity and friendship with sin as with a serpent. For by its poisonous bite it kills the sinner, and it is not the kind of thing with which friendship should be made: but if perhaps it has overpowered someone weak, or crept up on someone unwary, or caught someone wandering, or deceived someone going into error, let the soul not be reluctant to confess, nor seek an excuse, but an accusation of itself. For on this account he prayed in a certain Psalm and said: "Set a guard, Lord, on my mouth, and a door of restraint around my lips: and do not turn my heart to evil words, to make excuses in sins." Let each one see his sin; let it be refused above all. But has it persuaded him? Let him not excuse it, but rather accuse it. For this man too who said, "Create a clean heart in me, O God," began thus: "Have mercy on me, O God, according to your great mercy." A great sinner implores great mercy: a great wound desires a great medicine. There it is said, "Turn your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities. Create a clean heart in me, O God." So God turns his face from the sins of one who confesses, and accuses himself, and begs God's help and mercy. For he turns his face from his sins, not by turning it from him. For to the one to whom it is said, "Turn your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities," it is said elsewhere, "Do not turn your face from me." He turns away when he does not turn toward; for if he turns toward, he overturns. That is why judges too, when they pronounce sentence on convicted defendants, are said to "turn their attention" to them. That God may not do this, that is, that he may not turn his attention to them, we say, "Turn your face from my sins." Let him not take note of them; let him not know them. For as we call "noble" the noble, but call the not-noble "ignoble," so we call the knowing "knowing," but the not-knowing "forgiving." Yet if you want him to forgive, you acknowledge. Sin cannot be unpunished. It is not fitting for it to be unpunished, it ought not to be, it is not just. So since sin must not be unpunished, let it be punished by you, lest you be punished for it. Let your sin have you as its judge, not its advocate. Mount the tribunal of your mind against yourself, and set yourself as defendant before yourself. Do not put yourself behind yourself, lest God put you before himself. That is why he says in the same Psalm, so that he may obtain pardon most easily: "For I acknowledge my iniquity, and my sin is always before me." As though saying: Since it is before me, let it not be before you; and since I acknowledge it, you forgive. So sin is punished either by you or by God; but by you without you, by God with you. Let it have you, then, as its punisher, so that you may have God as your defender. Say: "I did it." "I said, Lord, have mercy on me; heal my soul, for I have sinned against you." "I," he says, "said." I do not look, to excuse my sin, for who sinned in my regard, or who compelled me to sin. I do not say, "Fortune fell on me." I do not say, "Fate willed this." Finally I do not say, "The devil did it." For the devil himself has the power to persuade, and finally to terrify; and also, if he is permitted, to inflict grievous troubles: strength must be begged from the Lord, so that enticements may not capture us nor hardships break us. May he give us, against the enticements and threats of the enemy, two virtues, to restrain and to endure: to restrain our lusts, so that prosperity may not capture us; to endure terrors, so that adversity may not break us. "And since I knew," it says, "that no one can be continent unless God gives it." Hence, then, he said, "Create a clean heart in me, O God"; and, "Woe to those who have lost endurance." So seek to accuse no one, lest you find an accuser from whom you cannot defend yourself. For our enemy the devil himself rejoices when he is accused: and he altogether wants you to accuse him; he himself wants to bear from you whatever charge you like, so long as you lose confession. Against his cunning that man cries out, "I said, Lord." The enemy lies in wait for me in vain; I know his cunning: he is trying to catch my tongue; he wants me to say, "The devil did it." "I said, Lord." So by these tricks he seduces souls and turns them away from the medicine of confession: either persuading them to excuse themselves and look for someone to accuse; or persuading them, because they have already sinned, to despair now, and not to think they can come to pardon at all; or persuading them, because God quickly forgives everything, not to correct themselves.

See how many things there are against which the heart of a penitent must keep watch. So that it may not, by excusing itself, accuse another, let it remember, "I said, Lord, have mercy on me; heal my soul, for I have sinned against you." So that it may not perish by despairing, thinking, because it has sinned and sinned gravely, that it can no longer be healed; and give itself up to lusts, to be dragged along by all desires. It does whatever it likes, though it is not lawful. And if it does not do it, it does not do it where it fears people. Altogether with a kind of gladiator's spirit, since it despairs of life, it does whatever it can to satisfy its desire and lust, like one devoted to death as a victim. Such people perish by despair. Against these, for their sake, that is, against such thoughts of theirs, Scripture, keeping watch, said: "On whatever day the wicked man turns and does righteousness, I will forget all his iniquities." Again, the soul, revived from the evil of despair if it has believed these words, may find another pit, so that, having been unable to perish by despair, it perishes by hope. And who perishes by hope? See the kind of man I propose, who says in his mind: "God has already promised pardon to all who turn away from their sins; at whatever hour they are converted, he will forget all their iniquities: so I will do whatever I want; when I want to, I will turn, and what I have done will be blotted out." What shall we say? That God does not care for the penitent when he turns? That God does not forgive all past sins? If we deny it, we contradict the divine indulgence: we oppose the prophetic words, we fight against the divine utterances. That is not the part of a faithful steward.

Someone comes back and says to me: "Will you, then, give rein to sins, so that people may do whatever they want, with pardon promised, impunity promised when they are converted?" They loosen the reins for sinning: they are carried along with great force, with no one calling them back, desperate through hope. Would Scripture, then, keep watch against those who despair and not keep watch against those who hope wrongly? Hear its watchfulness against bad and perverse hope: "Do not delay to turn to the Lord, nor put it off from day to day: for his wrath will come suddenly, and in the time of vengeance he will destroy you." What then, malignant hoper? If you despair, you perish; if you hope, you perish. Where will there be a safe place for you, to rescue yourself from both pits and set yourself on the right road, serving God, having pity on your soul, pleasing God? You despaired wrongly; you heard, "On whatever day the wicked man turns, I will forget all his iniquities." You began to hope wrongly; you heard, "Do not delay to turn to the Lord, nor put it off from day to day." The providence of God has surrounded you mercifully on every side. What do you say? "God has promised me pardon; when I turn he will give it." He will certainly give it when you turn; but why do you not turn? "Because when I turn, he will give it." Certainly, when you turn, he will give it; but that very "when," when is it? Why is it not today, why not while you are listening to me? Why not while you are shouting? Why not while you are praising? Let my shout be a helper for you: let your shout be a witness against you. Why not today? Why not now? "Tomorrow," he says; "God has promised me pardon." Do you promise yourself tomorrow? Or if perhaps you read me from the holy book that, as pardon has been promised to you when converted, so tomorrow has been promised to you, then put it off till tomorrow. Did he not put this first as a medicinal terror, did he not say this when rebuking you, "Do not put it off from day to day: for his wrath will come suddenly"? But, wise man that you are, of course you are afraid of having more than two days of good life. If there will be a tomorrow, let there be today too; and let it be two days. For if there will be no tomorrow, today will find you secure: but if there will be a tomorrow, it will be added to today. But you want to have a long life, and are not afraid of having a bad life. You want to live long, and live badly. You seek a long evil; why not rather a long good? What is there that you want to have not good? Only life will be what falls into evil in you. If I ask you what kind of garment you want, you answer, "A good one"; what kind of estate, "A good one"; what kind of wife, "A good one"; what kind of children, "Good ones"; what kind of house, "A good one"; only life a bad one. And you put life before all your goods, and among all your goods you want only your life to be bad. For all those things which you wanted good, garment, house, estate and the rest, you are ready to give for your life. If anyone says to you, "Either give me all your goods, or I take your life," you are ready to give all your goods and keep it, even bad. Why do you not want it to be good, when for it, even bad, you give all your goods? See, excuse has been taken away; let accusation be present, so that condemnation may not find you.

We exhort your Charity not to be reluctant to listen readily and attentively to the presbyters who minister the word of God. For the Lord our God is the truth itself, through whomever you hear it spoken; and no one is greater among you except the one who is lesser. So we had to speak first, according to custom; and you, hear out of love.

"The righteous will rejoice in the Lord, and will hope in him, and all the upright of heart will be praised." This we certainly sing with voice and mouth. These words both the Christian conscience and the Christian tongue have said to the Lord: "The righteous will rejoice in the Lord," not in the world. "Light has risen for the righteous," it says elsewhere, "and joy for the upright of heart." Asking where the joy comes from, you hear here, "The righteous will rejoice in the Lord." "Light has risen for the righteous," it says elsewhere; and elsewhere, "Delight in the Lord, and he will give you the requests of your heart." What is announced to us? What is given? What is commanded? What is granted? That we should rejoice in the Lord. Who will rejoice in something he does not see? Or do we perhaps see the Lord? This we hold in promise: but now we walk by faith; as long as we are in the body, we are away from the Lord; by faith, not by sight. Then we shall come to sight, when what John likewise says is fulfilled: "Beloved, we are sons of God, and it has not yet appeared what we shall be: we know that when he appears we shall be like him, when we see him as he is." Then, therefore, there will be great and perfect joy, and then full gladness, where hope no longer suckles us but the reality feeds us. Yet even now, before the reality itself comes to us, before we come to the reality itself, let us rejoice in the Lord. For hope, whose reality will come afterwards, has no small joy. And in these temporal things, in joy not of the Lord but of the world, some love many things and have not yet attained what they love: and yet ardor runs on in hope; it does not yet hold the thing. For example, you love money: you would not run after it if you did not hope for it. You love a wife, not yet married but still to be married; and perhaps she is loved while to be married, and when married will be hated. Why this? Because once married she did not appear such as the mind painted her while she was to be married. But God does not become cheap when present, though he is loved when absent. For however much the human mind exaggerates to itself the good that God is, it falls short, it is far below; and necessarily attainment will find more than thought was forming. So we shall love more when we have seen, if we have been able to love even before we saw. Now, then, we love in hope. That is why it says, "The righteous will rejoice in the Lord." And immediately, because he does not yet see: "and will hope in him."

Yet we have the firstfruits of the Spirit, and perhaps from elsewhere too we draw near to him whom we love; and what we are going to eat and drink eagerly we now, though thinly, lick and taste beforehand. How do we prove this? For God, whom we are commanded to love, in whom we are commanded to rejoice, is not gold, or silver, or earth, or heaven, or this light of the sun, or whatever shines from the sky, or whatever gleams on earth flooded with light. God is no body; he is spirit. That is why, it says, "those who worship must worship in spirit and truth." Not in some place of body, because he is not a body: not as if on a high mountain, so that you think you draw near to God by the height of the mountain. "The Lord is indeed high, but he looks on lowly things; and he knows lofty things from afar"; lowly things not from afar. Certainly he is high, and surely, if he knows lofty things from afar, he ought to notice lowly things from still further off. If by his loftiness he is far from lofty things, so that he knows them from afar, how much more, someone says, has his loftiness withdrawn far from lowly things? It is not so. For God is high, and looks on lowly things. How does he look on them? "The Lord is near to all those who have crushed their heart." So do not look for a high mountain from which you may seem nearer to him. If you lift yourself up, he withdraws far from you: if you humble yourself, he bends down to you. The tax collector stood far off, and so God drew near him more readily: "he did not even dare to lift his eyes to heaven," and he already had with him him who had made heaven. How, then, do we rejoice in the Lord, if the Lord is so far from us? That he is not far, and that he is far, is your doing. Love, and he will draw near: love, and he will dwell in you. "The Lord is near; have no anxiety." Do you want to see how he is with you if you love? "God is love." Why do the fancies of your thought flit far and wide, and you say to yourself, "What do you think God is? What do you think God is like?" Whatever you imagine, he is not; whatever you grasp in thought, he is not. For if he were that, he could not be grasped in thought. But so that you may receive something to taste: "God is love." You are going to say to me, "What do you think love is?" Love is that by which we love. What do we love? An ineffable good, a beneficent good, the good that is creator of all goods. Let him delight you, from whom you have whatever delights you. I do not mean sin: for sin is the only thing you do not have from him. Apart from sin, whatever else you have, you have from him.

So do not take what I said, "Let him delight you, from whom you have whatever delights you," as referring to sin, and say: "See, sin delights me; do I have sin from God?" First see whether perhaps sin does not delight you, but something else delights you, in which you commit sin. So by loving a creature inordinately, against honorable use, against what is lawful, against the law and will of the Creator himself, you sin by loving a creature. You do not love sin itself: but by loving badly what you love, you are snared by sin. You go for the bait in the net, and without knowing it you feed on sin; and you defend yourself like this: "If it is a sin to drink much, why did the Lord institute wine? If it is a sin to love gold" (I am a lover of gold, not of the Creator) "God is the creator of gold; why did he create what it is bad to love?" So too with the other things you love badly, in which there is all luxury, where no shameful acts are committed: attend, look, consider that every creature of God is good, and there is no sin there except that you use it badly. Hear this, then, O man. You say, "Why did God institute what he forbids me to love? He should not have instituted it, and there would be nothing for me to love; he should not have instituted a creature which he commands me not to love; and there would be nothing for me to love and be condemned for loving." If the creature itself which you love badly, because you do not even love yourself, could have a voice, it would answer you: "You would not want God to have made me, so that there would be nothing for you to love; now see how unjust you are, and in your very words you are caught most unjust: you would want God to make you, who is above you, and you would not want him to make another good thing." What God made for you is good: but some are great goods, others small goods; some earthly goods, others spiritual goods, others temporal goods; yet all are goods, because the Good made good things. That is why in a certain place of the divine Scriptures it is said, "Set love in order in me." God has made you something good; under himself he has made something lower, and under you; you are under one thing, you are above another: do not abandon the higher good and bend yourself to the lower good. Be upright, so that you may be praised: because "all the upright of heart will be praised." For how do you sin, except because you handle in a disordered way the things you received for use? Use lower things well, and you will rightly enjoy the higher good.

Now hear, and examine your own knowledge: and question yourself who handle things, and the things you handle. See, if in your business you put silver before gold, lead before silver, dust before lead, will you not be judged utterly mad by all your partners, if perhaps you are a merchant, and be removed from their partnership, and be called ruinous, and perhaps even in need of treatment for your whole head? For what else would all your partners say, when you said, "Silver is dearer than gold," or "Silver is better than gold"? Will they not cry out: "Madman, you are deceived; what is wrong with you, putting silver before gold?" And no one says to you, "What is wrong with you, putting gold before God?" "How," he says, "do I put gold before God? If through some madness I put silver before gold, I am called mad because, of two kinds, both of which I see, both of which I look at, both of which I handle, I put the cheaper before the dearer: how do I put gold before God? I see gold, I do not see God." You will not excuse yourself by this either. Why do you love silver? Because it is dear, because it is worth a high price. Why gold more? Because it is dearer. Silver dear, gold dearer: God is love itself.

See, I will mention something of God's gift, so that I may more quickly convict you of how you put gold before God; though you see gold and do not see God, and so do not think you put it first, because no one would want to put a thing he does not see before a thing he sees. See, I mention something. What do you think? Is faith silver? Is it gold? Is it a coin? Is it cattle? Is it land? Is it the sky? It is none of these, and yet it is something. Not only is it something, but it is something great. For the moment I am not speaking of that higher faith by which you are called one of the faithful, when you approach the table of your Lord, answering the words of faith out of faith: for the moment I set that aside a little. I will speak of that faith which is also commonly called faith: not that great faith which your God commands you, but the faithfulness which you demand from your slave. I speak of that very faithfulness, because your Lord also commands it of you: that you cheat no one, that you keep faith in business, that you keep faith with your wife in bed. Your God commands you this faithfulness too. What is this faithfulness? Certainly you do not see it: if you do not see it, why do you shout when it is broken toward you? By your shout I convict you of seeing it. You were saying: "How do I put gold before God? I see gold, I do not see God." See, you see gold, you do not see faithfulness. Or, what is truer, you see faithfulness; but when you demand it, you see it; when it is demanded of you, you do not want to see it? With open eyes you shout, "Give back the faith you promised": with closed eyes you shout, "I promised you nothing." In both cases open your eyes. Unjust man, do not lose faith but your injustice itself: give back what you demand. You lead your slave, to be manumitted, by the hand into the church. There is silence, your document is read out, or the declaration of your wish is made. You say you are manumitting your slave because he has kept faith with you in everything. This you love, this you honor, this you reward with the gift of freedom: whatever you can, you do; you make him free, because you cannot make him everlasting. Your God cries out to you, and convicts you by your slave: he says to you in your heart, "You have brought your slave from your house to my house; you want to bring him back from my house to your house free: why do you serve badly in my house? You give him what you can: I promise you what I can: you make free a slave who keeps faith with you; I make you everlasting, if you keep faith with me." Why do you still argue against me in your mind? Give back to your Lord what you praise in your slave. Or do you perhaps claim so much for yourself that you think yourself worthy to have a faithful slave, of whom you say, "I bought him"; and I am not worthy to have a faithful servant, whom I created? Your Lord says these things to you within, where no one hears but you; and he who speaks to you is he who speaks true things. For what is truer than this speech? Do not grow deaf. See, you love faithfulness in your slave; certainly you do not see faithfulness: why do you love it in another, and all that I said in another, and in a slave whom you bought with money, yet did not create? Your Lord deals with you by a double bond. He both created you and bought you. "Before you existed," he says to you, "I made you; when you had sold yourself under sin, I redeemed you." To manumit your slave, you break his tablets: God does not break your tablets. Your tablets are the Gospel, where the blood is by which you were bought: they remain, they are read daily, you are reminded of your condition, your price is recalled to you.

If your slave whom you are manumitting did not show you faithfulness, nor make himself worthy of your manumission by keeping faith, and you found him in some frauds in your house, what would you shout? "Wicked slave, you do not keep faith with me? Do you not know that I bought you? Do you not know that I paid out my blood for you?" You shout as loud as you can, and beat the sky with resentful cries: "I gave my blood for you, wicked slave." And all who hear say, "He is right." If your slave himself dared to answer you as you inveighed and shouted like this, would you not blush if he said to you: "What blood, I ask you, did you give for me? When you bought me, you did not even have yourself bled." But you call your money your blood. You love your money so much that you call it your blood. Your Lord convicts you by your own words. You call your money your blood, and so you demand faithfulness from your purchased slave, because for him you gave, not blood, of course, but coin or gold: "Recall what I gave. Read your tablets, if you do not recall it; read the death of the Saviour for you, the lance of the one who pierced, the price paid by the Redeemer. A man too can, while living, give his blood by having a vein opened, as I said, and still live: what your Lord says to you is more: Blood was not drawn from me while I lived; I bought you with my blood; I add, I bought you with my death." What have you to say? Give back to your Lord the faithfulness you demand from your slave. You see gold, and you see faithfulness too: you would not demand it if you did not see it; you would not praise it if you did not see it; you would not reward it with freedom if you did not see it: but gold you see with the eyes of the flesh, faithfulness you see with the eyes of the heart. The better the eyes of the heart are, the better is what you see with the eyes of the heart. But to this faithfulness, which your Lord commands you, you prefer gold, and you do not return what was entrusted to you, and say, "You gave me nothing": or to one to whom you entrusted nothing, you say, "Return what I entrusted to you." You do not give what you received, you claim back what you did not give. See, acquire, take, and heap up mud for yourself. Why do you press, saying, "Give back what you were not entrusted," denying what you received entrusted to you? Take, gather ruinous gains: see, you have filled your chest, you have acquired much gold; examine the chest of your heart: you have lost faith.

Return, then, if you have felt anything, if you have blushed, if you have corrected what had been crooked and bent: return, delight in the Lord, rejoice in the Lord. Rejoice in the things the Lord has commanded, so that you may rejoice in the Lord. Rejoice in faith, rejoice in hope, rejoice in love, rejoice in mercy, rejoice in hospitality, rejoice in chastity. All these are goods, treasures of the inner man; jewels not of your chest but of your conscience. Love to be rich in these, riches you cannot lose even in shipwreck; so that if you come out naked, you will be full. For so you come out upright of heart, so that you may be praised, not blaming your Lord if anything happens to you in this world, and praising the scourge of the Father whose inheritance you await. Flee under the hand that corrects. Do not turn away from discipline, because he who corrects you cannot err. He who made you knows what to do with you. Or do you perhaps think your maker so unskilled that he knew how to make you and forgets what to do with you? Before you existed, he thought of you: for if he had not thought of you, you would never have existed. So he thought of you before you existed, so that you might exist; and now that you exist, remain, live, serve him, will he despise you and look down on you? "He has looked down on me," you say: "I have prayed, and he has not heard me." What if you were asking for something that you would have received to your harm, if you had received it? "I wept before him, and he did not give it to me." O senseless child, what did you weep for? To receive carnal happiness, temporal happiness, earthly happiness. What if this happiness, which you longed and asked for, and for which you wept, would throw you headlong? A little while ago I was speaking of your slave; now take a comparison from your son. Your little son cries before you for you to lift him onto your horse: do you listen? Do you grant it? Are you hard, or rather merciful? What is it, tell me, what counsel are you acting on? Certainly this is the counsel of love, who doubts it? For him, when grown, you are keeping the whole house; while he is little and crying, you do not lift him onto the horse. Everything you have, both the house and whatever is in the house, both the field and whatever is in the field, you are keeping for him; and yet you do not lift the little one, crying, onto the horse. Let him cry as much as he likes, let him cry all day; you do not grant it, and you do not grant it out of mercy, and if you granted it, you would be cruel. See, then, think that your Lord does this to you when you ask for unsuitable things and do not receive them. For perhaps want will train you, plenty will corrupt you. You seek the plenty of corruption, when perhaps the want of training is necessary. Leave it to your God, who knows what to give you, what to take from you. For if he gives you what you ask for wrongly, perhaps he gives it in anger. Hear examples from the Law. He heard in anger the Israelites who craved the cravings of belly and throat: he did not, in his favor, hear Paul saying, "Take from me the thorn of the flesh."

So delight in the Lord, rejoice in the Lord, not in the world. For that man rejoiced in the Lord who, when he had lost all the joy of the world, still had the Lord left to rejoice in: there remained to him within the simple, perfect and unchangeable joy of his heart. What he had, he possessed; he was not possessed by it; but he was possessed by the Lord: those things he trod underfoot, on him he hung: when the things he trod underfoot were taken away, he clung to him on whom he hung. See, then, what it is to rejoice in the Lord. "The Lord gave," "the Lord" (see the joy), "the Lord has taken away": has he taken away himself? What he gave he took away; he who gave offered himself; he rejoices in the Lord. So: "The Lord gave, the Lord has taken away; as it pleased the Lord, so it has been done: blessed be the name of the Lord." Why should what pleased the Lord displease the servant? "I have lost gold," he says, "I have lost my household, I have lost my cattle, I have lost whatever I had: him from whom I have them I have not lost. I have lost what he had given; I have not lost him whose I am. He himself is my delight, he himself my riches." But why? Because he was not perverse, not upside down, did not neglect him who is above him and love the things that are below him. For that is perversity: using the creature badly.

Why do you accuse him who gave gold, you who are rightly accused of loving gold badly? "Have gold," God says to you; "I gave it to you; use it well." You want to be adorned with gold; adorn the gold rather: you want honor, you want distinction from gold; give distinction to the gold, do not be a disgrace to the gold. The whoremonger has gold, the fornicator, the debauchee: he puts on showy games, gives insane gifts to actors; he gives nothing to the hungry poor: that is no distinction to gold. Does not the one who rightly attends to this say, "I am sorry for the gold that has fallen to that man; oh, if only I had it!" And you, if you had the gold: for now you say, "I am sorry for the gold that has fallen to this man; oh, if only I had it!" What would you do? "I would take in strangers, feed the needy, clothe the naked, ransom captives." You speak good things before you have it: see that you speak so when you have it. If you are such, the gold will be your adornment. And if you use gold so, because you love more him who created gold, you will be upright, loving higher things more, using lower things rightly; and you will delight in the Lord, you will rejoice in the Lord as a righteous man. There will be in you no accusation of the Creator, but thanksgiving to the Redeemer.

We have heard, and trembled at, what was prophesied in the words of the Psalm. For it says: "As smoke vanishes, so let them vanish; as wax melts before the fire, so let sinners perish before the face of God." I do not doubt, my brothers, that the hearts of all of you were shaken, and that no one's conscience stood unafraid at these words. For "who will boast that he has a chaste heart? Or who will boast that he is clean from sin?" And so, when Scripture says, "As wax melts before the fire, so let sinners perish before the face of God," who would not tremble, who would not leap up in fright? What, then, shall we do, or what hope do we have? For these things are not sung in vain; or does the Prophet, when he says this, wish it on people, and not rather foresee what is to come? In the words, indeed, the form of one wishing appears, but the foreknowledge of one announcing is understood. For just as certain things in the Scripture of the Prophets are narrated as if done in the past when future things are foretold, so certain things are said as if in the wish of one wishing; but those who rightly understand what they hear recognize the vision of one announcing beforehand. These Psalms were spoken and written long before the birth of the Lord's incarnation. Not before Christ as God, but before Christ born of the virgin Mary. For certainly father Abraham lived long before King David, in whose time these Psalms were sung. But the Lord said, "Before Abraham, I am." For he is the Word of God, through whom all things were made: but he himself, filling the Prophets, foretold through them that he would come in the flesh. And the passion belongs to his incarnation. For he could not suffer the things written in the Gospel except in the mortal and passible flesh which he bore. And there we certainly read how, when the Lord was crucified, those who crucified him divided his garments among themselves, and when they found among them a tunic woven from the top, they would not tear it, but cast lots for it, so that whoever it came to, it would come to him whole: by which was signified love, which cannot be divided. So, while these things are now narrated in the Gospel as done, many years before, in the Psalm, when they were foretold as future, they were sung as done and past. "They pierced," it says, "my hands and my feet, and they numbered all my bones. And they looked and stared at me: they divided my garments among them, and cast lots for my clothing." All are told as if past, and they are foretold as future. Just as, then, in words of past time future events are signified, so in the form of one wishing the mind of one announcing beforehand must be understood. So too of Judas, the Lord's betrayer, the prophet as if wishes him what he foretells will come. And of the Jews themselves he says, "Let their table become a snare, and a trap, and a stumbling block." Which is without doubt explained as foretold of them; as the apostle Peter recalls the things foretold of Judas under the same form.

And it is not without reason that things which are future are spoken of as done. For to God they are so certain that they are already held as done; and the Prophet seems to say as a wish what he foresees is certain to come: showing nothing else, as it seems to me, than that the known sentence of God, which he has established fixed and immovable, ought not to displease us. And so in the Acts of the Apostles, when a certain prophet named Agabus foretold that the apostle Paul would suffer many things from the Jews in Jerusalem and would even come to chains, and when, hearing this, the brothers wanted to call him back and keep him from going there, he said: "What are you doing, troubling my heart? For I am ready not only to be bound, but also to die for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ." And so, when the brothers saw the man's immovable steadfastness to endure everything, they said, "The will of the Lord be done." Did they, then, because they said, "The will of God be done," wish the Apostle to suffer such things, and not rather most devoutly submit their minds to the lofty divine decree? So too the Prophet, when he says, "As wax melts before the fire, so let sinners perish before the face of God," sees most certainly that this threatens sinners, and what God has decreed pleases him, so that he himself may not displease God.

What, then, shall we do, brothers, but change our life while there is time, and correct our deeds, if any are bad? So that what without any doubt will come upon sinners may not find us for it to come upon: not because we shall not exist, but so that it may not find us such as those upon whom it has been foretold it will come. That is why the judge threatens that he will come, so that when he comes he may not find any to punish. That is why the Prophets sing this, so that we may be corrected. If he wanted to condemn, he would keep silent. No one who wants to strike says, "Look out." Everything, brothers, that we have heard through the Scriptures is the voice of God saying, "Look out." And everything we suffer, the tribulations in this life, is the scourge of God, who wants to correct, so as not to condemn at the end. However hard, however troublesome, however horrible to tell are the very grievous things each one suffers in this life, in comparison with the eternal fire they are not small but nothing. So whether we ourselves are scourged, or are warned by the Lord when others are scourged: all these things, brothers, which are inflicted in this life by the Lord are warnings and goads to our correction. But the eternal fire will come, of which it will be said to those who are to be set on the left, "Go into the eternal fire, which is prepared for the devil and his angels." Then some will do penance. For it is written in a certain book of Wisdom: "They will say within themselves, repenting and groaning in anguish of spirit: What did pride profit us? And what did the boasting of riches bring us? All those things have passed away like a shadow." For there will be repentance there, but fruitless: there will be repentance there, but having pain, not having medicine. Now repentance is fruitful, when correction is free. Repent at the voice of Scripture. For at the voice of the judge when he is present, you will repent in vain. Then he will already be pronouncing sentence: and there will be nothing for you to find fault with when he pronounces sentence. For he did not keep silent before the sentence. For he put you off only so that you might correct yourself: since he allowed the thief hanging on the cross to change. For then the thief hanging with the Lord believed in Christ, when the disciples wavered about him. The Jews despised him when he raised the dead; the thief did not despise him hanging with him on the cross. So there is nothing that can be said to the Lord at the end: "You did not allow me to live well"; or, "You did not give me a delay for correction"; or, "You did not show me what to seek, what to avoid." See that he does not keep silent, see that he delays, see that he coaxes, exhorts, threatens. He has set his word on high; it is read to the whole human race throughout the whole world. There is no one now who can say, "I did not know, I did not hear." What was said in the Psalm is fulfilled: "Nor is there anyone who can hide from his heat." Now, then, his heat is in his word: be changed now by his heat, and you will not melt like wax before his fire.

For that, my brothers, will come one day which the ungodly now laugh at, which the mockers now despise, which they think is sung falsely; one day it will come. If so many of the things foretold had not come, let us despair that this too will come one day: but if we already see displayed all the things foretold about the Church, and they strike even the eyes of the blind, why do we doubt that those things too will come? When it was said that the Church of Christ would be throughout the whole world, it was said by a few and laughed at by many. Now what was foretold so long before has been fulfilled: the Church has been spread throughout the whole world. Thousands of years ago it was promised to Abraham, "In your seed all nations shall be blessed." Christ came from the seed of Abraham; all nations have already been blessed in Christ. Schisms and heresies to come were foretold: we see them. Persecutions were foretold: they have taken place at the hands of kings who worshipped idols. For those very idols, against the name of Christ, the earth was filled with martyrs. The seed of blood was sown; the harvest of the Church sprang up. Nor did the Church pray in vain for her enemies: even those who persecuted believed. It was also foretold that the idols themselves would be overthrown through the name of Christ: for we find this too in the Scriptures. A few years ago Christians read these things and did not see them; they were still awaiting them as future, and so they departed: they did not see them, but believing that they would come, they departed with faith to the Lord: in our times even these things are seen. All the things that were foretold about the Church we see fulfilled: is the day of judgment alone not to come? Is it alone foretold, and will it not come? Are we so hard and stony of heart that we read the Scriptures and see that absolutely everything written has happened to the letter, and despair of what remains? For how much is it that remains, compared with what we see already shown us? Has God shown so many things, and will he cheat us of the rest? The judgment will come to repay according to deserts, good to the good, bad to the bad. Let us be good, and await the judge without anxiety.

My brothers, listen to me above all now as I speak. I do not want to reckon the past with you: from today change yourself; let tomorrow find you another man. But we, in our perversity, want God to be merciful in such a way that he is not just. Others, on the other hand, as if trusting in their own righteousness, want him just in such a way that they would not have him merciful. God shows himself both, offers both; neither does his mercy prejudice his justice, nor does his justice take away his mercy. He is merciful and just. How do we prove him merciful? He now spares sinners, gives pardon to those who confess. How do we prove that he is just? Because the day of judgment is coming, which he now puts off, does not take away; and when it comes, he will repay according to deserts. Or do you want the same to be repaid to those who have turned away as to those who have turned back? Brothers, does it seem just to you that Judas should be put where Peter has been put? And he too would have been put there if he had corrected himself. But despairing of pardon, he rather tied a rope around his neck than implored the King's clemency. So, brothers, as I had begun to say, there is nothing for which we can find fault with God. There will be nothing for us to say against him when he comes to judge. Let each one think of his own sins, and amend them now, while there is time. Let the grief be fruitful; let the regret not be barren. As if God said this: "See, I have announced the sentence, but have not yet pronounced it; I have foretold it, not fixed it. Why do you fear? Because I said it? If you are changed, it is changed." For it is written that God repents. Does God repent as a man does? For it was said, "If you repent of your sins, I too will repent of all the evils I was going to do to you." Does God repent as one who errs? But repentance in God means a change of sentence. It is not unjust, but just. Why just? The defendant has been changed; the judge has changed the sentence. Do not be frightened. The sentence has been changed, not justice. Justice remains whole: because he who is just ought to spare one who has been changed. As he does not spare the obstinate, so he spares the changed. He who is the giver of the Law is himself the king of pardon. He sent the Law, he came with pardon. The Law had made you guilty; he who gave the Law released you. Or rather, he did not acquit you: for to acquit is to judge innocent; rather he forgives the sins of the one converted. For all are guilty who are entangled in their sins. Let no one wish to be acquitted: let us all beg for pardon. Pardon is given to one who has changed: and we shall be secure when we hear, "As wax melts before the fire, so let sinners perish before the face of God."

Certainly, brothers, let sinners perish now, and sinners do not perish. If they begin to live justly, the sinners will certainly perish, but the human beings will not perish. Man, sinner: these are two names: "man" is one name, and "sinner" is another name. In these two names we understand that God made one of them, man made the other. For God made man; man made himself a sinner. Why, then, do you tremble when God says to you, "Let sinners perish before my face"? God says this to you: "Let what you made perish in you, and I preserve what I made." And now the fire burns in the heat of the word; the thing is in the fervor of the Holy Spirit, as I said a while ago, for it is written in another Psalm, "Nor is there anyone who can hide from his heat." And that the Holy Spirit is heat, the Apostle says: "Fervent in spirit." So instead of the face of God, set the Scripture of God before yourself for the time being: melt before it; repent when you hear these things about your sins. And when you repent, so that you torment yourself under the heat of the word, when even tears flow, are you not found like melting wax, running as it were into tears? So do now what you fear for the future, and you will have nothing to fear for the future: only do not vanish like smoke.

For you have both set down there: perhaps not without reason, because there is also a difference among sinners. In this one saying the Psalmist put both: "As smoke vanishes, so let them vanish; and as wax melts before the fire, so let sinners perish before the face of God." Who are those who vanish like smoke? Who are they, if not the proud, who do not confess their sins but defend them? Why are they compared to smoke? Because smoke rises, lifts itself up as if to heaven: but the higher it becomes, the more easily it vanishes and disperses. Consider again what I have said. Smoke is denser near the fire and near the earth; it has not yet vanished so, has not yet been so scattered to the winds: but the more it has lifted itself up, the more it is thinned, vanishes, and disperses. So since the proud man raises himself against God as smoke against the sky, it remains that he should vanish so, and perish as if scattered to the winds of his vanity by his exaltation; just as smoke disperses when lifted up, swollen with a puffed-up, not solid, greatness. For such is smoke: you see a great mass; you have something as it were to see, and you have nothing to hold. Detest such a punishment above all, then, brothers, and do not defend your sins: and if you still commit them, do not defend them. Submit yourselves to God, and beat your breasts in such a way that even those that remain may not be done. Try not to commit them, and, if possible, commit none: but if it is not possible for you to commit none, let that devout confession at least remain. For there will be regard for his mercy, so that, while you try to destroy them all and destroy as many as he helps you to, he will readily forgive the rest that remain to you, found on the road and caught in the attempt: only be eager to make progress, not to fall away. If the last day does not find you a victor, let it at least find you fighting, not captured and handed over.

But the mercy of God is most abundant, and his kindness generous, who redeemed us with the blood of his Son when, because of our sins, we were nothing. For he did something great when he created man in his own image and likeness. But because we chose to become nothing by sinning, and drew from our parents the inheritance of mortality, and became a mass of sin, a mass of wrath; yet it pleased him in his mercy to redeem us at so great a price; he gave for us the blood of his only Son, born innocently, living innocently, dying innocently. He who redeemed us at so great a price does not want those he bought to perish. He did not buy those he would lose: but he bought those he would give life to. If our sins overcome us, God does not despise his price. He gave a great price. Yet let us not flatter ourselves so much about his mercy if we have not struggled against our sins; nor, if we have committed some especially capital sins, let us hope that his mercy will be such that iniquity is joined to it. For will he set those who have done nothing to live as corrected people, but have remained in obstinacy and hardness of heart, and have even accused God in defending their sins, where he has set the holy martyrs, where he has set the holy apostles, prophets, patriarchs, and his faithful who have deserved well of him, serving him, walking in chastity, modesty, humility, giving alms, forgiving what they have suffered from anyone? For such is the way of the righteous, such is the way of the saints, who hold God as Father, who hold the Church as mother, offending neither that parent nor this one, but living in love of both parents, and hastening to the eternal inheritance: with neither father nor mother offended, the inheritance is given to each one.

For two parents begot us to death, two parents begot us to life. The parents who begot us to death are Adam and Eve; the parents who begot us to life are Christ and the Church. My father who begot me to death was Adam to me, and my mother was Eve to me. We were born according to this offspring of the flesh, by the gift of God indeed, for this gift too is not another's but God's: and yet, brothers, how were we born? Certainly to die. Predecessors begot successors for themselves: did they beget for themselves those with whom they might live here for ever? No, as people who were going to depart, they begot for themselves those who would succeed them. But God the Father and mother Church do not beget for this: they beget for eternal life, because they too are eternal. And we have the inheritance promised by Christ, eternal life. Insofar as the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, he was nourished, grew, suffered, died, and was raised, and received the inheritance, the kingdom of heaven. In that very man he received resurrection and eternal life, in that very man he received it: in the Word he did not receive it, because the Word remains unchangeably from eternity to eternity. So since that flesh which rose again and, made alive, ascended into heaven received resurrection and eternal life, this has been promised to us. We await that very inheritance, eternal life. For the whole body has not yet received it; for the head is in heaven, the members are still on earth: nor will the head alone receive the inheritance and the body be left behind: the whole Christ will receive the inheritance; the whole according to the man, that is, head and body. We are, then, members of Christ; let us hope for the inheritance: for when all these things have passed away, we shall receive this good which will not pass away, and escape this evil which will not pass away; for both are eternal. For he did not promise his own something eternal and threaten the ungodly with something temporal. As he promised the saints life, blessedness, the kingdom, an everlasting inheritance without end, so he threatened the ungodly with eternal fire. If we do not yet love what he promised, let us at least fear what he threatened.

Let us believe that what we have sung to the Lord has been set before us as the subject of our speaking: let our sermon to you come from it. And may he to whom we said, “You have held my right hand, and in your will you have led me, and with glory you have taken me up,” himself take up our hearts to a clearer understanding, and may he help with his mercy and grace both me as I speak and you as you judge. For although, for the convenience of making the voice carry, we seem to stand in a higher place, yet in that higher place it is you who judge and we who are judged. We are called teachers, but in many things we are looking for a teacher, and we do not wish to be taken for masters. For it is dangerous and forbidden, since the Lord himself says, “Do not wish to be called masters; one is your master, Christ.” Mastership, then, is dangerous; discipleship is safe. That is why the psalm says, “To my hearing you will give joy and gladness.” For the hearer of the word is safer than the one who utters it. That is why the friend of the bridegroom stands secure and hears him, and rejoices greatly because of the bridegroom’s voice.

And because the apostle had taken on the role of a teacher out of necessity, see what he says: “I was with you in fear and in much trembling.” It is safer, then, that both we who speak and you who listen should know that we are fellow disciples under one Master. It is altogether safer, and this is expedient, that you listen to us not as masters but as your fellow disciples. For see what anxiety is laid on us where it is said, “Brothers, do not become many masters; for in many things we all offend.” Who would not tremble when the apostle says “all”? What follows? “Whoever does not offend in word, he is a perfect man.” But who would dare to say that he is perfect? The one who stands and listens, then, does not offend in word. But the one who speaks, even if (which is difficult) he does not offend, still suffers and fears that he may offend. You ought, then, to be not only hearers of those who speak but also those who pity those who are afraid: so that in what we say truly, since everything true is from the Truth, you may praise not us but him; and where, as human beings, we offend, you may pray to the same one for us.

The holy Scriptures are … truthful, they are blameless. “All Scripture divinely inspired is useful for teaching, for reproof, for exhortation, for instruction.” There is nothing, then, for which we should accuse Scripture if perhaps, not having understood it, we go astray in something. When we understand it, we are upright; but when, not having understood it, we are crooked, we leave it standing upright. For by being crooked we do not make it crooked; it stands upright so that we may return to it to be set straight. Yet to exercise us, the same Scripture in many places speaks as if carnally, although it is always spiritual. For “the law,” as the apostle says, “is spiritual; but I am carnal.” Though it is spiritual, then, it often walks as if carnally with the carnal. But it does not want them to remain carnal. A mother, after all, loves to nurse her little one, but she does not love him to remain little. She holds him in her lap, cherishes him in her hands, comforts him with caresses, feeds him with milk: she does everything for the little one, but she wants him to grow, so that she need not always do such things. Look at the apostle; we do better to look at him, for he did not disdain to call himself even a mother, where he says, “I became a little one in your midst, like a nurse cherishing her own children.” The apostle, out of the genuine and devoted affection of love, took on the role both of the nurse, by saying “cherishing,” and of the mother, by adding “her own children.” For there are nurses who cherish children, but not their own; and there are mothers who give their children to nurses and do not cherish them themselves. This same nurse and … says in another place what I mentioned a little before: “I was with you in fear and in much trembling.”

But you say: What sort of people were they, that he was among them in fear and in much trembling? “As to little ones in Christ,” he says, “I gave you milk to drink, not solid food; for you were not able; and even now you are still not able; for you are still carnal.” Those he calls carnal he still calls little ones in Christ; he rebukes them in such a way as not to disown them. Both carnal and little ones in Christ: yet he does not want those he calls little ones in Christ to be carnal; he wishes them to be spiritual, judging all things, and judged by no one. “For the natural man,” as he himself says, “does not perceive the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot know them, because they are judged spiritually. The spiritual man judges all things; but he himself is judged by no one.” The same man says: “We speak wisdom among the perfect.” Why then do you speak, if among the perfect? For what need is there for you to speak to a perfect man? But ask in what he is perfect. For perhaps I do not find a perfect knower, but I do already find a perfect hearer. There is, then, also a perfect hearer, whose mind is already capable, to whom solid food causes no upset and brings no indigestion. Who is he, and we will praise him? Yet I do not doubt that there are some spiritual people who listen well and judge well: with them I do not labor. For either the carnal man is still unsure and deals kindly with me, or he grasps what I say and rejoices with me.

See, I have now taken up the words of the psalm we just sang: “You have held my right hand.” Give me a carnal hearer: what will he think, except that God appeared in human form, took hold of his right hand, not his left, led him into his own will, and took him up where he wished? If he understands this, or rather if he supposes this, he never understands. For whoever understands, understands what is true; but whoever supposes what is false does not understand. So if a carnal man supposes that the nature and substance of God is divided into members, defined by a form, bounded by size, remaining in a place, what am I to do with him? If I say, “God is not like that,” he does not grasp it. If I say, “He is like that,” he seems to grasp it; but I deceive him. I cannot say, “He is like that,” lest I lie; and not about just anything, but about my God, about my Savior and Redeemer, about my hope, about him to whom I stretch out my hand, my desire. It is no light thing to lie about such a one. To be deceived about such a one is troublesome and dangerous; but to lie about such a one is ruinous and destructive. Not everyone who lies is deceived. But if someone himself thinks true what is not true, he is deceived; and if he says what he thinks true, he does not lie, but he is still deceived. May God grant to him who would not lie that he may not be deceived either.

If then, as I said, that little one of ours believes God to be such a being, with members arranged in definite places of his body, bounded by a shape, limited by a form, remaining in a place and moving from place to place, in keeping with what is said, “Where shall I go from your Spirit? and where shall I flee from your face? If I ascend into heaven, you are there; if I descend into hell, you are present”; if he is in heaven, if he is on earth, if he is present in hell, what is that little one to do now? If he listens, let him seek with the Samaritan woman for mountains and temples by which to go to God, to Jerusalem, to the mountain of Samaria? No: let him not hurry to a visible temple, let him not look for some temple by which to come to God. Let him be a temple himself, and God will come to him. He does not despise him, does not shun him, does not disdain him; rather, he deigns to come. If he does not disdain, hear him promising; hear him meanwhile deigning by a promise, not disdaining by a threat: “We will come to him,” he says, “I and the Father.” To him whom he described above as one who loves him, obeys his precepts, keeps his commandment, loves God, loves his neighbor. “We will come to him,” he says, “and make our dwelling with him.” The heart of the believer is not narrow for him, for whom Solomon’s temple was narrow. For Solomon himself, when he was building it, said, “If the heaven of heaven does not suffice for you.” And certainly “the temple of God is holy, which you are.” “For we,” he says in another place, “are the temple of the living God.” And how do you prove this, as though someone asked him? “As it is written,” he says, “I will dwell in them.” If some great patron said to you, “I will dwell with you,” what would you do? Since your house is narrow, you would no doubt be troubled, utterly alarmed; you would wish it would not happen. For you would not want to be in cramped quarters when receiving a great man for whose coming your poor little house would not suffice. Do not fear the coming of your God, do not fear the affection of your God: he does not cramp you when he comes; rather, by coming he will enlarge you. And so that you may know that he will enlarge you, he promised not only his coming, “I will dwell in them,” but also breadth itself, by adding, “And I will walk about among them.” This breadth you see, if you love. Fear has torment; therefore it has narrowness; and so love has breadth. See the breadth of love: “Because the love of God,” he says, “is poured out in our hearts.”

But you were looking for a place for him. Let the indweller himself make room: “For love is poured out in our hearts,” yet not from ourselves, but “through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” If love is poured out in our hearts, and God is love, see, already, from however small a pledge, God walks about in us. For we have received a pledge. What is that thing of which the pledge is such? Though the manuscripts that have “earnest” are better than those that have “pledge.” The translators of course meant to say the same thing. Yet in ordinary usage there is some difference between an earnest and a pledge. For when a pledge is given, once that for which the pledge was given has been rendered, the pledge is taken back. I do not doubt that many of you have already understood. I do not see it, but from the murmuring, because you are talking to one another, I sense that those who have understood want to explain it to those who have not yet understood. So I will say it somewhat more plainly, so that it may reach everyone. You receive, for example, a book from your friend; so that he will give it to you, you deposit some pledge. When you have returned what you received, for which you deposited the pledge, he will have what you returned, and you will get back your pledge; for he will not keep both things.

What then, brothers? If God has now given love as a pledge through his Holy Spirit, then when he renders the thing itself, which he promised when he gave the pledge, must the pledge be taken away from us? Far from it! Rather, what he has given he will fill up. So “earnest” is better than “pledge.” For sometimes, for example, you prepare to pay the price for a thing that you hold by a contract made in good faith, and you give something out of that very price; and it will be an earnest, not a pledge: something to be completed, not something to be taken away. Now understand. If I find someone who loves, he has the earnest, and from the earnest he longs for the fullness. Let him consider the earnest itself, for that will be completed of which the earnest was given. Let him think about it, examine it within himself, look into it, question it about that fullness which he does not see, lest perhaps he desire in the fullness something other than what is in what he has received. Perhaps God is going to give gold, to complete a fullness of gold, and has given an earnest of gold. It is to be feared that you may desire lead instead of gold. Look, then, at the earnest, if I can persuade you to look at it: God is love.

From there we have something; from there we have been sprinkled, from there bedewed. If the dew is such, what is the fountain like? Sprinkled with that dew, but burning for the fountain, say to your God: “For with you is the fountain of life.” In that dew desire was born; at the fountain you will be filled. There is what suffices us. “But the sons of men will hope under the shelter of your wings.” Why do we desire as something great those benefits of God which he gives even to beasts? They are indeed his benefits, who doubts it? From whom comes even the least well-being, if not from him of whom it is said, “Salvation is the Lord’s”?

But the same psalm says, “Men and beasts you will save, O Lord, as your mercy has been multiplied, O God.” You have mercy so manifold that it reaches not only men but even beasts. You excel in mercy so greatly that you make your sun rise on the good and the evil, and send rain on the just and the unjust. Do your saints receive nothing special from you, does the godly man receive nothing of his own that the ungodly does not receive? Certainly he does: hear what follows. For he had said, “Men and beasts you will save, O Lord, as your mercy has been multiplied, O God”; and he added, “But the sons of men.” What then did you say a little before? Were men not sons of men? “Men,” he says, “and beasts you will save, O Lord: but the sons of men.” What then? “The sons of men will hope under the shelter of your wings.” This is not shared with the beasts. Why then “these” and “those” men? Are not men also sons of men? Certainly men too are sons of men. Where then does this distinction come from, unless because there is a man who was not a son of man? A man not a son of man: Adam. A man, son of man: Christ. “As in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive.” Do they seek salvation with the beasts, who die, and die not to live again, and not seek salvation with the sons of men, so as never to die? This distinction has been made clear. Those belong to “men,” these, the “sons of men,” to the Son of Man.

What then follows? “But the sons of men will hope under the shelter of your wings.” See, I hope; see, hope; but “hope that is seen is not hope.” So the future things that are promised will make them drunk: “They will be made drunk with the abundance of your house.” I fear that, just as a little before that hearer was looking for bodily members in God, so in God’s drunkenness he may imagine a surfeit, not of goods beyond words, but the gorging of carnal banquets. Still, let us say it: let him think what he can, if he cannot think greater things; let him not leave the lap, yet let him grow. Let us follow, and let us who can, as far as we can, take delight spiritually. “They will be made drunk,” he says, “with the abundance of your house, and from the torrent of your pleasure you will give them drink.” With what wine? What new wine? What water? What honey? What nectar? You ask with what? “For with you is the fountain of life.” Drink life, if you can. Prepare your conscience, not your gullet; your mind, not your belly. If you have heard, if you have understood, if you have loved as far as you could, you have already drunk from it. Pay attention to what you have drunk. You have drunk love. If you know it, God is love. If then you have drunk love, tell me in what place you drank it. If you know it, if you have seen it, if you love, from what do you love? For whatever you love rightly, you love with love. But how with love? Or what do you love, you who love love? So if you love, from what do you love? It came to you, and you know it, and you see it; and it is not seen in a place, nor sought with bodily eyes, so that it may be loved more ardently; nor is it heard by speech; and when it came to you, it was not perceived by its step. Have you ever felt the footsteps of love walking about in your heart? What then is it? Whose is this, which is already in you and is not grasped by you? Learn to love God in this way.

But he walked in paradise; but he was seen at the oak of Mamre; but he spoke with Moses on Mount Sinai mouth to mouth. And what of that? See, he who is seen in a place is not perceived by his step. Do you want to hear Moses himself, so that you, a restless infant, do not weary me, though I wish to nurse you? Do you want, then, to hear Moses himself? He certainly spoke with God mouth to mouth. To whom then did he say, if not to the very one with whom he was speaking, “If I have found favor before you, show me yourself”? He speaks with him mouth to mouth, as one speaks to his friend, and he says to him, “If I have found favor before you, show me yourself plainly.” What was he seeing, and what did he know? If it was not he himself, how is it said to him, “Show me yourself”? We cannot say that it was not he himself. If it were not he himself, he would have said to him, “Show me God.” So when he says, “Show me yourself,” he makes plain that it was he himself whom he wished to be shown to him. And he spoke with him mouth to mouth, as one speaks to his friend. Do you want to hear, then? If you can grasp it, God appeared to Moses while remaining hidden. For if he did not appear, there would be no one with whom he could speak mouth to mouth and say, “Show me your very self.” But if he were not hidden, Moses would not still be asking to see that same one. So, if you grasp it, if you understand, God can here both appear and be hidden at once: appear in an outward form, be hidden in his nature.

If you have understood this, as you could, take care that it does not creep into your mind that God, in order to appear, changes his nature into whatever form he wishes. God is unchangeable; not only the Father, but the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” The Word himself is unchangeable God, as is God with whom he is. Think of no loss in any person, no change. For God is “the Father of lights, with whom there is no change, nor shadow of turning.” If then he is unchangeable, you say, what is that form in which he appeared as he wished, to whom he wished, by walking, by sounding, or by showing himself even to the very eyes of flesh? You ask me what it is, from what God brings about his presence; as if I could already explain from what he made the world, from what he made heaven, from what he made earth, from what he made you. I see you already answering: “From clay.” There you are, from clay: from what the clay? You answer: “From earth.” But not, I suppose, from an earth that someone else made, but from that earth which he made who made heaven and earth. From what, then, is the earth itself? “He spoke, and they were made.” Good, excellent; you answer well, you acknowledge it: “He spoke, and they were made”: I ask nothing more. But just as, when you say, “He spoke, and they were made,” I ask nothing more, so you too should ask no more when I say, “He willed, and he appeared.”

He appeared as he judged fitting; he remained hidden as he was. True affection is not seen; love is not seen; charity is not seen. From that pledge let the hearer burn for that for which Moses too burned, when he said to him whom he saw, “Show me your very self.” If, then, we seek this, we are his children. “For we are children of God, and it has not yet appeared what we shall be. We know that when he appears, we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is.” Not as he was seen at the oak of Mamre, not as he was seen by Moses, so that we should still say to him, “Show us your very self”; but we shall see him as he is. By what merit? Because we are children of God. And this not from our merits, but by the grace of his mercy. “For a voluntary rain you set apart, O God, for your inheritance; and it was weakened”—not by presuming of itself to see what it does not see, but by believing what it longs to see—“but you perfected it.” As his inheritance, then, made perfect, and as his children, we shall see him as he is.

But what did the Lord say about the children? “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God.” So about such hidden and very difficult questions, if there is anything we understand less well, let us inquire peaceably. “Let no one be puffed up for one against another.” “For if you have bitter zeal, and there are quarrels among you, this is not the wisdom that comes down from above, but earthly, natural, devilish.” We are children of God, then; and we recognize that we are his children, and we are not recognized as such unless we are peacemakers. For we shall have nothing with which to see God, if by quarreling we put out the very eye within us.

Pay attention to what he says, and why I speak in fear and trembling: “Pursue peace with all, and holiness, without which no one will be able to see God.” How did he frighten lovers? He frightened none but lovers. Did he say, “Pursue peace with all, and holiness; whoever does not have it will be cast into fire, tormented with eternal fire, handed over to tireless torturers”? Those things are true too, and he did not say them. He wanted you to be a lover of the good, not one who dreads evil; and he frightened you with the very thing you desired. You will see God: is it for this that you despise peace, for this that you quarrel, for this that you stir up disturbances? “Pursue peace with all, and holiness, without which no one will be able to see God.” How foolish two people would be who wanted to see the sun rise, if they argued with each other about which side it would rise on and how it could be seen, and, a dispute having arisen between them, fought, and by fighting struck each other, and by striking put out their own eyes, so that they could not see that sunrise! So that we may be able to see God, then, let us cleanse our hearts by faith, heal them by love, make them firm by peace: for this very thing by which we love one another is already from him whom we desire to see.

Thanks be to the Lord our God, and abundant praise to the God to whom a hymn is fitting in Zion. Thanks to him to whom, with devotion of heart and mouth, we have sung, “O God, who is like you?”: because we feel his holy love deep within our hearts; because you fear him as Lord and love him as Father. Thanks to him who is desired before he is seen, who is felt as present and hoped for as one to come. Thanks to him whose fear love does not drive out, and whose love fear does not hinder. Him we bless, him we honor, both for ourselves and in ourselves. For “the temple of God is holy, which you are.” See now how greatly he lives, or how he lives, when the stones of his temple live like this. Think, brothers, what you are saying, and to whom you are saying, “O God, who is like you?” Living stones say to the one who dwells in them, “O God, who is like you?” Let the whole creation come before your hearts: the earth and whatever is on the earth, the sea and whatever is in the sea, the air and whatever is in the air, heaven and whatever is in heaven: “He spoke, and they were made; he commanded, and they were created.” So, “O God, who is like you?”: let every heart say it, let every obedient tongue say it, let every devout conscience say it, let it say it without fear: “O God, who is like you?” For it says it to one of whom it is not ashamed. This is worthy; this befits living stones.

For would that the dead stones might feel in themselves the mercy of the living stones! I call dead not the stones from which these buildings rise, nor those on which the craftsmen’s iron works, nor those that man has carved to be gods (or rather, man carved them to be called gods and not to be gods); I do not mean these when I say dead stones: I mean that men are dead stones, men whom their gods resemble. Living stones are those whom the apostle Peter addresses when he says, “And you, brothers, like living stones, are built together into the holy temple of God.” Would, then, my brothers, that the dead stones might feel in themselves the mercy of the living stones! For what are we busy about? What do we range over in the narrowness or the breadth of our heart? What do we care about, what are we eager for, except to free a stone from a stone? For living stones have eyes and see, have ears and hear, have hands and work, have feet and walk: for they know their maker. But the dead stones know their stones; they attend to their gods, worship them, and are known by them; they offer sacrifice, and themselves become a sacrifice to the devil. If they, brothers, had eyes to see and ears to hear, what a thing it would be to see the prophecies of Christ fulfilled! What a thing to attend to the truthful books, and to oracles that do not deceive! But why do they not see? Why do they not hear? Because here too the prophecy says, “Let those who make them become like them, and those who trust in them.” Are they then without hope, and to be given up? Far from it! And what is to be hoped for from the dead stones? What do you think, but what we already hold in writing: “God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham”?

And so, dearly beloved, since you know to whom we have said, “O God, who is like you?”: one of whom we are not ashamed, whose inscription we read not on a stone but carry in our heart; whose name is known to all, and who lives in believers, dwells in those who submit to him, and overthrows the proud. Since we know to whom we have said, “O God, who is like you?”, let not the men whom God made move us to hatred of them, but let whatever man himself has made badly in a man whom God made well move us to hatred of it. “Man” is one name. Look for the maker of this creature: it is God. Is God the creator of man only? Is he not the maker of cattle, and fish, and bird, and angel, and heaven, and earth, and stars, and sun, and moon, and of all things founded and ordered above and below, lowest and highest, joined by the bond of unity: of all these, is not God the maker? But man he made in his image and likeness. Man is called a certain likeness; and how great a likeness, to how great a one? What, to whom? Man to God? “What is man, that you are mindful of him?” Let us then, made in his image and likeness, say … “O God, who is like you?” For the Scripture adds, “Remember that we are dust.” So far are you from being like God. Man was made after the likeness of God; but the likeness itself is so distant that it is not fitting to compare it. And yet the heart of a man, even of a Christian, which would never say, “To Man, the god,” reads with pleasure, “To Hercules, the god.” The inscription does not speak; but it is read: “To Hercules, the god.” Of whom was this said? Let him say himself of whom it was said. Both are dumb, both senseless: above, a lie; below, a fabrication. An inscription that accuses its writer and confounds its worshiper. An inscription that does not commend the stone as a god but shows the man to be a fool. An inscription that puts the name of a god on a fabrication, and blots the name of its worshiper out of the book of the living. What particle of sense does it feel in itself?

Yet since God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham, let him attend there to what he made in man. Let God himself, to whom we said, “O God, who is like you?”, attend in man to what he himself made, and blot out what man himself has done against him who made man. Let him strike and heal, kill and make alive. For to him to whom he said, “Lord, who is like you?”, he went on to add, “Do not be silent, and do not be gentle, O God.” What is this? In that song, my brothers, have we provoked God to anger, when we said to him, “Do not be silent, and do not be gentle, O God”? Surely he is either the one who sent, or the very one who came and said, “Learn from me, for I am gentle and humble of heart.” The Son of God, Christ, is gentle and humble of heart. What then? He said, “Learn from me, for I am gentle and humble of heart”; and have we said to him, “Do not be silent, and do not be gentle, O God”? But let him answer us: “O man, is it not enough that you do not learn from me to be gentle, but you also want to lead me not to be gentle?” See, brothers, pay attention, help us, so that in his name we may get out of these straits (help us with devout attention and chaste prayer). The divine words seem to quarrel: they are thought to sound contrary to each other, unless understanding is present, and we receive it from the very one to whom we said, “O God, who is like you?”: let us receive what he himself said, “I will give you understanding.” We know this: “My peace I give to you.” Christ says it, so that Christians may have peace among themselves. How will they imitate it? How will they listen, if the divine words themselves cannot have peace among themselves? Pay attention; see what sounds like an echo of contraries: “Come to me,” and “Learn from me.” What then? First, who calls? Whom does he call? To what does he call? Hear who calls: “I confess to you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and prudent, and revealed them to little ones. Yes, Father, for so it was pleasing before you. All things have been handed over to me by my Father.” See who calls. “All things have been handed over to me by my Father. For no one has known the Son except the Father; and no one knows the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal him.” Immense greatness, and ineffable height! “All things,” he says, “have been handed over to me by my Father.” I alone know, I am known by one alone. What, are we left out? Do we not know? And where is “to whom the Son wills to reveal him”?

Your spirit and zeal for the faith, the ardor of your love, and the abundance of your zeal for the house of God have shown themselves in your shouts, which you have as clear enough witnesses of your heart. Allow the zeal also of the few faithful of God by whom you are governed to show itself in regard to this wish of yours. For you, brothers, are the people of God, as he himself said, and the sheep of his pasture. You have, in the name of God, shepherds: servants of the Shepherd and members of the Shepherd. The mind and will of a multitude for doing anything can show itself in shouts like these; but the care of the few for you must be shown not by shouts but by deeds. And so, brothers, since you have already done your part by acclaiming, allow it to be proved to you whether we too do our part by acting. We have tested you; test us, whether, after those shouts that witness to your heart and zeal, we prove sluggish in doing what ought to be done. Far be it from us that you should be found approved and we reprobate. But since the will to act on what you acclaimed is one, both yours and ours, while the manner of acting cannot be the same, we think, dearly beloved, that the will should be accepted from you, and the plan for carrying out your will be awaited from us. So that the members of Christ may not be in discord, let all that are in his body fulfill their duties: let the eye placed on high do what belongs to the eye; the ear, what belongs to the ear; the hand, what belongs to the hand; the foot, what belongs to the foot; so that there may be no divisions in the body, but the members may have the same care for one another. And so we rejoice and congratulate your Charity, because you obeyed our holy lord and colleague, your bishop, in what he said to you this morning. Follow this; do not depart from this way, lest you fall. For God greatly helps what you want, if you do what he has commanded. For what, as I had begun to say, is every man? Or what is the life of men but, as it is written, a vapor appearing for a little while? Consider, then, brothers, your frailty, your lowliness, the condition of the flesh, the fleeting passing of this world; and see that it will be well with you then, if your whole hope is in him in whom alone it can be firmly placed. But how will our hope be there, unless we obey his precepts?

Do we say, “Do not want what you want”? No, we even give thanks that you want what God wants. For that all the superstition of pagans and Gentiles should be abolished God wills, God has commanded, God has foretold, God has already begun to fulfill, and in many places of the world has already largely fulfilled. If our will had begun from this city, so that you were seeking to have the superstitions of demons abolished here first, it might perhaps be an arduous labor, yet not one to despair of. But as it is, if these things were done effectively where they began to be done, when no examples had gone before, how much more effectively do we believe that they can be accomplished here too in the name of the Lord, with the help of his right hand, when examples that have gone before are already reported? Certainly you shouted here: “As at Rome, so at Carthage!” If the thing has gone ahead in the head of the nations, will the members not follow? Consider, brothers; look into the books of the Gentiles themselves; hear it from those in whom remnants of that unhappiness have remained; by hearing or by reading, learn their literature; and see that both those gods and these are called Roman. So these gods are called Roman. And when Christians were being compelled, under the raging assault of the pagans, to worship them, and, refusing, endured their cruelty to the shedding of their blood, the whole fault of the martyrs, whose blood was being shed, seemed to be that they would not worship the Roman gods, that they rejected the ceremonies for the Roman gods, that they did not pray to the Roman gods; and the whole assault, the whole hatred, arose only from the name of the Roman gods. If, then, the Roman gods have failed at Rome, why have they remained here? Attend to these things, then, brothers, these things; I have said them; restrain these things. Roman gods, Roman gods, Roman gods! If the Roman gods have failed at Rome, why have they remained here? If they could walk, they would say that they had fled from there to here. But they have not fled: they have remained there, at Rome. The one who was once called the god Hercules is no longer at Rome. But here he even wanted to have a gilded beard. I have plainly made a mistake, because I said “he wanted.” For what does a senseless stone want? He, then, wanted nothing, could do nothing. But those who wanted him gilded were put to shame by his shaving. And so some petition or other crept up on the new judge. What did he do? He certainly did not bring it about that a stone should be honored by a Christian; rather, a Christian was brought into contact with that superstition in order to shave it. It did not move him to compliance but stirred him to punishment. Brothers, I think it was more disgraceful for Hercules to have his beard shaved than to have his head cut off. What was set up with their error has been taken away with their disgrace. Hercules is commonly called the god of strength: all his strength was in his beard. He shone to his own harm: because he did not shine with the Lord’s light, he shone not from light but from a grove.

Let them be silent, then; let them see now to which God the faithful read and say, “O God, who is like you? Do not be silent, and do not be gentle, O God.” This is what I had undertaken: how he is not gentle, overturning not men but errors. He is not gentle, so he is angry; if he is gentle, then he also has mercy. He is angry and has mercy: he is angry to strike, he has mercy to heal; he is angry to put to death, he has mercy to make alive. He does these things in one and the same man. Not as though putting some to death and making others alive: but in the very same people he is both angry and gentle. He is angry at errors, he is gentle when conduct is corrected. “I will strike, and I will heal; I will kill, and I will make alive.” The one man, Saul, later Paul, he both threw down and raised up: he threw down the unbeliever, raised up the believer; threw down the persecutor, raised up the preacher. If he is not angry, how is it that Hercules’ beard was shaved? For he did this through his faithful, through his Christians, through the authorities ordained by him and now subject to the yoke of Christ. And so, brothers, receive this with a glad mind, and with the Lord’s help hope now that the rest will go more prosperously.

When we were singing to God, we said to him, “Blessed is the man whom you instruct, O Lord, and teach out of your law.” So God’s Gospel sounded, and Zacchaeus gave alms. Learn. For what better law of God is there than the holy Gospel? For it is the law of the New Testament, of which you heard when the prophet was read: “Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, and I will accomplish upon the house of Jacob a new testament: not according to the testament which I established for their fathers when I led them out of the land of Egypt.” There the testament was promised, here it is rendered: promised through the prophet, rendered through the Lord of the prophets. Read that testament which is called the Old, and see. The law of God was given then too: read it, or listen when it is read, and see what was promised there. A land of earth was promised to you, a land flowing with milk and honey; but still earth. Yet if we understand it spiritually (since that land did not literally flow with milk and honey), there is another land that flows with milk and honey: the land of which it is said, “You are my hope, my portion in the land of the living.” For this is the land of the dying. Do you seek milk and honey? “Taste and see how sweet the Lord is.” His grace is signified by the name of milk and honey: it is sweet and nourishing. This grace was prefigured in the Old Testament and revealed in the New.

Finally, that Law, because of those who think carnally and seek such rewards from God, and want to worship God for the sake of the things promised there, deserved to hear from the apostle Paul that it “gives birth to slavery.” Why? Because it is understood carnally by the Jews. For understood spiritually, it is the Gospel. So it gives birth to slavery. Whom? Those who serve God for the sake of earthly goods. When these are present, they give thanks; when they are lacking, they blaspheme. For those who serve God for such things cannot serve him with a true heart. They look at those who do not serve our God: they see them having what they themselves serve God for; and they say in their heart, “What good does it do me that I serve God? Do I have as much as that man who blasphemes every day?” This one prays and goes hungry; that one blasphemes and belches. Whoever pays attention to such things is a man, a man of the Old Testament. But whoever worships God in the New Testament ought to hope for a new inheritance, not an old one. If you hope for a new inheritance, pass beyond the earth, tread on the tops of the mountains: that is, despise the loftiness of the proud. But when you have despised it and trodden on it, be humble, lest you fall from the height. Hear: “Lift up your heart”; but to the Lord, not against the Lord. All the proud have their heart lifted up, but against the Lord. But if you want truly to have your heart lifted up, have it lifted to the Lord. For if you have your heart lifted up to the Lord, he holds your heart so that it does not fall to the earth.

Blessed, then, is the man: “Blessed is the man whom you instruct, O Lord.” See, I speak; see, I cry out; see, I explain. Who hears me? I know who hears me: “Blessed is the man whom you instruct, O Lord”: the one to whom God speaks in the heart, even when I am silent; he is the blessed one whom you instruct, O Lord, and teach out of your law. What follows? Up to here we sang: “And teach him out of your law.” “That you may make him calm in the evil days, until a pit is dug for the sinner.” He is the man who is instructed by the Lord; he is the one who learns from the Lord out of God’s law, who is made calm in the evil days, until a pit is dug for the sinner. Hear what this means. The days are evil. Are we not spending evil days here, ever since we were cast out of paradise? Our elders too lamented their days, and their grandfathers lamented their days. No people have been pleased with the days they lived through. But the days of their elders please later generations; and those in turn were pleased with days which they themselves did not feel, and that is why they were pleased. For what is present is sharply felt. I do not say it comes closer; but it touches the heart every day. Almost every year, when we feel the cold, we say, “It has never been so cold”; “It has never been so hot.” He who makes it always makes it. But “blessed is the man whom you instruct, O Lord, that you may make him calm in the evil days, until a pit is dug for the sinner.”

Are these days evil which the circuit of the sun drives on? Evil men make the days evil; and almost the whole world is like that. Among crowds of the wicked the few grains of wheat groan. Let us turn back to the just themselves. Those others are evil and make the days evil: what of the just themselves? Are they not in evil days even within themselves, besides suffering the evil men among whom they groan? Even within themselves, I say: when they pay attention to themselves, go down into themselves, consider themselves well, they find evil days in themselves. They do not want war, they want peace; and who does not? And though all do not want war, and all want peace, even the one who lives justly turns his eyes back on himself and finds war within himself. Ask me what war. “Blessed is the man whom you instruct, O Lord, and teach out of your law.” See, a man asks me what war the just man suffers within himself: teach him out of your law; let the apostle speak: “The flesh desires against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh.” And where am I to throw off the flesh, if the trumpet sounds for war, if, God forbid, an enemy bursts in? A man flees, and drags his own war with him wherever he goes. I do not mean if he is evil; I mean precisely if he is good, if he lives justly: he finds in himself what the apostle says, “The flesh desires against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh.” In this war how are the days good?

So the days are evil; but let us be made calm. What does “let us be made calm” mean? That we are not angry at the divine judgment. Let us say to him: “It is good for me that you humbled me, that I might learn your justifications.” You dashed me out of paradise, you cast me out of blessedness: I am in hardship, I am in groaning, “my groaning is not hidden from you.” But “it is good for me that you humbled me, that I might learn your justifications.” In the evil days I learn to seek good days. What are the good days? Do not look for them now: believe me, or rather believe with me, you will not find them. The evil days will pass, and the good will come: but they will come as good for the good, and worse for the wicked.

For I too ask you: “Who is the man who wants life?” I know that everyone’s heart answers me, “Who is there who does not want life?” I add: “And loves to see good days?” You all answer, “Who is there who does not love to see good days?” You answer well: you want life, you want good days. Certainly, when I was saying, “Who is the man who wants life?”, every man answers me, “I.” “Who is the man who wants to see good days?” Does not each of you say in silence, “I”? Hear what follows: “Keep your tongue from evil.” Now say, “I.” You ask for pardon: now let me find you. The past has passed: your tongue may have been evil; you may have been a whisperer, a backbiter, a false accuser, a reviler; you may have been all these. Let them pass with the evil days; do not you pass with the evil days. For there is something to hold on to, so that you do not pass away. Human life runs like a river; the evil days run like a river. Hold on to the wood, so that you are not swept away. See, the river runs: “For all flesh is grass, and all the glory of flesh like the flower of grass.” It rushes on, passes; the grass withers, the flower falls. What do I hold on to? “The word of the Lord abides forever.”

So keep your tongue from evil, and your lips, so that they speak no deceit. You who wanted life, or who want life and good days: turn aside from evil and do good. Seek peace, which we all long for, in this mortality of the flesh, in this frailty of the flesh, in this most lying vanity. All of you, seek peace. “Seek peace, and pursue it.” Where is it? Where shall I pursue it? Which way did it pass? Which way did it pass, so that I may follow? It passed through you, but it did not remain in you. To whom am I speaking? To the human race: not to each one of you, but to the human race. Through the human race that peace passed: as it passed by, the blind man in yesterday’s reading cried out. And where did it go? First see what peace is, and see where it went, and pursue it. What is peace? Hear the apostle; he was saying of Christ, “He is our peace, who made both one.” Peace, then, is Christ. Where did he go? He was crucified and buried, he rose from the dead, he ascended into heaven. See where peace went. Lift up your heart. How shall I pursue it? Lift up your heart. Hear how you may follow. Every day, indeed, you hear it briefly, when it is said to you, “Lift up your heart”; think of it more deeply from there, and you will follow. Yet hear it more fully too, so that you may follow true peace, your peace, the peace that endured war for you; the peace that, while enduring war for you, prayed for the enemies of peace and said as he hung, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” There was war, and peace flowed from the tree. It flowed; but then what? He ascended into heaven: seek peace. And how will you follow? Hear the apostle: “If you have risen with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God; set your mind on the things above, not on the things on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God; when Christ your life appears, then you too will appear with him in glory.” See the good days: let us long for them; for this let us live, for this let us pray, for this let us give alms.

Now see, by God’s favor, it is winter: think of the poor, how the naked Christ may be clothed. When the Gospel was read, did we not all call Zacchaeus blessed, when Christ looked up at him in the tree, intent on seeing him pass by? For when could he have hoped to have him staying in his house? When he said to him, “Come down, Zacchaeus; today I must stay in your house,” I heard your groans of joy. It was as though you had all been in Zacchaeus and had received Christ; so the heart of every one of you said, “O blessed Zacchaeus! The Lord entered his house. O blessed man! Can it happen like that to us? Christ is already in heaven.” Recite to me, Christ, the New Testament: make me blessed out of your law. Recite it, so that you may know that you are not cheated of Christ’s presence. Hear him who is to judge: “When you did it to one of the least of mine, you did it to me.” Each of you is waiting to receive Christ seated in heaven: look at him lying under the colonnade; look at him hungry; look at him suffering cold; look at him needy; look at him a stranger. Do what you usually do; do what you do not usually do. The teaching grows; let good works grow. You praise the sowing; show the harvest. Amen.

The psalm that we have sung to God, in which we exhorted one another to adore him, and fall down before him, and weep before the Lord who made us, prompts us to ask somewhat more carefully what it means when it says, “who made us.” For that man was created by God no man doubts, unless he is ungrateful. We know, because so we have read and so we have believed, that God made man, among the many things that he made, in his own image. This is man’s first condition; this is humanity’s first creation. Yet I do not think that the Holy Spirit wished to remind us of this as something great in this psalm when it says, “Let us weep before the Lord who made us”: for in another place it says, “He made us, and not we ourselves.” About this, as I said, no Christian has any doubt: for God not only created the first man, from whom all men come, but God also creates individual men today; he who said to a certain saint of his, “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you.” First, then, he created man without man; now he creates man from man. Yet whether man without man or man from man, “he made us, and not we ourselves.” With this first and easy sense of these words, a true one nonetheless, let us adore him, brothers, and fall down before him, and weep before the Lord who made us. For he did not make and then abandon; he did not take care to make and then not care to keep. Let us weep before the Lord who made us: for we did not weep when he made us, and yet he made us. Will he who made us before he was asked abandon us when he is asked? So, as though man doubted whether he would be heard when he prays, Scripture reminded him, saying, “Let us weep before the Lord who made us.” Surely he hears those whom he made; surely he cannot fail to care for those whom he made.

But by a higher understanding, and, as I judge, a more useful one, the Holy Spirit saw some who say, or will say, that God made them men, but that they make themselves just. He foresaw them, admonished them, and called them back from this self-exaltation, saying, “He made us, and not we ourselves.” For why did he add, “and not we ourselves,” when it would have been enough to say, “He made us”? Only because he wished to point to the making of which men say, “We made ourselves”: that is, so that we might be just, we made ourselves just by free will; when we were created, we received free choice; so that we may be just, we do it by free choice. Why do we still call on God to make us just, when we have it in our power to make ourselves just? Listen, listen: both the just and the unjust, “He made us, and not we ourselves.” The first man was created in a nature without guilt, in a nature without fault: he was created upright; he did not make himself upright. But what he made himself is well known: falling from the potter’s hand, he was broken. For the one who had made him was ruling him; he chose to desert the one by whom he had been made. God permitted it, as though saying, “Let him desert me, and find himself, and prove by his misery that he can do nothing without me.” In this way, then, God wished to show man what free choice is worth without God. O evil free choice without God! We have experienced what it is worth without God. That is why we have become miserable, because we have experienced what it is worth without God. Having experienced it, then, let us at last learn it, and “come, let us adore him, and fall down before him.” “Come, let us adore and fall down before him, and weep before the Lord who made us,” so that he who made us may remake us, lost through ourselves. See, man was made good, and through free choice man became bad: when will a bad man make a good man by free choice while deserting God? The good man could not keep himself good, and will the bad man make himself good? When he was good, he did not keep himself good; and now that he is bad, does he say, “I make myself good”? What do you make, you who are bad, who perished when you were good, unless he who remains good remakes you?

So “he made us, and not we ourselves.” “But we are his people and the sheep of his pasture.” See, he who made us men made us his people. For when we were created men we were not yet his people. See, my brothers, and pay attention to the words of the psalm itself, to what it referred when it said, “He made us, and not we ourselves.” It said, “He made us, and not we ourselves,” in the sense that we should be his people and the sheep of his pasture. He made us. For pagans too are born, and all the ungodly, all the adversaries of his Church: that they might be born, he made them. For no other god created them. Those who are born of pagans are made by him, created by him; and they are not his people, nor the sheep of his pasture. Nature is common to all; grace is not. Let nature not be thought to be grace; but even if it is thought grace, let it be thought grace because it too was granted gratis. For man, who did not exist, did not merit to exist. If he had merited, he already existed; but he did not yet exist. So there was no one to merit, and yet he was made: not made like cattle, not made like a tree, not made like a stone, but made in the image of the Creator. Who gave this benefit? God, who was, and was from eternity. To whom did he give it? To man, who did not yet exist. He gave, who was; he received, who was not. And who could do this, except him who calls the things that are not as though they were? Of whom the apostle says, “who chose us before the foundation of the world.” He chose us before the foundation of the world: we were made in this world, and the world did not exist when we were chosen. Things beyond words, wonderful things, my brothers! Who would be equal to explaining this? Who could even think what to explain? Those who do not exist are chosen; and the one who chooses does not err, nor does he choose in vain. Yet he chooses, and holds as chosen those whom he will create to be chosen; he holds them in himself, not in their nature, but in his foreknowledge.

So do not be lifted up: we are men; he made us. And we are believers, if indeed we are, when we argue like this against grace; but see, we are believers; and as believers, and as just, since “the just lives by faith”: “He made us, and not we ourselves.” I ask what he made us. You will say, “Men.” That is not what the psalm was speaking of; that we know, that is known, that is plain: we need no great teaching to know that he made us men. But see what it was speaking of: “He made us, and not we ourselves.” What did he make us, if not what we are? But what are we? “But we.” See what we are. What? “His people and the sheep of his pasture.” He made us his people, he made us the sheep of his pasture. He who sent the innocent sheep to be slaughtered made sheep out of wolves. This is grace. Apart from that common grace of nature by which we were made men (and we were not worthy of it, because we did not exist), apart from that grace, this is the greater grace by which we were made his people and the sheep of his pasture, through Jesus Christ our Lord.

But someone says: “We were made through Jesus Christ, even so as to be men.” Yes indeed; the pagans too were made through Jesus Christ. For the pagans were made through Jesus Christ, not so that they might be pagans, but so that they might be men. For who is Jesus Christ, if not “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him”? To him, then, the pagans too owe it that they were created men; and they are to be punished all the more because they abandoned him by whom they were made, and worshiped what they themselves made.

Apart, then, from the grace by which human nature was established (for this is common to Christians and pagans), this is the greater grace: not that we were created men through the Word, but that we were made believers through the Word made flesh. “For there is one God, and one mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus.” “In the beginning was the Word”: the man Christ Jesus did not yet exist. “And the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” The world itself did not exist when the Word was God. “All things were made through him,” and “the world was made through him.” So when he made us, so that we might be men, he was not yet man. The apostle commends this grace more highly to Christians when he says, “For there is one God, and one mediator of God and men.” He did not say “Christ Jesus,” lest you think it was said with reference to the Word; but he added “man”: “mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus.” What is a mediator? One through whom we may be joined, through whom we may be reconciled: for we lay separated by our own sins, we were in death, we had altogether perished. Christ was not man when man was created; so that man might not perish, he became man.

We are often compelled to argue these things with you against a new heresy that is trying to rise, because we want you to be firm in the good and untouched by evil. For this was their argument when they first began to arise and to argue against grace: attributing much, not to man’s freedom, but in effect to his weakness, and so exalting wretched man as he lies fallen that he cannot rise by the hand stretched out to him from above. Arguing, then, against grace in favor of free choice, they gave offense to devout and Catholic ears. People began to shudder at them, began to avoid them as a sure destruction; it began to be said of them that they argued against grace. And to relieve this odium they found the following device. “I do not,” he says, “argue against the grace of God.” How do you prove it? “By the very fact,” he says, “that I defend free choice, I do not argue against the grace of God.” See the sharpness, but it is glass: it glitters with vanity, but it is broken by truth. Notice how sharply, as it were, they thought out what they wanted to say. “By the very fact,” he says, “that I defend man’s free choice, and say that free choice is sufficient for me to be just, I do not speak without the grace of God.” The ears of the devout pricked up; already whoever hears it begins to rejoice: “Thanks be to God! He does not defend free choice without the grace of God. For there is free choice, but it is worth nothing without the grace of God.” If, then, they defend free choice not without the grace of God, what evil do they say? Explain to us, then, teacher, what grace you mean. “When I say,” he says, “man’s free choice, notice that I say man’s. What next? Who created man? God. Who gave him free choice? God. If then God created man, and God gave man free choice, whatever man can do by free choice, to whose grace is it owed, if not to his who made him with free choice?” And they think this a clever thing to have said.

See, however, my brothers, how they preach that general grace by which man was created, by which we are men: and certainly we are men along with the ungodly, but we are not Christians along with the ungodly. It is this grace by which we are Christians that we want them to preach, this we want them to acknowledge; this is the grace we want, of which the apostle says, “I do not make the grace of God void. For if righteousness is through the Law, then Christ died for nothing.” See what the apostle was speaking of. He spoke of the Law: “If righteousness is through the Law, then Christ died for nothing.” Because righteousness was not from the Law, therefore Christ died, so that those who were not justified by the Law might be justified through faith. “For if a Law had been given,” he says, “that could give life, righteousness would certainly be from the Law” (as we also recalled yesterday); “but Scripture has shut up all things under sin, so that the promise”—a promise, not a prediction: he who promised does it himself—“so that the promise,” he says, “might be given by the faith of Jesus Christ to those who believe.” See in what state the grace of the Savior found us, whom not even the Law could make whole. But why was the Law given, if nature was sufficient? And yet not even the Law could suffice, so weak was nature itself: the Law was given, but not one that could give life. Why then was the Law given? “The Law,” says the apostle, “was given because of transgression”: it was set up because of transgression, to make you a transgressor. Why, to make me a transgressor? Because God knew your pride; he knew that you were saying, “O that there were someone to teach me! O that there were someone to show me!” See, the Law says to you, “You shall not covet.” You came to know the Law saying, “You shall not covet.” Covetousness rose up, which you had not known; for it was within, but it was not known. You began to try to conquer what was within, and what lay hidden appeared. Proud man, through the Law you were made a transgressor: acknowledge grace, and be one who praises it.

But who, you say, gave the Law? For there are vain men, and worse, ungodly men, who say that the Law was given by another, but grace through our Lord Jesus Christ; as though the Law were evil, as though the Law were perverse, but grace upright. And they want to separate the two Testaments in such a way as to say that the Old Testament is from some prince of darkness or other, but the New Testament from the Lord God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Hear the apostle Paul himself. If you think that the Law was given by another, not by God, because through it you were made a transgressor, hear the apostle himself praising the Law: “So the Law,” he says, “is holy, and the commandment holy”; add, “and just”; add further, “and good.” “Did what is good, then,” he says, “become death to me? Far from it: but sin, so that sin might appear.” For sin was there, but sin lay hidden. When did sin lie hidden? When it did not yet suffer you as an adversary. You began to strive, and the one who held you appeared. While you were following, you did not feel the chain; you sought refuge, and the bond appeared; you wanted to flee, and you began to be dragged. Since, then, you began to be dragged, let him help you who is not bound. Who is not bound, except the one who said, “If you have found sin in me, say so”? Who is not bound, except the one who said, “See, the prince of the world is coming, and he will find nothing in me”? Why should he kill me? He will find nothing, since death is justly owed to sin. Why, then, do you die? “So that all may know,” he says, “that I do the will of my Father.” He who is not bound sets free; he who is free among the dead delivers from the dead.

But he himself also sent the Law: the Law through his servant, grace through himself. Consider Elisha in a great and deep mystery, a prophet who foretold by acting, not only by speaking. The son of the woman who was his hostess had died. What did the dead boy signify, if not Adam? It was reported to the holy prophet, who in his prophetic role bore the type of our Lord Jesus Christ. He sent his staff by his servant and said to him, “Go, go, lay it on the dead boy.” He went, like an obedient servant. The prophet knew what he was doing. The servant laid the staff on the dead boy; he did not rise. “For if a Law had been given that could give life, righteousness would certainly be from the Law.” So the Law could not give life. He came himself, the grown man to the little boy, the savior to save, the living to the dead: he came himself. And what did he do? He drew in his youthful limbs, as though emptying himself to take the form of a servant. He drew in his youthful limbs, fitted himself, made small, to the small one, so as to make the body of our lowliness conformed to the body of his glory. And so in this type of Christ, expressed prophetically, the dead was raised, as the ungodly is justified.

Let this grace be preached; this is the grace of Christians, through the man who is Mediator, through him who suffered and was raised, who ascended into heaven and led captivity captive and gave gifts to men. Let this grace, I say, be preached; let the ungrateful not argue against this grace. The prophet’s staff did not suffice for the dead boy: would dead nature itself suffice? And as for the grace by which we were created, although we have hardly ever read it called by this name, yet because it was given gratis, let us confess it to be grace. But let us show you that this grace, by which we are Christians, is greater: pay attention. Before we were created, we merited nothing good; and therefore it was grace by which we were created, when we merited nothing good. If, then, it is a great grace when we merited nothing good, how great a grace is it when we merited so much evil? One who did not yet exist did not merit good; the sinner merited evil as well. The one who was made did not yet exist; but neither had he offended. He did not yet exist, and he was made; he offended, and he is saved. He who did not yet exist hoped for nothing, and he was made; but having fallen, he was expecting damnation, and he was set free. This is the grace through Jesus Christ our Lord. He made us, and before we existed at all he made us; and when we had been made and had fallen, he himself made us just, and not we ourselves. “If then anyone in Christ is a new creation, the old has fallen away, the new has been made.” There was one lump of perdition from Adam, to which nothing but punishment was owed: from it vessels were made for honor, out of the same lump. “For the potter has power over the clay, out of the same lump.” What lump? Certainly it had already perished; certainly just damnation was already owed to that lump. Rejoice that you have escaped: you have escaped the death that was owed, and found the life that was not owed. “The potter has power over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for honor, another for dishonor.” But you say, “Why did he make me for honor, and another for dishonor?” What am I to answer? Will you listen to Augustine, you who have not listened to the apostle saying, “O man, who are you to answer back to God?” Two little children are born: if you ask what is owed, both belong to the lump of perdition. But why does one mother carry her child to grace, while another mother, sleeping, smothers hers? Will you tell me what the one deserved who is carried to grace, what the one deserved whom his mother smothers in her sleep? Both deserved nothing good; but “the potter has power over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for honor, another for dishonor.” Do you want to argue with me? Rather, wonder with me, and cry out with me, “O the depth of the riches!” Let us both be afraid, let us both cry out, “O the depth of the riches!” Let us both agree in fear, lest we perish in error. “O the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!” Search the unsearchable, do the impossible, corrupt the incorruptible, see the invisible!

“His judgments are unsearchable”: you have heard it; let it suffice you. “And his ways past finding out. For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor? Or who first gave to him, and it will be repaid him?” Who first gave, when he received everything gratis? “Who first gave to him, and it will be repaid him?” If the Lord had wished to repay, he would have repaid nothing but the punishment that was owed. They gave nothing, that anything should be repaid them. “For nothing you will save them.” Who first gave to him, as though by the favor of his own merits? Who first gave to him, who got ahead of grace, which is given gratis? If some merits come before grace, it is no longer given gratis, but rendered as a debt. But if it is not given gratis, why is it called grace? “Who then first gave to him, and it will be repaid him? For from him and through him and in him are all things.” What things, surely, if not all the good things that we have received from him, and received so that we might be good? “For every best gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no change.” For you have been changed for the worse: he with whom there is no change comes to your help. “With whom there is not even a shadow of turning”: for you lie in the darkness of your night. All things, then, are from him; no one gave him anything first; let no one demand a debt. “By grace you have been saved through faith, and this not of yourselves, but it is the gift of God.”

“But it troubles me,” you say, “that this one perishes and that one is baptized; it troubles me, it troubles me as a man.” If you want to hear the truth, it troubles me too, because I am a man. But if you are a man and I am a man, let us both listen to the one who says, “O man!” Surely, if we are troubled because we are men, it is human nature itself, weak and feeble, that the apostle addresses when he says, “O man, who are you to answer back to God? Does the thing molded say to him who molded it, Why have you made me like this?” If a beast could speak and say to God, “Why did you make that one a man, and me a beast?”, would you not be justly angry and say, “O beast, who are you to answer back to God?” You too are a man, but before God you are a beast; and would that you were his beast and a sheep of his pasture! Acknowledge the Shepherd’s benefits, and you will not follow the wolves of error. We were wolves: “We too were by nature children of wrath, like the rest”; but the Sheep died, and made us sheep. “Behold the Lamb of God, behold him who takes away the sin,” not of this man or that, but “of the world.” So, my brothers, let us claim nothing for ourselves from the fact that we are something (if indeed we are something in his faith), however much we are; let us claim nothing for ourselves, lest we lose even what we have received. But in what we have received let us give him the glory, let us honor him, so that he himself may rain on his own seeds. What would our land have, if he had not sown? But he also gives the rain; he does not abandon what he has sown. “The Lord will give sweetness, and our land will yield its fruit.” Turning to the Lord, and so on.

As a door leads into a house, so the title of a psalm leads into its understanding. For it is headed thus: “When the house was being built after the captivity.” You ask what house; the psalm itself tells you: “Sing to the Lord a new song; sing to the Lord, all the earth.” See what house. When the whole earth sings a new song, it is the house of God. It is built by singing, founded by believing, raised by hoping, completed by loving. Now, then, it is being built; but at the end of the age it is dedicated. Let the living stones, then, run together to the new song; let them run together and be fitted into the structure of the temple of God: let them acknowledge the Savior, let them receive the one who will dwell in them.

We have said what house; we must say after what captivity. The psalm shows you this too; follow a little further: “Sing to the Lord a new song; sing to the Lord, all the earth. Sing to the Lord, bless his name; proclaim well from day to day his salvation. Announce among the nations his wonders, among all peoples his glory. For all the gods of the nations are demons.” See under whose captivity the house lay hidden. For from the first transgression of the first man, the devil, as victor, possessed the whole human race, born bound by sin. For if we were not held in captivity, we would not need a Redeemer. He came to captives, not captive himself: he came to redeem captives, having in himself nothing of captivity, that is, of iniquity, but bearing our price in mortal flesh. For if he had not had mortal flesh, where would there have been blood in the Word to shed for captives? But he who came into our captivity came with the likeness of sinful flesh, not with sinful flesh. For it was the likeness of sinful flesh: true flesh, but like sinful flesh; true flesh, but not sinful flesh. Who, then, was he who came in this way? “Proclaim well from day to day.” See who he was. He was day from day, he was God from God, he was light from light: but “the Word became flesh, so that he might dwell in us”; majesty hidden, weakness appearing, so that weakness might die and majesty be held fast.

If, then, the whole world was held in captivity, it is well said, “I will have mercy on whom I have had mercy, and I will show mercy to whom I have had mercy.” For if the whole world is in captivity, the whole world in sin, the whole world most justly destined for punishment, but in part set free by mercy, who would say to God, “Why do you condemn the world?” How is God the judge accused when the guilty world is condemned? You are guilty: if you consider what you owe, it is called punishment; and when the debt is demanded of you, the one who demands it is not justly blamed. Let the collector be blamed if he demands what is not owed; but when he demands what is owed, who would blame the collector, though one may hope for someone who will forgive the debt? “He has mercy on whom he wills, and he hardens whom he wills.” So you say to me: “Why does he still find fault? For who resists his will?” “O man, who are you to answer back to God?” Consider who he is; consider who you are. He is God; you are a man. But do you think that you are speaking justice, and that the fountain of justice has dried up? If you speak what is just, where do you get it from? Either you speak what is unjust, and you ought to be silent; or you speak what is just, and you have it only from the fountain of justice: and who is the fountain of justice, if not God? First, then, lay the foundation of faith: “Is there iniquity with God?” His equity may be hidden from you; iniquity cannot be there.

Perhaps you expect me to tell you why he has mercy on whom he wills and hardens whom he wills? Do you expect it of me, a man? If you are a man and I am a man, let us both listen: “O man, who are you to answer back to God?” For faithful ignorance is better than rash knowledge. God says to me (Christ speaks through the apostle), “O man, who are you to answer back to God?” And am I indignant because I do not know the justice of God? If I am a man, let me not be indignant: let me go beyond man, if I can, and reach the fountain. But even if I reach it, I will not tell it to a man; let him too go beyond, and reach it with me. “And who is there,” you say, “who as a man can go beyond man?” Then does the apostle not reproach certain people, saying, “For when you say, I am of Paul, I of Apollos, are you not men?” What did he want to make them, whom he reproached for being men? You are a man: you belong to Adam. Belong to the Son of Man.

And perhaps he says to you: “I will no longer call you servants, but friends; because what I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.” But he said this to the disciples, to those apostles; to them he said it. We ought not to be saddened because we are not yet such. And yet how did he say this even to them: “All that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you”? I think he said it in hope, not yet in reality; I think he spoke of what he was going to do, not of what he had already done. And how is this proved, when he says, “I have made known to you,” and not, “I will make known to you”? Because some things in the Scriptures are said in the past tense which are to be understood of the future. How are they said in the past tense when they are to be understood of the future? “They dug my hands and feet,” it says; “they numbered all my bones.” It had not yet happened, and what was going to happen was announced as though it had happened. “He saved us through the washing of regeneration.” But in another place the same apostle says: “In hope we have been saved; but hope that is seen is not hope.” “In hope we have been saved”: we say it only in the past tense; and since we have been saved in hope, not yet in reality, what we hope for is still future. For if we already saw and held it, it would no longer be hope but reality. “For what anyone sees,” he says, “why does he hope for it? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.” And yet we have been saved, and yet we still hope for and await salvation; we do not yet hold it. So too the Lord says to his disciples, “All that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.” If this had already been done, why does he say to them in another place, “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now”? Certainly, “All that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you”; but when he says, “You cannot bear them now,” and says, “I have things to say to you,” he defers, he does not take away. Because of a certain hope, then, since he knew beyond doubt that he would do it, it was counted with him as done; and therefore he said, “I have made known to you.”

So “as long as we are in the body, we are away from the Lord; for we walk by faith, and not by sight.” As far as it is given us, let us hold fast to faith and not doubt the justice of God. Let us not believe at all that there is iniquity with him, lest we fall into a great abyss of ungodliness. And when we have held with perfect faith that there is no iniquity with him, even if we do not now see it, that is, the equity that is with him, let the journey come to an end and let us reach the homeland: it cannot be seen in the time of faith; it will be seen in the time of sight. For now we walk by faith, then by sight. What does “by sight” mean? “Beautiful in form beyond the sons of men.” Because “in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” “Whoever loves me,” he says, “keeps my commandments; and whoever loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him.” And what will you give him? “And I will show myself to him.” This will be sight, when he does what he said: “And I will show myself to him.” There you will see the equity of God; there you will read in the Word without a book. So when we see him as he is, our pilgrimage will have passed; and afterward we shall rejoice with the joy of the angels. For this way: what is it? It is faith. For the sake of your faith Christ was made unsightly; but Christ remains beautiful. “Beautiful in form beyond the sons of men” he will be seen after our pilgrimage. But now, by faith, how is he seen? “And we saw him, and he had no form nor comeliness; but his face was cast down, and his state unsightly” (that is, his power): “despised and unsightly his state,” a man set under the blow, and knowing how to bear infirmities. Christ’s unsightliness gives you form. For if he had not been willing to be unsightly, you would not have recovered the form you lost. So he hung on the cross unsightly; but his unsightliness was our beauty. In this life, then, let us hold fast to the unsightly Christ. What is “the unsightly Christ”? “Far be it from me to glory, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.” This is Christ’s unsightliness. “Did I claim to know anything among you,” except the way? This is the way: to believe in the Crucified. We carry the sign of this unsightliness on our forehead; let us not be ashamed of this unsightliness of Christ. Let us keep to this way, and we shall come to sight. When we have come to sight, we shall see the equity of God; and there will no longer be any saying there, “Why did he help this one and not that one? Why was this one led by the governance of God to be baptized, while that one, though he lived well as a catechumen, died in a sudden collapse and did not come to baptism? And why did that other, though he lived wickedly, a profligate, an adulterer, an actor, a hunter in the arena, fall sick, get baptized, and depart, so that sin was proved in him and sin was blotted out in him?” Look for merits: you will find nothing but punishment. Look for grace: “O the depth of the riches!” Peter denies, the thief believes: “O the depth of the riches!”

Do you think that we can search out what the blessed apostle shuddered at? When he looked into such great depth and height and trembled, he cried out, “O the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!” For what had he said before, to come to this exclamation? He had said something in which, unless God is believed, because there is no iniquity with God, his dealings will be judged unjust. He was speaking to the Gentiles, to believers, about the Jews: “Just as you,” he says, “did not believe God, but now have obtained mercy because of their unbelief, so these too have not believed in your mercy, so that they too may obtain mercy. For God has shut up all in unbelief, so that he may have mercy on all.” Here Paul spoke the words that follow. And what is this reasoning of the equity and justice of God, to shut up all in unbelief so that he may have mercy on all? You seek a reason; I tremble at the depth. “O the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!” You reason; let me wonder. You argue; let me believe. I see the height; I do not reach the bottom. “O the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!” Is he perhaps going to explain? “For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor? Or who first gave to him, and it will be repaid him? For from him and through him and in him are all things; to him be glory for ever and ever.” He came to rest, because he found wonder: let no one ask me for the reason of hidden things. He says, “His judgments are unsearchable”; and have you come to search them? He says, “His ways are past finding out”; and have you come to find them out? If you have come to search the unsearchable and to find out what is past finding out, believe me, you have already perished. To want to search the unsearchable and to find out what is past finding out is like wanting to see the invisible and to speak the ineffable. So let the house be built: when it comes to its dedication, then perhaps it will find the plainest reason for these hidden things.

On verse 3 of Psalm 104: “Let the heart of those who seek the Lord rejoice.”

From all the divine words we have heard, let us with the Lord’s help speak rather of the last one we heard: “Let the heart of those who seek the Lord rejoice.” And fittingly, since we are fasting in our bellies too. Our heart will rejoice if we hunger in our minds. When something sweet is set before us at our meals, the palates of those who seek food rejoice; when things of varied color and charmingly painted are set before our sight, the eyes of those who seek to see something bright rejoice; the ears of those who seek song rejoice; the sense of smell of those who seek a pleasant scent rejoices. So: “Let the heart of those who seek the Lord rejoice.”

No doubt the particular things presented to our various senses delight the particular senses. For sound does not delight the sight, nor color the hearing. But to our heart the Lord is light, and voice, and fragrance, and food; and he is all of these because he is none of them; and he is none of them because he is the creator of all of them. He is light to our heart, to whom we say, “In your light we shall see light.” He is sound to our heart, to whom we say, “To my hearing you will give gladness and joy.” He is fragrance to our heart, of which it is said, “We are the good fragrance of Christ.” And if you seek food, because you are fasting: “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.” And of the Lord Jesus Christ himself it is said that he “became for us righteousness and wisdom.” See, the banquet is prepared: Christ is righteousness; he is never lacking; he is not prepared for us by cooks, nor brought by merchants from overseas like foreign fruit. He is food that everyone tastes who has a healthy palate; he is the food of the inner man. Commending himself, he says, “I am the living bread, who came down from heaven.” He is food that refreshes and does not run out; food that is eaten and not used up; food that satisfies the hungry and remains whole. When you go from here to your own tables, you will eat nothing like this. Since you have come to this banquet, then, eat well; but when you have gone away, digest well. For he eats well and digests badly who hears the word of God and does not do it: he draws no useful nourishment from it, but belches up the raw distaste of indigestion.

And do not wonder that our hearts feast in such a way that they are refreshed and do not diminish what refreshes them. God has given such food to our bodily eyes. For this light is the food of the eyes; our eyes are fed by it, and if someone has been in darkness too long, they fail as if from fasting. People have lost their eyes by sitting in darkness, though nothing struck their eyes, no one hit them, no foreign humor flowed into them, no dust, no smoke: a man is brought out after the darkness and does not see what he used to see. His eyes have died of hunger; they failed by not taking their food, that is, light. See, then, what I proposed: what sort of food our eyes have. This light is seen by all; it feeds the eyes of all; the gaze of the one who sees is refreshed, and the light remains whole. If two see, it remains as great; if more see, it remains the same; let the rich man see, let the poor man see, it is equal for all. No one fixes boundaries in it. It fills the want of the poor man; it leaves nothing for the avarice of the rich. For does he who has more see more, or does he get ahead of the poor man by offering gold, and buy for himself something to see, so that the other does not have it? If such is the food of our eyes, what is God himself to our minds?

And sound is a kind of food for the ears; and what is it like? From these senses of the body let us draw inferences about the intelligible things of the mind. See, I am speaking to your Charity: ears are present, minds are present. I have named two things, ears and minds; and in what I say there are two things, sound and meaning. They are carried together, they reach the ear together; the sound stays in the ear, the meaning goes down into the heart. But first let us notice from the sound itself how much more excellently we ought to love the meaning. Sound is like the body, meaning like the soul. But sound, as soon as it has struck the air and touched the ear, passes away; it is not called back, and it no longer sounds. For syllables follow one another, going before and coming after, so that the second does not sound unless the first has passed. Yet transitory as it is, it holds a great wonder. For see: if I set bread before you when you are hungry, it would not reach each of you whole; you would divide among you all that I had set out, and the more of you there were, the less each would have. But now, when I utter a sermon, you do not divide the words and syllables among you, nor cut up my sermon so that one takes this part and another that, and what I say reaches each person bit by bit and piece by piece. Rather, one hears it all, two hear it all, more hear it all, and however many come hear it all; it suffices for all and is whole for each. Your ear is made ready to hear, and your neighbor’s ear does not cheat it. If this happens with a sounding word, what happens with the almighty Word? For just as this voice of ours is whole for each of all who hear and whole with each, and my voices are not as many as your ears, but one voice fills many ears undivided, whole for all: so think of the Word of God, whole in heaven, whole on earth, whole in the angels, whole with the Father, whole with the Virgin, whole in eternity, whole in the flesh, whole in the underworld when he visited it, whole in paradise, to which he brought the thief. This I have said about sound.

What if I say something about meaning? How much less is it than the Word of God? For see, I utter a sound; but once I have uttered it, I do not call it back. If I want to be heard, I utter another sound, and when that has passed, I utter another, or silence will follow. But a meaning I both bring out to you and keep with me: you find what you heard, and I do not lose what I said. See how true these things are, and “let the heart of those who seek the Lord rejoice.” For the Lord is himself the first truth. So the meaning, remaining in my heart, moves into yours, and does not leave mine. Yet when the meaning is in my heart and I want it to be in yours too, I look for a sound as a kind of vehicle by which it may pass over to you; I take up the sound, and as it were put the meaning on it, and bring it out and bring it forth, and I teach and do not lose it. If my meaning could do this with my voice, could not the Word of God do it with his flesh? For see, the Word of God, God with God, the Wisdom of God remaining unchangeably with the Father, in order to come forth to us sought flesh as a kind of sound, put himself into it, and came forth to us, and did not withdraw from the Father. Understand, savor what you have heard; think how great and of what kind it is, and think greater things of God. He surpasses all light, surpasses all sound, surpasses all meaning. He is to be desired, and longed for with love, so that “the heart of those who seek the Lord may rejoice.”

We have been admonished, and it has been commanded us by the Spirit of God, that we should confess to the Lord; and the reason given for confessing to the Lord is “because he is good.” It is said briefly; it is pondered most deeply. “Confess to the Lord,” it says. And as if we asked, “Why?”, the answer is, “Because he is good.” What more do you seek, or if you seek anything else, what do you seek but the good? So great is the power of the good that even the wicked seek the good. But other things that are called good have from some good that they are good; and if we ask from whom all good things have it that they are good, let us recall what was said: “And God made all things, and behold, they were very good.” There would, then, be no good unless it had been made by the good. And by what kind of good? One that no one made. So there would be no good unless it had been made by a good that was not made. Heaven is good, but made good; the angels are good, but made good; good are the stars, sun and moon, the alternation of night and day, the changes of the seasons, the rolling of the ages, the course of the years, the kinds of plants and trees, the natures of animals, and among all these the creature that praises, man: all good, but made good, and good from God, not from themselves. He who made these things is good above all, because no one made him good; he is good of himself. Yet he is good not to himself alone but to us as well. “Confess, then, to the Lord, for he is good.” Confession is either of one who praises or of one who repents. For there are people too little instructed who, when they hear “confession” in the Scriptures, as if it could only be of sins, at once beat their breasts, as though they were being told to confess sins. But so that your Charity may know that confession does not belong to sins alone, let us hear him of whom we cannot doubt that he had no sin at all, crying out and saying, “I confess to you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth.” Who said this? He who “committed no sin, nor was deceit found in his mouth”; who alone could most truly say, “See, the prince of the world is coming, and in me he will find nothing.” And yet he confesses. But this one who confesses is one who praises, not a sinner. Hear, then, what he confesses; hear the praises, and that praise itself is our salvation. For what does the Son without sin confess to God the Father? “I confess to you,” he says, “Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and prudent, and revealed them to little ones.” This is the praise of the Father that he commended: that he hid these things from the wise and prudent, that is, the proud and arrogant; and revealed them to little ones, that is, the weak and humble.

But it is also true that the confession of sins is salutary. Hence we heard in the psalm that was read first, “Set, O Lord, a guard on my mouth, and a door of restraint around my lips, that you may not turn my heart to evil words, to make excuses in sins.” He asks God to set a guard on his mouth, and he explains what the guard is to keep watch against. For there are people who abound in this: when they begin to be accused, they run to excuse themselves. To excuse is to look for causes and string together pretexts why the sin should not seem to belong to oneself. One says, “The devil did it to me”; another says, “Fortune did it to me”; another, “I was compelled by fate”: no one blames himself. When you want to be your own excuser, your accuser triumphs over you. Do you want, then, to do something that will make your accuser, that is, the devil, grieve and groan? Do what you have heard, do what you have learned, and say to your God, “I said, Lord, have mercy on me; heal my soul, for I have sinned against you.” “I,” he says, “I said”: not the devil, not fortune, not fate. “I said”: I do not excuse myself; I accuse myself. “I said, Lord, have mercy on me; heal my soul.” For why is it sick? “Because I have sinned against you.”

“Confess, then, to the Lord, for he is good.” If you want to praise, what can you praise more safely than the good? If you want to praise, if you want to make a confession of praise, what can you praise more safely than the good? If you want to confess your sins, to whom more safely than to the good? To a man, because he is bad, you confess and are condemned; to God, because he is good, you confess and are cleansed. If you consider the confession of praise: whatever you are going to praise at length, your effort is spent on showing that what you praise is good. For good things are rightly praised, as bad things are rightly blamed. The praise of the Lord your God has been told you briefly: “He is good.” If you too are good, praise him from whom you are good; if you are bad, praise him from whom you may become good. For if you are good, you are good from him; if you are bad, you are bad from yourself. Flee from yourself, and come to him who made you: for by fleeing yourself you follow yourself; and by following yourself you cling to him who made you.

How many good things you seek, bad man! You are certainly bad: tell me what you want, if not what is good? You seek a horse: only a good one. You seek an estate: only a good one. You build a house: only a good one. You seek a wife: only a good one. A tunic, only a good one; a boot, only a good one: your soul alone, a bad one. Are you not at odds with yourself, you who seek good things when you are bad? If you seek good things, first be yourself what you seek. But if, while bad, you have found many good things, what good is it to you, since you yourself have perished? Love your souls as good; hate your souls as bad. But by loving him from whom is every good, you will be good. Hating your evils, choose good things.

What does it mean to hate your evils? To confess your sins by repenting. For everyone who repents, and confesses his sins in repentance, is angry with himself, and in a way, by repenting, punishes in himself what displeases him. For God hates sin. If you too hate in yourself what God also hates, you are meanwhile joined to God in some measure of will, while you hate in yourself what God also hates. Be severe with yourself, so that God may intervene for you and not condemn you. For sin must without doubt be punished: this is owed to sin, punishment, condemnation. Sin must be punished, either by you or by him. If it is punished by you, then it will be punished without you; but if it is not punished by you, it is punished together with you. “Confess, then, to the Lord, for he is good.” Praise as much as you can, love as much as you can; pour out your hearts before him: God is our helper, for he is good.

Without doubt, brothers, the one who said to God, “Direct my steps according to your word, and let no iniquity rule over me,” wanted to escape a heavy burden and a heavy yoke of iniquity. Let us see, then, when iniquity rules over a man, so that we may understand what we heard him praying and what we ourselves prayed in our response. For all of us, I think, responded to the holy psalm with a devout and truthful heart, praying and saying to the Lord our God, “Direct my steps according to your word, and let no iniquity rule over me.” From the rule of this worst of mistresses we have been redeemed by precious blood. And what good was it to have received a Law that commands and threatens and does not help, so that under it we were guilty before the grace of God? The Law threatens in vain when iniquity rules. For the Law is not bodily, not carnal; but since God, who gave the Law, is spirit, without doubt the Law is spiritual. But what does the apostle say? “For we know that the Law is spiritual; but I am carnal, sold under sin.” Do not be surprised, then, you who are sold under sin, if the one to whom you are sold rules over you. Hear the apostle John: “Sin is iniquity.” Against such a mistress, then, we call on the Lord, to whom we say, “Direct my steps according to your word, and let no iniquity rule over me.”

The one who was sold cries out; let the Redeemer hear. Man sold himself through free choice under the rule of iniquity, and took as his price the slight pleasure of the forbidden tree. So he himself cries out: “Direct my ways, which I have twisted; direct my steps, which I myself have perverted by my own choice; direct them according to your word.” What does “direct them according to your word” mean? That my steps may be straight, because your word is straight. “I,” he says, “have been twisted under the weight of iniquity, but your word is the rule of truth: so correct me, twisted by myself, as by a ruler, that is, by the straight word.” So: “Direct my steps according to your word, and let no iniquity rule over me.” I sold myself: redeem me. I sold myself by my own choice: redeem me by your blood. Let pride blush in the seller; let grace glory in the Redeemer. “For God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.”

“For the Law is spiritual; but I am carnal, sold under sin. For what I do I do not know: for I do not do what I want.” “I do not do what I want,” says the carnal man: he accuses not the Law but himself. For the spiritual Law has no fault; the carnal man, sold, incurs fault. He does not do what he wants: when he wants, he cannot, because when he could, he did not want. By willing evil, he lost the power to do good; and now the captive speaks, and the captive says, “I do not do what I want. For I do not do the good that I want, but the evil that I hate, that I do.” “Not what I want.” And a man answers back, “Yes, you do.” “I do not do what I want.” “You do exactly what you want.” “I do not do what I want: believe me, brother, I do not do what I want.” “Oh, if you wanted to, you would do it: because you do not want to, you do not do good.” “I do not do what I want: believe me, I know what goes on in me; I do not do what I want.” Opponent of grace, you are not the judge of my conscience. I know that I do not do what I want, and you say, “You do what you want”? “No one knows what goes on in a man except the spirit of the man that is in him.”

You too are a man; if you will not believe me, look at yourself. Do you really live in this corruptible body, which weighs down the soul, in such a way that the flesh does not desire against your spirit, and the spirit against your flesh? Is this strife not in you? Is there no desire of the flesh resisting the law of the mind? If nothing in you resists the other, see where the whole of you is. If your spirit does not dissent from the flesh desiring against it, see whether perhaps your whole mind consents to the flesh; see whether perhaps there is no war because the peace is perverse. Perhaps you consent wholly to the flesh, and there is no strife. What hope have you of ever conquering, when you have not yet begun to fight? But if you delight in the law of God according to the inner man, but see another law in your members fighting against the law of your mind; if you delight in the one and are bound by the other, you are free in mind, a slave in the flesh. If that is already how it is, have compassion rather on the man who says, “I do not do what I want.” For do you not want that desire which resists your mind to be absent from you altogether? You are a man of bad wishes if you do not want to be rid of such an adversary. As for me, I confess to you: whatever in me rebels against my mind and quarrels with me with contrary delight, whatever of that kind is in me, I want to kill altogether. And even if, perhaps with the Lord’s help, I do not consent to it, I do not want to have anything to quarrel with. It is much more desirable for me not to have an enemy than to conquer one. For that very thing by which the flesh desires against the spirit is not something other than mine: or am I really put together from a contrary nature? Both that is mine, and my refusal to consent to it is mine. A part that is somewhat free resists the remnants of slavery. I want the whole to be healthy, because I am the whole. I do not want my flesh to be separated from me forever as something foreign, but to be healed wholly with me. If you do not want this, I do not know what you think of the flesh: I suppose you think it comes from somewhere or other, as from a contrary race. That is false, heretical, blasphemous: mind and flesh have one maker. When he created man, he made both and joined both: he subjected the flesh to the soul, and the soul to himself. If the soul had always stood under its Lord, the flesh too would always have obeyed its mistress. Do not wonder, then, if the soul, which deserted its superior, suffers punishment through its inferior. “For the flesh desires against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh. For these,” he says, “are opposed to each other, so that you do not do what you want.” Hence this man too says, “I do not do what I want.” For the flesh desires against the spirit, and I do not want it to desire; I count it a great thing if I do not consent, yet I wish to be rid of it. So: “I do not do what I want.” For I want the flesh not to desire against the spirit, and I cannot: that is what I said, “I do not do what I want.”

Why do you slander me here? I say, “I do not do what I want,” and you say, “You do what you want.” Why do you slander me? Ungrateful to the physician, why do you slander the sick man? Let me ask the physician: “Redeem me from the slanders of men, and I will keep your law.” I will keep it through your redemption, not through my own power. That is why I do not claim for myself a health I do not yet have: because I ask the physician. But you, the defender of nature (and would that you were, not bringing a false defense of it as though it were healthy, but asking the physician on its behalf as not yet healthy): as it is, you defender of nature, or rather its assailant, while you praise the Creator as if for a healthy nature, you shut out the Savior from a sick one. He who created heals; when it falls by itself, he raises it by himself. This is the faith, this is the truth, this is the foundation of the Christian faith. One and one: one man through whom came ruin, another man through whom came rebuilding; through the one ruin, through the other rebuilding. He fell who did not stand firm; he raises up who did not fall. The one fell because he abandoned the one who abides; the one who abides came down to the one who lay fallen. If, then, the flesh desires against the spirit, so that in this very thing you do not do what you want, because you want it not to desire and you cannot, at least hold fast your will in the grace of the Lord, and persevere in his help. Say to him what you sang: “Direct my steps according to your word, and let no iniquity rule over me.” What does “let no iniquity rule over me” mean? Hear the apostle: “Let sin not reign in your mortal body.” What does “let it not reign” mean? “So that you obey its desires.” He did not say, “Do not have evil desires.” For how, in this mortal flesh, where the flesh desires against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh, am I not to have evil desires? Do this, then: “Let sin not reign in your mortal body so that you obey its desires.” Even if there are desires, let them not be obeyed, so that iniquity may not rule. “Nor present your members to sin as weapons of iniquity.” Let your members not become weapons of iniquity, and no iniquity will rule over you. But even this, that your members do not become weapons of iniquity: do you provide it for yourself by your own strength? This very thing, I say, this very thing, that your members do not become weapons of iniquity, do you provide it for yourself by your own strength? For when your members do not become weapons of iniquity, iniquity is indeed in your members, in unlawful desires, but it does not reign. How can one reign who has no weapons? A part of you, your flesh, the desire of your flesh, rebels against you through weakness. That weakness is a tyrant: if you want to be victor over the tyrant, call on Christ as emperor.

For I know what you are going to say to me tomorrow, or what you are saying now within yourself. Whoever of you here is like this and is listening to me, I know what iniquity says to you inwardly. For you are still under the yoke of iniquity, since you do not acknowledge the price paid by the Redeemer. I know what you say to yourself: “See, my flesh desires against my spirit, it desires adultery; but I do not consent, I do not nod assent, I do not decide on it. Not only do I not do it, I do not even consent to doing it; not only do I not commit it outwardly through the flesh, I do not even follow the rebel in my mind. Do I consent to what fights against me? Do I yield to what struggles with me? I do not. See, no iniquity rules over me.” So it is; it is true. If it is so, give thanks to him who granted you that it should be so. Do not claim this for yourself, lest you lose what you have received and begin to ask in vain. Do you not fear: “God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble”?

So do you provide for yourself that no iniquity rules over you? If this presumption of yours is true, our prayer is vain when we say to God, “Let no iniquity rule over me.” Did you sing these words today, or not? Were you here when we were all saying, “Direct my steps according to your word, and let no iniquity rule over me”? You were here; you sang these words; I do not think you will deny it. So you sang among the people of God and asked God, saying, “Direct my steps according to your word, and let no iniquity rule over me.” If you provided this for yourself, why were you asking for it with me? I have you praying, I have you calling on him, I convict you of laboring: so let us listen together to him who says, “Come to me, all you who labor.” Let us listen, and let us come. What does “let us come” mean? Let us advance by believing, approach by giving thanks, arrive by persevering. Let us come to him who says, “Come to me, all you who labor.” You labor, and I labor: let us listen to him, let us come to him; why do we quarrel among ourselves? Let us both listen, because we both labor; why do we quarrel among ourselves? So as not to hear the physician calling? O unhappy sickness! The physician calls to himself, and the sick man is busy with quarrels. See what he says as he calls: “Come to me, all you who labor.” Where do you labor, if not under the burdens of sins, under the yoke of that evil mistress, iniquity? “Come to me, then, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will refresh you.” I who made you will remake you. “I,” he says, “will refresh you”: because “without me you can do nothing.”

How will I refresh you? “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me.” What do we learn from you? We know you, Lord: the Word in the beginning, the Word God, the Word with God. We know that all things were made through you, those we see and those we do not see. What do we learn from you? For we, your disciples, are not going to found another world, as the disciples of a craftsman and builder might. You founded one world; you made heaven and earth; you adorned both with their creatures and ornaments. What do we learn from you? “Learn from me,” he says. “When I was in the beginning God with God, I created you; this I do not want you to learn from me. But I became what I made, so that what I made might not perish.” How did he become what he made? “He emptied himself, taking the form of a servant; made in the likeness of men, and found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself.” Learn this from me. “For he humbled himself,” it says. “Learn from me, for I am gentle and humble of heart.” “For I do not teach you this,” he says, “as though you had ever been in the form of God, not thinking it robbery to be equal with God.” To him alone this belonged; to him it was not robbery, for it was his by nature. In equality with the Father he was born of the Father. Yet what did he do for your sake? “He emptied himself, taking the form of a servant; made in the likeness of men, and found in appearance as a man.” See, for your sake God became man, and you will not acknowledge that you are a man? See, for your sake he became man without sin, and you will not acknowledge yourself with sin, so that you may come to him who says, “Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will refresh you”?

“Take my yoke upon you.” Have you taken this yoke? Have you taken it? Do you feel that you have a rider? Have you taken this yoke? You say, “I have.” Do you feel that you have a rider? Do you feel that you have a guide? “I feel it,” you say. Say to him, then, “Direct my steps according to your word.” He guides you under his yoke and under his burden. For so that his burden may be light for you and his yoke easy, he has breathed love into you. To one who loves, it is easy; to one who does not love, it is hard. To one who loves, it is easy: “The Lord has given sweetness.” Or perhaps, because you came on hearing “Come to me,” you mean to claim even this for yourself, that you came? “See,” you say, “I came to him by my own choice, by my own will. Because I came, he refreshes me; because I came, he lays his easy yoke on me; he who gives love lays his light burden on me as one who loves and cherishes him. He has done all these things in me; but because I came to him.” So this is your view, that because you came, you provided this for yourself? “For what do you have that you have not received?” How did you come? You came by believing; but you have not yet arrived. We are still on the way: we have come, but we have not yet arrived. “Serve the Lord in fear, and rejoice in him with trembling, lest at some time the Lord be angry, and you perish from the right way.” Fear that, while you claim for yourself that the right way was found by you, you may perish from the right way by that very arrogance. “I,” he says, “came; I came by my own choice, I came by my own will.” Why do you swell? Why are you puffed up? Do you want to know that even this was granted you? Hear the one who calls: “No one comes to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.” Turning to the Lord, and so on.

The psalm that is being sung to the Lord seems to suit the holy martyrs; but if we are members of Christ, as we ought to be, let us understand that it pertains to all of us. “Those who sow in tears will reap in joy. Going, they went and wept, casting their seeds; but coming, they will come with exultation, carrying their sheaves.” Going where, and coming from where? Sowing what in tears? What are the seeds? What are the sheaves? Going into death, coming from death; going by being born, coming by rising again; sowing good works, reaping an eternal reward. Our seeds, then, are whatever good we do; our sheaves, what we shall receive at the end. If, then, the seeds are good, good works, why are they sown with tears, since God loves a cheerful giver?

Here first see, dearly beloved, how these words pertain above all to the blessed martyrs. For no one spent so much as those who spent themselves, as the apostle Paul says, “And I myself will be spent for your souls.” For they spent themselves by confessing Christ, and by fulfilling with his help what was said: “You have sat at a great table; know that you must prepare the same.” What is the great table, if not the one from which we receive the body and blood of Christ? What does “know that you must prepare the same” mean, if not what blessed John explains: “As Christ laid down his life for us, so we too ought to lay down our lives for the brothers”? See how much they spent. But did they perish, when they had received an assurance from the Lord even about a hair? Does a hand perish where a hair does not perish? Does a head perish where a hair of the head does not perish? Where an eyelash does not perish, does an eye perish? Having received this great assurance, then, they spent themselves. So let us sow with good works while there is time, as the apostle says, “He who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly.” “Untiring,” he says, “while we have time, let us do good to all, but especially to those of the household of faith.” And again: “Doing good,” he says, “let us not lose heart; for in due season we shall reap.” He who fails in the sowing will not rejoice in the harvest.

Why then in tears, when all our good works ought to be cheerful? And indeed it can be said of the martyrs that they sowed with tears. For they fought bravely and were in great tribulations. Indeed, so that Christ might console their tears, he took them over and transfigured them into himself, and said, “My soul is sorrowful even to death.” Yet, my brothers, it seems to me that our Head had compassion on his weaker members, lest the weak members should perhaps despair of themselves, and, human frailty being what it is, be troubled as death drew near, and say that they did not belong to God, since if they belonged to him they would rejoice. That is why Christ first said, “My soul is sorrowful even to death. Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me.” Who says this? What power is this, what weakness? Hear what he says: “I have power to lay down my life, and I have power to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down, and I take it up again.” This power was sorrowful when it was doing what it would not have done unless it had willed. For he did it by power, not by the condition of his nature; because he himself willed it, not because a Jew was able to do it. So he transfigured into himself the weak members of his body. And perhaps it was of them, that is, of the weaker ones, that it was said, “Those who sow in tears will reap in joy.” For that great herald of Christ was not sowing in tears when he said, “For I am being offered, and the time of my release is at hand. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith; for the rest, there remains for me the crown of righteousness”: a crown made of sheaves. “There remains for me,” he says, “the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the just judge, will render to me on that day”: as if he said, “He will render me the harvest, for whom I spend myself as seed.” These words, as far as we understand them, brothers, are those of one exulting, not weeping. When he said these things, was he in tears? Was he not like the cheerful giver whom God loves? Let us refer these words, then, to the weak, so that even those who sowed in tears may not despair: for even if they sowed in tears, sorrow and groaning will pass away; sadness passes with an end, and joy comes without end.

Yet, dearly beloved, see how it seems to me that what was said pertains to all: “Those who sow in tears will reap in joy. Going, they went and wept, casting their seeds; but coming, they will come with exultation, bearing their sheaves.” Listen, and see whether with the Lord’s help I can explain how “Going, they went and wept” pertains to all. From the moment we are born, we go. For who stands still? Who, once he has entered the road, is not forced to walk? An infant is born; by growing he walks: death is the end. From there we must come back, but with exultation. For who does not weep here on this evil road, when the infant himself begins with it? Certainly the infant, when he is born, is poured out from the narrowness of the womb into the breadth of this world; he comes forth from darkness into light; and yet, coming from darkness into light, he can weep; he cannot see. [For this life is such that when there is rejoicing here, fear that it may deceive; when there is weeping here, pray that you may escape; and tribulation passes, and tribulation comes.] And people laugh, and people weep; and what people laugh at is to be wept over. But one weeps for his loss, another weeps for his distress because he has been put in prison, another weeps because he has lost by death one of his dearest: one for this, another for that. The just man, for what? First, for all of these: for the just man truly weeps for those who weep fruitlessly. He weeps for those who weep, he weeps for those who laugh: because those who weep over vain things weep emptily, and those who laugh over vain things laugh to their own harm. He weeps everywhere; so he weeps more.

“But they will come with exultation, carrying their sheaves.” Do you see, then, that the just man is cheerful when he does a good work? He certainly is cheerful: “For God loves a cheerful giver.” When, then, does he weep? When by praying he commends his good works to God. The psalm wished to commend the prayers of the saints: the prayers of pilgrims, the prayers of those who labor on this road, the prayers of those who love, the prayers of those who groan, the prayers of those who sigh for the eternal homeland, until they are filled with the sight of it, who are now set in grief. For indeed, my brothers, “as long as we are in the body, we are away from the Lord.” A pilgrimage that longs for the homeland is not without tears. If you desire what you do not have, pour out tears. Otherwise how will you say to God, “You have set my tears in your sight”? How will you say to God, “My tears have become my bread day and night”? They have become bread to me: they consoled me as I groaned, they fed me as I hungered. “My tears have become my bread day and night.” Why? “While it is said to me daily, Where is your God?” What just man has not had these tears? Whoever has not had them has not grieved at being a pilgrim. With what face will he come to the homeland who did not sigh for it while away? Is it not said to us daily, “Where is your God?” Learn, my brothers, learn to be among the few. Live well, walk in the way of God, and see that you hear, “Where is your God?” You will be happy when you hear this; unhappy if you say it. For when we defend the Christian faith and the answer comes back to us, “See, the name of Christ is preached everywhere; why do evils abound?”, what else is said but “Where is your God?” He who hears it groans, because he who says it is attacking.

There are tears of the godly, there are tears of the saints, which their prayers reveal. The just man works well and is cheerful; and he weeps so that he may work well; he weeps because he has worked well. By weeping he carries out a good work; by weeping he commends the good work he has done. The tears of the just, then, are frequent, but on this road: are they in the homeland? Why not in the homeland? Because “coming, they will come with exultation, carrying their sheaves.” When happiness has come, does a tear return? But those who here weep vainly and laugh vainly, scattered by their desires, who groan when they are cheated and exult when they cheat: they too weep on this road, they too weep, but not in exultation. “But coming, they will come with exultation, carrying their sheaves.” What do they gather who sowed nothing? Rather, they do gather, but what they sowed: because they sowed thorns, they gather fire. And they go, not from weeping to laughter, like the saints (“Going, they went and wept, casting their seeds; but coming, they will come with exultation”), but from weeping to weeping, from weeping mixed with laughter to weeping without laughter. For what will happen to them? Where do they go when they have risen? Where, if not where the Lord said, “Bind his hands and feet, and cast him into the outer darkness”? Come, what then? Will there be darkness, and no pain? Will they perhaps grope, but not suffer? Will they not see, but not be tormented? Far from it! There will not be darkness only; not only is the sight in which they rejoiced taken from them, but something is also given them to groan over forever. So that you may not despise darkness, whoever you are, you … who because of your evil deeds and wanton adulteries are accustomed not only not to dread darkness but to seek it, who usually rejoice more when the lamp is put out: you will not have the kind of darkness there in which you can rejoice and be glad and delight yourself in the pleasures of the flesh; the darkness there will not be like that. But what will it be like? “There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” A torturer who never fails, one tortured who never ends. Neither does the one who tortures grow tired, nor does the one who is tortured die. Eternal tears, then, will belong to those who have lived like this; eternal joys to the saints, when “coming, they will come with exultation, carrying their sheaves.” For at harvest time they will say to their Lord, “Lord, with your help we have done what you commanded; render what you have promised.”

Our God and Lord, who cares for and heals every sickness of the soul, has brought out many medicines from the holy Scriptures, as from his own cupboards, while the divine readings were being read; and these are to be applied to our wounds through our ministry. For we do not claim to be the physician’s servants, through whom he deigns to heal others, in such a way that we ourselves no longer need treatment. If we attend to him, if we offer ourselves to him with our whole heart to be cured, we shall all be healed. Many things were read, great and necessary (though all of them are so); but some are hidden more secretly in the Scriptures, to exercise those who seek, while others are set out openly and plainly, to cure those who desire. This psalm contains great secrets indeed; and if we wished to treat them all one by one, I fear that our common weakness would not bear it, whether because of the heat of the season, or our bodily strength, or slowness of understanding, or even our own less than adequate capacity. So we shall take a few things from it, as much as we judge sufficient for our duty and for the attention of your Charity.

First, its title is, “Against Goliath.” Those who are not unacquainted with the divine Scriptures, who love to frequent this school, who do not hate the teacher like hopeless schoolboys, but lend an attentive ear in church to the readers and open the receptacle of their heart to the streams of divine Scripture; who do not, within these walls, attend to the business of their homes and delight in household gossip, so that they come together only to find people with whom to chatter about trifles, not people with whom to hear useful things; who do not love to talk about other people’s affairs when they have failed in their own: those, then, who do not assemble like that, and who assemble often, are not unacquainted with this title of the psalm, “Against Goliath”; they know who Goliath was. Yet for the sake of others, who are attentive now but less attentive at other times, or who perhaps have been accustomed to choke the word in their heart, like useful seed, with the thorns of the world, that is, with the cares of worldly business, let us tell even these very old stories, familiar to the learned and to those devoted to the divine writings.

Goliath was one of the Allophyli, that is, the foreigners, who were waging war at that time against the children of Israel. At that time holy David, whose Psalter this is (or rather, through whom the Holy Spirit ministered this Psalter), was a boy feeding his father’s sheep, of tender age, scarcely yet a youth. His brothers, already young men, were serving as soldiers in the king’s army. Sent by his parents, he brought them something from home for their use. So at the time of the fighting he was found in the army, not yet a soldier, but the soldiers’ servant and brother. Then that Goliath of whom we have spoken stood forth, of huge bodily stature, equipped with arms, trained in strength besides, puffed up with boasting, who proudly challenged the opposing people to single combat: that is, that one man chosen by them should come out against him, so that, with two fighting, the decision of the whole war would turn on them, with a pact and agreement added that whichever of the two won, the victory would be awarded to the whole side on which he had stood. The king of the people of the Jews, the children of Israel, was Saul. He was distressed, he was in turmoil, he looked through the whole army for a match for that man; but he found none, either in bodily form or in daring to answer the challenge. While he was in this turmoil, this boy David dared, presuming not on his own strength but on the name of his God, to go out against him. It was reported to the king, not as the daring of boyhood but as the confidence of piety; and the king did not refuse or decline. He understood, when he saw the boy’s daring, that there was something divine in him, and that such tender years could not presume such things without divine prompting. He gladly accepted: David went out against Goliath.

In all those, then, who were on the side from which David went out, there was no presumption except on God; but in the others, all their hope was in the strength of one man. But what is man, if not what David sang in this psalm: “Man has become like vanity; his days pass like a shadow”? So their hope was empty, placed in a passing shadow. David was armed, so that, unequal as he was in age and strength, he might be equal at least in arms: but the old armor did not help; rather it burdened his young years. And to this pertains what the apostolic reading before the singing of the psalm signified in advance, when it said, “Put off the old man, and put on the new.” David did not want the oldness of the armor: he threw it off; he said it was burdensome, because it hampered him. He wanted to go out to battle quite unencumbered; strong not in himself but in the Lord; armed not so much with iron as with faith.

Yet having thrown away the armor, he chose something with which to fight, and this not without a sacrament. For you see, as it were, two lives fighting against each other: one old, in the foreigners; the other new, in the Israelites. On that side was the body of the devil; on this, a prefiguring of the Lord Jesus Christ. He took five stones from the brook, from the stream, and put them in the shepherd’s vessel in which milk is usually drawn, and so went out armed. The five stones were the Law; for the Law is contained in the five books of Moses. And in that Law there are ten saving commandments, which all the rest serve. So the Law is prefigured both by the number five and by the number ten. And therefore David fought with five and sang with ten, saying, “On a psaltery of ten strings I will sing to you.” Nor did he cast all five stones; he took one. For in the number of the stones he showed the number of the books; in the one stone, the unity of those who fulfill the Law. For unity itself fulfills the Law, that is, love. That is why those five stones were taken from the stream. What did the stream signify at that time?

And your Holiness ought to know this too, for the sake of the other rules as well, so that you may listen to the reader teachably. The things that are set down allegorically in the Scriptures do not always signify the same thing. A mountain does not always signify the Lord, a stone does not always signify the Lord, a lion does not always signify the Lord; they do not always signify something good, nor always something evil; but it depends on the places in the Scriptures and on what the rest of the context of the reading refers to. Just as letters are repeated in so many thousands of words and speeches, and are not increased: words are infinite, yet the letters are finite; no one can count the words; anyone can count the letters, from which the multitude of words comes. When one letter is placed in various positions, it has its value according to its position; it does not stand for one thing. What things are as different as God and the devil? Yet at the beginning there is the letter D, both when we say Deus and when we say Diabolus. Just as a letter, then, has value according to its place, and he errs, and is very foolish, and has a childish heart, who, having read, for example, the letter D in the name of God, is afraid to put it in the name of the devil, as though he were doing God an injury: so too one who listens to the divine Scriptures without skill. To keep to this very example: he hears “river” set down allegorically, in the place where it is said, “The rushing of the river makes glad the city of God” (this was said of the flood of the Holy Spirit, of which the prophet says in another place, “They will be made drunk with the abundance of your house, and from the torrent of your pleasure you will give them drink”). Having taken “river” in a good sense in this way, he has praised it and been delighted; and when he is told, according to another place, that a river signifies people flowing away and given over to temporal things, passing away with the love of passing things, he is alarmed; because elsewhere he had taken the river to signify something good, he is disturbed. So he becomes dumb in the Scriptures, as a person becomes dumb in letters if he will not carry the letters over to other words, but keeps them only in the words in which he first learned them.

If your Holiness has grasped this, you have been told something very useful, as we think, and something that will help you much, not only in listening to our sermons but also in understanding the Scriptures themselves, on which we preach to you. The river, then, from which David took five stones did not signify anything good at that time. I know, of course, that it may occur to some that this river signifies something good: for instance, if someone wished to understand it as baptism, so that the stones lifted from baptism, that is, the baptized, are very strong against the devil, who was signified by Goliath. Yet because of the number five our reasoning holds, since we said that the Law is signified by the number five, because of the five books of Moses. What does it signify that they were taken from the river and put in the shepherd’s vessel? We have already said that at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, so that the devil might truly be conquered, the Law passed over to grace. What so signifies grace as an abundance of milk? Those stones were taken from the river. The river signified a people flowing away, given to temporal things, loving passing things, and running down with the rush of desire into the sea of this world: such was the old people of the Jews. It had received the Law, but it trampled on the Law and passed over the Law, and was carried into the sea, as the river passed over those stones. For those stones had not made a boundary for the river, so as to stop it. If they had, they would signify the restraint of the Law, and those who, when they begin to flow with their pleasures and desires, come to the commandments of the Law and stop, and rein in the rush of their lusts. But those stones were not like that: they were in the river, and the water passed over them, as the transgressing people passed over the Law. From there, then, the Lord took the Law to grace: that is, he took it from the river and put it in the shepherd’s vessel.

Whoever wants to fulfill the Law, then, let him think of grace. That is why those ten commandments of the ten-stringed psaltery are the very same ones that were in that old people; but the ten commandments weighed that people down with fear. For love, which comes through grace, was not in them; there was fear. The Lord’s commandments were penal for that people, because they could not be fulfilled by love. They tried, but they were overcome by desire. When anyone has made the passage to grace, then, he does not fulfill other commandments; but the very ones that could not be fulfilled in that way are fulfilled in this way. Yet it is not the power of the commandments, but the power of the grace of God. For if this belonged to the commandments of the Law, they would have fulfilled them then as well. Whoever passes over to Christ passes from fear to love, and begins to be able by love to do what he could not do by fear; and he who trembled in fear does not tremble in love. That is why David, who signifies a man passing over to grace, says, “On a psaltery of ten strings I will sing to you”: to sing now in the commandments, that is, to fulfill the commandments cheerfully.

And so that you may know, brothers, that it is grace that fulfills this, no one ought to presume on his own strength; for the right presumption is to presume on the grace of God. For God calls you and commands you to act; but he himself gives the strength, so that what he commands can be fulfilled. Yet you must bring a capacious faith, so that in the flood of grace you may humble yourself, make supplication to God, presume nothing of yourself: strip yourself of Goliath, put on David. To this pertains what is said in the same psalm, which we had already begun to recall: “What is man?” For this warns man not to presume on himself. See how it sings against Goliath, who presumed on himself, and commends David, who was weak among men but most strong in God. “What is man?” And it says what man is: “That you have made yourself known to him.” This is the whole of man, if God makes himself known to him; but if God does not make himself known to him, man is nothing. What is man, to whom God has not made himself known? “Man has become like vanity; his days pass like a shadow.” So: “What is man, that you have made yourself known to him; or the son of man, that you take account of him?” What does “you take account of him” mean? It pleased you to choose him and set him in some higher and more eminent place: it is then of your mercy, not of his merits.

Look for what is man’s own: you will find sin. Look for what is man’s own: you will find a lie. Take away sin, and whatever you consider in man is God’s. Let man not love, then, what is his own. To this also can pertain what the apostle says: “Let no one seek his own.” For sometimes people hear this from the readers and are moved by it to take away other people’s property. It matters who says to you, “Do not seek your own.” For sometimes it is said by an evil persuader, sometimes by a good teacher. God is a good teacher. When you hear from God, then, “Do not seek your own,” do not take it the way it is commonly said. It is something good that God is warning you of. As we were saying: look for what is yours, you will find sin. Do not seek sin, then, and you are not seeking your own; do not seek a lie, and you are not seeking your own. For truth is from God, a lie from you.

And if the devil sometimes suggests something, he holds one who consents; he does not force one who is unwilling. For he does not seduce or draw anyone unless he finds him already in some respect like himself. He finds him desiring something, and desire opens the door to the devil’s suggestion as it enters. He finds him fearing something: he urges him to flee what he finds him fearing; he urges him to obtain what he finds him desiring; and through these two doors, desire and fear, he enters. Close them, and you fulfill the apostle’s word in today’s reading: “Do not give place to the devil.” For there the apostle wished to show that, although the devil enters and takes possession, it was man who gave him place so that he could enter.

So, since man is nothing to whom God has not made himself known and of whom God takes no account, he gives him his grace, finding in him something to condemn and forgiving everything to the one who confesses, so as to crown the one who believes. For what did the Lord find in men when he came, if not something to condemn? Altogether, brothers, think and see: whether in the people of the Israelites or among the Gentiles, he found nothing but what he could condemn. And therefore he chose to come to sinners in humility, not as judge, sparing them, so that first he might bestow mercy by forgiving sins, and afterward render severity by punishing sins. Let us not abuse, that is, misuse, his mercy, and we shall not feel his severity. So this is the whole of man: that God makes himself known to him, that he gives him his grace, on which David relied. But Goliath, relying on himself and on his own strength, proud, lifted up, puffed up, first placed the whole strength of his entire side in himself alone. And because all pride has a brazen forehead, he was thrown down when the stone struck that very forehead. The forehead that had the brazenness of its pride was emptied; and the forehead that had the humility of Christ’s cross conquered.

That is why we too carry that very sign of the cross on our forehead, whoever understands it. I say this, brothers, because many make it and do not want to understand it. God seeks someone who does his signs, not someone who paints them. If you carry on your forehead the sign of Christ’s humility, carry in your heart the imitation of Christ’s humility. Now we said, brothers, that he gives place to the devil who opens to him the doors of desire or fear: but desire for what, or fear of what? For we too desire the kingdom of heaven and fear hell. But just as those doors, the desire for temporal things and the fear of temporal punishments, often draw a man to wickedness and give place to the devil, so the desire for eternal things and the fear of eternal punishments make place in the heart for the word of God.

Briefly, then, brothers: if we want to live well, let us love what God promises more than what this world promises, and fear what God threatens more than what this world threatens. Is what we have said anything great or long? A temptation to some fraud comes to you; you want to commit fraud to get money. God promises the everlasting kingdom of heaven to those who do not commit fraud; desire for money conquers you. For who is there who does not want the kingdom of heaven? But to want earthly things more, this is to sin: to want more what is present, and not believe what is to come; to want more what a man sees, and not desire what God promises. Yet what a man sees can be taken away from his eyes, and what he possesses can be lost; whereas what God promises cannot meanwhile be seen with the eye of the flesh, and when anyone has reached God’s promises, he does not fear to lose them, because no one is more powerful than he who gave them. So, brothers, cling with love to the promises of God, and the desires of the world will not overcome you.

Again, the temptation of fear comes: someone says to you, “Give false testimony for me.” First he makes promises; but when he has not deceived you, if perhaps you put God’s promises before the pledges of men, and desire does not conquer, he tempts you by threats and begins to threaten horrible things. He is perhaps powerful in the city, powerful in the world; he seems able to do what he threatens. Fear of present evil conquers you. Yet God could certainly turn that away from you, if it seemed to him good for you; and if he chose not to turn it away, you ought to understand that he would not let it happen to you unless he knew that this too was good for you. The same God turned the fire away from the three young men. Did God change because he did not turn the sword away from the martyrs? The same God was God of the three young men and God of the Maccabees. The former escaped from the fire; the latter were tortured with fires; yet both conquered in the eternal God. For neither were the former delighted by this temporal life, nor were the latter broken by temporal threats.

So do not fear a man who threatens you. For what is man? “He has become like vanity; his days pass like a shadow.” Either he will not harm you, and that shadow will pass before his sting can reach you, for God is powerful; or, if he is permitted to harm you, he will harm for a time your shadow, that is, what is transitory in you, your temporal life, your old life. For until the last moment of death we carry something of the old man. He can harm your temporal life; no one can take eternal life from you. He will take away the hindrances by which you are held here, and you will cling to God, to whom you had already bound yourself by love, having sent your hope ahead.

That is why in the Psalms it is said most elegantly of the evil man, “Like a sharp razor you have worked deceit.” So the Spirit of God mocks him. What does he notice in a razor? Not that men can be killed with a razor, but what a razor is made for. It is made for shaving hair. What is as superfluous in the body as hair? With how much urgency, how much zeal, how much care, how much attention is it sharpened, to shave off a hair! So too the evil man goes off by himself, thinks, rethinks, thinks out, piles fraud on fraud, seeks a scheme, gets accomplices ready, procures false witnesses, sharpens the razor. What will he do to the just man, except shave off what is superfluous?

And so, brothers, if you want to be ready to follow the will of God (what we say to you we say first to ourselves; or rather, he says it to all who speaks without fear), if we want to be ready to follow the will of God, let us not love these things that pass away, and let us not think that what is called happiness in this world is happiness. For those foreigners thought so: they placed all happiness in temporal things, all sweetness in the shadow, not in the light itself, not in the truth itself. Therefore in this psalm, which is “Against Goliath,” pay attention to the latter part of the psalm. It is in the clearest words and in very plain speech, which needs no interpreter or expositor; by God’s mercy they are set out in such a way that no one can say, “Look, this man said it the way he wanted, he interpreted it according to his own cleverness, he understood it as he wished.” They are set out in such a way that no one can excuse himself. They are set out by David speaking, that is, by the new life, the life of Christ, the life given us through Christ; mocking the old life, the old happiness of men, and those who place their hope in it, and those who obtain it and rejoice in it.

For the just seem to toil in this world, and the unjust to live happily in this world; and as though God were asleep, neglecting human affairs, the latter are often lifted up by impunity, while the former are often broken by weakness, and they think that it does them no good to live well, because they do not have the things in which sinners, criminals, and ungodly men seem to abound. And as long as they ask God for such things, to be granted them as something great, so long are they in error; and they must beware lest they be handed over to the power of their own desire. For it is said, “God gave them up to the desires of their heart.” And God is more favorable when he does not hear one who asks for superfluous and trifling things so as to give them, but hears him so as to heal him by not giving. For why do people seek these things? Who does not see it? It is to spend them on their luxuries, their trifles, and the most insane shows that people seek to have these things from God.

Give me a man of the world: let him ask God for riches; let them be given, and see the countless snares of death that follow for him. With them he oppresses the poor; a mortal man is proud over a man who is his equal; he seeks vain honors from men; and to obtain them he puts on for them the shows of wickedness, the shows of evil desire: he buys games and bears, he gives his property to the beast-fighters, while Christ is hungry in the poor. What need is there to say more, brothers? Think for yourselves of what we pass over in silence: how many evils people do with superfluous things when the income from them comes to them. When a man is such that he would use an abundance of present things in this way, is it not better that God should take it from him than give it to him? Is that not mercy? And he will say: “I have done well; I have taken nothing belonging to another, and you have not heard me. I give to the needy from what I have; I take from no one; I am asking you; you give.” As if he would give you an estate without someone else losing an estate! If it is said to you, “Sell your estate,” you shudder as at a curse, you think an injury has been done to you; you keep hatred in your heart because you heard from a man that you should sell your estate: as if you could buy unless someone else sells. So if it is evil to sell, then in what you so greatly desire to buy, and wish to buy, you are seeking evil for someone else. It is good to find a purse of gold coins on the road; when you have found it, you say, “God gave it to me”; as if you could find it unless someone else lost it. Why then do you not wish for the goods of those treasures which all can possess with you without being cramped? You desire gold: desire righteousness. You cannot have gold unless someone else loses it; righteousness you can both embrace, and you are both enlarged.

Let us return, then, to the psalm, so that your Charity may understand that those are foreigners who think there is no happiness except the present one. If you judge yourself worthy that God should give you these things too, seek how you are to use them. If he has not given them, know that it is good for you that a good father does not give. For when your son cries for you to give him a pretty little knife with a gilded handle, let him cry as much as he likes; you do not give him something with which to hurt himself. “Lord, deliver me from the hand of the sons of strangers, whose mouth has spoken vanity, and their right hand is a right hand of iniquity.” And he explains what he calls vanity and what right hand. For he calls the happiness of this world the right hand of iniquity: not because it is not found among the good, but the good, when they have it, have it in the left hand, not the right. They have everlasting happiness in the right hand; temporal happiness they have in the left. But the desire for eternal things and eternal happiness ought not to be mixed with the desire for temporal things, that is, for present and temporal happiness. And this is: “Let your left hand not know what your right hand is doing.” So: “Their right hand is a right hand of iniquity.”

Hear now how they have spoken vanity, and how they have a right hand of iniquity. Let us all listen; it is good for you. Listen, so that you may not say that you did not hear; because it was said to the servant, “You should have given, and I would have exacted it.” And we said yesterday that we are servants who give; there is another who exacts. Our sisters, by not wanting to listen, are as it were unwilling to face the one who exacts. Without reason, my brothers; let no one flatter himself on this account. It is one thing not to have received, another to have refused to receive. Whoever refuses God’s gift is held guilty of that very refusal. For as it was said to the servant appointed to dispense, “Why did you not give?”, so it will be said to the servant to whom he was appointed to dispense, “Why did you not receive?” If there was no one to give, you will excuse yourself; but if the readers sound forth even when the preachers are silent, and the word of God is preached everywhere, and it is truly said, “Their sound has gone out into all the earth,” and the heat of God’s word is spread everywhere, “and there is no one who hides from its heat,” there will be nothing to say at God’s judgment. Brothers, let us listen and act; if we want to have hope, let us not excuse ourselves. Often a beggar asking for one coin sings God’s commandments to you at the door.

Let us listen, then: “Whose mouth has spoken vanity, and their right hand is a right hand of iniquity.” See the happiness of the world, where those placed their hope who spoke vanity and whose right hand is of iniquity. For he begins to speak in this way: “Whose sons are like young plants firmly set.” This is lawful happiness. He did not speak here of frauds, perjuries, robberies, crimes: he spoke of the happiness, as it were, of the innocent. And if this is to be despised, how much are those to be lamented who even commit robberies, thefts, crimes, murders, adulteries, and the rest, which even worldly happiness itself condemns?

Whoever sets great store by the happiness of the world is a foreigner. See what kind of man he wants the man of the new life to be, the man who belongs to the shepherd’s vessels, to the grace of God, and to the milk by which we are nourished. Attend now: “Whose sons are like young plants firmly set; their daughters adorned like the likeness of a temple.” Perhaps that is why the sisters did not want to listen. Let them listen, then, willing or not, and learn to come to the Lord’s house not in the pride of Goliath but in the humility of David. Do these things need explaining? Are they obscure? People speak vanity, and they are called foreigners: they do not belong to the inheritance of Christ, to the kingdom of him to whom we say, “Our Father”; they are counted foreigners. And what do they call happiness? “Their sons like young plants firmly set”: shoot upon shoot. He has many sons, many grandsons; he feels secure against the chances of death. As if one disaster did not often carry off thousands of people! “Their sons like young plants firmly set.” Suppose the sons are like young plants firmly set: does not a forest fire sometimes consume even young plants near the woods? “Their daughters adorned like the likeness of a temple.” Let us pass on quickly from here: we must spare the modesty of the women. Let them rather recognize, by having it, what they have, which we blush to mention. “Their daughters adorned like the likeness of a temple. Their storehouses full, overflowing from this into that.” As we say of the wealthy: “He has nowhere to put it; he does not know what he has.” One storehouse is filled, and the produce overflows; possessions overflow; the storehouses overflow from this into that. “Their sheep fruitful, multiplying in their goings out.” A few go in; they give birth, and many go out: “multiplying in their goings out.” Last year there were so many; this year there are so many. There is rejoicing and exulting; Goliath swells, so that, proud in this happiness, he challenges to combat: “Who can match me? Who dares against me?” See whether people who abound in these things do not say this, whether each does not feel it in himself every day. He has something more than his neighbor; does he not say, “Who can match me?” or, “If this neighbor does me an injury, will I not show him?” See whether this is not Goliath challenging to combat. But David comes out, bare of the weapons of war, armed with a few stones, and will lay low all pride: that is, the just man; as the martyrs did, who laid low the unjust. And at the very time when the unjust seemed to be victors, they themselves were being conquered, when the devil, their leader, was overcome in the martyrs. But attend to that happiness: “Their sheep multiplying in their goings out; their oxen fat. There is no breach in the hedge.” For a hedge is usually a wall. “There is no breach in the hedge, nor going out”: everything intact, everything perfect, everything full. “Nor outcry in their streets”: no lawsuits, no riots. See what kind of happiness he describes, the happiness, as it were, of the innocent, so that no one may say to himself, “But he said this of those who seize other people’s goods.” Nothing of that is said here; such people are mentioned elsewhere. For it is plain that criminals must be punished. And from this they ought to understand what punishment awaits them, when even an innocent man who uses these things proudly and immoderately is rejected by God and counted among the sons of foreigners. For that rich man too was not seeking other people’s produce, whose land prospered in its produce; and when he was in turmoil, having nowhere to gather his worldly produce, and did not see the poor in whom he might store up treasure for himself in heaven, he said, “I will pull down my barns and build new and larger ones, and I will fill them.” With what, if not his own produce? “And I will say to my soul: You have many goods; eat your fill.” But God said to him, “Fool, this night your soul will be required of you; the things you have prepared, whose will they be?” As in the Gospel, then, brothers, a man rejoicing in temporal happiness was mocked, although his happiness came from his own field and not from robbing others, so in this psalm too temporal happiness is mocked, so that the soul renewed and regenerated by the grace of the milk may learn to desire perpetual and everlasting blessedness. See, then, how he connects it: “Whose sons are like young plants firmly set; their daughters adorned like the likeness of a temple; their storehouses full, overflowing from this into that; their sheep fruitful, multiplying in their goings out; their oxen fat. There is no breach in the hedge, nor going out, nor outcry in their streets. They have called happy the people to whom these things belong.” But who said it? Those “whose mouth has spoken vanity.” For they were described above.

But you, what do you say? For they called happy the people to whom these things belong. What do I say? “Blessed is the people whose Lord is their God.” That, then, is the blessed people which, instead of its sons and adorned daughters, instead of fat oxen, instead of fruitful sheep, instead of full storehouses, instead of intact buildings, instead of peace from lawsuits and civil quarrels, instead of all this happiness, wants to possess its God, so as to have him instead of all things, him who founded all things, and to say, “But for me it is good to cling to God.” Let it worship him gratis; let it worship him when he gives these things, and when he takes them away, and when he does not give them; and let it fear nothing so much as that he should take himself away. And so, brothers, the Christian people, which says in its heart, “Let him take away whatever he wills, so long as he does not take himself away from me”: “Blessed is the people whose Lord is their God.”

Since it is written, “O God, I will sing a new song to you; on a psaltery of ten strings I will play to you,” by the psaltery of ten strings the ten commandments of the Law are understood. To sing and to play is usually the business of lovers. For the old man is in fear, the new in love. So too we distinguish the two Testaments, the old and the new, which the apostle says are figured in an allegory in the two sons of Abraham, one by the slave woman and the other by the free woman: “These,” he says, “are the two Testaments.” For slavery belongs to fear, freedom to love. For the apostle says, “For you did not receive the spirit of slavery again in fear, but you received the spirit of adoption as sons, in which we cry, Abba, Father.” And John says, “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.” Love, then, sings the new song. For that servile fear, set in the old man, can indeed have the psaltery of ten strings, since the Law of the ten commandments was given even to the carnal Jews; but it cannot sing the new song on it, for it is under the Law and cannot fulfill the Law. It carries the instrument but does not play it; it is burdened by the psaltery, not adorned by it. But whoever is under grace, not under the Law, fulfills the Law, because to him it is not a weight but an ornament: not a torment to one who fears, but an adornment to one who loves. Kindled by the Spirit of love, he now sings the new song on the psaltery of ten strings.

For so the apostle says: “For he who loves another has fulfilled the Law. For: You shall not commit adultery, You shall not kill, You shall not steal, You shall not covet; and if there is any other commandment, it is summed up in this word: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. Love of neighbor does no evil. Love is the fullness of the Law.” The Lord too, since he had said, “I did not come to abolish the Law but to fulfill it,” therefore gave his disciples a commandment by which the Law could be fulfilled by them: “A new commandment,” he says, “I give you, that you love one another.” It is no wonder, then, if a new commandment sings a new song; because, as was said, the psaltery of ten strings is the ten commandments of the Law, and the fullness of the Law is love. The apostle chose to mention a few of its strings, so that the rest might be understood from them, when he says, “For: You shall not commit adultery, You shall not kill,” and so on. For just as there are two commandments of love, on which the Lord says the whole Law and the Prophets hang, showing clearly enough that love is the fullness of the Law, so the ten commandments themselves were given on two tablets. For three are said to have been written on one tablet, and seven on the other. And just as those three pertain to the love of God, so the other seven are assigned to the love of neighbor.

The first of those three is: “Hear, O Israel: the Lord your God is one Lord. You shall not make for yourself an idol or the likeness of anything, either of what is in heaven above or of what is on the earth below,” and the rest, by which he binds us to the worship of the one God, abandoning the fornication of idols. The second commandment is: “You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.” The third concerns the keeping of the Sabbath. I believe that three commandments pertain to the love of God because of the Trinity. For the unity of the Godhead has its beginning from the Father; hence the first commandment speaks especially of one God. In the second commandment we are warned not to think the Son of God a creature by taking him to be unequal to the Father. For every creature, as the apostle says, has been subjected to vanity; and there it is commanded that we not take the name of the Lord our God in vain, that is, “to vanity.” And the gift of God, which is the Holy Spirit, promises eternal rest, which is figured by the Sabbath; hence we keep the Sabbath spiritually if we do no servile works. For even according to their carnal understanding the Jews are forbidden these on the Sabbath. But whoever wants to understand servile works spiritually, let him hear the Lord saying, “Everyone who commits sin is a slave of sin.” And sin is not only what appears to men in a shameful or unjust deed, but also what has the appearance of a good work and yet is done for a temporal reward, not for eternal rest. For whatever anyone does, if he does it with the intention of obtaining earthly gain, he does it servilely, and therefore does not keep the Sabbath. For God is to be loved gratis, and the soul cannot rest except in what it loves. Eternal rest is not given to it except in the love of God, who alone is eternal; and this is perfect sanctification and the spiritual Sabbath of Sabbaths. Therefore, since we are sanctified in the Holy Spirit, whom does it not move to understand a great sacrament: that among the three commandments pertaining to God, the third commandment concerns the Sabbath? And among all the things that Scripture in the book of Genesis records God as having made, it is not said that he sanctified anything except the seventh day, which signified the Sabbath.

Of the seven commandments assigned to the love of neighbor, the first is: “Honor your father and your mother.” The second: “You shall not kill.” The third: “You shall not commit adultery.” The fourth: “You shall not steal.” The fifth: “You shall not bear false witness.” The sixth: “You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife.” The seventh: “You shall not covet your neighbor’s property.” The apostle clearly bears witness to this division when he says, “Honor your father and your mother, which is the first commandment.” For one asks how, since it is not found to be the first in the whole Decalogue; for of the ten commandments the first is the one that commands the worship of the one God. It is therefore because the commandment to honor parents is written on the other tablet, and is first there, since the commandments that relate to the love of neighbor begin from it.

Let us sing, then, a new song, playing on the psaltery of ten strings. This is the new song: the grace of the New Testament, which separates us from the old man, who was made first, earthly from the earth. For he was made from clay, and having lost blessedness was justly cast into misery, since he had become a transgressor of the commandment. But what does he say in the prophet, who gives thanks to the grace of God that reconciles us to God through the forgiveness of sins and renews our past oldness? “He brought me up,” he says, “from the pit of misery and from the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and directed my steps; and he put a new song in my mouth, a hymn to our God.” This is the new song, played on the psaltery of ten strings. For no one praises God, that is, sings a hymn, unless his deeds agree with his mouth, by loving God and neighbor. And let the rebaptizing Donatists not think that they belong to the new song: for those do not sing the new song who have cut themselves off by proud ungodliness from the Church, which God willed to be in all the earth. For the same prophet says in another place, “Sing to the Lord a new song; sing to the Lord, all the earth.” Whoever, then, will not sing with all the earth, not departing from the old man, does not sing the new song, nor play on the psaltery of ten strings; because he is an enemy of love, which alone is the fullness of the Law, which we say is contained in the ten commandments pertaining to the love of God and neighbor.

We have been urged to sing to the Lord a new song. The new man knows the new song. A song is a thing of cheerfulness, and, if we consider it more carefully, a thing of love. Whoever, then, knows how to love the new life knows how to sing the new song. So we must be reminded what the new life is, for the sake of the new song. For all these belong to one kingdom: the new man, the new song, the New Testament. So the new man will both sing the new song and belong to the New Testament. There is no one who does not love; but the question is what he loves. We are not urged, then, not to love, but to choose what we love. But how do we choose, unless we are first chosen? For we do not love unless we are first loved. Hear the apostle John. He is the apostle who reclined on the Lord’s breast and at that supper drank in heavenly secrets. From that drink and from that happy drunkenness he belched forth, “In the beginning was the Word.” Lofty humility and sober drunkenness! That great belcher-forth, then, that is, preacher, among the other things he drank from the Lord’s breast, also said this: “We love, because he first loved us.” He had granted much to man, since he was speaking of God, in saying, “We love.” Who? Whom? Men God, mortals the immortal, sinners the just, the frail the unchangeable, the works their maker. “We have loved”: and where do we get this from? “Because he first loved us.” Ask how man comes to love God, and you will find nothing at all except that God first loved him. He gave himself, whom we have loved; he gave the means by which we might love. Hear more plainly through the apostle Paul what he gave so that we might love: “The love of God,” he says, “is poured out in our hearts.” From where? From ourselves, perhaps? No. From where, then? “Through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.”

Having such great confidence, then, let us love God from God; indeed, since the Holy Spirit is God, let us love God from God. For what more shall I say than, let us love God from God? Certainly, because I said, “The love of God is poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us,” it follows that, since the Holy Spirit is God and we cannot love God except through the Holy Spirit, we love God from God. This, then, follows. Hear John himself more plainly: “God is love; and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.” It is little to say, “Love is from God.” Which of us would dare to say what was said, “God is love”? He said it who knew what he had. Why then does human imagination and flighty thought fashion a God for itself, and build an idol in its heart, composing such a God as it can think of, not such as it has been found worthy to find? Is God like this? No, but like this. Why do you arrange features? Why do you put together limbs? Why do you shape a pleasing stature? Why do you imagine bodily beauty? God is love. What color is there in love? What features? What shape? We see none of these, and yet we love.

I dare to say to your Charity: let us notice in lower things what we may find in higher things. That lowest and earthly love, that sordid and shameful love which pursues the beauty of bodies, reminds us of something by which we may rise to higher and purer things. Some lascivious and unchaste man loves a very beautiful woman. The beauty of her body moves him, to be sure, but what he seeks inwardly is love in return. For if he hears that she hates him, does not all that heat and passion for her beautiful limbs grow cold? Does he not in a way recoil from what he was intent on, turn away, take offense, and even begin to hate what he loved? Has her form changed? Are not all the things there that had attracted him? They are there; and yet he was burning for what he saw, and demanding from her heart what he did not see. But if he learns that he is loved in return, how much more vehemently does he burn! She sees him, he sees her; no one sees love; and yet love itself, which is not seen, is loved.

Raise yourselves up from that muddy desire, so that you may remain in the most luminous love. You do not see God: love him, and you have him. How many things are loved in damnable desires and are not had; sought basely, and yet not possessed straightaway? Is loving gold the same as having gold? Many love it and do not have it. Is having very broad and very fine estates the same as loving them? Many love them and do not have them. Is loving honor the same as having honor? Many without honor burn to have it; they seek to have it, and often die before they find what they were seeking. God offers himself to us by a short way. He cries to us, “Love me, and you will have me; for you cannot even love me unless you have me.”

O brothers, O sons, O Catholic offshoots, O holy and heavenly seeds, O you who have been reborn in Christ and born from above! Hear me; or rather, through me, sing to the Lord a new song. “See,” you say, “I am singing.” You are singing; clearly you are singing; I hear it. But let your life not bear witness against your tongue. Sing with your voices, sing with your hearts, sing with your mouths, sing with your lives: “Sing to the Lord a new song.” You ask what you should sing of him whom you love? Without doubt you want to sing of him whom you love; you look for his praises to sing. You have heard: “Sing to the Lord a new song.” You look for praises? “His praise is in the church of the saints.” The praise of the one who is sung is the singer himself. Do you want to sing praises to God? Be what you say. You are his praise, if you live well. For his praise is not in the synagogues of the Jews, not in the madness of the pagans, not in the errors of the heretics, not in the applause of the theaters. You ask where it is? Look to yourselves; be it yourselves. “His praise is in the church of the saints.” You ask what to rejoice in when you sing? “Let Israel rejoice in him who made him”: and he finds nothing to rejoice in but God.

Well, my brothers, question yourselves; examine your inner chambers; see and consider how much love you have, and increase what you find. Attend to such a treasure, so that you may be rich within. Other things that have a great price are called dear, and not without reason. Look at your ordinary way of speaking: “This is dearer than that.” What does “dearer” mean, if not “more precious”? If whatever is more precious is called dearer, what is dearer than charity itself, my brothers? What, do we think, is its price? Where is its price to be found? The price of wheat is your coin; the price of an estate, your silver; the price of a pearl, your gold; the price of charity is you. You look for the means to possess an estate, a jewel, a beast of burden; you look for the means to buy an estate, and you look for it among your own resources. But if you want to have charity, look for yourself, and find yourself. Why are you afraid to give yourself, lest you use yourself up? Rather, if you do not give yourself, you lose yourself. Charity itself speaks through Wisdom and tells you something, so that you need not be terrified at what has been said: “Give yourself.” For if someone wanted to sell you an estate, he would say to you, “Give me your gold”; and if someone something else, “Give me your coin, give me your silver.” Hear what charity says to you through the mouth of Wisdom: “Give me, my son, your heart.” “Give me,” it says: what? “My son, your heart.” It was in a bad way when it was with you, when it was your own; for you were being dragged about by trifles and by lascivious and ruinous loves. Take it away from there. Where are you dragging it? Where are you putting it? “Give me,” it says, “your heart.” Let it be mine, and it is not lost to you. For see whether he wished to leave anything in you with which you might love even yourself, he who says to you, “You shall love the Lord your God with your whole heart, and with your whole soul, and with your whole mind.” What remains of your heart with which to love yourself? What of your soul? What of your mind? “With the whole,” he says. He who made you demands the whole of you. But do not be sad, as though nothing remained in you to rejoice in. “Let Israel rejoice,” not in himself, but “in him who made him.”

You will answer and say: “If nothing remains to me with which to love myself, since I am commanded to love him who made me with my whole heart and my whole soul and my whole mind, how am I commanded by the second commandment to love my neighbor as myself?” That is all the more reason why you ought to love God with your whole heart and your whole soul and your whole mind. And your neighbor, how? “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” God with the whole of me; my neighbor as myself. From what do I love myself, from what do I love you? Do you want to hear from what you love yourself? You love yourself from this, that you love God with the whole of yourself. Do you think it benefits God that you love God? And because you love God, does something accrue to God? And if you do not love him, will he have less? When you love, it is you who benefit: you will be where you do not perish. But you will answer and say, “When did I not love myself?” You certainly did not love yourself when you did not love God, who made you. But when you hated yourself, you thought you loved yourself. “For whoever loves iniquity hates his own soul.”

Turning to the Lord God, the Father almighty, with a pure heart, let us give him, as far as our littleness is able, the greatest and most abundant thanks, praying with our whole mind to his singular gentleness that in his good pleasure he may deign to hear our prayers; that by his power he may also drive the enemy from our actions and thoughts, multiply our faith, govern our mind, grant us spiritual thoughts, and bring us to his blessedness: through Jesus Christ his Son, our Lord, who with him lives and reigns in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever. Amen.

If the divine words are listened to with care, what is written may perhaps, not without reason, trouble us: “Son, if you become wise, you will be wise for yourself and for your neighbors; but if you turn out evil, you alone will drink up the evils.” How can this be rightly understood? For just as a neighbor’s good life gladdens us, so a perverse one saddens us. Or if this is thought to be said with respect to persuasion, because the wise man is wise both for himself and for those whom he persuades to wisdom, how will he alone drink up the evils if he turns out evil, since of the persuasions of such men it is said, “Evil conversations corrupt good morals”? For what else does that voice of love cry out: “If one member is glorified, all the members rejoice together; and if one member suffers, all the members suffer together”? How, then, is it true, “Son, if you become wise, you will be wise for yourself and for your neighbors; but if you turn out evil, you alone will drink up the evils”? How shall I rejoice in the good of one whose evil does not become an evil in me? How does it delight me that he has been found, if he could be lost while I remain unconcerned? If he is wise, will he not be a healthy member, with whom the other members rejoice? How then will the evil man alone drink up the evils, since likewise the other members suffer with a sick member?

This question, then, unless it is solved, will trouble us. But with the Lord’s help it will be solved, if first we hold fixed and immovable what is defined by most certain truth: that no one can be good by another’s good, nor evil by another’s evil. Hence the apostle says, “Each of us will carry his own load”; and elsewhere, “So each of us will give account for himself”; and again, “Let each one test his own work, and then he will have his glory in himself alone and not in another.” This is also said through the prophet Ezekiel: “The soul of the father is mine, the soul of the son is mine; the soul that sins, it shall die.” He explains that whole passage so as to show that bad sons are not relieved by the goods of their parents, nor good ones crushed by their evils. Once this most true principle has been established first and most firmly concerning ourselves, it remains to look at what duty we render to others, distinguishing most carefully what effect we seek for our own salvation and what affection we render to our neighbors. If you are good, you are good not by another’s good but by your own; yet by that very good of yours by which you are good, you also rejoice in another’s good, not by borrowed goodness but by mutual love. Likewise, if you are evil, you are evil not by another’s evil but by your own; and by that same evil of yours you do not love your neighbor as yourself, for you do not even love yourself. For you love iniquity, a most bitter enemy, not brought against you from outside but made by you within you; and so that it may conquer you more easily, you take its side against yourself. So you are plainly convicted of hating yourself, since you love that by which you are shamefully conquered. For the divine word is not proved false which says, “But whoever loves iniquity hates his own soul.”

Hence, then, the good man, by the good by which he is good, both rejoices at another’s good and is saddened by another’s evil. And so with such a neighbor (for he is more truly called a neighbor who attends to you from close by, that is, looks on you with mercy), with such a neighbor, then, if you become wise, you will be wise both for yourself and for him: not because he will be good by your good, but because by his own good he will love your good. But if you turn out evil, you will drink up the evils not with him but alone. For he will not be evil by your evil, but he will be merciful in your evil. Your wickedness saddens him, but your punishment does not follow him: it brings him sorrow, it does not share injustice with him. As an evil man, then, you will drink up not goods with your neighbor, but evils alone; because the sorrow which the good man has over you he has by his own good and by your evil. That sorrow of his shows his love and your perdition: it condemns you and crowns him; it casts you down and raises him up. That is why it is written, “Obey your leaders, for they keep watch over your souls as those who will give account, so that they may do this with joy and not with sorrow; for that would not be good for you.” It is not good for you, then, that they be weighed down by sorrow. For it is good for them to be saddened by our wickedness. Count the good, then, as your neighbors; and be good, by your own good, not theirs, and even that not given to yourself by yourself, but bestowed by God. “For what do you have that you have not received?” And so, “If you become wise, you will be wise for yourself and for your neighbors,” for whom it is good to rejoice at your goodness. “But if you turn out evil, you alone will drink up the evils,” and not they too, for whom even this is good: to be saddened by your wickedness.

The holy Scripture that was just read in your ears has prompted us (or rather God, who commands us to speak to you, has prompted us through it) to inquire with you and examine what it is and what it means, what was read: “There are some who pretend to be rich, having nothing; and there are some who humble themselves, though they are rich.” For it must not be supposed, nor believed at all, that holy Scripture took care to admonish us about the riches by which the proud are puffed up (I mean these visible and earthly ones), either so that we should think much of them or so that we should fear not having them. For what good does it do a man, someone says, who pretends to seem rich when he has nothing? Scripture has marked this man and rebuked him. But neither is the man much to be admired or imitated or highly esteemed whom it seems to have put in a place of praise, if you understand temporal and earthly riches. “And there are some,” it says, “who humble themselves, though they are rich.” The one rightly displeases us who, having nothing, pretends to be rich. What then? Does this one please us who, being rich, humbles himself? Perhaps he pleases because he humbles himself; yet he does not please because he is rich.

Let us accept this too, then: it is not unseemly, nor dishonorable, nor useless, that the holy Scriptures wished to commend humble rich people to us. For there is nothing so much to be feared in riches as pride. Indeed the apostle Paul admonishes Timothy of this: “Command,” he says, “the rich of this world not to be proud.” For he did not dread riches, but the disease of riches. And the great disease of riches is pride. For it is a great spirit that is not tempted by this disease in the midst of riches: a spirit greater than its riches, which conquers them not by coveting them but by despising them. Great, then, is the rich man who does not think himself great because he is rich; but whoever thinks himself great for that reason is proud and needy: he resounds in the flesh and begs in the heart; he is puffed up, not full. If you see two wineskins, one full and the other blown up with air, both are the same size, but they are not equally full. If you look, you are deceived; if you weigh, you will find out: the full one is hard to move; the one blown up with air is quickly carried away.

“Command,” then, he says, “the rich of this world.” He would not add “of this world” unless there were also rich people not of this world. Who are the rich not of this world? Those whose prince and head is the one of whom it is said, “He became poor for you, though he was rich.” But if he alone were rich, what good would it have done? See what follows: “so that by his poverty you might be made rich.” I think that Christ’s poverty brought us not money but righteousness. And where did his poverty come from? From his becoming mortal. True riches, then, are immortality; for there is true abundance where there is no want. Because we could not become immortal unless Christ had been made mortal for us, therefore he became poor, though he was rich. And he did not say, “He became poor, though he had been rich,” but “He became poor, though he was rich”: he took on poverty and did not lose his riches. Rich within, poor without; God hidden in riches, man appearing in poverty. See his riches: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God; he was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him.” What is richer than he through whom all things were made? A rich man can have gold; he cannot create it. When these riches of his had been set before us, see his poverty: “And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us.” By this poverty of his we have been made rich: because by his blood, which flowed from his flesh (for the Word became flesh to dwell among us), the sackcloth of our sins was torn. Through that blood we threw off the rags of iniquity, so that we might be clothed with the robe of immortality.

All good believers, then, are rich. Let no one despise himself, poor in his storeroom, rich in his conscience. The man rich in conscience sleeps more securely on the ground than the rich man in purple. There no malignant anxiety wakes him, his heart pricked by crime. Keep in your heart the riches that the poverty of the Lord your God has conferred on you. Rather, take him as your guardian: so that what he gave may not perish from your heart, let him who gave it keep it. All good believers, then, are rich, but not rich of this world. Indeed they do not feel their riches themselves; they will feel them later. The root is alive, but in winter even a green tree looks like a dry one. For in wintertime both the tree that is dry and the tree that flourishes are bare of the honor of leaves and empty of the honor of fruit. Summer will come and will tell the trees apart: the living root puts out leaves and is filled with fruit; the dry tree will remain empty in summer as in winter. So for the one a barn is prepared, to the other the axe is put, so that it may be cut down and thrown into the fire. So it is with our summer, the coming of Christ: our winter is Christ’s hiddenness, our summer Christ’s revelation. Indeed the apostle addresses the good and faithful trees in this way: “For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.” Dead, certainly, but dead in appearance, alive in the root. But notice the coming summertime, how he continues: “But when Christ your life appears, then you too will appear with him in glory.” These are rich, but not of this world. Yet the rich of this world are not despised either. He won them too by his poverty, who, though he was rich, became poor for us. For if he had despised them and had not wished to have them among the saints, the apostle would not, as I was saying, have commanded Timothy that he too should command: “Command,” he says, “the rich of this world not to be proud.” Among those who are rich in faith there are some rich of this world. Command them, because they too have become members of that poor man. Command them what you fear in them from riches: “not to be proud, nor to hope in the uncertainty of riches.” For the rich man grows proud because he hopes in the uncertainty of riches. For if he wisely considered the uncertainty of riches, he would never be proud but would always fear: the richer he was, the more anxious he would become, even with regard to this life, not only that one. For many poor people have been more secure in these upheavals of the world, while many have been sought out and seized because of their riches. Many have lamented having had what they could by no means always have. Many have regretted not accepting the advice of their Lord, who said, “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume, and where thieves break in and steal; but store up for yourselves treasure in heaven.” I do not tell you to lose your goods, but to move them. For many would not do this, and grieved that they had not obeyed, when not only did they lose their goods but because of them perished themselves. “Command,” then, “the rich of this world not to be proud,” and there will happen in them what we heard in the proverb of Solomon: “There are some who humble themselves, though they are rich.” This can happen even with regard to these temporal riches. Let the rich man be humble; let him rejoice more because he is a Christian than because he is rich. Let him not be puffed up or lifted up; let him look on his poor brother; let him not disdain to be called the brother of a poor man. For however rich he may be, Christ is richer, who willed those to be his brothers for whom he shed his blood.

Yet so that the rich might not say they did not know what to do with their riches, he admonished Timothy to guide them by counsel too, not only to restrain them by command. When he had said, “nor to hope in the uncertainty of riches,” lest they think they had lost hope, he added, “but in the living God, who provides us with everything abundantly to enjoy”: temporal things to use, eternal things to enjoy. But what are they to do with their riches? “Let them be rich in good works,” he says; “let them give readily.” Let riches be of use for this, that you have no difficulty in giving. For the poor man wants to and cannot; the rich man wants to and can. “Let them give readily, let them share, let them store up for themselves a good foundation for the future, so that they may lay hold of the true life.” For this life is false. Deceived by the falseness of this life, that man in purple and fine linen despised the poor man lying covered with sores before his door. But the poor man, licked by dogs, was acquiring for himself an eternal treasure in Abraham’s bosom, if not by abundant means, yet by a devout and rich will. But that rich man, who seemed great to himself in purple and fine linen, died and was buried in hell. And what did he find? Eternal thirst, unfailing flames. Fire took the place of purple and fine linen: he burned in a garment that he could not take off. Instead of banquets, dryness, and the longing for a drop from the poor man’s finger, as the poor man had longed for crumbs from the rich man’s table. But the poor man’s want passed; the rich man’s punishment remains. Let the rich of this world attend to this and not be proud. “Let them give readily, let them share; let them store up for themselves a good foundation for the future”, where the truly rich are, but not of this world, “so that they may lay hold of the true life.”

Perhaps, then, divine Scripture gave this warning, where it says, “There are some who pretend to be rich, having nothing,” because of the proud in rags. For if a proud rich man is scarcely to be borne, who would bear a proud poor man? Better, then, are those who humble themselves though they are rich. Yet Scripture testifies that it is speaking of other riches; for it went on to add, “The redemption of a man’s soul is his riches; but the poor man does not bear threats.” We must understand a poor man by some other poverty, and a rich man by some other riches. For they are more deeply rich who are rich in heart, full of courage, rich in devotion, abounding in love; they are rich within themselves, inwardly rich. But there are some who pretend to be rich when they are poor: they seem just to themselves when they are unjust. For we ought to understand those riches, since Scripture has disclosed what it meant: “The redemption of a man’s soul is his riches.” Understand, it says, what riches I am commending to you. Because I said, “There are some who pretend to be rich, having nothing; and there are some who humble themselves though they are rich,” you were thinking of those temporal, earthly, and visible riches; but I do not mean those, but the ones I go on to point out: “The redemption of a man’s soul is his riches.” So those who do not have the redemption of the soul, because they are unjust, and pretend to seem just, because they are hypocrites, are the ones of whom it says, “There are some who pretend to be rich, having nothing”: they want to seem just, though in the storeroom of their conscience they do not have the gold of righteousness. And there are those who are full, the humbler the richer they are; of whom it is said, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

Why then do you seek riches that flatter human, fleshly eyes? Gold shines, but faith shines more. Choose what you ought to have in your heart. Be full within, where God sees your riches and man does not. Yet you ought not to despise what you have within because man does not see it. Do you want to see that even in the eyes of the wicked faith shines more than gold? How does even a greedy master praise a faithful slave? He says that nothing is more precious than he; indeed he declares that he is altogether beyond price. “I have a slave,” he says, “who is beyond price.” Do you expect to hear why? Perhaps he dances well, or is an excellent cook? No: listen to the inward praise. “Nothing,” he says, “is more faithful.” Your faithful slave pleases you, man, and you do not want to be a faithful slave to your God? You notice that you have a slave; notice that you also have a Lord. Your slave you could buy, not create; your Lord both created you by his word and redeemed you by his blood. If you have become cheap in your own eyes, recall the price; if you have forgotten even this, read the Gospel, your deed of purchase. You love faithfulness in your slave, and does your Lord not look for it in his? Render what you demand. What you rejoice to have rendered to you by an inferior, render to your superior. You love a slave who faithfully guards your gold: do not despise the Lord who mercifully guards your heart. All, then, have eyes to praise faithfulness, but when they demand that it be rendered to them. For when it is demanded of them, they shut their eyes; they do not want to see how beautiful it is. Or perhaps, by foolish madness, they do not want to render it lest they lose it, as someone is afraid to repay money, since when he has repaid it he will not have it. Faith is not rendered like that: it is both rendered and kept. Wonderful to say: indeed, if it is not rendered, it is not had.

“The redemption of a man’s soul is his riches.” Rightly did God mock that most foolish rich man, to warn us not to imitate such things: the man whose land, yielding abundantly, troubled him more by its plenty than want could have done. For he thought within himself, saying, “What shall I do? Where shall I gather my produce?” And after much turmoil and distress, at last he seemed to himself to have found a plan; but a vain plan. For this plan was found not by prudence but by avarice. “I will pull down,” he says, “my old, smaller barns, and build new, larger ones, and I will fill them; and I will say to my soul: Soul, you have many goods; eat your fill and enjoy yourself.” God said to him, “Fool”: in what you think yourself wise, fool, what did you say? “I say to my soul, You have many goods, eat your fill.” “This night your soul will be taken from you; these things that you have prepared, whose will they be?” “For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world but suffers the loss of his soul?” Therefore, “The redemption of a man’s soul is his riches.” That vain and foolish man did not have these riches. For he did not redeem his soul by alms; he stored up produce that would perish. He was storing up, I say, perishable produce, himself about to perish, giving nothing to the Lord to whom he was about to depart. What face will he have at that judgment, when he begins to hear, “I was hungry, and you did not give me to eat”? For he wanted to sate his soul with superfluous and excessive feasts, and in his great pride he despised the many empty bellies of the poor. He did not know that the bellies of the poor were safer than his barns. For what he stored in those barns of his might perhaps be carried off by thieves; but if he had stored it in the bellies of the poor, it would be digested on earth, but kept more safely in heaven. So: “The redemption of a man’s soul is his riches.”

And what follows? “But the poor man does not bear threats.” The poor man, that is, one empty of righteousness, not having within him the fullness of the spirit, the ornaments of the spirit, the spiritual furnishings, and all that is not seen with the eyes but discerned all the more by the mind: not having these within, he does not bear threats. When some powerful man has said to him, “Say this word against my enemy, give false testimony, so that I may crush and subdue the man I want to,” perhaps he resists: “I won’t do it; I won’t bring sin on myself.” He refuses only until the rich man begins to threaten. But because he is poor, he does not bear threats. What does “he is poor” mean? He does not have the inner riches which the martyrs had, who for the truth and faith of Christ despised all the threats of the world. They lost nothing from the heart; and how much did they find in heaven? The poor man, then, does not bear threats. He cannot say to the rich man who is forcing him to give false testimony to someone’s injury, “I will not do it.” He has nothing within with which to answer; he is not made solid by an inner treasure: he is not one to speak, because he has nothing to speak from. He is not one to say, “What will you do to me, you who threaten? At most you will take what I have: you take what I am going to leave behind; you take what I might perhaps lose while I live even if you did not take it. From my inner chest I lose nothing. When you threaten to take what I have, you really want to take what I have within. But can you take that away and keep it? If by threatening you took away my faith, I would lose it and you would not have it. So I do not do what you urge, and I do not care what you threaten. But by raging you can even drive me from my homeland. You would have harmed me if you drove me to a place where I could not find my God. Perhaps you will even be able to kill me. When the house of flesh falls, I, its inhabitant, depart unharmed, and I will go out without fear to him to whom I keep faith, and I will fear you no more. For see what you threaten so that I may give false testimony: you threaten death, but of the body. I fear him more who said, ‘The mouth that lies kills the soul.’” The man full and rich within with these riches gives answers like these, or better ones, to the one who threatens. “But the poor man does not bear threats.”

Let us be rich, then, and fear to be poor. Let us seek to have our heart filled with riches by him who is truly rich. And if perhaps any of you enters into his heart and does not find these riches there, let him knock at the rich man’s door; let him become a devout beggar before his door, so that by his gift he may be filled and rich. And truly, my brothers, we ought to confess our poverty and our neediness to the Lord our God. The tax collector confessed it, who did not even dare to lift his eyes to heaven. For the sinful man had no substance with which to lift up his eyes. He considered his emptiness; but he recognized the Lord’s fullness; he knew that he had come thirsty to the fountain. He showed his dry throat; he knocked devoutly at the breasts so that they might fill him. “Lord,” he says, beating his breast and casting his eyes down to the ground, “be merciful to me a sinner.” I say that he was already rich in some measure when he thought and asked these things. For if he had still been poor in every way, from where did he bring out the gems of this confession? Yet he went down from the temple more abundant and fuller, justified. But that Pharisee went up to pray, and asked for nothing. “They went up,” it says, “to the temple to pray.” This one asks; that one does not ask. But from what does that one pray? “There are some who think themselves rich, having nothing.” “Lord,” he says, “I thank you that I am not like other men, unjust, robbers, adulterers, as is this tax collector too. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I possess.” He boasted; but this is swelling, not fullness. He thought himself rich, having nothing; the other knew himself to be poor, already having something. To say nothing else, he had the devotion of confession itself. And both went down. “But the tax collector,” he says, “was justified rather than the Pharisee: because everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.”

He who has made this day honored in his saints will grant us that the weakness of our voice may be equal to your attention. I have said this so that you may be good enough to help me with your silence: for the spirit is willing toward you, but the flesh is weak. And the spirit itself, whatever joys it may have conceived from the Scripture of God, is in labor and seeks to give birth in your ears and minds: provide in yourselves a nest for the turtledove. For in Scripture too the turtledove is commended for seeking a nest for itself where it may lay its young. And this that we are holding in our hands, the Scripture that you see, commends to us for inquiry and praise a certain woman of whom you heard a little while ago when it was read: a great woman, with a great husband, the husband who found her lost and adorned her when he had found her. Of her, following the course of the reading that you see me holding, I shall say a few things, as time allows, such as the Lord may suggest. For it is the day of the martyrs, and so the mother of the martyrs is all the more to be praised. Who this woman is you understood already as I was speaking beforehand; see that you recognize her as I read too. Every hearer now, as is plain enough from your response, is saying in his heart, “It must be the Church.” Confirm that thought. For what other mother of martyrs could there be? She it is; what you have understood is so: the woman of whom we want to say something is the Church. For it would not be fitting for us to speak of any other woman. It is true that in the reading of the passion of the martyrs we heard of women of whom we might fittingly speak; but we do not pass them over when we praise their mother.

Consider whose members you are; look to whose children you are. “A strong woman who will find?” The strength of the woman suits the day of the martyrs. For unless that woman were strong, her members would have failed in their suffering. “A strong woman who will find?” It is difficult to find her; or rather, it is difficult not to know her. Is she not the city on a mountain that cannot be hidden? Why then was it said, “Who will find?”, when it should have been said, “Who will not find?” But you see the city set on a mountain: yet so that she might be set on a mountain, she who had perished was found. Now that she has been made illustrious, who does not see her? When she lay hidden, who would have found her? For she is the city, and she is that one sheep which the shepherd sought when it was lost and, finding it, carried back rejoicing on his shoulders. That shepherd is the mountain; the sheep on his shoulders is the city on the mountain. It is easy for you to see her set on the mountain: when would you have found her, when she lay hidden in the brambles, in the thorns, that is, of her own sins? To have looked for her there is a great thing; to have found her there is wonderful. This difficult finding of her is commended when it is said, “A strong woman who will find?” “Who,” because it is one; not because there is not even one. So it was said of her husband himself, the lion of the tribe of Judah, of whom the prophet foretold, “You went up, lying down”: on the cross, surely. “You went up” is the cross; “lying down” is death. For what is “You went up,” if not what is written, “And they crucified him”? Hence he himself says, “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life.” What is “lying down”? “And bowing his head he gave up the spirit.” When it had been said there, “You went up, lying down,” it went on, “You slept like a lion.” “You slept like a lion”: you did not flee like a fox. What is “You slept like a lion”? By power, not by necessity. And when it had said, “You slept like a lion,” it went on, “Who will raise him up?” “Who will raise him?”: not that no one will, but which of men? For none but God, who raised him from the dead and gave him the name that is above every name. He also raised himself; hence he says, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” And now, when you hear, “A strong woman who will find?”, do not think it is said of a Church that lies hidden, but of her who has been found by one, so that she should be hidden from no one. Let her be described, then, praised, commended, to be loved by all of us as a mother: for she is the wife of one. “A strong woman who will find?” Who does not see this woman, so strong? But now found, now eminent, now conspicuous, now glorious, now adorned, now shining; now, to put it briefly, spread throughout the whole world.

“But she who is such is more precious than precious stones.” What great thing is it that this woman is more precious than precious stones? If you think only of human avarice, if precious stones are taken in the literal sense, what great thing is it that the Church is found more precious than any stones? There is no such comparison; but there are precious stones in her. These stones are so precious that they are called living. There are, then, precious stones adorning her; but she herself is more precious. I want to commend something to your Charity, as far as I grasp it, as far as you grasp it, as far as I fear and you ought to fear, about these precious stones. There are in the Church precious stones, and there always have been: learned men, abounding in knowledge and eloquence and all instruction in the Law. These are certainly precious stones; but some of their number have strayed from the adornment of this woman. As far as doctrine and eloquence go, by which he shone, Cyprian was a precious stone; but he remained in her adornment. Donatus was a precious stone; but he sprang out of the setting of the ornament. The one who remained wished to be loved in her; the one who was knocked out of it sought a name for himself apart from her. The one, remaining with her, gathered for her; the other, springing away, desired not to gather but to scatter. Bad sons, why do you follow a precious stone knocked out of the adornment of this woman? You answer me, “What then? Do you understand as he did? Or do you speak as he did? Or are you as learned as he?” Let him be a man of understanding: “Good understanding belongs to all who act on it.” Let him be learned, let him be instructed in the liberal disciplines and the mysteries of the Law: he is a precious stone; go back from him to her: “She is more precious than precious stones.” A precious stone, if it is not in the adornment of this woman, lies in darkness. A precious stone, wherever it lies, lies in darkness: it needed to remain in the adornment of this woman and be in the setting of her ornament. But I would say with confidence: precious stones are so called because they are worth a high price; he who does not have charity has now become cheap, has lost his price. Let him boast of his learning, let him boast of his tongue: let him hear the appraiser of the true stones of this matron; let him hear, I say, a certain craftsman who inspects the ornament. Why does he boast of his tongue, now not a precious but a cheap stone? “If I speak with the tongues of men,” he says, “and of angels, but have not charity, I have become sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal.” That stone is a cymbal: it no longer shines, but tinkles. So learn to appraise stones, merchants of the kingdom of heaven: let no stone please you except the adornment of this woman. She who is more precious than precious stones is herself the value of her ornament.

“The heart of her husband trusts in her.” He certainly trusts, and he has taught us to trust. For he commended the Church to the ends of the earth, through all nations, from sea to sea. If she did not persevere to the end, the heart of her husband would not trust in her. “The heart of her husband trusts in her”: he trusts with foreknowledge; he who trusts cannot be deceived. It was not said, “The heart of her sons trusts in her”: for her little sons could be deceived; no lie deceives his heart. It is true, then, that he trusts. “She who is such will not lack spoils.” Not that she does not seek spoils and so will not lack them, but that she will abound in many. “She who is such will not lack spoils.” She despoils the world from every side, spread everywhere; she seizes trophies from the devil everywhere. For her husband promised her this, the one to whom he says in another psalm, “I rejoice at your words, as one who finds much spoil.” How can she lack spoils, who seizes from everywhere, draws in from everywhere, gains from everywhere?

“For she works good for her husband, and not evil, at all times.” That is why this woman despoils the nations, by working good for her husband and not evil. At all times she works good and not evil; not for herself but for her husband, so that whoever lives no longer lives for himself, but for him who died for all and rose again. For her husband, then, she works good; before God she works good: she serves him, she is devoted to him; she loves him, she is always eager to please him. She does not adorn herself, either for her own eyes or for the eyes of others. She is not one of those who please themselves, not one of those who seek their own: “For she works for her husband.” But those who work for themselves all seek their own, not the things of Jesus Christ. “Finding wool and flax, she made something useful with her hands.” The holy word describes this matron as a worker in wool and in flax. We are asked what the wool is and what the flax is. I think the wool is something carnal, the flax something spiritual. I venture to infer this from the order of our clothing: for linen garments are worn underneath, woolen ones outside. Whatever we do with the flesh is in plain view; whatever we do with the spirit, in secret. To work with the flesh and not with the spirit, though it may seem good, is not useful. But to work with the spirit and not with the flesh is the way of the lazy. You find a man holding out alms with his hand to a poor man, yet not thinking of God in it, but wanting to please men: a woolen garment can be seen; he does not have the linen underneath. You find another who says to you, “It is enough for me to worship God in my conscience, to adore God; what need have I either to go to church or to mix visibly with Christians?” He wants to have the linen without the woolen tunic. This woman does not know or commend such works. Spiritual things must indeed be spoken of and taught as distinct from carnal ones; but those who receive them must both hold the spiritual things and do the carnal things in a way that is not carnal. “This woman found wool and flax, and made something useful with her hands.” This wool and this flax are in the holy Scriptures. Many find them, but do not want to make anything useful with their hands. She found, and she made. When you hear, you find; when you live well, you make. “Finding wool and flax, she made something useful with her hands.” See her, to whom it is said, “Spread out to the right and to the left, for your seed will inherit the nations; do not hold back; lengthen your cords.” See her: “She has become like a ship, by which a merchant gathers riches for himself from afar.” The riches of this woman are the praises of her husband. See how she gathers riches for herself from afar: “From the rising of the sun to its setting, the name of the Lord is to be praised.”

“She rises in the nights, and gives food to her household and tasks to her maidservants.” “She rises in the nights”: what power have nights? They do not overwhelm her, they do not force her to lie in darkness. She rises even out of the nights: the nights are tribulations. But she to whom this applies both rises out of the nights and makes progress in tribulations. “And gives food to her household”: in the nights she offered herself to be imitated; by doing she taught what she said should be done; and then she gave them food. Who eats at night? Yet then indeed she gave food. For those to whom she gave it are always hungry: “For blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied.” “From the night my spirit keeps watch for you, O God.” “At midnight I rose to confess to you.” These nocturnal foods abound in the house of this woman. No one there suffers hunger or gropes to find something to eat: the lamp of prophecy burns there. But is one to eat and be idle? For she who gave food to her household also gave tasks to her maidservants. Are these maidservants hers or her husband’s? Or, because they are her husband’s, are they also hers? Or is she herself the many maidservants? For although she is mother of the household, she does not disdain to be a maidservant. Let her consider her price; let her love her Lord. Let her acknowledge herself, I say, a maidservant, and not fear her condition. For he does not disdain to make his wife the one whom he bought at so great a price. And every good wife calls her husband her lord. Indeed, she not only calls him so, but thinks so, says so, carries it in her heart, professes it with her mouth; she regards the marriage contract as the deed of her purchase. She is a maidservant, then, giving tasks to maidservants. She is a maidservant; for her son is the one who says, “I am your servant, and the son of your maidservant.”

You were going to ask what she gains by those works, even by night; hear what she gains: “Looking ahead, she bought a field.” Looking ahead, not to the present but to the future, she bought that field: looking ahead by faith, by hope. That is why she also rises in the nights. “For if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.” Suffering tribulation in everything, she looks ahead to the field which she is buying. That is why she is called a strong woman. What are those nights compared with that field? “For our present momentary and light tribulation” (when we rise in the nights) “works for us beyond all measure an eternal weight of glory” (for us who have our hearts set on that field), “since we look not at the things that are seen but at the things that are not seen. For the things that are seen are temporal, but the things that are not seen are eternal.” What sort of field is that? What is its beauty? Let us burn to possess it. Do we not think it is the one of which God said, “And the beauty of the field is with me”?

“Looking ahead, she bought a field.” Where she bought, there she has the field. Where is the field? Where did she buy? Where she also put her treasure, so that for her it might be true that “where your treasure is, there is your heart also.” “Looking ahead, she bought a field.” With what did she buy it? You must not despair and sigh and do nothing: this field does not love a lazy lover. There, certainly, when you come to it, perhaps you will rest, and there will be no need for you to toil. For that field is not like this one, where Adam ate his bread in the sweat of his face. But now, so that you may come to the beauty of that field, get for yourself the means to buy the field there. What means? Gather the price. For this is what this woman does. See whether it is easy. When it had been said, “Looking ahead, she bought a field,” as if you were saying, “With what did she buy it?”, it says, “From the fruits of her hands she planted a possession.” These were the very tasks that she gave her maidservants, so that from the fruits of her hands she might plant a possession for eternity. For he called that possession the one that is to come; he hints at this by the word “looking ahead.”

“Girding her loins with strength, she strengthened her arms.” Truly strong. See whether she is not a maidservant. How devotedly she serves, how ready she is! So that the flowing folds of carnal desires may not hinder her as she works, she girds her loins, so as to tread on nothing superfluous as she hurries about her work. For there is the chastity of this woman, bound with the belt of the commandment and always ready for every good work. “Girding her loins with strength, she strengthened her arms,” so that they would not fail. Where does this come from? “She tasted that it is good to work.” Where is the palate with which this is tasted? People flee toil as something bitter: afraid to taste it, they do not know what to love. A good work makes a good conscience. And what is sweeter, brothers, than a good conscience? If it is absent, it stings; everything is bitter. Taste, then, taste, and you will see how it tastes, how it will delight you, how afterward you will not stop until you have eaten it all. “She tasted that it is good to work.”

“Her lamp will not be put out all night.” “No one lights a lamp and puts it under a bushel.” “You will light my lamp, O Lord.” Her lamp is her hope. Everyone works for it who does anything good for the sake of hope. And this lamp burns in the night. For what we do not see we hope for: therefore it is night. But if we both do not see and do not hope, it is both night and the lamp is not burning. What is more unhappy than such darkness? But so that we may not fail in the darkness, so that we may wait with patience for what we hope for unseen, let our lamp burn all night. For he who pours the word into us daily is, as it were, pouring in oil, so that the lamp may not go out.

“She stretched out her hands to useful things.” How far does she stretch out these hands? “From sea to sea, and from the river to the ends of the earth,” where she has reached. Hence it was not said in vain, “Spread out to the right and to the left.” She stretched out her hands, but to useful things.

“Her arms too she strengthened on the spindle.” Not “fusum” from “pouring” (fundere), but on that instrument of wool-working which they call the spindle. Of this spindle I shall speak as the Lord grants; for these matters of wool-working are not foreign to men. Hear what “She strengthened her arms on the spindle” means. It could have said, “on the distaff.” It said “spindle,” perhaps not without reason. Although it may seem, and be not absurdly understood, that by the spindle wool-working is signified, and by wool-working good work, as of a chaste woman and an industrious and diligent matron, yet I, dearly beloved, will not keep silent about what I understand by this spindle. Everyone who lives in good works in the holy Church, not neglecting but carrying out the commandments of God, does not know what he will do tomorrow; he knows what he has done today. He fears for the work to come, he rejoices in the work done; and so that he may persevere in good works, he keeps watch, lest by chance, neglecting what is to come, he lose what is past. Yet in praying to the Lord, in all his supplication, he has a firm conscience not about future work but about past work; from what he has done, not from what he is going to do. Now, then, if you see with me that this is true, consider in wool-working these two instruments, the distaff and the spindle. On the distaff the wool is wound; to be drawn out and spun into thread, it passes onto the spindle. What is wound on the distaff is the future; what is gathered on the spindle is already the past. Your work, then, is on the spindle, not on the distaff. For on the distaff is what you are going to do; on the spindle, what you have done. See, then, whether you have something on the spindle, where your arms may be strengthened. There your conscience will be strong; there you will say to God without fear, “Give, because I have given; forgive, because I have forgiven; do, because I have done.” For you ask a reward only for work done, not for work still to be done. Whatever you do, then, let your whole mind be on the spindle. For what hangs on the distaff must be passed to the spindle; but what has been gathered on the spindle is not to be called back to the distaff. So see what you are doing, so that you have something on the spindle, so that you strengthen your arms on the spindle, so that everything is drawn onto the spindle, so that the spindle has something to console you, to strengthen you, to give you confidence in praying and hoping for your reward.

“And what am I to do?” you say perhaps. “What do you bid me have on the spindle?” Hear what follows: “But she opened her hands to the poor.” Come, let us not be ashamed to teach you holy wool-work. See, if anyone has a full purse, a full barn, a full storehouse: all these are on the distaff; let them pass onto the spindle. See how she spins, or rather, see how she spins correctly. So long as all are taught, let the grammarians not be feared. “But she opened her hands to the poor, and held out fruit to the needy.” Hands to the poor, fruit to the needy. There is a certain poor man who seeks your hands; there is a certain needy man who seeks your fruit. The one who wants to seek from you only what serves his need is poor, seeking your hands. But there is another, needy, who says, “As having nothing, and possessing all things.” He does not want his need satisfied by your gift; but he seeks fruit, as on the Lord’s tree, which he planted and watered. Hear him saying of certain people, when he was speaking of such things: “Not that I seek the gift, but I seek the fruit.”

“Her husband is not anxious about what is in the house, when he stays somewhere.” Her husband is not anxious about what is in the house, because “the Lord knows who are his.” How should he be anxious, when “those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified”? “If God is for us, who is against us?” Her husband is not anxious: he knows his own, and his own know him. “When he stays somewhere.” Where does he stay, if not where he is to come from? He stays there, as though delaying there. For many already long for his coming; and their longing is put off until the number of the members of this matron is filled up. But many abuse his delay for their own ungodliness, and the wicked servant says, “My master is delaying.” And he begins to beat his fellow servants and to get drunk with the drunken. “The master will come on a day he does not know and at an hour he does not expect, and will cut him in two.” For the servant who gives his fellow servants their food in due time is the body of ministers and overseers. “He will cut him in two,” it says. It has good and bad, and he separates the bad from the good. “And will put his portion with the hypocrites.” Not the whole ministry, because there are also some in it who long for the Lord’s coming. There are also some of that number of whom it is said, “Blessed is that servant whom his master, when he comes, finds so doing.” So he will come and cut him in two.

Now meanwhile he stays somewhere; but he is not anxious about what is done in the house. For all in her household are clothed. Will he be anxious about the nakedness of his servants while he stays somewhere, when he has such a wife? They are clothed, and very well. How well, do you want to know? “As many of you as were baptized in Christ have put on Christ.” All without exception in her household are clothed. Both good servants and bad servants are clothed: but the good servants are clothed who have put on Christ not only in the form of the sacrament but also in the work of example, following the footsteps of their Lord; the others only as far as the sacrament, and they will have to give account of their garment. Yet that woman does not cease, that woman does not cease to clothe all, so that no one may complain, no one may say, “I did not work well because I was not clothed.” See, then, how you ought to be clothed. For our clothing let us also do the work. “For all in her household are clothed.”

What for her husband? Does she who clothes the servants make nothing for her husband? “She made double cloaks for her husband.” You are already acclaiming: I think you recognize what the double cloaks are that the Church makes for her husband. The cloaks she makes for him are praises: praises of faith, praises of confession, praises of preaching. Why double? You praise Christ; you praise God and man. Praise doubly, and praise simply: doubly, because he is man and God; simply, so that you are not false. Some woman or other in the household of a certain Photinus (a stone, as if precious, knocked out of the adornment of this woman, now cheap and cast aside, after whom the heretics are called Photinians) chose to make for her husband as it were a single cloak. He certainly did not receive it from his own wife, truly his, as it is written, “Of one the cloaks are double.” For he said that Christ was only a man. Again another detestable woman arose, as if she too were weaving a cloak for her husband, but weaving ragged little tales. For she said, “Christ is God only; he has nothing at all of man.” This is what the Manichees say. The Photinians: “Man only”; the Manichees: “God only.” The former confess nothing divine in the Lord; the latter, as it were, everything divine, and yet so false that it is not even human. For if he was not a man, then he did not die, then he was not crucified, then he did not rise either. How could he rise who did not die? Then he showed false scars to the doubting disciple. For without doubt those scars were false if true wounds had not gone before. But if true wounds went before, then true flesh; if true flesh, then true death, true cross, true man, and wholly truth: abundant praise from the distaff of this woman. But those who were afraid of these double cloaks of praise have remained double, that is, two-faced, in falsehood. “She made double cloaks for her husband.” She certainly made double cloaks. Confess God, confess man; praise God in the man, praise the man in God. She wove that most precious cloak of praise: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God: he was in the beginning with God.” She wove also the other cloak, because of his daily life among men: “The Word became flesh, and dwelt among us.” “She made double cloaks for her husband.”

“She made garments for herself of fine linen and purple.” For it was not fitting that the matron of so great a husband should go about either naked or in rags. “She made garments for herself of fine linen and purple.” Of fine linen, a shining confession; of purple, a glorious passion. Her fine linen we recognize when we pray; her purple we praised this morning in the martyrs.

“Her husband becomes conspicuous in the gates.” He who stays somewhere, he who because of such a wife is not anxious about his house, he whom no one now sees as he stays somewhere, becomes conspicuous in the gates. Notice when; see what follows: “When he sits in council with the elders of the land.” Nothing is clearer; read another prophecy: “He will come to judgment with the elders of his people.” In that council, that is, in that judgment, with the saints judging with him, to whom it was said, “You will sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel,” he will be conspicuous. For the Son of Man will come, as he said, in his majesty, and all his angels with him. There will be all the angels and archangels of heaven, and the angels who announce the word of God. For a prophet too was called an angel; for an angel is a messenger. And, “Behold, I send my angel before your face,” was said of John; and, “You received me as an angel of God,” the apostle says. He, then, who now stays somewhere, of whom many say, “When will he come?” or “Who is going to come?”, will be conspicuous in the gates, that is, in the open, manifestly. He will be conspicuous in the gates; but he will let some in, and shut the gates against others. “Her husband will be conspicuous in the gates, when he sits in council with the elders of the land.” Until this happens, let her meanwhile do what she was doing: let her work, let her not cease; let her wait for him who will be conspicuous in the gates; let her not tremble at the holy council of God’s judgment; let her come with a good conscience, let her come glorious; because those who are to judge with her husband are his members and his children.

“She made fine linen cloths and sold them.” It is good that she made fine linen cloths; but why did she sell them, unless because she does not seek the gift but seeks the fruit? Understand this selling first, brothers, as free. And does anyone buy for nothing? If he takes it for nothing, he does not buy; if he buys, he pays a price, he does not take it for nothing. And where is “You who thirst, come to the water; buy for yourselves without silver”? When you buy, you do not give silver; and yet you buy. If you buy, you give something; yet you do not give silver: you give yourself. For refer the fine linen cloths to those linen things which are spiritual, which this woman makes and preaches throughout all lands. And perhaps she is to be said to sell, because the apostle said, “If we have sown spiritual things among you, is it a great thing if we reap your carnal things?” For that is an account of giving and receiving; and in every sale an account of giving and receiving is involved. But the apostle is saddened about certain marketplaces where he did not sell his linen: “No church,” he says, “shared with me in the account of giving and receiving.” But he who sold in this way does not seek the gift but seeks the fruit: do not think him a seller of the Gospel. He is indeed his Lord’s merchant, but he seeks a better price. For whatever he sells, he gives spiritual things: and what does he seek? Carnal things, perhaps? These too are owed to him; but the apostle was not seeking them when he said, “For I do not seek what is yours, but you.” Give the price, then; give yourselves. For Joseph too in Egypt did sell grain; and yet he made those who bought it the king’s servants. Wanting to live through that famine, they received grain and became servants. Are we afraid to become servants? Woe to us if we are not his servants. What good does it do us to refuse such a Lord? We will be under the devil, and suffer hunger, and not escape the power of the true Lord. Give yourself, and buy yourself fine linen, that is, a spiritual cloak. In the same way you yourself are the price of a certain bread. For what? When you give yourself to pleasure, do you not, for the lust of the flesh, give yourself as the price, as when you buy a harlot? How much better to give yourself to God and buy the living bread that came down from heaven, with the very same price that you yourself are! For the price of a harlot is as much as one loaf of bread. “She made fine linen cloths and sold them.”

“And girdles to the Canaanites.” Let them gird themselves, let them work, let them come, let them be servants of this household, so that all may be clothed, all fed. For she made girdles, surely for work; for she herself, doing her work, girded her loins with strength. Who are the Canaanites? Foreign nations neighboring the people of Israel. “You who were once far off have been brought near in the blood of Christ.” You who were once strangers to the covenants, without hope of the promise, and without God in this world, but are now fellow citizens of the saints and members of the household of God: having received your girdles, work in the Lord’s house, now made members of God’s household, even you Canaanites, from whom also came that woman whose story was read in the Gospel just now. She was a Canaanite; she did not dare approach the children’s table, but sought the crumbs like a dog. See how she girded herself for work. Her girdle was faith; this is what he praises: “O woman, great is your faith!”

Let us look at the rest. “She is clothed with strength and beauty.” With beauty, as with fine linen; with strength, as with purple. For because she is strong, she is blood-red in her suffering. “And she rejoiced in the last days.” She rejoiced: so here she was long troubled. For how would she have purple garments without tribulation?

“She opened her mouth attentively. She set her tongue in order.” May he grant us, who are set in her, who praise her, who cling to her, who await her husband with her and in her, that we too may open our mouth attentively: not rashly, but cautiously, attentively, carefully. “I was with you in fear and in much trembling,” the apostle said, as if saying, “I opened my mouth attentively.” “Our mouth is open to you, O Corinthians.” “She opened her mouth attentively, and set her tongue in order”: praising the creature as creature, the Creator as Creator, angels as angels, heavenly things as heavenly, earthly things as earthly, men as men, cattle as cattle. Nothing confused, nothing out of order. Not taking the name of the Lord her God in vain, not supposing the substance of the creature to be of the Creator; speaking of everything in such order that she does not put lower things before better ones, nor subject better things to lower. Nothing is more beautiful than this order. Hence she herself says, “Set love in order in me.” Do not act preposterously; do not disturb and confuse what God has set in order. “Set love in order in me.” Love me as me, love God as God: do not offend God for my sake, nor offend me for the sake of anyone else, nor anyone else for my sake. “Set love in order in me.” Blessed is her daughter, set in this order, whose passion among others we celebrate today, whose confession we heard a little while ago, as she set her tongue in order: “Honor,” she said, “to Caesar as to Caesar, but fear to God.” “She opened her mouth attentively, and set her tongue in order.”

“Strict are the ways of life of her households.” Strict, strong, disciplined: there is no place where she runs loose; she does not love dissoluteness. “And she does not eat idle bread.” Rightly has she gained so much.

Here, then, she is laborious, watchful, anxious, strictly disciplining her household, rising in the nights, watching the lamp so that it does not go out, strong in tribulation, fearful while the promises are not yet received, strengthening her arms on the spindle, not eating idle bread. But after these labors of what looks like poverty and worldly need, what will there be, since “she rejoiced in the last days”? Do you want to hear what there will be? Hear for what hope our lamp burns all night; hear it now. “Her sons rose up and were made rich.” Now we live in poverty, we keep watch in poverty; and when we die, we sleep in poverty; but we shall rise and be made rich. Then her sons will be made rich. “Her sons rose up and were made rich.” Compare now any riches of this earth, exposed to thieves and moths. Why do you boast? It is because you are weak that you need many things. You need to be well clothed, because you cannot bear cold; you use beasts of burden, because you cannot walk on foot. These are props of weakness, not ornaments of power. What are those riches of the angels? They have one garment of light: it never wears out, never gets dirty. Those are true riches, where there will be no want, no need. Why do you seek this now, before you rise? If you are a son of this woman, notice when riches are promised you. “Her sons rose up and were made rich.” Prepare yourself to receive the riches of the resurrection. Do not love these riches, so that you may deserve to come to those. “Her sons rose up and were made rich.”

“And her husband praised her.” We shall praise her, but not from our own resources. Her husband himself praised her. When her sons rose and were made rich, he looked on her, and gazed at her, and praised her. Who would not want to hear how he praised her? If you listened so gladly when she was praised by us, how would we listen if we could hear how her husband praised her? He praised her in the resurrection: when we have risen, we shall hear it. Or has he not kept silent about his praise of her even now? This is the praise itself; it follows. Let us listen, let us listen to how her husband praised her, seeing her now with such blessedness of her sons, rich in the resurrection of the dead.

“Many daughters,” he says, “have done mightily.” These are the praises with which her husband praises her. “Many daughters have done mightily.” What daughters, with whom she is compared? And yet she is not compared. “Many daughters have done mightily; but you have surpassed them.” Pay attention, I beg you: we are now at the end of the reading. For I am afraid of having you tired at the very point where I most need you attentive. Let us hear her praises. “Many daughters have done mightily; but you have surpassed them, and been set above all.” You, he says, have surpassed all; you have been set above all. Who, then, are the other daughters who have done mightily, whom she has surpassed and above whom she has been set? Or what might have they shown, or how has she surpassed them? For there are bad daughters, namely the heresies. Why daughters? Because they too were born from her. But bad daughters: daughters not by likeness of conduct but by likeness of sacraments. They too have our sacraments, they have our Scriptures, they have our Amen and Alleluia, most of them have our Creed, many have our baptism: therefore they are daughters. But do you want to know what was said of this woman elsewhere, in the Song of Songs? “As a lily among thorns, so is my beloved among the daughters.” Wonderful to say, he called the same ones both thorns and daughters. And do those thorns show might? Certainly they do. Do you not see how the heresies themselves pray, fast, give alms, praise Christ? I can say that there are false prophets among them, of whom it was said, “They will do many signs and wonders, so as to deceive, if it were possible, even the elect. Behold, I have told you beforehand.” The thorns too show might, the might of which it is said, “Did we not eat and drink in your name, and in your name do many mighty works?” “We ate and drank”: he would not say this of just any food; you know of what food and drink he could say it. “And we did many mighty works.” Many daughters show might, we do not deny it: thorns too have a flower, but they do not have fruit. But this one to whom he said, “But you have surpassed and been set above all”: how has she surpassed, unless because she has not only flower but also fruit?

What fruit does she have? How has she surpassed them? Let it be told me. “I show you,” he says, “a still more excellent way.” What more excellent way? The one by which she has surpassed them, by which she has been set above all. “If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not charity, I have become sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal.” He speaks in tongues: flowers belong to that might. “If I know all mysteries and all knowledge, and have all prophecy and all faith, so that I can move mountains” (what great might!) “but have not charity, I am nothing.” Hear still other mighty works, belonging to the flower, not to the fruit: “If I distribute all my goods to the poor, and hand over my body to be burned, but have not charity, it profits me nothing.” This more excellent way she has, which is why it was said to her, “Many daughters have done mightily.” Many have spoken in tongues, known all mysteries, done many mighty works, driven out demons, distributed their goods to the poor, handed their bodies over to the fire. They are beneath you, because they did not have charity. “But you have surpassed and been set above all”: not only in flower but heavy with fruit, abounding in fruit. See the cluster itself, where it begins. When he had listed the works of the flesh, “acts of sexual immorality,” he says, “impurities, debaucheries, idolatry, sorceries, enmities, quarrels, jealousies, fits of anger, dissensions, heresies, envyings, carousings, drunkenness, and the like, of which I tell you beforehand, as I told you before, that those who do such things will not possess the kingdom of God”: having listed all the thorns to be thrown into the fire, he says, “But the fruit of the Spirit is charity”; and from this head, from this as from a root, the rest are woven together: “joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faith, gentleness, self-control.” Why is this cluster beautiful? Because it hangs from charity. “Many daughters have done mightily; but you have surpassed and been set above all.”

What has remained in them? “False graces and the empty beauty of a woman.” Because “if I do not have charity, I have become sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal; I am nothing; it profits me nothing.” False, then, are the graces, and empty the beauty of a woman. “For a wise woman is blessed.” She who sought what to understand, who kept understanding, she is the wise one, she is blessed; not those false beauties, not that empty grace. “A wise woman is blessed. But she herself praises the fear of the Lord.” She who is blessed praises something from which she is blessed, because she is wise. What does she praise? The fear of the Lord, by which she was led to wisdom. For “the beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord.” “But she herself praises the fear of the Lord.” Toiling through so many nights, patient among so many scandals, provident in looking ahead, strong in enduring, constant in persevering: when her labors are finished, “Give her of the fruits of her hands.” She has done, she has done; she is worthy to receive. “Give her of the fruits of her hands.” Give what? “Come, you blessed of my Father.” “Give her of the fruits of her hands.” Give what? “Receive the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.” See what to give. From what fruits of her hands? “For I was hungry, and you gave me to eat.” “Give her of the fruits of her hands.”

And what will her business be then, when her labors are finished? “And let her husband be praised in the gates.” This will be the harbor of our labors: to see God and to praise God. It will not be said there, “Rise, work, clothe the servants, clothe yourself, adorn yourself with purple, give food to the household, see that the lamp does not go out, be anxious, rise in the nights, open your hand to the poor, pass the wool from the distaff to the spindle.” There will be no works of necessity where there is no necessity. There will be no works of mercy where there is no misery. You will not break bread for the poor where no one begs. You will not take in the stranger where all live in their own homeland. You will not visit the sick where all are healthy forever. You will not clothe the naked where all are clothed with eternal light. You will not bury the dead where all live without end. And yet, though you do not do these things, you will not be doing nothing: you will see him whom you desired, and you will praise him without tiring. This fruit you will receive. Then there will be that one thing you asked for: “One thing I have asked of the Lord, this I will seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life.” And what will you do there? “That I may contemplate the delight of the Lord.” “And let her husband be praised in the gates.” “Blessed are those who dwell in your house; for ever and ever they will praise you.”

There are two things that are commanded us in this life as laborious: to refrain and to endure. For we are commanded to refrain from the things that are called good in this world, and to endure the evils that abound in this world. The first is called continence, the second endurance: two virtues that cleanse the soul and make it capable of God. In curbing lusts and restraining pleasures, so that what wickedly flatters may not seduce us and what is called prosperity may not weaken us, we need continence: not to trust earthly happiness, and to seek to the end the happiness that has no end. And as it belongs to continence not to trust the happiness of the world, so it belongs to endurance not to yield to the unhappiness of the world. Whether, then, we are in abundance or in straits, we must wait for the Lord, who will give what is truly good and sweet and turn away from us what is truly evil.

The good things that God promises the just are kept for the end; and the evils that he threatens the ungodly are kept for the end. The goods and evils that go round and are mixed together in this world neither the good alone have nor the bad alone. Whatever good you name in this world, the good have it and the bad have it too: bodily health itself, for example, both good and bad have. Riches you will find among the good and among the bad. Success in children, we see, is a gift common to good and bad. Long life: some good people live long, and some bad people live long. And whatever other goods of this world you care to count, you find them mixed among good and bad. Again, whatever is harsh, whatever is sad, both good and bad suffer: famine, disease, pain, losses, oppression, bereavement: this is the common stuff of everyone’s tears. It is easy, then, to see both that the goods of the world are with the good and the bad, and that the good and the bad bear the evils of the world. And that is why the feet of some stumble on the way of God and try to go off the track. For many stray and go off the track, having resolved and determined in their minds to serve God for this purpose, that they may abound in earthly goods and lack evils and avoid them. For when they have determined this for themselves and fixed this as the reward of their piety and religion, when they see themselves struggling and the wicked flourishing, as though they had lost their reward, as though he who called them had deceived them, as though he who cheated them of the wages had given them work in vain, they renounce God. And where do the wretches turn, turning away from him by whom they were made and clinging to the things that were made? When what was made begins to perish, where will the lover of time be, who has lost eternity?

Therefore, because of the goods that God will give only to the good and the evils that will be inflicted only on the bad, since both will appear at the end, God wants to be believed. For what reward is there for faith, or what does the very name of faith mean, if you want to see now what you hold? You ought not, then, to see what you believe, but to believe what you are to see; to believe as long as you do not see, lest when you see you be ashamed. So let us believe while it is the time of faith, before it is the time of sight. For so the apostle says: “As long as we are in this body, we are away from the Lord: for we walk by faith.” We walk by faith, then, as long as we believe what we do not see; but we shall hold the sight when we see face to face, as he is. The time of faith and the time of sight the apostle John too distinguishes in his letter, saying: “Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not yet appeared what we shall be.” This is the time of faith; see the time of sight: “We know,” he says, “that when he appears we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.”

The time of faith is laborious: who denies it? It is laborious; but this is the work of which that is the reward. Do not be lazy in the work whose reward you desire. If you yourself had hired a laborer, you would not count out his wages before you had put him to work. You would say to him, “Do the work, and receive your pay”; he would not say to you, “Give, and I will do it.” So too with God. You, because you fear God, do not cheat your laborer; will God himself, who commands you not to cheat your laborer, cheat you? Yet you can fail to give what you have promised; and even if there is no deceit or falsehood in your heart, there is still in human frailty the want of means. What should we fear from God, who can neither deceive, because he is truth, and abounds in all things, because he made all things?

Let us believe God, then, brothers. This is the first commandment, this is the beginning of religion and of our life: to have the heart fixed in faith, and with the heart fixed in faith to live well, to refrain from all that seduces, to endure temporal evils; and while the one flatters and the other threatens, to keep the heart unshaken against both, so that you neither flow away into the one nor are broken by the other. Having continence, then, and having endurance too, when temporal goods have passed and the evils that are inflicted are no more, you will have every good and no evil. That is why, what was said to us in the reading? “Son, coming to the service of God, stand in justice and fear, and prepare your soul for temptation. Humble your heart and endure, so that your life may increase at the last.” Not now, but at the last your life may increase: “that your life may increase at the last.” How much, do we think, does it increase? So as to become eternal. For now human life, as long as it is prolonged and seems to be prolonged, decreases rather than increases. Pay attention and see; reason it out and see that it decreases. A man is born: suppose God has set seventy years for his life. Life is added to him, we say, as he grows. Is it added, or does it depart? See, of seventy years he has lived sixty; ten remain: what was set has been diminished; and the more he lives, the less remains to him. And so by living here life decreases; it does not increase. Hold fast to what God has promised you: “that your life may increase at the last.”

Then follows what was not read: “Whatever is brought upon you, accept it, and endure in sorrow, and in your humiliation have patience. For gold and silver are tested in fire, but acceptable men in the furnace of humiliation.” It seems hard; you have given up. Have you not then lost what does not fail? Many suffer many things for money that will perish, and you will not suffer for life that will last? You refuse to toil for God’s promises, as if you did not toil for your desires. How much do robbers suffer for their iniquity? How much do the depraved suffer for their crimes, the dissolute for their wickedness, merchants for their avarice, crossing the sea, entrusting body and soul to winds and storms, leaving their own things, running to the unknown? If a judge pronounces exile, it is a punishment; avarice commands exile, and it is a joy? What great thing, then, does wisdom command you that avarice could not command? And yet when avarice commands, you do it. And when you have done what avarice commands, what will you have? A house full of gold and silver. Have you not read, “Although man walks in an image, yet he is troubled in vain: he stores up treasure, and does not know for whom he gathers it”? Why, then, did you sing and say to God, “Give ear to my tears”? Why do you not give ear to the words of him by whom you want your tears to be heard? If you accuse your avarice, he will invite you to his wisdom. But when you have taken up the yoke of wisdom, will it be laborious? Laborious indeed; but see with what end, with what reward. Do you not know for whom you gather what you gather through wisdom? You gather for yourself. Wake up, keep watch, have the heart of the ant. It is summertime: gather what will be useful to you for winter. When things go well for you, learn then how you will be sustained when things go badly. Things are going well for you; it is summer: do not be lazy; gather grain from the Lord’s threshing floor, the words of God from the Church of God, and store them within, in your heart. Now indeed things go well for you; the time will come when they go badly. Tribulation will come to every man: even if all earthly things are his, certainly when he begins to die he passes through tribulation to another life. For who is there who can say, “It will go well with me, and I will not die”?

And yet, if you love life and fear death, the very fear of death is a daily winter. And the fear of death stings most when things go well for us. For when things go badly for us, we do not fear death; when things go well for us, then we fear death more. That is why that rich man, whom his riches delighted so much (for he had great riches and great possessions), was, I believe, assailed by the fear of death and wasted away amid his delights. For he thought that he would leave those goods behind; he had gathered, and did not know for whom; and he desired something eternal, and came to the Lord and said to him, “Good Master, what good shall I do to obtain eternal life?” Things are going well for me, but what I hold is slipping away; things are going well for me, but suddenly what I have will be gone: tell me how I may have what will last forever; tell me how I may reach what I shall not lose. And the Lord said to him, “If you want to enter into life, keep the commandments.” He asked which commandments. He heard. He answered that he had kept them all from his youth. The Lord, the counselor of eternal life, said to him, “One thing you lack: if you want to be perfect, go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven.” For he did not say, “Lose it,” but, “Sell it, and come, follow me.” He who delighted in his riches, and for that reason asked the Lord what good he should do to obtain eternal life, because he wanted to pass from delights to delights and was afraid to leave the ones that delighted him, went away sad to his earthly treasures. He would not believe the Lord that he can keep in heaven what is going to perish on earth. He would not be a true lover of his treasure. By holding it badly he lost it; by loving it too much he lost it. For if he had loved it rightly, he would have moved it to heaven, where he himself would later follow. God showed him a house to move it to, not a place to lose it; for he went on to say, “For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”

But people want to see their riches. Suppose they store them up in the ground: are they not afraid their riches will be seen? They dig, block up, and cover them; and when they have blocked them up and covered them, do they see what they have? Not even the owner sees it: he wants it to lie hidden; he fears it may be exposed. He wants to be rich in reputation, not in reality. As if it were enough to have in one’s conscience what one keeps in the ground! O how much greater and better your conscience will be if you keep it in heaven! Here, when you have buried it in the ground, you are afraid that your slave may find out, take it, and run away; here you fear that your slave may take it from you; there you do not fear, because your Lord keeps it well for you. “But I have,” you say, “a faithful slave, who knows and will not betray me, and will not take it.” Compare him with your Lord. If you have found a faithful slave, when has your Lord ever deceived you? Even if your slave cannot take it, he can still lose it: your Lord can neither take it nor lose it, nor does he let it perish. He keeps it for you; it remains for you; he sets you free; he makes you abiding; he will neither lose you nor lose what you have entrusted to him. Will he say, “Come, receive what you deposited with me”? Far from it. God does not say this to you. “I,” he says to you, “who forbade you to lend at interest, have borrowed at interest from you. For you wanted to grow by interest, and you gave to a man so that he would give back more to you; he took it rejoicing and gave it back weeping. This you wanted, and I forbade it: for I said, ‘Who has not given his money at usury.’ I forbade you interest: I command you interest: lend to me at interest.” This is what your Lord says to you: “You want to give little and receive more: leave the man who weeps when you exact payment; find me, who rejoice when I repay. See, here I am: give, and take; at the time of repayment I will repay you. And what will I repay? You gave little; take more. You gave earthly things; take heavenly ones. You gave temporal things; take eternal ones. You gave what is mine; take me myself. For what did you give, except from what you received from me? Shall I not repay what you gave, I who gave you the means to give? I who gave you yourself to be the giver; I who gave you Christ to give to, who would say to you, ‘When you did it to one of the least of mine, you did it to me.’” See to whom you give: he feeds, and hungers for your sake; he gives, and is in need. When he gives, you want to receive; when he is in need, you do not want to give. Christ is in need when a poor man is in need: he who is ready to give eternal life to all his own has deigned to receive temporal things in every poor man.

And he gives you advice on where to move it: he has given advice on where you ought to move it. Move it from earth to heaven, lest you lose it. For how many have lost what they were keeping, and even so, not corrected, have not learned to place it in heaven! If perhaps someone said to you, “Move your riches from the West to the East, if you do not want them to perish,” you would be in turmoil, you would toil, you would bustle about, you would consider how much you had, you would see that because of the multitude of your possessions you could not easily move to distant parts; and perhaps you would weep, because you were forced to go and could not find how to take with you what you had gathered. He has ordered you to move farther, who did not say, “Move from the West to the East,” but “Move from earth to heaven.” You are in turmoil, as if you thought you faced a greater difficulty, and you say to yourself, “If I could not find beasts of burden and ships to move from the West to the East, how shall I find ladders to move from earth to heaven?” “Do not trouble yourself,” God says to you, “do not trouble yourself: I who made you rich, who gave you what to give, have made the poor your porters.” If, for example, you found some needy man from overseas, or from wherever you wanted to go, if you found a citizen of that place in need, you would say to yourself, “This citizen comes from where I want to go; he is in need here; I give to him what he can repay me there.” See, the poor man is in need here; he is a citizen of the kingdom of heaven: why do you hesitate to make a transfer? For if those who do this give so that they may receive more when they come to the place the recipient comes from, let us do the same.

This happens if we believe, if we rouse our faith. For we are troubled in vain. Why are we troubled in vain? Because while Christ was asleep in the boat, the disciples nearly suffered shipwreck. Jesus was asleep, and the disciples were troubled. The winds raged, the waves rose, the boat was sinking. Why? Because Jesus was asleep. So with you: when the storms of temptations rage in this world, your heart is troubled like your boat. Why, unless because your faith is asleep? For so the apostle Paul says, that Christ dwells through faith in our hearts. Wake Christ, then, in your heart; let your faith keep watch, let your conscience be calmed, and your boat is set free. Be sure that he who promised is truthful. He has not yet shown it, because it is not yet time for him to show it. Yet he has already shown many things: he promised his Christ, and gave him; he promised his resurrection, and gave it; he promised his Gospel, and gave it; he promised his Church to be spread over the whole world, and gave it; he foretold the very tribulations and heaps of calamities in human affairs, and showed them. How much remains? What was promised is being fulfilled; what was foretold is being fulfilled; and do you waver, fearing that what remains may not come? You ought to fear then, if you did not see what was foretold. There are wars, there are famines, there are disasters. Kingdom against kingdom, earthquakes, heaps of calamities, an abundance of scandals, the cooling of love, a flood of iniquity. All these, read it, were foretold. Read, and see that all that you see was foretold; and believe that you will see what has not yet come, counting how much has come. But you, seeing God show what he foretold, do not believe that he will give what he promised? There you ought to believe, where you began to be troubled.

If it is the end of the world, we must move out of the world, not love the world. See, the world is in turmoil, and the world is loved. What if the world were calm? How you would cling to it if it were beautiful, when you embrace it so when it is ugly! How you would gather its flowers, when you do not draw back your hand from its thorns! You do not want to leave the world; the world leaves you, and you follow the world. Let us cleanse our hearts, then, dearly beloved, and let us not lose endurance; but let us lay hold of wisdom and keep continence. Toil passes, rest comes: false delights pass, and the good comes that the faithful soul has desired, for which every pilgrim in the world burns and sighs: the good homeland, the heavenly homeland, the homeland of the contemplation of the angels; the homeland where no citizen dies and no enemy is admitted; the homeland where you may have God as your friend forever, and need fear no enemy.

We have heard, brothers, the Lord saying through the prophet: “Do not delay to turn to God, and do not put it off from day to day. For suddenly his wrath will come, and in the time of vengeance he will destroy you.” He has promised you that on the day you turn he forgets your past evils; but has he promised you tomorrow’s life? Or perhaps God did not promise it to you, but an astrologer promised it to you, so that God may condemn both you and him? God has made the day of death uncertain for our good: let each one think of his last day for his good. It is God’s mercy that man does not know when he will die. The last day is hidden, so that every day may be watched.

But the world holds us; its allurements flatter us on every side: the greatness of money delights, the splendor of honor delights, the terror of power delights. These things delight; but let the apostle be heard: “We brought nothing into this world, and we cannot take anything out.” Honor ought to seek you, not you it. For you ought to recline in a lower place, so that he who invited you may make you go up to a more honorable place. But if he does not wish to, eat where you are reclining, because you brought nothing into this world. Is it too little for you that you are eating at someone else’s expense? Recline anywhere, and eat. You will say, “I eat from my own.” Hear the apostle: “We brought nothing into this world.” You came into the world; you found a full table. “But the earth is the Lord’s, and its fullness.” “For those who want,” he says, “to become rich.” He did not say, “those who are rich,” but “those who want to become rich”: he accused desires, not means. “Those who want to become rich fall into temptation and into many foolish and harmful desires, which plunge men into ruin and destruction.” Money delights you; do you not fear these things? Money is a good thing, much money is a good thing. “They fall into temptation”: do you not fear? “They fall into many foolish and harmful desires”: do you not fear? Fear where desires lead. What does “where they lead” mean? “Which plunge,” he says, “men into ruin and destruction.” Are you still deaf? Do you not fear ruin and destruction? God thunders like this, and you snore?

But to those who are already rich the apostle gave further advice: “Command,” he says, “the rich of this world not to be proud.” The worm of riches is pride. It is difficult for one who is rich not to be proud. Take away pride, and riches will do no harm. But consider what you ought to do with them, lest what God has bestowed lie idle with you. “Not to be proud”: I take away this vice. “Nor to hope in the uncertainty of riches”: take away this vice too. When you have taken these away, practice good works. Which ones? Hear: “Let them be rich,” he says, “in good works; let them not hope in the uncertainty of riches.” But where should they hope? “In the living God, who provides us with everything abundantly to enjoy.” God provides the world to the poor man; he provides it to the rich. Because he is rich, will he fill two bellies? Pay attention and see that from God’s gifts the poor sleep satisfied. He who feeds you feeds them too, through you.

So let money not be loved; but if it is already had, let good be done with it. Be rich, you who have it. But rich where? “In good works. Let them give readily,” he says, “let them share.” Here avarice contracts at once when it hears, “Let them give readily, let them share”: as though doused with cold water, it stiffens, draws its purse tight, and says, “I will not lose the fruit of my labors.” Unhappy man, you do not want to lose your labors? See, you will die, and you who brought nothing here can take nothing from here: when you have taken nothing away, will you not have lost all your labors? Hear, then, God’s counsel. Do not be frightened because he said, “Let them give readily, let them share.” Hear what follows. Wait; do not shut the door against me, nor the entrance of your heart; wait. Do you want to know that “Let them give readily, let them share” means that you will not lose, and that this alone you will not lose? “Let them store up for themselves,” he says, “a good foundation for the future, so that they may lay hold of the true life.” This life, then, that delights you is a false life: you live here as if in dreams. If you live here as if in dreams, you will wake when you die, and so you will find nothing in your hands. It is as if a beggar sleeps, and in his dreams an inheritance comes to him: nothing is happier than he until he gets up. He sees himself in his dreams handling splendid clothes and precious vessels of gold and silver, entering most pleasant and spacious estates, great households serving him: he wakes up and weeps. And as a man awake accuses one who has robbed him, so he accuses the one who woke him. The psalm has spoken of this most plainly: “They slept their sleep,” it says, “and all the men of riches found nothing in their hands, after they had finished their sleep.”

Since, then, you brought nothing, you will take nothing away from here. Send on ahead what you found, and you will not lose it. Give to Christ: for Christ wanted to receive here. Give to Christ, and you do not lose. You do not lose if you entrust it to your slave; and do you lose if you entrust it to your Lord? You do not lose if you entrust to your slave what you have acquired; and will you lose if you entrust to your Lord what you received from that very Lord of yours? Christ chose to be in need here, but for our sake. All the poor whom you see: Christ could feed them, as he fed Elijah by a raven; yet even from Elijah he took away the raven, so that he might be fed by a widow, as a favor not to Elijah but to the widow. When God makes people poor, then, because he himself does not want them to have; when he makes people poor, he tests the rich. For so it is written: “The poor and the rich met each other.” Where did they meet each other? In this life. This one was born, that one was born: they found each other, they met each other. And who made them both? The Lord. The rich man, to help the poor; the poor man, to test the rich. Let each one give according to his means; let him not give in such a way that he himself suffers want. We do not say this. Your superfluities are another’s necessities. You heard just now, when the Gospel was being read: “Whoever gives a cup of cold water to one of the least of mine for my sake will not lose his reward.” He has put the kingdom of heaven up for sale, and willed its price to be a cup of cold water. But when the one who gives alms is poor, then his alms should be a cup of cold water. Let the one who has more do more. That widow gave from two mites; Zacchaeus gave half his goods, and kept the other half for repaying his frauds. Alms profit those who have changed their life. For you give to Christ in need so as to redeem your past sins. For if you give so that you may always be free to sin with impunity, you are not feeding Christ but trying to bribe the judge. So give alms for this purpose: that your prayers may be heard, and God may help you to change your life for the better. And you who are changing that life, change it for the better, so that through alms and prayers your past evils may be blotted out, and the eternal goods to come may come.

Often, brothers, we have sung with the psalmist, “Wait for the Lord, act manfully; and let your heart be strengthened, and wait for the Lord.” What does “Wait for the Lord” mean? That you should receive when he gives, not demand when you want. The time of giving is not yet: he has waited for you; wait for him. What did I mean by “He has waited for you; wait for him”? If you are already living justly, if you have already turned to him, if your past deeds displease you, if it has already pleased you to choose a good new life, do not be in a hurry to demand. He waited for you to change your bad life; wait for him, so that he may crown your good life. For if he too had not waited, there would be no one for him to give to. Wait, then, because you have been waited for.

But you who do not want to be corrected, whoever you are here who still do not want to be corrected (as if there were only one: I should rather have said, “Whoever of you are here”); still, you who are here, who have not resolved to be corrected (I will speak as if to one), whoever you are who do not want to be corrected, what do you promise yourself? Are you perishing by despair, or by hope? Whoever perishes by despairing says in his mind, “My iniquity is upon me; I am wasting away in my sins; what hope of life have I?” Hear the prophet saying, “I do not want the death of the wicked; only let the wicked turn from his most evil way and live.” Whoever perishes by hoping says in his mind, “God is good, God is merciful, he forgives everything, he does not repay evil for evil.” Hear the apostle saying, “Do you not know that the patience of God leads you to repentance?”

What, then, remains? For if we have gained anything with you, if what I said has entered your heart, I see what you will answer me: “It is true; I neither despair, so as to perish by despairing, nor do I hope wrongly, so as to perish by hoping. I do not say to myself, ‘My iniquity is upon me; I have no hope now.’ Nor do I say to myself, ‘God is good; he repays evil to no one.’ I say neither this nor that: the prophet presses me, the apostle presses me.”

“And what do you say?” “Let me live a little while longer as I like.” These are the ones who wear us out: they are very many, they are troublesome. “Let me live a little while longer as I like; afterward, when I have corrected myself, what the prophet said is certainly true: ‘I do not want the death of the wicked; only let the wicked turn from his most evil way and live.’ When I have turned, he will blot out all my evils: why should I not add something to my pleasures, and live as long as I like and as I like, and turn to God afterward?”

Why do you say this, brother? Why? “Because God has promised pardon if I change.” I see, I know: God has promised pardon. He promises it through the holy prophet, and he promises it through me, his least servant; what he promises is true; he promised it through his only Son. But why do you want to add evil days to evil days? “Sufficient for the day is its own evil.” Yesterday was an evil day, today is evil, and tomorrow is evil. Or do you think the days good when you satisfy your pleasures, when you nourish your heart in luxuries, when you lay snares for another’s chastity, when you grieve your neighbor by fraud, when you deny what was entrusted to you, when you swear falsely for a coin? When you treat yourself to a good lunch, do you think you are spending a good day? How can a day be good when the man is bad? Do you want to add bad days to bad days?

“I beg you,” he says, “let me be left alone a little while.” Why? “Because God has promised me pardon.” But no one has promised you that you will live tomorrow. Or read me, as you read the prophet, the Gospel, the apostle, that when you turn God blots out all your iniquities: read me where tomorrow was promised you, and live badly tomorrow. And yet, my brother, I ought not to have said this to you. Perhaps your life will be long: if it is long, let it be good. Why do you want to have a long life and a bad one? Either it will not be long, and that long life ought to delight you which has no end; or it will be long, and what harm will there be in having lived well for a long time? You want to live badly for a long time; you do not want to live well? And yet no one has promised you tomorrow. Correct yourself; hear the Scripture: “Do not delay to turn to God.” These words are not mine; and yet they are mine too. If I love them, they are mine: love them, and they are yours. This word that I am now speaking belongs to holy Scripture: if you despise it, it is your adversary. But hear the Lord saying, “Make peace with your adversary quickly.” Let all hear: I am reciting the words of divine Scripture. O wicked delayer, O wicked craver of tomorrow, hear the Lord speaking, hear holy Scripture proclaiming. From this place I am a watchman. “Do not delay to turn to God, and do not put it off from day to day.” See whether it did not see them, whether it did not look into those who say, “Tomorrow I will live well; today I will live badly.” And when tomorrow comes, you will say the same. “Do not delay to turn to God, and do not put it off from day to day. For suddenly his wrath will come, and in the time of vengeance he will destroy you.” Did I write this? Can I blot it out? If I blot it out, I fear to be blotted out. Can I keep silent about it? I am afraid to keep silent. I am compelled to preach: terrified, I terrify. Fear with me, so that you may rejoice with me. “Do not delay to turn to God.” Lord, see that I am saying it; Lord, you know that you terrified me when your prophet was being read. Lord, you know my fear in that chair when your prophet was being read. See, I am saying, “Do not delay to turn to God, and do not put it off from day to day. For suddenly his wrath will come, and in the time of vengeance he will destroy you.” But I do not want him to destroy you.

Do not say to me, “I want to perish”; because I do not want it. Better, then, my “I do not want” than your “I want.” If your father were lying sick with lethargy in your hands, and you, a young man, were attending your sick old father, and the doctor said, “Your father is in danger; this sleep is a deadly heaviness; watch him, do not let him sleep; if you see him sleeping, wake him; if waking is not enough, pinch him; if even that is not enough, prod him, so that your father does not die”: you, the young man, would be a burden to the old man. He, dissolved into a sweet sickness, would be drifting off, closing his eyes as that heaviness pressed on them; you, on the contrary, would shout to your father, “Do not sleep.” And he: “Leave me alone; I want to sleep.” And you: “But the doctor said, ‘If he wants to sleep, he must not sleep.’” And he: “I beg you, leave me alone; I want to die.” “But I do not want it,” says the son to his father. To whom? To one who wishes to die. And yet you want to put off your father’s death, and to live a little longer with your old father, who will die anyway. The Lord cries to you, “Do not sleep, lest you sleep forever; wake up, so that you may live with me and have a father whom you will never carry out to burial.” You hear, and you are deaf.

What have I done as a watchman? I am free; I do not burden you. I know that some will say, “What did he want to say to us? He frightened us, burdened us, made us guilty.” On the contrary, I wanted to free you from guilt. It is foul, it is shameful (I will not say evil, I will not say dangerous, I will not say ruinous), it is shameful that I should deceive you, if God does not deceive me. The Lord threatens death to the ungodly, the most wicked, cheats, criminals, adulterers, seekers of pleasures, those who despise him, those who grumble about the times and do not change their ways: the Lord threatens them with death, threatens hell, threatens eternal destruction. What do they want, that I should promise what he does not promise? See, a steward gives you a guarantee: what use is it to you if the master of the house does not accept it? I am a steward, I am a servant: do you want me to tell you, “Live as you like; the Lord will not destroy you”? A steward has given you a guarantee: a steward’s guarantee is worth nothing. Would that the Lord gave it, and I made you anxious! For the Lord’s guarantee is valid even if I do not want it; but mine is worth nothing if he does not want it. And what is our security, brothers, whether mine or yours, except that we listen attentively and carefully to the Lord’s commands and faithfully await his promises? In these we grow weary, because we are men: let us implore his help; let us groan to him. Let our prayers not be for worldly things that pass away, transitory and vanishing like vapor; but let our prayers be for the fulfilling of justice itself and for sanctification, for the name of God: not for defeating a neighbor, but for defeating lust; not for healing the flesh, but for taming avarice. Let our prayers be on this: may he help us as we struggle, so that he may crown us as we conquer.

While the divine Scriptures were being read (we cannot now speak about all their sentences), I noticed one sentence, very brief in number of words but very large in weight of meaning. From it I have chosen, with the Lord’s help, to serve this great expectation of your Charity according to the modest measure of our strength, and to minister to you from the Lord’s storeroom, from which I too live with you. This, then, is the sentence I am speaking of: “Hold faith with your neighbor in his poverty, so that you may also enjoy his good things.” Let us take it first as it seems to sound simply, as all can understand it, even those who search into none of the more hidden things of the divine Scriptures. “Hold faith,” it says, “with your neighbor in his poverty, so that you may also enjoy his good things.” It is true, says one who has heard it simply: when a friend is poor, faith with him must not be broken; one must stay with him and not change one’s friendship when his fortune changes; faith must be kept, with a steadfast will. For if my friend was my friend when he was rich and is not my friend now that he is poor, then it was not he who was my friend, but his gold. But if my friend was the man himself, then whether the gold remains or goes, he is the same man he was: why, then, should he not be my friend now, when, though he has lost his treasure, he has not lost his heart? If I were buying a horse, I might not despise it when stripped of its trappings and saddle-cloth; and did my friend please me when clothed and displease me when stripped? Well, then, does divine Scripture command, most wholesomely and most suitably to human conduct, “Hold faith with your neighbor in his poverty.”

“So that you may also enjoy his good things.” What then? Coming to the second part of this sentence, are we to think of our friend in such a way as to say to ourselves, “We must stay with him and keep faith with him in his poverty, so that we may enjoy his good things”? For the one who is poor now will be rich, and he will not admit you to his riches if before you proudly scorned his poverty. Hold faith with him, then, even when he is poor, so that you may also enjoy his good things when riches come to him, and rejoice with him in them. Hold faith with him: he is poor, but he has a great possession, faith. You who were ready, and wanted, to hold land with him if he had land that you might hold together, how much more securely do you hold faith with him? For perhaps your friend is someone from whom a wicked man could take his possession: will he be able to take his faith? What, then, does “so that you may also enjoy his good things” mean? Surely that he may become rich instead of poor, and you will enjoy his riches because you did not despise his poverty.

The first part of this sentence, on this popular understanding, pleases me; but the second, I confess, offends me. For if you stay with a friend in his poverty so that, when he is rich, you may enjoy his riches, you still love not the friend but something else in the friend. Faith and hope are two good friends, and greater than these is charity. “There remain,” says the apostle, “these three, faith, hope, and charity; but the greatest of these is charity: pursue charity.” So I question one friend about another. Tell me, I beg you, are you holding faith with this man in his poverty? “Certainly,” he says; “for I heard this in holy Scripture, and commended it to my heart and laid it up in my memory; I gladly recall it, and more gladly do it. For I heard the holy word, ‘Hold faith with your neighbor in his poverty.’” And I say: Why do you do this? For the sake of what follows, “so that you may also enjoy his good things”? What, then, are you expecting? “That when he is rich,” he says, “and good things have come to him, he may admit me to his good things, because I did not scorn his hardships.” Bear with me, then, while I question you a little more. What if this man, with whom you hold faith while he is poor, is never rich? What if he is going to be poor until he dies? Does faith perish because hope has been disappointed? Because you will not be able to hold gold with him as a rich man, will you regret having held faith with him as a poor one? If he has human sense, or rather if he has a sense of the truth, he will be troubled by this question and will say to me, “You are right. It is a good thing to hold faith with one’s neighbor; but if you say that faith is held with a poor neighbor in the hope of coming to his riches and sharing them with him, then without doubt, when this poor man has died and the hoped-for riches have not come, we shall regret that whole good deed, and what we milked well we shall pour out badly.” You see, then, that this sentence must be searched out more deeply: not as it can be understood popularly, but as it was set down by divine authority, to suggest, to teach, and to command something great to us, where our hope will not be deceived, so that we may not regret having held faith. You cannot reach the meaning of our sentence in that way.

So consider that poor man Lazarus, lying at the rich man’s gate. This poor man was wretchedly sick: he did not even have bodily health, which is the poor man’s patrimony. He was also covered with sores; dogs licked his sores. And in that house there was a rich man, who was clothed in purple and fine linen and feasted splendidly every day, and who would not hold faith with the poor man. Rightly the Lord Jesus, the lover and giver of faith, paid more attention to faith itself in the poor man than to gold and luxury in the rich man; he paid more attention to the poor man’s possession than to the rich man’s pride. That is why he named the poor man, but judged that the other’s name should be passed over in silence. “There was,” he says, “a certain rich man, who was clothed in purple and fine linen and feasted splendidly every day; and a certain poor man named Lazarus.” Does it not seem to you that he read it out of a book in which he found the poor man’s name written and did not find the rich man’s? For that book was the book of the living and the just, not of the proud and the wicked. The rich man was named by men and the poor man passed over in silence; the Lord, on the contrary, named the poor man and kept silent about the rich man. That rich man, then, would not hold faith with the poor man. Both died. The beggar died and was carried by the angels into Abraham’s bosom. The rich man died and was buried (for perhaps the other was not even buried); and when he was in torment in hell, as we read, he lifted up his eyes from afar and saw in Abraham’s bosom the poor man whom he had despised at his gate. He could not have a common rest with the man with whom he had refused to have a common faith. “Father Abraham,” he says, “send Lazarus to dip his finger in water and let it drip on my tongue, for I am tormented in this flame.” The answer was: “Remember, son, that you received your good things in your life, and Lazarus evil things; so now he is at rest here, and you are in torment. And besides all this, there is a great chasm between us and you, so that no one can pass from us to you, nor cross from you to us.” He saw that mercy was denied him because he had denied it. He saw that it was true: “Judgment without mercy for one who has not shown mercy.” And he who in his own time would not take pity on the poor man took pity on his brothers too late. “Send Lazarus, then,” he says: “I have five brothers there; let him tell them what happens here, so that they too may not come to this place of torment.” And to this the answer was given: “If they do not want to come to this place of torment, they have Moses and the Prophets; let them hear them.” He used to mock the prophets, surely together with his brothers. For I believe, indeed I do not doubt, that when he talked with those brothers of his about the prophets, who urge what is good, forbid what is evil, threaten torments to come, and promise rewards to come, he mocked all this, saying with his brothers, “What life is there after death? What memory is there in decay? What feeling in ashes? Everyone is carried there and buried; who has ever been heard to come back from there?” Recalling these words of his, he wanted Lazarus to go back to his brothers, so that they would no longer say, “Who has come back from there?” And to this a fitting and worthy answer was given. For he seems to have been a Jew, and therefore to have said, “Father Abraham.” So the answer was excellent and fitting: “If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be persuaded if someone rises from the dead.” This was fulfilled in the Jews, because they did not listen to Moses and the Prophets, nor did they believe Christ when he rose. Had he not foretold this to them: “If you believed Moses, you would believe me also”?

So that rich man remained without help, his temporal delights ended, in eternal punishment. He had not done what was just; he heard what he deserved: “Remember that you received your good things in your life.” This life, then, that you see is not yours. “You received your good things.” These things that you sigh for, longing from afar, are not yours, then. Where now are the words of the rich and of those who flatter the rich, when they see someone abounding in temporal delights, wealthy in land, seizing land and piling it up, and drawing to himself the lead with which he will sink? For a great weight brought that rich man down to hell, and a heavy burden pressed him to the depths. For he had not heard: “Come to me, you who labor and are burdened. My yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” Christ’s burden is wings. On these wings that poor man flew into Abraham’s bosom. The rich man would not hear this; for he listened to the tongues of flatterers. By these tongues he was deafened to the prophets: the tongues of those who praised him wrongly and said, “You alone are somebody; you alone really live.” So: “You received your good things in your life.” For these you thought were your goods; you did not believe in others or hope for them: you received them in your life. For you thought that this alone was your life, since you hoped for nothing after death and feared nothing sad. “You received your good things in your life, and Lazarus evil things.” He did not say “his,” but “evil things”: the things that people think evil, that people fear, that people avoid as a great matter. Lazarus received evil things here. His good things he did not receive then; yet he did not lose them. And as “his” was not added, so neither was “in his life” added. For his life was another, which he hoped for in Abraham’s bosom. Here he was dead; here he was not living: he was dead with the death of which the apostle speaks: “For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.” The poor man bore temporal evils; God was deferring his good things, not taking them away. Why, then, rich man, do you desire in hell what you did not hope for while you were enjoying your riches? Are you not the one who, despising the poor man, mocked Moses the prophet? You would not, then, hold faith with your neighbor in his poverty; do you now want to enjoy his good things? You mocked when you heard, “Hold faith with your neighbor in his poverty, so that you may also enjoy his good things.” Now you see his good things from afar, and do not hold them with him. For those good things were to come, and to come invisibly. When they were not seen, they had to be believed, so that when they are seen you might not be left with the grief of seeing them and being unable to hold them.

So, brothers, as far as I can see, this sentence has been made clear. It must, of course, be understood in a Christian way by Christians. Let us not hold faith with a poor neighbor in such a way as to hope that temporal riches will come to him, keeping our faith with a view to possessing them with him. Not that way at all, not that way. But how, except according to the command of our Lord: “Make friends for yourselves by means of the mammon of iniquity, so that they may receive you into the eternal tabernacles”? For there are poor people here who have no tabernacles in which to receive us. Make them your friends by means of the mammon of iniquity, that is, by means of the gains that iniquity calls gains. For there are gains that justice calls gains: these are in God’s treasuries. Do not despise the poor, who have nowhere to return to, nowhere to enter. They do have somewhere to enter; they have tabernacles, and eternal ones too. They have places into which you will wish in vain to be received, like that rich man, if you do not receive them into yours now; because “whoever receives a just man in the name of a just man will receive a just man’s reward; whoever receives a prophet in the name of a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward; and whoever gives one of the least of mine a cup of cold water only in the name of a disciple, amen, I say to you, he will not lose his reward.” Such a one, too, holds faith with his neighbor in his poverty; therefore he enjoys his good things.

Your Lord too says it to you, he who, though he was rich, became poor: he explains this sentence to you better and more solidly. For perhaps, about the poor man whom you have taken into your house, your mind somewhat doubts and hesitates whether he is honest or perhaps a deceitful pretender, a hypocrite: your mind wavers in showing mercy, because you cannot see into his heart. Do it even with a bad one, so that you may reach a good one too. The man who feared that his good seed would fall on the road, among thorns, on stones, too lazy to sow in winter, went hungry in summer. Yet your Lord, about whom you certainly have no doubt if you are a Christian, says to you: “For your sake I became poor, though I was rich.” “Who, being in the form of God” (what is richer than that form?) “did not think it robbery to be equal with God, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant” (what is richer than the form of God? What is poorer than the form of a servant?), “made in the likeness of men, and found in appearance as a man; he humbled himself, becoming obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.” Add this too: he was thirsty on the cross; he received a drink, not from one who pitied him but from one who mocked him; and the fountain of life drank vinegar in his death. Do not scorn this, do not despise it, do not say, “So my God became man? So my God was killed, was crucified?” Yes, certainly, so: he was crucified. His poverty is commended to you. He was far from you; he came near to you by poverty. “Hold faith with your neighbor in his poverty.” Here, certainly, this sentence nowhere wavers, nowhere is dark. For the name “neighbor” take the name “Christ,” and take it humbly. For if you are humble, you are suited to the humble one; if you are humble, you long for the high one. Take it humbly, and understand “neighbor”: “For the Lord is near to those who have crushed their heart,” so that you may say in prayer, “As a neighbor, as our brother, so I was pleasing.” This one word, then, the prophet added when he named “neighbor”; for prophetic speech had to be covered a little by the veil of a sacrament, so that it might be sought with greater desire and found with greater sweetness. Where he named “neighbor,” then, you name Christ; for he too named Christ in this way, prophetically. Name Christ, and see the sentence run clear, watering your thirst as from the fountain of truth: “Hold faith with Christ in his poverty, so that you may also enjoy his good things.” What does “Hold faith with Christ” mean? In that he became man for your sake, in that he was born of a virgin, in that he received insults, was scourged, was hung on the wood, was wounded by the lance, was buried: do not despise these things; let them not seem incredible to you; and so hold faith with your neighbor. For this is his poverty. And what does “so that you may also enjoy his good things” mean? Hear, for this is what he willed; hear, for this is why he came to you in poverty; hear the voice of the Lord your God, poor for your sake, making you rich; see how you will enjoy his good things if you keep faith with him in his poverty: “Father,” he says, “I will that where I am, they too may be with me.”

I, brothers, have little strength, but the word of God has great strength. May it prevail in your hearts. So what we say gently you will hear strongly, if you obey. The Lord has thundered through the prophet Isaiah as through his cloud: if you have any sense, you have taken fright. For he spoke plainly, and these words need no expositor but a doer. “What is the multitude of your sacrifices to me?” he says. “For who has required these things from your hands?” God seeks us, not our things. But the sacrifice of a Christian is alms to the poor. For by this God becomes propitious to our sins. And unless God becomes propitious to our sins, who remains but a guilty man? From the sins and faults without which this life is not lived, people are cleansed by alms; and these are of two kinds, giving and forgiving: giving the good you have, forgiving the evil you suffer. Hear how briefly the Lord, the good Master, who shortened his word on earth so that it might be fruitful and not burdensome, has embraced these two kinds of alms: “Forgive,” he says, “and you will be forgiven; give, and it will be given to you.” “Forgive, and you will be forgiven” pertains to pardoning; “give, and it will be given to you” pertains to giving out. From the alms by which you pardon a man you lose nothing. See, at once he asks pardon; you have pardoned; you have lost nothing. You have gone home richer in charity. The other kind of alms, in which we are commanded to give to the needy, seems heavy, because whatever anyone gives, he will not have the very thing he gives.

Indeed here too the apostle makes us secure, when he says, “According to what each one has; not that others should have relief and you distress.” Let each one, then, measure his means; let him not take care to store up treasure on earth. Let him give: what he gives does not perish. I do not say, “This does not perish,” but I say, “This alone does not perish.” The other things that you do not give and have in abundance, you either lose while you live or leave behind when you die. Next, my brothers, consider what a great promise exhorts us: “Forgive,” he says, “and you will be forgiven; give, and it will be given to you.” When he says, “Give, and it will be given to you,” consider to whom he says it. God says it to man, the immortal to a mortal, so great a householder to a beggar. For he is not going to take back what we gave. We have found someone to lend to. Let us lend at interest, but to God, not to man. We give to him who has everything in abundance; we give to him who gave us what to give. And for small, frivolous, mortal, perishable, earthly things, he gives eternal, incorruptible things that last without end. Why should I say much? He promises himself, the one who promises. If you love him, buy him from him. And so that you may know that you are giving to him, hear him saying, “I was hungry, and you gave me to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave me drink; I was a stranger, and you took me in; naked, and you clothed me; sick, and you visited me; in prison, and you came to me.” And they will say, “When did we see you in these needs and minister to you?” And he will say, “When you did it to one of the least of mine, you did it to me.” He gives from heaven, he receives on earth. He gives, and he receives. You are making, as it were, a transfer loan: you give here, you receive there; here you give things that will perish, there you receive things that will last without end.

And whenever you say to God, “Deliver me, O Lord, from the evil man” (for this is what we sang just now; and I know with what groaning you say, “Deliver me, O Lord, from the evil man”; for who in this world does not have to put up with some evil man?), when, then, you say this to God, “Deliver me, O Lord, from the evil man,” just as you say it with your whole heart, so first look at yourself with attentive eyes. “Deliver me, O Lord, from the evil man.” Suppose God answered you, “From whom?” You will say, “From Gaius, from Lucius, from so-and-so whom I have to put up with.” And he answers you, “Do you say nothing to me about yourself? If I am to deliver you from the evil man, you must first be delivered from yourself.” You suffer an evil man: do not be an evil you have to suffer in yourself. Let us see what another evil man can find in you to do to you. What can an evil man do to you? Do not you be evil. Let avarice not rule you, let your lust not trample you, let your anger not grind you. These are your inner enemies. Do nothing to yourself. Let us see what an evil neighbor does to you, an evil patron, an evil powerful man: let us see what he does to you. Let him find you just, let him find you faithful, let him find you a Christian: what will he do to you? What the Jews did to Stephen. By doing evil, they sent him to good. So when you ask God to deliver you from the evil man, look to yourself; do not spare yourself; let him deliver you from yourself. How does he deliver you from yourself? By forgiving sins, granting merits, giving you strength to fight against your desires, inspiring virtue, giving your mind a heavenly delight by which every earthly delight may be overcome. When God grants you these things, he delivers you from yourself, and amid the passing evils of this world you wait without fear for the Lord who is to come with the goods that cannot pass away. Let this be enough for you. You surely see that somehow I come to it weak and by speaking become strong, so great is my desire and my eagerness for your progress! For a laborer in the field who hopes for fruit feels his toil less. May you be my fruit, so that I may be with you, and we may all be God’s fruit.

The beginning of a good life, to which eternal life is also due, is right faith. Faith is believing what you do not yet see; and the reward of this faith is seeing what you believe. In the time of faith, then, as in the time of sowing, let us not lose heart, and let us not lose heart to the end; but let us persevere until we reap what we have sown. For since the human race had turned away from God and lay in its sins, just as we needed a Creator in order to exist, so we needed a Savior in order to live again. A just God condemned man; a merciful God frees man. “The God of Israel himself will give strength and fortitude to his people: blessed be God.” But believers receive it; those who despise it do not.

Yet we must not glory in faith itself as though we could do something of ourselves. For faith is not nothing, but something great; and if you have it, you have certainly received it. “For what do you have that you have not received?” See, dearly beloved, for what you should give thanks to the Lord God, lest you remain ungrateful for any gift of his, and through being ungrateful lose what you have received. The praise of faith can in no way be unfolded by me, but it can be pondered by the faithful. And if it is pondered even in part as it deserves, who could worthily ponder how far it is to be preferred to many gifts of God himself? And if we ought to acknowledge the lesser gifts of God in us, how much more ought we to acknowledge the gift that surpasses them?

From God we have it that we are what we are. For that we are not nothing, from whom do we have it, if not from God? But trees too exist, and stones exist: from whom, if not from God? What more, then, do we have? Trees and stones do not live; but we live. But even living we have in common with trees and shrubs. For vines are said to live as well; for if they did not live, it would not be written, “He killed their vines with hail.” A vine lives when it is green; it dries up when it dies. But that life has no sensation. What more do we have? We perceive by the senses. The sense of the body is known to be fivefold: we see, we hear, we smell, we taste, and by touch throughout our whole body we distinguish soft and hard, rough and smooth, hot and cold. There is, then, a fivefold sense in us; but the beasts have this too. So we have something more. And yet, my brothers, if we consider in ourselves even these things that we have listed, how much thanksgiving, how much praise do we owe the Creator for them? But still, what more do we have? Mind, reason, counsel, which the beasts do not have, the birds do not have, the fish do not have: in this we were made in the image of God. Indeed, where Scripture tells how we were made, it adds something that not only sets us before the cattle but sets us over them, that is, makes them subject to us: “Let us make man,” he says, “in our image and likeness, and let him have power over the fish of the sea and the birds of the sky and all the cattle and the serpents that creep on the earth.” Why should he have power? Because of the image of God. Hence some are told in rebuke, “Do not be like the horse and the mule, which have no understanding.” But understanding is one thing and reason another. For we have reason even before we understand; but we cannot understand unless we have reason. Man, then, is an animal capable of reason; or, to put it better and more briefly, a rational animal, in whose nature reason is present, and who has reason even before he understands. Indeed, he wants to understand precisely because reason comes first.

This, then, by which we surpass the beasts, we ought above all to cultivate in ourselves, and in a way to carve again and re-form. But who can do it, except the craftsman who formed it? We were able to deform the image of God in us; we are not able to re-form it. We have, then, to sum it all up briefly: existence with trees and stones; life with trees; sensation with beasts; understanding with angels. We distinguish colors with the eyes, sounds with the ears, smells with the nostrils, flavors with taste, heat with touch, ways of life with understanding. Understand. Every man wants to understand; there is no one who does not want to; but not all want to believe. A man says to me, “Let me understand, so that I may believe”; I answer, “Believe, so that you may understand.” Since such a controversy has in a way arisen between us, so that he says to me, “Let me understand, so that I may believe,” and I answer him, “No, believe, so that you may understand,” let us come with this controversy to a judge, and let neither of us presume a verdict in his own favor. What judge shall we find? Having considered all men, I do not know whether we can find a better judge than a man through whom God speaks. Let us not go, then, in this matter and this controversy to secular literature; let not a poet judge between us, but a prophet.

The blessed apostle Peter, with two other disciples of Christ the Lord, James and John, was on the mountain with the Lord himself, and heard a voice borne from heaven: “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear him.” Commending this, the same apostle said in his letter: “This voice we heard borne from heaven, when we were with him on the holy mountain.” And when he had said, “This voice we heard borne from heaven,” he added, “And we have the more certain prophetic word.” That voice sounded from heaven, and the prophetic word is more certain. Pay attention, dearly beloved; may the Lord help my will and your expectation, so that I may say what I want as I want. For which of us would not wonder that the apostle called the prophetic word more certain than a voice borne from heaven? He said “more certain”: more certain, not better, not truer. For that word from heaven is as true as the prophetic word, as good, as useful. What, then, does “more certain” mean, if not that by which the hearer is more firmly convinced? Why is this? Because there are unbelieving men who disparage Christ so as to say that he did by magic arts what he did. Unbelievers could therefore attribute even that voice borne from heaven to magic arts, by human conjectures and unlawful curiosity. But the prophets came before: I do not say before that voice, but before Christ’s flesh. Christ was not yet man when he sent the prophets. Whoever says he was a magician: if he brought it about by magic arts that he should be worshiped even when dead, was he a magician before he was born? See why the apostle Peter says, “We have the more certain prophetic word.” The voice from heaven is that by which believers are admonished; the prophetic word, that by which unbelievers are convinced. We have understood, as it seems to me, dearly beloved, why the apostle Peter said, “We have the more certain prophetic word,” after the voice borne from heaven.

And how great was Christ’s own condescension! This Peter who speaks so was a fisherman; and now an orator wins great praise if he can be understood by that fisherman. That is why the apostle Paul, speaking to the first Christians, says: “Consider your calling, brothers: not many were wise according to the flesh, not many powerful, not many noble; but God chose the weak things of the world to confound the strong; and God chose the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God chose the low and contemptible things of the world, and things that are not as though they were, so that the things that are might be brought to nothing.” For if Christ had first chosen an orator, the orator would say, “I was chosen for the merit of my eloquence.” If he had chosen a senator, the senator would say, “I was chosen for the merit of my rank.” Finally, if he had first chosen an emperor, the emperor would say, “I was chosen for the merit of my power.” Let these be quiet and wait a little, be quiet a little: let them not be left out, not despised, but put off a little, those who can glory of themselves in themselves. “Give me,” he says, “that fisherman; give me an uneducated man; give me an unskilled man; give me one with whom a senator does not deign to speak even when he buys fish from him. Give me him,” he says: “if I fill him, it will be plain that I am the one who does it. I shall make a senator too, and an orator, and an emperor; at some time I shall make a senator too, but more surely the fisherman.” A senator can glory of himself, an orator can, an emperor can; a fisherman cannot, except in Christ. Let the fisherman come to teach wholesome humility; let the fisherman come first; through him the emperor is better brought in.

Remember, then, the holy, just, good fisherman, full of Christ, to whose nets, cast throughout the world, this people too belonged, to be caught with the rest; remember, then, that he said, “We have the more certain prophetic word.” Give me, then, a prophet as judge for that controversy. What was at issue between us? You were saying, “Let me understand, so that I may believe”; I was saying, “So that you may understand, believe.” The controversy has arisen; let us come to the judge; let the prophet judge, or rather let God judge through the prophet. Let us both be silent. What we both said has been heard. “Let me understand,” you say, “so that I may believe.” “Believe,” I say, “so that you may understand.” Let the prophet answer: “Unless you believe, you will not understand.”

But do you think, dearly beloved, that the one who says, “Let me understand, so that I may believe,” says nothing true either? For what are we doing now, if not trying to bring to belief, not those who do not believe, but those who still believe too little? For if they did not believe at all, they would not be here. Faith brought them to listen; faith made them present to the word of God; but that faith which has sprouted must be watered, nourished, strengthened. This is what we are doing. “I planted,” he says, “Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither he who plants is anything, nor he who waters, but God who gives the growth.” By speaking, exhorting, teaching, persuading we can plant and water, but we cannot give the growth. The man with whom he was speaking knew this: for his faith, which was sprouting and still tender, still weak, and largely wavering (yet not no faith, but some faith), he prayed for a helper, saying to him, “I believe, Lord.”

Just now, when the Gospel was read, you heard: “If you can believe,” the Lord Jesus said to the boy’s father, “if you can believe, all things are possible to one who believes.” And he, looking at himself, placed as it were before himself, not with rash confidence but first examining his conscience, saw that there was some faith in him, and saw wavering too; he saw both. He confessed that he had the one, and asked for help with the other. “I believe,” he said, “Lord.” What followed? Was it, “Help my faith”? He did not say this. “I believe, Lord; I see something here in which I do not lie; I believe; I speak the truth. But I also see here something or other that displeases me. I want to stand, but I still totter. I speak standing; I have not fallen, because I believe; but still I totter: help my unbelief.” So, dearly beloved, the one whom I set up as my opponent, and for whose controversy with me I asked for the prophet as judge, also says something when he says, “Let me understand, so that I may believe.” For certainly what I am now saying, I say so that those who do not yet believe may believe; and yet unless they understand what I say, they cannot believe. So what he says is in part true, “Let me understand, so that I may believe”; and I, who say with the prophet, “No, believe, so that you may understand”: we both speak the truth; let us agree. So understand, so that you may believe; believe, so that you may understand. I will say briefly how we may accept both without controversy: understand my word, so that you may believe; believe God’s word, so that you may understand.

Of our Lord and Savior, dearly beloved brothers, it was prophesied long ago: “He will grow up like a shoot, and like a root in thirsty ground.” Why like a root? This is why: “He has no form nor honor.” He suffered, he was humiliated, he was spat upon; he had no form; he appeared as a man, though he was God. But it is as with a root, which is not beautiful but holds within it the power of its beauty. Pay attention, my brothers; see the mercy of God. You look at a beautiful tree, pleasant, green with leaves, rich in fruit, and you praise it. It delights you to pluck some of its fruit, to sit in its shade and rest from the heat; you praise all that beauty. If the root were shown you, there is no beauty in it. Do not despise what is lowly: from it has come what you admire. “Like a root in thirsty ground.” Look now at the splendor of the tree.

The Church has grown; the nations have believed; the princes of the earth have been conquered under the name of Christ, so that they might be conquerors throughout the world. Their neck has been placed under the yoke of Christ. Before, they persecuted Christians for the sake of idols; now they persecute idols for the sake of Christ. All flee for help to the Church, in every distress, in every tribulation of theirs. That mustard seed has grown; it has become greater than all the herbs; the birds of the sky, the proud of the world, come and rest under its branches. Where does this great beauty come from? It has risen from some root or other, and this beauty is in great glory. Let us look for the root. He was spat upon, humiliated, scourged, crucified, wounded, despised. See, here there is no form; but in the Church the glory of the root is powerful. So the prophet describes the bridegroom himself, despised, dishonored, lowly. But now you are able to see the tree that has risen from that root and filled the whole world: “a root in thirsty ground.”

“He has no form nor honor; and we saw him, and he had no form nor comeliness.” “Is not this the carpenter’s son?” How little comeliness he had, that it was said, “Do we not say truly that you have a demon?” In his name demons fled, and it is thrown at him that he had a demon. But why this? “We saw him, and he had no form nor comeliness.” What is his form within, where he was not seen? “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” What is his form? “Who, being in the form of God, did not think it robbery to be equal with God.”

And where was he seen to have no form nor comeliness? “And he had no form; but his face was cast down, and his bearing unsightly before all men. A man under the blow.” A man under the blow; before the blow, God; after the blow, man and God. “A man under the blow, and one who knows how to bear infirmities.” Whose infirmities? Those of the very men by whom he suffered. The physician bore the infirmities of the delirious; and while he himself was being crucified, he prayed and said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” Pay attention: let us love the bridegroom. The more unsightly he is presented to us, the dearer and the sweeter he has become to the bride. “For which reason he also turned himself away.” He turned himself away, so that those who were crucifying him might not understand him. “His face was dishonored, and was not highly esteemed.”

“He bears our infirmities and is in sorrows for us; and we thought him to be in sorrows, and under the blow, and in punishment. But he was wounded for our sins, and weakened for our iniquities. The chastisement of our peace was upon him; by his bruise we were healed. All we like sheep have gone astray, and the Lord handed him over for our sins.” Is this the Gospel, or prophecy? What do the Jews say against these things? Is it not amazing that they hear these things, possess these things, read these things, and do not find anyone of whom they could be said except that one man who is preached in the Gospel throughout the world, and still are not Christians, but are so blind against the most evident words of the prophets? Do not wonder at the blindness of the Jews about Christ. See, what is said of the bridegroom passes over, and what is said of the bride begins; and just as you wondered at the blindness of the Jews about the bridegroom, so you will wonder at the blindness of the heretics about the bride.

“The Lord handed him over for our sins; and he, because he was ill-treated, did not open his mouth. Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter; and like a lamb before its shearer he was without voice; so he did not open his mouth. In his humiliation his judgment was taken away.” And so that you may not despise him: “Who will tell of his generation?” What generation? “Before the morning star I begot you.” See one generation: “before the morning star,” before all things that were made, before all the angels, before all creation. Why? Because all things were made through him. But perhaps it is his second generation that is told. Who tells of it? He is conceived by faith; no man approaches; a virgin’s womb swells; he comes forth like a bridegroom from his chamber. Wonderful is this generation. The human one is wonderful, because it is without a father; that other is wonderful, because it is without a mother. “Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter, like a lamb before its shearer, so he did not open his mouth. In his humiliation his judgment was taken away. Who will tell of his generation? For his life will be taken away from the earth.” It proclaims his resurrection. You see that the Lord spoke truly (as if the Truth could speak otherwise than truly) when he said, “The things that are written in the Law and the Prophets and the Psalms about me”: that the Christ had to suffer and rise again, you have heard. And “rise again” you have just heard: “For his life will be taken away from the earth.” “And that repentance and the forgiveness of sins should be preached in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem”: you will hear that too from this prophet. Not that we ought to put the prophet before the Lord: the herald went before; the judge followed. The herald spoke not his own words but the judge’s, and the judge, following, confirmed his own words in the herald. “For his life will be taken away from the earth. Because of the iniquities of my people he was led to death.” You heard him just now saying to them, “What have I done to you? If you have found sin in me, prove it.” And they: “Crucify, crucify!” They thought him a man, yet an innocent one. So: “Because of the iniquities of my people he was led to death.”

“I will give, then, the wicked for his burial.” What does this mean, “I will give the wicked for his burial, and the rich for his death”? The wicked because of the burial, the rich because of the death. That rich man from Arimathea, Joseph, while the Lord was hanging on the cross, went in to Pilate and asked for his body: he obtained it, so as to bury it. The rich were given for his death: he buried the poor one, in whom he sought riches. So: “the rich for his death.” What the prophet said second happened first; what he said first happened afterward. “The wicked for his burial.” Where do we show it? The Jews went in to Pilate and said to him, “Lord, we have heard that that deceiver (ho planos), that is, that impostor, told his disciples that he would rise after being killed. Order the tomb to be guarded, lest his disciples come by night and take him away, and the error become greater than the first.” Pilate said to them, “You have soldiers; go, guard it as you wish.” They took soldiers and stationed them there. These are the wicked; they were given because of his burial, to guard it. But how do we prove that they were wicked? The soldiers were sent innocent: the judge gave them orders; they came to the tomb; they guarded it. Hear that they were wicked: read the Gospel. After the Lord rose and they saw the angel, they were terrified and dismayed. When it was said to others, “Do not be afraid,” these were struck with fear, because they were not lifted up by faith. And yet, though they knew these things, they went to the Jews and told them all of it. The Jews said, “We will give you money.” So they were wicked: they hid the truth and sold a lie. And how did they sell a lie? No wonder: they sold a lie, the blind to the blind. “Say” (they were told) “that while we were asleep his disciples came and stole him away.” O vanity selling vanity to vanity! The vain will hear it and believe it. Even today this is held among the Jews; such is the report itself, how vain, how false, how empty. They will not hear the testimony of martyrs, so as to live; and they hear the testimony of sleepers, so as to perish. If the guards were asleep, how could they know who took him from the tomb? Or why were you awake, you wicked man? O wicked man, of whom the prophet said not without reason, “I will give the wicked for his burial.” O wicked, O most wicked men: either you were awake, and you ought to have guarded him; or you were asleep, and you do not know what happened. For what the Holy Spirit had foretold long before through the psalmist was fulfilled: “They devised a plan which they could not carry out.” Let us, then, dearest brothers, for whose salvation all these things were both foretold and fulfilled, give thanks to the divine mercy, and labor with all our strength as far as we can, so that God’s benefits may bring us not judgment but progress; so that when the dreadful day of judgment and the time of rendering account comes, whatever our Lord and Savior conferred on us when he was judged, he may find whole when he comes to judge. And indeed, when he comes, he will render what he promised, but he will require what he redeemed; and what he conferred in his first coming he will exact in his second. Although we ought to trust much in God’s mercy, we must not on that account be careless about fearing his justice. For he who redeemed you with mercy will judge you with justice. That he spares us when we sin for so long is not negligence but patience. He has not lost his power; he has kept us back for repentance. Let us fear, then, the justice of him whose mercy we desire. For he spares now, but he is not silent; and even if he is silent, he will not always be silent. Let us listen to him, then, while he is not silent in his commandment, if we want him to spare us when he is not silent in judgment. For now mercy is extended to us in advance; then justice will be required of us, and he will render to each according to his works; and what the apostle said will come to pass: “Judgment without mercy for one who has not shown mercy.”

Of all the readings that we heard recited, if your Charity noticed the first, from the prophet Isaiah (for we can neither remember nor speak of everything that was read), I think that its most recent words could have remained in your hearts, those with which the reader concluded: “But those who are devoted to me will possess the land and will dwell on my holy mountain.” Then the apostolic reading came up and began from this point: “Having, then, these promises, dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit, perfecting sanctification in the fear of God.” The divine mercy, which rules us, arranged it; it prepares food for us when we are hungry, not only for refreshing our bodies, for whose sake he makes his sun rise on the good and the bad and sends rain on the just and the unjust, but also for the hunger of our heart, which we suffer in this desert and would die of unless manna rained down. So, the Lord preparing his table for us, with no human effort arranging it, it came about, as he knows, that the readings followed one another in such a way that in Isaiah something was promised to us, and in the apostle it was said, “Having, then, these promises, dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit, perfecting sanctification in the fear of God,” as if the reading of the prophet and that of the apostle were one. For what does the apostle say? “Having, then, these promises, dearly beloved”: and there it is not said what promises, not because they are not there, but because the reader did not begin from there; and the hearer’s mind was, as it were, asking what promises the apostle meant when he said, “Having, then, these promises, dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit.” For a great task is laid on us, and no small labor, to cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit; and no one takes up this labor unless he hears of the reward that is promised. Since no one takes up the labor of cleansing flesh and spirit unless he is invited by a reward, it somehow happened that the reader began with the imposing of the labor and did not begin with the promise of the reward. But God did not wish to cheat the attentive hearer. If perhaps someone hesitated to take up the labor of cleansing flesh and spirit because he had not heard of the reward, let him arm himself with the beginning of the apostolic reading; but if he is looking for the promises, let him attend to the end of the prophetic reading. For where the prophetic reading ended, there is the promise; where the apostle’s reading began, there is the imposing of the work.

Let us rouse ourselves, then, and cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit, since we have these promises. What promises? “But those who are devoted to me,” says the Lord through Isaiah, “will possess the land and will dwell on my holy mountain.” Having these promises, then, let us cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit. Someone says, “Am I to cleanse myself from defilement of flesh and spirit for this, that I may possess land and dwell on a mountain?” We must without doubt ask what possessing the land and dwelling on the mountain mean, lest people perhaps hope that they will receive broad estates, and so not end their desire but defer it; or rather increase it, despising small things because they think they will receive greater things of the same kind. For who would not despise one plot of land if he were promised that he would possess a hundred? Or who would not despise the delights of one lunch, perhaps a poorer and more frugal one, if he were told, “Unless you restrain yourself, you will not come to that most splendid and lavish dinner”? Those who restrain themselves from some present things in this way do not end their desires. For fear of losing what they desire more, they despise lesser things; yet it is the same desire. Is not the man avaricious who despises a hundred purses so as to gain a thousand? Do not think he has put an end to his avarice because you found him despising a hundred purses. He is thinking of a thousand; that is why he despised a hundred. There are people who often pay court to old men who have no children; they put up with a great deal in them, but they hope for greater things from them. Do we think them merciful, or greedy? That is why the sons of the poor are more approved when they serve their poor parents, because piety leads them, not reward. But when the sons of the rich serve their parents, their piety is not proved, and even if it exists, it is hidden: for even if it is seen by God, it cannot be seen by men. So much so that the parents themselves often think badly of their sons, supposing that their sons serve them for the sake of money. When it is sometimes to their sons’ advantage to be emancipated from their parents, when some advantage perhaps requires it, if a son is going to marry or to attain some office, so that they should give him their property, they say, “I will not give it; for then he will no longer serve me.” What a verdict he has passed on his son, that he serves him for money, without regard to his love as a son! If, then, you fear that your son will not serve you once he has received the money, it is not lovable piety but piety for sale. How much better is the son of a poor man, sometimes the son of a wretched and needy old man, who, expecting nothing from his father because he has nothing to leave him, feeds his father with the toil and hardship of his sweat! Sometimes the sons of the rich too, out of the fear of God, serve their parents, not because they expect anything from them, but because they are their parents, who begot them and brought them up, and because God commanded, “Honor your father and your mother”; but the affection is hidden where a reward is in view. Yet they are the more acceptable to God, because men cannot see their mind; God alone sees it, and they cannot be praised by men: like Job, who worshiped God. For the demons thought that he worshiped God for a reward. But where was it proved that he worshiped him for nothing? When he had lost everything and said, “The Lord gave, the Lord has taken away; as it pleased the Lord, so it has been done: blessed be the name of the Lord.”

Why have I said these things, brothers? Because Scripture does not stop warning us every day to despise temporal things and love eternal ones: no page of the divine writings stops speaking to us, sometimes openly, sometimes obscurely in mystery. But let no one think himself cheated when a divine page speaks obscurely. Where the will of God comes forth to you, that is, where it is open, love it there, cherish it there, when it warns openly. And such as it is in the open, such it is in the obscure; such as it is in the sunlight, such it is in the shade. Follow it as such, if you read it as such. For it is obscure, as I said: “He will possess the land, and will dwell on my holy mountain.” For if we take it carnally, we shall not cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit; and God would have arranged in vain for the end of the prophetic reading to be joined to the beginning of the apostolic reading, if for the sake of possessing an earthly mountain we prepare ourselves for avarice, not for piety. But what are we to understand by “mountain”? It is obscure what he meant by “mountain.” But if God had abandoned us, he would nowhere say openly what the mountain is. Where he says it openly, there love the mountain. Where he openly commends the mountain to you and Scripture itself discloses what it means by “mountain,” there love it. And wherever you hear such a mountain promised, follow it: understand it in the obscure place to be the same as you loved in the open. Where do we think the mountain is spoken of, so that we may cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit? What mountain has been promised us? First let us know what land is promised us, the land for which the prophet David sighs in a certain place, saying, “You are my hope, my portion in the land of the living.” Without doubt, then, there is a land of the living, since this land is a land of the dying. And no one would call that land the land of the living unless he compared this land with it and found this to be a land of the dying. There is, then, a land of the living: though it is eternal and heavenly, it is called land because it is possessed, not because it is ploughed. For it has a possessor without labor; whereas this land works its possessor hard and wearies him with fear. What is said to you? “Get up, plough the land, so that you may have something to live on.” Willing or not, groaning and sighing, you get up and work, because the sentence of the condemned Adam follows you: “In the toil of your face you shall eat your bread.” But when all labor and groaning have passed, we shall be in the land of the living. Nothing is born and grows there: whatever is there is in the same way and is so always. Winter and summer, night and day do not alternate there. Here one sows, so as to reap there; if indeed one sows. For who is it who sows here so as to reap there? He who gives to the poor. Giving to the poor is sowing in the land. Sow here, and there you will find the harvest: it is not cut in summer so as to pass away, but it is both eaten and remains with joy. For there you will be filled with righteousness. That land has its bread. Who is this bread? He who came to us from there: “I am,” he says, “the living bread who came down from heaven.” What is this bread like? “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied.”

We have heard of the bread of that land; let us hear of the mountain too. “They will dwell,” it says, “on my holy mountain.” For I think we find in another holy Scripture that the mountain is Christ himself. He who is the bread is also the mountain: bread, because he feeds the Church; mountain, because the Church is his body. The Church itself is the mountain; and what is the Church itself? The body of Christ. Add the head to it, and it becomes one man: head and body, one man. Who is the head? He who was born of the Virgin Mary, who took on mortal flesh without sin, who was beaten by the Jews, scourged, despised, crucified; who was handed over for our offenses and rose for our justification. He is the head of the Church; he is the bread from that land. And what is his body? His wife, that is, the Church. “For the two shall be in one flesh. This is a great sacrament; but I speak of Christ and the Church.” So too the Lord in the Gospel, when he was speaking of husband and wife: “So they are no longer two, but one flesh.” So he willed God the Christ and the Church to be one man. There is the head; here are the members. He did not will to rise with the members but before the members, so that the members might have something to hope for. But the head willed to die for this reason, that the head might rise first; that the head might go first into heaven, so that the other members might have hope in their head and expect to be fulfilled in themselves what was promised in the head. For what need was there for Christ to die, the Word of God, through whom all things were made, of whom it is said, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God; all things were made through him”? And yet he is crucified, and mocked, and pierced with a lance, and buried; and all things were made through him. But since he deigned to be the head of the Church, the Church would despair of her own rising if she saw that her head had not risen. So the head rose, and the head was seen to rise. He was seen first by women, and it was announced to men. Women first saw the risen Lord; the Gospel was announced by women to the apostles, who were to be its evangelists, and through women Christ was announced to them. For “evangelium” means “good news” in Latin. Those who know Greek know what “evangelium” is. “Evangelium,” then, is good news. What news can we call as good as that our Savior has risen? Or what greater thing were they to preach than what the women announced to them? But why did a woman announce the Gospel? Because through a woman death was to be repaired. For a woman announcing life consoled the woman who announced death, since she had died by offering death. Through a woman Adam was led astray so as to fall into death; through a woman Christ was announced, risen now and never to die. So we too shall rise, and we shall be the holy mountain of God. In this mountain dwells he who is devoted to God. “But those who are devoted to me will possess the land and will dwell on my holy mountain”; that is, they will not withdraw from the Church. Now let us labor in the Church; afterward we shall inherit the Church. For when our joy is eternal there, we shall be there only as possessors, and we shall not labor.

But let us find this mountain clearly elsewhere, for here it seems somewhat obscure. Someone may say, “Where is the Church a mountain? And when is Christ a mountain? And when is the body of Christ a mountain?” Daniel says it most clearly; no one has any doubt about it. Daniel saw a vision; surely it needs no expositor now? Let your Charity see. Perhaps some words there need explanation, and they will be laid open to you, explained in the name of Christ. See whether it can be said of anyone but Christ. “I saw,” said Daniel, “and behold, a stone cut from the mountain without hands.” He did not say, “That stone was without hands,” but that the stone was cut from the mountain without human work: no human hands came near to cut the stone from the mountain. Your Charity knows that stones are not cut from a mountain without human hands coming near. But that one was cut from the mountain without hands, and it came and broke all the kingdoms of the earth. I do not know whether anyone comes before your eyes but Christ, of whom it was said, “All the kings of the earth will worship him.” He broke all the kingdoms of the earth. A proud king wants to have no king before him; now all kings have Christ as their king. He broke all the kingdoms of the earth, then, so that he might reign. And what does the prophet say? “That stone grew and became a great mountain, so that it filled the whole face of the earth.” Now I think you recognize Christ. You have heard of the land: “Those who are devoted to me will possess the land.” You have heard of the mountain too: “And they will dwell on my holy mountain.” Having these promises, then, dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit. But perhaps you want to know what being cut without hands means. For this is set down there somewhat obscurely. To some, indeed, it has already occurred before I say it; but let them bear a little delay for the sake of others, who cannot think of it unless they hear something from us. What is “without hands”? Without the work of man. And let your Charity notice this too, brothers: the stone cut from the mountain has become a mountain. Cut from a mountain, it also became a mountain by growing. But what kind of mountain? Not like the one from which it was cut; for of the mountain from which it was cut it was not said, “It grew and filled the whole earth.” There are two mountains, then: the first mountain is the Synagogue, the second the Church; the first mountain the people of the Jews, the second the Christian people. But so that the Christian people might become a great mountain and fill the whole earth, the stone was cut from that mountain, because Christ came from the Jews. Why, then, without hands? Without human work. For Christ was born of a virgin, conceived without the embrace of a husband.

So we have this mountain plain to see. Let us not set before ourselves mountains such as Giddaba, or any others that are named to us. For sometimes people take things carnally. For example, they read, “He will hear him from his holy heaven,” and sometimes “from the mountain,” which speaks of Christ; and people run to a mountain to pray, as though God would hear them there. Thinking carnally, because they often see clouds clinging to the sides of mountains, they climb mountains so as to be near God. Do you want to reach God by your prayer? Humble yourself. Again, because we have said, “Do you want to reach God? Humble yourself,” do not take it carnally and go down into underground vaults to pray to God there. Seek neither underground vaults nor a mountain. Have humility in your heart, and God will give you height; he will come to you and be with you in your chamber. So, as we have Christ as the mountain, we have the Church; let us love the Church. This mountain has grown and filled the whole world. It is plain that those are not in this mountain who are in a part of it and do not hold the whole earth with us. Remember, brothers, that every page arms and equips us against the tongues of men that we suffer every day. If it had said, “That mountain grew and filled all Africa,” would they not say that it is the party of Donatus? It has silenced their tongues by growing. It has grown so much as to stop the mouths of the talkative. For where did it go by growing? Through the whole earth. For the mountain from which it was cut did not fill the whole earth by growing: for even if the Jews have filled the whole earth, it is because they were defeated and lost their land; they were scattered through the earth by the punishment of their deserts, not by the greatness of their growth. But the Lord Christ, the cornerstone, subdued the kingdoms of men, broke the kingdoms of demons, humbled all kings so that he might grow; he grew and filled the whole face of the earth. I dare to say, he is still growing; there are still places that he is filling.

You, then, love this mountain, and prepare yourself to dwell on this mountain forever; and cleanse yourself from all defilement of flesh and spirit, since you have these promises. What promises? If you want to possess the land and dwell on the holy mountain, cleanse yourself from all defilement of flesh and spirit. What are defilements of the flesh? Let your Charity pay attention; we must say this too. What are defilements of the flesh? Not when a man passing by chance touches something with his foot, or even with his face; or if a man happens to slip and fall so that he lands in mud or filth, his face is defiled. That defilement is easy to deal with; as people say, it is washed and it goes away. But the defilement of the flesh that must be avoided comes only from a defilement of the spirit, and so it defiles the flesh. What is defilement of the spirit? Lust. Defilement of the flesh? The commission of adultery. You have the two: lust has arisen, and already the spirit is defiled; adultery has not yet followed, and the flesh is not yet defiled. But what good is it that the flesh is clean, if the inhabitant of the flesh is unclean? The man who perhaps is clean in the flesh God holds to be an adulterer in the heart, as the Lord says: “Amen, I say to you, whoever looks at a woman to desire her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” This is defilement of the spirit. When, then, is sanctification perfect? When it is of both flesh and spirit. For there are people who restrain themselves from deeds and do not restrain themselves from evil thoughts: they cleanse the flesh and do not cleanse the spirit. Such people refrain only because they fear men. Lust burns; fear calls them back. What do you fear? To be found out and condemned; to be found out and exposed. So the flesh seems undefiled, but the sanctification is not perfect. For what does the apostle say? “Let us cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit”: so that as you restrain yourself from evil deeds, so you may restrain yourself from evil will and evil thoughts. Refrain from the evil deed, and you cleanse yourself from defilement of the flesh; abstain from evil will, and you cleanse yourself from defilement of the spirit.

And there follows: “perfecting sanctification in the fear of God.” Magnificently he added, “in the fear of God.” See, man does not perfect sanctification except in the fear of God. What is perfect sanctification? Sanctification both of body and of spirit. If it is of the body and not of the spirit, it is imperfect. For there cannot be sanctification of the spirit without that of the body. There can be sanctification of the body and not of the spirit; there cannot be sanctification of the spirit and not of the body. For whoever is clean in spirit cannot commit shameful deeds. Why? “For out of the heart come,” says the Lord, “adulteries, murders.” A man cannot carry out with his members what he has not first said to himself in his heart. He conceived the word in his heart, and it was put into action. That is why the Lord says in a certain place, “Cleanse what is within, and what is without will be clean.” He did not say, “Cleanse what is without.” If he had begun from the body, it would remain for him to warn us to cleanse the mind as well; but if he begins from the mind, there is no need for us to cleanse the body, because cleanness of body follows cleanness of mind. So the apostle Paul, because he began from the flesh, needed to speak of the spirit too, “perfecting sanctification”: “Let us cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit”; because the flesh can be undefiled, not committing adulteries, acts of sexual immorality, and such things, and yet there can be lusts, thoughts, and evil wills in the soul. And he added, “perfecting sanctification in the fear of God.” Who, then, achieves sanctification of the body and not of the soul? The one who fears men and not God. For whoever is in the fear of God perfects sanctification. You certainly did not want to commit adultery for fear that a man might know; by fear of men you kept your flesh from committing evil; that is why you did not want to do it where man sees. If you fear God as well, do not do it there either, where God sees, and you have perfected sanctification. Pay attention: “Oh, if only I could get to that woman!” someone says; “but I cannot: she is carefully guarded, she has a watchful husband, I have no go-between; if I dare, I will be caught.” He makes, as it were, a cleansing of the body; but within, because he wills it, he does not make a cleansing of the spirit. He was afraid to do it in the body lest a man see; and he is not afraid to do it within, where God sees. He avoids the eye of man and does not fear the eye of God. Who, then, perfects sanctification? The one who is in the fear of God: “perfecting sanctification in the fear of God.” Fear of men can perhaps keep the body from uncleanness; but only the fear of God can keep the soul. Has he sanctified his mind? He need not worry about his body. Let the one who is clothed be clean, and the garment itself will be clean. Let the inhabitant be good and sound, and he need not fear the collapse of his house.

What, then, is this flesh? We ought not to despise it. What is it? Grass, but it will be gold. Do not despise the grass: it will be changed into gold. For he who was able to change water into wine is able to change grass into gold and to make an angel out of flesh. If he made man out of filth, will he not make an angel out of man? Let your Charity consider from what man was made, and see whether we even want to think about it. Out of this filth he made man and set him over the other living creatures; will he not make an angel out of man? He certainly will. He made men his friends; will he not make them angels? “I will no longer call you servants, but friends.” To men still bearing flesh, still dying, still living in this need and frailty of life, he said, “I will no longer call you servants, but friends.” And what will he give his friends? What he showed in himself when he rose. They will be crowned and changed into heavenly glory, and they will be equal to the angels of God. There will be no corruption, no stirring of desire. It will not be said to us there, “Cleanse yourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit.” We shall not labor, nor will a reward be promised us, because we shall already have received it. Nor will we be told to groan, because we shall already be praising. For as mortal flesh is changed into an angel’s body, so groaning will be changed into praises. Here there is repentance, distress, and groaning; there, praises, gladness, and joy. Afterward, then: now there is no gladness. But where is it? In hope. You do not yet hold it, but you rejoice in hoping; because he who promised cannot deceive; because he who promised both has and gives.

That all our hope is in Christ, and that he is all our true and saving glory, your Charity has not learned for the first time now. For you are in the flock of him who watches over and shepherds Israel. But since there are shepherds who like to enjoy the name of shepherds but do not want to fulfill a shepherd’s office, let us review what he says to them through the prophet, as we heard it read. You, listen with attention; let us listen with trembling. “And the word of the Lord came to me, saying: Son of man, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel.” We heard this reading just now when it was read; from it we have decided to say something to your Holiness. He will help us to say what is true, if we do not say what is our own. For if we say what is our own, we shall be shepherds feeding ourselves, not the sheep; but if what we say is his, he will feed you through whomever he pleases. “Thus says the Lord God: O shepherds of Israel, who feed only themselves! Do not shepherds feed the sheep?” That is, shepherds do not feed themselves, but the sheep. This is the first reason why these shepherds are rebuked: that they feed themselves, not the sheep. Who are those who feed themselves? Those of whom the apostle says, “For all seek their own, not the things of Jesus Christ.” For we, whom the Lord in his condescension, not for our merit, has set in this place, of which a dangerous account must be given, have two things: one, that we are Christians; the other, that we are set over you. That we are Christians is for our own sake; that we are set over you is for yours. In our being Christians our own benefit is considered; in our being set over you, only yours. There are many Christians who are not set over others and who reach God by a perhaps easier road, walking perhaps the more freely, the lighter the load they carry. But we, besides being Christians, for which we shall give God an account of our life, are also set over you, for which we shall give God an account of our stewardship. I set out this difficulty for this reason, that you may sympathize with us and pray for us. For the day will come when all things will be brought into judgment. And that day, even if it is far off for the world, is near for each person as the last day of his life. Yet God willed both to be hidden: both when the end of the world will come and when the end of this life will come for each person. Do you want not to fear the hidden day? When it comes, let it find you ready. Since, then, those set over others exist to take care of those subject to them, let them not look in their office to their own benefit at all, but to the benefit of those whom they serve. Whoever is set over others in such a way that he rejoices in being over them, seeks his own honor, and looks only to his own advantage, feeds himself and not the sheep. This word is directed to such men. Listen as God’s sheep, and see how God has made you secure: whatever those set over you may be, that is, whatever we may be, he who shepherds Israel has given you security. For God does not abandon his sheep; the bad shepherds will pay the penalties they owe, and the sheep will receive what was promised.

Let us see, then, what the divine word, which flatters no one, says to the shepherds who feed themselves and not the sheep. “See, you consume the milk and clothe yourselves with the wool, and you kill what is fat, and you do not feed my sheep. The weak you have not strengthened; what was sick you have not made strong; what was broken you have not bound up; what was straying you have not called back; what was lost you have not sought; and what was strong you have destroyed. And my sheep were scattered because there was no shepherd.” It is said to the shepherds who feed themselves, not the sheep, what they love and what they neglect. What, then, do they love? “You consume the milk and clothe yourselves with the wool.” That is why the apostle says, “Who plants a vineyard and does not eat of its fruit? Who shepherds a flock and does not get some of the milk of the flock?” We find, then, that the milk of the flock is whatever God’s people give to those set over them for the support of their temporal living. For this is what the apostle was speaking about when he said what I have quoted.

And indeed, although the apostle chose to make his living with his own hands and did not seek even the milk from the sheep, he nevertheless said that he had the right to receive the milk, and that the Lord had so arranged it, that those who announce the Gospel should live by the Gospel. And he says that the other apostles, his colleagues, used this right, not usurped but given. He did more, in not receiving even what was owed him. He forgave even the debt; the others did not demand what was not owed; he did more. Perhaps he was signified by the one who, when he brought the sick man to the innkeeper, said, “Whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I return.” Of those, then, who do not need the milk of the flock, why should we say more? They are more merciful, or rather they carry out the very office of mercy more generously. For they are able, and what they are able to do, they do. Let these be praised, and let the others not be condemned. For the apostle himself did not seek the gift; yet he wanted the sheep to be fruitful, not barren and without abundance of milk. So when at one time he was in great want, in chains for confessing the truth, something was sent to him by the brothers to relieve his necessity and want. He answered them with thanks and said: “You did well to share in my necessities. For I have learned to be content in whatever state I am; I know how to abound and how to suffer want; I can do all things in him who strengthens me. Yet you did well to send to meet my needs.” But to show what he himself was seeking in their good deed, so as not to be among those who feed themselves and not the sheep, he rejoices not so much that his necessity was relieved as he congratulates them on their fruitfulness. What, then, was he seeking there? “Not that I seek the gift,” he says, “but I seek the fruit.” Not so that I may be filled, he says, but so that you may not remain empty.

Let them take the milk in such a way as to benefit the sheep; let them not take the milk and neglect the sheep. Those, then, who cannot do as Paul did and support themselves with their own hands, let them receive some of the milk of the sheep and provide for their need, but let them not neglect the weakness of the sheep. Let them not seek this for themselves as their own advantage, so as to seem to announce the Gospel because of the necessity of their poverty; but let them offer the light of the word of truth to enlighten people. For they are like lamps, as it is said, “Let your loins be girded and your lamps burning”; and, “No one lights a lamp and puts it under a bushel, but on a lampstand, so that it may give light to all who are in the house: so let your light shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven.” If, then, a lamp had been lit for you in your house, would you not add oil, so that it would not go out? But if the lamp, having received oil, gave no light, it would certainly not be fit to be placed on a lampstand, but to be broken at once. That they receive what they live on is a matter of necessity; that it is given them is a matter of charity. The Gospel is not for sale, as if its price were what those who announce it receive to live on. For if they sell it like that, they sell a great thing cheap. Let them receive the support of their need from the people, and the reward of their stewardship from the Lord. For the people are not able to give the reward to those who serve them in the light of the Gospel. Let them expect their reward only from where the people expect their salvation. Why, then, are those shepherds rebuked? What are they reproved for? For consuming the milk and clothing themselves with the wool while neglecting the sheep. They sought only their own, then, not the things of Jesus Christ.

But since we have said what consuming the milk is, let us ask what clothing oneself with the wool is. Whoever offers milk offers food; whoever offers wool offers honor. These are the two things that those who feed themselves and not the sheep seek from the people: the advantage of having their needs supplied, and the favor of honor and praise. For clothing is rightly understood as honor, because it covers nakedness. For every man is weak. And what is the one who is set over you, but what you are? He bears flesh, he is mortal, he eats, he sleeps, he gets up; he was born, he will die. If, then, you consider what he is in himself, he is a man; but you, by honoring him as though he were an angel, cover what is weak.

The same Paul had received a garment of this kind from God’s good people, when he said: “You received me as an angel of God: I bear you witness that, if it had been possible, you would have plucked out your eyes and given them to me.” But when such great honor had been shown him, did he, for the sake of that honor, spare those who were going astray, lest perhaps, if he rebuked them, the honor would be withheld and the apostle himself praised less? For if he had done that, he would have been among those who feed themselves and not the sheep; he would have said to himself, “What does it matter to me? Let each do what he likes; my living is safe, my honor is safe; I have milk and wool, and that is enough for me: let each go where he can.” So everything is fine for you, if each goes where he can? I do not even make you one set over others; I make you one of the people: “If one member suffers, all the members suffer together.” So the apostle himself, when he recalled how they had been toward him, so as not to seem to have forgotten the honor they had shown him, testifies that they received him as an angel of God, and that, if it had been possible, they would have wanted to pluck out their eyes and give them to him; and yet he goes to the sick sheep, the festering sheep, to cut into the wound, not to spare the rot. “Have I then become your enemy,” he says, “by telling you the truth?” See, he both received some of the milk of the sheep, as we mentioned a little before, and was clothed with the wool of the sheep; yet he did not neglect the sheep. For he did not seek his own, but the things of Jesus Christ.

Far be it from us, then, to say to you: “Live as you like; do not worry; God will destroy no one; only hold the Christian faith. He will not destroy those whom he redeemed; he will not destroy those for whom he shed his blood. And if you want to amuse yourselves at the shows, go: what harm is there? And these festivals that are celebrated throughout all the cities in the merriment of banqueters, who enjoy themselves, as they think, at public tables, but in reality rather destroy themselves: go, celebrate them; great is the mercy of God, which forgives everything. Crown yourselves with roses before they wither. Feast in the house of your God whenever you like; fill yourselves with food and wine with your friends: for this creation was given so that you might enjoy it; God did not give it to the ungodly and the pagans and not give it to you.” If we said these things, we might perhaps gather larger crowds; and if there are some who see that in saying these things we do not think rightly, we offend a few but win over the multitude. But if we did this, speaking not God’s words, not Christ’s words, but our own, we should be shepherds feeding ourselves and not the sheep.

Having said what these shepherds love, he also says what they neglect. For the faults of the sheep are widespread; healthy and fat sheep are very few, that is, sheep solid in the food of truth, making good use of the pastures by God’s gift. But those bad shepherds do not spare even these. It is not enough for them that they do not care for the sick, the weak, the straying, and the lost; as far as it lies in them, they even kill these strong and fat ones. These live by the mercy of God; yet, as far as the bad shepherds are concerned, they kill them. “How,” you say, “do they kill them?” By living badly, by giving a bad example. Or was it said in vain to the servant of God, eminent among the members of the chief Shepherd, “Show yourself in all things an example of good works,” and, “Be a pattern to the faithful”? For even a strong sheep often notices its leader living badly; if it turns its eyes away from the Lord’s rules and looks at a man, it begins to say in its heart, “If my leader lives like this, who am I not to do what he does?” He has killed a strong sheep. And if he has killed a strong sheep, what will he do to the rest, he who by living badly has killed one that he had not made strong himself but had found strong and robust? I say to your Charity, and I say it again: even if the sheep live, even if the sheep are strong in the word of the Lord and hold to what they have heard from their Lord, “Do what they say, but do not do what they do,” yet the one who lives badly in the sight of the people kills, as far as it lies in him, the one who is watching him. So let him not flatter himself because that sheep has not died. The sheep lives, and he is a murderer. Just as when a lustful man looks at a woman to desire her: see, she is chaste, and he is an adulterer. For the Lord’s sentence is true and plain: “Whoever looks at a woman to desire her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” He has not reached her bedroom, and already he is wallowing in his own inner bedroom. So everyone who lives badly in the sight of those over whom he is set kills, as far as it lies in him, even the strong sheep. Whoever imitates the bad leader dies; whoever does not imitate him lives; yet, as far as the leader is concerned, he kills both. “And what is fat,” he says, “you kill, and my sheep you do not feed.”

Now you have heard what they love; hear what they neglect. “The weak you have not strengthened; and what was in bad health you have not made strong; and what was broken” (that is, shattered) “you have not bound up; and what was straying you have not called back; and what was lost you have not sought; and what was strong you have destroyed,” that is, killed and slain. A sheep has a weak mind when it does not believe that temptations will come to it. The negligent shepherd, when such a weak one believes this, does not say to it, “Son, coming to the service of God, stand in justice and fear, and prepare your soul for temptation.” For whoever says this strengthens the weak and makes him firm instead of weak, so that when he has come to faith he will not hope for the prosperity of this world. But if he has been taught to hope for the prosperity of this world, he is corrupted by that very prosperity; and when adversities come upon him, he is wounded, or perhaps destroyed. Whoever builds in this way does not build him on the rock, but on sand. “But the rock was Christ.” Christ’s sufferings are to be imitated; a Christian is not to seek out pleasures. The weak man is strengthened when he is told, “Expect the temptations of this world, but the Lord will deliver you from them all, if your heart does not turn back from him.” For to strengthen your heart he came to suffer, he came to die, he came to be smeared with spittle, he came to be crowned with thorns, he came to hear reproaches, he came at last to be nailed to the wood. All this he did for you; you do nothing for him, but for yourself.

But what kind of shepherds are those who, afraid of offending those to whom they speak, not only do not prepare them for the temptations that threaten, but even promise them the happiness of this world, which God did not promise to the world itself? He foretells labors upon labors that will come upon the world itself until the end; and do you want the Christian to be exempt from these labors? Because he is a Christian, he will suffer something more in this world. For the apostle says, “All who want to live a godly life in Christ will suffer persecution.” Now, if you please, O shepherd who seeks your own and not the things of Jesus Christ, let him say, “All who want to live a godly life in Christ will suffer persecution,” and you say, “If you want to live a godly life in Christ, all good things will abound for you; and if you have no children, you will have them, and you will bring them all up, and none of them will die on you.” Is this your building? Consider what you are doing, where you are placing him. The one you are setting up is on sand: the rain will come, the river will flood, the wind will blow, and they will beat against that house, and it will fall, and great will be its ruin. Lift him from the sand; place him on the rock: let the one you want to be a Christian be in Christ. Let him look to the sufferings of Christ; let him look to him who, without any sin, paid back what he had not stolen; let him look to the Scripture that says to you, “He scourges every son whom he receives.” Either prepare to be scourged, or else do not seek to be received. “He scourges,” it says, “every son whom he receives”; and will you perhaps be the exception? If you are excepted from the suffering of the scourge, you are excepted from the number of sons. “Does he really,” you will say, “scourge every son?” He certainly scourges every son, even as he did the Only Son. That Only Son, born of the Father’s substance, equal to the Father in the form of God, the Word through whom all things were made, had nothing for which to be scourged: he put on flesh for this purpose, so as not to be without the scourge. Will he who scourges the Only Son without sin leave the adopted son with sin unscourged? The apostle says that we have been called to adoption. We have received the adoption of sons, so that we might be co-heirs of the Only Son and also be his inheritance. “Ask of me,” he says, “and I will give you the nations as your inheritance.” He has set us an example in his sufferings. But so that the weak man may not fail in the temptations to come, he must neither be deceived by false hope nor broken by terror. Say to him, “Prepare your soul for temptation.” But perhaps he begins to slip, to tremble, to be unwilling to come forward; you have something else to say: “God is faithful, who will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear.” To promise and to foretell sufferings to come is to strengthen the weak. But to promise the mercy of God to one who is too fearful and terrified by this, not that temptations will be lacking, but that he does not allow anyone to be tempted beyond what he can bear, is to bind up the broken. For there are those who, when they hear of tribulations to come, arm themselves the more and as it were thirst for their drink: for they think the medicine of the faithful too little for them, and seek the glory of martyrs as well. But there are others who, when they hear of temptations to come and bound to come, which must properly come to a Christian, and which no one feels except one who wants to be truly a Christian, are broken and limp when some of them threaten. Bring the bandage of consolation; bind up what is broken. Say: “Do not fear; he in whom you have believed does not desert you in temptations. God is faithful, who does not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear.” You do not hear this from me; the apostle says it, who also says, “Do you want proof of him who speaks in me, Christ?” When you hear these things, then, you hear them from Christ himself; you hear them from the Shepherd who shepherds Israel. For it was said to him, “You will give them tears to drink in measure.” For what the apostle says, “He does not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear,” the prophet says with “in measure.” Only do not abandon the one who reproves and exhorts, who terrifies and consoles, who strikes and heals.

“The weak,” he says, “you have not strengthened.” He says it to bad shepherds, false shepherds, shepherds who seek their own and not the things of Jesus Christ, who enjoy the advantage of the milk and the wool and do not care for the sheep at all, and who do not make strong what was in bad health. Between the weak (that is, the not firm, for the sick too are called weak), between the weak and the sick, that is, one in bad health, this seems to me to be the difference. For these things, brothers, which we are trying to distinguish as best we can, perhaps we could distinguish better with greater care, or someone else more skilled or fuller of the light of the heart could do so; meanwhile, so that you may not be cheated, I say what I think as far as the words of Scripture are concerned. With the weak man, it is to be feared that temptation may come and break him; but the sick man is already ill with some desire, and some desire is keeping him from entering the way of God, from taking up the yoke of Christ. Consider people who want to live well, who have already resolved to live well, but are less fit to suffer evil than they are ready to do good. It belongs to Christian firmness not only to do what is good but also to endure what is evil. Those, then, who seem fervent in good works but are unwilling or unable to endure the sufferings that threaten are weak. But those who, as lovers of the world, are drawn back by some evil desire from good works themselves lie sick and ill: by that very sickness, as though without any strength, they can do nothing good. Such in soul was that paralytic whom those who were carrying him, when they could not bring him in to the Lord, let down through the roof they had opened. That is, it is as if you wanted to do this in the soul: to open the roof and let down to the Lord a paralyzed soul, loosened in all its limbs and empty of every good work, weighed down indeed by its sins and languishing with the disease of its desire. If, then, all the limbs are loosened and there is an inner paralysis, so that you may reach the physician (for perhaps the physician is hidden and inside; that is, the true meaning is hidden in the Scriptures), open the roof by explaining what is hidden, and let down the paralytic. As for those who do not do this and neglect to do it, you have heard what they are told: “What was in bad health you have not made strong; and what was broken you have not bound up.” We have already spoken of this. He was broken by terror of temptations; there comes something by which what is broken is bound up, the consolation, “God is faithful, who will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear, but with the temptation will also make a way out, so that you may be able to endure it.”

“And what was straying you have not called back.” See where our danger lies among the heretics. “And what was straying you have not called back; and what was lost you have not sought.” Hence we live somehow between the hands of robbers and the teeth of raging wolves; and we ask you to pray for us in these dangers of ours. And the sheep are stubborn: because they are sought when they stray, they say, in their error and perdition, that they do not belong to us. “What do you want with us? Why are you looking for us?” As if this were not the very reason why we want them and look for them: because they are straying and perishing. “If I am in error,” he says, “if I am perishing, what do you want with me? Why are you looking for me?” Because you are in error, I want to call you back; because you are lost, I want to find you. “This is how I want to stray; this is how I want to perish.” So this is how you want to stray, this is how you want to perish! How much better that I do not want it! I will say it outright: I am importunate. For I hear the apostle saying, “Preach the word; be urgent in season and out of season.” In season for whom, out of season for whom? In season, surely, for the willing; out of season for the unwilling. I am entirely importunate, I dare to say it. You want to stray, you want to perish: I do not want it. And in the end, he who frightens me does not want it. If I wanted it, see what he says, see how he rebukes: “What was straying you have not called back; and what was lost you have not sought.” Shall I fear you more than him? “We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ.” I do not fear you; for you cannot overturn the judgment seat of Christ and set up the judgment seat of Donatus. I will call back the straying; I will seek the lost; whether you like it or not, I will do it. And if the brambles of the woods tear me as I search, I will squeeze through every narrow place; I will shake every hedge; as far as the Lord who frightens me gives me strength, I will go through everything: I will call back the straying, I will seek the perishing. If you do not want me to suffer, do not stray, do not perish.

It is not enough that I grieve over you as you stray and perish; I fear that by neglecting you I may also kill what is strong. For see what follows: “And what was strong you have destroyed.” If I neglect the one who is straying and perishing, even the one who is strong will be pleased to stray and perish. I desire the gains outside, but I fear more the losses within. If I treat your error with indifference, the one who is strong notices it and thinks it is nothing to go over to heresy. When some worldly advantage shines out that would make him change, that strong man, now about to perish, says to me at once, since I do not seek you who are lost: “God is on this side and on that; what difference does it make? Men quarreling among themselves did this; God is to be worshiped wherever one is.” If perhaps some Donatist says to him, “I will not give you my daughter unless you join my party,” he needs to take notice and say, “If there were nothing wrong with belonging to their party, our shepherds would not say so much against them and would not take such trouble over their error.” But if we stop and keep silent, he will say the opposite: “Surely, if it were wrong to be in the party of Donatus, they would speak against them, refute them, take trouble to win them: if they were straying, they would call them back; if they were perishing, they would seek them.” Not in vain, then, after saying above, “What was fat you have slaughtered,” did he put this again at the end: “And what was strong you have destroyed.” It is the same sentence repeated, except that here it arises from what he said just before: “What was straying you have not called back; and what was lost you have not sought”; and by doing this, you have killed what was strong.

Hear, then, what follows from this negligence of bad, or rather false, shepherds: “And my sheep were scattered because there was no shepherd, and they became food for all the beasts of the field.” Lurking wolves steal, roaring lions seize, when the sheep do not cling to the shepherd. For the shepherd is present, but for those who act wickedly there is no shepherd. And they cling to shepherds who are not shepherds, who feed themselves and not the sheep; and deadly error follows. They go to beasts that prey on them and want to be filled with their death. For all who rejoice in other people’s errors are such: beasts fed on the deaths of the scattered. “And my sheep were scattered and strayed on every mountain and on every high hill.” The mountains and hills are the swelling of earthly things and the pride of the world. The pride of Donatus exalted itself and made itself a party; Parmenian, following him, confirmed his error. That is a mountain; that is a hill. So every author of any error, swelling with earthly elation, promises the sheep rest and good pastures; and sometimes the sheep do find pastures there, from God’s rain, not from the hardness of the mountain: for they too have the Scriptures, they have the sacraments. These things do not belong to the mountains; but when they are found on the mountains, it is bad to remain on the mountains. For by straying on mountains and hills they desert the flock; they desert unity; they desert the folds fortified against lions and wolves. From there, then, let God call them back; let him himself call them back. You will hear him now calling them back: “My sheep,” he says, “strayed on every mountain and on every high hill”: that is, on every swelling of earthly pride. For there are good mountains too: “I lifted up my eyes to the mountains, from where my help will come.” And see that your hope is not in the mountains: “My help,” he says, “is from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.” Do not think you are wronging the holy mountains when you say, “My help is not from the mountains but from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.” The mountains themselves cry this to you. He was a mountain who cried, “I hear that there are divisions among you, and each of you says, I am of Paul, I of Apollos, I of Cephas, and I of Christ.” Lift your eyes to that mountain, hear what it says, and do not remain even on that mountain. For hear what follows: “Was Paul crucified for you?” So, when you have lifted your eyes to the mountains, from where your help will come, that is, to the authors of the divine Scriptures, pay attention to one crying with all his marrow and all his bones, “Lord, who is like you?”, so that without fear and without wronging the mountains you may say, “My help is from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.” Then not only will the mountains not be angry with you, but they will love you then, and favor you the more; if you place your hope in them, they will be grieved. An angel who was showing a man many divine and wonderful things was worshiped by the man, who was, as it were, lifting his eyes to a mountain. But the angel, calling him away from himself to the Lord, said, “Do not do it; worship him; for I am your fellow servant and the fellow servant of your brothers.”

“On every mountain and on every hill, and over the whole face of the earth they were scattered.” What does “they were scattered over the whole face of the earth” mean? Pursuing all earthly things, they love and cherish those things that shine on the face of the earth. They do not want to die, so that their life may be hidden in Christ. “Over the whole face of the earth”: by their love of earthly things; and also because straying sheep are found over the whole face of the earth. Not every heresy is over the whole face of the earth; but still there are heretics over the whole face of the earth. Some here, some there; yet nowhere are they lacking; and they do not know one another. One sect in Africa, another heresy in the East, another in Egypt, another in Mesopotamia, for example. In different places they are different; but one mother, pride, bore them all, just as our one mother, the Catholic Church, bore all the faithful Christians spread through the whole world. No wonder, then, if pride gives birth to division and love to unity. Yet the Catholic mother herself, and the Shepherd himself in her, seeks the straying everywhere, strengthens the weak, heals the sick, binds up the broken, some from these sects and some from those, who do not know one another. But she knows them all, because she is spread out among them all. For example, there is the party of Donatus in Africa; the Eunomians are not in Africa; but alongside the party of Donatus the Catholic Church is here. In the East there are Eunomians, but the party of Donatus is not there; but alongside the Eunomians the Catholic Church is there. She is like a vine, spread everywhere by growing; they are like useless branches, cut off by the farmer’s knife because of their barrenness, so that the vine might be pruned, not cut down. Those branches, then, have remained where they were cut off. But the vine, growing through all places, knows both its branches that have remained in it and, beside it, those that have been cut off from it. Yet from there it calls back the straying; for of the broken branches the apostle says, “For God is able to graft them in again.” Whether you speak of sheep straying from the flock or of branches cut off from the vine, God is no less able to call back the sheep or to graft the branches in again, because he is the supreme Shepherd, he is the true farmer. “And they were scattered over the whole face of the earth, and there was none to seek them, none to call them back.” There was none, that is, among those bad shepherds; there was none, that is, no man, to seek them.

“Therefore, shepherds, hear the word of the Lord: As I live, says the Lord God.” See how he began. It is, as it were, God’s oath, the witness of his life. “As I live, says the Lord.” The shepherds are dead, but the sheep are safe: the Lord lives. “As I live, says the Lord God.” Which shepherds are dead? Those who seek their own, not the things of Jesus Christ. Will there, then, be shepherds, and will they be found, who seek not their own but the things of Jesus Christ? There certainly will be, and they will be found; certainly they are not lacking and will not be lacking. Let us see, then, what the Lord says, who declares that he lives: whether he says that he will take the sheep away from the bad shepherds, who feed themselves and not the sheep, and give them to good shepherds, who feed the sheep and not themselves. “As I live, says the Lord God, because my sheep have become food for all the beasts of the field, because there was no shepherd.” Again he says “shepherd,” both a little before and now. He does not say, “because there were no shepherds.” For to such sheep, wickedly straying and wickedly perishing, there is no shepherd, even if the shepherd is present; just as, even when light is present, there is no light for the blind. “And the shepherds did not seek my sheep, and the shepherds fed themselves, but my sheep they did not feed.”

“Therefore, shepherds, hear the word of the Lord.” But which shepherds are to hear? “Thus says the Lord God: Behold, I am against the shepherds, and I will require my sheep from their hands.” Hear and learn, sheep of God: God requires his sheep from the bad shepherds, and from their hands he will require their death. For he says in another place through the same prophet: “Son of man, I have made you a watchman for the house of Israel; you will hear a word from my mouth and warn them from me. When I say to the sinner, You shall surely die, and you have not spoken to warn the wicked man away from his way, that wicked man shall die in his wickedness, but his blood I will require from your hand. But if you have warned the wicked man of his way, so that he may turn from it, and he has not turned from his way, he shall die in his wickedness, and you will have saved your soul.” What does this mean, brothers? Do you see how dangerous it is to keep silent? He dies, and he dies justly: he dies in his ungodliness and his sin, for his own negligence killed him. For he could have found the living Shepherd, who says, “As I live, says the Lord.” But since he was negligent, and the one who was set over him and made a watchman for the very purpose of warning him did not warn him, the one dies justly and the other is justly condemned. “But if you say,” he says, “to the wicked man, You shall surely die, the man against whom I have threatened the sword, and he neglects to avoid the sword that threatens him, and the sword comes and kills him, he shall die in his sin, but you have saved your soul.” For this reason it is our part not to be silent; it is yours, even if we are silent, to hear the words of the Shepherd from the holy Scriptures.

Let us see, then, as I had proposed, whether he takes the sheep away from the bad shepherds and gives them to good shepherds. I see him taking the sheep away from the bad shepherds. For he says this: “Behold, I myself am against the shepherds, and I will require my sheep from their hands, and I will turn them away from them, so that they do not feed my sheep; and the shepherds will no longer feed themselves.” For when I say, “Let them feed my sheep,” they feed themselves, not my sheep. “I will turn them away, so that they do not feed my sheep.” How does he turn them away, so that they do not feed his sheep? “Do what they say, but do not do what they do.” As if he said, “They speak what is mine; they do what is theirs.” If he had said, “Do without fear what they do; I will condemn them for living badly, but I will spare you, because you followed your leaders”: if he had said this, he would have frightened the bad shepherds, who feed not the sheep but themselves. But since he frightens not only the blind man leading but also the blind man following (for he does not say, “The leader falls into the pit and the follower does not fall,” but, “If a blind man leads a blind man, both fall into the pit”), he warned the sheep, saying, “Do what they say; do not do what they do.” For when you do not do what the bad shepherds do, it is not they who feed you; but when you do what they say, I feed you; for they speak what is mine and do not do it. “We follow our bishops without fear,” they say. The heretics often say this when they are refuted by the plainest truth: “We are sheep; they will give account for us.” They will certainly give a bad account of your death. For the death of a bad sheep the bad shepherd will give a bad account. Does a sheep live because its skin is produced with the mark on it? The shepherd is rebuked because he neglected the straying sheep, so that it ran into the wolf’s jaws to be devoured. What good is it to him that he brings back the marked skin? The householder requires the life of the sheep. But see, the bad shepherd has brought the skin: let him give account of the skin. Will he perhaps lie? He who afterward judges was watching from above. He to whom the shepherd recites his made-up words looks into his thoughts. Let the bad shepherd give account of the skin of the dead sheep. “I cried out your words to it, and it would not follow; I took pains that it should not stray from the flock, and it would not obey.” Certainly, if he says this and says it truly (and God knows whether he says it truly), he gives a good account of a bad sheep. But if God sees that he neglected the straying sheep, that he did not seek the perishing one, what good is it that he found the skin to bring back? He should have called back the sheep itself, rather than show the skin of a dead one. If, then, the one who did not seek the straying does not give a good account, what account will the one give who made it stray? This is what I mean: if a bishop set in the Catholic Church does not give a good account of a sheep, if he has not sought the one straying from God’s flock, what account will the heretic give, who not only did not call it back from error but even drove it into error?

But let us see, as I said, how God calls back the sheep from the bad shepherds. I have already mentioned it: “Do what they say, but do not do what they do.” And it is not they who feed you, but God; because, whether the shepherds like it or not, in order to get the milk and the wool they will speak the words of God. “You who preach that one must not steal, do you steal?” says the apostle to those who say good things and do bad things. As for you, listen to the preacher so as not to steal; do not imitate the thief. If you choose to imitate the thief, he feeds you with his deed: he serves you poison, not food. But if you hear from him what he says not from his own but from God’s, it is true that grapes cannot be gathered from thorns (for this is the Lord’s own sentence: “No one gathers grapes from thorns or figs from thistles”). Yet do not on that account as it were slander your Lord and say, “Lord, you did not want me to gather, since it cannot be done, grapes from thorns; and again you said to me about certain people, Do what they say, but do not do what they do. Surely those who do evil are thorns. How do you want me to gather the grape of your word from thorns?” The answer will be: “That grape does not belong to the thorns; but sometimes a growing branch entangles itself in a hedge, and the grape hangs among the dense thorns, but it does not spring from the root of the thorns. If you are hungry and have nothing else to eat, put out your hand carefully, so as not to be torn by the thorns, that is, so as not to imitate the deeds of the wicked; and pick the grape that hangs among the thorns but grows from the vine.” Let the nourishment of the cluster come to you; the torment of fire is kept for the thorns.

“And I will rescue my sheep from their mouth and from their hands, and they will no longer be food for them.” This is said in the psalm too: “Will not all who work iniquity know, who devour my people as they eat bread?” “And they will no longer be food for them; for thus says the Lord God: Behold, I myself.” I have taken my sheep away from the bad shepherds by warning them, as I said, not to do what they do; that is, so that careless and negligent sheep may not do what the bad shepherds do. And what does he say? To whom does he give what he has taken from them? To good shepherds, perhaps? That is not what follows. And what shall we say, brothers? Are there no good shepherds? Is it not said in another place of the Scriptures, “And I will set over them shepherds after my own heart, and they will feed them with discipline”? How is it, then, that the sheep he takes from the bad shepherds he does not give to good ones, but says, as if no good ones remained anywhere, “I will feed them”? He had said to Peter, “Feed my sheep.” What, then, are we to make of this? When the sheep were entrusted to Peter, the Lord did not say there, “I will feed my sheep, not you,” but, “Peter, do you love me? Feed my sheep.” Or is it perhaps that, since Peter is not found now (for he has been taken up into the rest of the apostles and martyrs), there is no one to whom the Lord of the sheep can say without anxiety, “Feed my sheep,” and that, as it were by necessity, he has come down to the office of feeding his sheep, having no one to entrust them to and yet not abandoning them? For this seems to follow: “Thus says the Lord God: Behold, I myself.” It is he to whom we said, “You who shepherd Israel, give ear; you who lead Joseph like a flock,” the people set in Egypt. Israel, now spread among the Gentiles, is Joseph himself. For you know that Joseph went down into Egypt: it came about by his brothers selling him. The Jews sold Christ: not without reason was there a seller among the apostles too, Judas. Christ began to be among the Gentiles; there he was honored, there his people grew; his Shepherd does not abandon him. “Stir up,” he says, “your power, and come to save us.” He certainly does so, and will do so. For he says, “Behold, I myself, and I will seek my sheep, and I will visit them as a shepherd visits his flock.” The bad shepherds did not care, for they did not redeem them with their own blood. “As a shepherd visits his flock,” he says, “in the day.” In what day? “When there is storm and cloud”: that is, both in rain and in fog. The rain and the fog are the error of this world: a great darkness rising from people’s desires, and a thick fog covering the earth. And it is hard for the sheep not to stray in that fog; but the Shepherd does not abandon them. He seeks them; he pierces the fog with his keenest eyes; he is not hindered by the darkness of the clouds; he sees; he calls back the straying from everywhere; so much so that what he says in the Gospel comes about: “My sheep hear my voice and follow me.” “In the midst of the scattered sheep, so will I seek my sheep and lead them out from every place where they have been scattered, in the day of cloud and storm.” When it is hard for them to be found, then I will find them. The fog is thick, the storm is heavy: nothing escapes his eyes.

“And I will lead them out from the nations and gather them from the regions, and I will bring them into their own land and feed them on the mountains of Israel.” The mountains of Israel have been established: they are the authors of the divine Scriptures. Feed there, so that you may feed without fear. Whatever you hear from there, let it taste good to you; whatever is outside, spit it out. So as not to stray in the fog, hear the voice of the Shepherd: gather yourselves to the mountains of holy Scripture. There are the delights of your heart; there is nothing poisonous there, nothing foreign; it is the richest pasture. Only come healthy, and feed in health on the mountains of Israel. “And in the streams, and in every dwelling place of the land.” For from the mountains we have pointed out flowed the streams of the Gospel preaching, when their sound went out into all the earth; and every dwelling place of the land became glad and fruitful for the feeding of the sheep. “In good pasture I will feed them, and on the high mountains of Israel. Their folds will be there”: that is, where they may rest, where they may say, “It is good”; where they may say, “It is true, it is plain, we are not deceived.” They will rest in the glory of God, as in those folds. “And they will sleep,” that is, rest, “and they will rest in good delights.”

“And they will feed in rich pasture on the mountains of Israel.” I have already said what the mountains of Israel are: good mountains, to which we lift our eyes so that help may come to us from there. “But our help is from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.” Therefore, so that our hope might not be even in good mountains, after he had said, “I will feed my sheep on the mountains of Israel,” lest you should place your hope in the mountains, he added at once, “I will feed my sheep.” Lift up your eyes to the mountains, from where your help will come; but listen to him who says, “I will feed them.” For your help is from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.

“And I will make them rest, says the Lord God.” But to make them rest, he first healed them. What he did first he mentions afterward: “Thus says the Lord God: What was lost I will seek; and what strayed I will call back; and what was crushed I will bind up; and what was lifeless I will strengthen; and what is fat and what is strong I will guard.” This is what the bad shepherds did not do, feeding themselves and not the sheep. The Lord did not say, “I will appoint other, good shepherds to do these things,” but, “I,” he says, “will do it; I will entrust my sheep to no one.” Be without fear, brothers; be without fear, sheep. Are we to think there is something to fear, as though a good shepherd were lacking?

He concludes thus: “And I will feed them with judgment.” See that he alone feeds with judgment in this way. For what man judges rightly about a man? Everything is full of rash judgments. Someone we had despaired of is suddenly converted and becomes excellent; someone we had great hopes of suddenly falls away and becomes very bad. Neither our fear is certain nor our love. What each man is today the man himself scarcely knows; yet he knows somehow what he is today, but what he will be tomorrow, not even he knows. He, then, feeds with judgment, giving to each his own: these things to these, those to those, what is due to each to whom this or that is due. For he knows what he is doing: with judgment he feeds those whom, having been judged himself, he redeemed. He himself, then, feeds with judgment.

For in the prophet Jeremiah he says, “The partridge cried out; it gathered what it did not hatch, making its riches not with judgment.” Against this partridge, which makes its riches not with judgment, this Shepherd feeds with judgment. Why is that one without judgment? Because it gathered what it did not hatch. Why is this one with judgment? Because he cherishes what he has begotten. Yet we are speaking of a good shepherd. Good shepherds either do not exist or are hidden. If they do not exist, what are we doing? If they are hidden, why is nothing said of them? That partridge has been understood by certain elders and expositors of the Scriptures before us to be the devil, gathering what he did not hatch. For he is not a creator but a deceiver, making his riches not with judgment. For it does not matter to him who strays in this way and who in that; he wants all to stray, by any errors whatever. However various the heresies, however various the errors, he wants people to stray in all of them. The devil does not say, “Let them be Donatists, let them not be Arians”: whether they are here or there, they belong to him who gathers without judgment. “Let him worship idols,” he says: “he is mine. Let him remain in the superstition of the Jews: he is mine. Let him abandon unity and go off into this heresy or that: he is mine.” So he gathers without judgment, making his riches. But what follows? “In the middle of his days they will leave him, and at his end he will be a fool.” He came gathering his sheep from everywhere. “In the middle of his days,” sooner than he hoped, before he expected, “they will leave him, and at his end he will be a fool.” Why was he wise at his beginning and a fool at his end? Listen, brothers. In the Scriptures “wisdom” is sometimes used for cunning, by a misuse of the word, not in its proper sense. Hence it is said, “Where is the wise man? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?” And this partridge, the same as the dragon, the same as the serpent, was as it were wise when he deceived Adam through Eve: he was thought to speak the truth, he was supposed to give good advice, he was believed against God. That “wisdom” is used by a misuse of the word and in a bad sense, according to the usage of our Scriptures (for what is it to us how the authors of the world speak?), you have in the same book: “Now the serpent was wiser than all the beasts.” He, wiser than all the beasts, is recognized as cunning and sharp to deceive. Afterward he is not believed, and it is said to him, “We renounce you; it is enough that you deceived the unwary at first.” So at his end he will be a fool; his frauds will be exposed, and so they will be frauds no longer. At his end he will be a fool, who gathered what he did not hatch and made his riches not with judgment. Against him our Redeemer feeds with judgment.

Let some heretic arise, even if not the devil’s brother, certainly his helper and son; and him I would call the partridge, a contentious creature. For this creature, as fowlers know, is caught even through its eagerness to fight. These people fight against the truth, and have fought ever since they divided themselves off. Now they say, “We do not want to fight”: because they have already been caught. He has nothing to say but, “I do not want to fight.” O captured one, surely it was you who once, in the first days of your sedition, accused traditors, condemned the innocent, sought the emperor’s judgment, refused to accept the bishops’ judgment, appealed again and again when you were defeated, litigated most zealously before the emperor himself, and gathered what you had not hatched. Where now is your proud neck? Where is your tongue? Where is your hissing? Certainly at your end you have become a fool: you have fed without judgment. For you do not want to judge truly, either about your error or about the truth. Against you Christ feeds with judgment; he distinguishes his sheep from the sheep that are not his. “My sheep,” he says, “hear my voice and follow me.”

Here I find all the good shepherds in the one Shepherd. For good shepherds are not really lacking; but they are in the one. Many are those who are divided; here one is proclaimed, because unity is commended. For it is not really because the Lord now finds no one to whom to entrust his sheep that the shepherds are passed over in silence and “shepherd” is said; nor did he entrust them then because he found Peter: rather, in Peter himself he commended unity. There were many apostles, and to one it is said, “Feed my sheep.” Far be it that good shepherds should be lacking now: far be it from us that they should be lacking; far be it from his mercy that he should not beget and establish them. Certainly, if there are good sheep, there are also good shepherds; for good shepherds come from good sheep. But all good shepherds are in the one; they are one. They feed: Christ feeds. For the friends of the bridegroom do not speak with their own voice, but rejoice greatly because of the bridegroom’s voice. So he himself feeds when they feed, and he says, “I feed,” because in them is his voice, in them is his love. For even Peter, to whom he was entrusting his sheep as one to another, he wanted to make one with himself, so as to entrust the sheep to him in such a way that he would be the head and Peter would bear the figure of the body, that is, the Church, and they would be like bridegroom and bride, two in one flesh. So, in order to entrust the sheep to him, what does he say first, so as not to entrust them to him as to another? “Peter, do you love me?” And he answered, “I love you.” And again: “Do you love me?” And he answered, “I love you.” And a third time: “Do you love me?” And he answered, “I love you.” He confirms love, so as to consolidate unity. He himself, then, the one, feeds in them, and they in the one; and the shepherds are passed over in silence, and yet they are not passed over. The shepherds glory; but “let him who glories glory in the Lord.” This is to feed for Christ, to feed in Christ, to feed with Christ: not to feed one’s own apart from Christ. Nor did the prophet say, “I will feed my sheep; I have no one to entrust them to,” because of a dearth of shepherds, as though he were foretelling these bad times to come. Even when Peter himself was here, and the apostles themselves were still in this flesh and this life, that one, in whom all are one, said, “I have other sheep that are not of this fold; I must bring them too, so that there may be one flock and one shepherd.” Let all, then, be in the one Shepherd, and speak the one voice of the Shepherd, which the sheep may hear and follow their Shepherd: not this one or that one, but the one. And let all in him speak one voice; let them not have different voices. “I beseech you, brothers, that you all say the same thing, and that there be no schisms among you.” Let the sheep hear this voice, cleansed of every schism, purged of every heresy, and follow their Shepherd, who says, “My sheep hear my voice and follow me.”

Do you want to know, heretic, that you do not have the Shepherd’s voice, and that the sheep follow you at their peril, you who are covered with sheep’s clothing and inwardly are a ravening wolf? Let them hear your voice; let us see whether it is Christ’s. A weak sheep straying from the flock, not knowing where the flock is, looks for the Church; it looks for where to join, where to go in. Speak: let us hear whether your voice is Christ’s; let us hear whether it is a lamb’s or a partridge’s. A sheep of God looks for its flock. Suppose a sheep has come from the East to Africa; it looks for its flock, runs into you, wants to enter your basilica. You are disturbed by the unfamiliar face, you or your minister standing or sitting at the door; he questions the sheep that is looking for its flock, or rather for God’s flock, wanting to go in with its flock where it thinks the flock is. You ask, “Are you a pagan or a Christian?” It answers, “A Christian”; for it is a sheep of God. You ask, lest perhaps it is a catechumen and might intrude on the sacraments: it answers, “One of the faithful.” You ask of what communion it is: it answers, “Catholic.” Do you reject a Christian, a believer, a Catholic? Then who are those you keep inside? Go on, then, throw him out, reject him. Rejected by you, he is approved by Christ. Would that those who are with you might recognize you, and leave you in the middle of your days! Some of our brothers went yesterday to their basilica: to bad brothers, it is true, but still to brothers. Notice, my brothers, what a difference there is between the confidence of truth and the fear of falsehood. When you recognize some of them among this congregation, how glad you are! Because he who seeks what was lost is in you. Sometimes it is suggested to you, “He will listen and go away.” And you say, “Let him listen and go away.” “He will listen and laugh.” “Let him listen and laugh.” Some day he will understand; some day he will recognize the truth; some day he leaves his people; he remains with his heart, renounces his error, gives thanks to his God. But what about them? “Who are you?” “We are Christians.” “No, you are spies.” And they: “We are Catholics.” They tried to do them harm; on better advice they thought better of it. And would that they would think better of remaining there, as those who went in to do harm thought better of it. Yet whom did they throw out? Christians, believers, Catholics. Whom they kept in, I will not say. Whom they threw out, I see; whom they kept in, let them say.

Let them speak their voice, then; let us see whether it is Christ’s voice, whether it is the voice of the Shepherd that the sheep should follow. Whether this voice comes through a good man or a bad one, let us attend to whether it is the Shepherd’s voice. The weak man looks for the Church; the straying man looks for the Church. What do you say? “The Church is the party of Donatus.” I am looking for the voice of the Shepherd. Read it to me from the prophet; read it to me from the psalm; recite it to me from the Law; recite it from the Gospel; recite it from the apostle. From these I recite to you the Church spread throughout the whole world, and the Lord saying, “My sheep hear my voice and follow me.” What is the voice of the Shepherd? “And that repentance and the forgiveness of sins should be preached in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.” See, this is the voice of the Shepherd: recognize it and follow it, if you are a sheep.

“But those men handed over the books, and those men offered incense to idols, this one and that one.” What is this one and that one to me? If they did it, they are not shepherds; you, give me the voice of the Shepherd, for you are not proclaiming the Shepherd’s voice about them either. You accuse them, not the Gospel; you accuse them, not the prophet, not the apostle. The one about whom this voice speaks to me, him I believe; others I do not believe. “But you bring forward official records.” I bring forward records too. Shall I believe yours? Then believe mine too. I do not believe yours: do not believe mine. Let human papers be put away; let divine voices sound. Give me one voice of Scripture for the party of Donatus; hear countless ones for the whole world. Who can count them? Who can set a limit to them? Yet, to mention a few, attend to the Law, God’s first covenant: “In your seed all nations will be blessed.” In the psalm: “Ask of me, and I will give you the nations as your inheritance, and the ends of the earth as your possession.” “All the ends of the earth will remember and turn to the Lord, and all the families of the nations will worship before him; for the kingdom is his, and he will rule over the nations.” “Sing to the Lord a new song; sing to the Lord, all the earth.” “And all the kings of the earth will worship him; all nations will serve him.” Who could count them all? Almost every page sounds nothing but Christ and the Church spread throughout the whole world. Let one voice come forth for me for the party of Donatus. What great thing am I asking? They say that the Church spread throughout the whole world was going to perish. Was she foretold to perish, who was foretold by so many testimonies to remain? There is not one such voice of the Shepherd, in the Law, in the Prophets, in the Psalms. For they could not speak the truth without the Word of God, which is Christ.

Hear the voice of the Word, and from the mouth of the Word. Marveling at the faith of the centurion, he said: “Amen, I say to you, I have not found such faith in Israel. Therefore I say to you that many will come from the East and the West and will recline with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven.” Many will come from East and West: see the Church of Christ; see the flock of Christ: see whether you are a sheep. For the flock that is everywhere is not hidden from you. You will have nothing to answer your judge, whom you do not want as your Shepherd; you will have nothing, I say, to answer your judge: “I did not know, I did not see, I did not hear.” What is it that you did not know? “There is no one who hides himself from its heat.” What is it that you did not see? “All the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God.” What is it that you did not hear? “Their sound has gone out into all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world.”

But you are rightly asked for the voice of Christ, the voice of the Shepherd, which the sheep may hear and follow. You find nothing to say; you do not have the voice of the Shepherd. Hear, and follow: leave the voice of the wolf; follow the voice of the Shepherd; or give us the voice of the Shepherd. “We give it,” they say. Let us hear. We too give the voice of the Shepherd. Let us hear. “In the Song of Songs,” they say, “the bride speaks to the bridegroom, the Church to Christ.” We know the Song of Songs: holy songs, songs of love, of holy love, of holy charity, of holy sweetness. Certainly I want to hear from it the voice of the Shepherd, the voice of the sweetest bridegroom. Give it, if you have anything; let us hear. “The bride,” they say, “says to the bridegroom, Tell me, you whom my soul loves, where you feed, where you lie down. And he,” they say, “answers, At noon,” that is, in the South. I was bringing forward plain testimonies to you, which there was no way for you to interpret otherwise: “Ask of me, and I will give you the nations as your inheritance and the ends of the earth as your possession.” “All the ends of the earth will remember and turn to the Lord.” What is this that you bring me from the Song of Songs? Something perhaps you do not understand. For those songs are riddles, known to the few who understand them, opened to the few who knock. Hold fast to what is plain and receive it devoutly, so that what is obscure may rightly be opened to you. How will you penetrate the obscure while you despise the plain?

See, however, brothers, let us examine these words as best we can; the Lord will be present, so that you may see the sound sense there. First, what is very easily judged by all, even the unskilled: they divide the words themselves wrongly. You will hear it now; you will test it now. For the text of the reading itself runs thus. The bride speaks to the bridegroom: “Tell me, you whom my soul loves, where you feed, where you lie down.” That the bride says this to the bridegroom, the Church to Christ, neither we nor they doubt. But hear all the bride’s words. Why do you want to give to the bridegroom a word that still belongs to the bride? Say all that the bride says; then the bridegroom will answer. Hear more clearly this division that I am about to state; you will find nothing more. “Tell me, you whom my soul loves, where you feed, where you lie down at noon.” She is still speaking: “where you feed, where you lie down at noon.” And see that she is still speaking. For it follows: “lest perhaps I become like one veiled, among the flocks of your companions.” I think everyone, skilled or unskilled, can tell masculine from feminine gender. “Veiled” (operta): I ask of what gender it is; I ask every man: is it masculine or feminine? “Tell me,” she says, “you whom my soul loves.” When she says “whom,” she is addressing a male; she is addressing the bridegroom. That a woman is addressing a man, the following words show: “Tell me where you feed, where you lie down at noon, lest perhaps I become like one veiled.” Hear “veiled,” so that these things may be unveiled for you. “Tell me, you whom my soul loves, where you feed, where you lie down at noon, lest perhaps I become like one veiled among the flocks of your companions.” Up to here are the words of the bride; now the bridegroom’s words begin, plainly: “Unless you know yourself.” Recognize clearly a woman: “yourself” is feminine. “O fairest among women: unless you know yourself, O fairest among women, go out in the tracks of the flocks and feed your kids beside the tents of the shepherds”: not beside the tent of the Shepherd. See how the bridegroom threatens; see how, in the face of danger, sweet as he is, he has put flattery aside. How sweetly she speaks! “Tell me, you whom my soul loves, where you feed, where you lie down at noon. For midday will come, when the shepherds gather to the shade, and perhaps it will be hidden from me where you feed and where you lie down; and I want you to tell me, lest perhaps I become like one veiled,” that is, like one hidden and unrecognized. “For I am in plain view; but I do not want, as one veiled and concealed, to fall among the flocks of your companions.” For all the heretics went out from Christ; all who have become bad shepherds, having their own flocks under the name of Christ, were his companions and received his banquet. For companions (sodales) are so called as sharers in one banquet: in the Latin language they are called sodales as if “simul edales,” because they eat together. Hear him in the psalm rebuking bad companions, that is, sharers in one banquet: “If my enemy had reproached me,” he says, “I would have borne it; and if he had spoken great things against me, I would have hidden myself from him; but you, my close friend and my acquaintance, my guide, who took sweet food together with me.” So many companions, ungrateful to the Lord’s table, went outside; bad companions made their own tables, set up altars against the altar. Among these she fears to go astray.

And if you think that “noon,” the South, is Africa (although I could maintain that the south of the world is rather the regions of Egypt and those lands scorched by the sun where rain does not appear, since that is the south, where midday blazes; and there the desert is full of thousands of servants of God; so that, if we want to look to the south of the earth’s places, why should he not rather feed there and rest there, since it was foretold, “The breasts of the desert will be fruitful”?)—but see, I concede it: let the South be Africa. Let Africa be the South; these are the bad companions. The Church overseas, in one of her members sailing to Africa, anxious not to go astray, calls on her bridegroom and says to him: “I hear that heretics abound in Africa; I hear that rebaptizers abound in Africa; but I hear that your own are there no less. I hear this, and I hear that; but who are yours, I want to hear from you. Tell me, you whom my soul loves, where you feed, where you lie down at noon. In that South, where I hear there are two parties, one of Donatus, the other cleaving to your whole world, tell me where to go, lest perhaps, like one veiled, that is, unknown, I fall among the flocks of your companions; lest I run into the flocks of heretics, who try to set stone upon stone which will be pulled down; lest I rush in among the rebaptizers: tell me.” And he who commends the unity of the Shepherd, who in this reading said, “I will feed,” and who rejects the shepherds who wanted to be many and lost unity, answers most severely, not sweetly, but in proportion to the greatness of the danger: “Unless you know yourself,” he says, “O fairest among women.” You are fair among women; but know yourself. Where will you know yourself? In the whole world. For if you are fair, unity is in you; where there is division, there is ugliness, not beauty. “Unless you know yourself.” You have believed in me; know yourself. How have you believed in me? Those bad companions too agree that the Word became flesh, was born of a virgin, was crucified, rose again, ascended into heaven: you have believed in me as such, and they too proclaim me as such. Know yourself and me: me in heaven, yourself in the whole world. Christ addresses any one member of the Church as the Church. For how could the Church be seeking the Church? I speak according to their own view. “Tell me, you whom my soul loves, where you feed, where you lie down.” What is she looking for? The Church. And he, as though pointing out the Church, says, “At noon,” as they would have it. Let them answer me, how does the Church look for the Church? “Tell me, you whom my soul loves.” Who is speaking? The Church. What does she want to be told? “Where you feed, where you lie down,” that is, where the Church is. The Church speaks and asks where the Church is; and he answers, as they think, “At noon.” If she is only in the South, as they say, in Africa, how is she asking where she herself is? Or does a portion of the Church overseas rightly ask about the South, so as not to go astray here? Christ addresses each of the members of his Church as his Church and says, “Unless you know yourself, O fairest among women, go out.” Going out is the mark of heretics. Either know yourself, or go out; for if you do not know yourself, you will go out. Go out where? “In the tracks of the flocks”: by following bad flocks. Lest perhaps you think that you are following sheep if you go out, hear what follows: “Go out in the tracks of the flocks, and feed your kids”: no longer sheep. You know, brothers, where the kids will be. On the left will be all who have gone out from the Church. To Peter, who remains, it is said, “Feed my sheep”; to the heretic who goes out, “Feed your kids.”

“There is,” they say, “another testimony too.” It is no less against you: speak; let us hear. It will be against you just as the one you thought was for you. “If you interpret ‘noon’ as Egypt,” they say. We interpret “noon” in many ways, and we can understand it as Egypt as a place in the world, and Africa itself likewise. Hear what I understand by “noon”: I understand the fervor of the spiritual, burning with the fire of charity and shining with the light of truth. For it is said in a certain psalm, “Make your right hand known to me, and those who are instructed in heart in wisdom.” The right hand, not the kids; and those instructed in heart in wisdom: they are the noon. Hence the prophet says, “And your darkness will be like noon.” We can understand “noon” in many ways, then; but I take it simply as Africa; I take it entirely as Africa. I accept from you something perhaps better than I would have thought of, had you not reminded me: let Africa be the South. The Church overseas fears to fall among the rebaptizers; she fears to fall, as one unknown, among the flocks of the companions; she asks her bridegroom to tell her where he feeds and where he lies down at noon. Because in that very South he feeds in some and not in others; he lies down in some and not in others. Let her hear the advice; let her come to the Catholic Church; let her not run into the flocks of the companions; let her not feed her kids. But say the other thing that you said you were going to say. “The prophet,” he says, “says, God will come from Africus.” And where there is Africus, surely there is Africa. What a testimony! “God will come from Africus.” Will God come from Africa? The heretics proclaim that another Christ is born in Africa and goes through the world. I ask, what does “God will come from Africus” mean? If you said, “God has remained in Africa,” you would be saying something shameful enough; but now you even say, “He will come from Africa.” We know where Christ was born, where he suffered, where he ascended into heaven, from where he sent his disciples, where he filled them with the Holy Spirit, where he ordered them to evangelize the whole world; and they obeyed him, and the world is being filled with the Gospel; and you say, “God will come from Africa”?

“You, then,” he says, “explain to me what ‘God will come from Africus’ means.” Say all of it, and perhaps you will understand. “God will come from Africus, and the holy one from the shady mountain.” Explain to me, if it is now from Africa, how it is from the shady mountain. The party of Donatus was born in Numidia: they were the first to be sent into dissension, tumult, and scandal, seeking to make a great wound. The Numidians sent them: Secundus of Tigisis sent them; where Tigisis is, everyone knows. The clergy who were sent gathered a congregation outside the Church, refused to go to the clergy of Carthage, set up an administrator of their own, and were received by Lucilla. The author of this whole evil was a Numidian heretic. In Numidia, from which they came here with such great evil, scarcely any shade is found; they live in huts. How is Numidia a shady mountain? Tell me, then: do not recite only as far as “God from Africus”; I demand what follows too: “And the holy one from the shady mountain.” But show me the party of Donatus coming from Numidia, from a shady mountain. You find everything bare: rich fields indeed, but for grain; not fertile with olive groves, not pleasant with other woods. Where, then, is there a shady mountain in the parts of Numidia from which this scandal came?

“You, then,” he says, “explain to me what ‘God will come from Africus, and the holy one from the shady mountain’ means.” See how easily I will explain it. First hear what the Lord says: “The Christ had to suffer and rise on the third day, and repentance and the forgiveness of sins had to be preached in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.” See from where he will come. When he said “beginning,” he certainly foretold that from there he would come in his saints to the other nations. Read the division of the land among all the tribes of the children of Israel in the book of Jesus son of Nave: it is plainly said there, “Jebus to the south [ab Africo], which is Jerusalem.” Read, search, and you will find. Would that, when you find it, you would believe; would that you would lay aside your animosity. “Jebus to the south, which is Jerusalem.” And the Lord says, “beginning from Jerusalem”: that is, “God will come from Africus.” How, then, from the shady mountain? Now read the Gospel. From the Mount of Olives Christ ascended into heaven. Follow it. And what is clearer? You hear “from Africus”; you have heard “from the shady mountain.” We recite the Law; we recite the Gospel. You have heard “beginning from Jerusalem”; hear “to all nations” in the same prophet. Follow the words that you despised, the words that you passed over: “God will come from Africus, and the holy one from the shady mountain; his shadow will cover the mountains, and the earth is full of his glory.” To all nations, then, beginning from Jerusalem: “God will come from Africus, and the holy one from the shady and thickly wooded mountain”; that is, from the Mount of Olives, from which he ascended into heaven, from which he sent his disciples, where also, as he was about to ascend, he said, “It is not for you to know the times that the Father has fixed by his own authority; but you will receive power from on high, and you will be my witnesses.” See how the Gospel begins: “And you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in Judea and Samaria, and to the whole earth.” So, as God the Christ comes, his name and the preaching of his Gospel come from Jerusalem, that is, from Africus, and from the shady mountain, that is, from the Mount of Olives, because the Gospel has been spread abroad through all nations. “His shadow will cover the mountains,” that is, his refreshment, his protection; “and the earth is full of his praise.” Sing, then, with the whole earth a new song; not the old song with a corner of the earth.

They also say something else: “A certain Cyrenian, Simon, was pressed into service to carry the Lord’s cross.” We read it; but I want to know how it helps you. “A Cyrenian,” he says, “is an African; that is why he was pressed into service to carry the cross.” Perhaps you do not know where Cyrene is: it is in Libya, in the Pentapolis; it borders on Africa, but it belongs rather to the East. Learn it even from the emperors’ division of the provinces: the Eastern emperor sends a governor to Cyrene. I answer briefly: where the party of Donatus is, Cyrene is not found; where Cyrene is, the party of Donatus is not found. Plain truth refutes error. Let him give me Cyrene where the party of Donatus is; let him give me the party of Donatus where Cyrene is. For it is plain, brothers, that in the Pentapolis there is the Catholic Church, and the party of Donatus is not there. But let us, being secure, laugh at those who should be wept over, and weep over those who should be laughed at. What do you say? You recall the great merit of this Cyrenian, because he carried the Lord’s cross, and you call him an African. He is an Easterner. For Libya is spoken of in two ways: either this which is properly Africa, or that part of the East which borders on Africa and is altogether adjacent to it. But let the Cyrenian have been an African. Do you think him blessed because he carried the cross under compulsion? How much better might someone else say that the Church of Christ has remained in Arimathea! For Joseph, that rich man from Arimathea, who had the kingdom of God before his eyes, not pressed into service, not forced, came to the Lord’s cross; when the others were afraid, he asked Pilate for the Lord’s body to bury it, took it down from the wood, attended to the funeral, laid it in a tomb, and is praised in the Gospel. Because this devout man, who showed such service to the Lord’s body, was from Arimathea, has the Church remained in Arimathea? Or, if the one who was pressed into service pleases you more, that is, the one who is forced to carry the cross: then the Catholic emperors do rightly in forcing you into unity.

The words we have sung contain our profession that we are God’s sheep; hence we beg insistently, with tears, for the mercy of him whose sheep we are. For we said: “Let us weep before the Lord who made us; for he is the Lord our God.” So that no one who weeps should despair of being heard, a certain bond was recalled that binds God to hear us: “For he is the Lord our God, who made us.” He is our God; we are the people of his pasture and the sheep of his hands. Human shepherds, or even heads of households who own flocks, did not themselves make the sheep they have; they did not create the sheep they feed. But our Lord God, because he is God and Creator, made for himself the sheep he was to have and to feed; no one else formed those whom he feeds, and no one else feeds those whom he formed. Let us weep, then, before him. For we are not in a good state while we are in this world. When we please the Lord in the land of the living, then our tears will be wiped away; and we shall sing praises to him who rescued us from the chains of death, our feet from slipping, our eyes from tears, so that we may please the Lord in the land of the living; for it is hard to please him in the land of the dead. Yet here too there is a way to please him: by begging his mercy upon us, by abstaining from sins as far as we can, and, where we cannot, by confessing and lamenting them. So in this life we are hoping for another life, weeping here; or rather, weeping in reality, rejoicing in hope.

Having professed, then, in this song that we are his sheep, the people of his pasture, the sheep of his hands, let us hear what he says to us as to his sheep. Earlier, in the previous reading, he was speaking to shepherds; in the present one, today’s, he speaks to the sheep. In those words of his, then, we listened with trembling, you with security. What, then, of today’s words? Do we in our turn listen with security, and you with trembling? Not at all. First, because even though we are shepherds, a shepherd hears with trembling not only what is said to shepherds but also what is said to the sheep. For if he hears without concern what is said to the sheep, he has no care for the sheep. Second, we already told your Charity on that occasion that two things are to be considered in us: one, that we are Christians; the other, that we are set over you. Because we are set over you, we are counted among the shepherds, if we are good; but because we are Christians, we too are sheep along with you. So whether the Lord speaks to shepherds or to sheep, we must hear everything with trembling; and let anxiety not leave our hearts, so that we may weep before the Lord who made us.

Let us hear, then, brothers, for what the Lord rebukes wicked sheep and what he promises his own sheep. “And you, my sheep,” he says, “thus says the Lord God.” First, if anyone considers how great a happiness it is to be God’s flock, brothers, he will conceive great joy even in these tears and these tribulations. For one is not in the flock of a shepherd whom wolves can beat, or whose sleep robbers can take advantage of. For it was to him that it was said, “You who shepherd Israel”; it was of him that it was said, “He who keeps Israel will neither sleep nor slumber.” He keeps watch over us, then, when we are awake; he keeps watch also when we are asleep. If, then, a man’s flock is secure with a human shepherd, how great ought our security to be with God as our shepherd, not only because he feeds us but also because he made us?

We have one care laid upon us: to hear the shepherd’s voice. And now is the time for hearing, because he has not yet taken up the time for judging. He who speaks is silent for now. For he speaks in his commandment and is silent in his judgment. That is why he says in a certain place: “I have kept silent; shall I always keep silent?” How did he keep silent, when he said this very thing by speaking? He who says, “I have kept silent,” is not silent; for even to say, “I have kept silent,” is not to be silent. So I hear you speaking in so many commandments, in so many sacraments, in so many pages, in so many books; I hear you, finally, in this very saying, “I have kept silent; shall I always keep silent?” How, then, have you kept silent? Because I do not yet say, “Come, blessed of my Father, receive the kingdom”; and I do not yet say to the others, “Go, you cursed, into the eternal fire, which is prepared for the devil and his angels.” And I do not yet say these very things in such a way that I do not already proclaim them beforehand. The final sentence that a judge is to pronounce, which he is to write on a tablet with his own hand, and after which he will judge nothing further, the parties do not hear: it is written while they go outside. Both parties are stunned and in suspense, wondering against whom or for whom his sentence will come out. Great is the judge’s secrecy, from which his chamber is named the secretarium. Great is the fear of those involved in the case: what he thinks and what he writes is unknown; and he is a man, and those whom he judges are certainly men. But he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture and the sheep of his hands. And although he is the Creator and we the creature, he immortal and we mortal, he invisible and we visible, he did not want to hide from us in this life what final sentence he is to pronounce at the end. No one who means to condemn says beforehand, “I condemn”; no one who means to strike says beforehand, “I strike.”

Great, then, is his gentleness, great his mercy, great his mildness; but only if we do not abuse his patience to serve our wickedness, and, while he bears our sins, heap sins on sins as though to add to his burden, as if so that he may carry more because he does not tire in carrying. Our sins, which he still spares because he still bears with them, show his patience and pile up our load. “Do you not know,” he says, “that God’s patience leads you to repentance?” That patience is what he calls silence, when he says, “I have kept silent; shall I always keep silent?” So when he was rebuking certain people and saying, “You who preach that one must not steal, steal; you who say that one must not commit adultery, commit adultery,” and so on, he says: “Or do you despise the riches of his goodness and long-suffering?” Because he is good, because he is long-suffering, because he sees and is silent, because he sees and bears with it, do you think him unjust? “Do you not know that God’s patience leads you to repentance?” And see whether he who is silent now will always be silent: “But you,” he says, “by your hardness and impenitent heart are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath and of the revelation of the just judgment of God, who will render to each according to his works.” So he is silent; shall he always be silent? Again, after listing certain sins, he says: “These things you did, and I kept silent”; that is, you did these things and I did not punish them; “you supposed wickedly that I would be like you.” And indeed many think this: when they have done many evil things and have seen nothing evil happen to them, not only do their evil deeds please them, but they even think they please God. Impiety goes so far that the impious despiser thinks God is like himself. And while God, by warning, teaching, exhorting, and rebuking, draws him toward his own likeness, not only does he not follow God’s likeness, but he wants to draw God toward his own. This is a greater wickedness than the sins themselves from which he does not correct himself. “You supposed wickedly that I would be like you?” And what follows? “I will rebuke you.” Why this? “I have kept silent; shall I always keep silent?” Therefore, brothers, since this word that comes from the mouth of God frightens both me and you (for we all have one good hope in him, and we must all equally fear that, having offended him, we may not find what we hoped for but experience what we despised), let us all listen as God’s sheep while he who is silent speaks, while he who made us warns us and does not yet judge us, while there is time to listen, while it is permitted.

“And you, my sheep,” he says, “thus says the Lord God: Behold, I judge between sheep and sheep, and rams and he-goats.” What are he-goats doing here in God’s flock? In the same pastures, at the same springs, the he-goats, though destined for the left, are mixed with those on the right; those who will be separated are first tolerated; and here the patience of the sheep is exercised, after the likeness of God’s patience. For the separation will be made by him, some to the left, others to the right. But now he is silent, and you want to speak. But in what respect do I say, “You want to speak”? In the respect in which he is silent: in the punishment of judgment, not in the word of rebuke. He does not yet separate; you want to separate. He who sowed tolerates the mixture. If you want the grain cleaned before the winnowing, you will be badly winnowed by your own wind. The servants were permitted to say, “Do you want us to go and gather them?” For they were indignant at seeing the weeds, and grieved that weeds were mixed with the good crop; and they said, “Did you not sow good seed? Where, then, did the weeds come from?” He gave the reason why they had appeared; yet he did not allow them to be pulled up before the time. Although the servants themselves were indignant at the weeds, they still sought counsel and a command from their master. Those things displeased them among the crop; but the servants saw that if they did anything of their own accord, even in pulling up the weeds, they themselves would be counted among the weeds. They awaited the Lord’s command and sought their king’s order: “Do you want us to go and gather them?” And he said: “No.” And he gave the reason: “Lest perhaps, when you want to gather the weeds, you root up the wheat with them.” He calmed their indignation and did not leave them in their grief. It seemed hard to the servants that there should be weeds among the wheat; and it truly was hard. But the condition of the field is one thing, the rest of the barn another. Bear with it; that is what you were born for. Bear with it, for perhaps you were borne with. If you have always been good, have mercy; if you were once bad, do not lose the memory of it. And who is always good? If God examines you carefully, he will more easily find you bad even now than you will find yourself always good. So these weeds are to be tolerated among the wheat, the he-goats among the rams, the kids among the sheep. But what does he say about the wheat? “At the time of harvest,” he says, “I will tell the reapers: Gather first the weeds, and bind them in bundles to burn them; but store my wheat in the barn.” The mixture of the field will pass; the separation of the harvest will come. The Lord now requires of us the patience that he sets forth in himself, saying to you: “If I chose to judge now, would I judge unjustly? If I chose to judge now, could I be deceived? If I, who always judge rightly and cannot be deceived, put off my judgment, do you, who do not know how you are to be judged, dare to judge so hastily?” See, brothers, how he did not grant this work to those servants who wanted to root up the weeds before the time, not even at the harvest. For he says, “At the time of harvest I will tell the reapers”; he does not say, “I will tell you.” But what if the servants themselves are to be the reapers? No. For, explaining everything one by one, he says, “The reapers are the angels.” So do you, a man hedged in by flesh, carrying flesh, or perhaps wholly flesh, that is, flesh in body and carnal in mind, dare to seize beforehand another’s office, which will not be yours even at the harvest? So much for separating the weeds. What of the he-goats? “When the Son of Man comes, and all the angels with him, he will sit on the throne of his glory; and all the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate them as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.” He will come, and he will separate: the harvest will come, and they will be separated. Now, then, is not the time of separation but of toleration. And we do not say this, brothers, so that the diligence of rebuking may go to sleep; on the contrary, so that we may not come to that judgment unprepared and, blind and careless of our blindness, suddenly find ourselves on the left, let discipline be exercised, but let judgment not be rushed.

What, then, does the Lord say? “Behold, I judge between sheep and sheep, and rams and he-goats.” “I judge”: great security! He himself judges; let the good be secure. No adversary bribes their judge, no advocate gets round him, no witness deceives him. But as secure as the good are, so much let the wicked fear. He is not a judge from whom anything is hidden. Will God, when he judges, look for witnesses to learn from them who you are? How can he be deceived about who you are, he who knew who you were going to be? He questions you, not someone else about you. “The Lord,” it says, “questions the righteous and the wicked.” But he questions you not in order to learn from you but in order to confound you. Since we have such a judge, whom no one deceives either against us or for us, let us so act that we do not fear his coming judgment but await and desire it. Does the grain fear being put into the barn? On the contrary, it wishes and longs for it eagerly. Do the sheep fear being placed on the right? On the contrary, nothing seems so slow to them as its coming. These say from the heart and in all sincerity, when they pray, “Your kingdom come.” But at these words the heart of a bad man trembles and his tongue stammers. For how do you say, “Your kingdom come”? See, it will come: in what state will it find you? So act that you may pray securely. And if perhaps there is something of error and sin in your conscience, you have the medicine in the prayer itself: “Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors.” For God willed that you should be a debtor in such a way that you also have a debtor. By sinning you make yourself God’s enemy; but take care whether perhaps you too have an enemy. Forgive, and you will be forgiven. What you do, who can be found in sin, he will do to you who can be judged guilty of no sin. But if, being a man set in sin, you do not spare the one who sins against you, and do not consider your own condition in him, and do not shudder at the fall of your frailty for the time to come, what will he do to you, who judges so securely, as one who never sins?

We must work, then, for a pure conscience; and if perhaps some scruple is there, let us come before his face in confession. Just now in the psalm, as it was sung, we heard, “Let us come before his face in confession.” Let us come before him, so that he does not come upon us first. After confession he will not seek vengeance, if after confession you do not return to your wickedness. Come before him before he comes upon you. For that he will come is certain; you are lost if you do not desire what is going to happen. For he will come even against your will. Will you delay him by refusing to let him come? As he knew the hour in which he was to be judged, so he also knows the hour in which he is to judge. He will come; see to it what you will be. Today there is a scruple: today let there be confession, today let the scruple be renounced; today it is forgiven, today it is released. There is no reason for you to say, “God puts off pardon”: do not put off your medicine. For you have something in your mind that distresses you; and if it distresses you, it also troubles you. Surely, if there were a stone in your house offending your eyes, you would order it removed from the way, especially if you were about to receive a rather important guest into your house. So when you invoke God, you call him into yourself: how will he come into you, when you have not cleaned the place in which you are to receive him? But are you unfit to remove from your heart what you yourself made there? Invoke him, that he may cleanse it; invite him, that he may enter; only do now what you are going to do, while he speaks by warning and is silent in judging.

Here he has named he-goats, he has named rams, and he judges between them. And what does he say to them? “Is it not enough for you that you fed on good pasture? And the rest of your pasture you trampled with your feet; and you drank the water that had settled” (that is, that was clear and still), “and the rest you muddied with your feet; and my sheep fed on what your feet had trampled, and drank the water muddied by your feet.” What is this? God’s pastures are good, and God’s springs are pure. We have these in the holy Scriptures. Who, then, are those who drink from them what is still, and feed from them on what is clean, and trample the rest and muddy the water, so that other sheep get trampled grass and drink muddied water? And you surely see that this displeases the shepherd, who says, while these things are being done, “I judge between sheep and sheep”: surely, so that they may not be done. There are many who learn calmly and teach turbulently, and though they have a patient teacher, they rage at the learner. For who does not know how calmly Scripture itself teaches us? Someone comes, then, and reads God’s commandments; he reads and takes them in; he takes them in calmly, drinking still water from a still source and feeding on what is green and clean. Someone else comes to hear something from him; he grows indignant, gets agitated, and by accusing the slowness of one who understands with difficulty, he makes the other, now troubled, understand less of what he could have heard calmly.

I would not say this, brothers, as if dullness should never be rebuked, since the great calm of the Truth itself rebukes it, saying, “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe!”, provided this is done with that love by which we wish to rouse people: to rouse the diligence of their attention, and perhaps to clear away the cloud from their mind that they have gathered from the cares of the world; for perhaps, by thinking of other useless things, they cannot hear what is useful. Then too, even if someone sees slowness in himself, he is not accused without reason, so that he may ask God to loose his slowness and grant him the truth. For either, if we understand too little of what we have heard through our own negligence, the negligence must certainly be rebuked; or, if it is slowness, once it has been accused there will be a reason to pray to God. So such teachers are not to be blamed; but those who do this with a bitter mind, an envious mind, they are the ones who trample the pastures and muddy the springs: whatever they may know, they want to know it in such a way that others do not know it. Men of malicious mind, full of hellish jealousy, livid not in body but in heart, they have read and understood; but when they are asked, they say, “That is too much for you; am I to entrust these things to you? Are you worthy to read or hear these things?” Why do you muddy the water? The spring flows for you both. Why do you trample the grass that is common? You did not send the rain to make it grow.

There is something else in these words that can reasonably be understood. There are people who think that their conscience is enough for them in living well, and they do not much care what anyone else thinks of them. They do not know that when a man sees a man of good conscience living rather carelessly, associating with anyone anywhere, knowing that an idol is nothing and yet reclining at table in an idol’s temple, his conscience, being weak, is built up, not toward what he examines, but toward what he suspects. For a man your equal, your brother, cannot enter into your conscience, which God knows. Your conscience is before God; your conduct is before your brother. If he, suspecting something bad of you, is disturbed and “built up” to doing something that he thinks you do, because you live in such a way, what good is it to you that the belly of your conscience has drunk pure water, while he drinks muddied water from your careless conduct?

And when such people are rebuked so that they will not do these things, you hear them answer us and say: “The Apostle said, If I wished to please men, I would not be a servant of Christ.” Here too you muddy the water and trample the pasture. Pay closer attention, so that you do not muddy the water for yourself too. What the Apostle says, “If I wished to please men, I would not be a servant of Christ,” I accept very well; I gladly acknowledge the apostolic saying. But have you not read something else in the Apostle: “Please all in all things, as I also please all in all things, not seeking what is profitable to me but to many, that they may be saved”? Again, have you not heard the same apostle: “Give no offense to Jews or to Greeks or to the church of God”? Third, have you not heard the same apostle: “For we provide what is good, not only before God but also before men”? So he says: “Explain to me, then, how I am to understand sayings so different and contrary: the Apostle saying here, If I wished to please men, I would not be a servant of Christ; and here, Please all in all things, as I also please all in all things; here, This is our glory, the testimony of our conscience; and here, We provide what is good, not only before God but also before men.” If you listen calmly, if you do not muddy the water of your own mind for yourself, I will perhaps explain, as far as I can. There are people who are rash judges, slanderers, whisperers, grumblers, who seek to suspect what they do not see, and who seek even to spread abroad what they do not even suspect: against such people what remains but the testimony of our conscience? For, brothers, even with those whom we wish to please, we do not seek our own glory, nor ought we to seek it, but their salvation: so that if we walk well, they may not go astray in following us; let them be our imitators if we are Christ’s; but if we are not Christ’s, let them be imitators of Christ. For he himself feeds his flock, and he alone is with all who feed well, because they are all in him. So we do not seek our own advantage when we wish to please people; but we rejoice that what is good pleases them, for their benefit, not for our honor. It is clear against whom the Apostle said, “If I wished to please men, I would not be a servant of Christ”; and it is clear for whose sake he said, “Please all in all things, as I also please all in all things.” Both are lucid, both calm, both pure, both undisturbed. Only, feed and drink; do not trample and muddy.

For you have surely heard the Lord Jesus Christ himself, the teacher of the apostles: “Let your works shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father who is in heaven”; that is, who made you such. For we are the people of his pasture and the sheep of his hands. So let him be praised who made you good, if you are good; not you, who by yourself could only be bad. Why do you want to turn the truth upside down, so that when you do something good you want yourself to be praised, and when you do something bad you want the Lord to be blamed? For surely he who said, “Let your works shine before men,” also said in the same sermon, “Do not do your righteousness before men.” But just as these things seemed contrary to you in the Apostle, so also in the Gospel. But if you do not muddy the water of your heart, here too you will recognize the peace of the Scriptures, and you too will have peace with them. But if you refuse to have peace with them, you stir up a quarrel within yourself; they will not lose their peace. It is because of those who commend themselves to people by boasting, and so fan their good works abroad that they set the end of their good works in human praise, and count that same human praise as the reward of their good works: of these it is said, “Truly I say to you, they have received their reward.” Against them it is said, “Beware of doing your righteousness before men.” Then follows: “in order to be seen by them.” He did not stretch the aim any further; he made it end there. Do not do whatever good you do before men in such a way as to be seen by them, so that being seen by them is itself the end of your work. Do not act, then, so as to be seen by them. But in the other place he does not set the end in our being seen by the people before whom he wants our good deeds to be; he says, “Let your works shine before men, that they may see your good works.” He did not stop, nor remain there; but he led you upward from there, and took you away from yourself (for you would fall if you rested in yourself), and placed you where you would be safe: “That they may see,” he says, “your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven.” Do not be angry that he is glorified: be with him, and you will be glorified in him. “So that no flesh,” says the Apostle, “may glory before him.” Shall we, then, remain without glory? No; for he himself says, “Let him who glories glory in the Lord.” For even the testimony of our conscience is a glory to us in this way, because it is in him. For if our glory is such that we please ourselves and become self-pleasing, then he who pleases himself pleases a very foolish man.

Let us take care, then, brothers, not only to live well but also to conduct ourselves well before people; and not only to have a good conscience, but, as far as our weakness is able, as far as the vigilance of human frailty is able, let us take care also to do nothing that might fall under evil suspicion with a weak brother; lest perhaps, while we eat clean grass and drink clean water, we trample God’s pastures, and the weak sheep eat what is trampled and drink what is muddied. And woe to us, because of him who says, “I judge between sheep and sheep.”

“For this reason thus says the Lord God to them: Behold, I judge between the strong sheep and the weak sheep.” Let him say something else. We have already heard about those who trample the grass and muddy the waters; let us hear of another kind of evil, and a great kind of evil. After this he makes no more mention of the he-goats: he named them once, so that we should know they are there. For he knows them well. After this he speaks as though all were sheep. First he spoke as he himself sees; afterwards as we see. For since the he-goats are among them and will be separated at the end, let the sheep know it; for now I distinguish as between sheep and sheep. No one knows the sheep and the he-goats by predestination and foreknowledge except him alone who could predestine because he could foreknow. Now, since all are under the sign of Christ and all come to the grace of God, you think yourself a sheep; God perhaps knows you as a he-goat. But hear as a sheep what you hear: “Behold, I judge between the strong sheep and the weak sheep.”

“Because you pushed with your sides and shoulders, and struck with your horns, and crushed all that was failing, until you scattered them outside.” Who would not understand this? Who would not shudder at it? If no sheep are outside, it has not happened. But if we lament that many sheep wander outside, woe to those by whose shoulders and sides and horns it was done. For only strong sheep would do these things. Who are the strong? Those who presume on their own strength. Who are the strong? Those who boast of their own righteousness. None divided the sheep, none sent them outside, except those who said that they were righteous: shoulders bold to push, because they do not carry God’s burden; evil sides, conspiring friends, a fellowship of obstinacy; horns raised high, lifted up in pride. Push with sides and shoulders, toss with horns, send outside what you did not buy! Certainly the whole case is this: that you are righteous and others unrighteous, and that it was unworthy for a righteous man to be with the unrighteous; unworthy, of course, that the grain should be among the weeds; unworthy that the sheep should feed among the he-goats until the shepherd should come who does not err in separating. Are you, then, the angel uprooting the weeds? I would not recognize you as an angel uprooting the weeds even if the harvest had already come. Before the harvest it is not you; and whoever it may be, he is not genuine. He who appointed the reapers also appointed the time. Men too could call themselves angels. Perhaps we find in the Scriptures that men too are called angels; but still I look to the time of harvest. You can give yourself the name of angel; you cannot shorten the time of harvest. So you speak falsely in saying that you are one, because the time when you might be one has not yet come. Accordingly, when it comes, and the true reapers have been sent, I do not know where they will find you, whether as one to be cleansed and stored in the barn, or as one to be bound and thrown into the fire. I say “perhaps” because I do not dare to judge. For now I grieve that you are outside; whether you will be inside, I do not know.

Meanwhile, hear that by another testimony of Scripture it is written about you while you are alive; and do not want to uproot the weeds when it is not the time, but come back inside yourself while it is the time. Another Scripture of God says: “A bad son calls himself righteous.” These are your shoulders and sides and horns. Wrongly strong, how much better it would be for you to be weak! Wrongly strong, but not healthy. The madman, wrongly strong, strikes even his doctor. You call yourself perfect so as to make a defection. How much better, how much more useful it would be for you to be weak, so that he who knows your imperfection might perfect you! The apostle Paul, a chosen vessel, so that he should not be lifted up by his revelations (which we would not dare to say if we did not believe him when he says it): “Lest I be lifted up,” he says, “by the greatness of the revelations, there was given me a goad in my flesh, an angel of Satan, to buffet me.” So that he would not raise his horns, he said that he was buffeted. “For this,” he says, “I asked the Lord three times to take it away from me; and he said to me: My grace is enough for you; for strength is made perfect in weakness.” How much more useful, then, is the weakness that is made perfect than that strength which pushes the sheep and tosses them in order to shut them out! So you yourself are the bad son: you call yourself righteous. “A bad son calls himself righteous, but does not wash away his going out.” Pay attention, my brothers, to a saying brief in number of words but immense in weight of truth. He calls himself righteous so as to go out and to shut others out. He calls himself righteous, but he is bad; therefore he does not wash away his going out. What does “does not wash away” mean? He does not clear it, does not defend it, does not excuse it. For why did you separate yourself? Why did you go out? Why does your heart tremble when you hear from the divine books, “They went out from us, but they were not of us”, if indeed that evil strength with which you push and drive and toss God’s sheep allows any trembling into your heart? For surely, when you hear, “They went out from us, but they were not of us,” the one speaking was in the Church. The Church is spread through the whole world; what are you doing outside? For it is not I who proclaim the Church spread through the whole world: the prophets proclaimed it, the apostles proclaimed it, the Lord himself proclaimed the Church spread through the whole world. Just now, when the psalm was read, we heard, “The Lord does not reject his people.” As if it were asked, “Which people?”, it says, “For in his hand are the ends of the earth.” He does not reject them, and you push them away. You push, you toss, you shut out, you throw out the charge of “betrayers”, and you do not prove it. These are the horns of one who tosses, not the gentleness of one who feeds. See God’s people at the ends of the earth; see God’s people groaning and weeping before God who made it, saying in the psalm to the very Lord before whom it weeps, “From the ends of the earth I have cried to you, when my heart was in anguish.” See how it humbles itself in the anguish of its heart. And what does it say was granted to it? “You have lifted me up on the rock.” On the rock, Christ, you have lifted me up; you have not hurled me down from the mountain of Donatus. Go now, toss your horns, stretch out your sides, puff up your shoulders, and push the sheep; and say, “I am righteous.” Scripture will answer you: “Bad, not righteous. A bad son calls himself righteous.” If you are righteous, why do you go outside? Why do you cast out? What are you doing outside with those whom you cast out? As a sheep you fled from the he-goats. Better that you be separated from them by the shepherd to the right than be put to shame with them on the left. They were he-goats, you a sheep: you should have fed with the he-goats. How had the pastures, how had the springs offended you? Finally, how had the shepherd himself offended you, who mixed both flocks for a time, who, though he could do this well whenever he pleased, yet kept the separation for the end? For even if he separated them now, he would not err. He puts it off to the end; you separate before the time. You do not wait for the end, not knowing when your own end will be. Why this, unless because you accused falsely even those whom you accused as he-goats? For if you had accused them truly, you would not have separated yourself. Your separation is their vindication. If they were weeds, why did you want to separate them before the time? You would have been wheat mixed with them, rooted in the same field, watered by the same rain. Why, then, did you go out? Do you find a reason? Those whom you accuse you do not convict; but by going out before the time and separating yourself, you yourself are convicted. See that you are a bad son: you call yourself righteous, but you do not wash away your going out. I do not say to you, “It is rather you who are the betrayer.” If I said it, I could easily prove it; but I do not wish to say it, because it was your people who did it, not you. I do not impute others’ deeds to you, even those of your own people: I look at your own deed; I reproach you for being outside. I reproach your going out. I set aside entirely everything that can be said against you. I pass over your drunkenness, your interest and usury upon usury; I pass over the gangs and the frenzies of the Circumcellions; I pass over all these things and whatever others I cannot list. Perhaps not all among you do these things. Let the one there who does not do them, the one who is displeased by what is done there, let him come forward, let him speak: I do not charge him with another’s crime; let him wash away his going out. You see that it is rightly said to him, “A bad son calls himself righteous.” For the Lord says it, who speaks the truth: “A bad son calls himself righteous.” Not I, but he. If he wants me to call him righteous, let him come, let him bear good fruit in Catholic peace and keep it in Catholic peace; for there is no fruit where there is no endurance. “And they bear fruit,” it says, “with endurance.” Do you want to tell how you came to be struck by hail? Hear from another place: “Woe to those who have lost endurance.”

Now imagine someone considering (as often happens) where he should be a Christian. He is moved to become a Christian; he observes the human race running together to the name of Christ; he wants to be a Christian with no temporal advantage in view, not to win a more powerful friend, not to obtain a woman he desires as his wife, not to escape some pressure of this world (although many who enter even in this way are corrected once they have come in). But let us suppose someone who is thinking about his soul and wants to be a Christian. He looks around and sees two parties; he asks the reasons why the one separated itself from the other. They answer: “We separated ourselves, as the righteous from sinners.” As if they were speaking to a blind man, who hears what they say but does not see what they do. So if, looking at their morals and at the things I mentioned a little earlier, he says to them, “Please tell me: you call yourselves righteous, and so you maintain that you rightly separated yourselves; why are there such people and such things among you?”, they perhaps, because they do not dare to deny it, since what is said is set before the eyes, reply, “There are indeed such people among us, but surely we are not all like that?” Very well. Then I see you outside with sinners: why not inside? For the reward of your separation ought to have been not to live with a sinner. If you were outside in such a way that you did not have among you the kind of people you pretend to have fled, I would put up with your separation somehow. So let this man who wants to be a Christian consider where he should be a Christian. He sees those who separated themselves supposedly from sinners full of sinners. Then let him look at the Church of Christ by the standard of conduct generally approved among mankind, by which even he, coming from the world, can judge in some fashion: he sees here too some sober and some drunk, some feeding the poor and some craving to plunder other people’s goods, and other such things: he sees them here, and he sees them there. Let him now look to God, and what he says about his Church: he finds God speaking of his Church through all nations; he finds God saying also, in that likeness of the weeds, “The field is this world.” The field is not Africa, but this world. Through the whole world, wheat; through the whole world, weeds (yet the field is the world, the sower the Son of Man, the reapers the angels, not the chiefs of the Circumcellions); both growing until the harvest: not the weeds growing and the wheat diminishing, but both growing until the harvest. What harvest? Hear him: “The harvest is the end of the age.” He hears these things plainly, and, judging rightly, what does he say? “I will not be in that cutting-off; I will be here, and I will be good in the name of him whose I shall be; and I will be good, not making myself good but waiting to be made good by him; not calling myself good and righteous, but longing to be called so by him.” He enters; he becomes a Catholic. See, he washes clean his coming in; you too, wash away your going out. You cannot: for “a bad son calls himself righteous, but does not wash away his going out.”

“You pushed with your sides and shoulders, and struck with your horns, and crushed all that was failing, until you scattered them outside. And I will save my sheep.” As their wickedness and cruelty is to be abhorred, so the mercy of our shepherd, truly our God, is to be praised: he will save his sheep. Perhaps, my brothers, he does this even through his least servants, perhaps through unworthy ones, when we say these things. May he save his sheep: let them hear the voice of their shepherd and follow him. Let them not seek the Church from the mouth of men: let them seek it from the mouth of God, from the mouth of Christ. Whom he calls wicked is wicked; whom he calls righteous is righteous; whom he calls a sheep is a sheep; whom he calls a he-goat is a he-goat. He is the truth; let him speak; let the Church be sought from him. Tell us, Lord, where is your Church? And he says to all: “Do you know where I am?” Let all answer: “In heaven, at the right hand of the Father.” That is the whole faith: “This I taught, this I sowed; but I sowed it through the world. When you confess me in heaven,” he says, “surely that psalm comes to your mind, Be exalted above the heavens, O God. Are you seeking the Church? Read what follows: And your glory above all the earth.” There, brothers, where it is said of Christ rising and ascending, “Be exalted above the heavens, O God,” there it immediately follows, “And your glory above all the earth.” The bridegroom is in heaven, the bride is on earth: he above all the heavens, she over all the earth. O heretic, you believe what you do not see in heaven, and you deny what you see on earth. So let him say these things; let him say them and be heard: may he save his sheep. “And I will save my sheep,” he says, “and they will no longer be plundered; and I will judge between sheep and sheep.”

“And I will raise up over them one shepherd.” Had he not himself said in the earlier reading, “I will feed them”? Now he who feeds raises up one shepherd. Or perhaps, within so short a space of reading, he grew weary of feeding, and raised up a shepherd to whom he might entrust the care of the sheep so that he himself could be free of care? Let us hear what shepherd he means; and there we shall understand why the shepherd himself, even when this shepherd has been raised up, himself feeds, and alone feeds. “I will raise up over them one shepherd, and my servant David will feed them; he will feed them.” That this is a prophecy of Christ coming to men from the seed of David you quickly understand, brothers, if you know the times. This prophet Ezekiel lived at the time of the captivity, which came about through the deportation of the people to Babylon. From the time of David to the time of this deportation there are fourteen generations. See how long afterwards he says, “And David will feed them.” If this were said in the time of Noah, or of Abraham, or of Moses, or at least of Saul himself, whom David succeeded as king, we would rightly understand it to have been said of David himself, the son of Jesse, that he would be the shepherd of God’s flock, since that people was entrusted to him as king. But by now David had already reigned, had already departed this life, had already been gathered to his fathers, was already at rest according to his merit. What, then, does he mean by saying, “I will raise up David, and make him one shepherd for them,” unless that David is he who came from the seed of David? How, then, does God raise up a shepherd for us? What one shepherd? “And my servant David will feed them.” For a long time he himself was feeding us; God was feeding us; now his servant David feeds us. Why as if he were another? For surely, when he fed, God fed; and when God fed, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit fed. Now he is raised up and becomes as it were another shepherd; but not another. Not another according to the form of God, because in the form of God he and the Father are one God; but in the form of a servant he is raised up as it were another, to feed, because the Father is greater. Hear the one who feeds, and Christ feeding: “I and the Father are one.” Hear Christ raised up to feed: “The Father is greater than I.” So one feeds, because “though he was in the form of God, he did not think it robbery to be equal with God.” But he is raised up to feed, because “he emptied himself, taking the form of a servant.” The very words here testify to this too: “My servant David will feed them.” Servant, in the form of a servant. Servant, because “he emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, made in the likeness of men and found in appearance as a man; he humbled himself, becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross.” Let him be raised up, then, to feed. “Therefore,” it says, “God raised him up” from the dead, “and gave him the name that is above every name.” Now that his servant David has been raised up, now that the form of a servant has been raised up, which he set at his right hand, he gave him the name that is above every name. See how he feeds, how widely he feeds: “that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, of those in heaven, on earth, and under the earth.” Into what narrow corner, heretical vanity, do you drive the owner of so wide a domain? Do you trust your proud shoulders and your horns so much that you not only fail to gather the flock to the shepherd but even try to shut the shepherd himself out of the flock? “My servant David will feed them.” Hear, you sheep, David feeding you: hear the voice of David your shepherd, not the voice of robbers, not the howling of wolves. “My servant David will feed them. He will feed them.” O word to be prized! “He will feed them.” Let no one say that he feeds, except him: “He will feed them.” Whoever wants to feed, let him feed in him; for he will feed them. A little earlier God was saying, “I will feed”; now he says, “He will feed them.” Let the Son answer and tell us: “Both were truly said: I and the Father are one.” He who says, “I will feed,” does not lie in saying, “He will feed”; and when he says, “He will feed,” he does not lie in saying, “I will feed.” “Do you not believe,” he says, “that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? Philip, he who has seen me has seen the Father.” Rightly it is said, “I will feed”; rightly it is said, “He will feed.” It is a distinction, not a separation: “He will feed them.” Do not be afraid, you sheep; he who said, “He will feed them,” will not leave you. God feeds, Father and Son and Holy Spirit: God himself feeds. But the form of a servant had to be distinguished, not separated and estranged and set up as another person. The Creator took the creature into himself; the Creator was not changed into the creature: he assumed what he was not; he did not lose what he was.

“My servant David will feed them. He will feed them, and he will be their shepherd; and I the Lord will be their God.” Pay attention, brothers: see the unity of the Godhead and yet the distinction of the persons, so that we do not say that the one who is the Father is the Son, or that the one who is the Son is the Father. See, he said, “He will feed them,” who a little earlier had said, “I will feed them.” “And he will be their shepherd,” he says, “and I the Lord will be their God.” Explain it to us, Lord; let no one muddy the water; let us drink what flows pure from a pure spring. Why did you say it as if separately, “He will be their shepherd, I will be their God”, as though he were our shepherd and you our God? Why, Lord, are you not our shepherd, and why is he not our God? Listen calmly; be gentle in hearing the word, so that you may understand. For perhaps some ear is listening to me now that holds a different view and is wasted by heretical poison, and mocks me for saying that the Father and the Son are one God, though it does not mock so many thousands of brothers who had one soul. And he says to me: “See, God says plainly, My servant David will be their shepherd, and you yourself took him to be Christ, nor can he be understood otherwise; for you gave the reason, that these words were said when David had already fallen asleep. So Christ will be their shepherd; and I the Lord, he says, will be their God: the one as shepherd, the other as God.” Then you explain to me what “I will feed” means. Who was saying, “I will feed”? Certainly God was speaking when he said, “I will feed.” As he did not separate Christ from feeding when he said, “I will feed,” so he did not separate Christ from the Godhead when he said, “I God.” See, Christ is shepherd, and the Father too is shepherd. So too the Father is God, and Christ too is God. As you do not separate the Father from Christ the shepherd, so do not separate Christ from God the Father. The Father has with the Son the compassion that feeds; the Son has with the Father equality of divinity. But if he had not spoken in this way, you would think that the one who is the Son is the Father. So he has pointed you both to the unity of the Godhead and to the distinction of the persons: so that, when he says, “He will feed, and I will be their God,” not separating himself from the Son who feeds nor separating the Son from himself who rules, you may understand the Son as God in the Father, and the Father as shepherd in the Son. “I the Lord,” he says, “will be their God, and my servant David a prince in their midst.” Why in their midst? Because “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” “A prince in their midst.” Hence he is also the mediator between God and men: because he is God with the Father, because he is man with men. Not a mediator as man apart from the Godhead; not a mediator as God apart from humanity. See the mediator: divinity without humanity is not mediator; humanity without divinity is not mediator; but between divinity alone and humanity alone, the mediator is the human divinity and the divine humanity of Christ. “And my servant David a prince in their midst. I the Lord have spoken”: not some heretic or other. “I the Lord have spoken.”

“And I will establish with them a testament of peace”: surely through him who says, “My peace I give you, my peace I leave you.” This is the testament of our father, a testament of peace. Any other inheritance may be divided among co-heirs; the inheritance of peace cannot be divided. Our peace is Christ. Peace makes both one, not two out of one. “For he is our peace,” it says, “who made both one.” The testament is God’s; the inheritance is peace. Let it be possessed by co-heirs in harmony, not divided by litigants. “And I will establish with them a testament of peace.” Wake up, heretics; hear the testament of peace from the shepherd; come to peace. You are angry with the Christian emperors because your testaments could not stand in your houses: see how fitting the penalty is. And what does it amount to, that your testament does not stand in your house? What is it? How much is it? This pain is a warning, not yet a condemnation. For God willed that you should share in the suffering of his testament of peace. You grieve for your testament if your testament does not stand in your house. Certainly you are going to die, and you will not know what is done in that house afterwards. “For on that day,” it says, “all his thoughts will perish; and he will no longer know his place.” So although you will not know what is done in your house after you are dead, you still grieve that your testament does not stand in your house. Christ died, rose again, and looked down from heaven, so that his testament might stand. Wake up from your pain; be corrected by your torment. You know that heat is usually applied to wood that is badly bent: let this pain correct you. It is not yet the flame of the eternal fire; it is as if the heat of a hearth has been applied to your bent heart, so that by it the heart may be warned and straightened. Grieve; you grieve quite rightly that your testament does not stand in your house. God’s house is your heart. If you want your testament to be valid in your house, why do you not want God’s testament to be valid in his house? You leave walls to your children, and if you knew that your children would divide them otherwise than you had disposed, you would grieve. Over one very cheap house, over a roof that will fall in, how much care you take, how much anxiety you feel! How, in burning fevers, under the pressure of disease, you resist death itself as it presses on you, as far as you can, gasping out your last words, so as to complete your testament! How many lawyers you consult, how many tricks you search out, so that your testament may stand even against the law of the emperor! From close at hand God answers you: “Do not seek tricks, do not hunt for captious formulas: do you want your testament to stand? Let mine stand in you. You grieve because someone you did not want takes what you acquired: what of my inheritance, so broad, so full of love? In your seed all nations shall be blessed: I said this to my servant,” God says to you, “and he believed when he did not see these things: you see them, and you deny them.” See, he kept the testament when it was made; you tear it up when it has been opened. For the testament was kept when it was heard; it was opened when it was fulfilled. The testament was kept until it came into your hands. Certainly you want to be an heir: does your co-heir quarrel with you in such a way as to say to you, “You take this part, I that one”, or, “You take the smaller, and I the larger”? He does not say, “Let us divide it together,” but, “Let us have it together.” For this is what the testator willed. Open it and read. And you cry out: “It was I who saw to it that it was not burned; it was I who kept it from being burned.” You kept it from being burned? Open it and see that you have kept the very thing that condemns you to be burned; though far be it from me to believe that you kept it, when I see that you do not keep what it commands. “And I will establish with them a testament of peace.”

“And I will exterminate the evil beasts from the land.” Beasts: the enemies of the testament of peace. Of these beasts it is said in the psalm, “Rebuke the wild beasts of the reed.” What are “the wild beasts of the reed”? Beasts hostile to holy Scripture, because the Scriptures were written with a reed. “I will exterminate the evil beasts from the land; and they will dwell in the desert in hope.” What does “in the desert” mean? In solitude. What does “in solitude” mean? Within, in the conscience. A great solitude, through which no man passes, and which no man even sees. There let us dwell in hope, because not yet in reality. For everything of ours that is outside is tossed about by the storms and temptations of the world. There is an inner desert; there let us question our faith; let us ask whether there is love within; let us see whether not only the lips but also the heart speaks when we say, “Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors.” If it rings true, if we speak the truth where no man sees, there is the desert where we rest in hope; because all this tribulation passes, and what was hope will become reality, and all that is ours will be at rest. Then we shall be clearly seen by one another; and thought will not be hidden as it were from you; and the conscience will not be a desert, because all will be known to one another, and they will not have their thoughts unknown, when the Lord comes and lights up what is hidden in darkness, and discloses the thoughts of the heart, and then each will have his praise from God. But now you see two men in tribulation; you cannot see their hearts. Perhaps one is gnawed by his conscience, while the other rests in his conscience as in a desert. “And they will dwell in the desert in hope, and they will sleep”: that is, they will rest, their senses as it were withdrawn from all the noise of the world; within, there, they will rest “in the streams.” In that very desert within there are certain streams of memory flowing, divine waters welling up from the mind of one who holds Scripture fast and ponders it. For what you have read, what you have heard, if you have committed it to memory pure and clear and holy, then when you begin to rest in that inner desert, that is, in a good conscience, it trickles out from the depths of your mind, and the remembrance of the word of God flows in a certain way, and you rest with the others in hope, and say: “It is true; it is well with me; this is my hope; God promised me this; he does not lie; I am secure.” And this security is sleep in the streams. “And they will sleep in the streams.”

“And I will give them a blessing round about my hill.” Whether it is a mountain or a hill, may it be well with us round about it. The hill is Christ himself. For he is thus in our midst, and we are round about him. For he had said a little earlier, “David a prince in their midst.” And because he is a prince, he is therefore a hill: gentle, not steep and hard for the one who climbs, provided that one does not try to set one’s feet on it from on high. “And I will give them a blessing round about my hill; and I will bring down rain in its season”: the rain of the word of God. For there is also an evil rain, which throws down the house built upon sand, against which it is a great thing for the house founded upon the rock to stand firm; for that is the rain of temptation, seeking ruin, not watering the land. This rain which the Lord says he brings down will not be like that. For what does he say? “There will be showers of blessing.” The mention of rain had made you wary: there will be showers of blessing, not of temptation. “There will be showers of blessing.”

And see what that rain achieves. “And the trees that are in the plain will yield their fruit.” In the plain: on a kind of level ground, not on the heights; in a certain easiness of life. By “plain” he meant a certain easiness of this life that has nothing steep, laborious, or difficult in it: such is the life of many believers in the Church of God who have wives, children, and houses of their own; like trees in a plain, they have not been able to climb to anything steep. But let them receive the rain, and these trees too will yield their fruit. The fruit of these trees is: “Break your bread for the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house.” To such trees the Apostle said, “Not that I seek the gift, but I seek the fruit.” “And the trees that are in the plain will yield their fruit”: even if they do not have greater fruit, they still have a certain fruit of their own. “And the land will yield its produce”: the whole land. “And they will dwell in their land.” Now plains, hills, and mountains will yield their produce. What can a plain do? What can a hill? What can a mountain? Let the farmer alone be acknowledged. “And they will dwell in their land in hope.” You see that he promises things that he gives us in this present time. As long as he says “in hope,” I understand him still to mean this present time. For when we have reached what was promised, there will no longer be hope; it will be the reality itself.

“And they will know that I am the Lord, when I have broken the forks of their yoke”: the forks by which their neck is pressed down. Lord, break the forks with which heretics press down the necks of the weak. For what is so confining, so tightly pressed by a fork, as: “Do not listen to Christ; listen to me”? Take away the fork, let me breathe. I do not know what you are saying. I hear the voice of my shepherd: “Through all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.” Let me follow the shepherd. Why do you press me down? Take the fork off my neck; I will take up the gentle yoke of my Lord. He hears this, and presses down. Lord, the heretic will not lift the fork; break the fork yourself. The Lord’s cross lifts up; the heretic’s fork presses down. But they will be broken: “when I have broken the forks of their yoke.” For they want to impose their own domination on people, wanting them to be under themselves, not under God. “When I have broken the forks of their yoke, and rescued them from the hand of those who were reducing them to slavery.” What does “were reducing them to slavery” mean? They were driving them to sin. For “everyone who commits sin is a slave of sin.” See, brothers, what they have persuaded them of, so that they say: “They will give an account for us; we are sheep; wherever they lead, we follow.” Are you a sheep? Listen to the shepherd, not to the wolf.

“And they will no longer be plundered by the nations.” For in all nations they are not lacking, some here, some there; not the same ones there as here; but still, neither here nor there are there lacking those who press down the necks of the faithful with forks. They disagree among themselves; against unity they all agree. But unity does not disagree with itself; rather it fights everywhere against all who disagree with it, it labors everywhere; but there is rest in the desert. “And they will no longer be plundered by the nations, and the beasts of the land will no longer devour them.” Hearing the voice of the shepherd, they will be rescued from the teeth of the wolves. Those beasts of the reed will not devour them, those who want to turn the Scriptures to their own sense, turning ears away from the plain Scriptures, wanting themselves to be heard and the Scriptures not to be heard. “And the beasts of the land will not devour them, and they will dwell in hope.” See how often he shows that what he promises now, he promises for this present life: God is speaking of things that he still provides here. “There will be no one to terrify them.” How will there be no one to terrify them? There will be no one at all. “In the Lord I trust.” Now when a man begins to say, “In God I will praise the word, in the Lord I will praise the saying,” not in myself. They praise the word in themselves, saying, “Believe what we tell you”; we praise the word in the Lord, saying, “Let us believe what the Lord tells us.” There will be no one to terrify us; because “In God I will praise the word, in the Lord I will praise the saying; in God I have hoped; I will not fear what man may do to me.” “There will be no one to terrify them.” “And I will raise up for them a planting of peace.” A testament of peace, a planting of peace. Let what God plants sprout, and let what the heretic sowed be rooted out. What God planted, he planted of himself and of his Church: of himself in heaven, of the Church on earth; of himself above all the heavens, of the Church through all lands. This God planted. But come here, be in the party of Donatus: the Church is in Africa alone. God did not plant that; I do not recognize it as God’s planting. What you say is to be rooted out, not watered. “And I will raise up for them a planting of peace, and there will no longer be any who perish by famine in the land.” Truly, brothers, there is a famine; look and see how great a famine they suffer. And what is worse, they have food right at their mouths, but they do not eat; just as the sick often die of loathing, not because they lack something to eat, but because they do not want to eat and turn away from it. For surely the Scriptures say these things too; and here as well as there the psalm rings out: “All the ends of the earth will remember and turn to the Lord, and all the families of the nations will worship in his sight.” See, the food is set out in the dish: if you were healthy and ate, would you stay where you are? “And there will no longer be any who perish by famine in the land, and they will no longer bear the reproach of the nations.” Truly, brothers, the Church has been raised to such a height in the name of Christ that all the revilers are now confounded and do not dare to revile. This alone is left for them to say against us: “Why do you not agree among yourselves?” The pagan Gentiles who remain, having nothing to say against the name of Christ, throw the dissension of Christians in the faces of Christians. So whoever passes over from the heretics to the Catholic Church will not have this reproach from the nations, nor will they bear the reproach of dissension, because they remain in the root of unity, in the planting of love. “They will not bear the reproach.”

“And they will know that I am the Lord their God, and they are my people, the house of Israel, says the Lord God.” See, here are sheep; see, there is also a vineyard. When Isaiah spoke of the vineyard, rebuking a certain bad vineyard, so that they could not say, “We did not understand,” he explained at the end, saying, “But the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel,” so that they could not say, “It was not said to us, but to some vineyard or other.” So here too, having spoken of the sheep, at the end, so that no one could say, “Perhaps there are some sheep of God somewhere or other whom God cares for, and I do not know them” (although anyone who thought this would be far too absurd for human sense), yet that shepherd, compassionate toward the weak, came down even to such thoughts, and explained most plainly who his sheep were: “And you, my sheep, and the sheep of my flock, are men.” But which men? All men? No. For “Blessed is he whose hope is the Lord God”; and, “How good is the God of Israel to the upright in heart!” “Blessed is the man whose God is the Lord himself.”

God is above all; and yet somehow no one readily dares to say, “My God,” except one who believes in him and loves him; such a one says, “My God.” You have made him your own; and he whose you are loves this. So, with all the sweetness of your affection, and with secure and confident love, say, “My God.” You say it securely, you say it truly: because he is yours, and you have not made it so that he is not someone else’s. For you do not say “My God” in the way you say “My horse.” For your horse is yours and not someone else’s horse. But God is both yours and also the God of anyone else who says “My God” as you say it. Each one says “My God,” and “My God”: he belongs to all, offering himself in common to all to be enjoyed, whole in all, whole in each. For those who say “My God” do not divide him among themselves. If this word that I throw out with my tongue, in a sound made of letters and syllables, reaches each person whole, and those who hear it do not divide it among themselves; if a word that sounds bodily to the ears of the body, more clearly close by and more faintly far off, is nevertheless received whole by all who hear it, not divided among them syllable by syllable, but received whole by all; how much more is that God, present everywhere and filling all things, not more clearly close by and more faintly far off, but “reaching mightily from end to end and ordering all things sweetly,” possessed equally by all? This light, my brothers, which is certainly bodily, shines from the sky; it rises, it sets, it goes round, it moves from place to place; and yet the eyes of all go out to it and are directed to it, and the eyes of all possess it equally and do not divide it. No rich man has fixed a boundary in it, nor, by seizing it first in order to see, has he shut out or narrowed the eyes of the poor. Let the poor man say, “My God”; let the rich man say, “My God”: the one has less, the other more; but of silver, not of God. To come to God, the rich man Zacchaeus gave half of his patrimony; to come to him, Peter left his nets and his boat; to come to him, the widow gave two small coins; to come to him, someone poorer still offered a cup of cold water; to come to him, someone utterly poor and needy gave only a good will. They gave different things, but they came to the one God, because they did not love different things. So you too, men, God’s sheep, sheep of God’s flock, do not be troubled by your differences in this life: that some are in honor and others without honor, some with money and others without money, some beautiful in body and others less beautiful, some worn out with age and others young, some boys, some men, some women: God is present to all equally. He has more room with God who has brought more, not of silver but of faith. “And you,” he says, “my sheep, and the sheep of my flock, are men; and I am your God, says the Lord God.” O how happy we are in such a possession and such a possessor! For he both possesses us and we possess him: he possesses us to cultivate us; we possess him to worship him. But we worship him as God; he cultivates us as a field. He cultivates us so that we may bear fruit; we worship him so that we may yield fruit. All of it comes back to us; he has no need of us. “I will give you,” he says, “your inheritance, and as your possession the ends of the earth.” See, we are his possession. “The Lord,” it says, “is the portion of my inheritance and of my cup.” See, he is our possession; but with what distinction? “You are men; I am the Lord your God, says the Lord our God.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Manichees slander the prophet Haggai, maliciously accusing him because he said, speaking in the person of God, “Mine is the gold, and mine is the silver.” And since they are eager to set the Gospel combatively against the old Law, so that the two Scriptures may seem hostile and contrary to each other, they pose the question in this way: “In the prophet Haggai,” they say, “it is written, Mine is the gold, and mine is the silver; but in the Gospel our Savior called this sort of thing mammon of iniquity. Of its use the blessed Apostle, writing to Timothy, says: But the root of all evils is avarice; some who desired it have turned away from the faith and pierced themselves with many sorrows.” This is how they pose the question; or rather, it is an accusation against the old Scriptures, through which the Gospel was foretold, drawn from the very Gospel that was foretold through them. For if they were posing a question, perhaps they would be seeking; and if they were seeking, perhaps they would find.

But why do the wretches not understand that the Lord, speaking through Haggai, said, “Mine is the gold, and mine is the silver,” so that the man who does not want to share what he has with the needy may understand, when he hears the commandments to do works of mercy, that God orders gifts to be made not from the property of the man he commands but from his own; and so that the man who gives something to a poor person may not think that he does it from his own, lest perhaps he be not so much strengthened by the name of mercy as puffed up by the vanity of pride? “Mine,” he says, “is the gold, and mine is the silver”; not yours, O rich of the earth. Why, then, do you hesitate to give to the poor from what is mine, or why are you lifted up when you give from what is mine?

And do you want to see how gold and silver are the property of a just judge? The greedy man is tormented by the very thing by which the merciful man is helped. As divine justice distributes what is its own, right deeds are made manifest by it, and sins are punished by it. For gold and silver and every earthly possession are both an exercise of humanity and a punishment of greed. When God gives such things to good men, he shows in them how much the soul despises whose riches are the Giver himself. For no one can be seen to despise anything except a thing of which he has been made the owner. Those who do not have these things can also despise them; but whether they pretend or truly despise them, God sees, who examines the heart; whereas for men, so that they may imitate it, the mind of one who despises riches is seen only in the hands of one who gives them away. When God grants these things to bad men, he shows in them how the soul to which the Giver of such great things has become cheap is tormented even in the very goods that God bestows. For to the good he supplies occasions for kindness; the bad he torments with the fear of losses. And so if both lose their gold and silver, the former will keep their heavenly riches with a glad heart; but the latter will be left with a house empty of temporal goods and a conscience emptier still of eternal ones.

So gold and silver belong to the one who knows how to use gold and silver. For even among men themselves, a person ought to be said to have something only when he uses it well. For what one does not handle justly, one does not hold by right. And if someone calls his own what he does not hold by right, it will not be the voice of a just owner but the effrontery of a shameless squatter. Therefore, if a man not improperly calls something his own, not what he has seized by unjust and foolish greed, but what he has handled with very prudent authority and very just moderation, how much more does God truly and properly call gold and silver his own, which he both created by his most generous goodness and administers by his most just rule; so that without his will and dominion neither the wicked can have gold and silver as a punishment for their greed, nor the good for the use of mercy? These men, however, cannot bring it into existence, nor distribute and arrange it so that one has it and another lacks it.

If gold and silver were given into the power of the wicked alone, they would rightly be thought evil; if into the power of the good alone, they would rightly be thought some great good. Again, if they were lacking only to the wicked, poverty would seem a great punishment; but if they were lacking only to the good, poverty would seem the highest happiness. But as it is, if you want to know that gold can be possessed well, the good also have it; if you want to know that they are not good because of gold, the wicked also have it. Again, if you want to know that poverty is not misery, there are some poor people who are blessed; if you want to know that poverty is not blessedness, there are some poor people who are wretched. So God, the founder and administrator of things, distributes gold and silver to men in such a way that in itself, by its nature and kind, it is good, though not the highest and a great good, and in the rank of its order it shows the Founder of the universe to be worthy of praise; but its abundance does not lift up the good, nor does its lack crush them; whereas the wicked it blinds when it is offered and tortures when it is taken away. A thing, then, that was created both for the praise of the Creator and for the testing of the good and the punishment of the wicked can in no way rightly be blamed; and God most truly calls it his own, since he not only created it with overflowing goodness but also dispenses it with the most provident moderation. But when the Lord in the Gospel calls this kind of thing the mammon of iniquity, he indicates that there is another mammon, that is, other riches, which only the just and good can possess; so that it is called the mammon of iniquity because it is iniquity that calls these things riches. But justice knows that there are other riches, with which the inner man is adorned, as blessed Peter says, “which is rich before God.” Those are called just riches, because they are given to good and just merits. Those are called true riches, because whoever has them will not be in want. But these are unjust riches: not because gold and silver are unjust, but because it is unjust to think things riches that do not take away want. For the more someone loves them and the more of them he has, the more he will burn with want. How, then, are they riches, when as they increase, need increases; and the greater they are, the less they bring satisfaction to their lovers and the more they inflame their greed? Do you think a man rich who would be in less need if he had less? For we see some who, when they had a little money, were glad of small gains; but after it began to abound for them (the real substance of gold and silver, indeed, but still false riches), if you offer them small sums, they now refuse them. You believe they are now satisfied; but it is not so. For more money does not close the jaws of avarice but stretches them; it does not water it but sets it on fire. They spit out a cup because they thirst for a river. Is he, then, to be called richer or needier who, having wanted to have something so as not to be in need, now has more only so as to be in less need?

But this is not the fault of gold and silver. Suppose a merciful man has found a treasure: is not hospitality offered to strangers by the working of mercy, the hungry fed, the naked clothed, the needy helped, captives ransomed, churches built, the weary refreshed, the quarrelsome reconciled, the shipwrecked set on their feet again, the sick cared for; bodily wealth distributed on earth and spiritual wealth stored up in heaven? Who does these things? A merciful and good man. With what does he do them? With gold and silver. In whose service does he do them? In the service of him who said, “Mine is the gold, and mine is the silver.” You see now, I think, brothers, with what great error and what great madness the guilt of those who use things badly is transferred to the very things that people use badly. For if gold and silver are blamed because men depraved by avarice neglect the commandments of the almighty Creator and are swept away by detestable desire for the things he made, then let every creature of God be blamed too, because, as the Apostle says, certain perverse men worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Let this sun too be blamed, which these same Manichees, since they do not understand it to be a creature, never cease to worship and adore as the Creator himself or as some part of him. Why, then, do they not blame it, when people often stir up most unjust lawsuits over the use of the sun and light in their buildings; and, so that freer rays may pour somewhat more abundantly into their windows, often try to pull down other people’s houses; and pursue with the bitterest enmity those who oppose them, even if they oppose them by the most certain right? If, then, some more powerful man unjustly and wickedly oppresses one of the weak over the use of the sun, plunders him, and drives him into exile or even to death, is it the crime of the sun, which he wants to use more abundantly, or rather the wickedness of the one who uses it badly, who, while he longs to get more of the temporal light for the eyes of his body, does not open the chamber of his heart to the light of equity?

From this let them understand, if they can, either that they ought not to accuse gold and silver, even though very greedy men often fight over gold and silver; or that they ought to transfer their accusations from earth to heaven, from gleaming metals to the stars and to the sun itself, since wicked men often clash in implacable discord over possessing the light of the sun. At the same time let them also learn what difference there is between this visible light and the light of justice. For it can happen that the greater the eagerness with which someone wants to enjoy this light, the greater the blindness with which he falls away from the light of justice. For a man cannot be justified by any creature; but in order to be able to use all creatures justly, he must be justified by the Creator. So the Lord himself, though as a just judge he condemns avarice everywhere, yet as a true teacher shows the right use of earthly abundance in the very place that these people wanted to bring up as contrary to the Prophet. For he says, “Make friends for yourselves of the mammon of iniquity”; that is to say: what is the mammon of iniquity ought not to be your mammon. For then you will be able to use the abundance of earthly things justly, and to make from it friends who will receive you into the eternal dwellings, if this is not mammon to you, that is, if you do not think that it makes you rich. For your riches, which are true riches and will free you from all want, are not to be compared with earthly resources. But in order that you may deservedly enjoy those, you must first make good use of these, which are neither true riches nor yours; for they are unjustly called riches, since they do not take away want, and it is the wicked who think them riches. For they think that by these they are freed from want; but you ought to desire other riches, that is, the true riches and your own. “But if you have not been faithful in the unjust mammon, who will give you the true? And if you have not been faithful in what is another’s, who will give you what is your own?”

And yet it is clear that the Manichees slander the sayings of the prophets after their own fashion. For anyone who looks even moderately at the context of that Scripture will find that the Prophet was not speaking of this silver or gold over which avarice foolishly goes mad, but rather of that which the Apostle also mentions when he says, “But if anyone builds on the foundation gold, silver, precious stones.” With this gold and silver that treasure is rich which the Lord himself testifies was found in a field and bought by a man who sold all that he had, a man wonderfully and praiseworthily avaricious. For the Prophet, foretelling the Lord himself and designating figuratively, as is his custom, the times of the new age, that is, of the Church, speaks thus: “Yet a little while, and I will shake heaven and earth, and the sea and the dry land, and I will move all nations; and the Desired of all nations will come, and I will fill this house with glory, says the Lord of hosts. Mine is the gold, and mine is the silver, says the Lord of hosts. Great will be the glory of this latter house, more than of the former, says the Lord of hosts; and in this place I will give peace, says the Lord of hosts.”

If these men did not wish to be dogs and swine, to whom we are forbidden to give what is holy and to throw pearls, but desired, by asking, to receive, by seeking, to find, and by knocking, to have it opened to them, how readily they might perhaps perceive, even without any interpreter, with the Holy Spirit himself as their guide, that what was said refers without any obscurity to the new people, that is, the Christian people, whose great priest is Jesus the Son of God: certainly at least in that place where it is said, “Yet a little while, and I will shake heaven and earth, and the sea and the dry land, and I will move all nations; and the Desired of all nations will come.” For this verse was spoken of the last, that is, the second coming of the Lord, in which he is to come in glory, when the Prophet says, “And the Desired of all nations will come.” For when he first came in mortal flesh through the Virgin Mary, he was not yet desired by all nations, because they had not yet believed. But as the Gospel is spread through all nations, desire for him is kindled in all nations. For through all nations there are, and will be, his elect, who say in prayer with their whole heart, “Your kingdom come.” But the first coming sowed mercy beforehand for the judgment; in that judgment the glory of the second coming will stand out. First, then, heaven had to be moved, when the angel announced him to the Virgin who was to conceive, when the star led the Magi to worship him, when again angels made known his birth to the shepherds; the earth had to be moved, when it was thrown into turmoil by his miracles; the sea had to be moved, when this world raged with persecutions; the dry land had to be moved, when those who believed in him hungered and thirsted for justice; finally all nations had to be moved, when his Gospel ran everywhere. Then, after that, the Desired of all nations would come, as he is to come according to the Prophet’s prediction. “And this house will be filled with glory,” that is, the Church. So he then added, “Mine is the gold, and mine is the silver.” For all wisdom, which is signified figuratively by the name of gold, and “the words of the Lord, pure words, silver tried by fire, refined from the earth, purified seven times”: all such silver and gold, then, belongs not to men but to the Lord; so that, since the house will be filled with glory, “he who glories may glory in the Lord.” For that great priest, the one who dwells in this house, our Lord Jesus Christ, deigned to offer himself as an example of humility for the return of man, who had gone out of paradise through pride; he testifies to this in the Gospel, crying out, “Learn from me, for I am gentle and humble of heart.” So lest anyone in his house, that is, in the Church, if he is able to perceive or say anything wisely, should be lifted up, wanting it to seem his own, see how great a medicine is spoken to him by the Lord God: “Mine is the gold, and mine is the silver.” For in this way what follows will come about, that the glory of this latter house will be great, more than that of the former. For the former house, that is, the citizens of the earthly Jerusalem, as the Apostle says, “being ignorant of the justice of God, and seeking to establish their own justice, were not subject to the justice of God.” See whether they, by saying that the gold and silver were their own, were not unable to come to the eternal glory of the latter house. Yet when the Prophet says, “Great will be the glory of this latter house, more than of the former,” he shows that the former was not without some glory either. For the Apostle too was speaking of it when he said, “For if what is being done away was with glory, much more will what remains be in glory.”

But the last verse, with which this discourse of the Prophet concludes: “And in this place,” he says, “I will give peace, says the Lord of hosts.” What does “in this place” mean, unless he is pointing, as it were with his finger, to something earthly? For what can be contained in a place, except a body? It is not absurd, then, for us to understand it of the final resurrection of the body, with which the most perfect blessedness is completed, when the flesh no longer lusts against the spirit, nor the spirit against the flesh. “For this corruptible body will put on incorruption, and this mortal body will put on immortality.” There will be no other law in the members fighting against the law of the mind, because “in this place I will give peace, says the Lord of hosts.”

For who is so deaf against the divine voices as not to know what the prophets say about despising earthly gold and silver? For they bring forward, in order to deceive people, what the Apostle says, “For the root of all evils is avarice; some who pursued it have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many sorrows,” as though you could easily find any book of the old Scriptures in which avarice is not blamed and condemned with the execration it deserves. But since the question now concerns gold and silver, why do they not hear the prophet saying, “But their silver and their gold will not be able to deliver them on the day of the Lord’s wrath”? If anyone who thirsts hears this alone and pours it into the marrow of his soul, will he not withdraw himself wholly from the allurements of false happiness and call himself into God’s embrace, having put off the old man so as to clothe himself with immortality? But why should we treat this question any longer? I believe it is clear to your Charity that the sect of the Manichees deals with the unskilled not by truth but by fraud: they prefer the new Scriptures to the old, not by comparing the whole with the whole, but by excerpting sentences which they try to show are opposed to one another, so as to deceive the unskilled. But there is no Epistle of the Apostle, nor even any book of the Gospel, in the New Testament itself, with which this could not be done, so that by certain sentences one and the same book would seem to contradict itself, unless its whole context were handled with the most careful attention by the reader.

May he who has aroused your Charity’s expectation fulfil it. For although we presume that what is to be said to you is not ours but God’s, still with much more reason do we say what the Apostle humbly says: “We have this treasure in earthen vessels, so that the excellence of the power may be of God and not from us.” We do not doubt, then, that you remember our promise. We made the promise in him through whom we now pay it. For when we promised, we were asking it of him; and when we pay, we receive it from him. Your Charity remembers that on the morning of the Lord’s Nativity we put off the question that we had proposed to resolve, because many were with us celebrating the solemnity due to that day, even those to whom the word of God is usually burdensome. But now I think that no one has come together here except those who want to hear. So we are not speaking to deaf hearts or to bored minds. And this expectation of yours is a prayer for me. Something more has been added: the day of the games has winnowed many away from here. For their salvation, as anxious as we are, so anxious we urge you, brothers, to be; and pray to God with earnest minds for those who are not yet intent on the spectacles of truth but are given over to the spectacles of the flesh. For I know, I know for certain, that there are now among your number those who today have despised those shows; they are breaking with what they were used to. For people change, both for the better and for the worse. By daily experiences of this kind we are now glad, now sad: glad over those who are corrected, sad over those who are corrupted. That is why the Lord did not say that he who has begun will be saved, but, “He who perseveres to the end,” he says, “he will be saved.”

What more wonderful could the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who is also son of man (for he deigned to be this too), grant us, what more magnificent, than to gather into his fold not only the spectators of frivolous games but even some of those who are usually watched there? For he hunted for salvation not only the lovers of the beast-fighters but even the beast-fighters themselves; because he too was made a spectacle. Hear how. He said it himself; before he was watched he foretold it, and in prophetic speech announced what was to come as if it had already happened, saying in the psalm: “They dug my hands and my feet; they numbered all my bones.” See how he was made a spectacle, so that his bones were numbered. And he speaks of the spectacle itself more plainly: “But they themselves considered and gazed upon me.” He was watched to be mocked; he was watched by those who, far from favoring him in that spectacle, raged at him: just as he first caused his martyrs to be watched, as the Apostle says, “We have been made a spectacle to the world, to angels and to men.” But two kinds of people watch such spectacles: one kind is carnal, the other spiritual. The carnal watch, thinking those martyrs wretched who were thrown to the beasts, who were beheaded, who were burned in the fire, and they detest and shudder at them. But others watch as the holy angels also watch, not attending to the mangling of the bodies but marvelling at the soundness of the faith. A soul kept whole while the body is torn apart offers a great spectacle to the eyes of the heart. When these things are read in church, you gladly watch them with the eyes of the heart. For if you watched nothing, you would hear nothing. You see, then, that today you have not despised spectacles but chosen them. So may God be with you, and grant that you may describe your spectacles sweetly to your friends whom you are grieved to have seen running to the amphitheatre today and refusing to come to the church; so that those things may begin to grow cheap for them too, by loving which they themselves have grown cheap; and so that they may love God with you, of whom no lover can be ashamed, because he loves one who cannot be conquered. Let them love Christ with you, who, by the very fact that he seemed conquered, conquered the whole world. For he has conquered the whole world, as we see, brothers: he has subjected all powers, he has subjugated kings, not with proud soldiery but with a mocked cross; not raging with the sword but hanging on the wood; suffering in the body, acting in the spirit. His body was raised on the cross; he subjected minds to the cross. Indeed, what gem in a diadem is more precious than the cross of Christ on the foreheads of rulers? In loving him you are never ashamed. For how many come back from the amphitheatre defeated, because those for whom they rave have been defeated? They would be still more defeated if their favorites won. For they would be made subject to empty joy, subject to the exultation of perverse desire; they are defeated by the very fact that they run there. How many, brothers, do you think hesitated today whether to come here or go there? And those who, in that very hesitation, considered Christ and ran to the church, conquered not just any man but the devil himself, the worst hunter of the whole world. But those who in that hesitation chose rather to run to the amphitheatre were surely defeated by him whom the others defeated. And they conquered in him who said, “Take heart, for I have conquered the world.” For the Commander allowed himself to be tempted for this very purpose, to teach his soldier how to fight.

To do this, then, our Lord Jesus Christ became son of man, certainly by being born of a woman. But if he had not been born of the Virgin Mary, what would have been lacking? Someone says: “He willed to be man; he could have been man and yet not been born of a woman; for the first man, whom he made, he did not make from a woman.” See what is answered to this. You say, why did he choose a woman to be born from? You are answered: why, rather, should he have avoided a woman to be born from? Suppose I cannot show why he chose to be born of a woman: you show what he ought to have avoided in a woman. But it has already been said at some time that, if he had avoided a woman’s womb, he would surely have seemed to signify that he could be defiled by her. But the more incapable of defilement he was by his own substance, the less he needed to fear a womb of flesh, as if he could be stained by it; rather, by being born of a woman he was to show us something of a great mystery. For truly, brothers, we too admit that, if the Lord had willed to become man without being born of a woman, it would certainly have been easy for his Majesty. For as he could be born of a woman without a man, so he could have been born without a woman. But he showed us this: that human creatures of neither sex should despair of themselves. For the human race is of males and of females. If, then, being a man, as he had to be, he had not been born of a woman, women would despair of themselves, mindful of their first sin, because the first man was deceived through a woman; and they would think they had no hope at all in Christ. So he came as a man, choosing the male sex, and, born of a woman, he consoled the female sex, as if addressing them and saying: “So that you may know that God’s creature is not evil, but that perverse pleasure perverts it: in the beginning, when I made man, I made them male and female. I do not condemn the creature that I made. See, I am born a man; see, I am born of a woman. So I do not condemn the creature that I made, but the sins, which I did not make.” Let each sex see its own honor, and let each confess its own iniquity, and let each hope for salvation. Poison was offered to man through a woman to deceive him; let salvation be offered to man through a woman to restore him. Let the woman make up for the sin of the man deceived through her by giving birth to Christ. Hence, too, it was women who first announced to the apostles that God had risen. In paradise a woman announced death to her husband; in the Church women announced salvation to men. The apostles were to announce the resurrection of Christ to the nations; women announced it to the apostles. Let no one, then, slander Christ for being born of a woman: the Liberator could not be stained by that sex, and the Creator was to honor it.

“But,” they say, “how are we to believe that Christ was born of a woman?” I would answer: from the Gospel, which has been preached and is being preached to the whole world. But the blind try to thrust a question upon a matter already believed through all the earth; they want to blind others, and they do not see what is to be seen while they try to tear up what is to be believed. For they answer and say: “Do not press us with the authority of the whole world; let us examine the Scripture itself. Do not play to the crowd: a deceived multitude supports you.” First I answer here: a deceived multitude supports me? This multitude was once a small number. From what did this multitude grow, which was foretold so long ago in these very increases? For it has not been seen to grow without having first been foreseen. I should not even say it was a small number: there was one man, Abraham. Consider, brothers: there was one man, Abraham, in the whole world at that time, in the whole earth, among all men, among all nations; and to that man it was said, “In your seed all nations will be blessed.” What one man believed in his solitude has been displayed to many in the multitude of his seed. Then it was not seen, and it was believed; now it is seen, and it is attacked; and what was then said to one man and believed by one man is now assailed by a few, when it is displayed in many. He who made his disciples fishers of men enclosed every kind of authority within his nets. If a multitude is to be believed, what is more numerous than the Church spread through the whole world? If the rich are to be believed, let them consider how many rich it has caught; if the poor, let them consider the thousands of poor; if nobles, almost the whole nobility is now inside; if kings, let them see them all subject to Christ; if the more eloquent, the more learned, the wiser, let them look at how many orators, how many experts, how many philosophers of this world have been netted by those fishermen, so as to be drawn up from the deep to salvation. Let them think of him who, coming down to heal by the example of his humility the great evil of the human soul, that is, pride, “chose the weak things of the world to confound the strong; and chose the foolish things of this world to confound the wise”, not those who were wise, but those who seemed to be, “and chose the ignoble things of this world, and the things that are not, to bring to nothing the things that are.”

“Say what you like,” they say, “we have caught you out at the place where you read that Christ was born: the Gospels disagree with each other, and two things that disagree cannot both be true. For when I have shown the disagreement,” he says, “I am right to reject the faith; or else you who accept the faith, show the agreement.” What disagreement, I ask, will you demonstrate? “An open one,” he says, “which no one can deny.” You hear this without anxiety, because you are believers. Pay attention, dearly beloved, and see how wholesomely the Apostle warns us, saying: “As, then, you have received Christ Jesus our Lord, walk in him, rooted and built up in him, and confirmed in the faith.” For in that simple and certain faith we ought to remain firmly in him, so that he himself may open to the faithful what is hidden in him; because, as the same apostle says, “In him are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” He has not hidden them in order to refuse them, but in order to arouse desire by hiding them. This is the usefulness of what is secret. Honor him in what you do not yet understand; and honor him the more, the more veils you see. For the more honored a person is, the more veils hang in his house. The veils give honor to what is secret; but for those who honor it, the veils are lifted. Those who mock the veils are driven away even from coming near the veils. So, because we pass over to Christ, the veil is taken away.

Some people bring forward their slanders and say: “Matthew is certainly an evangelist?” We answer, yes, with reverent mouth and devoted heart, doubting nothing whatever; we answer plainly, Matthew is an evangelist. “Do you believe him?” they say. Who would not answer, “I believe”? How that rang out in your reverent murmur! So, brothers, if you believe without anxiety, there is nothing for you to blush at. I speak to you as one who was once deceived, when as a youth I first wanted to bring to the divine Scriptures the sharpness of debate rather than the reverence of seeking. I myself, by my perverse ways, was shutting the door of my Lord against myself: when I ought to have knocked so that it would be opened, I was pushing so that it would be shut. For in my pride I dared to seek what only the humble can find. How much more blessed you are now! How securely you learn, how safely, all of you who are still little ones in the nest of faith and receive spiritual food! But I, wretched as I was, thinking myself fit to fly, left the nest; and I fell before I could fly. But the merciful Lord lifted me up, so that I would not be trampled to death by passers-by, and put me back in the nest. For the very things that troubled me then are the ones that I now, securely, in the name of the Lord, both put forward and explain to you.

As I had begun to say, then, this is how they slander: “Matthew,” they say, “is an evangelist, and you believe him?” Of course, since we confess him to be an evangelist, we necessarily believe him. Look at the generations of Christ that Matthew set down: “The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.” How the son of David, how the son of Abraham? It cannot be shown except through the succession of the line. For it is certain that when the Lord was born of the Virgin Mary, neither Abraham nor David was among the living. And you call the same person son of David and son of Abraham? It is as if we said to Matthew: prove, then, what you say. For I am waiting for the succession of Christ’s line. “Abraham,” he says, “begot Isaac, and Isaac begot Jacob, and Jacob begot Judah and his brothers. And Judah begot Perez and Zerah by Tamar. And Perez begot Hezron, and Hezron begot Ram, and Ram begot Amminadab, and Amminadab begot Nahshon, and Nahshon begot Salmon, and Salmon begot Boaz by Rahab, and Boaz begot Obed by Ruth, and Obed begot Jesse, and Jesse begot David the king.” Now from here notice how the line comes from David to Christ, who has been called son of Abraham and son of David. “And David,” he says, “begot Solomon by her who had been the wife of Uriah. And Solomon begot Rehoboam, and Rehoboam begot Abijah, and Abijah begot Asa, and Asa begot Jehoshaphat, and Jehoshaphat begot Joram, and Joram begot Uzziah, and Uzziah begot Jotham, and Jotham begot Ahaz, and Ahaz begot Hezekiah, and Hezekiah begot Manasseh, and Manasseh begot Amon, and Amon begot Josiah, and Josiah begot Jechoniah and his brothers, at the time of the deportation to Babylon. And after the deportation to Babylon, Jechoniah begot Shealtiel, and Shealtiel begot Zerubbabel, and Zerubbabel begot Abiud, and Abiud begot Eliakim, and Eliakim begot Azor, and Azor begot Zadok, and Zadok begot Achim, and Achim begot Eliud, and Eliud begot Eleazar, and Eleazar begot Matthan, and Matthan begot Jacob, and Jacob begot Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ.” So, through the order and succession of parents and forebears, Christ is found to be the son of David, the son of Abraham.

To this matter, faithfully narrated, they raise their first slander, because the same Matthew goes on to say: “So all the generations from Abraham to David are fourteen generations; and from David to the deportation to Babylon, fourteen generations; and from the deportation to Babylon to Christ, fourteen generations.” Then, to tell how Christ was born of the Virgin Mary, he added: “Now the birth of Christ took place in this way.” For through the order of his ancestors he had set out why Christ is called son of David and son of Abraham. How he was born and appeared among men must now be told; and there follows the narrative itself, by which we believe that our Lord Jesus Christ was not only born of the eternal God, coeternal with him who begot him before all times, before every creature, he through whom all things were made, but also born at a point in time of the Holy Spirit from the Virgin Mary; and this we confess equally. For you remember and know (for I am speaking to my Catholic brothers) that this is our faith, this we profess and confess. For this faith thousands of martyrs have been killed throughout the whole world.

For this is what follows, and those who want to discredit the Gospel books want to laugh at it, so as to show that we have, as it were, rashly believed what is said: “When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together, she was found to be with child of the Holy Spirit. But Joseph her husband, being a just man and unwilling to expose her, wanted to put her away secretly.” For since he knew that she was not pregnant by him, he consequently thought her an adulteress. “Being a just man,” as Scripture says, “and unwilling to expose her” (that is, to make it public; for many manuscripts have this reading too), “he wanted to put her away secretly.” The husband is troubled, but the just man does not act harshly. For such great justice is attributed to this man that he neither wanted to keep an adulteress nor dared to punish her by making it public. “He wanted,” it says, “to put her away secretly,” because he was unwilling not only to punish her but even to betray her. Note his sincere justice. For he did not want to spare her because he wished to keep her. For many spare adulterous wives out of carnal love, wanting to keep them even as adulteresses so as to enjoy them through carnal desire. But this just man does not want to keep her: so he does not love carnally. And yet he does not want to punish her: so he spares her out of mercy. What a just man this is! He does not keep the adulteress, so that he may not seem to spare her because he loved her lustfully; and yet he neither punishes her nor betrays her. Rightly indeed was he chosen as the witness of his wife’s virginity. So he who was troubled by human weakness was made firm by divine authority.

For the Evangelist goes on to say: “While he was thinking about these things, see, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying: Joseph, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife. For what is born in her is of the Holy Spirit. And she will bear a son, and you will call his name Jesus.” Why Jesus? “For he,” it says, “will save his people from their sins.” So it is understood that “Jesus” in the Hebrew language means “Savior” in Latin, as we gather from the explanation of the name itself. For as if someone asked, “Why Jesus?”, he immediately added, disclosing the reason for the word, “For he will save his people from their sins.” This we devoutly believe, this we hold most firmly: that Christ was born of the Holy Spirit from the Virgin Mary.

What, then, do they say? “If I find a lie,” he says, “surely you will not believe the whole. I have found one.” Let us see. I will count the generations. For by their slanders they invite us and lead us to this. If we live devoutly, if we believe in Christ, if we do not want to fly from the nest before the time, they lead us to this: to come to know mysteries. So let your Holiness consider the usefulness of heretics: their usefulness, that is, according to God, who makes good use even of the wicked. But to them is rendered what they themselves intended, not the good that God makes of them. Just as with Judas: how much good he did! By the Lord’s passion the nations were saved. But for the Lord to suffer, Judas handed him over. So God both sets the nations free by the passion of his Son and punishes Judas for his crime. For no one, content with a simpler faith, would examine the mysteries that lie hidden there; and so no one would find them, because no one would examine them, unless slanderers came knocking. For when heretics slander, the little ones are disturbed; when they are disturbed, they inquire; and their inquiry is like a butting of the head against their mother’s breasts, so that they may flow with as much as is enough for the little ones. They inquire because they are troubled; and those who know and have learned, because they searched and God opened to them when they knocked, open in their turn to the troubled. And so it happens that the heretics are useful for finding the truth, while they slander in order to lead people into error. For the truth would be sought more carelessly if it did not have lying adversaries. “For there must also be heresies,” he says; and as if we asked the reason, he immediately added, “so that those who are approved may be made manifest among you.”

What, then, do they say? “See, Matthew counts the generations, and says that from Abraham to David there are fourteen, and from David to the deportation to Babylon fourteen, and from the deportation to Babylon to Christ fourteen. Multiply fourteen by three: it makes forty-two.” But they count them and find forty-one generations, and they raise a slander, and mock and insult us. What, then, does it mean that, although the Gospel says there are three times fourteen, yet when they are all counted they are found to be not forty-two but forty-one? Without doubt it is a great mystery. And we rejoice and give thanks to the Lord that, even on the occasion given by slanderers, we have found something which delights us the more when found, the more it was hidden when it was being sought. For, as we said at the beginning, we are putting on a spectacle for minds. From Abraham, then, to David there are fourteen. Then the count begins with Solomon, for David begot Solomon. The count begins with Solomon and reaches Jechoniah, during whose lifetime the deportation to Babylon took place; and there are another fourteen generations, counting Solomon at the head of the second interval and counting Jechoniah too, with whom that number closes, so that fourteen are completed. But the third interval begins with Jechoniah himself.

Let your Holiness give attention to something both mysterious and sweet: I confess to you how it tasted to my heart; and so I believe that when I have brought it out and you have tasted it, you will say the same. Attend, then. Beginning the count of the third interval from Jechoniah himself, there are fourteen down to the Lord Jesus Christ; because that Jechoniah is counted twice, as the last of the preceding interval and the first of the following one. But someone may say: why is Jechoniah counted twice? Nothing happened in former times among the people of Israel that was not a mystery of things to come. Jechoniah is indeed not counted twice without reason. For if there is a boundary between two fields, a stone or some dividing wall, the man on this side measures up to that wall, and the man on the other side begins his measuring again from it. But why was this not done at the first junction of intervals, where we count fourteen generations from Abraham to David, and begin to count the other fourteen not by repeating David but from Solomon? A reason must be given, and it contains a great mystery. Let your Holiness attend. The deportation to Babylon took place when Jechoniah had been made king in place of his dead father. The kingdom was taken from him, and another was made king in his place. Yet the deportation to the Gentiles took place while Jechoniah was alive. For no fault of Jechoniah is mentioned for which he was deprived of the kingdom; rather the sins of those who succeeded him are brought forward. Captivity follows, then; they go to Babylon. Not only the wicked go; the saints go with them too. In that captivity was the prophet Ezekiel; in it was Daniel; there were the three young men, made famous among the flames. And they went according to the prophecy of the prophet Jeremiah.

Remember that Jechoniah, rejected without any fault, ceased from then on to reign and made the passage to the Gentiles when the deportation to Babylon took place; and notice the image, shown beforehand, of things to come in the Lord Jesus Christ. For the Jews did not want our Lord Jesus Christ, in whom they found no fault, to reign over them. He was rejected in himself, rejected also in his servants; and the passage was made to the Gentiles, as into Babylon. For Jeremiah too prophesied this, that the Lord commanded them to go into Babylon. And whatever other prophets told the people not to go into Babylon, Jeremiah rebuked as false prophets. Let those who read the Scriptures remember this with us; let those who do not read them believe us. Jeremiah, then, in the person of the Lord, threatened those who refused to go into Babylon; but to those who went he promised rest there, and a kind of happiness in renewing vineyards and planting gardens and in abundance of fruits. How, then, does the people of Israel, now not in figure but in truth, pass into Babylon? Where did the apostles come from? Were they not of the nation of the Jews? Where did Paul himself come from? “For I too,” he says, “am an Israelite, of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin.” So many of the Jews believed in the Lord. From them the apostles were chosen; from them were the more than five hundred brothers who were found worthy to see the Lord after the resurrection; from them were the hundred and twenty in the house when the Holy Spirit came. But what does the Apostle say in the Acts of the Apostles, when the Jews rejected the word of truth? “We were sent to you,” he says, “but since you have rejected the word of God, see, we turn to the Gentiles.” So the deportation into Babylon took place according to the spiritual dispensation of the time of the Lord’s incarnation, which was foreshadowed then in the time of Jeremiah. But what does Jeremiah say to those who were being deported, about these Babylonians? “For in their peace,” he says, “will be your peace.” So when Israel too passed into Babylon through Christ and the apostles, that is, when the Gospel came to the Gentiles, what does the Apostle say, as if with the voice of Jeremiah of old? “I urge, then, first of all, that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all men, for kings and for those who are set in high positions, that we may lead a quiet and tranquil life in all godliness and chastity.” There were not yet Christian kings, and he prayed for them. So Israel, praying in Babylon, was heard. The voices of the Church were heard; the kings became Christians; and you see fulfilled what was said in figure, “In their peace will be your peace.” For they received the peace of Christ and ceased to persecute Christians, so that now, in the security of peace, churches might be built, and peoples planted in God’s husbandry, and all nations bear fruit in faith, hope, and love, which is in Christ.

The deportation to Babylon took place, then, through Jechoniah, who was not permitted to reign among the Jewish nation, as a type of Christ, whom the Jews did not want to reign over them. Israel made the passage to the Gentiles, that is, the preachers of the Gospel passed over to the peoples of the Gentiles. Why, then, are you surprised that Jechoniah is counted twice? For if he bore the figure of Christ passing over from the Jews to the Gentiles, consider what Christ is between Jews and Gentiles. Is he not that cornerstone? Look at the corner: the end of one wall and the beginning of another. You measure one wall up to that stone, and the other from it. So the cornerstone that joins both walls is counted twice. Jechoniah, then, bearing the figure of the Lord, displayed the type of a cornerstone. And as Jechoniah was not permitted to reign over the Jews, but they went into Babylon, so Christ, “the stone that the builders rejected, has become the head of the corner,” so that the Gospel might reach the Gentiles. So do not hesitate to count the head of the corner twice, and you arrive at the number that is written: so there are fourteen, and fourteen, and fourteen; and yet there are not forty-two generations but forty-one. For as with a row of stones: when it runs in a straight line, the stones are all counted one by one; but when the row is turned to make a corner, the stone at which it turns must be counted twice, because it belongs both to the row that ends at it and to the row that begins from it; so the line of generations, as long as it remained within that people, made no corner in its twice seven, that is, its interval of fourteen; but when the line was turned so that the people were deported to Babylon, a kind of corner was made at Jechoniah, so that he had to be counted twice, as a type of that venerable cornerstone.

They have another slander. “Christ’s generations,” they say, “are counted through Joseph and not through Mary.” Let your Holiness attend for a little while. “It ought not,” they say, “to be through Joseph.” Why ought it not to be through Joseph? Was not Joseph Mary’s husband? “No,” they say. Who says this? For Scripture says, on the authority of an angel, that he was her husband: “Do not be afraid,” it says, “to take Mary as your wife. For what is born in her is of the Holy Spirit.” He is also commanded to give the child a name, although the child was not born of his seed: “She will bear a son,” it says, “and you will call his name Jesus.” Scripture is intent on making clear that he was not born of Joseph’s seed, when it is said to Joseph, anxious about how she came to be with child, “It is of the Holy Spirit.” And yet paternal authority is not taken from him, since he is commanded to give the child a name. Finally, the Virgin Mary herself, though well aware that she had not conceived Christ from his embrace and intercourse, still calls him Christ’s father.

Notice how. When the Lord Jesus Christ was twelve years old according to his humanity (he who according to his divinity is before all times and without time), he stayed behind them in the temple and disputed with the elders, and they were amazed at his teaching. But they, on their way back from Jerusalem, looked for him in their company, that is, among those who were travelling with them; and not finding him, they went back to Jerusalem troubled, and found him disputing in the temple with the elders, when he was, as I said, twelve years old. But what wonder? The Word of God is never silent, but he is not always heard. He is found, then, in the temple, and his mother says to him: “Why have you done this to us? Your father and I have been looking for you in sorrow.” And he said: “Did you not know that I must be in the things that are my Father’s?” He said this because the Son of God was in the temple of God. For that temple was not Joseph’s but God’s. “See,” someone says, “he did not admit that he was Joseph’s son.” Attend a little more patiently, brothers, because of the shortness of the time, so that it may suffice for the sermon. When Mary had said, “Your father and I have been looking for you in sorrow,” he answered, “Did you not know that I must be in the things that are my Father’s?” For he did not want to be their son in such a way that he would not be understood to be the Son of God. For as Son of God he is always the Son of God, the Creator of those very parents. But as Son of Man, from a point in time, born of a virgin without a husband’s seed, he still had both as his parents. How do we prove this? Mary has already said, “Your father and I have been looking for you in sorrow.”

First, brothers, especially for the instruction of the women, our sisters, the holy modesty of the Virgin Mary must not be passed over. She had given birth to Christ; the angel had come to her and said to her, “See, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will call his name Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High.” She had been found worthy to bear the Son of the Most High, and she was most humble: she did not put herself before her husband, not even in the order of naming, so as to say, “I and your father”; but “Your father,” she says, “and I.” She did not consider the dignity of her womb; she considered the order of marriage. For the humble Christ would not have taught his mother to be proud. “Your father and I have been looking for you in sorrow.” “Your father,” she says, “and I”; because “the man is the head of the woman.” How much less ought other women to be proud! For Mary herself too was called a woman, not because her virginity was lost, but by an expression proper to her nation. For the Apostle too said of the Lord Jesus Christ, “made of a woman”; and yet he did not break the order and wording of our faith, in which we confess that he was born of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary. For she conceived as a virgin, gave birth as a virgin, and remained a virgin. But they called all females “women,” by a property of the Hebrew language. Hear a very clear example. The first female, whom God made, taken from the man’s side, before she lay with the man (which is written to have happened after they went out of paradise), was nevertheless already called a woman, as Scripture says: “He formed her into a woman.”

So when the Lord Jesus Christ answers, “I must be in the things that are my Father’s,” he does not point to God as Father in such a way as to deny that Joseph is his father. How do we prove this? From the Scripture, which says: “And he said to them: Did you not know that I must be in the things that are my Father’s? But they did not understand what he said to them. And when he had gone down with them, he came to Nazareth, and was subject to them.” It did not say, “He was subject to his mother,” or, “He was subject to her,” but, “He was subject,” it says, “to them.” To whom was he subject? Was it not to his parents? Both were his parents, and he was subject to both, by that condescension by which he was the son of man. A little earlier the women were receiving instruction; now let the children receive it, to obey their parents and be subject to them. The world is subject to Christ, and Christ was subject to his parents.

You see, then, brothers, that he did not say, “I must be in the things that are my Father’s,” in such a way that we should understand him to have said, “You are not my parents.” They were his parents in time; he is his Father eternally. They were the parents of the son of man; he is the Father of his Word and Wisdom, the Father of his Power, through which he formed all things. If all things are formed through that Wisdom which “reaches mightily from end to end and orders all things sweetly,” then those also to whom that same one was afterwards, as son of man, to be subject were formed through the Son of God. And the Apostle calls him the son of David: “who was made,” he says, “of the seed of David according to the flesh.” But the Lord himself puts a question to the Jews which the Apostle resolves in these very words. For when he said, “who was made of the seed of David,” he added “according to the flesh,” so that it might be understood that according to his divinity he is not the son of David but the Son of God, the Lord of David. For in another place too the Apostle speaks thus, when he was setting forth the privileges of the Jewish stock: “Whose are the fathers,” he says, “from whom is Christ according to the flesh, who is above all, God blessed for ever.” According to the flesh, therefore, he is the son of David; but as God above all, blessed for ever, he is the Lord of David. The Lord, then, says this to the Jews: “Whose son do you say the Christ is?” They answered: “David’s.” For they knew this, as they easily gathered it from the preaching of the prophets. And truly he was of the seed of David, but according to the flesh, through the Virgin Mary, betrothed to Joseph. So when they answered that the Christ is the son of David, Jesus said to them: “How, then, does David in the Spirit call him Lord, saying, The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand, until I put your enemies under your feet? If, then, David in the Spirit calls him Lord, how is he his son?” And the Jews could not answer. So we have it in the Gospel. He did not deny that he was the son of David, though they did not know that he was the Lord of David. For in the Christ they held to what he was made in time; they did not understand in him what he is in eternity. Therefore, wanting to teach them his divinity, he raised a question about his humanity, as if to say: “You know that the Christ is the son of David; answer me how he is also the Lord of David.” And so that they would not say, “He is not the Lord of David,” he brought in David himself as witness. And what does he say? He certainly speaks the truth. For you also have it in the Psalms, said to David: “Of the fruit of your body I will set upon your throne.” See, the son of David. How is he who is David’s son also David’s Lord? “The Lord said,” it says, “to my Lord, Sit at my right hand.” Do you wonder that David has his son as his Lord, when you see that Mary gave birth to her Lord? He is David’s Lord, because he is God; David’s Lord, because he is Lord of all; but he is David’s son, because he is the son of man. The same is Lord, the same is son: David’s Lord, who “though he was in the form of God, did not think it robbery to be equal with God”; but David’s son, because “he emptied himself, taking the form of a servant.”

So Joseph was not therefore not a father because he did not lie with the mother of the Lord; as if it were lust that makes a wife, and not married love. Let your Holiness attend. Some time later the Apostle of Christ was to say in the Church, “It remains that those who have wives be as though they had none.” And we know many of our brothers, bearing fruit in grace, who in the name of Christ, by mutual consent, restrain from each other the desire of the flesh, but do not restrain from each other married love. The more the former is held in check, the more strongly the latter is confirmed. Are those not spouses who live in this way, not seeking from each other the fruit of the flesh, not demanding from each other the debt of bodily desire? And yet she is subject to her husband, because this is fitting; and the more chaste she is, the more subject she is. And he truly loves his wife, as it is written, “in honor and sanctification,” as a co-heir of grace, “as Christ,” it says, “loved the Church.” So if it is a union, if it is a marriage, if it is not therefore not a marriage because that does not take place which can take place even with one who is not a spouse, though unlawfully (would that all could do this; but many cannot), let them not, then, separate those who can, and deny that he is a husband or she a wife because they are not joined in the flesh but are bound together in heart.

From this understand, my brothers, what Scripture meant about those fathers of ours who were so married that they sought only offspring from their wives. For those who, according to the times and the custom of their nation, even had several wives, held them so chastely that they did not come to carnal union except for the sake of procreation, truly holding them in honor. But whoever desires his wife’s flesh beyond what that limit prescribes, namely, for the procreation of children, acts against the very marriage contract by which he took her as his wife. The contract is read, and read in the sight of all the witnesses, and it is read out: “for the procreation of children”; and it is called the marriage contract. Unless wives were given and received for this, who with an unashamed face would give his daughter to another’s lust? But so that the parents may not blush when they give her, the contract is read out, so that they may be fathers-in-law, not procurers. What, then, is read out from the contract? “For the procreation of children.” The father’s brow is wiped and clears when he hears the words of the contract. Let us look at the brow of the husband who takes a wife. Let the husband too blush to receive her otherwise, if the father blushes to give her otherwise. But if they cannot (we have said this before at times), let them demand what is due; let them not go beyond those who owe it to them. Let both the woman and the man console their weakness within themselves. Let him not go to another woman, nor her to another man: that is where the name “adultery” comes from, as if “to another.” And if they go beyond the bounds of the marriage contract, let them not go beyond the bounds of the marriage bed. Is it not a sin to demand the debt from one’s spouse more than the need of procreating children requires? It is indeed a sin, but a pardonable one. The Apostle says, “But this I say by way of concession,” when he had been speaking of this: “Do not defraud one another,” he says, “except by consent for a time, so that you may be free for prayer; and come together again, so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.” What does this mean? Do not lay anything on yourselves beyond your strength, lest by abstaining from one another you fall into adulteries. “So that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.” And lest he should seem to command what he was permitting (for it is one thing to command virtue, another to make allowance for weakness), he immediately added, “But this I say by way of concession, not of command. For I would that all men were as I myself am.” As if he said: I do not command you to do it, but I pardon you if you do.

So, my brothers, attend. Great men who have wives for the procreation of children, such as we read the patriarchs to have been, and find by many proofs, with the holy pages proclaiming it without any doubt: if, then, any men have wives only for the begetting of children, and if it could be granted them to have sons without intercourse, would they not embrace so great a benefit with unspeakable joy? Would they not receive it with immense gladness? For there are two works of the flesh by which the human race is sustained; to these two works the wise and holy come down out of duty, while the foolish rush into them out of desire. For it is one thing to come down to something out of duty, another to fall into something out of desire. What are these by which the human race is sustained? The first concerns ourselves, and has to do with taking nourishment (which certainly cannot be taken without some pleasure of the flesh): eating and drinking; if you do not do it, you will die. By this one support, then, eating and drinking, the human race stands, according to the measure of its nature. But by this support people are sustained only as regards themselves; they do not provide for succession by eating and drinking, but by taking wives. For this is how the human race is sustained: first, that people may live; but because, however much care is given to the body, they certainly cannot live for ever, the next provision is that those who are born should succeed those who die. For the human race is, as it is written, like leaves on a tree; but on a tree like the olive or the laurel or some such tree, which is never without foliage, and yet does not always have the same leaves. For, as it is written, it puts forth some and casts off others; because those that spring up succeed the others as they fall. For it is always casting off leaves, and always clothed with leaves. So too the human race does not feel the losses of those who die each day, because of the replacement by those who are born; and so, in its own measure, the whole species of the human race stands; and as leaves are always seen on the tree, so the earth is seen to be full of people. But if people only died and were not born, the earth would be stripped of all people, as certain trees are of all their leaves. Since, then, the human race subsists in such a way that the two supports of which enough has been said are necessary, the wise, prudent, and faithful man comes down to both out of duty; he does not fall into them out of lust. How many rush greedily into eating and drinking, putting their whole life there, as if it were the very reason for living! For although they ought to eat in order to live, they think they live in order to eat. Every wise man rebukes these, and above all divine Scripture: the gluttons, the drunkards, the gormandizers, “whose god is their belly.” Nothing brings them to the table but the desire of the flesh, not the need of refreshment. So these fall into food and drink. But those who come down to it from the duty of living do not live in order to eat; they eat in order to live. So if these prudent and temperate people were offered the chance of living without food and drink, with what joy they would embrace this benefit, that they need not even come down to that into which they were not accustomed to fall, but might always be held up in the Lord, and the need of propping up the body’s decay would not draw down their attention! How do you think holy Elijah received it, when he received a jar of water and a cake of bread, so that it was enough to nourish him for forty days? With great joy, surely; because he ate and drank for the duty of life, not in slavery to desire. Try to give this, if you can, to a man who has set his whole blessedness and happiness in feasting, like a beast at the manger. He hates your benefit, pushes it away, thinks it a punishment. So too in that marital duty, lustful men seek wives for nothing else; and so they are hardly content even with their own wives. And would that, if they cannot or will not remove their lust, they would at least not let it go beyond what the marital debt prescribes, even that which is conceded to weakness. But if you asked such a man, “Why are you taking a wife?”, he might perhaps answer you, out of shame, “For the sake of children.” If someone whom he believed without any doubt said to him, “God is able to give you children, and will certainly give them to you, even if you do not perform that act with your wife,” then surely he would be cornered and admit that it was not for children that he was seeking a wife. Let him confess his weakness, then, and receive what he pretended to receive out of duty.

So those earlier saints, men of God, sought sons, wanted to receive sons. For this one purpose they were joined to women; for this they had intercourse with women: to beget sons. That is why they were permitted to have several. For if unrestrained lust pleased God, it would have been permitted at that time for one woman to have several husbands, just as one man had several wives. Why did all chaste women have no more than one husband, while a man had several wives, unless because for one man to have several wives serves the number of offspring, whereas one woman, however many husbands she had, could not bear more children? Therefore, brothers, if our fathers were joined to women and had intercourse with them for no other reason than to beget children, it would have been a great joy to them if they could have had sons apart from that carnal act, since in order to have them they did not rush into it from lust but came down to it out of duty. Was Joseph, then, not a father on this account, because he received a son without the desire of the flesh? Far be it from Christian chastity to think what even Jewish chastity did not think. Love your wives, but love them chastely. Seek the carnal act only so far as to beget children. And since you cannot have children otherwise, come down to it with sorrow. For it is the punishment of that Adam from whom we are sprung. Let us not pride ourselves on our punishment. It is the punishment of him who deserved to beget mortal offspring, because he was made mortal by sin. God has not taken away that punishment, so that man may remember from where he is being called back and to where he is being called, and may seek that embrace where there can be no corruption.

Among that people, then, because there had to be an abundant propagation until Christ, through the numerousness of the people in whom all the teachings of the Church that were to be prefigured were prefigured, they had the duty of taking wives, through whom the people might grow in whom the Church was foreshadowed. But when the King of all nations himself was born, the dignity of virginity began with the Mother of the Lord, who was found worthy both to have a son and not to be corrupted. As, then, that was a marriage, and a marriage without any corruption, so why should the husband not chastely receive what his wife had chastely borne? For as she was chastely a wife, so he was chastely a husband; and as she was chastely a mother, so he was chastely a father. Whoever, then, says, “He ought not to be called father, because he did not beget the son in that way,” is looking for lust in begetting children, not the affection of love. He fulfilled better in his mind what another desires to fulfil in the flesh. For those who adopt sons also beget in their hearts, more chastely, those whom they cannot beget in the flesh. See, brothers, see the laws of adoption: how a man becomes the son of one from whose seed he was not born, so that the will of the one who adopts has more right over him than the nature of the one who begot him. So Joseph not only ought to be a father, but all the more ought to be. For men also beget sons from women who are not their wives, and these are called natural sons; and sons born in marriage are preferred to them. As far as the work of the flesh is concerned, they are born alike; why are the latter preferred, unless because the love of a wife, from whom children are begotten, is more chaste? There the carnal union is not considered, for it is equal in both women. Where does the wife prevail, unless in the affection of faithfulness, the affection of marriage, the affection of a purer and more chaste love? If, then, anyone could receive sons from his wife without intercourse, ought he not to be all the more glad, the more chaste she is whom he loves the more?

From this, see now also how it can happen that one man has not only two sons but also two fathers. For now that adoption has been mentioned, it may occur to your minds that this can happen. For people say: a man can have two sons, but he cannot have two fathers. On the contrary, it is found that he can have two fathers too, if one begot him by seed and another adopted him in love. If, then, one man can have two fathers, Joseph too could have two fathers, begotten by one and adopted by the other. And if he could, what are they slandering, those who say that Matthew followed one set of generations and Luke another? And indeed we find that the one followed one line and the other another. For Matthew said that Joseph’s father was Jacob, but Luke said Heli. It might indeed seem that one man, whose son Joseph was, had two names. But since they list different grandfathers and great-grandfathers and other forebears further back, and in the count itself one has more and the other fewer, it is clearly shown that Joseph had two fathers. The slander of this question is now removed, since clear reasoning has shown that it can happen that the father who begot is one and the father who adopted another. Once two fathers are established, it is no wonder if the grandfathers and great-grandfathers and the other ancestors going upward are counted differently from different fathers.

And do not let the right of adoption seem foreign to our Scriptures, as if it were known only in the practice of human laws and could not agree with the authority of the divine books. For it is an ancient thing, and customary in the very scriptures of the Church, that not only the origin of the seed but also the gift of the will should make a son. For women too, if they had not given birth themselves, used to adopt as sons those born of their husbands’ seed by slave women; indeed, they even directed their husbands so that sons might be begotten for them in this way: as Sarah did, as Rachel did, as Leah did. In this duty the husbands did not commit adultery, because they were obeying their wives in a matter that belongs to the marital debt, according to what the Apostle says: “The wife does not have power over her own body, but the husband does; likewise the husband does not have power over his own body, but the wife does.” Moses too, born of a Hebrew mother and exposed, was adopted by Pharaoh’s daughter. There were not, indeed, the same legal formulas then as now; but the decision of the will was held as the rule of law; as the Apostle says in another place, “For the Gentiles who do not have the law do by nature the things of the law.” But if women were permitted to make sons of those whom they had not borne themselves, why not men also, of those whom they had not begotten from carnal seed but from the love of adoption? For we read that the patriarch Jacob himself, father of so many sons, nevertheless made his grandsons, the sons of Joseph, his own sons, saying: “These two will be mine, and they will receive the land with their brothers; those others whom you beget will be yours.” Unless perhaps someone says that the very word “adoption” is not found in the holy Scriptures. As if it mattered by what word it is called, when the thing itself is there, that a woman has a son whom she did not bear in the flesh, or a man one whom he did not beget in the flesh. And, without objection from me, let him not call Joseph adopted, provided he grants that he could be the son even of one from whose flesh he was not born. Although the apostle Paul constantly uses even the word “adoption,” and of a great mystery. For while Scripture testifies that our Lord Jesus Christ is the only Son of God, it says that the brothers and co-heirs whom he deigned to have are made so by a kind of adoption of divine grace. “But when the fullness of time came,” he says, “God sent his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive the adoption of sons.” And in another place: “We groan within ourselves,” he says, “awaiting the adoption, the redemption of our body.” Again, speaking of the Jews: “I could wish that I myself were accursed from Christ for the sake of my brothers, my kinsmen according to the flesh, who are Israelites; to whom belong,” he says, “the adoption, and the glory, and the covenant, and the giving of the law; whose are the fathers, and from whom is Christ according to the flesh, who is above all, God blessed for ever.” There he shows that among the Jews either the name of adoption or the thing itself was ancient, just as the covenant and the giving of the law were, which he mentions together with it.

Add to this that there was another way, proper to the Jews, by which someone became the son of one from whom he was not born in the flesh. For relatives used to marry the wives of their relatives who had died without children, in order to raise up seed for the dead man. So the one who was born was both the son of him from whom he was born and the son of him in whose succession he was born. These things have been said so that no one, thinking it impossible for two fathers to be rightly mentioned for one man, should think either of the Evangelists who narrated the Lord’s generations open to a sacrilegious slander, as if guilty of a lie; especially since we see that we are alerted by their very words. For Matthew, who is understood to be naming the father by whom Joseph was begotten, lists the generations in this way, “He begot him,” so as to arrive at what he says at the end, “Jacob begot Joseph.” But Luke, because one who becomes a son by adoption, or who is born in succession to a dead man from her who was his wife, is not properly said to be begotten, did not say, “Heli begot Joseph,” or, “Joseph, whom Heli begot,” but, “who was,” he says, “the son of Heli”; whether by adoption, or by being born, begotten by a relative, in succession to the dead man.

Enough has now been said to show that it ought not to disturb us that the generations are counted through Joseph and not through Mary: because as she was a mother without carnal desire, so he was a father without carnal union. Let the generations, then, descend through him and ascend through him. And let us not separate him because carnal desire was lacking. Let his greater purity confirm his fatherhood, lest holy Mary herself rebuke us. For she was unwilling to put her name before her husband’s, but said, “Your father and I have been looking for you in sorrow.” So let perverse grumblers not do what a chaste wife did not do. Let us count, then, through Joseph; because as he is chastely a husband, so he is chastely a father. But let us put the man before the woman, by the order of nature and of God’s law. For if we set him aside and put her in his place, he will say, and say rightly, “Why have you separated me? Why do the generations not ascend or descend through me?” Shall it be said to him, “Because you did not beget by the work of your flesh”? But he will answer, “Did she give birth by the work of her flesh? What the Holy Spirit worked, he worked for both.” “Being,” it says, “a just man.” A just man, then, and a just woman. The Holy Spirit, resting on the justice of both, gave a son to both. But in the sex that was fitted to give birth he worked this, so that the son was born to the husband also. That is why the angel tells both of them to give the child a name, by which the authority of both parents is declared. For Zechariah too, while he was still mute, the mother gave the newborn son his name; and when those present made signs to the father asking what he wanted him called, he took a writing tablet and wrote what she had already said. It is said to Mary, “See, you will conceive a son, and you will call his name Jesus”; and it is said to Joseph, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife. For what is born in her is of the Holy Spirit. And she will bear a son, and you will call his name Jesus: he will save his people from their sins.” It is also said, “And she bore him a son”: there the father is confirmed not by the flesh but by love. So he is father, just as he is. For the Evangelists most carefully and most wisely count through him, whether Matthew descending from Abraham to Christ, or Luke ascending from Christ through Abraham to God. The one counts descending, the other ascending; both through Joseph. Why? Because he is father. Why father? Because he is the more firmly father, the more chastely he is father. He was indeed thought to be the father of our Lord Jesus Christ in another way, namely, like other fathers who beget in the flesh, not receiving children by spiritual affection alone. For Luke also said, “who was thought to be the father of Jesus.” Why “thought”? Because human thinking and opinion went in the direction of what is usually done by men. So the Lord was not of Joseph’s seed, though this was thought; and yet to Joseph’s devotion and love a son was born of the Virgin Mary, who is also the Son of God. But why does the one count descending and the other ascending? Listen, I pray, attentively, as far as the Lord helps, with minds now at ease and free from all the trouble of knotty slanders. Matthew descends through the generations to signify our Lord Jesus Christ descending to carry our sins, so that in the seed of Abraham all nations might be blessed. That is why he did not begin from Adam, for the whole human race is from him; nor from Noah, because from that family too, after the flood, the whole human race arose. Nor could the man Christ Jesus belong to the fulfilment of prophecy as coming from Adam, from whom all men come, or from Noah, from whom again all men come; but as coming from Abraham, who was chosen at the time when the earth was already full of nations, as the one in whose seed all nations would be blessed. But Luke ascends, beginning to list the generations not at the very start of the Lord’s birth but at the place where he narrates that he was baptized by John. For as in the Lord’s incarnation the sins of the human race are taken up by him to be carried, so in the consecration of baptism they are taken up to be cleansed. So the one, signifying him descending to carry sins, lists the generations descending; but the other, signifying the cleansing of sins (not his own, of course, but ours), lists the generations ascending. But the one descends through Solomon, in whose mother David sinned; the other ascends through Nathan, another son of the same David, through whom he was cleansed of sin. For we read that Nathan was sent to him to rebuke him, so that he might be healed through repentance. The two meet in David, the one descending, the other ascending; and from there to Abraham, or from Abraham to David, they differ in no generation. So Christ, both son of David and son of Abraham, passes up to God. For we, renewed in baptism, must be led back to God through the abolition of sins.

In the generations that Matthew lists, the number forty stands out. For the divine Scriptures have this custom, that they sometimes do not count what goes beyond certain round numbers. Thus four hundred years are said to have passed, after which the people of Israel went out of Egypt, though there were four hundred and thirty. So too the one generation that goes beyond the number forty does not take away the predominance of this number. This number signifies the life in which we labor on this earth, as long as we are pilgrims away from the Lord, during which the dispensation of the truth preached in time is necessary. For the number ten, by which the perfection of blessedness is signified, multiplied four times because of the fourfold division of time and the fourfold world, makes the number forty. That is why there was fasting for forty days by Moses, by Elijah, and by the Mediator himself, our Lord Jesus Christ: because in this time continence from bodily allurements is necessary. The people also wandered forty years in the desert; the flood lasted forty days. The Lord lived with his disciples for forty days after the resurrection, persuading them of the reality of his risen body; by this he signified that in this life, in which we are pilgrims away from the Lord, which the number forty, as has been said, mystically suggests, the remembrance of the Lord’s body, which we make in the Church until he comes, is necessary for us. Since, then, our Lord came down to this life, and the Word became flesh, to be handed over for our offenses and to rise for our justification, Matthew followed the number forty: so that the one generation that there exceeds forty either does not hinder it, as those thirty years do not hinder the completeness of the four hundred; or it even signifies that the Lord himself, with whom added there are forty-one, came down to this life to carry our sins in such a way that he is nevertheless found to be set apart from this life by his own singular excellence, by which he is man in such a way that he is also God. For of him alone is said what could not and cannot be said of any holy man, however perfect in wisdom and justice: “The Word became flesh.”

But Luke, who ascends through the generations from the Lord’s baptism, completes the number seventy-seven, beginning to ascend from our Lord Jesus Christ himself through Joseph and arriving at God through Adam; because in this number is signified the abolition of all sins, which takes place in baptism: not because the Lord himself had anything to be forgiven in baptism, but because by his humility he commended what would be useful for us. And although that baptism was John’s, yet in it the Trinity of Father and Son and Holy Spirit appeared to the senses, by which the baptism of Christ himself was consecrated, with which future Christians were to be baptized: the Father in the voice that came from heaven; the Son in the man himself, the Mediator; the Holy Spirit in the dove.

Why the number seventy-seven should contain all the sins that are forgiven in baptism, this probable reason seems to suggest itself: because the number ten holds the perfection of justice and blessedness, when the sevenfold creature cleaves to the Trinity of the Creator; hence also the Decalogue of the law was consecrated in ten commandments. The transgression of ten is signified by the number eleven; and sin is understood to be transgression, when a man, seeking something more, goes beyond the rule of justice. Hence also the Apostle calls avarice the root of all evils. And to the soul that goes whoring away from God it is said, in the person of the same Lord: “You hoped that if you departed from me you would have something more.” Since, then, the one who sins refers his transgression, that is, his sin, to himself, because he wants to delight in some private good of his own (which is why those are also rebuked “who seek their own, not the things of Jesus Christ,” and love is praised which “does not seek its own”), therefore this number eleven, by which transgression is signified, is multiplied not ten times but seven, and makes seventy-seven. For transgression belongs not to the Trinity of the Creator but to the creature itself, that is, to man himself, which creature the number seven shows: three because of the soul, where there is a certain image of the Trinity of the Creator (for it is there that man was made in the image of God); and four because of the body. For the four elements of which the body consists are very well known. And anyone to whom they are not known can easily notice that the body of the world itself, in which our body moves from place to place, has, as it were, four principal parts, which divine Scripture also constantly mentions: East and West, South and North. And since sins are committed either in the mind, as in the will alone, or also by works of the body, now visibly, therefore the prophet Amos constantly represents God threatening and saying, “For three and for four impieties I will not turn away,” that is, I will not overlook it. Three, for the nature of the soul; four, for that of the body: of these two man consists.

So eleven times seven, that is, as has been said, the transgression of justice referred to sinful man, makes the number seventy-seven, by which all sins that are forgiven through baptism are signified to be contained. Hence Luke ascends to God through seventy-seven generations, showing that man is reconciled to God through the abolition of all sins. Hence the Lord himself said to Peter, when he asked how often he ought to forgive his brother, “I tell you, not seven times, but up to seventy-seven times.” And if anything more can be drawn out of these secrets and treasures of God’s mysteries by those more diligent and more worthy, still we, according to our capacity, as far as the Lord helped and granted, and considering also the shortness of time, have said what we could. If any of you can grasp more, let him knock at the door of him from whom we too take whatever we can grasp and say. Above all, hold to this: do not be disturbed by holy Scriptures that you do not yet understand; and when you understand them, do not be puffed up; but what you do not understand, put off with reverence, and what you do understand, hold with love.

The Gospel reading has set before us what we are to speak about to your Charity, as if by the Lord’s command, and truly by the Lord’s command. For my heart waited for it from him, as a command to deliver a sermon, so that from this I might understand that I ought to want to speak about what he himself had willed to be read. Let your zeal and devotion, then, listen, and help my labor before the Lord our God himself. For we see, and as if a divine spectacle were set before us we gaze upon it, our God commended to us in Trinity at the river Jordan. For when Jesus came and was baptized by John, the Lord by the servant (which he did as an example of humility; for in that very humility he shows that justice is fulfilled, when John said to him, “I ought to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?”, and he answered, “Let it be so now, so that all justice may be fulfilled”): when, then, he had been baptized, the heavens were opened, and the Holy Spirit came down upon him in the form of a dove; and then a voice from above followed: “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” So we have the Trinity distinguished in a certain way: the Father in the voice, the Son in the man, the Holy Spirit in the dove. This needed only to be mentioned, for it is very easy to see. For this Trinity is commended to us plainly, without any shadow of doubt. For the Lord Christ himself, coming to John in the form of a servant, is certainly the Son; for it cannot be said that he is the Father, or that he is the Holy Spirit. “Jesus came,” it says: certainly the Son of God. As for the dove, who would doubt, or who would say, “What is the dove?”, when the Gospel itself testifies most plainly, “The Holy Spirit came down upon him in the form of a dove”? Likewise about that voice there is no doubt that it is the Father’s, when he says, “You are my Son.” So we have the Trinity distinguished.

And if we consider places, I dare to say (though I say it timidly, still I dare) that the Trinity is, as it were, separable. When Jesus came to the river, he came from one place to another; the dove came down from heaven to earth, from one place to another; the very voice of the Father sounded neither from the earth nor from the water, but from heaven. These three are as it were separated in places, separated in functions, separated in works. Someone may say to me: “Show the inseparable Trinity. Remember that you are a Catholic speaking, and speaking to Catholics.” For our faith, that is, the true faith, the right faith, the Catholic faith, gathered not by presumptuous opinion but by the testimony of the Scripture read, not made uncertain by heretical rashness but founded on apostolic truth, teaches this: this we know, this we believe. Though we do not see this with our eyes, nor yet with our heart, as long as we are being cleansed by faith, yet by that faith we hold most rightly and most firmly that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are an inseparable Trinity, one God, not three gods; yet one God in such a way that the Son is not the Father, the Father is not the Son, and the Holy Spirit is neither the Father nor the Son, but the Spirit of the Father and of the Son. This ineffable Godhead, abiding in itself, making all things new, creating, re-creating, sending, recalling, judging, delivering: this Trinity, then, we know to be at once ineffable and inseparable.

What, then, are we to do? See, the Son came separately in the man; the Holy Spirit came down separately from heaven in the form of a dove; the voice of the Father sounded separately from heaven, “This is my Son.” Where is the inseparable Trinity? God has made you attentive through me. Pray for us, and, as if opening your bosom, may he himself give what will fill what you have opened. Labor together with us. For you see what we have undertaken: not only what, but also who has undertaken it; what we want to speak of, where we are placed, how we are placed: in a body which is corruptible and weighs down the soul, while the earthly dwelling presses down the mind that thinks of many things. So when I draw this mind away from many things and gather it toward the one God, the inseparable Trinity, so as to see something I may say, do you think that in this body which weighs down the soul I shall be able to say, so as to speak to you worthily, “To you, Lord, I have lifted up my soul”? May he help me; may he lift it up with me. For I am weak for it, and it is heavy for me. This question is often raised by very studious brothers; it often comes up in the conversation of those who love God’s word; there is often much knocking at God’s door about it, as people say: “Does the Father do anything that the Son does not do? Or does the Son do anything that the Father does not do?” Meanwhile let us speak of the Father and the Son. And when he to whom we say, “Be my helper, do not forsake me,” has carried our effort through this, it will also be understood that the Holy Spirit in no way departs from the working of the Father and the Son. Hear, then, brothers, about the Father and the Son. Does the Father do anything without the Son? We answer, No. Do you doubt it? For what does he do without him through whom all things were made? “All things,” it says, “were made through him.” And, pressing it home fully on the slow, the hard, the quarrelsome, he added, “And without him nothing was made.”

What, then, brothers? “All things were made through him”: we understand that the whole creation was made through the Son, that the Father made it through his Word, God through his Power and Wisdom. Are we going to say, “All things, indeed, when they were created, were made through him, but now the Father does not do all things through him”? Far from it. Let this thought depart from the hearts of the faithful; let it be driven from the minds of the devout, from the understanding of the godly. It cannot be that he created through him and does not govern through him. Far be it that what exists should be ruled without him, when it was through him that it was made to exist. But let us show by this testimony of Scripture too that not only were all things made and created through him, as we have quoted from the Gospel, “All things were made through him, and without him nothing was made,” but also that the things that were made are ruled and ordered through him. You acknowledge Christ, then, as the Power of God and the Wisdom of God; acknowledge also what is said of Wisdom: “She reaches mightily from end to end, and orders all things sweetly.” Let us not doubt, then, that all things are ruled through him through whom all things were made. So the Father does nothing without the Son, and the Son nothing without the Father.

So a question arises, which we have undertaken to solve in the name of the Lord and by his will. If the Father does nothing without the Son, and the Son nothing without the Father, will it not seem to follow that we must say that the Father too was born of the Virgin Mary, that the Father suffered under Pontius Pilate, that the Father rose again and ascended into heaven? Far from it. We do not say this, because we do not believe this. “For I believed, and therefore I have spoken; and we believe, and therefore we also speak.” What is in the Creed? That the Son was born of the Virgin, not the Father. What is in the Creed? That the Son suffered under Pontius Pilate and died, not the Father. Have we forgotten that some, misunderstanding this, are called Patripassians, who say that the Father himself was born of a woman, that the Father himself suffered, that the Father is the very same one who is the Son, that there are two names, not two realities? And the Catholic Church has removed these from the communion of saints, so that they might not deceive anyone, and might quarrel in their separation.

Let us recall, then, the difficulty of the question to your minds. Someone may say to me: “You said that the Father does nothing without the Son, nor the Son without the Father; and you brought testimonies from the Scriptures that the Father does nothing without the Son, because all things were made through him; and that what was made is not ruled without the Son, because he is the Wisdom of the Father, reaching mightily from end to end and ordering all things sweetly. Now you tell me, as if speaking against yourself: the Son was born of the virgin, not the Father; the Son suffered, not the Father; the Son rose again, not the Father. See, I hold that the Son does something that the Father does not do. So either confess that the Son does something without the Father, or confess that the Father too was born, suffered, died, and rose again. Say one or the other; choose one of the two.” I choose neither; I say neither this nor that. I do not say that the Son does anything without the Father, because I would be lying if I said it; nor do I say that the Father was born, suffered, died, and rose again, because I would be lying no less if I said it. “How,” he says, “will you get yourself out of these straits?”

The question as I have put it pleases you; may God help, so that it may please you when solved as well. See what I say, so that he may set both me and you free. For we stand in one faith in the name of Christ, and we live in one house under one Lord, and we are members in one body under one head, and we are given life by one Spirit. So that the Lord may free from the straits of this most troublesome question both me who speak and you who listen, I say this: the Son indeed, not the Father, was born of the Virgin Mary; but this very birth of the Son, not of the Father, from the Virgin Mary, both the Father and the Son brought about. The Father indeed did not suffer, but the Son; yet the passion of the Son both the Father and the Son brought about. The Father did not rise again, but the Son; yet the resurrection of the Son both the Father and the Son brought about. We seem now to be free of this question; but perhaps only by my own words; let us see whether by divine words as well. It falls to me, then, to show by the testimonies of the holy books that both the Father and the Son brought about the birth of the Son; and so the passion; and so the resurrection; so that, although the birth and the passion and the resurrection belong to the Son alone, yet these three, which belong to the Son alone, were done neither by the Father alone nor by the Son alone, but by the Father and the Son together. Let us prove each point. You are listening as judges; the case has been laid out; let the witnesses come forward. Let your judgment say to me what is usually said to those who plead cases: “Prove what you promise.” I do prove it, with the Lord’s help, and I read out a reading from the heavenly law. You listened attentively while I put the question; listen more attentively now while I prove it.

First I must teach about Christ’s birth: how both the Father brought it about and the Son brought it about, although what the Father and the Son brought about belongs only to the Son. I cite Paul, a competent expert in divine law. For the lawyers too have a Paul today, who lays down the laws of litigants, not of Christians. I cite, I say, the Paul who lays down the laws of peace, not of strife. Let the holy Apostle show us how the Father brought about the birth of the Son. “But when the fullness of time came,” he says, “God sent his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem those who were under the law.” You have heard, and because it is plain and clear, you have understood. See, the Father caused the Son to be born of a virgin. For when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son: the Father, that is, sent Christ. How did he send him? “Made of a woman, made under the law.” So the Father made him of a woman, under the law.

Or perhaps this troubles you, that I said “of a virgin,” and Paul says “of a woman”? Let it not trouble you; let us not linger over it, for I am not speaking to the untaught. Scripture says both, “of a virgin” and “of a woman.” How “of a virgin”? “See, a virgin will conceive and bear a son.” And “of a woman,” as you have heard: there is no contradiction. For the idiom of Hebrew speech calls “women” not those whose virginity has been lost, but females. You have a clear text of Genesis, when Eve herself was first made: “He formed her into a woman.” Scripture also says in another place that God commanded the “women” to be set apart who had not known a man’s bed. So this ought now to be known, and it should not detain us, so that with the Lord’s help we may explain other things that will rightly detain us.

We have proved, then, that the birth of the Son was brought about by the Father; let us prove that it was brought about also by the Son. What is the birth of the Son of the Virgin Mary? Surely it is the taking of the form of a servant in the virgin’s womb. Is being born anything else for the Son than taking the form of a servant in the virgin’s womb? Hear that the Son also did this: “Who, though he was in the form of God, did not think it robbery to be equal with God; but he emptied himself, taking the form of a servant.” “When the fullness of time came, God sent his Son, made of a woman,” who was made for him “of the seed of David according to the flesh.” So we see that the birth of the Son was brought about by the Father; but because the Son himself “emptied himself, taking the form of a servant,” we see that the birth of the Son was brought about also by the Son himself. This has been proved; let us move on from here. Attentively take in the next point, which follows in order.

Let us prove also that the passion of the Son was brought about both by the Father and by the Son. Let the Father bring about the Son’s passion: “He who did not spare his own Son, but handed him over for us all.” Let the Son also bring about his own passion: “Who loved me and handed himself over for me.” The Father handed over the Son; the Son handed himself over. This passion was undergone by one, but it was brought about by both. As with the birth, then, so the passion of Christ neither the Father brought about without the Son, nor the Son without the Father. The Father handed over the Son; the Son handed himself over. What did Judas do here, except sin? Let us move on, and from here come to the resurrection.

Let us see the Son, not the Father, rising again, but both the Father and the Son bringing about the resurrection of the Son. Let the Father bring about the resurrection of the Son: “Therefore he exalted him, and gave him the name that is above every name.” So the Father raised the Son, by exalting him and waking him from the dead. Did the Son also raise himself? Certainly he did. Speaking of the temple as a figure of his body, he said: “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” Finally, as laying down one’s life belongs to the passion, so taking it up again belongs to the resurrection. Let us see whether the Son laid down his life and the Father gave it back to him, not he to himself. That the Father gave it back is plain; for that is why the psalm says, “And raise me up, and I will repay them.” But that the Son too gave his life back to himself, why are you waiting for me to prove it? Let him say it himself: “I have power to lay down my life.” I have not yet said what I promised. I said “to lay down,” and you are already calling out, because you fly on ahead. For, taught in the school of the heavenly Teacher, as hearers who listen attentively to the readings and devoutly repeat them, you know what follows: “I have power,” he says, “to lay down my life, and I have power to take it up again. No one takes it from me; but I lay it down of myself, and I take it up again.”

We have paid what we promised: we have proved our propositions, I think, by the firmest evidence of testimonies. Hold on to what you have heard. I sum it up briefly, and I commend to your minds something very useful, as I judge, to be stored there. The Father was not born of the virgin; yet this birth of the Son from the virgin both the Father and the Son brought about. The Father did not suffer on the cross; yet the passion of the Son both the Father and the Son brought about. The Father did not rise from the dead; yet the resurrection of the Son both the Father and the Son brought about. You have the distinction of persons and the inseparability of working. So let us not say that the Father works anything without the Son, or the Son anything without the Father. Or perhaps the miracles that Jesus worked trouble you, as if he did some that the Father did not do? Then where is “But the Father, abiding in me, himself does the works”? These things we have said were plain; they needed only to be said. There was no need to labor to make them understood, only to take care that they were called to mind.

I want to say something more, and here I truly ask for your keener attention and your devotion toward God. Only bodies are held or contained in bodily places. The Godhead is beyond bodily places; let no one look for it as if in space. It is present everywhere, invisibly and inseparably: not greater in one part and smaller in another, but whole everywhere, divided nowhere. Who sees this? Who grasps this? Let us restrain ourselves; let us remember who we are and of whom we speak. This and that, whatever it is that God is, let it be devoutly believed, reverently thought of, and, as far as is granted and as far as one can, understood in an ineffable way. Let words fall silent, let the tongue be still; let the heart be roused, let the heart be lifted up there. For that is not the kind of thing that rises up into the heart of man; it is where the heart of man must rise. Let us look at the creature (“for his invisible things, from the creation of the world, are understood and seen through the things that have been made”), in case perhaps in the things God has made, with which we have a certain familiarity of habit, we may find some likeness by which we may prove that there are some three things which are presented separately and work inseparably.

Come, brothers, be present with your whole mind. First see what I am promising: whether I may perhaps find a likeness in the creature, since the Creator is high above us. And perhaps one of us, whose mind the brightness of truth dazzles as it were with a flash, can say those words: “I said in my ecstasy.” What did you say in your ecstasy? “I am cast out from the sight of your eyes.” For it seems to me that the one who said this had lifted up his soul to God and poured out his soul above himself, while it was said to him daily, “Where is your God?”; that he had reached by a kind of spiritual touch that unchangeable light, and through the weakness of his sight had not been able to bear it; that he had fallen back again into his own sickness and faintness, as it were, and compared himself with it, and felt that the keenness of his mind could not yet be attuned to the light of God’s wisdom. And because he had done this in ecstasy, snatched from the senses of the body and caught up into God, when he was in a way called back from God to man, he said, “I said in my ecstasy.” For I saw something or other in ecstasy, which I could not bear for long; and given back to my mortal members, and to the many thoughts of mortals that come from the body which weighs down the soul, I said, what? “I am cast out from the sight of your eyes.” You are far above; I am far below. What, then, shall we say of God, brothers? For if you have grasped what you want to say, it is not God; if you have been able to comprehend it, you have comprehended something else instead of God. If you think you have been able to comprehend it, you have deceived yourself by your own thinking. So it is not he, if you have comprehended it; but if it is he, you have not comprehended it. How, then, would you speak of what you could not comprehend?

Let us see, then, whether perhaps we may find something in the creature by which we may prove that some three things are both presented separately and work inseparably. Where shall we go? To heaven, to discuss the sun and moon and stars? To the earth, to discuss perhaps the shrubs, the trees, the animals that fill the earth? Or the heaven itself, or the earth itself, which contain all things that are in heaven and on earth? How long, O man, will you go round the creation? Return to yourself; look at yourself, examine yourself, discuss yourself. You are looking in the creation for some three things that can be shown separately and that work inseparably: if you are looking in the creation, look first in yourself. For you are not something other than a creature. You are looking for a likeness. Are you going to look for it in a beast? For you were speaking of God, when you looked for a kind of likeness. You were speaking of the Trinity of ineffable Majesty; and because you failed in the things of God and confessed your weakness with due humility, you came down to human things: discuss it there. Will you look in a beast, look in the sun, in a star? Which of these was made in the image and likeness of God? Surely you look more familiarly and better for something of this in yourself. For God made man in his image and likeness. Look in yourself, in case perhaps the image of the Trinity has some trace of the Trinity. And what kind of image? An image made, far removed; a likeness, nevertheless, and an image, though far removed; not an image as the Son is, who is what the Father is. For an image is one thing in a son, another in a mirror. There is a great difference. In your son your image is you yourself. For the son is what you are by nature: in substance what you are, in person other than you. So man is not an image as the only-begotten Son is, but made in a certain image and a certain likeness. Let him look for something in himself, if he can find it: some three things that are named separately and work inseparably. I shall look; you look with me. Not I in you, but you in yourselves, and I in myself. Let us look together, and together examine our common nature and substance.

See, O man, notice whether what I say is true. Do you have a body, do you have flesh? “I have,” you say. “For how else am I in a place, how else do I move from place to place? How do I hear the words of someone speaking, except through the ear of the flesh? How do I see the mouth of someone speaking, except through the eyes of the flesh?” You have it; it is agreed; there is no need to labor long over something obvious. Look at something else; look at what works through the flesh. You hear with the ear, but it is not the ear that hears. There is someone else inside who hears through the ear. You see through the eye; look at him. Have you recognized the house and neglected the one who lives in it? Does the eye see by itself? Is it not someone else who sees through the eye? I do not say that the eye of a dead man does not see, since it is clear that the inhabitant has left that body; but the eye of someone thinking about something else does not see the face of one who is present. Look, then, at your inner man. For there, rather, a likeness of some three things presented separately and working inseparably is to be sought. What does your mind have? Perhaps, if I look, I find many things; but there is something very near, which is more easily understood. What does your soul have? Recall it within; reflect. For I do not ask that what I am about to say be believed on my word: do not accept it, if you do not find it in yourself. Look within, then; but first let us see something that had slipped my mind: whether man is not the image of the Son only, or the image of the Father only, but of the Father and the Son, and therefore, of course, of the Holy Spirit as well. Genesis says: “Let us make man,” it says, “in our image and likeness.” So the Father does not make without the Son, nor the Son without the Father. “Let us make man in our image and likeness.” “Let us make”: not “I will make,” or “Make,” or “Let him make,” but “Let us make in” not “your image” or “my image,” but “our image.”

So I am asking; I am speaking of something unlike. Let no one say: “See what he has compared to God!” I have already said it and said it beforehand; I have put you on your guard and been on my guard. These things are far apart: the lowest from the highest, the changeable from the unchangeable, the created from the creating, the human from the divine. See, I state this first, that what I am about to say is far removed, so that no one may slander me. Lest perhaps, while I am looking for ears, someone is getting his teeth ready, this is what I promised to show: some three things presented separately and working inseparably. How like or unlike these are to the almighty Trinity, I am not dealing with now; but in the creature itself, low and changeable, we find some three things that can be presented separately and work inseparably. O carnal thinking, and stubborn and unbelieving conscience! Why do you doubt about that ineffable Majesty a thing that you have been able to find in yourself? See, I say it, see, I ask: Man, do you have memory? If you do not, how have you kept hold of what I said? But perhaps you have already forgotten what I said a little earlier. These very words that I say, “I said”: you would not keep hold of these two syllables except through memory. For how would you know there were two, if when the second sounded you had forgotten the first? Why, then, do I dwell on it longer? Why do I press so? Why am I driven to prove it so? It is clear: you have memory. I ask something else: do you have understanding? “I have,” you say. For if you did not have memory, you would not keep hold of what I said; if you did not have understanding, you would not recognize what you kept hold of. You have this too. You turn your understanding back to what you hold within, and you see it, and in seeing you are formed, so that you are said to know. I ask a third thing: you have memory, by which you keep hold of what is said; you have understanding, by which you understand what is kept hold of; about these two I ask you: was it willingly that you kept hold and understood? “Willingly, certainly,” you say. So you have will. These are the three things that I had promised to speak of to your ears and minds. These three are in you, and you can count them but cannot separate them. So these three, memory, understanding, and will: notice, I say, that these three are named separately and work inseparably.

The Lord will be present, and I see that he is present: from your understanding I understand that he is present. For from these voices of yours I notice how you have understood; I trust that he will help, so that you may understand everything. I promised that three things would be shown to be presented separately and to work inseparably. See, I did not know what was in your mind; you showed it to me by saying, “Memory.” This word, this sound, this utterance came from your mind to my ears. For this thing that is memory you were thinking silently, and you were not saying it. It was in you, and had not yet come to me. But so that what was in you might be brought out to me, you said its very name, that is, “Memory.” I heard: I heard these four syllables in the name me-mo-ri-a. It is a name of four syllables; it is a word; it sounded, it came to my ear, it conveyed something to my mind. What sounded passed away; that by which something was conveyed, and what was conveyed, remains. But this is what I ask: when you said this name, “Memory,” you surely see that this name belongs only to memory. For the other two have their own names. One is called understanding, the other will, not memory; but that one alone is called memory. But to say this, to produce these four syllables, by what did you produce them? This name, which belongs to memory alone, was produced in you by memory, so that you kept hold of what you were saying; by understanding, so that you knew what you were keeping hold of; and by will, so that you brought out what you knew. Thanks be to the Lord our God! He has helped us, both in you and in us. I tell your Charity truly, I had begun to examine and explain this with great trepidation. For I was afraid that I might perhaps delight the capable and burden the slower with weariness. But now I see that, by your attention in listening and your quickness in understanding, you have not only grasped what was said but flown ahead to what was about to be said. Thanks be to the Lord!

See, then: I now speak with confidence, presenting what you have understood; I am not driving home something unknown, but by repeating it I commend what has been grasped. See, of those three, one thing has been named; the name of one thing has been spoken. “Memory” is the name of one of those three, and yet the name of one of those three was produced by all three. “Memory” alone could not be said except by the working of will, understanding, and memory. “Understanding” alone cannot be said except by the working of memory, will, and understanding. Nor can “will” alone be said except by the working of memory and understanding and will. What was promised has been explained, I think: what I named separately, I conceived inseparably. The three produced each one of these; yet this one thing that the three produced belongs not to the three but to one. The three produced the name “memory,” but it belongs only to memory. The three produced the name “understanding,” but it belongs only to understanding. The three produced the name “will,” but it belongs only to will. So the Trinity made the flesh of Christ, but it belongs only to Christ. The Trinity made the dove from heaven, but it belongs only to the Holy Spirit. The Trinity made the voice from heaven, but the voice belongs only to the Father.

So let no one say to me, let no slanderer try to press me, weak as I am: “Then in these three which you have shown to be in our mind or soul, which of these three belongs to the Father, that is, as it were to the likeness of the Father; which of them to the Son’s; which of them to the Holy Spirit’s?” I cannot say; I cannot explain it. Let us leave something to those who reflect; let us grant something also to silence. Return to yourself, and take yourself away from all noise. Look within yourself, whether you have there some sweet inner chamber of your conscience, where you make no clamor, where you do not quarrel or stir up quarrels, where you do not plan dissensions and obstinacy. Be gentle in hearing the word, so that you may understand. Perhaps you will say, “To my hearing you will give joy and gladness, and the bones will rejoice”: but the humbled bones, not the proud.

It is enough, then, that we have shown that some three things are presented separately and work inseparably. If you have found this in yourself, if in a man, if in a person walking on the earth and carrying a frail body that weighs down the soul, believe that the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit can, through particular visible things, through certain forms of assumed creatures, both be presented separately and work inseparably. This is enough. I do not say, The Father is memory, the Son is understanding, the Spirit is will; I do not say it; let it be understood as one likes; I do not dare. Let us keep the greater things for those who can grasp them; weak as we are, let us give the weak what we can. I do not say that these are to be made equal to that Trinity, as if to be ruled by an analogy, that is, by some exact rule of comparison: I do not say this. But what do I say? See, I have found in you three things presented separately and working inseparably; and the name of each one of the three produced by all three, yet belonging not to the three but to one of them. Believe there, then, what you cannot see, if here you have heard and seen and held it. For what is in yourself you can know; what is in him who made you, whatever it is, when can you know it? And even if you will be able, you are not able yet. And yet, when you are able, will you be able to know God as God knows himself? Let this suffice, then, for your Charity: what we could, we have said; we have paid what was promised to those who demanded it; the rest that is to be added, so that your understanding may grow, seek from the Lord.

By the feast of a holy virgin who bore witness to Christ and was found worthy of witness from Christ, killed openly and crowned secretly, we are reminded to speak to your Charity about that exhortation which the Lord was just now setting forth from the Gospel, naming many grounds of the blessed life, which there is no one who does not want. For no one can be found who does not want to be happy. But oh, if people would not refuse the work that earns the reward as they desire the reward! Who would not run eagerly when he is told, “You will be happy”? Let him also listen gladly when he is told, “If you do this.” Let the contest not be refused if the prize is loved; and let the mind be kindled to eagerness for the work by the commendation of the reward. What we want, what we desire, what we ask for, will be hereafter; but what we are commanded to do for the sake of what will be hereafter must be now. See, begin now to recall the divine sayings, and the very precepts and rewards of the Gospel. “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” The kingdom of heaven will be yours later; be poor in spirit now. Do you want the kingdom of heaven to be yours later? See now whose you yourself are. Be poor in spirit. You ask me perhaps what it is to be poor in spirit. No one who is puffed up is poor in spirit; so the humble person is poor in spirit. The kingdom of heaven is high; but “he who humbles himself will be exalted.”

Notice what follows: “Blessed,” he says, “are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.” Now you want to possess the earth: take care that you are not possessed by the earth. You will possess it if you are meek; you will be possessed if you are not. And when you hear the reward set before you, that you will possess the earth, do not stretch out the lap of greed, by which you want to possess the earth now, shutting out your neighbor by any means; do not let that notion deceive you. You will truly possess the earth when you cling to him who made heaven and earth. For this is what it is to be meek: not to resist your God, so that in the good you do, he pleases you, not you yourself; and in the evil you justly suffer, he does not displease you, but you displease yourself. For it is no small thing that you will please him when you displease yourself; but you will displease him if you please yourself.

Notice the third: “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.” The work is in mourning; the reward is in comfort. For those who mourn in a carnal way, what comforts do they have? Troublesome ones, ones to be feared. There the mourner is comforted where he fears again that he may mourn. For example, a son’s being carried to burial saddens, a son’s birth gladdens: he has buried the one, he has taken up the other; in the one there is sadness, in the other fear; in neither, then, is there comfort. So that will be true comfort, in which what cannot be lost will be given; so that those who now mourn that they are in exile may afterwards rejoice to be comforted.

Let the fourth work and reward come forward: “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice, for they will be filled.” You want to be filled. With what? If the flesh desires fullness, once that fullness is digested you will suffer hunger again. “And whoever drinks of this water,” he says, “will thirst again.” A medicine that is put on a wound, if it heals it, no longer hurts; but what is applied against hunger, that is, food, is applied so as to relieve for a little while. For when the fullness has passed, hunger returns. The remedy of fullness is indeed applied every day, but the wound of weakness is not healed. So let us hunger and thirst for justice, so that we may be filled with that very justice for which we now hunger and thirst. For we shall be filled with that for which we hunger and thirst. Let our inner man hunger and thirst; for it has its own food, it has its own drink. “I am,” he says, “the bread that came down from heaven.” You have the bread of the hungry; desire also the drink of the thirsty: “For with you is the fountain of life.”

Notice what follows: “Blessed are the merciful, for God will have mercy on them.” Do it, and it will be done; do it to another, so that it may be done to you. For you both abound and are in need: you abound in temporal things, you are in need of eternal ones. You hear a man begging; you yourself are God’s beggar. You are asked, and you ask. What you do with the one who asks you, God will do with the one who asks him. You are both full and empty: fill the empty from your fullness, so that your emptiness may be filled from God’s fullness.

Notice what follows: “Blessed are the clean of heart,” that is, those who are clean in heart, “for they will see God.” This is the end of our love: an end by which we are perfected, not one by which we are used up. Food comes to an end, a garment comes to an end: food, because it is used up by eating; a garment, because it is completed by weaving. Both come to an end; but the one end belongs to consumption, the other to completion. Whatever we do, whatever we do well, whatever we strive for, whatever we are praiseworthily eager for, whatever we blamelessly desire, when the vision of God has come we shall seek nothing more. For what would one seek to whom God is present? Or what would suffice one for whom God does not suffice? We want to see God, we seek to see God, we burn to see God. Who does not? But see what is said: “Blessed are the clean of heart, for they will see God.” Prepare that by which you may see. For, to speak in terms of the flesh, why do you long for the sunrise with bleary eyes? Let the eyes be healthy, and that light will be a joy; if the eyes are not healthy, that light will be a torment. For you will not be allowed to see with a heart that is not clean what is seen only by a clean heart. You will be pushed back, taken away; you will not see. For “blessed are the clean of heart, for they will see God.” How many times has he already counted the blessed? What grounds of blessedness, what works, what rewards, what merits, what prizes? Nowhere has it been said, “They will see God.” “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are the meek: they will inherit the earth. Blessed are those who mourn: they will be comforted. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice: they will be filled. Blessed are the merciful: they will obtain mercy.” Nowhere has it been said, “They will see God.” When it came to the clean of heart, there the vision of God was promised. Not without reason, except that there are the eyes by which God is seen. Of these eyes the apostle Paul speaks when he says, “The eyes of your heart enlightened.” Now, then, these eyes are enlightened by faith according to their weakness; afterwards they will be enlightened by sight according to their strength. For as long as we are in the body, we are pilgrims away from the Lord; for we walk by faith, not by sight. And as long as we are in this faith, what is said of us? “We see now through a mirror in an enigma; but then face to face.”

For if, kindled by the desire to see God, you prepare your bodily face for seeing, you will look for such a face in God too. But if you now at least think of God spiritually, so as not to think that God is bodily (we dealt with this at length yesterday, if indeed we accomplished anything); if in your heart, as in God’s temple, we have broken the image of human form; if it has now come well into your mind and taken hold of your inmost heart, where the Apostle condemns those who, “saying that they were wise, became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into the likeness of an image of corruptible man”; if you now detest such an evil, if you oppose it, if you are cleaning his temple for the Creator, if you want him to come and make his dwelling with you: “Think of the Lord in goodness, and seek him in simplicity of heart.” See to whom you say it, if indeed you say it, if you say it truly: “My heart has said to you, I will seek your face.” Let your heart say it too, and add: “Your face, Lord, I will seek.” For you seek well, because you seek with the heart. God’s face is spoken of, God’s arm is spoken of, God’s hand is spoken of, God’s feet are spoken of, God’s seat is spoken of, the footstool of his feet is spoken of; but do not think of human members. If you want to be a temple of truth, break the idol of falsehood. The hand of God is God’s power. The face of God is the knowledge of God. The feet of God are God’s presence. The seat of God, if you like, is you. Or will you perhaps dare to deny that Christ is God? “No,” you say. Do you grant this too, that Christ is the Power of God and the Wisdom of God? “I grant it,” you say. Hear, then: “The soul of the just is the seat of wisdom.” For where does God have his seat, if not where he dwells? And where does he dwell, if not in his temple? “For the temple of God is holy, and that temple you are.” See, then, how you receive God. “God is spirit; it is in spirit and truth that one must worship God.” Now, if you please, let the ark of the covenant enter your heart, and let Dagon fall. Hear, then, now, and learn to desire God; learn how to prepare that by which you can see God. “Blessed,” he says, “are the clean of heart, for they will see God.” Why are you preparing the eyes of the body? If he were to be seen that way, what is seen would be in a place. He who is wholly everywhere is not in a place. Clean that by which he may be seen.

Hear and understand, if with his help I can explain it: may he help us to understand how all the works and rewards mentioned above have been set beside each other fittingly. For where has anything been said about a reward that did not fit the work, that did not agree with it? Because the humble seem as it were strangers to a kingdom, he says, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Because meek people are easily driven off their land, he says, “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.” The rest are now open and clear; they are recognized of themselves; they need no one to discuss them, only someone to mention them. “Blessed are those who mourn.” What mourner does not want comfort? “They,” he says, “will be comforted.” “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice.” What hungry and thirsty person does not seek to be filled? “And they,” he says, “will be filled.” “Blessed are the merciful.” Who is merciful but one who hopes, from that very work, to be repaid by God in turn, so that what he does for the poor may be done for him? “Blessed,” he says, “are the merciful, for God will have mercy on them.” How each reward has been set beside each precept as its own, and nothing has been put into the reward that did not fit the precept! For the precept is that you be poor in spirit; the reward is that you have the kingdom of heaven. The precept is that you be meek; the reward is that you possess the earth. The precept is that you mourn; the reward, that you be comforted. The precept is that you hunger and thirst for justice; the reward, that you be filled. The precept is that you be merciful; the reward, that you obtain mercy. So the precept is that you clean your heart; the reward, that you see God.

So do not think about these precepts and rewards in such a way that, when you hear, “Blessed are the clean of heart, for they will see God,” you think that the poor in spirit will not see, or the meek will not see, those who mourn will not see, those who hunger and thirst for justice will not see, the merciful will not see. Do not suppose that only those who are clean of heart will see, as it were, and the others are cut off from the vision. For all these are the very same people. They will see; but they will not see because they are poor in spirit, because they are meek, because they mourn, because they hunger and thirst for justice, because they are merciful, but because they are clean of heart. It is as if bodily works were fitted to bodily members, and someone said, for example: Blessed are those who have feet, because they will walk; blessed are those who have hands, because they will work; blessed are those who have a voice, because they will cry out; blessed are those who have a mouth and tongue, because they will speak; blessed are those who have eyes, for they will see. So, arranging, as it were, the spiritual members, he taught what belongs to what. Humility is suited to having the kingdom of heaven; meekness is suited to possessing the earth; mourning to comfort; hunger and thirst for justice to fullness; mercy to obtaining mercy; a clean heart to seeing God.

If, then, we desire to see God, how will this eye be cleaned? For who would not care, who would not seek how to clean the eye by which he can see him whom he desires with all his affection? The divine testimony has stated it: “By faith,” it says, “cleansing their hearts.” Faith in God cleans the heart; the clean heart sees God. But because this faith is sometimes defined by people who deceive themselves as if it were enough merely to believe (for some promise themselves even the sight of God and the kingdom of heaven while believing and living badly), the apostle James, angered against these and in a way indignant with spiritual love, says in his Epistle: “You believe that God is one.” You applaud yourself for your faith; for you notice that many ungodly people think there are many gods, and you congratulate yourself on believing that God is one. “You do well. The demons also believe, and tremble.” Will they too see God? Those will see who are clean of heart. But who would call unclean spirits clean of heart? And yet they believe, and tremble.

Our faith must be distinguished from the faith of demons. For our faith cleans the heart, while theirs makes them guilty. For they act wickedly, and so they say to the Lord: “What have we to do with you?” When you hear the demons say this, do you think they do not recognize him? “We know,” they say, “who you are: you are the Son of God.” Peter says this, and is praised; a demon says this, and is condemned. Why, unless the words are the same and the heart is not? Let us distinguish our faith, then, and let it not be enough to believe. That is not the kind of faith that cleans the heart. “By faith,” it says, “cleansing their hearts.” But by what faith, what kind of faith, if not that which the apostle Paul defines when he says, “Faith that works through love”? That faith distinguishes us from the faith of demons; it distinguishes us from the shameful and abandoned ways of men. “Faith,” he says. What faith? Faith that works through love and hopes for what God promises. Nothing is more carefully weighed than this definition, nothing more complete. So there are those three. The one in whom there is faith that works through love must hope for what God promises. Hope, then, is the companion of faith. For hope is necessary as long as we do not see what we believe, lest perhaps, not seeing and despairing, we give up. It saddens us that we do not see; but it comforts us that we hope we shall see. So hope is here, and it is faith’s companion. Then there is also love, by which we desire, by which we strive to reach, by which we burn, by which we hunger and thirst. So this too is brought in, and there will be faith, hope, and love. For how will there not be love there, since love is nothing other than loving? And that faith has been defined as working through love. Take away faith, and what you believe perishes; take away love, and what you do perishes. For it belongs to faith that you believe; to love, that you act. For if you believe and do not love, you do not move yourself to good work; and if you do move, you move as a slave, not as a son, fearing punishment, not loving justice. That faith, then, I say, cleans the heart which works through love.

And what does this faith do now? With so many testimonies of the Scriptures, with such manifold reading, with such varied and abundant exhortation, what does it do, if not make us see now through a mirror in an enigma, and afterwards face to face? But do not go back again to this face of yours. Think of the face of the heart. Force your heart to think of divine things; compel it, press it. Whatever likeness of a body occurs to you as you think, throw it away. You cannot yet say, “This is it”; at least say, “This is not it.” For when will you say, “This is God”? Not even when you see him; for what you will see is ineffable. The Apostle says that he was caught up into the third heaven and heard ineffable words. If the words are ineffable, what is he whose words they are? So when you think about God, perhaps some wondrous and very great size in human form occurs to you; you have set it before the gaze of your thought as something great, very broad, vast, spread out in an immense mass. You have bounded it somewhere. If you have bounded it, it is not God. If you have not bounded it, where is the face? You are thinking of a mass, and to distinguish members you put limits to the mass. For you cannot distinguish members otherwise, unless you give the mass a boundary. What are you doing, foolish and carnal thought? You have made a great mass, and all the greater, the more you thought you were honoring God. Another adds one cubit and makes it bigger.

“But I have read,” you say. What have you read, you who have understood nothing? Still, tell me: what have you read? Let us not push away a little one playing in his heart. Tell me what you have read. “Heaven is my throne, and the earth is the footstool of my feet.” I say: I have read it too; but perhaps you think yourself better off because you have read and believed. I too believe what you have said. Let us believe together. What am I saying? Let us seek together. See, hold on to what you have read and believed: “Heaven is my throne,” that is, my seat (for thronus in Greek is sedes, seat, in Latin), “and the earth is the footstool of my feet.” Have you not read this too: “Who has measured heaven with his palm?” I think you have read it; you recognize it, and you admit that you believe it. For we read both there, and we believe both. Now think, and teach me: I take you as my teacher and make myself the little one. Teach me, I beg you: who is it who sits on his own palm?

See, you have drawn the shapes and features of God’s members from the human body. But perhaps it has crept into your mind that we were made in God’s image according to the body. For the moment I accept this for consideration, discussion, inquiry, and examination by argument. If you please, listen to me, since I listened to you in what you were pleased to say. God sits in heaven, and measures heaven with his palm. Does the same heaven become broad when he sits, and narrow when he measures? Or is God himself as large in sitting as in his palm? If this is so, God did not make us in his likeness; for we have a palm much narrower than the part of the body on which we sit. But if he is as broad in his palm as in his sitting, he has made our members unlike his. This is no likeness. So let such an idol blush in a Christian heart. Accordingly, take heaven to mean all the saints. For the earth too is used to mean all who are on the earth: “Let all the earth worship you.” If we rightly say, of those who live on the earth, “Let all the earth worship you,” we also rightly say, of those who live in heaven, “Let all heaven carry you.” For the saints themselves who live on earth tread the earth in the flesh but live in heaven in the heart. For it is not in vain that they are reminded to have their hearts lifted up, and when they have been reminded, they answer that they have; nor is it said in vain: “If you have risen with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God; set your mind on the things that are above, not on those that are on the earth.” In so far, then, as they have their life there, they too carry God, and they are heaven; because they are God’s seat; and when they proclaim God’s words, “the heavens tell the glory of God.”

Return with me, then, to the face of the heart: prepare it. What God speaks to is within. The ears, the eyes, the other visible members are either the dwelling or the instrument of someone within. It is the inner man where Christ dwells now through faith; there he will dwell by the presence of his divinity, when we have known what is the breadth, the length, the height, the depth; when we have known also the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that we may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now, then, if this understanding does not displease you, call yourself to comprehend the breadth, the length, the height, the depth. Do not run about by the imagination of your thought through the spaces of the world and the comprehensible greatness of this so great mass. Notice what I am saying in yourself. The breadth is in good works; the length is in long-suffering and perseverance in good works; the height is in the expectation of heavenly rewards, for the sake of which height you are told to have your heart lifted up. Act well, and persevere in good works, for the sake of God’s benefits. Count earthly things as nothing, lest, when this earth is shaken by some scourge of that Wise One, you say that you worshiped God for nothing, did good works for nothing, persevered in good works for nothing. For by doing good works you had, as it were, the breadth; by persevering in them, the length; but by seeking earthly things you did not have the height. Notice the depth: it is the grace of God in the hidden counsel of his will. “For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor?” And, “Your judgments are like a great deep.”

This way of life, of acting well, of persevering in it, of waiting for heavenly things, of God’s grace given in secret, in wisdom, not foolishness, and of not finding fault because one person is this way and another that (for there is no injustice with God): this way of life, if you please, fit also to the cross of your Lord. For not in vain did he choose such a death, he in whose power it was either to die or not to die. If it was in his power to die or not to die, why not in his power to die in this way or that? Not in vain, then, did he choose the cross, on which he might crucify you to this world. For the breadth on the cross is the crossbeam, where the hands are fastened, signifying good works. The length is in that part of the wood which stretches from the crossbeam to the ground. For there the body is crucified and in a way stands; and that standing signifies perseverance. The height is in that part of the wood which rises from the same crossbeam upward toward the head; and by it is signified the expectation of heavenly things. Where is the depth, if not in that part which is fixed in the ground? For grace is hidden and lies concealed. It is not seen; but from it rises what is seen. After this, if you have comprehended all these things, not only by understanding but also by doing (for “good understanding belongs to all who do it”), then stretch yourself, if you can, to know the knowledge of the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge. When you have reached it, you will be filled with all the fullness of God. Then it will be face to face. And you will be filled with all the fullness of God, not so that God is full of you, but so that you are full of God. Look for a bodily face there, if you can. Now let trifles be taken away from the mind’s sight. Let the little child throw away toys and learn to handle greater things. We too are little ones in many things; and when we were even more so than we are, we were borne with by our elders. “Pursue peace with all, and holiness, without which no one will be able to see God.” For by this too the heart is cleansed, because there is the faith that works through love. Hence, “Blessed are the clean of heart, for they will see God.”

It often troubles many, dearly beloved, that our Lord Jesus Christ in the Gospel sermon, after first saying, “Let your light shine before men, so that they may see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven,” afterwards said, “Take care not to do your justice before men in order to be seen by them.” For the mind of one who understands too little, and who certainly wants to obey the commandment, is troubled and pulled apart by different and opposing directions. For no one can obey even one master who gives conflicting orders, any more than one can serve two masters, as the Savior himself testified in the same sermon. What, then, will a wavering mind do, when it thinks it cannot obey and is afraid not to obey? For if it puts its good works in the light for people to look at, so as to do what is commanded, “So let your light shine before men, so that they may see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven,” it will think itself guilty, because it has acted against the commandment that says, “Take care not to do your justice before men in order to be seen by them.” And again, if, fearing and avoiding this, it hides the good it does, it will think it is not obeying him who commands, “Let your light shine before men, so that they may see your good works.”

But the one who understands rightly fulfils both, and will serve the most universal Lord, who would not condemn a lazy servant if he commanded things that could in no way be done. For listen to Paul, “a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the Gospel of God,” both doing and teaching both. See how his light shines before men, so that they may see his good works: “We commend ourselves,” he says, “to every man’s conscience in the sight of God”; and again, “For we provide what is good, not only in the sight of God but also in the sight of men”; and again, “Please all in all things, as I also please all in all things.” See, on the other hand, how he takes care not to do his justice before men in order to be seen by them: “Let each one test his own work,” he says, “and then he will have glory in himself and not in another”; and again, “For this is our glory, the testimony of our conscience”; and what could not be plainer: “If I were still pleasing men,” he says, “I would not be a servant of Christ.” But lest any of those who are troubled about the seemingly conflicting commandments of the Lord himself should press the question much more on his Apostle and say, “How do you say, Please all in all things, as I also please all in all things, and the same you say, If I were still pleasing men, I would not be a servant of Christ?”, may the Lord himself be present, who spoke also in his servant and Apostle, and open his will to us, and grant us the power to obey.

For the Gospel words themselves carry their own explanations; nor do they shut the mouths of the hungry, since they feed the hearts of those who knock. What must be looked at is where the intention of the human heart is directed and what it aims at. For if someone who wants his good works to be seen by people sets his own glory and advantage before people and seeks this in their sight, he has fulfilled neither of the things the Lord commanded about this matter; because he both took care to do his justice before men in order to be seen by them, and his light did not shine before men in such a way that they saw his good works in order to glorify the Father who is in heaven. For he wanted himself to be glorified, not God; and he sought his own advantage, he did not love the Lord’s will. Of such the Apostle says, “For all seek their own, not the things of Jesus Christ.” So the sentence did not end where he says, “So let your light shine before men, so that they may see your good works”; he immediately added why this is to be done: “so that they may glorify,” he says, “your Father who is in heaven.” So that when a person doing good is seen by people, he may have the intention of the good deed in his own conscience, and have no intention of becoming known except in the praise of God, for the benefit of those to whom he becomes known; for it benefits them that God, who granted this to a man, begins to please them; and so they do not despair that this could be granted to them too, if they wish. And so he ended the other sentence, where he says, “Take care not to do your justice before men,” nowhere else than where he said, “in order to be seen by them”; nor did he add, “and they glorify your Father who is in heaven,” but rather added, “Otherwise you will have no reward with your Father who is in heaven.” By this he showed that those who are such as he does not want his faithful to be seek their reward in the very fact that they are seen by people; there they set their good; there they delight the vanity of their heart; there they are emptied and puffed up, there they swell and waste away. For why was it not enough for him to say, “Take care not to do your justice before men,” but he added, “in order to be seen by them,” unless because there are some who do their justice before men, not in order to be seen by them, but so that the works themselves may be seen and the Father who is in heaven may be glorified, who deigned to give them to the ungodly whom he has justified?

Those who are such do not count the justice as their own, but as his by faith in whom they live. Hence the Apostle says, “That I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having my own justice, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the justice from God by faith”; and in another place, “So that we might become the justice of God in him.” Hence also he rebukes the Jews thus: “Being ignorant,” he says, “of the justice of God, and wanting to establish their own, they did not submit to the justice of God.” Whoever, then, wants his works to be seen by people in such a way that he is glorified from whom he received what is seen in him, and so that those very people who see may be stirred by the devotion of faith to imitate the good, truly lets his light shine before men; because the light of love shines from him, not the smoke of pride belched out. And in that very act he takes care not to do his justice before men in order to be seen by them; because he neither counts that justice as his own nor does it in order that he himself may be seen, but so that he may be recognized who is praised in the justified man, so that he may do in the one who praises what is praised in the other, that is, make the one who praises worthy of praise. Notice the Apostle too: when he had said, “Please all in all things, as I also please all in all things,” he did not stop there, as if he had set the end of his intention there, to please people; otherwise he would have said falsely, “If I were still pleasing men, I would not be a servant of Christ.” But he immediately added why he pleased people: “Not seeking,” he says, “what is useful to me, but to many, that they may be saved.” So he both did not please people for his own advantage, lest he not be a servant of Christ; and he pleased people for their salvation, so that he might be a fit steward of Christ; because for him his conscience before God was enough, and from him shone before people what they might imitate.

The passage of the holy Gospel that we heard just now when it was read greatly frightened us, if we have faith; but it did not frighten those who have no faith. And because it does not frighten them, they want to be perversely secure, not knowing how to apportion and distinguish the times for fear and for security. Let the one, then, who now leads a life that has an end be afraid, so that in that life he may have security without end. So we were afraid. For who would not fear the Truth speaking and saying, “Whoever says to his brother, Fool, will be liable to the fire of Gehenna”? “But no man can tame the tongue.” Man tames a wild beast but does not tame his tongue; he tames a lion and does not bridle his speech; he tames others and does not tame himself; he tames what he used to fear, and, to tame himself, he does not fear what he ought to fear. But how is this? It is a true sentence, and this too came from the oracle of truth: “But no man can tame the tongue.”

What, then, shall we do, my brothers? I see that I am speaking to a multitude; but because we are all one in Christ, let us take counsel as if in private. No outsider hears us; we are one, because we are gathered into one. What shall we do? “Whoever says to his brother, Fool, will be liable to the fire of Gehenna.” “But no man can tame the tongue.” Will everyone, then, go into the fire of Gehenna? Far from it. “Lord, you have become our refuge from generation to generation.” Your wrath is just; you send no one into Gehenna unjustly. “Where shall I go from your Spirit?” And where shall I flee from you, except to you? So let us understand, dearly beloved, that if no man can tame the tongue, we must take refuge in God, so that he may tame our tongue. For if you want to tame it, you cannot, because you are a man. “No man can tame the tongue.” Notice a likeness from the very beasts that we tame. The horse does not tame itself; the camel does not tame itself; the elephant does not tame itself; the asp does not tame itself; the lion does not tame itself; so man too does not tame himself. But so that the horse, the ox, the camel, the elephant, the lion, the asp may be tamed, a man is sought. So let God be sought, so that man may be tamed.

So, “Lord, you have become our refuge.” We betake ourselves to you, and it will be well with us from you. For it is bad for us from ourselves. Because we left you, you left us to ourselves. Let us be found, then, in you, because we were lost in ourselves. “Lord, you have become our refuge.” Why, then, my brothers, should we doubt that the Lord will make us gentle, if we offer ourselves to him to be tamed? You have tamed a lion, which you did not make; will he who made you not tame you? For how were you able to tame such savage beasts? Are you their equal in bodily strength? By what power, then, were you able to tame huge beasts? Even the animals called beasts of burden are beasts. For they cannot be put up with untamed. But because habit has never known them except in the hands of men, under the bridles of men, and in the power of men, do you think they could have been born tame? At least look at the savage wild beasts. The lion roars: who would not be afraid? And yet how do you know you are stronger? Not by the strength of your body, but by the inner reason of your mind. You are stronger than the lion in that by which you were made in the image of God. The image of God tames a wild beast; and will God not tame his own image?

In him is our hope: let us submit ourselves to him and beg for mercy. Let us place our hope in him, and until we are tamed and thoroughly tamed, that is, made perfect, let us bear with our tamer. For our tamer often brings out the whip too. For if you bring out a rod, bring out a whip, to tame your animals, will God not bring it out to tame his animals, which we are, he who will make his sons out of his animals? You tame your horse: what will you give your horse when it has begun to carry you gently, to bear your training, to obey your command, to be your beast of burden, that is, the help of your weakness? What do you give in return to one that you do not even bury when it dies, but throw out to be torn apart by the birds? For you, when you are tamed, God keeps an inheritance, which is God himself; and when you have been dead for a time, he raises you up. He will give you back your flesh to the number of your hairs, and will place you with the angels for ever, where you will no longer need to be tamed, but only to be possessed by the most loving one. For then God will be all in all; nor will there be any unhappiness to exercise us, but only happiness to feed us. Our shepherd himself is our God; our drink is our God; our honor is our God; our riches are our God. Whatever various things you seek here, he alone will be all things to you.

Is it for this hope that man is tamed, and is the tamer considered unbearable? Is it for this hope that man is tamed, and does he grumble against this useful tamer if perhaps he brings out the whip? You have heard the Apostle exhorting: “If you are left without discipline, then you are bastards and not sons.” Bastards are the children of adulterers. “For what son is there to whom his father does not give discipline? And we had fathers of our flesh,” he says, “who corrected us, and we respected them; shall we not much more be subject to the Father of spirits and live?” For what could your father give you because he corrected you, because he beat you, because he brought out the whip and struck you? Could he give you to live for ever? What he could not give himself, when could he give you? For the sake of his money, however small, which he had gathered by interest and labor, he trained you with whips, lest his labor, left to you, be squandered while you lived badly. And he struck his son, fearing that his labors would be lost; since he left you what he could neither keep here nor take away. For he did not leave you here anything that could be his: he gave way so that you might come in. But your God, your Redeemer, your tamer, your chastiser, your Father, trains you. For what? So that you may receive an inheritance where you will not carry your father to burial, but will have the Father himself as your inheritance. For this hope you are trained, and you grumble? And if something sad happens, perhaps you blaspheme? Where will you go from his Spirit? See, suppose he lets you go and does not whip you; suppose he abandons you as you blaspheme: will you not experience him as judge? Is it not better that he should whip you and receive you than spare you and abandon you?

Let us say, then, to the Lord our God: “Lord, you have become our refuge from generation to generation.” In the first generation and in the other generation, you have become our refuge. You were our refuge, that we might be born, who were not; you were our refuge, that we might be born again, who were evil; you were our refuge, to feed those who deserted you; you are our refuge, to raise up and direct your sons; you have become our refuge. We will not go back from you, when you have freed us from all our evils and filled us with your good things. You give good things, you deal gently with us, so that we may not grow weary on the way; you rebuke, you strike, you smite, you direct, so that we may not stray from the way. So whether you deal gently, so that we may not grow weary on the way, or chastise, so that we may not stray from the way, “Lord, you have become our refuge.”

The blessed Apostle, showing that these times, when all nations were to believe in God, had been foretold by the prophets, set down the testimony where it is written: “And it will be that every man who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” For formerly the name of the Lord who made heaven and earth was called upon only among the Israelites; the other nations called upon mute and deaf idols, by which they were not heard, or upon demons, by which they were heard to their own harm. But when the fullness of time came, what had been foretold was fulfilled: “And it will be that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” Then, because the Jews themselves, even those who believed in Christ, begrudged the Gospel to the Gentiles and said that the Gospel of Christ ought not to be proclaimed to those who had not been circumcised, and because it was against them that the apostle Paul set down this testimony, “And it will be that whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved,” he immediately added, to convince those who did not want the Gospel preached to the Gentiles: “But how will they call on him in whom they have not believed? Or how will they believe him whom they have not heard? And how will they hear without someone preaching? Or how will they preach unless they are sent?” Because, then, he said, “How will they call on him in whom they have not believed?”, you did not receive the Prayer first and the Creed afterwards, but the Creed first, where you would know what to believe, and the Prayer afterwards, where you would know whom to call upon. The Creed belongs to faith, the Prayer to petition; for it is the one who believes who is heard when he calls.

But many ask for what they ought not to ask, not knowing what is good for them. So the one who calls on God must beware of two things: not to ask for what he ought not, and not to ask it from one from whom he ought not. Nothing is to be asked from the devil, from idols, from demons. From the Lord our God Jesus Christ, from God the Father of the prophets, the apostles, and the martyrs, from the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from God who made heaven and earth, the sea and all that is in them, from him we must ask, if anything is to be asked. But we must beware of asking even from him what we ought not to ask. Since we ought to ask for human life, if you ask it from deaf and mute idols, what good does it do you? Again, if you wish from God the Father who is in heaven for the death of your enemies, what good does it do you? Have you not heard or read in the psalm in which the damnable traitor Judas was foretold, how the prophecy said of him, “Let his prayer become sin”? If, then, you get up and pray for evils on your enemies, your prayer will become sin.

In the holy Psalms you have read that the one who speaks in the Psalms seems to call down many evils on his enemies. And surely, someone says, the one who speaks in the Psalms is righteous: why does he wish such evils on his enemies? He does not wish them; he foresees them. It is the prophecy of one foretelling, not the vow of one cursing. For in the Spirit they knew to whom evil was going to happen and to whom good; and through prophecy they spoke as if they wished what they foresaw. But you, how do you know that the one for whom you pray evil today will not be better than you? “But I know he is malicious,” you say. And you know that you are malicious. Perhaps you even dare to judge what you do not know about another’s heart; but you know that you yourself are malicious. Do you not hear the Apostle saying, “I, who was formerly a blasphemer, a persecutor, and insolent; but I obtained mercy, because I acted in ignorance in unbelief”? When the apostle Paul was persecuting the Christians, binding them wherever he found them and dragging them to the priests to be tried and punished, what do you think, brothers: was the Church praying against him or for him? Surely the Church of God, which had learned from its Lord, who said as he hung on the cross, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do,” prayed for Paul, or rather still for Saul, that what was in fact done might be done in him. For when he says, “I was unknown by face to the churches of Judea that are in Christ; they only heard that he who once persecuted us now preaches the faith he once ravaged; and they glorified God in me,” why did they glorify God, unless because before it happened they had been asking God for it?

Our Lord, then, first cut off wordiness, so that you would not bring many words to God, as if you wanted to teach God with many words. So when you ask, what is needed is devotion, not verbosity. “For your Father knows what you need before you ask him.” Do not, then, speak at length, because he knows what you need. But lest someone here perhaps say, “If he knows what we need, why do we say even a few words? Why do we pray? He knows: let him give what he knows we need”: he willed that you should pray so that he might give to one who desires, so that what he gives might not be held cheap; for he himself has also instilled that very desire. So the words that our Lord Jesus Christ taught in the Prayer are the pattern of our desires. You are not permitted to ask for anything other than what is written there.

“You, then,” he says, “say: Our Father, who are in heaven.” Here you see that you have begun to have God as Father. But you will have him when you have been born. Although even now, before you are born, you have been conceived of his seed, as about to be brought forth in the font, the womb, as it were, of the Church. “Our Father, who are in heaven.” Remember that you have a Father in heaven. Remember that you were born of father Adam to death, and are to be reborn of God the Father to life. And what you say, say in your hearts. Let there be the affection of one who prays, and there will be the effect of one who hears. “Hallowed be your name.” Why do you ask that God’s name be hallowed? It is holy. Why do you ask for what is already holy? Again, when you ask that his name be hallowed, are you not as it were asking him for himself, and not for you? Understand: you are asking for yourself too. For what you ask is this: that what is always holy in itself may be hallowed in you. What does “be hallowed” mean? Be held holy, not despised. So you see that when you wish this, you are wishing good for yourself. For if you despise God’s name, it is bad for you, not for God.

“Your kingdom come.” To whom do we say this? Even if we do not ask, will God’s kingdom not come? For it is of that kingdom that we speak which will be after the end of the world. For God always has a kingdom, and he is never without a kingdom, he whom the whole creation serves. But what kingdom do you wish for? That of which it is written in the Gospel: “Come, blessed of my Father, receive the kingdom prepared for you from the beginning of the world.” See, this is the kingdom of which we say, “Your kingdom come.” We wish that it may come in us; we wish that we may be found in it. For see, it will come; but what good is it to you if it finds you on the left? So here too you wish well for yourself; you pray for yourself. This is what you desire, what you long for in praying: that you may live in such a way as to belong to the kingdom of God, which is to be given to all the saints. So when you say, “Your kingdom come,” you are praying for yourself, that you may live well. Let us belong to your kingdom; let what is to come to your saints and righteous ones come to us too.

“Your will be done.” If you do not say it, will God not do his will? Remember what you recited in the Creed: “I believe in God the Father almighty.” If he is almighty, why do you pray that his will be done? What, then, does “Your will be done” mean? May it be done in me, so that I do not resist your will. So here too you are praying for yourself, and not for God. For God’s will will be done in you, even if it is not done by you. For both in those to whom he will say, “Come, blessed of my Father, receive the kingdom prepared for you from the origin of the world,” God’s will will be done, that the just and holy receive the kingdom; and in those to whom he will say, “Go into the eternal fire, which is prepared for the devil and his angels,” God’s will will be done, that the wicked be condemned to the everlasting fire. That it be done by you is another matter. So it is not without reason that you pray that it be done in you, but so that it may be well with you. For whether it goes well or badly with you, it will be done in you; but may it be done by you too. Why, then, do I say, “Your will be done in heaven and on earth,” and not, “Your will be done by heaven and by earth”? Because what is done by you, he himself does in you. Nothing is ever done by you that he does not himself do in you. Sometimes he does in you what is not done by you; but nothing is ever done by you unless he does it in you.

But what does “in heaven and on earth” mean, or “as in heaven, so on earth”? The angels do your will; let us do it too. “Your will be done, as in heaven, so on earth.” The mind is heaven, the flesh is earth. When you say, if you do say it, what the Apostle says, “With the mind I serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin,” God’s will is done in heaven, but not yet on earth. But when the flesh has come into agreement with the mind, and death has been swallowed up in victory, so that no carnal desires remain for the mind to struggle against; when the quarrel on earth has passed, when the war of the heart has passed, when what is said has passed, “The flesh lusts against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh; for these are opposed to each other, so that you do not do what you will”; when, then, this war has passed and all concupiscence has been changed into love, nothing will remain in the body to resist the spirit, nothing to be tamed, nothing to be bridled, nothing to be trampled; but the whole will go forward in concord to justice; and God’s will will be done in heaven and on earth. “Your will be done in heaven and on earth.” We wish for perfection when we pray this. Again: “Your will be done, as in heaven, so on earth.” In the Church the spiritual are heaven, the carnal are earth. “Your will be done, then, as in heaven, so on earth”: that as the spiritual serve you, so the carnal too, changed for the better, may serve you. “Your will be done, as in heaven, so on earth.” There is also another very devout sense. For we have been told to pray for our enemies. The Church is heaven; the enemies of the Church are earth. What, then, does “Your will be done, as in heaven, so on earth” mean? May our enemies believe, as we too believe in you; may they become friends, may they end their enmities. They are earth, and so they oppose us; may they become heaven, and they will be with us.

“Give us this day our daily bread.” Here it is now plain that we are praying for ourselves. When you say, “Hallowed be your name,” it has to be explained to you that you are praying for yourself, not for God. When you say, “Your will be done,” this too has to be explained, so that you do not think you are wishing God well, that his will be done, rather than praying for yourself. When you say, “Your kingdom come,” this too has to be explained, so that you do not think you are wishing God well, that he may reign. But from this point to the end of the Prayer it is clear that we are asking God for ourselves. When you say, “Give us this day our daily bread,” you profess yourself God’s beggar. But do not be ashamed: however rich anyone is on earth, he is God’s beggar. The beggar stands before the rich man’s house; but the rich man himself stands before the house of the great Rich One. He is asked, and he asks. If he were not in need, he would not knock at God’s ears in prayer. And what does the rich man need? I dare to say: the rich man needs daily bread itself. For why does he have abundance of everything? From where, except that God gave it? What will he have if God withdraws his hand? Have not many gone to sleep rich and woken up poor? And that he does not lack is due to God’s mercy, not to his own power.

But this bread, dearly beloved, by which the belly is filled and the flesh refreshed day by day: you see that God gives this bread not only to those who praise him but also to those who blaspheme, he “who makes his sun rise on the good and the bad, and rains on the just and the unjust.” You praise him, he feeds you; you blaspheme, he feeds you. He waits for you to repent; but if you do not change, he condemns you. Since, then, both the good and the bad receive this bread from God, do you think there is no bread that the children ask for, of which the Lord said in the Gospel, “It is not good to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs”? Certainly there is. What is this bread? And why is it called daily? This too is necessary; for without it we cannot live, just as we cannot live without bread. It is shameless to ask God for riches; it is not shameless to ask for daily bread. What you might be proud of is one thing; what you live on is another. Still, because this visible and tangible bread is given to the good and the bad, there is a daily bread that the children ask for. It is the word of God, which is dealt out to us daily. It is our daily bread: by it not bellies but minds live. It is necessary to us even now as laborers in the vineyard; it is food, not wages. For the one who hires a laborer for the vineyard owes him two things: food, so that he does not faint, and wages, in which he may rejoice. Our daily food in this land is the word of God, which is always being dealt out to the churches; our wages after the labor are called eternal life. Again, if by this daily bread of ours you understand what the faithful receive, what you will receive when you have been baptized, we rightly ask and say, “Give us this day our daily bread,” so that we may live in such a way as not to be separated from that altar.

“And forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors.” This petition needs no explanation that we are asking for ourselves. For we are asking that our debts be forgiven us. For we are debtors, not of money but of sins. Perhaps you say now: “And you too?” We answer: “We too.” “You too, holy bishops, are you debtors?” We too are debtors. “You too? Far be it, my lord; do not wrong yourself.” I do not wrong myself; I speak the truth: we are debtors. “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” We have been baptized, and we are debtors. Not because anything remained that was not forgiven us in baptism, but because in living we contract what must be forgiven daily. Those who are baptized and depart this life go up without debt, go on without debt. But those who are baptized and are kept in this life contract something from mortal frailty, so that, even if there is no shipwreck, the bilge still has to be pumped. For if we do not pump it, little by little there seeps in enough to sink the whole ship. And to pray this is to pump the bilge. But we ought not only to pray but also to give alms; for when the bilge is pumped so that the ship does not sink, the work is done with voices and with hands. We work with our voices when we say, “Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors.” We work with our hands when we do this: “Break your bread for the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house.” “Shut up alms in the heart of the poor, and it will pray for you to the Lord.”

So, though all our sins have been forgiven through the bath of regeneration, we would be driven into great straits if the daily cleansing of the holy Prayer were not given us. Alms and prayers cleanse sins; only let such sins not be committed for which we must be separated from the daily bread: let us avoid the debts to which a certain and severe condemnation is due. Do not call yourselves righteous, as if you had no reason to say, “Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors.” You may abstain from idolatry, from the star-readings of astrologers, from the remedies of enchanters; abstain from the deceptions of heretics, from the divisions of schismatics; abstain from murders, from adulteries and fornications, from thefts and robberies, from false testimonies; and from any others, if there are any, which I do not name, that have deadly outcomes, for which one must be cut off from the altar and bound on earth so as to be bound in heaven, very dangerously and to the point of death, unless he is loosed on earth so as to be loosed in heaven: even with these excepted, there is no lack of ways in which a man may sin. He sins by looking with pleasure at what he ought not. And who can hold back the swiftness of the eye? Indeed, the eye (oculus) is said to have got its name from swiftness. Who can hold back the ear or the eye? The eyes can be shut when you wish, and are shut quickly; the ears you shut with effort: you raise your hand and reach them; and if someone holds your hands, they stay open, and you cannot shut them against words that are abusive, impure, flattering, and deceiving. When you hear something you ought not to hear, even if you do not do it, do you not sin with the ear? You hear something bad with pleasure. How many sins does the deadly tongue commit! Sometimes such that a man is separated from the altar for them. To it belongs the whole matter of blasphemies; and many empty things too are said that are beside the point. Let the hand do nothing evil; let the foot not run to anything evil; let the eye not be turned to lewdness; let the ear not lie open with pleasure to filth; let the tongue not move to what is unfitting: tell me, who holds back the thoughts? My brothers, we often pray and think of something else, as if we had forgotten before whom we stand or before whom we lie prostrate. If all these are gathered against us, do they not crush us because they are small? What difference does it make whether lead crushes you or sand? Lead is one mass, sand is tiny grains, but in their quantity they crush you. Sins are small: do you not see rivers filled and lands swept away by tiny drops? They are small, but they are many.

So let us say every day, and say with a true heart, and do what we say: “Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors.” We make a pledge with God, a pact and an agreement. The Lord your God says this to you: “Forgive, and I forgive. You have not forgiven: you hold your sins against yourself, not I.” Truly, my dearest children, since I know what is good for you in the Lord’s Prayer, and above all in this sentence of the whole Prayer, “Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors,” listen to me. You are about to be baptized: forgive everything. Whatever anyone has in his heart against anyone, let him forgive it from the heart. Enter in this way, and be certain that absolutely everything you have contracted is forgiven you, both what you contracted by being born of your parents according to Adam, with original sin (because of which sin you run with the little ones to the grace of the Savior), and whatever you have added in living, by words, deeds, and thoughts: all are forgiven. And you will come out from there as if from the presence of your Lord, secure from all debts.

Now, because of those daily sins of which I spoke, since you must say, as a kind of daily cleansing, “Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors,” what will you do? You have enemies. For who lives on this earth without an enemy? Take heed to yourselves: love them. In no way can a raging enemy harm you as much as you harm yourself if you do not love your enemy. For he can harm your farm, or your flock, or your house, or your manservant, or your maidservant, or your son, or your wife; or at most, if he is given the power, your flesh. Can he harm your soul, as you can? Stretch yourselves toward this perfection, dearly beloved, I urge you. But was it I who gave you this? He gave it to you to whom you say, “Your will be done, as in heaven, so on earth.” Yet let it not seem impossible to you: I know, I have known, I have proved that there are Christian people who love their enemies. If it seems impossible to you, you will not do it. First believe that it can be done, and pray that God’s will may be done in you. For what good does your enemy’s evil do you? If he had no evil, he would not even be your enemy. Wish him good: let him end his evils, and he will not be your enemy. For it is not human nature in him that is your enemy, but his fault. Is he your enemy because he has a soul and a body? This is what you are: you have a soul, he has a soul; you have a body, he has a body. He is of one substance with you; you were made from the same earth, you were given life by the same Lord. This is what he is, what you are: look on your brother. Our first two parents were Adam and Eve, he father, she mother: so we are brothers. Let us leave aside our first origin: God is our Father, the Church our Mother: so we are brothers. “But my enemy is a pagan, a Jew, a heretic.” That is why I said a while ago: “Your will be done, as in heaven, so on earth.” O Church, your enemy is the pagan, the Jew, the heretic: he is earth. If you are heaven, call on the Father who is in heaven, and pray for your enemies; for Saul too was an enemy of the Church; prayer was made for him in this way, and he became a friend. He not only ceased to be a persecutor but labored to be a helper. And to tell the truth, prayer was made against him, but against his malice, not his nature. You too pray against your enemy’s malice: may it die, and may he live. For if your enemy has died, you seem to be rid of an enemy, but you have not found a friend. But if his malice has died, you have both lost an enemy and found a friend.

You still say: “Who can do it? Who has done it?” May God do it in your hearts. I know too: few do it; those who do it are great, the spiritual do it. Are all the faithful in the Church who come to the altar and receive the body and blood of Christ like that? Are they all like that? And yet they all say, “Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors.” What if God answered them: “Why do you ask me to do what I promised, when you do not do what I commanded? What did I promise? To forgive your debts. What did I command? That you too forgive your debtors.” How can you do this if you do not love your enemies? What, then, shall we do, brothers? Is the flock of Christ reduced to such a small number? If only those who love their enemies ought to say, “Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors,” I do not know what to do, I do not know what to say. Am I to say to you: “If you do not love your enemies, do not pray”? I do not dare; rather, pray so that you may love them. But am I to say to you: “If you do not love your enemies, do not say in the Lord’s Prayer, Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors”? Suppose I say, “Do not say it.” If you do not say it, they are not forgiven; if you say it and do not do it, they are not forgiven. So it must be both said and done, so that they may be forgiven.

I see something by which I can console, not a few Christians, but the multitude; and I know that you want to hear it. “Forgive, so that you may be forgiven,” Christ said. And what do you say in the Prayer, which we are now discussing? “Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors.” “So forgive, Lord, as we forgive.” This is what you say: “So forgive our debts, Father who are in heaven, as we also forgive our debtors.” For this you must do; and if you do not do it, you will perish. When an enemy asks pardon, forgive at once. And is this too much for you? It was much for you to love an enemy who was raging; is it much for you to love a man who is pleading? What do you say? “He was raging, and I hated him.” I would rather you had not hated even then; I would rather that, while you suffered his raging, you had remembered the Lord saying, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do.” This, then, I would greatly have wished: that even at that time, when your enemy was raging against you, you had looked to the Lord your God saying this. But perhaps you will say: “He did it, but as Lord, because he is Christ, because he is the Son of God, because he is the Only-begotten, because he is the Word made flesh. What can I do, a bad and weak man?” If your Lord is too much for you, think of your fellow servant. Saint Stephen was being stoned; and among the stones he knelt and prayed for his enemies, and said, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” They were throwing stones, not asking pardon; and he prayed for them. I want you to be like that: stretch yourself. Why do you always drag your heart along the ground? Hear: “Lift up your heart”; stretch out, love your enemies. If you cannot love the one who rages, love at least the one who asks. Love the man who says to you, “Brother, I have sinned, forgive me.” Then, if you do not forgive, I do not say that you blot this prayer out of your heart, but you will be blotted out of God’s book.

But if then at least you forgive, if then at least you let go of hatred from your heart (it is hatred, I say, that you are to let go from the heart, not discipline)... “What if the one who asks pardon ought to be punished by me?” Do as you will; for I suppose you love your son even when you beat him. You do not mind the tears of the one being beaten, because you are keeping an inheritance for him. This I say: that you let go of hatred from the heart when an enemy asks pardon of you. But perhaps you say: “He is lying, he is pretending.” O judge of another’s heart, tell me your father’s thoughts; tell me your own thoughts of yesterday. He asks, he begs pardon: forgive, forgive completely. If you do not forgive, you harm not him but yourself. For he knows what he will do. You, a fellow servant, will not forgive your fellow servant: he will go to your common Lord and say to him, “Lord, I asked my fellow servant to forgive me, and he would not forgive; you forgive me.” Is the Lord not permitted to release his servant’s debts? He, having received pardon from the Lord, goes away released; you remain bound. How bound? The time of prayer will come; it will come that you say, “Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors,” and the Lord will answer you: “Wicked servant, when you owed me so much, you asked me, and I forgave you; should you not also have had pity on your fellow servant, as I had pity on you?” These words are from the Gospel, not from my heart. But if, when asked, you grant pardon to one who begs it, you can now say this prayer. And even if you are not yet able to love one who rages, still you can say this prayer: “Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors.” Let us pass on to the rest.

“And lead us not into temptation.” “Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors,” we say because of past sins, which we cannot make not to have been done. You can act so as not to do what you have done; how will you act so that what you have done was not done? For the things that have already been done, this sentence of the Prayer comes to your help: “Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors.” For the things into which you may fall, what will you do? “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil,” that is, from temptation itself.

And those three petitions, “Hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, as in heaven, so on earth”: these three petitions are for eternal life. For God’s name ought always to be hallowed in us; we ought always to be in his kingdom; we ought always to do his will. This will be for eternity. Daily bread is necessary now. From this article on, the rest of what we pray for concerns the needs of the present life. Daily bread is necessary in this life; that our debts be forgiven is necessary in this life. For when we come to that life, we are done with debts. In this land there is temptation; in this land the sailing is dangerous; in this land something slips in through the cracks of our frailties that has to be pumped out. But when we have been made equal to the angels of God, far be it that we should say, far be it that we should ask God to forgive our debts, for there will be none. Here, then, is the daily bread; here, that debts be forgiven; here, that we not enter into temptation, for in that life temptation does not enter; here, that we be delivered from evil, for in that life there will be no evil, but everlasting good will remain.

The order of your upbuilding is that you learn first what to believe and afterwards what to ask. For so the Apostle says: “It will be that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” Blessed Paul set down this testimony from the prophet, because these times were foretold through the prophet, when all were to call on God: “Whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” And he added: “But how will they call on him in whom they have not believed? Or how will they believe him whom they have not heard? And how will they hear without someone preaching? Or how will they preach unless they are sent?” So preachers were sent; they preached Christ. As they preached, the peoples heard; by hearing they believed; by believing they called on him. Since, then, it was most rightly and most truly said, “How will they call on him in whom they have not believed?”, you first learned what to believe; today you have learned to call on him in whom you have believed.

The Son of God, our Lord Jesus Christ, taught us a prayer; and though he is himself the Lord, as you have received in the Creed and recited back, the only Son of God, yet he did not want to be alone. He is the only Son, and he did not want to be alone: he deigned to have brothers. For to whom does he say, “Say: Our Father, who are in heaven”? Whom did he want us to call our Father, if not his own Father? Did he begrudge us this? Parents sometimes, when they have begotten one son, two, three, are afraid to beget more, lest they make the others beggars. But because the inheritance he promises us is such that many may obtain it and no one be cramped, he has called the peoples of the nations into his brotherhood; and the Only Son has countless brothers who say, “Our Father, who are in heaven.” Those who were before us said this; those who will be after us will say it. See how many brothers the Only Son has in his grace, sharing the inheritance with those for whom he endured death. We had a father and mother on earth, so that we were born to toil and death; we have found other parents, God our Father and the Church our Mother, by whom we are born to eternal life. Let us consider, dearly beloved, whose children we have begun to be, and let us live as befits those who have such a Father. See: our Creator has deigned to be our Father.

We have heard whom we ought to call on, and with what hope of an eternal inheritance we have begun to have a Father in heaven; let us hear what we should ask of him. What are we to ask of such a Father? Have we not been asking him for rain today and yesterday and the day before? It is nothing great that we have asked of such a Father; and yet you see with what groaning, with what longing we ask for rain, when death is feared, and what is feared is what no one can escape. For every man will die, sooner or later; and we groan, we beg, we are in labor, we cry to God, so that we may die a little later. How much more ought we to cry to him that we may come where we shall never die!

That is why it was said, “Hallowed be your name.” This too we ask of him, that his name be hallowed in us; for it is always holy. And how is his name hallowed in us, except when it makes us holy? For we were not holy, and through his name we are made holy; but he is always holy, and his name always holy. We pray for ourselves, not for God. For we do not wish good for God, to whom no evil can ever happen. But we wish good for ourselves, that his holy name may be hallowed: that what is always holy may be hallowed in us.

“Your kingdom come.” Whether we ask or not, it is going to come. God indeed has an everlasting kingdom. For when did he not reign? When did he begin to reign? For his kingdom has no beginning, nor will it have an end. But so that you may know that this too we pray for ourselves, not for God (for we do not say “Your kingdom come” as if wishing that God may reign): we shall be his kingdom, if, believing in him, we make progress in him. All the faithful, redeemed by the blood of his Only Son, will be his kingdom. And that kingdom will come when the resurrection of the dead has taken place; for then he himself will come. And when the dead have risen, he will divide them, as he himself says, and will set some on the right and others on the left. He will say to those who are on the right: “Come, blessed of my Father, receive the kingdom.” This is what we wish and ask when we say, “Your kingdom come”: that it may come to us. For if we are rejected, that kingdom will come to others, not to us. But if we are in the number of those who belong to the members of his only-begotten Son, his kingdom will come to us, and it will not delay. For do as many ages remain as have passed? The apostle John said, “Little children, it is the last hour.” But for that great day the hour is long; and see how many years that last hour lasts. Still, let it be for you as for one who keeps watch, sleeps, rises, and reigns. Let us keep watch now; we shall sleep in death; at the end we shall rise; we shall reign without end.

“Your will be done, as in heaven, so on earth.” Third, we ask, “Your will be done, as in heaven, so on earth.” And this too we wish as a good for ourselves. For God’s will must be done. It is God’s will that the good reign and the wicked be condemned. Can that will not be done? But what good do we wish for ourselves when we say, “Your will be done, as in heaven, so on earth”? Listen. This petition can be understood in many ways, and many things are to be thought of in this petition when we ask God, “Your will be done, as in heaven, so on earth.” As your angels do not offend you, so may we not offend you. Again, how is “Your will be done, as in heaven, so on earth” understood? All the holy patriarchs, all the prophets, all the apostles, all the spiritual are, as it were, heaven to God; while we, compared with them, are earth. “Your will be done, as in heaven, so on earth”: as in them, so also in us. Again: “Your will be done, as in heaven, so on earth.” The Church of God is heaven; its enemies are earth. We wish our enemies well, that they too may believe and become Christians: and so God’s will is done, as in heaven, so on earth. Again: “Your will be done, as in heaven, so on earth.” Our spirit is heaven, the flesh earth: as our spirit is renewed by believing, so may the flesh be renewed by rising again; and God’s will be done, as in heaven, so on earth. Again, our mind, by which we see the truth and delight in that truth, is heaven. See the heaven: “I delight in the law of God according to the inner man.” What is the earth? “I see another law in my members, fighting against the law of my mind.” When this fight has passed, and full concord of flesh and spirit has been made, God’s will will be done, as in heaven, so on earth. When we say this petition, let us think of all these things and ask all these of the Father. And all these, dearly beloved, the three we have spoken of, these three petitions, belong to eternal life. For that the name of our God is hallowed in us will be eternal. That his kingdom comes, where we shall live for ever, will be eternal. That his will is done, as in heaven, so on earth, in all the ways I have explained, will be eternal. There remain the petitions for this life of our pilgrimage; so there follows: “Give us this day our daily bread.” Give eternal things, give temporal things. You have promised a kingdom; do not deny us support. You will give everlasting glory with you; give on earth temporal nourishment. That is why it is “daily,” why “this day,” that is, in this time. When this life has passed, shall we ask for daily bread? For then it will not be called “daily,” but “today.” Now it is called daily, when a day passes and another day comes. Will it be called daily when there is one eternal day? This petition about daily bread is surely to be understood in two ways: either for the need of bodily food or also for the need of spiritual nourishment. There is the need of bodily food, for daily sustenance, without which we cannot live. Sustenance includes clothing as well; but the whole is understood from a part. When we ask for bread, we take in everything there. The faithful also know a spiritual nourishment, which you too will come to know, when you receive it from the altar of God. This too will be daily bread, necessary for this life. For shall we receive the eucharist when we have come to Christ himself and have begun to reign with him for ever? So the eucharist is our daily bread; but let us receive it in such a way that we are refreshed not only in the belly but also in the mind. For the power that is understood there is unity, so that, gathered into his body, made his members, we may be what we receive. Then it will truly be our daily bread. And what I am expounding to you is daily bread; and the readings you hear daily in church are daily bread; and the hymns you hear and sing are daily bread. For these are necessary for our pilgrimage. When we arrive there, shall we hear a book read? We shall see the Word himself, hear the Word himself, eat him, drink him, as the angels do now. Do the angels need books, or expounders, or readers? Far from it. They read by seeing: for they see the Truth itself, and are filled from that fountain from which we are sprinkled. So much, then, about daily bread; for in this life this petition is necessary to us.

“Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors.” Is this necessary except here? For there we shall have no debts. For what are debts but sins? See, you are going to be baptized; all your sins will be blotted out there; none at all will remain there. Whatever evil you have ever done, committed, said, desired, thought, all of it will be blotted out. And yet, if there were security in the life after baptism, we would not learn such a prayer, in which we say, “Forgive us our debts.” But by all means let us do what follows: “as we also forgive our debtors.” Above all, then, you who are about to enter to receive full pardon of your debts, see that you hold nothing in your hearts against another, so that you may come out from there secure, free as it were and released from all debts; and do not begin to want to avenge yourselves on your enemies who did you wrong before. Forgive, as you are forgiven. God did no one wrong, and yet he forgives, who owes nothing. How ought one who is forgiven to forgive, when he forgives everything who owes nothing that could be forgiven him?

“Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” Will this too be necessary in that life? “Lead us not into temptation” is not said except where there can be temptation. In the book of holy Job we read, “Is not the life of man on earth a temptation?” What, then, do we ask? Hear what. The apostle James says, “Let no one, when he is tempted, say that he is tempted by God.” He meant that evil temptation by which a person is deceived and brought under the yoke of the devil; that is the temptation he meant. For there is another temptation, which is called testing; of that temptation it is written, “The Lord your God tests you, to know whether you love him.” What does “to know” mean? To make you know; for he himself knows. In that temptation by which a person is deceived and led astray, God tempts no one; but plainly, by his deep and hidden judgment, he abandons some. When he abandons someone, the tempter finds what to do. For he does not find a wrestler against him, but at once presents himself to him as owner, if God abandons him. So that he may not abandon us, then, we say, “Lead us not into temptation.” “For each one is tempted,” says the same apostle James, “drawn away and enticed by his own concupiscence; then concupiscence, when it has conceived, gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is completed, brings forth death.” What has he taught us? To fight against our concupiscences. For in holy baptism you are going to lay down your sins; the concupiscences will remain, and with them you must fight after you have been reborn. The conflict within yourselves remains. Let no enemy from outside be feared: conquer yourself, and the world is conquered. What will a tempter from outside do to you, whether the devil or a servant of the devil? Whoever holds out gain to seduce you, let him not find avarice in you: what does the one who holds out gain achieve? But if avarice is found in you, at the sight of gain you catch fire; you are caught in the snare of corrupt bait. But if he does not find avarice in you, the trap remains set in vain. The tempter sets before you a very beautiful woman: let chastity be present within, and the wickedness outside is defeated. So that he may not catch you with the beauty of another man’s wife set before you, fight within against your own lust. You do not feel the enemy, but you feel your concupiscence. You do not see the devil, but you see what delights you. Conquer within what you feel. Fight, fight; for he who has reborn you is the judge: he has set the contest; he is preparing the crown. But because you will without doubt be conquered if you do not have him as helper, if he abandons you, therefore you put it in the Prayer: “Lead us not into temptation.” The wrath of the judge has handed some over to their concupiscences; and the Apostle says it: “God handed them over to the concupiscence of their heart.” How did he hand them over? Not by forcing, but by abandoning.

“Deliver us from evil” can belong to that same sentence. It is so in order that you may understand it as one sentence: “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” That is why he added “but”: to show that all this belongs to one sentence, “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” How? I will set out each part: “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” By delivering us from evil, he does not lead us into temptation; by not leading us into temptation, he delivers us from evil.

Truly it is a great temptation, dearly beloved, a great temptation in this life, when that part of us is tempted by which we earn pardon if, being tempted somewhere, we have fallen. It is a dreadful temptation when that is taken from us by which we could be healed of the wounds of other temptations. I know you have not yet understood; attend in mind, so that you may understand. Suppose avarice tempts, and someone is defeated (for sometimes even a good wrestler and good fighter is wounded) in some single temptation: avarice has defeated a man, even a good wrestler, and he has done some avaricious thing. Lust has passed by; it has not led to fornication, it has not reached adultery. (For when that happens, the man must certainly be kept back from adultery.) But he looked at a woman to desire her; he dwelt on something with more pleasure than he ought; he took the blow; even the best fighter was struck; but he did not consent; he beat back the lewd impulse, punished it with the bitterness of grief, beat it back and conquered. Yet by the very fact that he had slipped, he has reason to say, “Forgive us our debts.” So with all other temptations: it is hard for there not to be reason for us to say, “Forgive us our debts.” What, then, is that dreadful temptation I mentioned, troublesome, fearful, to be avoided with all one’s strength, all one’s might? What is it? When we are urged to avenge ourselves. Anger is roused, and a man grinds his teeth to be avenged: a dreadful temptation. For you lose the very thing by which you were to receive pardon for other offenses. If you had sinned in other senses, in other desires, there was healing from this, that you would say, “Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors.” Whoever urges you to take revenge will make you lose what you were going to say: “as we also forgive our debtors.” When that is lost, all will be held against you: nothing at all is forgiven.

Knowing this dangerous temptation in this life, the Lord, our Master and Savior, when he taught us six or seven petitions in this Prayer, took up none of them to discuss and to commend to us more strongly, except this one. Did we not say, “Our Father, who are in heaven,” and the rest that follows? Why, after finishing the Prayer, did he not discuss any of it with us, either what he put at the head, or what he concluded with at the end, or what he placed in the middle? For why did he not say: if the name of God is not hallowed in you, or if you do not belong to the kingdom of God, or if the will of God is not done in you as in heaven, or if God does not guard you from entering into temptation? Why none of these? But what? “Truly I say to you, that if you forgive men their sins,” because of that petition: “Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors.” Passing over all the petitions he taught us, he taught that one above all. There was no great need to commend those in which, if a man sins, he knows how to be healed; there was need to commend the one in which, if you sin, there is no way for the rest to be healed. For you must say this: “Forgive us our debts.” What debts? There is no lack: we are sons of man. I spoke a little more than I ought, I said something I ought not, I laughed more than I ought, I drank more than I ought, I ate more than I ought, I listened with pleasure to what I ought not, I looked with pleasure at what I ought not, I thought with pleasure about what I ought not: “Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors.” If you have lost this, you are lost.

See, my brothers; see, my sons; see, sons of God; see what I am telling you. Fight with your heart as much as you can. And if you see your anger standing against you, ask God against it: may God make you victor over yourself; may God make you victor, not over an enemy outside you, but over your own spirit within. For he will be present, and will do it. He wants us to ask this of him more than rain. For you see, dearly beloved, how many petitions the Lord Christ taught us, and there is scarcely one found there that speaks of daily bread, so that we may think all we think for the sake of the life to come. For why should we fear that he will not provide for us who promised and said: “Seek first the kingdom and the justice of God, and all these things will be added to you. For your Father knows that you need these things before you ask him. Seek first the kingdom and the justice of God, and all these things will be added to you”? For many have even been tested by hunger and found to be gold, and have not been abandoned by God. They would have perished of hunger if the inner daily bread had abandoned their heart. Let us hunger for that above all. For “blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice, for they will be filled.” He can, moreover, look mercifully on our weakness and see us, as it is said: “Remember that we are dust.” He who made man from dust and gave him life gave his Only Son to death for this thing he had formed. How much he loves us, who can explain, who can even think worthily?

You have recited the Creed, in which the faith is contained, briefly summed up. I have already told you before what the apostle Paul says: “How will they call on him in whom they have not believed?” Since, then, you have received, held fast, and recited how one believes in God, receive today how God is called upon. The Son himself, as you heard when the Gospel was read, taught this Prayer to his disciples and his faithful. We have hope of winning our case, since such a lawyer has dictated our petition to us. He is the Assessor of the Father, as you have confessed, who sits at the right hand of the Father; he is our advocate who is to be our judge. For from there he will come to judge the living and the dead. So hold fast this Prayer too, which you are to recite back in eight days. Any of you who did not recite the Creed well have time: let them hold it fast; for on the Sabbath day you will recite it in the hearing of all who will be present, on the last Sabbath, the day on which you are to be baptized. And eight days from today you will recite this Prayer, which you have received today.

Its beginning is: “Our Father, who are in heaven.” We have found a Father in heaven; let us take heed how we live on earth. For one who has found such a Father ought to live so as to be worthy to come to his inheritance. And we say in common, “Our Father.” What condescension! The emperor says this, the beggar says this; the slave says this, and his master says it. Together they say, “Our Father, who are in heaven.” So they understand that they are brothers, since they have one Father. And let the master not disdain to have as a brother his slave, whom the Lord Christ willed to have as a brother.

“Hallowed be your name,” we say; “Your kingdom come.” The hallowing of God’s name is that by which we are made holy. For his name is always holy. We also wish his kingdom to come; it will come even if we do not want it. But to wish and pray that his kingdom come is nothing other than to wish from him that he make us worthy of his kingdom, lest perhaps, God forbid, it come and not come to us. For to many it will not come, though it will certainly come. For it will come to those to whom it will be said, “Come, blessed of my Father, receive the kingdom prepared for you from the origin of the world.” It will not come to those to whom it will be said, “Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire.” So when we say, “Your kingdom come,” we pray that it may come to us. What does “may come to us” mean? May find us good. So we pray this: that he make us good; for then his kingdom will come to us.

We add: “Your will be done, as in heaven, so on earth.” The angels serve you in heaven; may we serve you on earth. The angels do not offend you in heaven; may we not offend you on earth. As they do your will, so may we too. And here what do we pray for, but that we may be good? For when we do God’s will (for he without doubt does his own), then his will is done in us. And we also rightly understand “Your will be done, as in heaven, so on earth” in another way. We receive God’s commandment, and it pleases us, it pleases our mind. “For we delight in the law of God according to the inner man.” Then his will is done in heaven. For our spirit is likened to heaven, our flesh to earth. What, then, is “Your will be done, as in heaven, so on earth”? That as your command pleases our mind, so our flesh may consent to it; and that the quarrel described by the Apostle may be taken out of the way: “For the flesh lusts against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh.” When the spirit lusts against the flesh, his will is already done in heaven; when the flesh does not lust against the spirit, his will is already done on earth. There will be full concord when he wills; let there be the fight now, so that there can be the victory. It can also rightly be understood so: “Your will be done, as in heaven, so on earth,” taking heaven as the Church, because it carries God, and earth as unbelievers, to whom it was said, “Earth you are, and to earth you will go.” So when we pray for our enemies, the enemies of the Church, the enemies of the Christian name, we pray this: that his will be done, as in heaven, so on earth; that is, as in your faithful, so also in your blasphemers, so that all may become heaven.

There follows: “Give us this day our daily bread.” It can be taken simply that we pour out this prayer for daily sustenance, that it may abound for us, and if it does not abound, that it may not be lacking. And he said “daily” for as long as it is called “today.” Daily we live, daily we rise, daily we are filled, daily we hunger. May he give us daily bread. Why did he not also say clothing? For our sustenance is in food and drink, our covering in clothing and roof. Let a man desire nothing more. Indeed, the Apostle says: “We brought nothing into this world, and we cannot take anything away; having food and covering, let us be content with these.” Let avarice perish, and nature is rich. So if what we say, “Give us this day our daily bread,” refers to daily sustenance (for this too is rightly understood), let us not be surprised if, with bread named, the other necessities too are understood; as when Joseph invited his brothers: “These men,” he said, “will eat bread with me today.” Were they going to eat bread alone? But by bread alone the rest was understood. So when we ask for daily bread, we ask for whatever we need on earth for the sake of our flesh. But what does the Lord Jesus say? “Seek first the kingdom of God and his justice, and all these things will be added to you.” This too is very rightly understood by “Give us this day our daily bread”: your eucharist, our daily food. For the faithful know what they receive, and it is good for them to receive the daily bread necessary for this time. They pray for themselves, that they may become good, that they may persevere in goodness and faith and good life. This they wish, this they pray for; for if they do not persevere in good life, they will be separated from that bread. So what is “Give us this day our daily bread”? Let us so live that we are not separated from your altar. And the word of God, which is opened to you daily and in a way broken, is daily bread. And as bellies hunger for that bread, so minds hunger for this. So we ask simply for this too, and whatever is necessary in this life for our soul and our flesh is included in daily bread.

“Forgive us our debts,” we say; and let us say it, for we say the truth. For who lives here in the flesh and has no debts? What man lives in such a way that this Prayer is not necessary for him? He can puff himself up; he cannot justify himself. It is good for him to imitate the tax collector, and not to swell like the Pharisee, who went up to the temple and boasted of his merits and covered his wounds. But he knew why he had gone up who said, “Lord, be merciful to me a sinner.” This the Lord Jesus (consider, my brothers), this the Lord Jesus taught his disciples to pray, those great first apostles of his, our rams. If, then, the rams pray for their sins to be forgiven, what should the lambs do, of whom it is said, “Bring to the Lord the young of rams”? So you know that you recited this in the Creed, because among other things you named “the forgiveness of sins.” There is one forgiveness of sins that is given once; another that is given daily. There is one forgiveness of sins that is given once, in holy baptism; another that is given, as long as we live here, in the Lord’s Prayer. That is why we say, “Forgive us our debts.”

And God has entered with us into a pact and agreement and a firm bond, that we say, “as we also forgive our debtors.” Whoever wants to say effectively, “Forgive us our debts,” let him say truly, “as we also forgive our debtors.” If he either does not say the latter part or says it falsely, he says the first part in vain. Above all we say to you who are approaching holy baptism: forgive everything from your hearts. And you, the faithful, who on this occasion hear this Prayer and our exposition, forgive from your hearts whatever you have against anyone: forgive there, where God sees. For sometimes a man forgives with the mouth and holds it in the heart: he forgives with the mouth for people’s sake, and holds it in the heart, not fearing the eyes of God. Forgive completely; whatever you have held up to these days, at least in these days let it go. The sun ought not to have gone down on your anger, and many suns have passed. Let your anger too pass at last; we are now celebrating the days of the great Sun, that Sun of whom Scripture says, “For you the Sun of justice will rise, and healing in his wings.” What does “in his wings” mean? In his protection. Hence in the psalm it is said, “Protect me under the shadow of your wings.” But others, who on the day of judgment will repent too late and grieve to no purpose, have been foretold by Wisdom: what will they say then, repenting and groaning in anguish of spirit? “What did pride profit us? And what has the boasting of riches brought us? All those things have passed away like a shadow.” And among other things: “So we strayed from the way of truth, and the light of justice did not shine for us, and the sun did not rise for us.” That Sun rises for the just; but this visible sun God makes rise daily on the good and the bad. To see that Sun belongs to the just; now that Sun dwells in our hearts through faith. So if you are angry, let not that Sun set in your heart upon your anger: “Let not the sun go down on your anger”; lest perhaps you are angry, and the Sun of justice sets on you, and you remain in darkness.

Do not think that anger is nothing. “My eye is troubled because of anger,” says the prophet. Surely one whose eye is troubled cannot see the sun; and if he tries to see, it is pain to him, not pleasure. What is anger? The lust for revenge. A man lusts to be avenged; and Christ is not yet avenged, the holy martyrs are not yet avenged! God’s patience still waits for the enemies of Christ to be converted, for the enemies of the martyrs to be converted. Who are we, that we should seek revenge? If God sought it from us, where would we stand? He who has harmed us in nothing does not want to avenge himself on us; and we seek to be avenged, who offend God almost daily! So forgive: forgive from the heart. If you are angry, do not sin: “Be angry, and do not sin.” Be angry as men, if you are overcome; and do not sin by holding anger in your heart (for if you hold it, you hold it against yourselves), lest you not enter into that light. So forgive. What is anger? The lust for revenge. What is hatred? Anger grown old. If anger has grown old, it is now called hatred. This he seems to confess who, having said, “My eye is troubled because of anger,” added, “I have grown old among all my enemies.” What was anger when it was new became hatred, because it turned into oldness. Anger is a speck; hatred is a beam. Sometimes we rebuke one who is angry, and we hold hatred in our heart; and Christ says to us, “You see the speck in your brother’s eye, and you do not see the beam in your own eye.” How did the speck grow to make a beam? Because it was not pulled out at once. Because you let the sun go out and come in so many times on your anger, you made it old; you drew in evil suspicions, and watered the speck, by watering nourished it, by nourishing made it a beam. Tremble at least when it is said, “Whoever hates his brother is a murderer.” You did not draw a sword, you did not make a wound in the flesh, you did not kill a body by any blow: there is only the thought of hatred in your heart, and you are held a murderer; you are guilty before the eyes of God. He is alive, and you have killed. As far as you are concerned, you have killed the one you hate. Amend yourself; correct yourself. If there were scorpions or asps in your houses, how you would labor to clean your houses so that you could live there safely! You are angry, and angers grow old in your hearts; they become so many hatreds, so many beams, so many scorpions, so many serpents; and will you not clean God’s house, your heart? So do what is said, “as we also forgive our debtors,” so that you may say securely, “Forgive us our debts.” For you cannot live in this land without debts. But those great crimes that it is good for you to have forgiven in baptism, and from which you must always remain far away, are one thing; the daily sins without which man cannot live here are another, and because of them the daily prayer is necessary, with its pact and its agreement: so that as gladly as we say, “Forgive us our debts,” so truly we may say, “as we also forgive our debtors.” So we have said these things about past sins; what about the rest?

“Lead us not into temptation”: forgive what we have done, and grant that we may not commit other sins. For whoever is overcome by temptation commits sin. For, says the apostle James, “Let no one, when he is tempted, say that he is tempted by God. For God is not a tempter to evil; he tempts no one. But each one is tempted, drawn away and enticed by his own concupiscence. Then concupiscence, when it has conceived, gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is completed, brings forth death.” So that you may not be drawn away by concupiscence, do not consent to concupiscence then. It has no way to conceive except from you. You consented: as it were, you lay with it in your heart. Concupiscence has risen up: deny yourself to it; do not follow it. It is unlawful, it is lewd, it is shameful, it estranges you from God. Do not give it the embrace of consent, lest you bewail the offspring; for if you consent, that is, when you have embraced it, it conceives. “When concupiscence has conceived, it gives birth to sin.” Do you not yet fear? “Sin brings forth death”: at least fear death. If you do not fear sin, fear where sin leads. Sin is sweet, but death is bitter. This is the unhappiness of men: what they sin for, they leave behind here when they die, and they carry the sins themselves with them. You sin for money: it must be left here. You sin for a farm: it must be left here. You sin for a woman: she must be left here. And whatever it is for which you sin, when you close your eyes in death you leave it here, and the sin itself that you commit you carry with you.

Let sins be forgiven: let the past be forgiven, let future ones cease. But you cannot live here without them: let them be lesser, or tiny, or light. But let not even these light and tiny ones be despised. Rivers are filled from tiny drops. Let not even the lesser ones be despised. Through narrow little cracks water seeps into a ship, the bilge fills, and if the bilge is neglected, the ship sinks. But the sailors do not stop; their hands keep moving: they keep moving so that the bilge is emptied daily. So let your hands too keep moving, so that you pump the bilge daily. What does “let your hands keep moving” mean? Let them give, do good works: let your hands keep moving. “Break your bread for the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house”; if you see someone naked, clothe him. Do as much as you can, do it from what you can, do it cheerfully, and send up your prayer securely. It will have two wings, a twofold almsgiving. What is a twofold almsgiving? “Forgive, and you will be forgiven; give, and it will be given to you.” One almsgiving is that which comes from the heart, when you forgive your brother his sin. The other almsgiving is that which comes from your possessions, when you hand bread to the poor. Do both, so that your prayer does not remain without one wing. So when we have said, “Lead us not into temptation,” there follows, “But deliver us from evil.” Whoever wants to be delivered from evil testifies that he is in evil. That is why the Apostle says, “Redeeming the time, because the days are evil.” But who is the one who wants life and loves to see good days? When every man in this flesh has only evil days, who does not want it? Do what follows: “Keep your tongue from evil, and your lips from speaking deceit; turn away from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it”: and you are rid of evil days, and what you prayed is fulfilled, “Deliver us from evil.”

So the three earlier petitions, “Hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, as in heaven, so on earth,” are eternal. But the four that follow belong to this life. “Give us this day our daily bread”: shall we ask every day for daily bread when we have come to that fullness? “Forgive us our debts”: shall we say it in that kingdom, when we have no debts? “Lead us not into temptation”: shall we be able to say it then, when there will be no temptation? “Deliver us from evil”: shall we say it, when there will be nothing to be delivered from? So these four are necessary to us for our daily life, but those three for eternal life. But let us ask for all, so that we may come to that life; and here let us pray that we may not be separated from it. The Prayer is to be said by you daily, when you have been baptized. For in church, at the altar of God, this Lord’s Prayer is said daily, and the faithful hear it. So we are not afraid that you will hold it less carefully; for even if any of you cannot hold it perfectly, he will hold it by hearing it daily.

So on the Sabbath, when by God’s mercy we shall keep vigil, you will recite, not the Prayer, but the Creed. For unless you hold the Creed now, you do not hear the Creed daily in church among the people. But when you have learned it, say it daily so that you do not forget it: when you get up, when you lie down to sleep, recite your Creed; recite it to the Lord; remind yourselves; do not be weary of repeating it. For repetition is good, so that forgetfulness does not creep in. Do not say: “I said it yesterday, I said it today, I say it daily, I know it well.” Call your faith to mind, look into yourself: let your Creed be like a mirror to you. See yourself there, whether you believe all that you confess you believe, and rejoice daily in your faith. Let it be your riches; let it be in a way the daily clothing of your mind. Do you not dress when you get up? So too, by recalling your Creed, clothe your soul, lest perhaps forgetfulness strip it and you remain naked, and what the Apostle says (far be it from you) happen: “If indeed, having been stripped, we are not found naked.” For we shall be clothed with our faith; and that faith is both tunic and breastplate: a tunic against shame, a breastplate against adversity. But when we come to that place where we shall reign, there is no need to say the Creed: we shall see God; God himself will be our vision; the vision of God will be the reward of this faith.

You have recited what you believe; hear what you are to pray. Since you could not call on him in whom you had not believed, as the Apostle says, “How will they call on him in whom they have not believed?”, you first learned the Creed, where the rule of your faith is, short and great: short in the number of its words, great in the weight of its meaning. But the Prayer which you receive today, to hold fast and to recite back in eight days, was, as you heard when the Gospel was read, spoken by the Lord himself to his disciples, and from them it has come to us; for “their sound has gone out into all the earth.”

So do not cling to earthly things, you who have found a Father in heaven. For you are going to say, “Our Father, who are in heaven.” You have begun to belong to a great family. Under this Father, master and slave are brothers; under this Father, emperor and soldier are brothers; under this Father, rich and poor are brothers. All faithful Christians have different fathers on earth, some noble, some of low birth; but they call on one Father, who is in heaven. If our Father is there, the inheritance is being prepared for us there. And this Father is such that we possess with him what he gives. For he gives an inheritance, but he does not leave it to us by dying. For he does not depart; he remains, so that we may come to him. Since we have heard from whom we are to ask, let us know also what we are to ask, lest perhaps we offend such a Father by asking wrongly.

What, then, did the Lord Jesus Christ teach us to ask of the Father who is in heaven? “Hallowed be your name.” What kind of benefit is it that we ask of God, that his name be hallowed? God’s name is always holy: why, then, do we ask that it be hallowed, unless that we may be hallowed through it? So we pray that what is always holy may be hallowed in us. God’s name is hallowed in you when you are baptized. Why will you pray this when you have been baptized, unless that what you will receive may remain in you?

Another petition follows: “Your kingdom come.” Whether we ask or not, the kingdom of God will come. Why, then, do we ask, unless that what will come to all the saints may come to us too; that God may have us also in the number of his saints, to whom his kingdom will come?

In the third petition we say, “Your will be done, as in heaven, so on earth.” What is this? That as the angels serve you in heaven, we too may serve you on earth. For his holy angels obey him; they do not offend him; they carry out his commands by loving him. So we pray this: that we too may carry out God’s commandments with love. Again, these words are understood in another way: “Your will be done, as in heaven, so on earth.” Heaven in us is the soul; earth in us is the body. What, then, is “Your will be done, as in heaven, so on earth”? As we hear your commandments, so may our flesh agree with us; lest, while flesh and spirit contend, we be less able to fulfil God’s commandments.

There follows in the Prayer: “Give us this day our daily bread.” Whether we ask the Father for the support necessary for the body, signifying by bread whatever we need, or understand that daily bread which you are going to receive from the altar, we rightly ask that he give it to us. For what do we pray but that we may commit no evil for which we would be separated from such bread? And the word of God that is preached daily is bread. For it is not because it is not bread for the belly that it is not bread for the mind. But when this life has passed, we shall neither look for the bread that hunger looks for, nor shall we have to receive the sacrament of the altar, because we shall be there with Christ, whose body we receive; nor will these words that we speak to you need to be spoken to us, nor will a book need to be read, when we see him who is the Word of God, through whom all things were made, by whom the angels are fed, by whom the angels are enlightened, by whom the angels are made wise, not looking for the words of winding speech, but drinking the one Word, filled with which they belch forth praises and never fail in praising. For “blessed,” says the psalm, “are those who dwell in your house; for ever and ever they will praise you.” So in this life we ask what follows: “Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors.” In baptism all debts, that is, sins, are entirely forgiven us. But because no one can live here without sin, even if not with a great crime for which one would be separated from that bread, still no one can be without sins on this earth; and we can receive only one baptism, once. In the Prayer we receive the means of being washed daily, so that our sins may be forgiven daily; but only if we do what follows: “as we also forgive our debtors.” So, my brothers, I urge you, my sons in God’s grace and my brothers under that Father, I urge you: when someone offends and sins against you, and comes and confesses and asks your pardon, forgive him, and at once forgive from the heart, lest you shut out from yourselves the pardon that comes from God. For if you do not forgive, neither will he forgive you. So this too we ask in this life: because sins can be forgiven here, where they can be committed. But in that life they are not forgiven, because they are not committed.

Then we ask, saying, “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” This too is necessary for us to ask in this life: that we not be led into temptation, because here there are temptations; and that we be delivered from evil, because here there is evil. And so, of all these seven petitions, three belong to eternal life, four to the present life. “Hallowed be your name”: this will always be. “Your kingdom come”: this kingdom will always be. “Your will be done, as in heaven, so on earth”: this will always be. “Give us this day our daily bread”: this will not always be. “Forgive us our debts”: this will not always be. “Lead us not into temptation”: this will not always be. “But deliver us from evil”: this will not always be; but where there is temptation and where there is evil, there it is necessary that we ask.

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.”

In the reading of the holy Gospel the Lord has urged us to pray. “Ask,” he says, “and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. Or what man is there among you who, if his son asks for bread, will hand him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will he hand him a serpent? Or when he asks for an egg, will he hand him a scorpion? If, then, you,” he says, “though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him?” “Though you are evil,” he says, “you know how to give good gifts to your children.” A wonderful thing, brothers: we are evil, and we have a good Father. What is plainer? We have heard our name: “Though you are evil, you know how to give good gifts to your children.” And see what kind of Father he shows to those he called evil: “How much more your Father.” Father of whom? Of the evil, certainly. And what kind of Father? “No one is good but God alone.”

So, brothers, we who are evil have a good Father for this reason, that we may not always remain evil. No evil man makes anyone good. If no evil man makes anyone good, how does an evil man make himself good? He makes good out of evil who is always good. “Heal me, Lord,” it says, “and I shall be healed; save me, and I shall be saved.” Why do the vain say vain things to me: “You save yourself if you will”? “Heal me, Lord, and I shall be healed.” We were created good by the Good: for “God made man upright”; but by our own choice we became evil. We were able to become evil from good, and we shall be able to become good from evil. But it is he who is always good who makes good out of evil; because man could not heal himself by his own will. You do not look for a doctor in order to wound yourself; but when you have wounded yourself, you look for one to heal you. So, good things according to time, temporal goods, bodily goods, fleshly goods, we know how to give to our children, even though we are evil. For these too are good things; who doubts it? A fish, an egg, bread, fruit, grain, this light, this air we breathe: these are good things. Even riches, by which people are puffed up and do not recognize other people as their equals; by which, I say, people are puffed up, loving a shining garment more than thinking of their common skin: even riches, then, are good. But all these goods I have mentioned can be had by the good and the bad; and though they are good, they cannot make people good. So there is a good that makes good, and there is a good with which you may do good. The good that makes good is God. For no one makes a man good except him who is always good. So, to be good, call on God. The other good is that with which you may do good: that is, whatever you have. It is gold, it is silver: it is good, not good to make you good, but good to do good with. You have gold, you have silver; and you covet gold and covet silver. You both have and covet; you are both full and thirsty. That is a disease, not wealth. There are people in a disease who are full of fluid and always thirsty: they are full of fluid and thirst for fluid. How, then, do you delight in wealth, you who have the dropsy of covetousness? So you have gold; it is good. You have it, not as that by which you may be good, but as that with which you may do good. “What good,” you say, “am I to do with gold?” Have you not heard the psalm? “He has scattered, he has given to the poor; his justice remains for ever and ever.” This is the good, this is the good by which you are good: justice. If you have the good by which you may be good, do good with the good by which you are not good. You have money: give it out. By giving out money you increase justice. “For he scattered, he distributed, he gave to the poor; his justice remains for ever and ever.” See what is diminished and what is increased. Money is diminished, justice is increased. That is diminished which you were going to leave, that is diminished which you were going to abandon; that is increased which you will possess for ever.

I am giving you advice about profits: learn to trade. For you praise the merchant who sells lead and acquires gold; and do you not praise the merchant who gives out money and acquires justice? “But I,” you say, “do not give out money, because I do not have justice. Let him give out money who has justice: I do not have justice; let me at least have money.” So, because you do not have justice, you do not want to give out money? All the more give out money, so that you may have justice. For from whom will you have justice, if not from God, the fountain of justice? So if you want to have justice, be God’s beggar, he who a little while ago, from the Gospel, was urging you to ask, to seek, to knock. He knew his beggar; and see, the householder, the great rich one, rich, of course, in spiritual and eternal riches, urges you and says to you: “Ask, seek, knock. He who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; to the one who knocks it will be opened.” He urges you to ask: will he deny what you ask?

Notice a likeness or comparison from the opposite case, as in that unjust judge, urging us to prayer, when the Lord says: “There was a judge in a city who neither feared God nor respected man. A certain widow kept pestering him daily and saying, Avenge me.” For a time he would not; she did not stop pestering; and he did out of weariness what he would not do out of kindness. So he has urged us to ask by an opposite case. “He came,” he says, “to his friend, to whom a guest had come; and he began to knock and say: A guest has come to me; lend me three loaves. The other answered: I am already resting, and my servants are resting with me.” He does not stop; he stands, he presses, he knocks, and like a friend from a friend he begs. And what does he say? “I tell you that he gets up, and not because of his friendship, but because of his persistence he gives him as many as he wanted.” Not because of friendship, though he is a friend, but because of persistence. What does “because of his persistence” mean? Because he did not stop knocking; because even when he was refused, he did not turn away. He who did not want to give did what was asked, because the other did not give up asking. How much more will the Good One give, who urges us to ask, who is displeased if we do not ask? But when he sometimes gives more slowly, he is commending his gifts, not refusing them. Things long desired are obtained more sweetly; things given quickly grow cheap. Ask, seek, persist. By asking and seeking you grow, so that you can take it in. God keeps for you what he does not want to give quickly, so that you too may learn to desire great things greatly. Hence one must always pray and not lose heart. If, then, my brothers, God has made us his beggars by warning, urging, and commanding us to ask, seek, and knock, let us too pay attention to those who ask from us. We ask. From whom do we ask? Who are we who ask? What do we ask? From whom, or who, or what do we ask? We ask from God, who is good; we who ask are evil men; but we ask for justice, by which we may be good. So we ask for what we may have for ever; with which, when we have been filled, we shall want nothing further. But so that we may be filled, let us hunger and thirst; hungering and thirsting, let us ask, seek, knock. “For blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice.” Why blessed? They hunger and thirst, and are they blessed? Is need ever blessed? They are not blessed because they hunger and thirst, but because they will be filled. There blessedness will be in fullness, not in hunger. But let hunger go before fullness, lest loathing come to the bread.

So we have said from whom we ask, who we are who ask, and what we ask. But we too are asked. For we are God’s beggars: so that he may recognize his beggars, let us recognize ours. And there too let us think, when we are asked, who ask, from whom they ask, what they ask. Who ask? Men. From whom do they ask? From men. Who ask? Mortals. From whom do they ask? From mortals. Who ask? The frail. From whom do they ask? From the frail. Who ask? The wretched. From whom do they ask? From the wretched. Except for the amount of their means, those who ask are such as those from whom they ask. What face do you have to ask of your Lord, you who do not recognize your equal? “I am not,” he says, “like him: far be it from me to be like him.” Puffed up and clad in silk, he says this of the man in rags. But I am questioning you naked. I am not asking what you are like in your clothes, but what you were like when you were born. Both naked, both weak, beginning a wretched life, and so both crying.

See, rich man, recall your beginnings: see whether you brought anything here. Now you have come and have found so much. Tell me, I ask you, what did you bring? Tell me what you brought. Or if you are ashamed to say, hear the Apostle: “We brought nothing into this world.” “We brought nothing,” he says, “into this world.” But perhaps, because you brought nothing and found much here, you will take something away from here with you? And perhaps out of love of riches you are afraid to admit this too: hear this as well. Let the Apostle, who does not flatter you, say this too: “We brought nothing into this world,” that is, when we were born; “but neither can we take anything away,” that is, when we leave the world. You brought nothing; you will take nothing from here: why do you puff yourself up against the poor man? When infants are born, let parents, servants, clients step aside; let the obsequious crowds step aside; and let the rich children be recognized by their crying. Let a rich woman and a poor woman give birth together; let them not look at what they bore; let them go away a little while, come back, and recognize them. See, rich man, you brought nothing into this world; but neither can you take anything away from here. What I said of the newborn, I say of the dead. Surely, when by some chance old tombs are broken open, let the rich man’s bones be recognized! So, rich man, hear the Apostle: “We brought nothing into this world.” Recognize it: it is true. “But neither can we take anything away.” Recognize it: this too is true.

What, then, follows? “Having food and covering, let us be content with these. For those who want to become rich fall into temptation and many harmful desires, which plunge a man into ruin and destruction. For the root of all evils is avarice; some who have pursued it have wandered from the faith.” Notice what they have left behind. You grieve that they have left this behind: see what they have entangled themselves in. Listen: “They have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many sorrows.” But who? “Those who want to become rich.” It is one thing to be rich, another to want to become rich. One is rich who was born of rich parents: he is rich not because he wanted to be, but because many left him inheritances. I see his means; I do not inquire into his pleasures. Here it is greed that is accused: not gold, not silver, not riches, but greed. For those who do not want to become rich, or do not care, or do not burn with greed, are not set on fire by the torches of avarice, but are rich: let them hear the Apostle. It was read today: “Charge the rich of this world.” Charge them what? Charge them above all not to think proudly. For there is nothing that riches beget so much as pride. Every fruit, every grain, every kind of wheat, every tree has its own worm. The worm of the apple is one, of the pear another, of the bean another, of the wheat another. The worm of riches is pride.

So, “Charge the rich of this world not to think proudly.” He has shut out the vice; let him teach the use. “Not to think proudly.” But how not to think proudly? From what follows: “Nor to hope in the uncertainty of riches.” Those who do not hope in the uncertainty of riches do not think proudly. If they do not think high things, let them fear. If they fear, they do not think high things. How many were rich yesterday and are poor today? How many go to sleep rich and, when robbers come and take everything, wake up poor? So, “not to hope in the uncertainty of riches, but in the living God, who supplies us abundantly with all things to enjoy”: temporal and eternal. But rather the eternal for enjoying, the temporal for using; temporal things as for travelers, eternal as for inhabitants; temporal things with which we may do good, eternal by which we may be made good. So let the rich do this: let them not think proudly, nor hope in the uncertainty of riches, but in the living God, who supplies us abundantly with all things to enjoy. Let them do this. But what are they to do with what they have? Hear what: “Let them be rich in good works, let them give readily.” For they have the means. Why do they not do it? Poverty is hardship. “Let them give readily”: they have the means. “Let them share”: that is, let them recognize their fellow mortals as equals. “Let them share; let them store up for themselves a good foundation for the future.” “For when I say,” he says, “Let them give readily, let them share, I do not want to strip them, I do not want to leave them naked, I do not want to leave them empty. I am teaching profit, when I show: Let them store up for themselves. For I do not want them to remain poor. Let them store up for themselves. I do not say, so that they may lose, but I show them where to move.” “Let them store up for themselves a good foundation for the future, so that they may lay hold of the true life.” So this is a false life: let them lay hold of the true life. “For vanity of the vain, and all is vanity. What great abundance has man in all his labor at which he labors under the sun?” So the true life must be laid hold of; our means must be moved to the place of the true life, so that we may find there what we give here. He who changes us changes them too.

So give to the poor, my brothers. “Having food and covering, let us be content with these.” The rich man has nothing from his riches but what the poor man asks of him: food and covering. From all you have, what more do you have? You have received food; you have received necessary covering. Necessary, I say, not empty, not superfluous. What more do you take from your riches? Tell me. Surely all the rest of yours will be superfluous. Let your superfluities be the necessities of the poor. “But I,” you say, “take costly feasts, I feed on costly food.” What about the poor man? On cheap food. The poor man feeds on cheap food; “I,” he says, “on costly.” I ask you, when you are both full: the costly food enters you; what does it become once it has entered? If we had windows in our bellies, would we not be ashamed of all the costly foods with which you are filled? The poor man is hungry, the rich man is hungry; the poor man seeks to be filled, the rich man seeks to be filled. The poor man is filled with cheap food, the rich man is filled with costly food. The fullness is equal: the goal both want to reach is one; but the one by a short cut, the other by a long way round. “But,” you say, “costly dishes taste better to me.” Being fastidious, you are hard to satisfy. You do not know how what hunger kindles tastes. Nor have I said this to force the rich to eat the food and dishes of the poor. Let the rich keep to the habit of their weakness; but let them be sorry that they cannot do otherwise. For they would be better off if they could do otherwise. So if the poor man is not puffed up about his begging, why are you puffed up about your weakness? Use choice and costly foods, because you are used to them, because you cannot do otherwise, because if you change your habit you fall ill. It is granted you: use superfluities, give the poor necessities; use costly things, give the poor cheap things. He waits on you; you wait on God. He waits for a hand that was made along with him; you wait for the hand that made you. But he made not only you, but the poor man with you. He gave you both one road, this life; you have found yourselves companions; you are walking one road. He carries nothing; you are overloaded. He carries nothing with him; you carry with you more than you need. You are loaded: give him some of what you have; and you both feed him and lessen your load.

So give to the poor: I ask, I advise, I instruct, I command. Give to the poor whatever you like. For I will not hide from your Charity why I found it necessary to bring out this sermon to you. Since we have been here, going to church and coming back, the poor stop us and tell us to tell you, so that they may receive something from you. They have urged us to speak to you; and when they see that they receive nothing from you, they think we labor among you in vain. They expect something from us too. We give as much as we have, we give as we can; but are we sufficient to meet their need? Since, then, we are not sufficient to meet their need, at least we are their ambassadors to you. You have heard, you have applauded: thanks be to God. You have received the seed; you have given back words. These praises of yours weigh on us rather, and put us in danger; we bear them, and tremble among them. Still, my brothers, these praises of yours are the leaves of the trees: it is fruit that is sought.

We heard, as the Gospel was read, our faith praised in humility. For when the Lord Jesus promised to go to the centurion’s house to heal his servant, he answered: “I am not worthy that you should come under my roof; but only say the word, and he will be healed.” By calling himself unworthy he showed himself worthy, not for Christ to enter his walls, but for Christ to enter his heart. Nor would he have said this with such faith and humility unless he were carrying in his heart the one he feared to have enter his house. For it would have been no great happiness if the Lord Jesus entered his walls and were not in his breast. For the Teacher of humility, by word and example, reclined at table even in the house of a certain proud Pharisee named Simon; and while he reclined in his house, there was no place in his heart where the Son of Man could lay his head.

For so, as can be understood from the Lord’s own words, he called back from discipleship a certain proud man who wanted of his own accord to go with him. “I will follow you, Lord,” he said, “wherever you go.” And the Lord, seeing invisible things in his heart: “Foxes,” he said, “have holes, and the birds of the sky nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” That is: in you snares dwell like foxes, pride dwells like the birds of the sky; but the Son of Man, simple against snares, humble against pride, has nowhere to lay his head. And the very laying down of the head, not its raising, teaches humility. So he calls back this one who wants to go, and draws another who declines. For in the same place he says to someone, “Follow me.” And he: “I will follow you, Lord; but let me first go and bury my father.” His excuse was dutiful; and so he was the more worthy to have his excuse removed and his calling confirmed. What he wanted to do was dutiful; but the Teacher taught what he ought to put first. For he wanted him to be a preacher of the living word, to make people who would live. There were others through whom that need would be met. “Let the dead,” he says, “bury their dead.” When unbelievers bury a corpse, the dead bury the dead. The body of the one has lost its soul; the soul of the others has lost God. For as the soul is the life of the body, so God is the life of the soul. As the body expires when it gives up the soul, so the soul expires when it loses God. God lost is the death of the soul; the soul given up is the death of the body. The death of the body is necessary; the death of the soul is voluntary.

So the Lord reclined at table in the house of a certain proud Pharisee. He was in his house, as I said, and was not in his breast. But into this centurion’s house he did not enter, and he possessed his breast. Zacchaeus, again, received the Lord both in his house and in his heart. Yet it is this man’s faith that is praised in humility. For he said, “I am not worthy that you should come under my roof.” And the Lord said, “Truly I tell you, I have not found such faith in Israel”: according to the flesh, that is. For this man too was already an Israelite according to the spirit. The Lord had come to Israel according to the flesh, that is, to the Jews, to seek first there the lost sheep, in the people from which he had taken his body: “I have not found such faith there,” he says. We can measure people’s faith as men do; he who saw the inner things, he whom no one deceived, bore witness to the man’s heart, hearing words of humility and pronouncing a sentence of healing.

But on what ground did he presume this? “I too,” he says, “am a man set under authority, having soldiers under me; and I say to this one, Go, and he goes; and to another, Come, and he comes; and to my servant, Do this, and he does it.” I am an authority to some placed under me, placed myself under an authority above me. “If, then, I, a man under authority, have the authority to command, what can you do, whom all authorities serve?” Now this man was from the Gentiles, for he was a centurion. By then the Jewish nation had soldiers of the Roman empire. There he was serving as a soldier, as far as a centurion could, both under authority and having authority: obedient as a subject, ruling subjects. But the Lord (and this your Charity should especially attend to, as it is needful), though he was among the Jewish people, was already proclaiming the Church to come throughout the whole world, into which he was going to send apostles: he himself not seen and yet believed by the Gentiles, seen and killed by the Jews. For as the Lord did not enter this man’s house in body, and yet, absent in body, present in majesty, healed his faith and his very house, so the same Lord was in body among the Jewish people alone; among the other nations he was not born of a virgin, did not suffer, did not walk on foot, did not endure human things, did not work divine miracles. None of these things among the nations; and yet what was said of him was fulfilled: “A people whom I did not know has served me.” How, if it did not know? “At the hearing of the ear it obeyed me.” The Jewish nation knew him and crucified him; the whole world heard and believed. This absence, as it were, of his body and presence of his power among all the nations he signified also in that woman who had touched the fringe of his garment, when he asks, saying, “Who touched me?” As if absent, he asks; as if present, he heals. “The crowds,” say the disciples, “press on you, and you say, Who touched me?” For as if he were walking in such a way as to be touched by no body at all, he said, “Who touched me?” And they: “The crowds press on you.” And as if the Lord said, “I am looking for one who touched, not one who presses.” So it is now too with his body, that is, his Church. The faith of a few touches it; the crowd of many presses it. For you have heard, as its children, that the Church is the body of Christ; and if you will, you yourselves are it. The Apostle says this in many places: “For his body,” he says, “which is the Church.” And again: “But you are the body of Christ, and members.” If, then, we are his body, what his body then suffered in the crowd, his Church suffers now. It is pressed by crowds; it is touched by few. The flesh presses it; faith touches it. Lift up your eyes, then, I beg you, you who have the means to see. For you have something to see. Lift up the eyes of faith; touch the last fringe of his garment: it will suffice for salvation.

See that what you heard from the Gospel as then to come is now present. “Therefore,” he says, “I tell you” (because of the praised faith of the centurion, foreign by flesh, of the household by heart), “therefore many will come from east and west.” Not all, but many; yet these from east and west: by these two parts the whole world is designated. “Many will come from east and west, and will recline with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven; but the sons of the kingdom will be cast into the outer darkness.” “The sons of the kingdom,” that is, the Jews. Why sons of the kingdom? Because they received the law, the prophets were sent to them, among them were the temple and the priesthood, they celebrated the figures of all the things to come. But of the things whose figures they celebrated, they did not recognize the presence. So the sons of the kingdom, he says, will go into the outer darkness; there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. We see the Jews rejected; we see Christians called from east and west to a kind of heavenly banquet, to recline with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, where the bread is justice and the drink wisdom.

Pay attention, then, brothers: for this is what you are; you are of this people, foretold then, made present now. You are surely among those who have been called from east and west to recline in the kingdom of heaven, not in the temple of idols. Be, then, the body of Christ, not the crush on the body of Christ. You have the fringe of the garment to touch, so that you may be healed of the flow of blood, that is, of the flux of carnal pleasures. You have, I say, the fringe of the garment to touch. Think of the apostles as the garment, clinging to Christ’s sides in the weave of unity. Among these apostles, like the fringe, was Paul, the least and the last, as he himself says: “I am the least of the apostles.” In a garment the last and least part is the fringe. The fringe is looked on with contempt, but touched with salvation. “To this very hour we hunger and thirst and are naked and are beaten.” What is so last, what so contemptible? Touch it, if you suffer a flow of blood: power will go out from him whose garment it is, and will heal you. The fringe was just now being offered to be touched, when there was read from the same apostle: “For if anyone sees the one who has knowledge reclining in an idol’s temple, will not his conscience, being weak, be built up to eat food offered to idols? And the weak brother will perish by your knowledge, for whom Christ died?” How do you think people can be deceived by images, which they think are honored by Christians? “God knows my heart,” he says. But your brother does not know your heart. If you are weak, beware of a worse sickness; if you are strong, care for your brother’s weakness. Those who see these things are built up to other things, so that they want not only to eat there but also to sacrifice. See, the weak brother perishes by your knowledge. Hear, brother: if you despised the weak, do you despise your brother too? Wake up. What if you sin against Christ himself? Pay attention to what you can in no way despise. “When you sin thus against the brothers,” he says, “and wound their weak conscience, you sin against Christ.” Let those who despise these things go now and recline in the idol’s temple: will they not be those who press, not those who touch? And when they have reclined in the idol’s temple, let them come and fill the church: not to receive salvation, but to make a crush.

“But I am afraid,” you will say, “of offending someone greater.” By all means be afraid of offending someone greater, and you will not offend God. For you who are afraid of offending someone greater, see whether there is not perhaps someone greater than the one you are afraid of offending. Certainly do not offend someone greater. This rule is set before you. Is it not plain that he must least of all be offended who is greater than all others? Now go through your superiors. First for you are father and mother: if they bring you up rightly, if they nourish you for Christ, they are to be heard in all things, obeyed in every command: let them command nothing against one greater, and let them be served. “Who,” you say, “is greater than the one who begot me?” He who created you. For man begets, God creates. How man begets, he does not know; what he will beget, he does not know. He who saw you in order to make you, before the one he made existed, is surely greater than your father. Let your country be greater even than your parents, so that whatever parents command against the country is not to be heard. And whatever the country commands against God is not to be heard. For if you want to be healed, if after the flow of blood, after twelve years in that disease, after spending everything on doctors without recovering health, you at last want to be made well, O woman, whom I address as a figure of the Church, your father commands this, and your people commands that. But your Lord says to you: “Forget your people and your father’s house.” For what good? For what fruit? For what reward? “Because the king has desired your beauty.” He desired what he made; for, so as to make you beautiful, he loved you when you were ugly. For you, unfaithful and ugly, he shed his blood; he made you faithful and beautiful; he loved his own gifts in you. For what did you bring to your bridegroom? What did you receive as dowry from your former father and former people? Was it not excesses and the rags of sins? He threw away your rags, he tore your sackcloth: he had pity so as to adorn you; he adorned you so as to love you.

What more, brothers? You are Christians; you have heard that when you sin against the brothers and wound their weak conscience, you sin against Christ. Do not despise it, if you do not want to be blotted out of the book of life. How long are we to try to say brightly and pleasantly to you what our grief forces us to say in whatever way, and does not allow us to keep silent? Whoever wants to despise these things sins against Christ; let them see what they are doing. We want the remaining pagans to be gathered in; you are stones in the way. They want to come, they stumble, and they go back. For they say in their hearts: “Why should we abandon the gods whom the Christians themselves worship with us?” “Far be it from me,” one says, “to worship the gods of the Gentiles.” I know, I understand, I believe you. What are you doing about the conscience of the weak, which you are wounding? What are you doing about the price, if you despise what was bought? See at what price it was bought. “The weak man will perish,” it says, “by your knowledge”: the knowledge you claim to have, that you know an idol is nothing, and that you think of God in your mind, and so you recline in the idol’s temple. By this knowledge the weak man perishes. And so that you would not despise the weak man, he added: “for whom Christ died.” Him whom you want to despise, consider his price, and weigh the whole world against the death of Christ. And lest you still think you are sinning against a weak man, and count the sin light and of small account, he says: “You sin against Christ.” For people usually say: “I sin against a man; surely not against God?” Then deny that Christ is God. Do you dare to deny that Christ is God? Or did you learn something else when you reclined in the idol’s temple? Christ’s teaching does not admit that teaching. I ask where you learned that Christ is not God. The pagans usually say this. Do you see what bad tables do? Do you see that evil conversations corrupt good morals? There you cannot speak of the Gospel, and you hear people speaking of idols. There you lose the truth that Christ is God, and what you drink there you vomit up in church. Perhaps here you dare to speak; perhaps among the crowds you dare to mutter: “Was Christ not a man? Was he not crucified?” You learned this from the pagans; you have lost salvation; you have not touched the fringe. Touch the fringe in this too; receive salvation. As we taught you to touch it in what is written, “Whoever sees a brother reclining in an idol’s temple,” touch it also concerning the divinity of Christ. The same fringe said of the Jews: “Whose are the fathers, and from whom is Christ according to the flesh, who is above all, God blessed for ever.” See against what true God you sin while you recline among false gods.

“It is not a god,” he says, “because it is the Genius of Carthage.” As if, were it Mars or Mercury, it would be a god! But consider how it is regarded by them, not what it is. For I too know as well as you that it is a stone. If the Genius is some ornament, let the citizens of Carthage live well, and they themselves will be the Genius of Carthage. But if the Genius is a demon, you heard there too: “What the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons and not to God; I do not want you to become partners of demons.” We know that it is not a god; would that they too knew it so! But because of those weak ones who do not know this, their conscience ought not to be wounded. This is what the Apostle warns. For that they have a divinity there and take that statue for a divinity, the altar testifies. What is an altar doing there, if it is not regarded as a divinity? Let no one say to me, “It is not a divinity, it is not a god.” I have already said: would that they knew this as we all know it! But what they hold it to be, for what they take it, what they do there, that altar testifies. It has convicted the minds of all who worship there: let it not convict those who recline there.

But let Christians not press it, if pagans press it. It is the body of Christ. Were we not saying that the body of Christ was pressed and not touched? He bore those who pressed him; he looked for those who touched. And would, brothers, that the body of Christ were pressed by pagans, by whom it is usually pressed; let Christians not press the body of Christ. Brothers, it is our business to speak to you, our business to speak to Christians. “For what have I to do with judging those outside?” says the Apostle himself. Those we address otherwise, as weak. They must be coaxed so that they may hear the truth; in you the rottenness must be cut out. If you ask how the pagans may be won, how they may be enlightened, how they may be called to salvation: abandon their festivals, abandon their trifles; and if they do not agree with our truth, let them blush at their small numbers.

If the one set over you is good, he is your nourisher; if he is bad, he is your tempter. Receive the nourishment gladly, and prove yourself in the temptation. Be gold. Look at this world as a goldsmith’s furnace: in one narrow place there are three things, gold, chaff, fire. The fire is applied to the other two: the chaff is burned, the gold is purified. Someone gave way to threats and was led to the idol’s temple: woe is me, I bewail the chaff, I see the ash. Another did not give way to threats, did not give way to terrors; brought before the judge, he stood firm in his confession; he was not bent to the idol’s temple: what does the flame do? Does it not purify the gold? Stand firm in the Lord, brothers: he who has called you is more powerful. Do not fear the threats of the ungodly. Bear with your enemies: you have people to pray for; let them not frighten you at all. This is health: draw it from here, at this banquet; drink here what will fill you, not there, what will make you mad. Stand firm in the Lord. You are silver; you will be gold. This likeness is not ours; it is from divine Scripture. You have read, you have heard: “As gold in the furnace he tried them, and as a burnt offering he received them.” See what you will be in the treasuries of God. Be rich from God: not to make him rich, but to become rich from him. Let him fill you; admit nothing else into your heart.

Are we stirring you up to pride, or telling you to be despisers of the ordained authorities? We do not say this. You who are sick on this point too, touch here too that fringe of the garment. The Apostle himself says: “Let every soul be subject to the higher authorities; for there is no authority except from God. Those that exist have been ordained by God. Whoever resists authority resists God’s ordinance.” But what if it commands what you ought not to do? Here, certainly, despise authority by fearing Authority. Consider these ranks of human affairs. If the curator commands something, must it not be done? Yet if he commands against the proconsul, you do not despise authority, but choose to serve a greater one. Nor should the lesser be angry at this, if the greater is preferred. Again, if the proconsul himself commands something and the emperor commands another, is there any doubt that the former must be disregarded and the latter served? So if the emperor commands one thing and God another, what do you judge? “Pay tribute; be in my service.” Right, but not in an idol’s temple. In an idol’s temple he forbids it. Who forbids it? A greater Authority. Pardon me: you threaten prison; he threatens Gehenna. Here you must take up your faith as a shield, with which you may quench all the fiery darts of the enemy.

“But a powerful man lies in wait against you, a powerful man schemes against you.” He is sharpening a razor to shave your hair, not to cut off your head. What I have said you heard just now in the psalm: “Like a sharp razor you have worked deceit.” Why did he compare the deceit of a wicked powerful man to a razor? Because it reaches only to what is superfluous in us. As hairs on our body seem superfluous and are shaved off without harm to the flesh, so whatever an angry powerful man can do to you, count among your superfluities. He takes away your poverty: does he take away your riches? Your poverty, your riches, are in your heart. He could take away your superfluities, he could inflict loss on you, even if allowed to harm the body. Even this life, for those who think of another life, this life, I say, must be counted among superfluities. For the martyrs too despised it. They did not lose life, but gained life.

Be certain, brothers, that enemies are not let loose against the faithful except as far as it profits the faithful to be tempted and proved. Be certain, brothers; let no one say otherwise. Cast all your care on the Lord; throw your whole selves entirely upon him. He will not withdraw so that you fall. He who created us has given us security even about our hairs. “Truly I tell you,” he says, “even the hairs of your head are all numbered.” Our hairs are numbered by God: how much more our ways, to him to whom our hairs are so known? See that God does not despise our least things. For if he despised them, he would not create them. For he certainly created our hairs too, and has them numbered. “But,” you say, “though they exist now, perhaps they will perish.” Hear his voice on this too: “Truly I tell you, not a hair of your head will perish.” Why do you fear man, O man, set in God’s bosom? Do not fall from his bosom: whatever you suffer there will avail for salvation, not destruction. The martyrs endured the tearing of their limbs, and do Christians fear the injuries of Christian times? Whoever does you injury now does it in fear. He does not say openly, “Come to the idol”; he does not say openly, “Come to my altars, feast there.” And if he said it and you refused, let him complain of this, let him bring it as an accusation, as a grievance: “He would not come to my altars, he would not come to the temple I worship.” Let him say this. He does not dare to say it; but he contrives other things deceitfully. Get your hair ready: he is sharpening the razor; he is going to take away your superfluities, to shave off whatever you would leave behind. Let him take away what will remain, if he can. What has the harmful powerful man taken? What great thing has he taken? What a thief takes, what a housebreaker; at his fiercest, what a robber takes. Even if he is allowed to kill the very body, what does he take but what a robber takes? I honored him by saying “robber.” For whatever a robber is, he is a man. What a fever takes, a scorpion, a poisonous mushroom. This is the whole power of the raging: to do what a mushroom does. People eat a bad mushroom and die. See in what frailty human life is: since you will leave it sooner or later, do not fight for it in such a way that you yourself are left behind.

Christ is our life: look to Christ. He came to suffer, but also to be glorified; to be despised, but also to be exalted; to die, but also to rise again. The work frightens you: look at the reward. Why do you want to arrive in comfort at a thing to which only labor leads? “But I am afraid of losing my silver, because I came to my silver with great labor.” If you did not come without labor to the silver that you will lose some day, at least when you die, do you want to come to eternal life without labor? Let that life be dearer to you, which after all labors you will reach in such a way that you will never lose it. If this is dear to you which you reached after all labors in such a way that you will lose it some day, how much more ought we to desire those everlasting things?

Do not believe their words, and do not fear them. They call us enemies of their idols. May God so grant, and give everything into our power, as he has given what has been broken down. For this we say to your Charity: do not do these things when it is not in your power to do them. It is the way of perverse men, of the raging Circumcellions, both to rage where they have no authority and to hurry to die without cause. All of you who were recently present at the Mappalia heard what we read to you: “When the land has been given into your power” (first he says, “into your power,” and then he said what is to be done), “you shall destroy their altars, break their groves, and smash all their pillars.” When you have received authority, do this. Where authority has not been given us, we do not do it; where it has been given, we do not neglect it. Many pagans have these abominations on their estates: do we go and smash them? For first we work so that we may break the idols in their hearts. When they too have become Christians, they either invite us to so good a work or anticipate us. Now we must pray for them, not be angry with them. If great grief moves us, it moves us against Christians, against our brothers, who want to enter the Church in such a way that they have their body here and their heart elsewhere. The whole must be within. If what man sees is within, why is what God sees outside? But know, dearly beloved, that their grumbling joins itself with the heretics and with the Jews. Heretics, Jews, and pagans have made a unity against unity. Because it happened that in some places the Jews received discipline for their wickednesses, they accuse us, and suspect, or pretend, that we are always seeking such things against them. Because it happened that somewhere heretics paid the penalties of the laws for their impiety and the fury of their violence, they now say that we seek in every way some harm to them for their ruin. Again, because it was decided that laws should be passed against the pagans, or rather for the pagans, if they were wise (for as when foolish boys play in the mud and dirty their hands, the strict tutor comes, knocks the mud out of their hands, and hands them a book: so God willed through rulers subject to him to frighten foolish, childish hearts, so that they may throw the mud from their hands and do something useful. What is useful for the hands? “Break your bread for the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house.” And yet the boys escape the tutor’s eyes and go back to the mud on the sly; and when they are found, they hide their hands so as not to be seen): because, then, God has willed it, they think we are looking for idols everywhere, and that when we have found them we smash them in all places. Why? Are not the places where they are before our eyes? Or are we really ignorant where they are? And yet we do not do it, because God has not given them into our power. When does God give them into our power? When the owner of the property becomes a Christian. Lately the owner of a property wanted it done. If he had not wanted to give the place itself to the Church, but only ordered that there be no idols on his property, I think it ought to have been done with the greatest devotion, so that the absent Christian soul might be helped by Christians, who wants on his land to give thanks to God and does not want anything there to God’s dishonor. In addition, he gave the very place to the Church. And were there to be idols on the Church’s property? Brothers, see what displeases the pagans. It is not enough for them that we do not take them from their own estates, that we do not smash them there: they want them preserved on ours too. We preach against idols; we take them out of hearts; we are persecutors of idols: we profess it. Are we to be their preservers? I do not do it where I cannot; I do not do it where the owner of the property complains; but where he wants it done and gives thanks, I would be guilty if I did not do it.

On the reading of the holy Gospel just now, with the Lord’s gift, I address you, and in him I urge you that, against the storms and waves of this world, faith may not sleep in your hearts. For it is not, is it, that the Lord Christ had death in his power but did not have sleep in his power, and that sleep perhaps overcame the Almighty against his will as he sailed? If you believe this, he is asleep in you; but if Christ is awake in you, your faith is awake. The Apostle says that Christ dwells in your hearts through faith. So Christ’s sleep too is the sign of a mystery. Those sailing are souls crossing the world on wood. And that ship also prefigured the Church. And indeed each one is a temple of God, and each one sails in his own heart; and he does not suffer shipwreck if he thinks good things.

You have heard an insult: that is the wind. You are angry: that is the wave. So when the wind blows and the wave rises, the ship is in danger, your heart is in danger, your heart is tossed. Having heard an insult, you want to be avenged; and see, you have been avenged, and, giving way to another’s evil, you have suffered shipwreck. And why this? Because Christ is asleep in you. What does it mean, Christ is asleep in you? You have forgotten Christ. Wake Christ, then; remember Christ; let Christ wake up in you: consider him. What did you want? To be avenged. Have you forgotten that, when he was being crucified, he said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do”? He who was sleeping in your heart did not want to be avenged. Wake him; call him to mind. The remembrance of him is his word; the remembrance of him is his command. And you will say to yourself, if Christ is awake in you: “What kind of man am I, who want to be avenged? Who am I, to hurl threats at a man? Perhaps I will die before I am avenged. And when, gasping, inflamed with anger and thirsting for revenge, I leave the body, he will not receive me who did not want to be avenged; he will not receive me who said, Give, and it will be given to you; forgive, and you will be forgiven. So I will restrain myself from my anger and return to the quiet of my heart.” Christ commanded the sea; there was calm.

What I have said about anger, hold as a rule in all your temptations. A temptation has arisen: that is the wind. You are troubled: that is the wave. Wake Christ; let him speak with you. “Who is this, that both the winds and the sea obey him?” Who is this, whom the sea obeys? “The sea is his, and he made it.” “All things were made through him.” Rather imitate the winds and the sea: obey the Creator. At Christ’s command the sea hears, and you are deaf? The sea hears and the wind ceases, and you keep blowing? What? “I say, I do, I devise”: what is that but to keep blowing and to refuse to cease at Christ’s word? Let not the wave overcome you in the disturbance of your heart. Yet because we are human, if the wind drives on, if it moves the affection of our soul, let us not despair: let us wake Christ, so that we may sail in calm and come to our homeland. Turning to the Lord, and so on.

You heard, brothers, when the holy Gospel was read, how our Lord Jesus Christ strengthened his martyrs by his teaching, saying: “Behold, I send you as sheep in the midst of wolves.” Consider, my brothers, what he is doing. If one wolf comes among many sheep, however many thousands of sheep there are, they will be thrown into confusion by one wolf in their midst; and if not all are torn, still all are terrified. What kind of reasoning was this, then, what counsel, what power, not to let a wolf in among the sheep but to send sheep against wolves? “I send you,” he says, “as sheep in the midst of wolves”: not to the borders of the wolves, but into the midst of the wolves. There was, then, a pack of wolves, and few sheep. But when the many wolves killed the few sheep, the wolves were changed and became sheep.

Let us hear, then, what he advised, who promised crowns and set the contest first, who watches the contestants and helps those who toil. What kind of contest did he proclaim? “Be,” he says, “shrewd as serpents and simple as doves.” Whoever has understood and held to this dies secure, because he will not die. For no one ought to die secure except one who knows that he will die in such a way that death dies in him and life is crowned.

So, dearly beloved, it must be explained to you, though we have already often spoken of it, what it is to be simple as doves and shrewd as serpents. If the simplicity of doves has been enjoined on us, what is the shrewdness of the serpent doing in the dove’s simplicity? I love in the dove that it has no gall; I fear in the serpent that it has poison. Do not be horrified at the serpent in every respect: it has something for you to hate and something for you to imitate. For when the serpent is weighed down with old age and feels the weight of its oldness, it squeezes itself through a hole and lays aside its old coat, so as to spring out new. Imitate it, Christian, you who hear Christ saying, “Enter through the narrow gate.” And the apostle Paul says to you: “Strip off the old man with his deeds, and put on the new.” So you have something to imitate in the serpent. Do not die for oldness, but for truth. Whoever dies for a temporal advantage dies for oldness. But when you have stripped off all that oldness, you have imitated the serpent’s shrewdness. Imitate it in this too: guard your head. What does “guard your head” mean? Keep Christ with you. Perhaps some of you have noticed, when you wanted to kill a snake, how it exposes its whole body to the blows of the one striking in order to protect its head. It does not want to be struck in the part where it knows its life is. And Christ is our life. For he himself said: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.” Hear the Apostle too: “The head of a man is Christ.” So whoever keeps Christ in himself guards his head for himself.

Now what need is there to commend the simplicity of doves at length? The serpent’s poisons had to be guarded against; there imitation was dangerous, there was something to fear; but imitate the dove without anxiety. See how doves rejoice in company: everywhere they fly together, feed together; they do not want to be alone; they rejoice in fellowship, they keep love, they coo with the moans of love; they beget their young with kisses. For when doves, as we often notice, quarrel among themselves over their nests, it is in a way a peaceful contention. Do they separate because they quarrel? They fly together, feed together, and their very quarrel among themselves is peaceful. See the quarrel of doves. The Apostle says: “If anyone does not obey our word through this letter, mark that man, and do not associate with him.” See, a quarrel; but notice that it is a quarrel of doves, not of wolves. He immediately added: “Yet do not regard him as an enemy, but rebuke him as a brother.” The dove loves even when it quarrels; the wolf hates even when it fawns. So, having the simplicity of doves and the shrewdness of serpents, celebrate the festivals of the martyrs in sobriety of mind, not in drunkenness of belly; sing praises to God. For he is the Lord our God who is the God of the martyrs; he is our crowner. If we have wrestled well, we are crowned by him who crowned those whom we long to imitate.

The divine words that have been read urge us to not fear by fearing, and to fear by not fearing. You noticed, when the holy Gospel was read, that the Lord our God, before he died for us, wanted us to be firm: by warning us not to fear, and by warning us to fear. For he said: “Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul.” See where he warned us not to fear. See where he warned us to fear: “But fear him,” he says, “who has power to kill both body and soul in Gehenna.” So let us fear, so that we may not fear. Fear seems to belong to cowardice; fear seems to be of the weak, not the strong. But see what Scripture says: “The fear of the Lord is the hope of strength.” Let us fear so as not to fear: that is, let us fear wisely, so as not to fear vainly. The holy martyrs, for whose festival this was read from the Gospel, by fearing did not fear: because by fearing God, they despised men.

For what is a man to fear from men? And what is there by which a man may terrify another man? He terrifies and says, “I will kill you”; and he does not fear that, while he threatens, he may die first. “I will kill,” he says. Who says it? To whom does he say it? I hear two: one terrifying, the other afraid; one is powerful, the other weak, but both mortal. Why, then, does a power more puffed up in honor stretch itself out, when its weakness in the flesh is equal? Let him threaten death securely who does not fear death. But if he fears the thing with which he terrifies, let him consider himself and compare himself with the one he threatens. Let him find in the one he threatens the same condition, and let him ask the Lord for mercy together with him. For he is a man and threatens a man, a creature a creature; but one puffed up under the Creator, the other fleeing to the Creator. Let the bravest martyr say, then, standing as a man before a man: “I do not fear, because I fear. What you threaten, you do not do if he does not will it; but what he threatens, no one prevents him from doing. Then, what you threaten, even if you are permitted, what do you do? You rage as far as the flesh: the soul is safe. You will not kill what you do not see; visible, you terrify the visible. We both have an invisible Creator, whom we ought to fear together; who created man himself from the visible and the invisible: he made the visible from earth; he gave life to the invisible with his breath. So the invisible substance, that is, the soul, which raised the earth lying there from the earth, does not fear when you strike the earth. You can strike the dwelling; can you strike the dweller? When the bond is struck, the one bound together flees, and will be crowned in secret. Why, then, do you threaten, you who can do nothing to the soul? By the merit of that to which you can do nothing, that to which you can do something will rise again. For by the merit of the soul the flesh will rise, and will be given back to its dweller, no longer to fall but to remain. See, I speak the words of a martyr: see, I do not fear the one who threatens even on account of my flesh itself. My flesh lies subject to power; but even the hairs of my head are numbered by the Creator. Why should I fear losing my flesh, who do not lose a hair? How will he not care for my flesh, to whom my lowliest things are so known? This very body, which can be struck and killed, will for a time be ash; it will be immortal for ever.” But for whom? To whom will the body be given back for eternal life, even when killed, destroyed, scattered? To whom will it be given back? To the one who did not fear to lay down his life, since he does not fear that his flesh will be killed.

For, brothers, the soul is said to be immortal, and it is immortal according to a certain manner of its own: because it is a kind of life that can give life to the flesh by its presence. For it is through the soul that the flesh lives. This life cannot die; and so the soul is immortal. Why, then, did I say, “according to its own manner”? Hear why. Because there is a certain true immortality, an immortality which is complete unchangeableness; of which the Apostle speaks, speaking of God: “Who alone has immortality, and dwells in unapproachable light; whom no man has seen, nor can see; to whom be honor and glory for ever and ever. Amen.” If, then, God alone has immortality, surely the soul is mortal. See why I said the soul is immortal according to its own manner. For it can also die. Let your Charity understand, and no question will remain. I dare to say: the soul can die, can be killed. Certainly it is immortal. See, I dare to say both that it is immortal and that it can be killed; and that is why I said that there is a certain immortality, that is, complete unchangeableness, which God alone has, of whom it is said, “Who alone has immortality.” For if the soul cannot be killed, how did the Lord himself say, when he was frightening us, “Fear him who has power to kill both body and soul in Gehenna”?

So far I have confirmed the question, not solved it. I have proved that the soul can be killed. The Gospel cannot be contradicted except by an ungodly soul. See, here something occurs to me and comes to mind to say: life cannot be contradicted except by a dead soul. The Gospel is life; ungodliness and unbelief are the death of the soul. See, it can die, and it is immortal. How, then, is it immortal? Because there is always some life in it which is never extinguished. How does it die? Not by ceasing to be life, but by losing its life. For the soul is both life to something and has its own life too. Notice the order of creatures. The life of the body is the soul; the life of the soul is God. As life, that is, the soul, is present to the body so that the body does not die, so life, that is, God, ought to be present to the soul so that the soul does not die. How does the body die? When the soul leaves it. When the soul leaves, I say, the body dies; and the corpse lies there, a little before desirable, now repulsive. The members are there, the eyes, the ears; but these are windows of the house; the dweller has gone. Whoever mourns the dead cries in vain at the windows of the dwelling: there is no one inside to hear. How much the mourner’s affection says, how much it lists, how much it recalls; and with what madness of grief, so to speak, it talks as if with one who perceives, when it talks with one who is absent! It recounts his ways, recounts the signs of his kindness toward him: “It was you who gave me that; you granted me this and that; it was you who loved me so and so.” If you consider, if you understand, if you check the madness of grief: the one who loved you has gone; in vain the house puts up with your knocking, in which you cannot find a dweller.

Let us return to the matter I was speaking of a little earlier. The body is dead. Why? Because its life has departed, that is, the soul. The body lives, and the man is ungodly, unbelieving, hard to believe, iron against amending his ways: while the body lives, the soul is dead, through which the body lives. For the soul is so great a thing that it is able to give life to the body even when dead. So great a thing, I say, is the soul, so excellent a creature, that it is able even when dead to give life to the flesh. For the soul of the ungodly man, of the unbeliever, of the perverse, of the hard, is dead; and yet through it, dead as it is, the body lives. That is why it is there: it moves the hands to work, the feet to walk; it directs the gaze to see, it bends to the ears to hear; it judges tastes, shrinks from pains, seeks pleasures. All these are signs of a living body, but from the soul’s presence. I ask the body whether it lives. It answers me: “You see me walking, you see me working, you hear me speaking, you see me seeking and shunning, and you do not understand that the body is alive?” By these works of the soul set within, I understand that the body lives. And I ask the soul itself whether it lives. It too has its own works by which to show its life. The feet walk: I understand the body lives, but by the soul’s presence. I ask whether the soul lives. These feet walk. See, about one movement. I question the body and the soul about life. The feet walk: I understand the body lives. But where do they walk? “To adultery,” he says. Then the soul is dead. For so the most truthful Scripture said: “The widow who lives in pleasures is dead.” Since there is a great difference between pleasures and adultery, how can a soul that is said to be dead in pleasures live in adultery? It is dead. But even without acting so it is dead. I hear someone speaking: the body lives. For the tongue would not move in the mouth and strike out articulate sounds in their places unless a dweller were within, and like a musician at this instrument, using his tongue. I understand completely. In this way the body speaks; the body lives. But I ask whether the soul lives too. See, the body speaks, it lives. What does it speak? As I said of the feet, “They walk, see, the body lives,” and I asked, “Where do they walk?”, so as to understand whether the soul too lived: so also, when I hear someone speaking, I understand that the body lives; I ask what it speaks, whether the soul too lives. It speaks a lie. If it speaks a lie, then it is dead. How do we prove this? Let us ask the Truth itself, which says: “The mouth that lies kills the soul.” I ask, why is the soul dead? As I said a little earlier, I ask, why is the body dead? Because its life, the soul, has departed. Why is the soul dead? Because its life, God, has abandoned it.

Having learned these things briefly, then, know and hold for certain that the body is dead without the soul, the soul dead without God. Every man without God has a dead soul. You mourn the dead: mourn the sinner more, mourn the ungodly, mourn the unbeliever. It is written: “Mourning for the dead, seven days; but for the fool and the ungodly, all the days of their life.” Are there not in you the bowels of Christian compassion, so that you mourn a body from which the soul has departed and do not mourn a soul from which God has departed? Holding to this, let the martyr answer the one who threatens: “Why do you force me to deny Christ? Do you, then, force me to deny the truth? If I refuse, what do you do? You strike my body so that my soul may depart from it; but my soul itself has its body for itself. It is not imprudent; it is not foolish. You want to strike my body: do you want that, while I fear that you may strike my body and my soul depart from it, I should strike my soul and my God depart from it?” So do not fear, martyr, the executioner’s sword: fear your own tongue, lest you strike yourself and kill not your flesh but your soul. Fear for your soul, lest it die in the Gehenna of fire.

Hence, then, the Lord says, “Who has power to kill both body and soul in the Gehenna of fire.” How? When the ungodly is sent into Gehenna, will the body burn there, and the soul there? The death of the body is everlasting punishment; the death of the soul is the absence of God. Do you want to know what the death of the soul is? Understand the prophet saying: “Let the ungodly be taken away, so that he may not see the glory of the Lord.” So let the soul fear its own death, and not fear the death of its body. For if it fears its own death and lives in its God, not offending him and driving him away from itself, it will deserve at the end to receive back its body: not for eternal punishment, like the ungodly, but for eternal life, like the just. Fearing that death and loving that life, waiting for God’s promises and despising the threats of persecutors, the martyrs both deserved to be crowned with God and left us those festivals to celebrate.

The reading of the holy Gospel has set before us a question about John the Baptist. May the Lord help us to resolve it for you, as he has resolved it for us. John was praised by Christ’s testimony, as you have heard; and praised in such a way that among those born of women none had arisen greater. But he who was born of the Virgin was greater than he. How much greater? Let the herald himself say how great the difference is between himself and his judge, whose herald he is. For John went before Christ both in being born and in preaching; but he went before him by serving, not by setting himself above him. For the whole retinue of officials walks before the judge; and those who walk in front are the ones who rank behind. How great a testimony, then, did John bear to Christ? So great that he said he was not worthy to untie the strap of his sandal. What more? “We,” he said, “have received from his fullness.” He confessed himself a lamp lit from him, and so he took refuge at his feet, lest by reaching for the heights he should be blown out by the wind of pride. For he was so great that he was thought to be the Christ; and if he himself had not borne witness that he was not, the error would have remained and he would have been thought to be the Christ. How humble was he? Honor was offered him by the people, and he refused it. People went astray over his greatness, and he humbled himself. He did not want to grow great by the words of men, because he had grasped the Word of God.

This, then, is what John said of Christ. What did Christ say of John? We have just heard: he began to speak to the crowds about John: “What did you go out into the wilderness to see? A reed shaken by the wind?” Surely not, for John was not blown about by every wind of doctrine. “But what did you go out to see? A man clothed in soft garments?” No, for John was clothed in a rough garment: he had clothing of camel’s hair, not of down. “But what did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, and more than a prophet.” Why more than a prophet? The prophets foretold the Lord who was to come, whom they longed to see and did not see; but to him was granted what they sought. John saw the Lord, he saw him; he pointed his finger at him and said, “Behold the Lamb of God, behold him who takes away the sins of the world”: behold, here he is. He had already come, and he was not recognized; and so people were mistaken even about John himself. Behold, here is he whom the patriarchs longed to see, whom the prophets foretold, whom the law prefigured. “Behold the Lamb of God, behold him who takes away the sins of the world.” And he bore good testimony to the Lord, and the Lord to him: “Among those born of women,” said the Lord, “none has arisen greater than John the Baptist; but he who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he”: less in time, greater in majesty. He said this meaning himself to be understood. John is very great among men, he than whom, among men, Christ alone is greater. It can also be divided and resolved in another way: “Among those born of women none has arisen greater than John the Baptist; but he who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he”: not in the way I said a little before. “But he who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he”: by the kingdom of heaven he meant the place where the angels are; whoever, then, is least among the angels is greater than John. He commended to us a kingdom to desire; he set before us a city whose citizens we should long to be. What kind of citizens are there? How great the citizens are! Whoever is least there is greater than John. Than which John? Than him than whom none greater has arisen among those born of women.

We have heard the true and good testimony both of John about Christ and of Christ about John. What then does it mean that John, when he was shut up in prison and about to be put to death, sent his disciples to him and said to his disciples: “Go, say to him: Are you the one who is to come, or do we look for another?” Is that the whole of his praise? Has that praise become doubt? What are you saying, John? To whom are you saying it? What are you saying? You speak to the Judge, you, the herald. You pointed your finger, you showed him; you said, “Behold the Lamb of God, behold him who takes away the sins of the world.” You said, “We have all received from his fullness”; you said, “I am not worthy to untie the strap of his sandal.” And now you say, “Are you the one who comes, or do we look for another?” Is he not the very one? Who are you? Are you not his forerunner? Are you not the one of whom it was foretold, “Behold, I send my messenger before your face, and he will prepare your way”? How do you prepare the way, and yourself go astray? So John’s disciples came; and the Lord said to them, “Go, tell John: the blind see, the deaf hear, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the poor have the gospel preached to them; and blessed is he who is not offended in me.” Do not suspect that John was offended in Christ. And yet the words do sound that way: “Are you the one who comes?” Ask the works: “The blind see, the deaf hear, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the dead rise, the poor have the gospel preached to them”; and you ask whether it is I? My works, he says, are my words. “Go, report back.” “And as they were going away”: lest anyone should say, “John was good at first, and the Spirit of God deserted him; that is why he said these things,” it was after their departure, after the departure of those whom John had sent, that Christ praised John. What then does this obscure question mean? Let the sun shine, from which that lamp was lit. Then the solution is plainly a solution. John had disciples of his own: not separated from Christ, but a witness made ready. For it was fitting that one who was himself also gathering disciples should bear such testimony to Christ, one who could have envied him if he had not been able to see him. So, because John’s disciples held their master John in high regard, they heard John’s testimony about Christ and marveled; and as he was about to die, he wanted them to be confirmed by Christ. For no doubt they were saying among themselves: “This man says such great things about him, and says no such things about himself.” “Go, say to him”: not because I doubt, but that you may be instructed. “Go, say to him”: what I am accustomed to say, hear from him; you have heard the herald, be confirmed by the judge. “Go, say to him: Are you the one who comes, or do we look for another?” They went and said it, for their own sake, not for John’s. And for their sake Christ said, “The blind see, the lame walk, the deaf hear, the lepers are cleansed, the dead rise, the poor have the gospel preached to them.” You see me: recognize me; you see the deeds: recognize the doer. “And blessed is he who is not offended in me.” But I say this of you, not of John. For, that we might know he did not say it of John: “As they were going away, he began to speak to the crowds about John”: he, the truthful one, the Truth, spoke true praises of him.

I think this question has been sufficiently resolved. Let it suffice, then, to have brought the sermon as far as its solution. Keep the poor in mind: you who have not yet done so, do it; believe that you do not lose it; rather, the only thing you lose is what you do not bring to the chariot races. Now what has been offered by those of you who have offered must be paid out to the poor; and we have much less in the total than you usually offer: shake off your sloth. I have become a beggar for beggars: what is that to me? Let me be a beggar for beggars, so that you may be counted among the number of sons.

When the holy Gospel was read, we heard that the Lord Jesus exulted in the Spirit and said: “I confess to you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and prudent and revealed them to little ones.” Thus far, for now, the Lord’s words. If we consider them worthily, carefully, and, what comes first, devoutly, we find first of all that we ought not always to understand the voice of a sinner when we read “confession” in the Scriptures. This especially had to be said, and your Charity reminded of it here, because as soon as this word sounded in the mouth of the reader, the sound of your beating your breasts followed, when you heard, that is, the Lord say, “I confess to you, Father.” At the very sound of “I confess” you beat your breasts. And what is beating the breast but rebuking what lies hidden in the breast, and chastising hidden sin with a visible blow? Why did you do this, except that you heard, “I confess to you, Father”? You heard “I confess”; you did not notice who was confessing. Now, then, pay attention. If Christ said “I confess,” he from whom all sin is far away, confession belongs not only to the sinner but sometimes also to one who praises. So we confess, whether praising God or accusing ourselves. Both kinds of confession are godly: when you reproach yourself, who are not without sin, or when you praise him who cannot have sin.

But if we think rightly, your reproach becomes his praise. For why do you now confess in accusing your sin? In accusing yourself, why do you confess, except that from being dead you have been made alive? For Scripture says: “From the dead, as from one who is not, confession perishes.” If confession perishes from the dead, he who confesses is alive; and if he confesses sin, he has certainly come back to life from death. If the one who confesses sin has come back to life from death, who raised him? No dead man raises himself. He alone could raise himself who, when his flesh was dead, was not dead. For he raised what had been dead. He raised himself who was alive in himself but was dead in his flesh that was to be raised. For not only did the Father raise the Son, of whom it was said by the Apostle, “Therefore God also exalted him,” but the Lord also raised himself, that is, his body; hence he says, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” But the sinner is dead, above all the one whom the weight of habit presses down, as Lazarus was buried. For it was not enough that he was dead; he was also buried. Whoever, then, is pressed by the weight of bad habit, of a bad life, that is, of earthly desires, so that what is lamentably said in a certain psalm has already come true in him, “The fool has said in his heart, There is no God,” becomes such a one as it is said of: “From the dead, as from one who is not, confession perishes.” Who will raise him, but he who, when the stone was removed, cried out, saying, “Lazarus, come forth”? What is it to come forth, but to bring out what was hidden? He who confesses comes forth. He could not come forth unless he were alive; he could not be alive unless he had been raised. So in confession the accusation of oneself is the praise of God.

So someone says: What use is the Church, if the one who confesses, raised by the Lord’s voice, already comes forth? What use is the Church to the one confessing, the Church to which the Lord says, “Whatever you loose on earth will be loosed also in heaven”? Look at Lazarus himself: he comes forth with his bonds. He was already alive by confessing; but he did not yet walk free, entangled in bonds. What then does the Church do, to which it was said, “Whatever you loose will be loosed,” except what the Lord said at once to the disciples: “Loose him, and let him go”?

Whether, then, we accuse ourselves or praise God, either way we praise God. If we accuse ourselves devoutly, we certainly praise God. When we praise God, we proclaim him as one who is without sin; when we accuse ourselves, we give glory to him through whom we have risen. If you do this, the enemy finds no occasion to entrap you before the judge. For when you yourself are the accuser and the Lord the deliverer, what will he be but a false accuser? Rightly, then, has such a one provided himself with protection against enemies: not visible ones, flesh and blood, which are to be pitied rather than guarded against, but those enemies against whom the Apostle urges us to arm ourselves: “Our struggle is not against flesh and blood”: that is, against men whom you see raging against you. They are vessels; another uses them. They are instruments; another plays them. “The devil,” it says, “put it into the heart of Judas to betray the Lord.” Someone says: “What then did I do?” Hear the Apostle: “Do not give place to the devil.” By a bad will you gave him place: he entered, took possession, and uses you. If you had not given him place, he would not possess you.

So, admonishing us, he says: “Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers.” Someone might think: against the kings of the earth, against the powers of this world. Why? Are they not flesh and blood? It has been said once for all: not against flesh and blood. Turn away from every human being. What enemies remain, then? “Against the principalities and powers of spiritual wickedness, the rulers of the world.” It seems as though he gave more to the devil and his angels. He did give more: he called them rulers of the world. But lest you understand it wrongly, he explains what the world is of which they are rulers: “Rulers of the world of this darkness.” What is “of the world of this darkness”? The world is full of those whose ruler he is, his lovers and the unbelieving. These the Apostle calls darkness. Their rulers are the devil and his angels. This darkness is not darkness by nature, not unchangeable: they are changed and become light; they believe, and by believing are enlightened. When this has happened in them, they will hear: “For you were once darkness, but now light in the Lord.” For when you were darkness, you were not in the Lord; again, when you are light, you are light not in yourself but in the Lord. “For what do you have that you did not receive?” Since, then, the enemies are invisible, they must be overcome invisibly. You conquer a visible enemy by striking; you conquer an invisible one by believing. A man is a visible enemy, and striking is visible too; the devil is an invisible enemy, and believing is invisible too. So there is an invisible fight against invisible enemies.

How does a certain man say that he is safe from these enemies? For I had begun to speak of this, and I had to treat these enemies at some length. Now that the enemies are known, let us see the protection. “Praising, I will call upon the Lord, and I shall be safe from my enemies.” You have what you must do. Call upon him praising; but call upon the Lord praising. For if you praise yourself, you will not be safe from your enemies. Praising, call upon the Lord, and you will be safe from your enemies. For what does the Lord himself say? “The sacrifice of praise will glorify me; and there is the way where I will show him my salvation.” Where is the way? In the sacrifice of praise. Do not set your foot outside this way. Be on the way; do not withdraw from the way; from the praise of the Lord not a nail’s breadth, let alone a foot. For if you want to stray from this way and praise yourself instead of the Lord, you will not be safe from those enemies; for of them it is said, “Beside the path they have set stumbling blocks for me.” Whatever good, then, you have thought you have from yourself, you have strayed from the praise of God. Why are you surprised now if the enemy leads you astray, when you are your own seducer? Hear the Apostle: “For whoever thinks himself something, when he is nothing, deceives himself.”

Pay attention, then, to the Lord confessing: “I confess to you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth.” I confess to you: I praise you. I praise you; I do not accuse myself. But as regards the taking up of the man himself, it is all grace, singular grace, perfect grace. What did that man who is Christ deserve, if you take away grace, and such great grace, by which there had to be one Christ, and he the one we know? Take away this grace: what is Christ but a man? What but what you are? He took up a soul, he took up a body, he took up a complete man; he joins him to himself; the Lord makes one person with the servant. How great is this grace! Christ in heaven, Christ on earth; Christ at once in heaven and on earth; not two Christs, but the same Christ in heaven and on earth. Christ with the Father, Christ in the Virgin’s womb; Christ on the cross, Christ among those below, coming to the aid of some; and on that same day Christ in paradise with the confessing thief. And what did the thief deserve there, except that he held to that way where he showed his salvation? From that way let your foot not go out. For in accusing himself he praised God and made his own life blessed. He did indeed presume on the Lord and said to him, “Lord, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” For he was considering his crimes, and he counted it a great thing if he were spared even at the end. But the Lord at once, when he said, “Remember me”—but when? “when you come into your kingdom”—said, “Amen, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise.” Mercy offered what misery had put off.

Hear, then, the Lord confessing: “I confess to you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth.” What do I confess? In what do I praise you? For this confession, as I said, contains praise. “Because you have hidden these things from the wise and prudent and revealed them to little ones.” What is this, brothers? Understand it from its opposite. “You have hidden these things,” he says, “from the wise and prudent”; and he did not say, “You have revealed them to the foolish and imprudent,” but, “You have hidden them indeed from the wise and prudent, and revealed them to little ones.” To the wise and prudent, who are to be laughed at, the arrogant, falsely great but truly swollen, he opposed not the unwise, not the imprudent, but little ones. Who are the little ones? The humble. So, “You have hidden these things from the wise and prudent.” He himself explained that by the name of the wise and prudent the proud are to be understood, when he said, “You have revealed them to little ones.” So “you have hidden them” from those who are not little ones. What is “not little ones”? Not humble. What is “not humble” but proud? O way of the Lord! Either it did not exist, or it lay hidden, so that it might be revealed to us. Why did the Lord exult? Because it was revealed to little ones. We must be little ones; for if we want to be great, as if wise and prudent, it is not revealed to us. Who are the great? The wise and prudent. “Claiming to be wise, they became fools.” You have the remedy from the opposite. If by calling yourself wise you have become a fool, call yourself a fool, and you will be wise. But say it; say it, and say it inwardly, because it is as you say. If you say it, do not say it before men and fail to say it before God. Truly, as far as concerns yourself, as far as concerns what is yours, you are darkness. For what else is it to be foolish than to be darkened in heart? Finally, of them he says this: “Claiming to be wise, they became fools.” Before they said this, what came first? “And their foolish heart was darkened.” Say that you are not a light to yourself. At most you are an eye; you are not the light. What use is an open and healthy eye, if light is lacking? So say that you are not a light to yourself from yourself, and cry out what is written: “You will light my lamp, O Lord; with your light, Lord, you will enlighten my darkness.” For of mine I have nothing but darkness; but you are the light that puts darkness to flight and enlightens me: I am not a light to myself from myself, but I share in light only in you.

So John too, the friend of the bridegroom, was thought to be the Christ, was thought to be the light. He was not the light, but came to bear witness about the light. What was the light? It was the true light. What is “true”? That which enlightens every man. If the true light is that which enlightens every man, then it enlightened John too, who rightly said, rightly confessed, “We have received from his fullness.” See whether he said anything other than, “You will light my lamp, O Lord.” Then, once enlightened, he bore witness. For the sake of the blind, the lamp bore witness to the day. See that he is a lamp: “You,” he says, “sent to John, and you were willing to rejoice for an hour in his light: he was a burning and shining lamp.” He was a lamp, that is, a thing enlightened, lit so that it might shine. What can be lit can also be put out. But that it may not be put out, let it not expose itself to the wind of pride. So: “I confess to you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and prudent,” who thought themselves light and were darkness; and because they were darkness and thought themselves light, they could not be enlightened. But those who were darkness and confessed that they were darkness were little ones, not great; humble, not proud. Rightly, then, did they say, “You will light my lamp, O Lord.” They recognized themselves, they praised the Lord, they did not withdraw from the way of salvation. Praising, they called upon the Lord, and they were safe from their enemies.

Turning to the Lord God, the Father almighty, with a pure heart, let us give him, as far as our littleness is able, the greatest and most abundant thanks; praying with all our soul to his singular kindness that he may deign to hear our prayers in his good pleasure, drive out the enemy from our actions and thoughts by his power, increase our faith, govern our mind, grant us spiritual thoughts, and bring us to his blessedness, through Jesus Christ his Son. Amen.

We have heard the Son of God saying, “I confess to you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth.” What does he confess to him? In what does he praise him? “Because,” he says, “you have hidden these things from the wise and prudent and revealed them to little ones.” Who are the wise and prudent? Who are the little ones? What did he hide from the wise and prudent and reveal to little ones? By the wise and prudent he means those of whom Paul says: “Where is the wise man? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?” Perhaps you still ask who these are. Perhaps they are those who, disputing much about God, said false things; puffed up by their own teachings, they were quite unable to find and know God, and in place of God, whose substance is incomprehensible and invisible, they thought that God was the air, the ether; that God was the sun; that God was something that stands out on high in creation. For attending to the greatness and beauty and strength of creatures, they stopped there; they did not find the Creator.

The book of Wisdom refutes them, where it is said: “For if they were able to know so much that they could assess the world, how did they not more easily find its Lord?” They are accused who spend their time and the labor of their disputations searching out and in a way measuring creation: they investigated the courses of the constellations, the intervals of the stars, the paths of the heavenly bodies, so that by certain calculations they came to such knowledge that they predicted eclipses of the sun and of the moon; and what they predicted came to pass, on that day and at that hour, as much and in as large a part as they had predicted. Great industry, great skill. But there they searched for the Creator, who is placed not far from them, and did not find him. Had they found him, they would have had him with them. Very well, then, and very rightly are they accused who were able to investigate the numbers of the stars and the intervals of times, to know and predict the eclipses of the lights: rightly accused, because they did not find him by whom these things were made and ordered, because they neglected to seek him. But you, do not worry much if you do not know the circuits of the stars and the numbers of heavenly or earthly bodies. See the beauty of the world, and praise the Creator’s design. See what he made; love him who made it: hold to this above all. Love him who made it, because he also made you, his lover, in his own image.

If, then, it is a wonder that the things of which Christ said, “You have hidden these things from the wise and prudent,” were hidden from such wise men, busy with creatures, who were willing to seek the Creator only carelessly and could not find him, it is more wonderful that wise and prudent men were found who were even able to know him. “For the wrath of God,” he says, “is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who hold back the truth in unrighteousness.” Perhaps you ask what truth they hold back in unrighteousness? “Because what is known of God is manifest in them.” How is it manifest? He goes on and says: “For God has manifested it to them.” Do you still ask how he manifested it to those to whom he did not give the law? How, then? “For his invisible things, from the creation of the world, are clearly seen, being understood through the things that are made.” There were some, then—not like Moses the servant of God, not like the many prophets who beheld and understood these things, helped by the Spirit of God, the Spirit whom they drew in by faith, drank with the throat of godliness, and poured forth again with the mouth of the inner man. Not men like these, then; but there were others, unlike them, who through this creation were able to come to understand the Creator and to say of the things God made: “See what he made; he governs it and holds it together; he himself who made it fills with his presence the things he made.” They were able to say this. For Paul mentioned them too in the Acts of the Apostles, where, having said of God, “For in him we live and move and are,” since he was speaking among the Athenians, where these very learned men had arisen, he added at once, “As also some of your own have said.” What they said is no small thing: “That in God we live and move and are.”

Why, then, were they unlike the others? Why blamed? Why rightly accused? Hear the words of the Apostle which I had begun to quote: “The wrath of God,” he says, “is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness”—that is, even of those who did not receive the law—“against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who hold back the truth in unrighteousness.” What truth? “Because what is known of God is manifest in them.” Who made it manifest? “For God manifested it to them.” How did he manifest it? “For his invisible things, from the creation of the world, are clearly seen, being understood through the things that are made, his eternal power also and divinity.” Why did he manifest it? “So that they are without excuse.” If he manifested it so that they would be without excuse, why then are they culpable? “Because, knowing God, they did not glorify him as God.”

What is it that you say, “They did not glorify him as God”? “Nor did they give thanks.” Is this, then, to glorify God: to give thanks to God? Certainly. For what is worse than if you, created in his image, having come to know God, are ungrateful? This is exactly it, this: to glorify God is to give thanks to God. The faithful know where and when it is said, “Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.” But who gives thanks to God except one who lifts up his heart to the Lord? So they are culpable who are without excuse, because “knowing God, they did not glorify him as God, nor did they give thanks.” But what? “But they became vain in their thoughts.” Why did they become vain, unless because they were proud? Smoke too vanishes by rising high, while fire shines more and grows stronger by taking hold lower down. “They became vain in their thoughts, and their foolish heart was darkened.” Even smoke, though it is higher than the fire, is dark.

Finally, notice what follows, and see on what the whole case hangs: “For claiming to be wise, they became fools.” By claiming for themselves what God had granted, they lost what God had given. So he hid himself from the proud, he who through creation had made himself known only to those who diligently searched for the Creator. Rightly, then, did the Lord say, “You have hidden these things from the wise and prudent”: whether from those who by many disputations and most skillful inquiry arrived at the investigation of creation but did not know the Creator at all, or from those who, knowing God, did not glorify him as God and give thanks, and could not see perfectly or to their salvation, because they were proud. “You have hidden these things,” then, “from the wise and prudent, and revealed them to little ones.” To which little ones? To the humble. Say, upon whom does my Spirit rest? “Upon the humble and quiet one who trembles at my words.” Peter trembled at these words; Plato did not tremble. Let the fisherman hold what the most noble debater lost. “You have hidden these things from the wise and prudent and revealed them to little ones”: you have hidden them from the proud and revealed them to the humble. What are these things? For when he said this, he was not looking at heaven and earth and, as it were, pointing to them with his hand when he said “these things.” For who does not see these? The good see them, the bad see them; for he makes his sun rise on the good and the bad. What, then, are these things? “All things have been delivered to me by my Father.”

We heard in the Gospel that the Lord, gladdened in spirit, said to God the Father: “I confess to you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and prudent and revealed them to little ones. Yes, Father, for so it was pleasing in your sight. All things have been delivered to me by my Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father, nor does anyone know the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.” We labor in crying out; you labor in listening. Let us hear, then, him who continues and says: “Come to me, all you who labor.” For why do we all labor, except that we are mortal men, fragile, weak, carrying vessels of clay that cramp one another? But if the vessels of flesh are cramped, let the spaces of love be widened. Why, then, does he say, “Come to me, all you who labor,” except that you may not labor? Finally, his promise is ready to hand: since he called those who labor, they might perhaps ask for what reward they were called: “And I,” he says, “will refresh you.”

“Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me”: not to build the world, not to create all things visible and invisible, not to work miracles in that world and raise the dead; but “that I am meek and humble of heart.” Do you want to be great? Begin from the least. Are you planning to build a great structure of height? Think first of the foundation of humility. However great a mass of building anyone wants and plans to set on top, the greater the building will be, the deeper he digs the foundation. And while the building is being constructed it rises upward; but he who digs the foundation goes down to the depths. So the building is humbled before it rises high, and the summit is raised after the humbling.

What is the summit of the building we are laboring to construct? How far will the top of the building reach? I say it at once: to the sight of God. You see how lofty, how great a thing it is to behold God. Whoever longs for it understands both what I say and what he hears. The sight of God is promised to us, of the true God, the most high God. For this is the good: to see the One who sees. Those who worship false gods see them easily; but they see gods that have eyes and do not see. To us, however, is promised the vision of the living and seeing God, that we may long to see that God of whom Scripture says: “He who planted the ear, will he not hear? He who formed the eye, does he not consider?” Does he who made for you that by which you hear not hear? And does he who created that by which you see not see? Well does he say earlier in the same psalm, “Understand, then, you who are unwise among the people; and you fools, be wise at last.” For many do evil precisely because they think they are not seen by God. It is hard, indeed, for them to believe that he cannot see; but they think he does not wish to. Few are found of such ungodliness that what is written is fulfilled in them: “The fool has said in his heart, There is no God.” That madness belongs to few. For as great godliness belongs to few, so great ungodliness likewise belongs to few. But what I am about to say the crowd says: “Look, is God thinking about this now, to know what I am doing in my house? Does God care what I want to do in my bed?” Who says this? “Understand, you who are unwise among the people; and you fools, be wise at last.” Because you, being a man, would labor to know everything in your house and to have every word and every deed of your servants reach you, do you think that God labors in the same way to attend to you, he who did not labor to create you? Does he not turn his eye upon you, he who made yours? You were not, and he created you so that you might be: does he not care for you now that you are, he who calls the things that are not as though they were? Do not promise yourself this, then. Whether you will or not, he sees you; and there is nowhere you can hide from his eyes. For if you ascend into heaven, he is there; if you descend into hell, he is present. You labor, unwilling to withdraw from evil deeds and wanting not to be seen by God. Great labor! You want to do evil every day, and you suppose you are not seen? Hear Scripture saying: “He who planted the ear, will he not hear? He who formed the eye, does he not consider?” Where do you hide your evil deeds from the eyes of God? If you will not withdraw from them, you labor much.

Hear him saying, “Come to me, all you who labor.” You do not end your labor by fleeing. Do you choose to flee from him, and not to him? Find somewhere to go, and flee. But if you cannot flee from him because he is present everywhere, flee—it is close at hand—to God, who is present where you stand. Flee. See, in fleeing you have gone beyond the heavens: he is there; you have gone down to the underworld: he is there; whatever wildernesses of the earth you choose, he is there who said, “I fill heaven and earth.” If, then, he himself fills heaven and earth, and there is nowhere to flee from him, do not labor: flee to him who is present, lest you feel him coming. Be confident that by living well you will see him by whom you are seen even when living badly. For by living badly you can be seen but cannot see; but by living well you are both seen and see. For how much more familiarly will he who crowns the worthy look upon you, he who mercifully looked upon you in order to call you when you were unworthy? Nathanael said to the Lord, whom he did not yet know: “How do you know me?” The Lord said to him: “When you were under the fig tree, I saw you.” Christ sees you in your shade: will he not see you in his light? For what is “When you were under the fig tree, I saw you”? What does it mean? What does it signify? Remember the original sin of Adam, in whom we all die. When he first sinned, he made himself girdles of fig leaves, signifying by those leaves the itch of lust to which he came by sinning. From there we are born; thus are we born; we are born in the flesh of sin, which only the likeness of the flesh of sin heals. That is why God sent his Son in the likeness of the flesh of sin. He came from there, but he did not come in that way. For the virgin conceived not by lust but by faith. He came into the virgin who was before the virgin. He chose her whom he created; he created her whom he would choose. He brought fruitfulness to the virgin; he did not take away her integrity. So he who came to you without the itch of the fig leaves saw you when you were under the fig tree. Prepare yourself to see on high him by whom you were seen in mercy. But because the summit is great, think of the foundation. “What foundation?” you say. Learn from him, for he is meek and humble of heart. Dig this foundation of humility in yourself, and you will reach the summit of love. Turning to the Lord, etc.

It seems strange to some, my brothers, when they hear the Lord saying, “Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will refresh you. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me that I am meek and humble of heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is gentle and my burden light”; and they consider that those who have bowed their necks to that yoke without fear and taken that burden on most gentle shoulders are tossed about and exercised by such great difficulties of this world that they seem to have been called not from labors to rest but from rest to labor; since the Apostle too says, “All who want to live godly in Christ will suffer persecution.” So someone says: How is the yoke gentle and the burden light, since to bear that yoke and burden is nothing other than to live godly in Christ? And how is it said, “Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will refresh you,” and not rather, “Come, you who are idle, that you may labor”? For he also found idle men whom he hired into the vineyard to bear the heat of the day. And under that gentle yoke and light burden we hear the Apostle say: “In all things commending ourselves as ministers of God, in much patience, in tribulations, in necessities, in distresses, in beatings,” and so on. And in another place in the same epistle: “From the Jews five times I received forty lashes less one. Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned, three times I was shipwrecked, a night and a day I was in the depth of the sea”; and the other dangers, which can indeed be counted, but cannot be endured except with the help of the Holy Spirit.

All those harsh and heavy things that he mentioned he endured quite often and abundantly; but surely the Holy Spirit was with him, who, in the decay of the outer man, renewed the inner man day by day, and, giving him a taste of spiritual rest in the abundance of God’s delights, softened all present hardships in the hope of future blessedness and lightened every burden. See how sweet a yoke of Christ he bore, and how light a burden: so that all those things listed above, hard and monstrous, at which every hearer shudders, he called a light tribulation, seeing with inner and faithful eyes at what price in temporal things the future life is to be bought: not to suffer the eternal labors of the ungodly, and to enjoy without any anxiety the eternal happiness of the righteous. People let themselves be cut and burned so that pains, not eternal but those of a somewhat longer-lasting ulcer, may be bought off at the price of sharper pains. For a feeble and uncertain leisure, very brief and at the end of life, the soldier is worn down in the most savage wars, perhaps restless in labors for more years than he will rest in leisure. With what storms and tempests, with what horrible and dreadful savagery of sky and sea do merchants contend, to acquire windy riches, full of greater dangers and storms than those by which they were acquired! What heat, what cold, what dangers from horses, from ditches, from cliffs, from rivers, from wild beasts do hunters endure! What labor of hunger and thirst, what straits of the cheapest and filthiest food and drink, to catch a beast! And sometimes not even the flesh of the beast for which they endure all this is needed for their tables. Though even when a boar or a stag is caught, it is sweeter to the hunter’s mind because it has been caught than to the eater’s palate because it has been cooked. To what torments of almost daily beatings is the tender age of boys subjected! With what troubles of sleepless nights and abstinence are they exercised even in the schools, not to learn wisdom, but for the riches and honors of vanity, so that they may learn arithmetic, letters, and eloquent deceits!

But in all these things, those who do not love them suffer the same things as heavy; but those who love them suffer the same things, yet seem not to suffer them as heavy. For love makes all savage and monstrous things wholly easy and almost nothing. How much more surely and easily, then, does charity do for true blessedness what desire did, as far as it could, for misery? How easily is any temporal adversity borne in order that eternal punishment may be avoided and eternal rest obtained? Not without reason did that vessel of election say with great joy: “The sufferings of this time are not worthy to be compared with the glory to come that will be revealed in us.” See why that yoke is sweet and the burden light. And if it is narrow for the few who choose it, yet it is easy for all who love it. The psalmist says: “Because of the words of your lips I have kept hard ways.” But what is hard to those who labor becomes soft to the same people when they love. For this reason it was so arranged by the dispensation of divine goodness that, for the inner man who is renewed day by day, no longer placed under the law but under grace, freed from the burdens of countless observances—which was truly a heavy yoke, but fittingly laid on a hard neck—whatever troubles that prince who was cast out might bring on the outer man from outside should become light through inner joy, by the ease of simple faith and good hope and holy love. For nothing is so easy to a good will as itself; and this suffices to God. However much this world may rage, then, the angels most truly cried out when the Lord was born in the flesh, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men of good will”: because the yoke of him who was born is sweet and his burden light. And as the Apostle says, “God is faithful, who does not let us be tempted beyond what we can bear, but with the temptation also makes a way out, so that we can endure.”

A great question has been set before us by the Gospel reading just heard, and, as far as we ourselves are concerned, we are unequal to solving it; but our sufficiency is from God, insofar as we can receive or grasp his help. First, then, notice the greatness of the question, so that when you see its weight laid on our shoulders, you may pray for our labors, and in the help that is given us you may find edification for your minds. When one who had a demon, blind and mute, had been brought to the Lord, and he had healed him so that he spoke and saw, and all the crowds were amazed and said, “Is this not the son of David?”, the Pharisees, hearing it, said: “This man casts out demons only by Beelzebub, the prince of demons.” But Jesus, knowing their thoughts, said to them: “Every kingdom divided against itself will be laid waste; and every city or house divided against itself will not stand. And if Satan casts out Satan, he is divided against himself: how then will his kingdom stand?” In saying this he wanted it understood, from their own confession, that by not believing in him they had chosen to be in the kingdom of the devil, which, being divided against itself, certainly could not stand. Let the Pharisees choose what they like, then. If Satan cannot cast out Satan, they could find nothing to say against the Lord; but if he can, let them look out for themselves all the more and withdraw from his kingdom, which, divided against itself, cannot stand.

But by what power the Lord Christ casts out demons, lest they think it is the prince of demons, let them attend to what follows: “And if I,” he says, “cast out demons by Beelzebub, by whom do your sons cast them out? Therefore they will be your judges.” He said this, surely, of his disciples, the sons of that people, who as disciples of our Lord Jesus Christ were well aware that they had learned no evil arts from their good master, so as to cast out demons by the prince of demons. “Therefore,” he says, “they will be your judges.” They, he says, they, the low and despised things of this world, in whom appears not crafty malice but the holy simplicity of my power, they, my witnesses, will be your judges. Then he adds: “But if I cast out demons by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.” What is this? If I, he says, cast out demons by the Spirit of God, and your sons, to whom I gave not a malicious teaching but simple faith, can cast them out in no other way, then without doubt the kingdom of God has come upon you, by which the kingdom of the devil is overthrown, and you are overthrown with it.

And since he had said, “By whom do your sons cast them out?”, to show that this was his grace in them, not their merit, he says: “Or how can anyone enter the strong man’s house and plunder his goods, unless he first binds the strong man, and then he will plunder his house?” Your sons, he says, who either have believed in me or are yet to believe, and to cast out demons not by the prince of demons but in simple holiness; who certainly either were, or are, what you also are, that is, sinners and ungodly, and therefore in the devil’s house and the devil’s vessels: how could they be rescued from him who held them firmly through prevailing iniquity, unless he were bound with the chains of my righteousness and I snatched away his vessels, which had been vessels of wrath, and made them vessels of mercy? This is what the blessed Apostle too says, rebuking the proud who boast as if of their own merits: “For who distinguishes you?” That is: from the mass of perdition that comes from Adam and from the vessels of wrath, who distinguishes you? And lest anyone should say, “My righteousness,” he says, “For what do you have that you did not receive?” Hence he also says of himself, “For we too were once by nature children of wrath, like the rest.” So he too was a vessel in the house of that evil strong man, when he was a persecutor of the Church, a blasphemer, insolent, living in malice and envy, as he confesses. But he who bound the strong man snatched a vessel of perdition from him and made it a vessel of election.

Then, lest unbelievers and the ungodly who oppose the Christian name should think, because of the various heresies and schisms of those who gather flocks of the lost under the Christian name, that Christ’s kingdom too is divided against itself, he goes on to add: “He who is not with me is against me; and he who does not gather with me scatters.” He does not say, “He who is not under the sound of my name, or under the outward form of my sacrament,” but, “He who is not with me is against me.” Nor does he say, “He who does not gather under the sound of my name,” but, “He who does not gather with me scatters.” So Christ’s kingdom is not divided against itself; but men try to divide what was bought at the price of Christ’s blood. For “the Lord knows those who are his; and let everyone,” it says, “who names the name of the Lord depart from iniquity.” For if he does not depart from iniquity, he does not belong to Christ’s kingdom, even though he names the name of Christ. To mention some things, then, by way of example: the spirit of avarice and the spirit of luxury, since the one hoards and the other squanders, are divided against each other, and both belong to the devil’s kingdom. Among the worshippers of idols, the spirit of Juno and the spirit of Hercules are divided against each other, and both belong to the devil’s kingdom. The pagan enemy of Christ and the Jewish enemy of Christ are divided against each other, and both belong to the devil’s kingdom. The Arian and the Photinian, both heretics, are both divided against each other. The Donatist and the Maximianist, both heretics, are both divided against each other. All the vices and errors of mortals, being contrary to one another, are divided against each other, and all belong to the devil’s kingdom: therefore his kingdom will not stand. But the righteous and the ungodly, the believer and the unbeliever, the Catholic and the heretic, are indeed divided against each other, but they do not both belong to Christ’s kingdom. The Lord knows those who are his. Let no one flatter himself on account of the name. If anyone who calls on the name of the Lord wants the name of the Lord to profit him, let him depart from iniquity.

But these words of the Gospel, though they had something of obscurity, which I think has been explained with the Lord’s help, were not of as great difficulty as what follows appears to be: “Therefore I say to you: every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, but blasphemy of the Spirit will not be forgiven. And whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man, it will be forgiven him; but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit, it will not be forgiven him, neither in this age nor in the age to come.” What, then, will become of those whom the Church longs to win? Is a false hope held out, in the forgiveness of all sins, to those who are corrected and come to her from whatever error? For who is not convicted of having spoken a word against the Holy Spirit before he became a Christian or a Catholic? First, those who are called pagans, worshippers of many false gods and adorers of idols: when they say that the Lord Christ worked miracles by magic arts, are they not like those who said that he cast out demons by the prince of demons? Then, when they daily blaspheme our sanctification, what else do they blaspheme but the Holy Spirit? What of the Jews, who said of the Lord the words from which this discourse arose? Do they not to this day speak a word against the Holy Spirit, denying that he is in Christians just as those denied that he was in Christ? For they did not revile the Holy Spirit either by saying that he does not exist, or that he exists but is not God but a creature, or that he has no power to cast out demons: they said no such unworthy things, nothing like them, about the Holy Spirit. For the Sadducees denied the Holy Spirit, while the Pharisees defended his existence against the heresy of the Sadducees; but they denied that he was in the Lord Jesus Christ, who they thought cast out demons by the prince of demons, when he cast them out by the Holy Spirit. And so both the Jews and all heretics who confess the Holy Spirit, but deny that he is in the body of Christ, which is his one Church, and that certainly none other than the one Catholic Church, are without doubt like the Pharisees, who at that time, even though they confessed that the Holy Spirit exists, nevertheless denied that he was in Christ, whose works in casting out demons they attributed to the prince of demons. I pass over the fact that certain heretics contend that the Holy Spirit himself is not the Creator but a creature, like the Arians, the Eunomians, and the Macedonians; or deny him altogether, by denying that God is a Trinity and asserting that God is only the Father, who is sometimes called the Son and sometimes called the Holy Spirit, like the Sabellians, whom some call Patripassians because they hold that the Father suffered; and since they deny that he has any Son, they without doubt deny that the Holy Spirit exists. The Photinians too, saying that the Father alone is God and the Son only a man, deny altogether that there is a third person, the Holy Spirit.

It is plain, then, that the Holy Spirit is blasphemed by pagans, by Jews, and by heretics. Are they, then, to be abandoned and counted as without any hope, since the sentence stands fixed, “Whoever speaks a word against the Holy Spirit, it will not be forgiven him, neither in this age nor in the age to come”; and are only those to be considered free of the guilt of this gravest sin who have been Catholics from infancy? For all who have believed the word of God so as to become Catholics have certainly come into the grace and peace of Christ either from the pagans, or from the Jews, or from the heretics. If the word they spoke against the Holy Spirit has not been forgiven them, it is in vain that men are promised and preached to that they should turn to God and receive peace and the forgiveness of sins, whether in baptism or in the Church. For it was not said, “It will not be forgiven him, except in baptism,” but, “It will not be forgiven,” he says, “neither in this age nor in the age to come.”

Some think that only those sin against the Holy Spirit who, having been washed in the bath of regeneration in the Church and having received the Holy Spirit, then, as if ungrateful for so great a gift of the Saviour, have plunged themselves into some deadly sin, such as adultery or murder, or departure itself, whether from the Christian name altogether or from the Catholic Church. But I do not know how this view can be proved, since a place for repentance for any crimes whatever is not denied in the Church, and the Apostle says that the heretics themselves are to be corrected for this very purpose: “In case God may perhaps 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.” For what is the fruit of correction without any hope of forgiveness? Finally, the Lord does not say, “Whatever baptized Catholic speaks a word against the Holy Spirit,” but “Whoever speaks,” that is, anyone at all, whoever speaks, “it will not be forgiven him, neither in this age nor in the age to come.” Whether, then, he is a pagan, or a Jew, or a Christian, or a heretic from among the Jews or the Christians, or bears any other name of error, it is not said, “this one or that one,” but, “Whoever speaks a word against the Holy Spirit,” that is, blasphemes the Holy Spirit, “it will not be forgiven him, neither in this age nor in the age to come.” Furthermore, if every error contrary to the truth and hostile to Catholic peace, as we showed above, speaks a word against the Holy Spirit, and yet the Church does not cease to correct and gather out of every error those who are to receive the forgiveness of sins and the very Holy Spirit whom they had blasphemed, I think we have shown how great a secret this so great question holds. Let us, then, seek the light of explanation from the Lord.

Lift up, then, brothers, lift up your ears to me and your minds to the Lord. I tell your Charity: perhaps in all the holy Scriptures no greater, no more difficult question is found. So, to confess something about myself to you, in the sermons I have preached to the people I have always avoided the difficulty and trouble of this question: not because I had nothing at all that I thought about it, for in so great a matter I would not neglect to ask, to seek, to knock; but because I did not think I could do justice, with words that come at the moment, to the understanding that had been somewhat opened to me. But today, hearing the readings on which I was to preach to you, when the Gospel was read, my heart was so knocked upon that I believed God wished you to hear something on this through my ministry.

First, then, so that you may notice and understand, I point out that the Lord did not say, “Every blasphemy of the Spirit will not be forgiven,” nor did he say, “Whoever speaks any word whatever against the Holy Spirit, it will not be forgiven him,” but, “Whoever speaks a word.” For had he said that, nothing at all would remain for us to discuss. For if every blasphemy and every word spoken against the Holy Spirit were not forgiven men, the Church would win no one from any kind of ungodliness among those who contradict the gift of Christ and the sanctification of the Church, whether pagans, or Jews, or any heretics whatever, or even some of the unlearned within the Catholic Church itself. But far be it that the Lord should have said this: far be it, I say, that the Truth should have said that every blasphemy or every word spoken against the Holy Spirit has no forgiveness, neither in this age nor in the age to come.

For he wished to exercise us by the difficulty of the question, not to deceive us by the falsity of the sentence. Therefore it is not necessary for anyone to think that every blasphemy or every word spoken against the Holy Spirit has no forgiveness; but it is plainly necessary that there be some blasphemy and some word which, if spoken against the Holy Spirit, never merits any pardon and forgiveness. For if we take it as “every,” who could be saved? But if, on the other hand, we think there is none, we contradict the Saviour. There is, then, without doubt some blasphemy and some word which, if spoken against the Holy Spirit, will not be forgiven. But what this word is the Lord wished us to ask; that is why he did not state it. He wished it to be sought, I say, not denied. For the Scriptures are accustomed to speak so that, when something is said in a way that is determined neither as of the whole nor as of a part, it is not necessary that, because it could be meant of the whole, it should not also be understood of a part. This sentence, then, would be pronounced of the whole, that is, universally, if it were said, “Every blasphemy of the Spirit will not be forgiven,” or, “Whoever speaks any word whatever against the Holy Spirit, it will not be forgiven him, neither in this age nor in the age to come.” But it would be pronounced of a part, that is, particularly, if it were said, “A certain blasphemy of the Spirit will not be forgiven.” Since, then, the sentence is stated neither universally nor particularly (for it is not said, “Every blasphemy of the Spirit,” or “a certain blasphemy,” but only indefinitely, “Blasphemy of the Spirit will not be forgiven”; nor is it said, “Whoever speaks any word whatever,” or “whoever speaks a certain word,” but indefinitely, “Whoever speaks a word”), it is not necessary for us to understand every blasphemy or every word; but it is plainly necessary that the Lord wished a certain blasphemy and a certain word to be understood, though he did not wish to state it, so that if by asking, seeking, and knocking we receive some right understanding, we may not hold it cheap.

That you may see this more clearly, notice what the same Lord says of the Jews: “If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have sin.” For this was not said in such a way that he wished it understood that the Jews would have been entirely without any sin if he had not come and spoken to them. For he found them full of sins and burdened with them. That is why he says: “Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened.” With what, except the loads of sins and the transgressions of the law? For “the law came in so that offense might abound.” Since, then, he himself also says elsewhere, “I came not to call the righteous but sinners,” how would they not have sin if he had not come, unless because this sentence, pronounced neither universally nor particularly but indefinitely, does not compel us to understand every sin? But plainly, unless we understand some sin that they would not have had if Christ had not come and spoken to them, we would be saying—far be it—that the sentence is false. So he does not say, “If I had not come and spoken to them, they would have no sin,” lest the Truth should lie. Nor again did he say definitely, “If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have a certain sin,” lest godly zeal should be too little exercised. For in all the abundance of the holy Scriptures we are fed by what is plain and exercised by what is obscure: by the one hunger is driven away, by the other distaste. Since, then, it is not said, “They would have no sin,” let us not be troubled when we acknowledge that the Jews were sinners even if the Lord had not come. But yet, because it is said, “If I had not come, they would not have sin,” it necessarily follows that, even if not every sin, they nonetheless contracted from the Lord’s coming some sin that they did not have before. That is surely this: that they did not believe him when he was present and speaking to them, and, regarding him as an enemy because he spoke the truth, they even killed him. This sin, so great and horrible, they would certainly not have had if he had not come and spoken to them. As, then, there, when we hear, “They would not have sin,” we understand not every sin but some sin, so in today’s reading, when we hear, “Blasphemy of the Spirit will not be forgiven,” we ought to understand not every blasphemy but a certain one; and when we hear, “Whoever speaks a word against the Holy Spirit, it will not be forgiven him,” not every word but a certain one.

For this very thing that he says, “But blasphemy of the Spirit will not be forgiven,” we must surely understand of blasphemy not of every spirit but of the Holy Spirit. Even if he did not say this more plainly elsewhere, who would be so senseless as to understand anything else? By this rule of speech this too is taken: “Unless one is reborn of water and the Spirit.” For he does not say there, “and the Holy Spirit”; yet this is understood. Nor, because he said “of water and the Spirit,” is anyone compelled to understand every spirit. So when you hear, “But blasphemy of the Spirit will not be forgiven,” just as you should not take it of every spirit, so you should not take it of every blasphemy of the Spirit.

I see that you now want to hear, since it is not every blasphemy, what that blasphemy of the Spirit is which will not be forgiven; and what the word is, since it is not every word, which, if spoken against the Holy Spirit, will not be forgiven, neither in this age nor in the age to come. I too would like now to say what you are so intently waiting to hear; but bear with some delays for greater care, until, with the Lord’s help, I set out all that occurs to me. For the other two evangelists, Mark and Luke, speaking of this matter, did not say “blasphemy” or “word” so that we might understand not every blasphemy but a certain one, nor every word but a certain one. What, then, did they say? In Mark it is written thus: “Amen I say to you, all sins will be forgiven the sons of men, and the blasphemies with which they blaspheme; but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit has no forgiveness forever, but will be guilty of an eternal offense.” In Luke thus: “Everyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man, it will be forgiven him; but to him who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit it will not be forgiven.” Do we depart from the truth of the same sentence because of some difference of words? For there is no other reason why the evangelists do not say the same things in the same way, except that we may learn from it to put things before words, not words before things, and to seek nothing else in a speaker but his intention, for the conveying of which words are uttered. For what difference does it make whether it is said, “Blasphemy of the Spirit will not be forgiven,” or “Whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit, it will not be forgiven him”? Except perhaps that the same thing is said more plainly in this way than in that, and one evangelist does not destroy another but explains him. “Blasphemy of the Spirit” is said obscurely, because it is not stated whose spirit. For not every spirit is the Holy Spirit. Again, “blasphemy of the spirit” can be said when someone blasphemes with the spirit, as “prayer of the spirit” can be said when someone prays with the spirit. Hence the Apostle says: “I will pray with the spirit, I will pray also with the mind.” But when it is said, “Whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit,” those ambiguities are resolved. Likewise what is written, “He has no forgiveness forever, but will be guilty of an eternal offense”: what is it but what is read in Matthew, “It will not be forgiven him, neither in this age nor in the age to come”? The very same sentence is expressed in other words and another manner of speaking. And what is in Matthew, “Whoever speaks a word against the Holy Spirit,” the others put more plainly, lest we understand anything other than blasphemy: “Whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit.” Yet the same thing was said by all, and none of them departed from the intention of the speaker, for the understanding of which words are spoken, written, read, and heard.

But someone says: “See, I have accepted and understood that when ‘blasphemy’ is said, and it is not stated whether every blasphemy or a certain one, a certain one can be understood, or every one; but it is not necessary that it be every one; yet unless a certain one is understood, what is said is false. So too with ‘word’: if it is not said ‘every’ or ‘a certain,’ it is not necessary that every word be understood; but unless at least a certain word is understood, what is said can in no way be true. But where one reads, ‘Whoever blasphemes,’ how am I to understand a certain blasphemy, where ‘blasphemy’ is not read, or a certain word, where ‘word’ is not read, but it seems to be said generally, as it were, ‘Whoever blasphemes’?” To this objection we answer thus: here too, if it were said, “Whoever blasphemes with any blasphemy whatever against the Holy Spirit,” there would be no reason to think we should look for some particular blasphemy, since we would have to understand every one. But since every one cannot be understood, lest the hope of forgiveness, if they correct themselves, be taken away from pagans, Jews, heretics, and every kind of men who by their various errors and contradictions blaspheme against the Holy Spirit, it certainly remains that in what is written, “Whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit has no forgiveness forever,” that man is to be understood who has blasphemed not in any way whatever but in such a way that he can never be pardoned.

For just as, in the saying “God tempts no one,” it must be understood that God tempts no one not with every kind of temptation but with a certain kind—lest what is written be false, “The Lord your God tempts you”; and lest we deny that Christ is God, or call the Gospel false, where we read that he questioned a disciple, testing him, “but he himself knew what he would do”—for there is a temptation that leads to sin, by which God tempts no one, and there is a temptation that proves faith, by which God too deigns to tempt: so when we hear, “Whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit,” we ought not to take it of every kind of blaspheming, just as there we do not take it of every kind of tempting.

Likewise, when we hear, “Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved,” we certainly do not understand one who believes in the way the demons also believe and tremble, nor the baptized in the number in which Simon the magician could be baptized but could not be saved. As, then, when he said, “Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved,” he had in view not all who believe and are baptized but certain ones, namely those established in that faith which, by the Apostle’s distinction, works through love: so when he said, “Whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit has no forgiveness forever,” he meant not every guilt of one who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit, but a certain guilt, by which whoever is bound will never be released by any forgiveness.

And that saying of his, “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him”: how are we to understand it? Can we include here even those of whom the Apostle says that they eat and drink judgment to themselves, though they eat that very flesh and drink that very blood? Did Judas too, the wicked seller and betrayer of his master, abide in Christ, or Christ in him, though, as the evangelist Luke declares more plainly, he ate and drank with the other disciples that first sacrament of his flesh and blood, made by his own hands? Finally, do so many who either eat that flesh and drink that blood with a feigned heart, or become apostates after they have eaten and drunk, abide in Christ, or Christ in them? But surely there is a certain way of eating that flesh and drinking that blood, in which whoever has eaten and drunk abides in Christ and Christ in him. So it is not in whatever way anyone eats the flesh of Christ and drinks the blood of Christ that he abides in Christ and Christ in him, but in a certain way, a way which he certainly saw when he said these things. So too in his saying, “Whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit has no forgiveness forever”: it is not whoever blasphemes in any way whatever who is guilty of this unforgivable offense, but whoever blasphemes in a certain way, which he who uttered this true and terrible sentence wished us to seek and understand.

But what that manner of blaspheming is—or rather that lack of all measure—what that blasphemy is, and what the word against the Holy Spirit is, the very order of the discourse now requires, as I judge, that we say, and that we no longer put off your expectation, held back so long, though necessarily. You know, dearly beloved, that in that invisible and incorruptible Trinity which our faith and the Catholic Church hold and preach, God the Father is the Father not of the Holy Spirit but of the Son; and God the Son is the Son not of the Holy Spirit but of the Father; and God the Holy Spirit is the Spirit not of the Father alone or of the Son alone, but of the Father and the Son. And this Trinity, though the property and substance of each of the persons is preserved, is nevertheless, because of the undivided and inseparable essence or nature of eternity, truth, and goodness, not three gods but one God. And so, as far as we can grasp it, as far as it is granted to see these things through a mirror and in an enigma, especially to such as we still are, there is suggested to us in the Father authority, in the Son birth, in the Holy Spirit the communion of the Father and the Son, in the three equality. What, then, is common to the Father and the Son, through this they willed us to have communion both among ourselves and with them, and by that gift which both have as one to gather us into one, that is, by the Holy Spirit, God and the gift of God. For in him we are reconciled to the Godhead and delight in it. For what would it profit us to know whatever good we knew, unless we also loved it? Just as we learn by truth, so we love by charity, so that we may both know more fully and, being blessed, enjoy what we know. And charity is poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. And because by sins we were estranged from the possession of true goods, charity covers a multitude of sins. So the Father is the truthful origin of the Son, the Truth; and the Son is the Truth born of the truthful Father; and the Holy Spirit is the goodness poured out from the good Father and the good Son: but in all there is no unequal divinity and no separable unity.

First, then, there comes to us from God’s goodness, from the beginning of faith, a gift toward receiving eternal life, which will be given at the last: the forgiveness of sins. For while sins remain, there remains in a way enmity against God and estrangement from him, which comes from our evil; for Scripture does not lie when it says, “Your sins separate between you and God.” So he does not bring his goods into us unless he takes away our evils. And the former grow in proportion as the latter diminish; nor will the former be perfected unless the latter are ended. Now that the Lord Jesus forgives sins by the Holy Spirit, just as he casts out demons by the Holy Spirit, can be understood from this: after he rose from the dead, having said to his disciples, “Receive the Holy Spirit,” he immediately added, “If you forgive anyone’s sins, they will be forgiven him; if you retain anyone’s, they will be retained.” For that regeneration too, in which the forgiveness of all past sins takes place, takes place in the Holy Spirit, as the Lord says, “Unless one is reborn of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.” But it is one thing to be born of the Spirit, another to be fed by the Spirit; just as it is one thing to be born of the flesh, which happens when the mother gives birth, another to be fed by the flesh, which happens when she nurses the infant, who turns to drink with pleasure from that from which he was born in order to live, so that he receives the nourishment of living from the source from which he received the beginning of birth. So the first benefit of God’s kindness in the Holy Spirit that we must believe is the forgiveness of sins. That is why the preaching of John the Baptist, who was sent as the Lord’s forerunner, also began thus. For so it is written: “In those days John the Baptist came, preaching in the wilderness of Judea and saying: Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has drawn near.” Hence also the preaching of the Lord himself, as we read: “From then on Jesus began to preach and to say: Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has drawn near.” And John says, among the other things he said to those who came to be baptized by him: “I baptize you in water for repentance; but he who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry; he will baptize you in the Holy Spirit and fire.” And the Lord says: “John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit, whom you will receive not many days from now, at Pentecost.” Now what John said, “and fire,” though it can be understood also of the tribulation that believers would suffer for the name of Christ, yet it is not beside the point that the same Holy Spirit seems to be signified also by the name of fire. That is why at his coming it is said: “There appeared to them divided tongues as of fire, which also rested on each of them.” Hence the Lord himself says: “I came to cast fire into the world.” Hence the Apostle says: “Fervent in spirit,” since from this source charity burns. For it is poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. Opposed to this fervor is what the Lord says: “The charity of many will grow cold.” But perfect charity is the perfect gift of the Holy Spirit. Yet what pertains to the forgiveness of sins comes first: by this benefit we are rescued from the power of darkness, and the prince of this world, who works in the sons of unbelief by no other power than the fellowship and bond of sin, is cast out by our faith. For by the Holy Spirit, by whom the people of God is gathered into one, the unclean spirit, which is divided against itself, is cast out.

Against this free gift, against this grace of God, the impenitent heart speaks. This impenitence, then, is the blasphemy of the Spirit, which will not be forgiven, neither in this age nor in the age to come. For against the Holy Spirit, in whom those are baptized whose sins are all forgiven, and whom the Church received so that whoever’s sins she forgives, they are forgiven him, a very evil and exceedingly ungodly word is spoken, whether in thought or also with the tongue, by the one whom the patience of God leads to repentance, but who, according to the hardness of his heart and his impenitent heart, stores up wrath for himself on the day of wrath and of the revelation of the just judgment of God, who will render to each according to his works. This impenitence, then—for by some such single name we can somehow call both the blasphemy and the word against the Holy Spirit that has no forgiveness forever—this impenitence, I say, against which both the herald and the judge cried out, saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has drawn near”; against which the Lord opened the mouth of gospel preaching, and against which he foretold that the Gospel itself was to be preached in the whole world, when, after he rose from the dead, he said to the disciples, “It was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and for repentance and forgiveness of sins to be preached in his name among all nations, beginning from Jerusalem”: this impenitence has no forgiveness at all, neither in this age nor in the age to come; for repentance obtains forgiveness in this age, which avails in the age to come.

But this impenitence, or impenitent heart, cannot be judged as long as anyone lives in this flesh. For no one is to be despaired of as long as the patience of God leads to repentance and he does not snatch the ungodly from this life, he who does not will the death of the ungodly so much as that he turn and live. He is a pagan today: how do you know whether he will be a Christian tomorrow? He is an unbelieving Jew today: what if tomorrow he believes in Christ? He is a heretic today: what if tomorrow he follows Catholic truth? He is a schismatic today: what if tomorrow he embraces Catholic peace? What if these whom you mark out in whatever kind of error, and condemn as utterly hopeless, repent before they end this life and find true life in the future? Therefore, brothers, let what the Apostle says admonish you on this point too: “Do not judge anything before the time.” For this blasphemy of the Spirit, for which there is never any forgiveness (which we have understood to be not every blasphemy but a certain one, and have said, or found, or even, as far as we judge, shown to be the persevering hardness of an impenitent heart), cannot, as we said, be detected in anyone while he is still in this life.

Let it not seem absurd on this account that, although a man who persists in hard impenitence to the end of this life speaks long and much against this grace of the Holy Spirit, the Gospel nevertheless called so long a contradiction of the impenitent heart a “word,” as if it were something short, saying: “Whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man, it will be forgiven him; but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit, it will not be forgiven him, neither in this age nor in the age to come.” For though this blasphemy is drawn out, woven together and prolonged with very many words, yet Scripture is accustomed to call even many words a “word.” For no prophet spoke only a single word, and yet we read: “The word that came to this or that prophet.” And the Apostle says: “Let the presbyters be counted worthy of double honor, especially those who labor in the word and teaching.” He does not say “in words,” but “in the word.” And Saint James says: “Be doers of the word, and not hearers only.” He too does not say “of the words,” but “of the word,” though so many words of the holy Scriptures are read, spoken, and heard publicly and solemnly in the church. Just as, then, however long any one of us has labored in preaching the Gospel, he is called a preacher not of words but of the word; and however long any one of you has listened diligently and attentively to our preaching, he is called most eager to hear not words but the word: so, in the manner in which the Scriptures speak and which the custom of the Church knows, whoever, throughout the whole life in which he bears this flesh, however long it may stretch, has spoken whatever words, with the mouth or in thought alone, with an impenitent heart, against the forgiveness of sins that takes place in the Church, speaks a word against the Holy Spirit.

So not only the word spoken against the Son of Man, but absolutely every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, because where this sin of the impenitent heart against the Holy Spirit, by whom sins are loosed in the Church, is not present, all others are forgiven. But how will this sin be forgiven, which even hinders the forgiveness of the others? All sins, then, are forgiven those in whom this sin, which will never be forgiven, is not present; but in those in whom it is present, since this sin is never forgiven, neither are the others forgiven, because the forgiveness of all is hindered by the bond of this one. So it is not because the Holy Spirit is greater than the Son in the Trinity—which no one, not even a heretic, has ever said—that whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man, it will be forgiven him, but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit, it will not be forgiven. It is because whoever has resisted the truth and blasphemed the truth, which is Christ, even after his being so proclaimed among men that the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, which is the Son of Man, the same Christ—if he has not spoken that word of the impenitent heart against the Holy Spirit, of whom it is said, “Unless one is reborn of water and the Spirit,” and of whom it is likewise said, “Receive the Holy Spirit; if you forgive anyone’s sins, they are forgiven him”—that is, if he repents, will receive through this gift the forgiveness of all sins, including this one, that he spoke a word against the Son of Man; because to the sin of ignorance or stubbornness or any blasphemy whatever he has not added the sin of impenitence against the gift of God and the grace of regeneration or reconciliation that takes place in the Church in the Holy Spirit.

Nor, then, should one think what some suppose: that the word spoken against the Son of Man is forgiven, while what is spoken against the Holy Spirit is not, because Christ became the Son of Man by taking on flesh, and the Holy Spirit is certainly greater than that flesh, since in his own substance he is equal to the Father and to the only-begotten Son according to his divinity, according to which the only-begotten Son himself is equal to the Father and to the Holy Spirit. For if it had been said for this reason, surely all other blasphemy would have been passed over in silence, so that this alone would seem forgivable, which is spoken against the Son of Man, as when he is thought to be a mere man. But since it is said first, “Every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men,” which is also put thus in another evangelist, “All sins will be forgiven the sons of men, and the blasphemies with which they blaspheme,” without doubt the blasphemy spoken against the Father is also included in this generality; and yet only the blasphemy spoken against the Holy Spirit is defined as unforgivable. Did the Father also take the form of a servant, in which the Holy Spirit would be greater than he? Certainly not. But after the universal mention of all sins and all blasphemy, he wished to single out more prominently the blasphemy spoken against the Son of Man, because, even if men were bound by that sin which he mentioned where he says, “If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have sin”—which he also showed in the Gospel according to John to be a very grave sin, where he says of the Holy Spirit himself, when promising to send him, “He will convict the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment: of sin, because they did not believe in me”—yet if that hardness of the impenitent heart has not spoken a word against the Holy Spirit, even this which was spoken against the Son of Man will be forgiven. Here perhaps someone may ask whether only the Holy Spirit forgives sins, or the Father and the Son too. We answer: the Father and the Son too. For the Son himself says of the Father: “If you forgive men their sins, your Father will also forgive you your sins.” To him we also say in the Lord’s Prayer, “Our Father who art in heaven,” and among other things we ask this too, saying, “Forgive us our debts.” And of himself he says: “That you may know that the Son of Man has power on earth to forgive sins.” If, then, you say, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit forgive sins, why is that impenitence which will never be forgiven said to pertain only to blasphemy of the Spirit, as though one bound by this sin of impenitence seems to resist the gift of the Holy Spirit, because the forgiveness of sins takes place by that gift? Here I too ask whether Christ cast out the demons, or the Father and the Holy Spirit as well. For if only Christ, what does he himself mean by saying, “But the Father abiding in me, he does the works”? For it is said, “He does the works,” as though the Son did not do them, but the Father abiding in the Son. Why, then, does he say in another place, “My Father is working until now, and I am working,” and a little later, “For whatever he does, these things the Son also does likewise”? And what he says in another place, “If I had not done among them the works that no one else did,” he says as though he did them alone. But if these things are said in such a way that the works of the Father and the Son are nonetheless inseparable, what are we to believe about the Holy Spirit but that he too works equally? For in the very passage from which this question we are discussing arose, when the Son was casting out demons, he nevertheless says, “If I cast out demons by the Holy Spirit, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.”

Here perhaps someone may say that the Holy Spirit is given by the Father and the Son rather than doing anything by his own will; and that the saying “By the Holy Spirit I cast out demons” refers to this, that not the Spirit himself but Christ did it by the Spirit, so that “In the Holy Spirit I cast out” is understood as if it were said, “With the Holy Spirit I cast out.” For the Scriptures are accustomed to speak thus: “They killed in the sword,” that is, with the sword; “They burned in fire,” that is, with fire; and “Jesus took knives of stone, in which he circumcised the sons of Israel,” that is, with which he circumcised the sons of Israel. But those who on this account take away from the Holy Spirit his own power, let them notice what we read was said by the Lord: “The Spirit breathes where he wills.” And as for what the Apostle says, “But all these things one and the same Spirit works,” it is to be feared that someone might suppose that the Father and the Son do not work them, since among those works he mentioned gifts of healings and workings of powers, which surely include the casting out of demons. But when he adds, “Dividing to each his own as he wills,” does he not show the power of the Holy Spirit too, but as plainly indivisible from the Father and the Son? If, then, these things are said in such a way that the working of the Trinity is nonetheless understood to be inseparable—so that when the working of the Father is spoken of, he is not understood to work without the Son and the Holy Spirit; and when the working of the Son, not without the Father and the Holy Spirit; and when the working of the Holy Spirit, not without the Father and the Son—it is well enough known to those who believe rightly, or who even understand as they can, first, that “He does the works” was said of the Father because from him is also the origin of the works, from whom is the existence of the cooperating persons, since the Son is born of him, and the Holy Spirit proceeds principally from him of whom the Son is born, and with whom the same Spirit is common to the Son; next, that what the Lord said, “If I had not done among them the works that no one else did,” was not said with reference to the Father or the Spirit, as though they did not cooperate with him in those works, but with reference to men, by whom many miracles are read to have been done, yet by none those which the Son did; and finally, that what the Apostle says of the Holy Spirit, “But all these things one and the same Spirit works,” was said not because the Father and the Son do not cooperate with him, but because in these works there are not many spirits but one Spirit, and in his diverse operations he is not diverse from himself.

Yet it is not idly but reasonably and truly said that the Father, not the Son and the Holy Spirit, said, “You are my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” But this miracle of a word sounding from heaven, though we know it pertains only to the person of the Father, we do not deny that the Son and the Holy Spirit cooperated in it. For it is not the case that, because the Son, bearing flesh, was then living among men on earth, he was therefore not also in the bosom of the Father as the only-begotten Word when that voice came from the cloud; nor can it be wisely and spiritually believed that God the Father separated the working of his sounding and passing words from the cooperation of his Wisdom and his Spirit. In the same way, although we say most rightly that not the Father, nor the Holy Spirit, but the Son walked on the sea, since that flesh and the feet pressing on the waves were his alone, yet who would deny that the Father and the Holy Spirit cooperated in that work of so great a miracle? So too we say most truly that the Son alone took flesh, not the Father or the Holy Spirit; and yet whoever denies that the Father or the Holy Spirit cooperated in this incarnation, which pertains to the Son alone, does not think rightly. Likewise we say that neither the Father nor the Son, but the Holy Spirit alone, appeared both in the form of a dove and in tongues as of fire, and granted those on whom he came to proclaim the mighty works of God in many and various tongues; yet from this miracle, which pertains to the Holy Spirit alone, we cannot separate the cooperation of the Father and the only-begotten Word. So the Trinity works the works of each of those in the Trinity, the two cooperating with each one who works, with harmony of action among the three and no lack in any one of power to accomplish. This being so, that is why the Lord Jesus casts out demons by the Holy Spirit. It is not that he could not accomplish this alone and took that help as if he were insufficient for the work; but it was fitting that the spirit divided against itself should be expelled by that Spirit whom the Father and the Son, undivided in themselves, have in common.

So too sins, since they are not forgiven outside the Church, had to be forgiven by that Spirit by whom the Church is gathered into one. Finally, if anyone outside the Church repents of his sins, yet has an impenitent heart regarding this great sin by which he is estranged from the Church of God, what does that repentance profit him, since by this alone he speaks a word against the Holy Spirit: that he is a stranger to the Church, which received this gift, that in her the forgiveness of sins takes place in the Holy Spirit? Though the Trinity effects this forgiveness, yet it is understood to pertain properly to the Holy Spirit. For he is the Spirit of the adoption of sons, in whom we cry, Abba, Father, so that we can say to him, “Forgive us our debts.” And by this we know, as the Apostle John says, that Christ abides in us, by his Spirit whom he has given us. The Spirit himself bears witness to our spirit that we are sons of God. For to him belongs the fellowship by which we are made one body of the only Son of God. Hence it is written: “If, then, there is any exhortation in Christ, any consolation of charity, any fellowship of the Spirit.” Because of this fellowship those on whom he first came spoke in the tongues of all nations. For as the fellowship of the human race is bound more closely together by languages, so it was fitting that by the languages of all nations this fellowship of the sons of God and members of Christ, which was to be in all nations, should be signified: so that, as then he was seen to have received the Holy Spirit who spoke in the tongues of all nations, so now he may recognize that he has received the Holy Spirit who is held by the bond of peace of the Church, which is spread through all nations. Hence the Apostle says: “Eager to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.”

That he is the Spirit of the Father, the Son himself says: “He proceeds from the Father”; and in another place, “For it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father who speaks in you.” That he is also the Spirit of the Son, the Apostle says: “God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father,” that is, making us cry. For it is we who cry, but in him, that is, as he pours out charity in our hearts, without which whoever cries cries in vain. Hence he also says: “But whoever does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him.” To whom in the Trinity, then, would the communion of this fellowship properly belong, if not to that Spirit who is common to the Father and the Son?

That those who are separated from the Church do not have this Spirit, the apostle Jude declared most plainly, saying: “Those who separate themselves, natural men, not having the Spirit.” Hence the apostle Paul, rebuking within the Church itself those who were attempting certain schisms through the names of men, though men established in her unity, says among other things: “But the natural man does not perceive the things of the Spirit of God; for it is foolishness to him, and he cannot know it, because it is spiritually discerned.” He shows what he meant by “does not perceive”: that is, he does not grasp the word of knowledge. These, though established in the Church, he calls little ones, not yet spiritual but still carnal, to be fed with milk, not solid food. “As to little ones in Christ,” he says, “I gave you milk to drink, not solid food; for you were not yet able; and even now you are not yet able.” Where “not yet” or “not still” is said, there is surely no despair, if one is reaching for the day when what is not yet will be. “For you are still,” he says, “carnal.” And showing why they are carnal: “For since there is rivalry and strife among you,” he says, “are you not carnal and walking according to man?” And making this plainer: “For when one says, I am of Paul, and another, I of Apollos, are you not men? What then is Apollos? And what is Paul? Ministers through whom you believed.” These, then, that is, Paul and Apollos, were in agreement in the unity of the Spirit and the bond of peace; and yet, because these people had begun to divide them from each other and to be puffed up for one against the other, they are called men, carnal, and natural, unable to perceive the things of the Spirit of God. And yet, because they are not separated from the Church, they are called little ones in Christ; he certainly wished those whom he rebuked for being men to be angels or gods, since in these quarrels they savored not the things of God but the things of men. But of those who are separated from the Church it is not said, “Not perceiving the things of the Spirit,” lest it be referred to the perception of knowledge; it is said, “Not having the Spirit.” And it does not follow that one who has it also perceives by knowing what he has.

So the little ones in Christ established in the Church, still natural and carnal, have this Spirit, though they are unable to perceive, that is, to understand and know, what they have. For how would they be little ones in Christ unless they had been reborn of the Holy Spirit? Nor should it seem strange that someone has something and does not know what he has. For, to say nothing of the divinity of the Almighty and the unity of the unchangeable Trinity, who easily perceives by knowledge what the soul is? And who does not have a soul? Finally, that we may know most certainly that the little ones in Christ who do not perceive the things of the Spirit of God nevertheless have the Spirit of God, let us look a little further on at the apostle Paul, how, rebuking these very people, he says: “Do you not know that you are the temple of God, and the Spirit of God dwells in you?” He would by no means say this to those separated from the Church, who were said to be “not having the Spirit.”

But neither is he to be said to be in the Church and to belong to this fellowship of the Spirit who mingles with Christ’s sheep only by bodily mixing, with a feigned heart. For the Holy Spirit of discipline will flee the deceitful. Therefore, whoever are baptized in the congregations, or rather segregations, of schismatics or heretics, although they are not reborn of the Spirit, being like Ishmael, who was born to Abraham according to the flesh, not like Isaac, who was born according to the Spirit, because through promise, yet, when they come to the Catholic Church and are joined to the fellowship of the Spirit, which outside they without doubt did not have, the washing of the flesh is not repeated for them. For this form of godliness was not lacking even to those placed outside; but there is added to them what cannot be given except within: the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. For before they were Catholics they were such as the Apostle speaks of: “Having the form of godliness, but denying its power.” For the visible form of a branch can exist even apart from the vine; but the invisible life of the root cannot be had except in the vine. So the bodily sacraments, which even those separated from the unity of Christ’s body carry and celebrate, can display the form of godliness; but the invisible and spiritual power of godliness cannot be in them, just as feeling does not follow a member of a man when it is cut off from the body.

Since this is so, the forgiveness of sins, since it is not given except in the Holy Spirit, can be given only in that Church which has the Holy Spirit. For this is what the forgiveness of sins does: that the prince of sin, the spirit divided against itself, may not reign in us; that, rescued from the power of the unclean spirit, we may from then on be made the temple of the Holy Spirit; and that we may receive as our indweller, for producing, increasing, and perfecting righteousness, the very one by whom we are cleansed in receiving pardon. For at his first coming, when those who had received him spoke in the tongues of all nations, and the apostle Peter was addressing the amazed bystanders, they were pierced to the heart and said to Peter and the apostles: “What then shall we do, brothers? Show us.” And Peter said to them: “Repent, and let each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.” Both certainly took place in the Church, in which the Holy Spirit was: that is, both the forgiveness of sins and the receiving of this gift. And it was “in the name of Jesus Christ” because, when he promised the same Holy Spirit, he said, “whom the Father will send in my name.” For the Holy Spirit does not dwell in anyone without the Father and the Son, as neither does the Son without the Father and the Holy Spirit, nor the Father without them. For the indwelling of those whose working is inseparable is inseparable; but they are often shown singly through signs in creatures, not in their own substance; just as their names are pronounced separately by the voice, in syllables each occupying its own span of time, and yet the persons are not separated from one another by any intervals and moments of time. For the names can never be spoken together, while the persons cannot be except always together. But, as we have said more than once, the forgiveness of sins, by which the kingdom of the spirit divided against itself is overthrown and expelled, and the fellowship of the unity of God’s Church, outside of which this forgiveness of sins does not take place, is as it were the proper work of the Holy Spirit, the Father and the Son of course cooperating, because the Holy Spirit himself is in a certain way the fellowship of the Father and the Son. For the Father is not had in common as Father by the Son and the Holy Spirit, because he is not the Father of both. And the Son is not had in common as Son by the Father and the Holy Spirit, because he is not the Son of both. But the Holy Spirit is had in common by the Father and the Son, because he is the one Spirit of both.

Whoever, then, is guilty of impenitence against the Spirit, in whom the unity and fellowship of the communion of the Church is gathered, will never be forgiven, because he has shut himself out from the place where forgiveness is given; and he will rightly be condemned with the spirit that is divided against itself, since he too is divided against the Holy Spirit, who is not divided against himself. The Gospel testimonies themselves also remind us of this, if we examine them more attentively. For according to Luke, the Lord does not say that he who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven at the point where he answers those who said that he casts out demons by the prince of demons. From this it appears that the Lord said this more than once, and that there too we must not carelessly pass over the place where it was said. For he was speaking of those who had confessed him or denied him before men, when he says: “But I say to you, whoever confesses me before men, the Son of Man will also confess him before the angels of God; but whoever denies me before men will be denied before the angels of God.” And lest the salvation of the apostle Peter, who denied him three times before men, be despaired of on this account, he at once added: “And everyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man, it will be forgiven him; but to him who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit it will not be forgiven”: namely, by that blasphemy of the impenitent heart by which the forgiveness of sins that takes place in the Church through the Holy Spirit is resisted. This blasphemy Peter did not have, for he soon repented when he wept bitterly; and having overcome the spirit that is divided against itself, which had demanded to sift him, against which the Lord prayed for him that his faith might not fail, he also received the very Holy Spirit whom he had not resisted, so that not only was his sin forgiven him, but through him the forgiveness of sins was preached and given.

In the other two evangelists, the occasion for this sentence about blasphemy of the Spirit, as they narrate it, arose from the mention of the unclean spirit, which is divided against itself. For it had been said of the Lord that he cast out demons by the prince of demons; there the Lord says that he casts out demons by the Holy Spirit, so that the Spirit who is not divided against himself conquers and casts out the one who is divided against himself, while that man remains in the latter’s perdition who refuses through impenitence to pass over into the peace of the one who is not divided against himself. Mark narrates it thus: “Amen I say to you, all sins will be forgiven men, and the blasphemies with which they blaspheme; but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit has no forgiveness forever, but will be guilty of an eternal offense.” Having recorded these words of the Lord, he then added his own, saying: “Because they were saying, He has an unclean spirit,” to show that the occasion for his saying this arose from their having said that he drove out demons by Beelzebub, the prince of demons. Not that this was the blasphemy that is not forgiven, since even this is forgiven if right repentance follows; but because from this, as I said, the occasion arose for the Lord to utter that sentence, mention having been made of the unclean spirit, which the Lord showed to be divided against itself, in contrast with the Holy Spirit, who not only is not divided against himself but makes those he gathers undivided, by forgiving the sins that are divided against themselves and by dwelling in those he has cleansed; so that it may be as is written in the Acts of the Apostles: “The multitude of believers had one heart and one soul.” No one resists this gift of forgiveness except one who has the hardness of an impenitent heart. For in another place too the Jews said of the Lord that he had a demon, and yet he said nothing there about blasphemy of the Holy Spirit, because they did not charge him with an unclean spirit in such a way that it could be shown from their own mouths to be divided against itself, as was Beelzebub, by whom they said demons could be cast out.

But in this reading according to Matthew, the Lord disclosed much more plainly what he wished to be understood here: namely, that he speaks a word against the Holy Spirit who with an impenitent heart resists the unity of the Church, where the forgiveness of sins takes place in the Holy Spirit. For, as has already been said, those do not have this Spirit who, though they carry and handle the sacraments of Christ, are cut off from his congregation. For when he had spoken of the division of Satan against Satan, and said that he himself cast out demons by the Holy Spirit, surely by the Spirit who is not divided against himself as that one is, he at once added—lest anyone think, because of those who gather their conventicles under the name of Christ outside his fold, that the kingdom of Christ too is divided against itself—“He who is not with me is against me; and he who does not gather with me scatters”: to show that those do not belong to him who, by gathering outside, chose not to gather but to scatter. Then he added: “Therefore I say to you: every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men; but blasphemy of the Spirit will not be forgiven.” What is this? Is blasphemy of the Spirit alone not forgiven precisely because he who is not with Christ is against him, and he who does not gather with him scatters? Precisely so. For he who does not gather with him, in whatever way he may gather under his name, does not have the Holy Spirit.

Here entirely, here he compels us to understand that the forgiveness of every sin and every blasphemy cannot take place elsewhere than in the congregation of Christ, which does not scatter. For it is gathered in the Holy Spirit, who is not divided against himself as that unclean spirit is. And therefore all the congregations, or rather dispersions, which call themselves churches of Christ, and are divided and opposed among themselves, and hostile to the congregation of unity, which is his true Church, do not belong to his congregation because they seem to have his name. They would belong to it, however, if the Holy Spirit, in whom this congregation is united, were divided against himself. But since this is not so—for he who is not with Christ is against him, and he who does not gather with him scatters—therefore every sin and every blasphemy will be forgiven men in this congregation which Christ gathers in the Holy Spirit, who is not divided against himself. But that blasphemy of the Spirit himself, by which this so great gift of God is resisted with an impenitent heart until the end of this life, will not be forgiven. For even if someone is so opposed to the truth as to struggle against God speaking, not in the prophets, but in his only Son, whom for our sake he willed to be the Son of Man so as to speak to us in him, it will be forgiven him when by repenting he has turned to the kindness of God, who, since he does not will the death of the ungodly so much as that he turn and live, gave his Church the Holy Spirit, so that whoever’s sins she forgives in him, they would be forgiven. But if anyone becomes an enemy to this gift, so that he does not seek it through repentance but contradicts it through impenitence, it becomes unforgivable: not any sin whatever, but the very forgiveness of sins despised or even attacked. And so a word is spoken against the Holy Spirit when one never comes from the dispersion to the congregation that received the Holy Spirit for forgiving sins. And if anyone comes to that congregation with an unfeigned heart, even through a bad cleric, reprobate and feigned, provided he is a Catholic minister, he receives forgiveness of sins in that very Holy Spirit. For that Spirit in the holy Church, even at this time when it is threshed like a threshing floor with the chaff, so works that he spurns no one’s true confession and is deceived by no one’s pretense, and so flees the reprobate that he gathers the approved even through their ministry. There is, then, one refuge, lest the blasphemy be unforgivable: to guard against the impenitent heart, and to believe that repentance profits only if the Church is held fast, where the forgiveness of sins is given and the fellowship of the Spirit is kept in the bond of peace.

As I could—if indeed I could to any degree—with the Lord’s mercy and help, I have treated a most difficult question. Yet whatever I have not been able to grasp in its difficulty, let it not be imputed to the truth itself, which exercises the godly to their good even when it is hidden, but to my weakness, since I could not either see what was to be understood or explain what I understood. And for those things which we have perhaps been able both to track down by thinking and to set out by speaking, thanks are to be given to him from whom we sought, whom we asked, at whose door we knocked, so that we might have something both to feed ourselves on in meditation and to minister to you in speaking.

The Lord Jesus Christ has admonished us to be good trees, so that we may be able to bear good fruit. For he says: “Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or make the tree bad and its fruit bad; for the tree is known by its fruit.” When he says, “Make the tree good and its fruit good,” this is certainly not a warning but a saving command, to which obedience is necessary. But when he says, “Make the tree bad and its fruit bad,” it is not a command that you should do it, but a warning that you should beware. For he said it against those who thought that, though they were bad, they could speak good things or have good works. The Lord Jesus says that this cannot be. For the man must first be changed, so that his works may be changed. For if a man remains in being bad, he cannot have good works; if he remains in being good, he cannot have bad works.

But who was found good by the Lord, since Christ died for the ungodly? He found all of them bad trees, then; but he gave power to become sons of God to those who believe in his name. Whoever, then, is good today, that is, a good tree, was found bad and was made good. And if, when he came, he had wanted to uproot the bad trees, which would have remained that did not deserve to be uprooted? But he came to bestow mercy first, so as to exercise judgment afterward, he to whom it is said: “Mercy and judgment I will sing to you, O Lord.” So he gave believers the forgiveness of sins; he did not want to settle accounts with them even over their past debts. He gave forgiveness of sins; he made the trees good. He put off the axe; he gave security.

Of this axe John speaks, saying: “Already the axe is laid at the root of the trees. Every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.” With this axe the householder threatens in the Gospel, saying: “See, it is three years that I have been coming to this tree, and I find no fruit on it. Now I must clear the ground; so let it be cut down.” And the cultivator intercedes, saying: “Lord, let it alone this year too; I will dig around it and put on a basket of dung; if it bears fruit, well; if not, you will come and cut it down.” The Lord visited the human race, as it were, over three years, that is, in three periods. The first period was before the law; the second under the law; the third is now, which is the time of grace. For if he did not visit the human race before the law, where did Abel come from? Enoch? Noah? Abraham? Isaac? Jacob? whose Lord he wished to be called; and though all nations were his, he said, as if he were the God of three men: “I am the God of Abraham, and of Isaac, and of Jacob.” And under the law, if he had not visited, he would not have given the law itself. After the law the householder himself came: he suffered, died, rose again, gave the Holy Spirit, had the Gospel preached throughout the whole world; and still a certain tree remained unfruitful. There is still a certain part of the human race that does not yet correct itself. The cultivator intercedes: the Apostle prays for the people. “I bend my knees,” he says, “for you before the Father, that, rooted and grounded in charity, you may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length, height and depth; to know also the surpassing knowledge of the charity of Christ, that you may be filled to all the fullness of God.” By bending his knees he intercedes for us with the householder, that we may not be uprooted. Since, then, he must come, let us act so that he finds us fruitful. The digging around the tree is the humility of the penitent, for every ditch is low. The basket of dung is the filth of repentance. For what is filthier than dung? And yet, if you use it well, what is more fruitful?

Let each one, then, be a good tree; let him not suppose that he has good fruit if he remains a bad tree. There will be no good fruit except from a good tree. Change the heart, and the work will be changed. Root out greed, plant charity. For as greed is the root of all evils, so charity is the root of all goods. Why, then, do people mutter or argue among themselves, saying, “What is good?” O, if you knew what is good! What you want to have is not very good; what you do not want to be, that is good. You want to have bodily health: that is good; yet do not think it a great good, since a bad man also has it. You want to have gold and silver: see, I say this too is good, but only if you use it well; and you will not use it well if you are bad. And so gold and silver are bad for the bad and good for the good: not because gold and silver make them good, but because, finding them good, they are turned to good use. You want to have honor: it is good, but this too only if you use it well. For how many has honor been an occasion of ruin! For how many has honor been the means of good work!

Let us distinguish these goods, then, if we can, since we are speaking of good trees. And here there is nothing that each one ought to think about so much as to turn his eyes upon himself, to learn himself, to examine himself, to inspect himself, to seek himself, and to find himself; and what displeases him, to kill; what pleases him, to desire and to plant. For when a man finds himself empty of better goods, why is he greedy for external goods? And what use is a chest full of goods with an empty conscience? You want to have goods, and you do not want to be good? Do you not see that you ought to blush for your goods, if your house is full of goods and has you, bad, as its owner? For what is there that you want to have bad? Tell me. Nothing at all: not a wife, not a son, not a daughter, not a manservant, not a maidservant, not a country estate, not a tunic, and finally not even a boot; and yet you want to have a bad life. I beg you, put your life ahead of your boot. All the elegant and beautiful things that surround your eyes are dear to you; and are you cheap and ugly to yourself? If the goods with which your house is full, which you longed to have and feared to lose, could answer you, would they not cry out to you as well: “Just as you want to have us good, so we too want to have a good master”? With a silent voice they appeal against you to your Lord: “See, you have given this man so many goods, and he himself is bad! What does what he has profit him, when he does not have the One who gave him everything?”

Someone, then, admonished by these words of mine, and perhaps pricked to the heart, asks what is good, what kind of good, where good comes from. You have understood well that you ought to ask this. I will answer the questioner and say: That is good which you cannot lose against your will. For you can lose gold even unwillingly; you can lose a house, honors, even the health of the flesh; but the good by which you are truly good you neither receive unwillingly nor lose unwillingly. I ask, then, what kind of good this is. A certain psalm reminds us of a great thing, perhaps the very thing we are seeking. For it says: “Sons of men, how long will you be heavy of heart?” How long that tree in its three years? “Sons of men, how long heavy of heart?” What is “heavy of heart”? “Why do you love vanity and seek after a lie?” And then it says what is to be sought: “Know that the Lord has magnified his Holy One.” Christ has already come, has already been magnified, has already risen and ascended into heaven; his name is already preached throughout the whole world: how long heavy of heart? Let past times suffice: now that that Holy One has been magnified, how long heavy of heart? After the three years, what remains but the axe? “How long heavy of heart? Why do you love vanity and seek after a lie?” Are vain things still, useless things still, showy and fleeting things still sought, now that Christ the Holy One has been magnified? Truth is already crying out, and is vanity still sought? How long heavy of heart?

Rightly is this world being severely scourged; for the world now knows the words of the Lord. “And the servant,” he says, “who does not know his master’s will and does things deserving of stripes will be beaten with few.” Why? So that he may seek his master’s will. The servant who did not know the will was the world before God magnified his Holy One; it was a servant not knowing his master’s will, and so it was beaten with few stripes. But the servant who now knows his master’s will is the world now, since the Godhead magnified his Holy One; and, not doing his will, he will be beaten with many. What wonder, then, if the world is beaten much? It is a servant who knows his master’s will and does things deserving of stripes. Let it not refuse, then, to be beaten with many stripes; for if it unjustly refuses to hear the teacher, it will justly suffer the avenger. Or at least let it not murmur against the one who chastises it, when it sees itself deserving of stripes, so that it may obtain mercy: through Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with God the Father and the Holy Spirit for ever and ever. Amen.

Both yesterday and today, as our Lord Jesus Christ spoke, we have heard the parables of the sower. You who were here yesterday, remember today. Yesterday the reading was about that sower who scattered seed: some fell on the path, and the birds gathered it; some on rocky places, and it dried up in the heat; some among thorns, and it was choked and could not be fruitful; some on good ground, and it bore fruit a hundredfold, sixtyfold, thirtyfold. But today the Lord told another parable about a sower, who sowed good seed in his field. While men slept, the enemy came and sowed weeds on top. While it was in the blade, it did not yet show; when the fruit of the good seed began to appear, then the weeds also became plain. The servants of the householder were offended, seeing many weeds in the good crop, and wanted to root them out, and were not allowed; but it was said to them, “Let both grow until the harvest.” And the Lord Jesus Christ also explained this parable: he said that he himself was the sower of the good seed, and he showed that the sower of the weeds was the enemy, the devil; the time of harvest, the end of the age; his field, the whole world. But what does he say? “At harvest time I will say to the reapers: Gather first the weeds to burn them, but store my wheat in the barn.” Why are you in such a hurry, he says, servants full of zeal? You see weeds among the grain, you see bad Christians among the good; you want to root out the bad: be still, it is not the time of harvest. Let it come, and let it find you grain. Why are you vexed? Why do you bear it ill that the bad are mixed with the good? They can be with you in the field; they will not be in the barn.

You know those three things mentioned yesterday, where the seed did not prosper: the path, the rocky places, the thorny places; they are the weeds. They received another name in another comparison. For when comparisons are given, or the proper meaning is not expressed, it is not the truth but a likeness of the truth that is expressed through them. I know that few have understood what I am saying; but we speak for the sake of all. In visible things a path is a path, rocky places are rocky places, thorny places are thorny places: they are what they are, because they are named in the proper sense. But in parables and comparisons one thing can be called by many names; so it is not inconsistent for me to tell you that that path, those rocky places, those thorny places are bad Christians, and that they are also the weeds. Is not Christ a lamb? Is not Christ also a lion? Among wild beasts and cattle, a lamb is a lamb and a lion is a lion: Christ is both. Those are each what they are in the proper sense; he is both by likeness. It even happens that by likeness things very far apart are called by one name. For what is so far apart as Christ and the devil? Yet both Christ and the devil are called a lion. Christ a lion: “The lion of the tribe of Judah has conquered.” The devil a lion: “Do you not know that your adversary the devil goes about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour?” So both the one and the other are lions: the one a lion for strength, the other a lion for ferocity; the one a lion to conquer, the other a lion to harm. The serpent is the devil, the ancient serpent: were we then commanded to imitate the devil when our Shepherd said to us, “Be simple as doves, shrewd as serpents”? So yesterday I addressed the path, I addressed the rocky places, I addressed the thorny places, and I said: Be changed while you can; turn the hard ground over with the plough, throw the stones out of the field, pull the thorns out of the field. Do not have a hard heart, from which the word of God quickly perishes. Do not have thin soil, where the root of charity does not settle deep. Do not choke with the cares and desires of the world the good seed that is scattered for you by our labors. For the Lord sows, but we are his workers. Be good ground. Yesterday we said it, and today we say to all: let one bear a hundredfold, another sixtyfold, another thirtyfold. In one the fruit is greater, in another less; but all will belong to the barn. Yesterday we said these things; today I address the weeds. Yet the weeds themselves are sheep. O bad Christians! O you who by filling the Church weigh it down by living badly! Correct yourselves before the harvest comes! Do not say, “I sinned, and what happened to me?” God has not lost his power; but he requires repentance of you. This I say to the bad who are nonetheless Christians; this I say to the weeds. For they are in the field, and it can happen that those who are weeds today will be grain tomorrow. So I address the wheat too.

O you Christians who live well, you sigh as few among many, you groan as few among very many. Winter will pass, summer will come; see, the harvest will soon be here. The angels will come, who can separate and do not know how to err. We at this time are like those servants of whom it was said: “Do you want us to go and gather them?” For we would want, if it could be, no bad person to remain among the good. But it was said to us: “Let both grow until the harvest.” Why? Because you are such that you can be deceived. Finally, hear: “Lest perhaps, while you want to root out the weeds, you root out the wheat with them.” What good are you doing? Will you not lay waste my harvest by your diligence? The reapers will come; and he explained who the reapers are: “The reapers are the angels.” We are men; the angels are the reapers. We too shall be equal to the angels of God if we finish the course; but now, when we are vexed against the bad, we are still men. And we must now hear: “Therefore let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall.” For do you think, my brothers, that these weeds do not climb up into the apse? Do you think they are below and not above? Would that we may not be such! “But for me it is a very small thing to be judged by you.” I tell your Charity plainly: in the apse there is wheat and there are weeds; and among the people there is wheat and there are weeds. Let the good bear with the bad; let the bad be changed and imitate the good. Let us all, if it can be, belong to God; let us all escape the wickedness of this age in his mercy. Let us seek good days, since we are in bad days; but in the bad days let us not blaspheme, so that we may come to good days.

The Gospel reading prompts us to seek and to explain to your Charity, as far as the Lord grants, who is the scribe instructed in the kingdom of God, like a householder bringing out of his treasure things new and old. For the reading itself ended with this: what are the new and old things of the instructed scribe? Whom the ancients, according to the usage of our Scriptures, called scribes is well known: namely, those who professed knowledge of the law. For such were called scribes among that people, not such as are called scribes in the offices of judges or in the usage of cities. For we ought not to enter school in vain, but to know in what sense we take the words of the Scriptures, lest, when something sounds from the Scriptures that is usually understood in another, secular usage, the hearer go astray and, thinking of what he is used to, not understand what he has heard. Scribes, then, were those who professed knowledge of the law, to whom belonged the books of the law, to keep, to study, and also to copy and to understand.

Such men our Lord Jesus Christ rebukes because they have the keys of the kingdom of heaven and neither enter themselves nor allow others to enter; he is rebuking, that is, the Pharisees and scribes, the teachers of the law of the Jews. Of them he says in another place: “What they say, do; but what they do, do not do; for they say and do not do.” Why was it said to you, “For they say and do not do,” except that there are some in whom what the Apostle says is shown: “You who preach that one must not steal, do you steal? You who say one must not commit adultery, do you commit adultery? You who abhor idols, do you commit sacrilege? You who boast in the law, do you dishonor God by transgressing the law? For the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you.” It is certainly plain that the Lord says of these, “For they say and do not do.” They are scribes, then, but not instructed in the kingdom of God.

Perhaps one of you may say: And how can a bad man speak good things, since it is written, the Lord himself saying: “A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good things, and a bad man out of the bad treasure of his heart brings forth bad things. Hypocrites, how can you speak good things, since you are bad?” Here he says, “How can you speak good things, since you are bad?”; there he says, “What they say, do; but what they do, do not do; for they say and do not do.” If they say and do not do, they are bad; if they are bad, they cannot speak good things: how, then, do we do what we hear from them, when we cannot hear good things from them? Let your Holiness notice how this is resolved. Whatever a bad man brings forth from himself is bad; whatever a bad man brings forth from his heart is bad, for there is the bad treasure. But whatever a good man brings forth from his heart is good, for there is the good treasure. How, then, did those bad men bring forth good things? Because they sat in the chair of Moses. Had he not said first, “They sit in the chair of Moses,” he would never have commanded that the bad be heard. For what they brought forth from the bad treasure of their heart was one thing; what they proclaimed from the chair of Moses, as heralds of the judge, was another. What a herald says will never be attributed to the herald if he says it before the judge. What the herald speaks in his own house is one thing; what the herald speaks having heard it from the judge is another. For, willing or not, the herald proclaims the sentence of punishment even on his friend; likewise, willing or not, he proclaims the sentence of acquittal even of his enemy. Give him a voice from his own heart: he acquits his friend and punishes his enemy. Give him a voice from the judge’s seat: he punishes his friend and acquits his enemy. Give the voice of the scribes from their heart: you will hear, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.” Give the voice from the chair of Moses: you will hear, “You shall not kill; you shall not commit adultery; you shall not steal; you shall not bear false witness; honor your father and mother; you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Do this, which the chair sounds through the mouth of the scribes, not what sounds through the heart of the scribes. For in this way, embracing both sayings of the Lord, you will not be obedient in one and guilty in the other; but you understand that both agree, and you see that this is true, that a good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good things and a bad man out of the bad brings forth bad things; and that this too is true, that those scribes did not speak good things out of the bad treasure of their heart, but could speak good things out of the treasure of Moses’ chair.

So those words of the Lord will not trouble you either: “Every tree is known by its fruit. Do they gather grapes from thorns, or figs from thistles?” The scribes and Pharisees of the Jews, then, are thorns and thistles; and yet, “What they say, do; but what they do, do not do.” So a grape is gathered from thorns and a fig from thistles, as he has given you to understand according to the preceding discussion. For sometimes vines entangle themselves in the thorny hedge of a vineyard, and clusters hang from the bramble. Hearing the name of thorns, are you going to despise the grape? Seek the root of the thorns, and see where you find it. Follow the root of the hanging cluster, and see where you find it. So understand that one thing belongs to the heart of the Pharisee and another to the chair of Moses.

But why were they such? “Because a veil,” he says, “has been laid over their heart.” And they do not see that the old things have passed away and all things have become new. Hence they were such, and whoever are still such now. Why “old”? Because they have long been preached. Why “new”? Because they belong to the kingdom of God. How the veil is removed the Apostle himself says: “But when you pass over to the Lord, the veil will be taken away.” So the Jew who does not pass over to the Lord does not direct the gaze of his mind to the end. Just so at that time, in this figure, the sons of Israel did not direct the gaze of their eyes to the end, that is, to the face of Moses. For the shining face of Moses bore a figure of the truth; a veil was placed between, because the sons of Israel could not yet gaze on the brightness of his face. This figure is done away; for so the Apostle said: “which are done away.” Why are they done away? Because when the emperor comes, the images are removed from the scene. The image is looked at where the emperor is not present; but where he whose image it is is present, the image is removed. So images were carried before him, until our emperor the Lord Jesus Christ came. With the images taken away, the presence of the emperor shines. So when anyone passes over to the Lord, the veil will be taken away. For the voice of Moses sounded through the veil, and the face of Moses did not appear. So too now the voice of Christ sounds to the Jews through the voice of the old Scriptures: they hear their voice; they do not see the face of the speaker. Do they want the veil to be taken away, then? Let them pass over to the Lord. For then the old things are not taken away, but stored up in the treasure, so that one may now be a scribe instructed in the kingdom of God, bringing out of his treasure neither the new only nor the old only. For if he brings out only the new, or only the old, he is not a scribe instructed in the kingdom of God bringing out of his treasure things new and old. If he says them and does not do them, he brings them out of the chair, not out of the treasure of his heart. And we tell your Holiness the truth: what is brought out of the old is made clear through the new. That is why one passes over to the Lord: that the veil may be taken away.

The reading of the Gospel which we have just heard admonishes the humility of all of us to see and recognize where we are, and where we must strive and hasten. For that boat carrying the disciples, which was laboring in the waves against a contrary wind, is not without meaning. Nor was it without reason that the Lord, leaving the crowds, went up the mountain to pray alone; then, coming to his disciples, walking on the sea, he found them in danger, strengthened them by getting into the boat, and calmed the waves. And what wonder if he who founded all things can calm all things? Yet after he got into the boat, those who were being carried came, saying, “Truly you are the Son of God.” But before this clear proof they were troubled, seeing him on the sea. For they said, “It is a phantom.” But he, getting into the boat, took away the tossing of mind from their hearts, where they were now in greater danger from wavering doubt than they had been in body from the waves.

Yet in all that the Lord did, he admonishes us how we should live here. For no one in this world is not a pilgrim, though not all desire to return to the homeland. And on the journey itself we suffer waves and storms; but we must at least be in the boat. For if there are dangers in the boat, without the boat there is certain death. However great the strength of arm of one who swims in the open sea, in time he is overcome by the greatness of the sea, swallowed up, and sunk. We must, then, be in the boat, that is, be carried on wood, so that we can cross this sea. And this wood, by which our weakness is carried, is the cross of the Lord, with which we are signed and rescued from the drownings of this world. We suffer waves; but he who helps us is God.

That the Lord went up alone to the mountain to pray, leaving the crowds: the mountain signifies the heights of heaven. For, leaving the crowds, the Lord alone after the resurrection went up into heaven, and there he intercedes for us, as the Apostle says. This, then, is what it signifies that, leaving the crowds, he went up the mountain to pray alone. For he alone is as yet the firstborn from the dead after the resurrection of the body, at the right hand of the Father, high priest and advocate of our prayers. The head of the Church is above, so that the other members may follow at the end. If, then, he intercedes for us, he prays alone, as on the summit of the mountain, above the height of all creatures.

Meanwhile the boat carrying the disciples, that is, the Church, tosses and is shaken by the storms of temptations; and the contrary wind does not rest, that is, the devil who opposes her, striving to keep her from reaching rest. But greater is he who intercedes for us. For in this tossing of ours, in which we labor, he gives us confidence, coming to us and strengthening us: only let us not, troubled in the boat, throw ourselves out and cast ourselves into the sea. For even if the boat is troubled, it is still the boat. It alone carries the disciples and receives Christ. It is in danger, indeed, on the sea; but without it one perishes at once. So keep yourself in the boat, and pray to God. For when all counsel fails, when the rudder is not enough, and the very spreading of the sails is more dangerous than useful, when all human help and strength have been given up, there remains for sailors only the effort of praying and pouring out cries to God. He, then, who grants sailors to reach port, will he abandon his Church and not bring her to rest?

Yet, brothers, the greatest disturbance in this boat comes only in the Lord’s absence. Does one established in the Church have the Lord absent? When does he have the Lord absent? When he is overcome by some desire. For it is said in a certain place, and is taken in a mystical sense: “Let the sun not go down on your anger; and do not give place to the devil.” It is understood not of this sun, which has a certain eminence among the visible heavenly bodies and can be seen alike by us and by beasts, but of that light which only the pure hearts of the faithful see, as it is said: “It was the true light, which enlightens every man coming into this world.” For this light of the visible sun lights even the tiniest and most short-lived animals. The true light, then, is righteousness and wisdom, which the mind ceases to see when it has been overcome by the disturbance of anger as by a cloud; and then the sun, as it were, goes down on a man’s anger. So too in this boat, when Christ is absent, each is shaken by his own storms, his own iniquities and desires. For the law says to you, for example, “You shall not bear false witness.” If you understand the truth of testimony, you have light in your mind; but if, overcome by desire for shameful gain, you resolve in your mind to bear false witness, you will begin, with Christ absent, to be troubled by the storm; you will toss on the waves of your avarice, you will be endangered by the storm of your lusts, and, as if Christ were absent, you will almost be sunk.

How much it is to be feared that the boat may be turned around and look back! This happens when someone, abandoning the hope of heavenly rewards, is turned, as desire twists him, toward the things that are seen and pass away. For one who is troubled by the temptations of lust and yet looks toward the things within is not so far gone in despair: he begs pardon for his offenses and strives to overcome and cross the fury of the raging sea. But one who is so twisted away from himself that he says in his heart, “God does not see; for he does not think about me or care whether I sin,” turns the prow, is carried off by the gale, and is driven back to where he came from. For there are many thoughts in the hearts of men; and with Christ absent, the boat is troubled by the waves of this world and by many storms.

The fourth watch of the night is the end of the night, for one watch consists of three hours. It signifies, then, that the Lord comes to help now at the end of the age, and is seen walking on the waters. For although this boat is troubled by the storms of temptations, it sees God glorified walking over all the swellings of the sea, that is, over all the principalities of this world. For earlier it was said, in words spoken from his passion, when according to the flesh he gave an example of humility, that the waves of the sea rose against him to no avail, waves to which he willingly yielded for us, so that that prophecy might be fulfilled: “I came into the depth of the sea, and the storm sank me.” For he did not drive back the false witnesses, nor the savage clamor of those saying, “Let him be crucified.” He did not check the rabid hearts and mouths of the furious by power, but endured them with patience. They did to him all they wished, because he became obedient unto death, even death on a cross. But after he rose from the dead to pray alone for the disciples, who are set in the Church as in a boat, carried by faith in his cross as by wood, and endangered by the temptations of this world as by the waves of the sea, his name began to be honored even in this world in which he was despised, accused, and killed: so that he who, according to the passion of the flesh, had come into the depth of the sea, and the storm had sunk him, now trampled on the necks of the proud like the foam of the waves by the honor of his name. So now we see the Lord as it were walking on the sea, and we see all the fury of this world subjected under his feet.

But to the dangers of storms are added also the errors of heretics; and there are those who so tempt the minds of those in the boat as to say that Christ was not born of a virgin, nor had a true body, but that what was not there was seen by the eyes. And these opinions of heretics arose now, when the name of Christ is already glorified throughout all nations, as if Christ were already walking on the sea. The tempted disciples said, “It is a phantom.” But he strengthens us against these plagues with his voice, saying, “Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.” For it was out of vain fear that men thought these things about Christ: considering his honor and majesty, they do not think that one who deserved to be so glorified could have been born in such a way, as if they were terrified at him walking on the sea. By this act the excellence of his honor is figured; and so they think he was a phantom. But when he says, “It is I,” what else does he say than that there is nothing in him that is not real? So if he showed flesh, it was flesh; if bones, they were bones; if scars, they were scars. For in him there was not “Yes and No,” but “Yes” was in him, as the Apostle says. Hence that voice: “Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.” That is: do not be so terrified at my dignity that you want to take away my reality. Though I walk on the sea, though I have the pride and arrogance of the world under my feet like raging waves, yet I appeared a true man; yet my Gospel preaches the truth about me: that I was born of a virgin, that I the Word was made flesh; that I spoke the truth when I said, “Handle me and see, for a spirit does not have bones, as you see that I have”; that the hands of the doubter touched the true marks of my wounds. So, “It is I; do not be afraid.”

But this event, that the disciples thought he was a phantom, does not signify only those, does not designate only those who deny that the Lord had human flesh, and who sometimes trouble even those in the boat with blind perversity; but also those who think the Lord lied in some respect, and do not believe that what he threatened against the ungodly will come to pass: as if he were partly truthful and partly lying, appearing like a phantom in his words, as if he were and were not. But those who rightly understand the voice of him who says, “It is I; do not be afraid,” now believe all the Lord’s words, so that as they hope for the rewards he promises, so they fear the punishments he threatens. For as it is true what he will say to those placed at the right, “Come, blessed of my Father, receive the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world,” so it is true what those placed on the left will hear: “Go into the eternal fire, which has been prepared for the devil and his angels.” For this opinion too, by which people think that Christ did not truly threaten the wicked and the lost, arose from this: they see many peoples and countless crowds subject to his name, so that Christ seems to them a phantom because he walked on the sea; that is, he seems to lie in his threat of punishments, because, as it were, he cannot destroy such countless peoples who are subject to his name and honor. But let them hear him saying, “It is I.” Let those, then, not be afraid who, believing Christ truthful in all things, not only seek what he promised but also flee what he threatened; because even though he walks on the sea, that is, though all kinds of men in this world are subject to him, yet he is not a phantom, and so he does not lie when he says, “Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven.”

What, then, does it also signify that Peter dared to come to him on the waters? For Peter often bears the person of the Church. What else, then, do we think was said by “Lord, if it is you, bid me come to you on the waters,” but: “Lord, if you are truthful and lie in nothing, let your Church too be glorified in this world, because prophecy foretold this of you”? Let her walk on the waters, then, and so come to you, she to whom it was said, “The rich of the people will entreat your face.” But since human praise does not tempt the Lord, while men in the Church are often troubled by human praises and honors and almost sink, therefore Peter trembled on the sea, dreading the great force of the storm. For who does not fear that saying: “Those who call you happy lead you into error and disturb the paths of your feet”? And since the mind struggles against the desire for human praise, it is good in such danger to turn to prayer and supplication, lest perhaps one who is soothed by praise be undermined and sunk by blame. Let Peter, tottering in the wave, cry out and say, “Lord, save me.” For the Lord stretches out his hand; and though he rebukes him, saying, “O you of little faith, why did you doubt?”—why did you not look straight at him toward whom you were heading, and glory only in the Lord?—yet he snatches him from the waves and does not let him perish, since he confesses his weakness and asks for his help. And when the Lord has been received into the boat, faith strengthened, all doubt removed, and the storms of the sea calmed, so that they come at last to the stability and security of land, all worship, saying, “Truly you are the Son of God.” For this is everlasting joy, in which the clear truth, and the Word of God, and the Wisdom through which all things were made, and the surpassing greatness of his mercy are both known and loved.

The Gospel just read about the Lord Christ, who walked on the waters of the sea, and about the apostle Peter, who, walking, faltered through fear, sank through distrust, and rose again through confession, admonishes us to understand that the sea is the present age, and the apostle Peter a type of the one Church. For Peter himself, first in the order of the apostles, readiest in the love of Christ, often answers alone for all. Indeed, when the Lord Jesus Christ asked whom men said he was, and the disciples reported the various opinions of men, and the Lord asked again, saying, “But who do you say that I am?”, Peter answered, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” One gave the answer for many: unity in the many. Then the Lord said to him: “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jona, because flesh and blood has not revealed it to you, but my Father who is in heaven.” Then he added: “And I say to you.” As if he said: Because you said to me, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God,” I too say to you, “You are Peter.” For before he was called Simon. This name, that he should be called Peter, was given him by the Lord, and with this figurative meaning, that he should signify the Church. For since Christ is the rock (petra), Peter is the Christian people. For “rock” is the primary name. Therefore Peter is named from the rock, not the rock from Peter; just as Christ is not named from Christian, but Christian from Christ. “You are Peter,” then, he says, “and on this rock”—which you have confessed, on this rock which you have recognized, saying, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God”—“I will build my Church”: that is, on myself, the Son of the living God, I will build my Church. I will build you on me, not me on you. For people wanting to be built on men said: “I am of Paul, I of Apollos, I of Cephas,” who is Peter. And others, who did not want to be built on Peter but on the rock, said, “But I am of Christ.” And the apostle Paul, when he saw that he was being chosen and Christ despised, said: “Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?” As not in Paul’s name, so not in Peter’s, but in the name of Christ: so that Peter might be built on the rock, not the rock on Peter. This same Peter, then, called blessed, named from the rock, bearing the figure of the Church, holding the first place in the apostleship, a little while after he had heard that he was blessed, that he was Peter, that he was to be built on the rock, was displeased when he heard of the Lord’s future passion, which the Lord had foretold to his disciples as coming soon. He feared to lose by death him whom he had confessed as the fountain of life. He was troubled, saying: “Far be it from you, Lord; this shall not happen.” Spare yourself, God; I do not want you to die. Peter said to Christ, “I do not want you to die”; but Christ said better, “I want to die for you.” At once, then, he rebukes him whom he had praised a little before; and the one he had called blessed he calls Satan. “Get behind me, Satan,” he says; “you are a stumbling block to me; for you do not savor the things of God, but the things of men.” What does he want to make of us from what we are, he who thus blames us for being men? Do you want to know what he wants to make of us? Hear the psalm: “I said, You are gods, and all sons of the Most High.” But by savoring human things: “But you will die like men.” The same Peter a little before blessed, afterward Satan, in one moment, within a few words! You wonder at the difference of names; consider the difference of causes. Why do you wonder that a little before he was blessed and afterward Satan? Consider the cause why he was blessed: “Because flesh and blood has not revealed it to you, but my Father who is in heaven.” Blessed for this reason, because flesh and blood did not reveal it to you. For if flesh and blood had revealed this to you, it would be from what is yours; but because flesh and blood did not reveal it to you, but my Father who is in heaven, it is from what is mine, not from what is yours. Why from mine? Because “all that the Father has is mine.” See, you have heard the cause why he was blessed, and why he was Peter. But why that which makes us shudder and which we do not want to repeat? Why, except because it was from what is yours? “For you do not savor the things of God, but the things of men.”

Considering this, let us, members of the Church, distinguish what is from God and what is from ourselves. For then we shall not totter; then we shall be founded on the rock, fixed and stable against the winds, the rains, the floods, that is, the temptations of the present age. Yet look at Peter, who was then a figure of us: now he trusts, now he totters; now he confesses the Immortal, now he fears that he may die. So, since the Church of Christ has the strong and also the weak, and can be neither without the strong nor without the weak—whence the apostle Paul says, “We who are strong ought to bear the burdens of the weak”—in Peter’s saying, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God,” he signifies the strong; but in his trembling and tottering, and in his not wanting Christ to suffer, fearing death and not recognizing life, he signifies the weak of the Church. So in that one apostle, Peter, first and chief in the order of the apostles, in whom the Church was figured, both kinds had to be signified, the strong and the weak, because without both there is no Church.

Hence, then, is also what was just read: “Lord, if it is you, bid me come to you on the waters.” If it is you, bid me; for I cannot do this in myself, but in you. He recognized what he had from himself and what from him by whose will he believed he could do what no human weakness could. So: “If it is you, bid,” because when you bid, it will be done. What I cannot do by presuming, you can do by bidding. And the Lord said, “Come.” And without any doubt, at the word of him who bade, at the presence of him who sustained, at the presence of him who ruled, Peter without any hesitation leapt into the waters and began to walk. He could do what the Lord could, not in himself, but in the Lord. “For you were once darkness, but now light”—but “in the Lord.” What no one can do in Paul, no one in Peter, no one in any other of the apostles, he can do in the Lord. So Paul, rightly and profitably despising himself and commending Christ, says: “Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?” Not in me, then, but with me; not under me, but under him.

So Peter walked on the waters at the Lord’s command, knowing that he could not have this from himself. By faith he was able to do what human weakness could not. These are the strong of the Church. Pay attention, hear, understand, act. For we must not deal with the strong so that they become weak, but with the weak so that they become strong. But many are kept from strength by presuming on their strength. No one will be strong from God except one who feels himself weak from himself. “A voluntary rain, O God, setting apart for your inheritance.” Why do you run ahead, you who know what I am going to say? Let speed be moderated, so that slowness may keep up. This I have said, and this I say: hear, grasp, do. No one is made strong by God except one who feels himself weak from himself. A voluntary rain, then, as the psalm says, voluntary: not from our merits, but voluntary. “A voluntary rain, then, O God, setting apart for your inheritance; for it was made weak, but you perfected it.” Because you set apart a voluntary rain, not looking at men’s merits but at your grace and mercy. The inheritance itself, then, was made weak, and recognized itself weak in itself, so that it might be strong in you. It would not be strengthened unless it were weakened, so that it might be perfected by you in you.

See a little portion of this inheritance, Paul; see him made weak, who said: “I am not worthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the Church of God.” Why, then, are you an apostle? “By the grace of God I am what I am.” “I am not worthy,” but “by the grace of God I am what I am.” Paul was made weak, but you perfected him. Now, since it is by God’s grace that he is what he is, see what follows: “And his grace in me was not in vain, but I labored more than all of them.” Take care lest by presumption you lose what you gained in weakness. Good, good: “I am not worthy to be called an apostle; by his grace I am what I am; and his grace in me was not in vain”: all excellent. But “I labored more than all of them”: you seemed to begin to attribute to yourself what a little before you had given to God. Recognize it, and go on: “Yet not I, but the grace of God with me.” Good, weak one: you will be exalted most strongly, because you are not ungrateful. You are that same Paul, small in yourself, great in the Lord. You are the one who asked the Lord three times that the thorn of the flesh, the angel of Satan by whom you were buffeted, be taken away from you. What was said to you? What did you hear when you asked this? “My grace is sufficient for you; for power is perfected in weakness.” For he was made weak, but you perfected him. So Peter too says, “Bid me come to you on the waters.” I, a man, dare; but it is not a man I ask. Let God made man bid, so that a man may be able to do what a man cannot. “Come,” he says. And he went down and began to walk on the waters; and Peter could, because the Rock had bidden. See what Peter is in the Lord; what is he in himself? “Seeing the strong wind, he was afraid; and when he began to sink, he cried out: Lord, I perish, save me.” He presumed on the Lord, he was able by the Lord; he tottered as a man, he returned to the Lord. “If I said, My foot has slipped”—a psalm speaks; it is the voice of a holy song; and if we recognize it, it is ours too; indeed, if we will, it is ours as well. “If I said, My foot has slipped”: why slipped, except because it was mine? And what follows? “Your mercy, O Lord, helped me.” Not my strength, but your mercy. For did the Lord forsake the one tottering, whom he heard calling on him? Where is that saying, “Who has called upon God and been forsaken by him?” Where also that: “And everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved”? At once stretching out the help of his right hand, he lifted up the sinking man and rebuked the distrustful one: “O you of little faith, why did you doubt?” On me you relied, and of me you doubted.

Come, brothers, the sermon must be concluded. Consider the world as the sea: the wind is strong, and the storm great. Each one’s own desire is his storm. You love God: you walk on the sea, and the swelling of the world is under your feet. You love the world: it will swallow you. It knows how to devour its lovers, not to carry them. But when your heart tosses with desire, call upon the divinity of Christ, so that you may conquer your desire. Do you think the wind is contrary only when there is adversity in this world? For when there are wars, when riots, when famine, when pestilence, when a private calamity befalls anyone, even a single person, then the wind is thought adverse, then it is thought that God must be called upon. But when the world smiles with temporal prosperity, it is as if there were no contrary wind. Do not ask the calm of the times about this; ask your own desire. See whether there is calm in you; see whether the wind within is not overturning you: see to this. It takes great virtue to wrestle with prosperity, lest prosperity itself entice, corrupt, and overturn you. It takes great virtue, I say, to wrestle with prosperity; it is great prosperity not to be conquered by prosperity. Learn to trample on the world; remember to trust in Christ. And if your foot has slipped, if you totter, if there are things you do not overcome, if you begin to sink, say: “Lord, I perish, save me.” Say “I perish,” so that you may not perish. For he alone frees you from the death of the flesh who died in the flesh for you. Turning to the Lord, etc.

This woman, commended to us just now in the Gospel reading, gives us an example of humility and a way of godliness: she shows how to rise from humility to the heights. She was, as appears, not of the people of Israel, from whom came the patriarchs, from whom the prophets, from whom the parents of our Lord Jesus Christ according to the flesh, from whom the Virgin Mary herself, who bore Christ. This woman, then, was not of that people, but was of the Gentiles. For, as we have heard, the Lord withdrew to the region of Tyre and Sidon, and a Canaanite woman came out from those borders and begged most insistently for the favor of healing her daughter, who was badly tormented by a demon. Tyre and Sidon were not cities of the people of Israel but of the Gentiles, though neighbors of that people. So she cried out, eager to obtain the favor, and knocked hard; and he made as if not to notice her, not so that mercy might be denied but so that her desire might be kindled; and not only so that her desire might be kindled but, as I said before, so that humility might be commended. So she cried out, as though the Lord were not listening, while he was silently arranging what he was going to do. The disciples asked the Lord on her behalf and said: “Send her away, for she is crying after us.” And he said: “I was sent only to the sheep that are lost of the house of Israel.” Here a question arises from these words: How did we come from the Gentiles into Christ’s fold, if he was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel? What does so deep a dispensation of this secret mean, that, though the Lord knew why he came—certainly to have a Church among all nations—he said he was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel? We understand, then, that he had to show among that people his bodily presence, his birth, the display of his miracles, and the power of the resurrection; that it was so arranged, so set forth from the beginning, so foretold, so fulfilled: that Christ Jesus had to come to the nation of the Jews to be seen, to be killed, and to gain from among them those whom he foreknew. For that people was not condemned but winnowed. There was a multitude of chaff there; there was the hidden worth of the grains; there was what would be burned; there was that with which the barn would be filled. For where did the apostles come from, if not from there? Where did Peter come from? Where the others?

Where did Paul himself come from, who was first Saul? That is, first proud, afterward humble. For when he was Saul, the name was derived from Saul. And Saul was a proud king, who in his reign persecuted the humble David. When, then, the one who was afterward Paul was Saul, he was certainly proud then, a persecutor of the innocent then, a ravager of the Church then. For he had received letters from the priests (burning, as it were, with zeal for the synagogue and pursuing the Christian name) to bring whatever Christians he found to be punished. As he went, as he breathed out slaughter, as he thirsted for blood, he was struck down by the heavenly voice of Christ: the persecutor was laid low, the preacher was raised up. In him was fulfilled what is written in the prophet: “I will strike, and I will heal.” For God strikes in man what exalts itself against God. The doctor who strikes a swelling, who cuts or burns rottenness, is not cruel. He inflicts pain, yes, but to lead to health. He is troublesome; but if he were not, he would not be useful. So Christ with one word laid Saul low and raised Paul up: that is, he laid low the proud man and raised up the humble one. For what was the reason for his changing his name, so that, though he was called Saul before, he wished afterward to be called Paul, except that he recognized that the name Saul in him, when he persecuted, had been a name of pride? So he chose a humble name, to be called Paul, that is, very small. For paulum means very little; paulum is nothing other than “small.” Glorying now in this name, and commending humility, he says: “I am the least of the apostles.” Where, then, where did this man come from, if not from the people of the Jews? From there the other apostles, from there Paul, from there those whom the same Paul commends as having seen the Lord after the resurrection. For he says that he was seen by about five hundred brothers at once, of whom most remain until now, though some have fallen asleep.

From that people also came those who, when Peter spoke, commending the passion, resurrection, and divinity of Christ, after the Holy Spirit had been received—when all on whom the Holy Spirit came spoke in the tongues of all nations—were pierced in spirit, those of the Jewish people who were listening, and asked counsel for their salvation, understanding that they were guilty of Christ’s blood, since they themselves had crucified him, they themselves had killed him, in whose name, though they had killed him, they saw such great miracles done, and saw the presence of the Holy Spirit. Seeking counsel, then, they received the answer: “Repent, and let each of you be baptized in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, and your sins will be forgiven you.” Who would despair of the forgiveness of his sins, when the crime of killing Christ was forgiven to the guilty? They were converted from that very people of the Jews: they were converted, they were baptized. They came to the Lord’s table, and the blood which they had shed in their rage they drank as believers. How they were converted, how fully and perfectly, the Acts of the Apostles shows. For they sold all they possessed and laid the prices of their goods at the apostles’ feet; and it was distributed to each as each had need; and no one said anything was his own, but they had all things in common. And they had, as it is written, one soul and one heart toward God. See, these are the sheep of whom he said, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” For to them he showed his presence; for them, as they raged against him, he prayed when crucified, saying: “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do.” The doctor understood that the frenzied, out of their minds, were killing the doctor, and, in killing the doctor, were unknowingly making a medicine for themselves. For by the Lord’s being killed we have all been healed, redeemed by his blood, freed from hunger by the bread of his body. This presence, then, Christ showed to the Jews. So he said, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel,” so as to show them the presence of his body; not so as to despise and pass over the sheep he had among the Gentiles.

For he himself did not go to the Gentiles, but sent his disciples. And there was fulfilled what the prophet said: “A people whom I did not know has served me.” See how deep, how clear, how express a prophecy: “A people whom I did not know,” that is, to whom I did not show my presence, “has served me.” How? It continues: “At the hearing of the ear they obeyed me”: that is, they believed not by seeing but by hearing. That is why the praise of the Gentiles is greater. For the others saw, and killed; the Gentiles heard, and believed. And to call and gather the Gentiles, so that what we just sang might be fulfilled, “Gather us from the Gentiles, that we may confess your name and glory in your praise,” that apostle Paul was sent. That least one, made great not by himself but by him whom he persecuted, was sent to the Gentiles, from a robber made a shepherd, from a wolf a sheep. That least apostle was sent to the Gentiles, and labored much among the Gentiles, and through him the Gentiles believed. His epistles are witnesses. You have this also figured in the Gospel in a most sacred way. The daughter of a certain ruler of the synagogue had died; her father had asked the Lord to come to her; he had left her sick and in danger. The Lord was going to visit and heal the sick girl; meanwhile she was announced dead, and it was said to the father, “The girl is dead; do not trouble the master any more.” But the Lord, who knew he could raise the dead, did not take hope away from the despairing man, and said to the father: “Do not fear; only believe.” He was going on toward the girl; and on the way, among the crowds, a certain woman squeezed in as best she could, who suffered a flow of blood and in that long illness had spent all she had on doctors in vain. When she touched the fringe of his garment, she was made well. And the Lord said: “Who touched me?” The disciples, astonished, since they did not know what had happened and saw him pressed by the crowds yet concerned about one woman who had touched him lightly, answered: “The crowd presses you, and you say, Who touched me?” And he said: “Someone touched me.” For they press; she touched. Many, then, press the body of Christ troublesomely; few touch it to their healing. “Someone touched me,” he says, “for I felt that power went out from me.” And when she saw she was not hidden, she fell at his feet and confessed what had happened. After this he went on and came where he was heading, and raised the girl, the daughter of the ruler of the synagogue, whom he found dead. This happened, indeed, and was fulfilled as it is narrated; but yet the very things done by the Lord also signified something, being, if one may say so, words that are visible and signify something. This appears most clearly where he sought fruit on a tree out of season and, because he did not find it, cursed the tree and made it wither. Unless this deed is taken figuratively, it is found foolish: first, to have sought fruit on that tree when it was not the season for there to be fruit on any tree; then, even if it were already the season for fruit, what fault of the tree would it be not to have fruit? But because it signified that he seeks not only leaves but also fruit, that is, not only men’s words but also their deeds, by withering the tree where he found only leaves he signified the punishment of those who can speak good things but will not do good things. So it is here too. For it is surely a mystery. He who foreknows all says, “Who touched me?” The Creator becomes like one who does not know, and he asks who not only knew this but foreknew all else. There is surely something that Christ is saying to us through a signifying mystery.

That daughter of the ruler of the synagogue signified the people of the Jews, for whose sake Christ had come, who said, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” But that woman who suffered the flow of blood figured the Church from the Gentiles, to which Christ had not been sent in his bodily presence. He was going to the one, intent on her healing; the other runs in between, touches the fringe as though he did not know, that is, is healed as if by one absent. He says, “Who touched me?” as if to say: I do not know this people. “A people whom I did not know has served me.” “Someone touched me. For I felt that power went out from me”: that is, the Gospel sent out has filled the whole world. And the fringe that is touched is a small and outermost part of the garment. Take the apostles as the garment of Christ. There Paul was the fringe: that is, the last and least. For he said both of himself: “I am the least of the apostles.” For he was called after all, he believed after all, he healed more than all. The Lord was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. But because the people he had not known was also to serve him, was to obey at the hearing of the ear, he did not keep silent about it while he was there. For the same Lord says in a certain place: “I have other sheep that are not of this fold; I must bring them also, that there may be one flock and one shepherd.”

From that people was this woman; that is why she was not despised but kept waiting. “I was sent,” he says, “only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” And she pressed on by crying out, persevered, knocked, as if she had already heard, “Ask, and receive; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.” She pressed on, she knocked. For when the Lord spoke these words, “Ask, and you will receive; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you,” he had said just before, “Do not give what is holy to dogs, nor throw your pearls before swine, lest perhaps they trample them under their feet and turn and tear you to pieces”: that is, after despising your pearls they may also do you harm. So do not throw before them what they despise.

And how do we discern (as if they answered) who are the swine and who are the dogs? This was shown in this woman. For to this woman as she pressed on he answered thus: “It is not good to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.” You are a dog; you are one of the Gentiles; you worship idols. And what is so familiar to dogs as licking stones? “It is not good, then, to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.” If she had gone away after these words, she had come a dog and gone away a dog; but by knocking she was made a human being from a dog. For she persisted in asking, and from what seemed an insult she showed humility and obtained mercy. For she was not upset, nor angry, that she was called a dog when asking a favor and begging for mercy; but she said, “Yes, Lord”: you have called me a dog; I am plainly a dog; I acknowledge my name; the Truth is speaking; but I am not therefore to be driven away from the favor. Wholly a dog: “but the dogs too eat of the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” It is a small and slight favor I desire: I do not invade the table; I seek crumbs. See how humility is commended. The Lord had called her a dog; she did not say, “I am not,” but she said, “I am.” And the Lord at once, because she acknowledged herself a dog, said: “O woman, great is your faith! Be it done to you as you have asked.” You acknowledged yourself a dog; I now acknowledge you a human being. “O woman, great is your faith!” You asked, you sought, you knocked: receive, find, let it be opened to you. See, brothers, how in this woman, who was a Canaanite, that is, who came from the Gentiles and bore the type, that is, the figure, of the Church, humility is commended above all. For the Jewish nation, so that it was repelled from the Gospel, was puffed up with pride that it had deserved to receive the law; that from that nation the patriarchs had come forth and the prophets had arisen; that Moses the servant of God had done great miracles in Egypt, which we heard in the psalm, had led the people through the Red Sea as the waters drew back, and had received the law, which he gave to that people. The Jewish nation had grounds for being lifted up; and through that very pride it came about that it would not humble itself before Christ, the author of humility, the curber of swelling, God the physician, who for this reason, though he was God, became man, so that man might know himself to be man. A great medicine! If this medicine does not cure pride, I do not know what can cure it. He is God and becomes man; he sets aside his divinity, that is, in a certain way sequesters it, that is, hides what was his own, and appears in what he had taken on. He becomes man though he is God; and man does not acknowledge himself as man, that is, does not acknowledge himself mortal, does not acknowledge himself frail, does not acknowledge himself a sinner, does not acknowledge himself sick, so as at least, being sick, to seek the physician; but, what is more dangerous, he seems to himself healthy! So that people did not come for this reason, that is, through pride; and they are called the natural branches broken off from the olive tree, that is, from that people created from the patriarchs; that is, the Jews, deservedly barren through the spirit of pride; and into that olive tree the wild olive was grafted. The wild olive is the people from the Gentiles. So the Apostle says that the wild olive was grafted into the olive and the natural branches were broken off. They were broken off through pride; the wild olive was grafted in through humility. This humility the woman showed, saying: “Yes, Lord, I am a dog; I desire crumbs.” In this humility that centurion also pleased him: when he desired his servant to be healed by the Lord, and the Lord said, “I will come and heal him,” he answered, “Lord, I am not worthy that you should come under my roof; but only say the word, and my servant will be healed.” “I am not worthy that you should come under my roof.” He did not receive him under his roof; he had received him into his heart. The humbler, the more capacious, the fuller. For hills repel water; valleys are filled. And what then, what did the Lord say to this, after he said, “I am not worthy that you should come under my roof”? To those who followed: “Amen I say to you, I have not found such faith in Israel”: that is, in that people to which I came I have not found such faith. “Such”: what is it? So great. Great from what? From the least, that is, great from humility. “I have not found such faith”: like a grain of mustard seed, the smaller, the more fiery. So the Lord was already grafting the wild olive into the olive. He was doing it then, when he said, “Amen I say to you, I have not found such faith in Israel.”

Finally, see what follows. “Therefore I say to you” (because I have not found such faith in Israel, that is, such humility with faith): “Therefore I say to you that many will come from east and west and will recline with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven.” “They will recline,” he says: they will rest. For we must not imagine fleshly banquets there, or desire anything of that kind in that kingdom, as if we were not changing vices for virtues but only putting vices in place of vices. For it is one thing to desire the kingdom of heaven for the sake of wisdom and eternal life, another to desire it for the sake of earthly happiness, as if we were to have that there more abundant and greater. If you think you will be rich in that kingdom, you do not cut off greed but change it; and yet you will be rich, and nowhere but there will you be rich. For here your need gathers very many things. Why do the rich have much? Because they need much. Greater need procures, as it were, greater means; there need itself will die. Then you will truly be rich, when you need nothing. For it is not that you are rich and an angel poor, because he has no beasts of burden and carriages and households of slaves. Why? Because he does not need them; for the stronger one is, the less needy. So there are riches there, and true riches. Do not imagine the banquets of this earth there. For the banquets of this earth are daily medicines; they are necessary for a certain sickness of ours with which we are born. Everyone feels this sickness when the hour for refreshment has passed. Do you want to see how great this sickness is, that like an acute fever it kills in seven days? Do not think yourself healthy. Health will be immortality. For this life is a long sickness. Because you prop up your disease with daily medicines, you seem healthy to yourself: take away the medicines, and see what you can do.

For from the moment we are born, we must die. This disease necessarily leads to death. Doctors certainly say this when they examine the sick. For example: this man has dropsy; he is dying; this disease cannot be cured. He has elephantiasis; this disease cannot be cured either. He is consumptive; who cures that? He must perish, he must die. See, the doctor has said, “He is consumptive; he can only die”; and yet sometimes the man with dropsy does not die of it, the one with elephantiasis does not die of it, the consumptive does not die of it; and yet whoever has been born must die of this. He dies of it; it cannot be otherwise. Both the doctor and the unskilled pronounce this; but if he dies later, does he therefore not die? When, then, will there be true health, if not when there is true immortality? If, then, there is true immortality, no corruption, no failing, what need will there be of food there? So when you hear, “They will recline with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob,” prepare not your belly but your mind. You will be filled there; and the inner belly too has its food. With regard to this belly it is said: “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled.” And they will truly be filled, so as never to hunger.

So the Lord was already grafting in the wild olive when he said, “Many will come from east and west and will recline with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven,” that is, they will be grafted into the olive tree. For the roots of this olive are Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; but the sons of the kingdom, that is, the unbelieving Jews, will go into the outer darkness. The natural branches will be cut off, so that the wild olive may be grafted in. But why did the natural branches deserve to be cut off, except through pride? Why was the wild olive grafted in, except through humility? Hence this woman too said, “Yes, Lord; for the dogs too eat of the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” And so she hears, “O woman, great is your faith!” So too that centurion: “I am not worthy that you should come under my roof.” “Amen I say to you, I have not found such faith in Israel.” Let us learn humility, or hold it fast. If we do not yet have it, let us learn it; if we have it, let us not lose it. If we do not yet have it, let us have it, so that we may be grafted in; if we already have it, let us hold it fast, so that we may not be cut off.

We must look into and discuss, dearly beloved, this vision which the Lord showed on the mountain. For it is the one of which he had said: “Amen I say to you, there are some of those standing here who will not taste death until they see the Son of Man in his kingdom.” From there began the reading that was recited. When he had said this, after six days he took three disciples, Peter, John, and James, and went up the mountain. These three were the “some” of whom he had said, “There are some here who will not taste death until they see the Son of Man in his kingdom.” It is no small question. For that mountain was not the whole extent of his kingdom. What is a mountain to him who possesses heaven? This we not only read, but in a way see with the eyes of the heart. He calls “his kingdom” what in many places he calls the kingdom of heaven. And the kingdom of heaven is the kingdom of the saints. For “the heavens declare the glory of God.” Of these heavens it is said at once in the psalm: “There are no speeches or words whose voices are not heard. Their sound has gone out into all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world.” Whose, if not the heavens’? Therefore of the apostles and of all faithful preachers of the word of God. The heavens will reign with him who made the heavens. To show this, see what happened.

The Lord Jesus himself shone like the sun; his garments became white as snow; and Moses and Elijah were talking with him. Jesus himself shone like the sun, signifying that he is the light that enlightens every man coming into this world. What this sun is to the eyes of the flesh, he is to the eyes of the heart; and what this sun is to bodies, he is to hearts. His garments are his Church. For garments, unless they are held together by the one who wears them, fall. Of these garments Paul was, as it were, the last fringe. For he says, “For I am the least of the apostles”; and in another place, “I am the last of the apostles.” And in a garment the fringe is the last and least part. So, as that woman who suffered a flow of blood was made well when she touched the Lord’s fringe, so the Church that came from the Gentiles was saved through Paul’s preaching. What wonder if the Church is signified by white garments, when you hear the prophet Isaiah saying, “Even if your sins are like scarlet, I will make them white as snow”? Moses and Elijah, that is, the law and the prophets: what are they worth unless they converse with the Lord? Unless they bear witness to the Lord, who would read the law? Who the prophets? See how briefly the Apostle says this: “For through the law comes knowledge of sin; but now apart from the law the righteousness of God has been manifested”—see the sun—“attested by the law and the prophets”—see the splendor.

Peter sees this and, savoring human things as a man, says: “Lord, it is good for us to be here.” He had suffered weariness from the crowd; he had found the solitude of the mountain; there he had Christ, the bread of the mind. Why should he leave there for labors and pains, when he had holy loves toward God, and therefore a good way of life? He wanted it to be well with himself; so he added, “If you will, let us make three tents here: one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” To this the Lord answered nothing; but yet Peter was answered. For while he was saying these things, a bright cloud came and overshadowed them. He was seeking three tents; the heavenly answer showed that for us there is one, which human sense wished to divide. Christ is the Word of God; the Word of God in the law, the Word in the prophets. Why, Peter, do you seek to divide? You ought rather to join. You seek three; understand also that they are one.

So, when the cloud overshadowed them all and in a way made one tent for them, a voice also sounded from the cloud, saying: “This is my beloved Son.” Moses was there, Elijah was there; it was not said, “These are my beloved sons.” For the Only One is one thing, the adopted are another. He was commended in whom the law and the prophets gloried. “This is,” he says, “my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear him.” For you heard him in the prophets too, and you heard him in the law. And where have you not heard him? When they heard this, they fell to the ground. Now the kingdom of God is shown to us in the Church. Here is the Lord, here the law and the prophets; but the Lord as Lord, the law in Moses, prophecy in Elijah; but these as servants, as ministers. They as vessels; he as the fountain. Moses and the prophets spoke and wrote; but they were filled from him when they poured out.

But the Lord stretched out his hand and raised those who lay there. Then they saw no one but Jesus alone. What does this mean? You heard, when the Apostle was read, that now we see through a mirror in an enigma, but then face to face. And tongues will cease, when that comes which we now hope for and believe. That they fell to the ground signified that we die, because it was said to the flesh, “You are earth, and to earth you will go.” But when the Lord raised them up, he signified the resurrection. After the resurrection, what is the law to you? What is prophecy to you? That is why Elijah does not appear, Moses does not appear. There remains for you, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” There remains for you that God may be all in all. Moses will be there, but no longer the law. We shall see Elijah there too, but no longer as a prophet. For the law and the prophets bore witness to Christ, that he must suffer and rise from the dead on the third day and enter into his glory. There is fulfilled what he promised to those who love him: “He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him.” And as if it were said, “Since you will love him, what will you give him?”: “And I will show myself to him.” A great gift, a great promise! God does not keep some reward of his for you, but himself. Greedy man, why is what Christ promises not enough for you? You seem rich to yourself; and if you do not have God, what do you have? Another is poor; and if he has God, what does he not have?

Come down, Peter: you wanted to rest on the mountain; come down, preach the word, be urgent in season and out of season, reprove, exhort, rebuke, with all patience and teaching. Labor, sweat, suffer some torments, so that what is understood by the Lord’s white garments you may possess through the whiteness and beauty of right action in charity. For in the praise of charity, when the Apostle was read, we heard: “It does not seek its own.” It does not seek its own, because it gives what it possesses. In another place something is said that is more dangerous if you do not understand it. For the Apostle, commanding the faithful members of Christ in keeping with that same charity, says: “Let no one seek his own, but another’s.” For avarice, hearing this, prepares frauds, so as to get the better of someone in business, as if seeking another’s good, and so seeks not its own but another’s. Let avarice restrain itself; let justice come forward: let us hear and understand. It was to charity that it was said, “Let no one seek his own, but another’s.” But you, greedy man, if you resist and twist this command rather to coveting what is another’s, then lose your own. But as I know you, you want to have both your own and another’s. You commit fraud to have another’s: then suffer theft, so that you lose your own. You do not want to seek your own, but you take another’s. If you do this, you do not do well. Hear, O greedy man, listen: the Apostle explains to you more plainly in another place what he said, “Let no one seek his own, but another’s.” He says of himself: “Not seeking what is profitable to myself, but to many, that they may be saved.” This Peter did not yet understand when he wished to live with Christ on the mountain. He was keeping this for you, Peter, after death. But now he himself says: Come down to labor on earth, to serve on earth, to be despised, to be crucified on earth. Life came down to be killed; bread came down to hunger; the way came down to be wearied on the journey; the fountain came down to thirst; and do you refuse to labor? Do not seek your own. Have charity, preach the truth; then you will come to eternity, where you will find security.

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.

The divine readings we heard just now when they were recited admonish us to take up the strength of the virtues against the stumbling blocks which have been foretold as coming, and to fortify the Christian heart—and this from the mercy of the Lord. For “what is man,” it says, “unless you are mindful of him?” “Woe to the world because of stumbling blocks,” the Lord says, the Truth says: he frightens and warns; he does not want us to be careless; for he certainly did not make us to despair. Against this “woe,” that is, against this evil that is to be feared, dreaded, and guarded against, Scripture consoles, exhorts, and instructs us in the place where it says: “Great peace have those who love your law, and there is no stumbling block for them.” It showed an enemy to be guarded against, but did not fail to show a fortified wall. Hearing, “Woe to the world because of stumbling blocks,” you were thinking where you might go outside the world, so as not to suffer stumbling blocks. To avoid stumbling blocks, then, where will you go outside the world, unless you flee to him who made the world? And how shall we be able to take refuge with him who made the world, unless we hear his law, which is preached everywhere? It is not enough to hear, unless we love. For divine Scripture, making you secure against stumbling blocks, does not say, “Great peace have those who hear your law.” For not the hearers of the law are righteous before God. But because the doers of the law will be justified, and faith works through love, it says: “Great peace have those who love your law, and there is no stumbling block for them.” With this sentence agrees also what we sang, listening and responding: “But the meek will inherit the earth, and will delight in the abundance of peace.” Because: “Great peace have those who love your law.” For the meek are those who love the law of God. “For blessed is the man whom you instruct, O Lord, and teach out of your law, that you may make him gentle in the evil days, until a pit is dug for the sinner.” How different the voices of Scripture seem, and yet they so flow together and converge into one meaning that, whatever you have been able to hear from that most abundant fountain, you too may rest in it, a friend in harmony with truth, full of peace, fervent with charity, fortified against stumbling blocks.

The task set before us, then, is to see, or seek, or learn how we ought to be meek; and from what I have just recalled from the Scriptures we are prompted to find what we are seeking. Let your Charity attend a little; it is a great matter, that we be meek: a necessary matter in adversity. For it is not the adversities of this world that are called stumbling blocks: notice what stumbling blocks are. Someone, for example, placed in some necessity, is hard pressed by pressure. That he is hard pressed by pressure is not a stumbling block. The martyrs too were pressed by pressure, but not crushed. Beware of the stumbling block, not so much of the pressure. Pressure presses you; a stumbling block crushes you. What, then, is the difference between pressure and a stumbling block? Under pressure you were preparing to keep patience, to hold constancy, not to abandon faith, not to consent to sin. If you keep this, or will have kept it, the pressure will not be a ruin to you; but that pressure will serve the purpose it serves in the oil press: not that the olive be crushed, but that the oil may flow. Indeed, if under that pressure you sing praises to God, how useful the press from which this liquid flows from you! The apostles sat under pressure, in chains, and under that pressure they sang a hymn to God. What was pressed? What flowed out? Job sat under great pressure on the dunghill, needy, helpless, without property, without children; full, but of worms, as far as concerns the outer man. But because inwardly he was full of God, he praised God, and that pressure was no stumbling block to him. Where, then, was the stumbling block? When his wife came to him and said, “Say something against God, and die.” For when everything had been taken away by the devil, an Eve was kept for the man being tested, not for his consolation but for his temptation. See where the stumbling block is. She heaped up his miseries, and her own miseries with his, and began to urge him to blasphemy. But he was meek, because God had taught him out of his law and made him gentle in the evil days; he had great peace in his heart as one who loved the law of God, and there was no stumbling block for him. She was a stumbling block, but not to him. Finally, see the meek man, see one instructed in the law of God—the eternal law of God, I mean. For that law given to the Jews on tablets did not yet exist in Job’s times; but the eternal law still remained in the hearts of the godly, from which was copied the law that was given to the people. Since, then, he had been made gentle in the evil days by the law of God, and had great peace as one who loved the law of God, see how meek he is, what he answers. Learn here what I proposed: who the meek are. “You have spoken,” he says, “like one of the foolish women. If we have received good things from the hand of the Lord, shall we not endure evil things?”

We have heard by example who the meek are: let us define them in words, if we can. The meek are those to whom, in all their good deeds, in all they do well, nothing is pleasing but God; and in all the evils they suffer, God is not displeasing. Come, brothers, attend to this rule, to this standard; let us stretch ourselves toward it; let us seek growth, so as to fill it out. For what use is it that we plant and water, unless God gives the growth? “Neither he who plants is anything, nor he who waters, but God who gives the growth.” Hear, you who want to be meek, who want to be made gentle in the evil days, who love the law of God, so that there may be no stumbling block in you, and you may have great peace, so that you may possess the earth and delight in the abundance of peace: hear, you who want to be meek. Whatever good you do, do not be pleased with yourself. “For God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” So whatever good you do, let nothing please you but God; whatever evil you suffer, let God not displease you. What more? Do this, and you will live. The evil days will not swallow you up; you will escape what was said: “Woe to the world because of stumbling blocks.” For to what world is there woe because of stumbling blocks, if not to that of which it is said, “And the world did not know him”? Not to that world of which it is said, “God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself.” There is a bad world and a good world: the bad world, all the bad in the world; and the good world, all the good in the world. As we often look at a field: “This field is full.” Of what produce? “Of wheat.” And we also say, and say truly, “This field is full of chaff.” A tree: “It is full of fruit.” Another says, “It is full of leaves.” And he who says, “It is full of fruit,” speaks truly; and he who says, “It is full of leaves,” speaks truly. Neither did the abundance of leaves take away room from the fruit, nor did the abundance of fruit drive out the crowd of leaves. It is full of both; but the wind seeks the one, the farmer gathers the other. So, then, when you hear, “Woe to the world because of stumbling blocks,” do not be frightened: love the law of God, and there will be no stumbling block for you.

But a wife comes along, urging some evil. You love her, as a wife ought to be loved: she is your member. But if your eye causes you to stumble, if your hand causes you to stumble, if your foot causes you to stumble—you have just heard the Gospel—cut it off, throw it from you. Whoever is dear to you, whoever is held in high regard by you, let him be great to you so long, let him be your beloved member so long, as he has not begun to cause you to stumble, that is, to urge some evil on you. Hear that this is a stumbling block. We set up the example of Job and his wife; but there “stumbling block” was not named. Hear the Gospel: when the Lord was foretelling his passion, Peter began to urge him not to suffer. “Get back, Satan; you are a stumbling block to me.” The Lord, who gave you an example of living, has plainly taught you both what a stumbling block is and how a stumbling block is to be avoided. To him he had said a little before, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jona”: he had shown that he was his member. But when he began to be a stumbling block, he cut off the member; and he restored the member and put it back. So he will be a stumbling block to you who begins to urge you toward some evil. And let your Charity attend: this often happens not from ill will but from perverse good will. For your friend who loves you and is loved by you in turn—your father, your brother, your son, your wife—sees you in evil and wants to make you do evil. What does “sees you in evil” mean? He sees you in some pressure. You are perhaps suffering this pressure for the sake of righteousness: you are suffering pressure because you will not bear false witness. I speak by way of example; examples abound, because “woe to the world because of stumbling blocks.” See, for example, some powerful man asks of you the service of false testimony, for the sake of his plunder, his robbery. You refuse: you deny the false, lest you deny the true. Not to dwell long on it: he is angry, he is powerful, he presses you. A friend comes along who does not want you to be under pressure, does not want you to be in evil: “I beg you, do what you are told; what is the great matter?” Perhaps, as Satan said to the Lord: “It is written of you that he has commanded his angels concerning you, lest you strike your foot against a stone.” Perhaps this friend of yours too, because he sees you are a Christian, wants to persuade you from the law of what he thinks you ought to do. “Do what he says.” “What?” “What he wants.” “But it is a lie, it is false.” “Have you not read, Every man is a liar?” Now he is a stumbling block. He is a friend: what are you going to do? He is an eye, he is a hand: cut it off and throw it from you. What is “cut it off and throw it from you”? Do not consent. This is what “cut it off and throw it from you” signifies: do not consent. For the members in our body make a unity by consent, live by consent, are joined to one another by consent. Where there is dissent, there is disease or a wound. So he is your member: you love him. But he causes you to stumble: cut him off and throw him from you. Do not consent; turn him away from your ears; perhaps, corrected, he will come back.

How will you do what I say—cut off and throw away, and perhaps thereby correct? How will you do it? Answer. He wanted to persuade you to a lie from the law. For he says, “Say it.” And perhaps he did not dare to say, “Tell a lie,” but rather, “Say what he wants.” You say, “But it is a lie.” And he, to excuse it: “Every man is a liar.” And you, brother, answer him: “The mouth that lies kills the soul.” Pay attention: what you have heard is no light thing: “The mouth that lies kills the soul.” What does this powerful enemy who presses me do to me, since you pity me, and my condition moves you to pity, and you do not want me to be in evil, though you want me to be evil? What does this powerful man do to me? What does he press? The flesh. “He presses the body,” you say; I say, “He destroys it.” How much more gently he deals with me than I would deal with myself if I lied! He kills my flesh; I would kill my soul. The angry powerful man kills the body; the mouth that lies kills the soul. He kills the body, which was going to die even if it were not killed; but the soul that iniquity does not kill, truth receives forever. Keep, then, what you can keep; let that perish which will perish someday anyway. You have answered; and yet you have not resolved “Every man is a liar.” Answer him on this too, lest he think he has said something to persuade you to lie by bringing testimony from the law, pressing you from the law against the law. For in the law it is written, “You shall not bear false witness”; and in the law it is written, “Every man is a liar.” Look back to what I reminded you of a little while ago, when I defined the meek man in such words as I could. The meek man is he to whom, in all he does well, nothing is pleasing but God; in all the evils he suffers, God is not displeasing. Answer him, then, who says, “Lie, because it is written, Every man is a liar”: I do not lie, because it is written, “The mouth that lies kills the soul.” I do not lie, because it is written, “You will destroy all who speak a lie.” I do not lie, because it is written, “You shall not bear false witness.” Let him whom I displease by the truth press my flesh with afflictions: I hear my Lord: “Do not fear those who kill the body.”

How, then, is every man a liar? Or perhaps you are not a man? Answer quickly, and truly: “Then let me not be a man, so that I may not be a liar.” For see: “God looked down from heaven on the sons of men, to see if there was anyone who understands and seeks God. All have turned aside; together they have become useless; there is no one who does good, not even one.” Why? Because they wanted to be sons of men. But to take them away from these iniquities, to redeem them, to cure them, to heal them, to change the sons of men, he gave them power to become sons of God. What wonder, then? You were men, if you were sons of men: you were all men; you were liars; for every man is a liar. The grace of God comes to you; he gave you power to become sons of God. Hear the voice of my Father saying, “I said, You are gods, and all sons of the Most High.” Since men are sons of men, if they are not sons of the Most High, they are liars, because every man is a liar. If you are sons of God, if redeemed by the grace of the Saviour, if bought with precious blood, if reborn of water and the Spirit, if predestined to the inheritance of heaven, you are certainly sons of God. So you are now gods. What has a lie to do with you? For Adam was a mere man; Christ is man and God, God the creator of every creature. Adam was a man; Christ is a man, the mediator with God, the only Son of the Father, God and man. See, you, man, are far from God, and God is far above man: God made man placed himself in between. Recognize Christ, and through the man ascend to God.

Now, then, corrected, and meek, if we have achieved anything, let us hold to an unswerving confession. Let us love the law of God, so that we may escape what was said, “Woe to the world because of stumbling blocks.” Let us say something about the stumbling blocks with which the world is full, and how stumbling blocks multiply and pressures abound. The world is being laid waste; the winepress is being trodden. Come, Christians, heavenly seed, pilgrims on earth, who seek a city in heaven, who desire to be joined to the holy angels: understand that you came here on condition that you depart. You are passing through the world, striving toward him who created the world. Let the lovers of the world not trouble you, who want to remain in the world and, willing or not, are forced to move on: let them not deceive you, let them not lead you astray. These pressures are not stumbling blocks. Be righteous, and they will be exercises. Tribulation comes: it will be what you choose, either exercise or condemnation. As it finds you, so it will be. Tribulation is fire: does it find you gold? It takes away the dross. Does it find you chaff? It turns you to ash. So the pressures that abound are not stumbling blocks. But what are stumbling blocks? Those sayings, those words by which we are told: “See what Christian times are doing.” See, these are stumbling blocks. For this is said to you so that, if you love the world, you may blaspheme Christ. And your friend, your counselor, says this to you: so he is your eye. Your servant, your fellow worker, says this to you: so he is your hand. Perhaps one who supports you, who lifts you up from earthly lowliness, says this to you: so he is your foot. Throw it away, cut it off, throw it from you; do not consent. Answer such people as that man answered who was being urged to bear false witness. You too answer: say to the man who tells you, “See, in Christian times there are such pressures; the world is being laid waste”: answer him, “Christ foretold this to me before it happened.”

For why are you troubled? Your heart is troubled by the pressures of the world, like that boat in which Christ was sleeping. See the reason, man of courage, why your heart is troubled: see the reason. The boat in which Christ sleeps is the heart in which faith sleeps. For what new thing are you told, Christian? What new thing are you told? “In Christian times the world is laid waste, the world is failing.” Did your Lord not tell you, “The world will be laid waste”? Did your Lord not tell you, “The world will fail”? Why did you believe when it was promised, and are troubled when it is fulfilled? The storm rages against your heart, then: beware of shipwreck; wake Christ. “That Christ may dwell,” says the Apostle, “through faith in your hearts.” Through faith Christ dwells in you. Faith present, Christ is present; faith awake, Christ is awake; faith forgotten, Christ is asleep. Rouse him, stir him, say: “Lord, we are perishing!” See what the pagans say to us; see what, more grievously, bad Christians say to us. “Arise, Lord, we are perishing.” Let your faith wake up, and Christ begins to speak to you: Why are you troubled? I foretold all these things to you. I foretold them so that when evils came you would hope for good things, so that you would not fail amid the evils. Do you wonder that the world is failing? Wonder that the world has grown old. It is like a man: he is born, he grows, he grows old. There are many complaints in old age: cough, phlegm, bleary eyes, anxiety, weariness are there. So a man grows old and is full of complaints; the world has grown old and is full of pressures. Has God given you little, in that in the old age of the world he sent you Christ, to restore you then, when all things are failing? Do you not know that he signified this in the seed of Abraham? “The seed of Abraham,” says the Apostle, “which is Christ. He does not say, And to seeds, as of many; but as of one, And to your seed, which is Christ.” That is why a son was born to Abraham when he was old: because Christ was to come in the old age of the world itself. He came when all things were growing old, and he made you new. A made thing, a created thing, a thing destined to perish, was already declining toward its setting. It was bound to abound in labors: he came both to console you amid labors and to promise you everlasting rest. Do not choose to cling to the old world and refuse to grow young in Christ, who says to you: The world is perishing, the world is growing old, the world is failing, it labors with the breathlessness of old age. Do not fear: “Your youth will be renewed like the eagle’s.”

“See,” they say, “in Christian times Rome is perishing.” Perhaps Rome is not perishing; perhaps it has been scourged, not destroyed; perhaps chastised, not wiped out. Perhaps Rome does not perish, if the Romans do not perish. And they will not perish if they praise God; they will perish if they blaspheme. For what is Rome but the Romans? It is not a question of stones and timber, of lofty apartment blocks and very broad walls. That was made in such a way that it would someday fall. When man built, he set stone upon stone; and when man destroyed, he knocked stone from stone. Man made it; man destroyed it. Is wrong done to Rome because it is said, “It is falling”? Not to Rome, but perhaps to its builder. Do we do wrong to its founder because we say, “Rome is falling, which Romulus founded”? The world which God founded is going to burn. But neither does what man made fall unless God wills it, nor does what God made fall unless God wills it. For if a work of man does not fall without the will of God, how can a work of God fall through the will of man? Yet God made even the world for you as something that will fall; and so he made you as one who will die. Man himself, the ornament of the city, man himself, the inhabitant, ruler, and governor of the city, comes so as to go, is born so as to die, enters so as to pass on. Heaven and earth will pass away: what wonder, then, if at some time there is an end to a city? And perhaps the end of the city is not now; yet someday there will be an end to the city. But why is Rome perishing amid the sacrifices of the Christians? Why did her mother Troy burn amid the sacrifices of the pagans? The gods in whom the Romans put their hope—the very Roman gods in whom the pagan Romans put their hope—migrated from burning Troy to found Rome. The Roman gods themselves were first Trojan gods. Troy burned; Aeneas carried off the fugitive gods; or rather, fleeing himself, he carried off senseless gods. For they could be carried by one fleeing; they could not flee themselves. And coming with these gods into Italy, he founded Rome with false gods. It would take long to go through the rest; yet let me briefly recall what their own writings contain. Their author, known to all, speaks thus: “The city of Rome, as I have learned, was founded and at first held by Trojans, who, fugitives under the leadership of Aeneas, were wandering with no fixed abode.” So they had gods with them; they founded Rome in Latium; they set up there for worship the gods who had been worshipped in Troy. Their poet brings in Juno, angry with Aeneas and the fleeing Trojans, and she says: “A people hateful to me sails the Tyrrhenian sea, carrying Ilium and its conquered household gods into Italy”—that is, carrying conquered gods with them into Italy. When conquered gods were being carried into Italy, was that a divine protection or an omen? Love, then, the law of God, and let there be no stumbling block for you. We ask you, we beseech you, we exhort you: be meek, have compassion on those who suffer, support the weak; and on this occasion of so many refugees, needy and suffering, let your hospitality abound, let your good works abound. Let Christians do what Christ commands, and the pagans will blaspheme only to their own harm.

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.

Yesterday the holy Gospel admonished us not to neglect the sins of our brothers: “But if your brother sins against you,” it says, “rebuke him between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. But if he despises you, take with you two or three, so that in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may stand. But if he despises them too, tell the Church. And if he despises the Church, let him be to you as a heathen and a tax collector.” Today too the passage that follows, which we heard just now when it was read, concerns the same matter. For when the Lord Jesus had said this, Peter went on to ask the Master how often he should forgive a brother who had sinned against him; and he asked whether seven times would be enough. The Lord answered him: “Not only seven times, but seventy times seven.” Then he told a very terrible parable: that the kingdom of heaven is like a householder who settled accounts with his servants, and among them he found a debtor of ten thousand talents. And when he had ordered that all he had, and all his household, and he himself be sold, and the debt paid, the man fell at his master’s knees and asked for delay, and obtained remission. For his master had pity on him, as we heard, and forgave him the whole debt. But he, free of the debt but a slave of iniquity, after he went out from his master’s presence, himself found a debtor of his, who owed not ten thousand talents, as much as his own debt had been, but a hundred denarii: he began to drag him by the throat and to say, “Pay what you owe.” And that man begged his fellow servant as he himself had begged his master; but this one did not find such a fellow servant as the other had found a master. Not only would he not forgive him the debt, but he did not even grant delay. He dragged him by force to payment, he who was already free of his debt to the master. The fellow servants were displeased, and reported to their master what had happened; and the master had the servant brought and said to him: “Wicked servant, when you owed me so much, I had pity on you and forgave you everything; should you not then also have had pity on your fellow servant, as I had pity on you?” And he ordered all that he had forgiven him to be exacted.

So he set forth this parable for our instruction, and by warning us he showed that he did not want us to perish. “So also,” he says, “your heavenly Father will do to you, if each of you does not forgive his brother from your hearts.” See, brothers, the matter is plain, the warning useful; and a very wholesome obedience is owed, so that what is commanded may be fulfilled. For every man is both God’s debtor and has his brother as his debtor. For who is not God’s debtor, except one in whom no sin can be found? And who does not have a brother as his debtor, except one against whom no one has sinned? Do you think anyone can be found in the human race who is not himself bound to his brother by some sin? Every man, then, is a debtor, yet himself has a debtor too. Therefore God, being just, has set you a rule regarding your debtor, which he too will follow with his. For there are two works of mercy that set us free, which the Lord himself set down briefly in the Gospel: “Forgive, and you will be forgiven; give, and it will be given to you.” “Forgive, and you will be forgiven” concerns pardon. “Give, and it will be given to you” concerns doing good. As to what he says of pardon: you too want to be pardoned for your sins, and you have another whom you can pardon. Again, as to doing good: a beggar asks of you, and you are God’s beggar. For all of us, when we pray, are God’s beggars: we stand before the door of the great householder, indeed we prostrate ourselves, we groan as suppliants, wanting to receive something; and that something is God himself. What does the beggar ask of you? Bread. And what do you ask of God but Christ, who says, “I am the living bread that came down from heaven”? Do you want to be pardoned? Pardon: “Forgive, and you will be forgiven.” Do you want to receive? “Give, and it will be given to you.”

But hear what can trouble one in this plain command. In forgiveness, where pardon is asked and is owed by the one who forgives, there can be a difficulty, the one that troubled Peter. “How often,” he says, “must I forgive? Is up to seven times enough?” “It is not enough,” says the Lord: “I do not say to you seven times, but seventy times seven.” Now count how often your brother has sinned against you. If you can reach the seventy-eighth fault, so as to pass seventy times seven, then contrive revenge. Is what he says really so, and is it truly the case that if he sins seventy times seven you are to forgive, but if he sins seventy-eight times you may then refuse to forgive? I dare, I dare to say that even if he sins seventy-eight times you are to forgive. If, as I said, he sins seventy-eight times, forgive. And if he sins a hundred times, forgive. And why should I name this number and that? Altogether, as often as he sins, forgive. Have I then dared to go beyond my Lord’s measure? He fixed the limit of forgiveness at the number seventy-seven: shall I presume to leap over this limit? It is not so; I have not dared anything more. I heard my Lord himself speaking in his Apostle, where no measure or number is set. For he says: “Forgiving one another, if anyone has a complaint against another, as God in Christ forgave you.” You have heard the pattern. If Christ forgave you sins seventy times seven, if he pardoned up to that point and refused beyond it, then set a limit yourself, and do not forgive beyond it. But if Christ found thousands of sins in sinners and yet forgave them all, do not withdraw your mercy, but ask for the explanation of that number. For not without reason did the Lord say seventy times seven, since there is no fault whatever that you ought not to forgive. See, that very servant who, while a debtor, was found to have a debtor, owed ten thousand talents. For I think that ten thousand talents are, to say the least, ten thousand sins; for I would not say that a single talent comprises all sins. But how much did that fellow servant owe him? He owed a hundred denarii. Is this not already more than seventy times seven? And yet the Lord was angry because he did not forgive it. For not only are a hundred more than seventy-seven, but a hundred denarii are perhaps a thousand asses. But what is that to ten thousand talents?

And so let us be ready to forgive all the faults committed against us, if we desire to be forgiven. For if we consider our sins and count what we have done by deed, by eye, by ear, by thought, by countless impulses, I do not know whether we can sleep without owing a talent. So every day we ask, every day we knock at the divine ears by praying, every day we prostrate ourselves and say: “Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors.” What debts of yours? All, or some part? You will answer: All. So, then, you too must forgive all to your debtor. This, then, is the rule you lay down; this the condition you state; this the pact and agreement you recall when you pray, saying, “Forgive us, as we also forgive our debtors.”

What, then, does seventy times seven mean? Hear, brothers, a great mystery, a wonderful sacrament. When the Lord was baptized, the holy evangelist Luke recorded there his generations: in what order, in what series, by what line of descent one came to that generation in which Christ was born. Matthew began from Abraham and came down as far as Joseph, descending; but Luke began to count ascending. Why the one descending, the other ascending? Because Matthew was setting forth the generation of Christ by which he came down to us; so, since Christ was born, he began to count descending. But Luke began to count when Christ was baptized—there is the beginning of ascent—so he began to count ascending, and in counting he completed seventy-seven generations. From whom did he count? Pay attention: from whom. He began to count from Christ up to Adam himself, who first sinned and begot us with the bond of sin. He reached as far as Adam, and seventy-seven generations are counted: that is, from Christ to Adam, the seventy-seven we mentioned, and from Adam to Christ seventy-seven. If, then, no generation has been passed over, no fault is passed over that ought not to be forgiven. For that is why he enumerated seventy-seven generations of Christ, the number which the Lord commended in the forgiveness of sins: because he began to count from the baptism, where all sins are loosed.

And in this, brothers, receive a still greater sacrament. In the number seventy-seven is the mystery of the forgiveness of sins: so many generations are found from Christ to Adam. Then question the secret of this number a little more carefully, search out its hiding places: knock more carefully, so that it may be opened to you. Righteousness consists in the law of God: that is true. For the law is set forth in ten commandments. That is why that man owed ten thousand talents. This is that memorable Decalogue, written by the finger of God and delivered to the people through Moses the servant of God. So that man owed ten thousand talents: it signifies all sins, because of the number of the law. And the other owed a hundred denarii: no less from the same number. For a hundred times a hundred make ten thousand, and ten times ten a hundred. The one owed ten thousand talents, and the other ten times ten denarii. For there is no departure from the number of the law, and in both you will find all sins. Both are debtors, both bewailed their debt and obtained pardon; but that bad servant, ungrateful, unjust, would not pay back what he received, would not grant what had been granted to him though unworthy.

See, then, brothers: everyone begins from baptism; he goes out free; the ten thousand talents have been forgiven him; and when he goes out, he will find his fellow servant his debtor. Let him consider sin itself, then: for the number eleven is the transgression of the law. For the law is ten, sin eleven: the law by ten, sin by eleven. Why is sin by eleven? Because to go to eleven is to transgress ten. In the law a measure is fixed; transgression is sin. As soon as you transgress ten, you come to eleven. So great a mystery was figured when the tabernacle was ordered to be built. Many things were stated there by number, in a great sacrament. Among other things, curtains of goat’s hair were ordered to be made, not ten but eleven, because goat’s hair signifies the confession of sins. What more do you seek? Do you want to know that all sins are contained in this number seventy-seven? Seven is commonly reckoned for the whole, since time revolves in seven days, and when the seven is finished it returns again to the beginning, so that the same form revolves. By revolutions of this kind the ages pass; yet the number seven is never departed from. For he spoke of all sins when he said seventy times seven: because if you take that eleven seven times, it makes seventy-seven. So he who marked them out beforehand by the number seventy-seven willed all sins to be forgiven. Let no one hold the debt fast against himself by not forgiving, lest it be held fast against him when he prays. For God says: Forgive, and you will be forgiven. I forgave first: at least forgive afterward. For if you do not forgive, I will call you back, and whatever I had forgiven you I will demand again. For the Truth does not lie; Christ does not deceive or be deceived, who added, saying: “So also your Father who is in heaven will do to you.” You find a Father: imitate the Father. For if you will not imitate him, you are arranging to be disinherited. “So also,” he says, “will your heavenly Father do to you, if each of you does not forgive his brothers from your hearts.” Do not say with the tongue, “I forgive,” and put it off in your heart. For God shows you the punishment by threatening vengeance. God knows where you speak. Man heard your voice; God inspects your conscience. If you say, “I forgive,” forgive. It is better to shout with your mouth and forgive in your heart than to be smooth in mouth and cruel in heart.

Now, then, undisciplined boys plead and do not want to be beaten, and they raise this objection against us when we want to discipline them: “I have sinned, forgive me.” See, I forgave, and he sins again. “Forgive.” I forgave. He sins a third time. “Forgive.” A third time I forgave. Now, the fourth time, let him be beaten. And he says: “Have I tired you out seventy times seven?” If by this objection the severity of discipline falls asleep, with discipline suppressed wickedness rages unpunished. What, then, is to be done? Let us rebuke with words, and if need be with blows too; but let us forgive the offense and cast the fault out of our heart. For that is why the Lord added, “from your hearts”: so that, if discipline is imposed out of charity, gentleness may not depart from the heart. For what is so kind as a doctor carrying his scalpel? The one to be cut weeps, and is cut; the one to be cauterized weeps, and is cauterized. That is not cruelty; far be it that the doctor should be called savage. He is severe on the wound so that the man may be healed; for if the wound is merely stroked, the man is lost. So let me warn you of these things, my brothers: let us love in every way our brothers who have sinned, let us not let charity toward them go out of our hearts, and let us give discipline when it is needed, lest through the relaxing of discipline wickedness grow and we begin to be accused before God; for it was read to us, “Rebuke those who sin before all, so that the rest may have fear.” Certainly, if one distinguishes the occasions, which alone is right, the question is solved, and it is true. If the sin is in secret, rebuke in secret. If the sin is public and open, rebuke publicly, so that he may be corrected and the rest may fear.

The Lord said to a certain young man: “If you want to come to life, keep the commandments.” He did not say, “If you want to come to eternal life,” but, “If you want to come to life,” defining as life that which would be eternal life. So let us first commend the love of this life. For even this life, of whatever kind, is loved; and people fear and dread to end even this life, of whatever kind, full of hardship and misery. From this we must see, from this consider, how eternal life is to be loved, when this miserable life, which will someday end, is loved so much. Consider, brothers, how much that life is to be loved where you never end life. You love this life, then, where you labor so much, run, bustle, pant; and the things necessary in a miserable life can scarcely be counted: sowing, ploughing, planting new vines, sailing, grinding, cooking, weaving; and after all this you will end your life. See what you suffer in this miserable life that you love; and do you think you will always live and never die? Temples, rocks, marbles, held together with iron and lead, still fall: and does man think he will never die? Learn, then, brothers, to seek eternal life, where you will not endure these things but will reign with God forever. For he who wants life, as the prophet says, loves to see good days. For in bad days death is wished for rather than life. Do we not hear and see people, when they are placed in some tribulations and straits, in conflicts and sicknesses, and see themselves suffering, say nothing but, “God, send me death; hasten my days”? And sometimes sickness comes: people run, doctors are brought, gold coins and gifts are promised. Death itself says to you: “See, here I am, whom a little while ago you were asking of the Lord; why do you want to flee me now? I have found you a deceiver, and a lover of a miserable life.”

Of these days that we spend, the Apostle says: “Redeeming the time, because the days are evil.” Are the days not evil, then, which we spend in the corruption of this flesh, in so great, or under so great, a burden of a corruptible body, among so many temptations, among so many difficulties, where pleasure is false, there is no security of joy, fear tortures, desire is greedy, sadness is dry? See how evil the days are; and no one wants to end those evil days, and people ask God much for this very thing, that they may live long. But what is it to live long but to be tortured long? What else is living long but adding evil days to evil days? And when boys grow, days seem to be added to them; and they do not know that they are being diminished: it is a false reckoning. For as they grow, days are taken away rather than added. Allot some newborn man, for example, eighty years: whatever he lives, he subtracts from the total. And foolish people rejoice at many birthdays, both their own and their children’s. O prudent man! If the wine in your skin diminishes, you are sad: you lose days, and you rejoice? So the days are evil, and all the worse because they are loved. This world flatters so much that no one wants to end a life of hardship. For true and blessed life is this: when we shall rise again and reign with Christ. For the ungodly too will rise again, but to go into the fire. So there is no life except blessed life; and blessed life cannot be except eternal, where the days are good—and not many, but one. They are called “days” from the custom of this life. That day knows no rising, knows no setting. No tomorrow succeeds that day, because no yesterday precedes it. This day, or these days, and this life, the true life, we have in promise. It is, then, the reward of some work. If we love the reward, let us not fail in the work, and we shall reign with Christ forever.

The Gospel reading that has just sounded in our ears, brothers, wants a hearer and a doer more than an expounder. What is clearer than this light: “If you want to come to life, keep the commandments”? What, then, am I to say? “If you want to come to life, keep the commandments.” Who is there who does not want life? And yet who is there who wants to keep the commandments? If you do not want to keep the commandments, why do you seek life? If you are lazy about the work, why do you hurry to the wages? That rich young man said he had kept the commandments; he heard greater precepts: “If you want to be perfect, one thing you lack: go, sell all that you have and give to the poor”—you will not lose it, but “you will have treasure in heaven”—“and come, follow me.” For what does it profit you if you do this and do not follow me? But he went away sad and sorrowful, as you have heard, for he had great riches. What he heard we too have heard. The Gospel is the mouth of Christ. He sits in heaven, but he does not cease to speak on earth. Let us not be deaf, for he cries out. Let us not be dead, for he thunders. If you do not want to do the greater things, do the lesser. If one of the greater is too much for you, at least take hold of the lesser. Why are you lazy toward both? Why do you oppose both? The greater are: “Sell all that you have, and give to the poor, and follow me.” The lesser are: “You shall not commit murder; you shall not commit adultery; you shall not seek false testimony; you shall not steal; honor father and mother; you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Do these. Why do I cry out to you to sell your goods, when I cannot wring from you that you not seize the goods of others? You heard, “You shall not steal”; you plunder. Before the sight of so great a Judge I now hold you not as a thief but as a robber. Spare yourself; have pity on yourself. This life still gives you time; do not reject correction. You were a thief yesterday; do not be one today too. Perhaps you have been one today too; not tomorrow. At some time end the evil, and claim good as your reward. You want to have good things and do not want to be good: your life contradicts your wishes. If it is a great good to have a good country estate, how great an evil is it to have a bad soul?

The rich man went away saddened, and the Lord said: “How difficult it is for one who has riches to enter the kingdom of heaven!” And how difficult it would be he showed by the comparison he set forth, showing it to be so difficult as to be altogether impossible. For everything impossible is difficult, but not everything difficult is impossible. See how difficult it is; consider the comparison: “Amen I say to you, it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.” A camel entering through the eye of a needle! If he had said a flea, it would be impossible. Then, hearing this, the disciples were saddened and said: “If it is so, who then can be saved?” Who of the rich? Poor people, hear Christ: I speak to the people of God. You poor are more numerous; you at least take this in; and yet listen. All of you who glory in poverty, beware of pride, lest humble rich people outdo you; beware of ungodliness, lest godly rich people outdo you; beware of drunkenness, lest sober rich people outdo you. Do not glory in poverty, if they ought not to glory in riches.

Let the rich hear, if there are any; let them hear the Apostle: “Command the rich of this world”—because there are rich of another age. The poor are rich of another age; the apostles were rich of another age, who said, “As having nothing and possessing all things.” That you may know of which rich he speaks, he added, “of this world.” Let the rich of this world, then, hear the Apostle: “Command,” he says, “the rich of this world not to be proud-minded.” The first worm of riches is pride. An evil moth, it gnaws the whole and reduces it to ashes. “Command them,” then, “not to be proud-minded, nor to hope in the uncertainty of riches,” lest perhaps you go to sleep rich and rise poor. “Nor to hope in the uncertainty of riches” (these are the Apostle’s words), “but in the living God,” he says. A thief takes away your gold; who takes away your God? What does the rich man have, if he does not have God? What does the poor man not have, if he has God? So he says not to hope in riches, “but in the living God, who provides us richly with all things to enjoy”; and with all these things, himself.

If, then, they ought not to hope in riches, not trust in them, but in the living God, what are they to do with their riches? Hear what: “Let them be rich in good works.” What is this? Explain, Apostle. For many do not want to understand what they do not want to do. Explain, Apostle; do not give occasion for evil work through obscurity of speech. Tell us what you said: “Let them be rich in good works.” Let them hear, let them understand: let them not be allowed to excuse themselves, but rather let them begin to accuse themselves and to say what we just heard in the psalm: “For I acknowledge my sin.” Tell us what “Let them be rich in good works” is. What is “Let them give readily”? Is this not understood either? “Let them give readily, let them share.” You have, another does not have: share, so that it may be shared with you. Share here, and you will share there. Share bread here, and you will receive bread there. What bread here? That which you gather with sweat and toil, from the curse on the first man. What bread there? He who said, “I am the living bread that came down from heaven.” You are rich here, but you are poor there. You have gold, but you do not yet hold Christ present. Pay out what you have, so that you may receive what you do not have. “Let them be rich in good works, let them give readily, let them share.”

Are they, then, to lose their goods? He said “let them share,” not “let them give everything.” Let them keep for themselves as much as is enough; let them keep more than is enough. Let us give from it a certain portion. What portion? A tenth. The scribes and Pharisees gave tithes. Let us blush, brothers: they gave tithes, they for whom Christ had not yet shed his blood. The scribes and Pharisees gave tithes; so do not think you are doing something great because you break bread for the poor; that is scarcely a thousandth of your means. And yet I do not blame it: at least do this. So thirsty am I, so hungry, that I rejoice even at these crumbs. But I will not keep silent about what was said by the Living One who died for us: “Unless your righteousness exceeds,” he says, “that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.” Let him not flatter us: he is a doctor; he cuts to the quick. “Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.” The scribes and Pharisees gave tithes. What about you? Question yourselves. See what you do, and out of how much you do it; what you give, what you leave yourselves; what you spend on mercy, what you reserve for luxury. So: “Let them give readily, let them share, let them store up for themselves a good foundation for the future, that they may lay hold of true life.”

I have admonished the rich: hear, you poor. You rich, pay out; you poor, do not plunder. You rich, give away your means; you poor, restrain your desires. Hear, you poor, the same apostle: “But godliness is great gain.” Gain is the acquisition of profit. “Godliness,” he says, “with sufficiency is great gain.” You have the world in common with the rich; you do not have a house in common with the rich; but you have heaven in common, light in common. Seek sufficiency, seek what is enough, do not want more. The rest weighs down rather than lifts up; burdens rather than honors. “Great gain is godliness with sufficiency.” Godliness first of all. Godliness is the worship of God. “Godliness with sufficiency. For we brought nothing into this world.” Did you bring something here? But neither did you rich bring anything. You found everything here; you were born naked with the poor. [Common to both is the] weakness of the body, common the crying of infants, witness of our miseries. “For we brought nothing into this world” (he is speaking to the poor), “but neither can we take anything out. Having food and clothing, [let us be content with these. For those who want to] become [rich]”: those who want to become rich, not those who are. For those who are, let them be. They have heard what concerns them: that they be rich in good works, give readily, share. They themselves have heard. You who are not yet rich, hear: “Those who want to become rich fall into temptation and snares, and many harmful desires.” Do you not fear? Hear what follows: “which plunge men into ruin and perdition.” Do you not fear? “For avarice is the root of all evils.” Avarice is wanting to become rich, not already being rich. That is avarice. Do you not fear being plunged into ruin and perdition? Do you not fear avarice, the root of all evils? You root out the root of thorns from your field, and do you not root out from your heart the root of evil desires? You clean your field, from which your belly may get its fruit, and do you not clean your heart, where your God may dwell? “For avarice is the root of all evils; following it, some have wandered from the faith and have pierced themselves with many sorrows.”

You have heard what to do; you have heard what to fear; you have heard how the kingdom of heaven is bought; you have heard how the kingdom of heaven is hindered. Be all of one mind in the word of God. God [made] both rich and poor. [Scripture says: The rich man] and the poor man have met each other. On what road, if not in this life? The rich man was born, the poor man was born. You have met each other walking the same road. You, do not oppress; you, do not defraud. This one is in need; that one has. But the Lord made both. Through the one who has, he helps the one in need; through the one who does not have, he tests the one who has. We have heard, we have spoken: let us fear, let us beware, let us pray, let us arrive.

The Gospel has admonished us by the present reading to speak to your Charity about the heavenly treasure. For our God did not, as greedy unbelievers think, want us to lose our goods: if what was commanded us is well understood, piously believed, and devoutly received, he did not command us to lose them, but showed us a place where we should put them. For no one can help thinking of his treasure and following his riches by a kind of journey of the heart. If, then, they are buried in the earth, the heart seeks the depths; but if they are kept in heaven, the heart will be above. If, then, Christians want to do what they know they also profess—for not all who hear know this; and would that those who know it do not know it in vain—whoever wants to have the heart lifted up, let him put there, there, what he loves; and, placed on earth in the flesh, let him dwell with Christ in heart; and as its head went before the Church, so let his heart go before the Christian. As the members will go where Christ the head went before, so the man, rising again, will go where his heart has now gone before. Let us go from here, then, by whatever part we can: the whole of us will follow where some part of us has gone before. The earthly house is falling into ruin; the heavenly house is eternal. Let us move ahead to where we plan to come.

We heard a certain rich man asking the good master for counsel on gaining eternal life. Great was what he loved, and cheap was what he would not despise. So, hearing with a perverse heart him whom he had just called good master, through a greater love of what was cheap he lost the possession of charity. Unless he had wanted to obtain eternal life, he would not have asked counsel about having eternal life. Why is it, then, brothers, that he spurned the words of him whom he himself had called good master, words drawn out for him from faithful teaching? Is that master good before he teaches, and bad when he has taught? Before he taught, he was called good. The man did not hear what he wanted, but he heard what he ought: he had come desiring, but he went away sad. What if it had been said to him, “Lose what you have,” when he went away sad because it was said, “Keep well what you have”? “Go,” he says, “sell all that you have, and give to the poor.” Are you perhaps afraid of losing it? See what follows: “And you will have treasure in heaven.” Perhaps you would have set some little slave as guardian of your treasures: your God will be the guardian of your gold. He who gave on earth keeps it in heaven. Perhaps the man would not have hesitated to entrust what he had to Christ, and was saddened because it was said to him, “Give to the poor,” as if saying in his heart: “If you said, Give to me, I will keep it for you in heaven, I would not hesitate to give to my Lord, the good master; but now you have said, Give to the poor.”

Let no one fear to pay out to the poor; let no one think that the one whose hand he sees is the one receiving. He receives who commanded you to give. Nor do we say this from our own heart or by human guesswork: hear him himself, both warning you and writing you a guarantee. “I was hungry,” he says, “and you gave me to eat.” And when, after he had listed their services, they answered, “When did we see you hungry?”, he answered: “When you did it to one of my least, you did it to me.” The poor man begs, but the rich one receives: you give to one who consumes, and he receives who will repay. Nor will he repay only what he receives: he has willed to borrow at interest; he promises more than you have given. Now bring out your avarice; think of yourself as a moneylender. Certainly if you were one, you would be reproved by the Church, refuted by the word of God; all your brothers would curse you as a cruel moneylender, eager to profit from others’ tears. Be a moneylender: no one forbids you. You want to give to a poor man who will lament when he repays: give to a sound debtor, who even urges you to receive what he promises.

Give to God, and sue God. Rather, give to God, and you will be summoned to receive. Certainly on earth you used to look for your debtor; and he was looking too, but for where to hide from your face. You had gone to the judge and said: “Order this debtor of mine to be summoned.” He, hearing this, goes off and does not even care to greet you, though perhaps, when he was in need, you had given him well-being by your loan. Here, then, you have someone to press. Give to Christ; he himself summons you of his own accord to receive, while you wonder that he received anything from you. For to those placed at the right he himself will say of his own accord: “Come, blessed of my Father.” Where? “Come, receive the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.” For what? “I was hungry, and you gave me to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave me drink; I was naked, and you clothed me; a stranger, and you took me in; sick and in prison, and you visited me.” And they: “Lord, when did we see you?” What is this? The debtor summons, and the creditors make excuses. The faithful debtor does not want them deceived. Do you hesitate to receive? I received, and you do not know it? And he answers how he received: “When you did it to one of my least, you did it to me.” I did not receive it in my own person; I received it through my own. What was given to them came to me: be secure, you have not lost it. You were looking at debtors on earth who could hardly pay: you have one in heaven who can. I, he says, received; I will repay.

And what did I receive? What do I repay? “I was hungry,” he says, “and you gave me to eat,” and so on. I received earth, I will give heaven; I received temporal things, I will restore eternal ones; I received bread, I will give life. Indeed, let us even say this: I received bread, I will give bread; I received drink, I will give drink; I received hospitality, I will give a home; I was visited when sick, I will give health; I was seen in prison, I will give freedom. The bread you gave to my poor has been consumed; the bread I will give both refreshes and does not fail. Let that bread which came down from heaven, then, give us bread. When he gives bread, he will give himself. For what did you want when you lent at interest? To give coins and receive coins; but to give fewer and receive more. I, says God, will exchange for something better all that you gave. For if you gave a pound of silver and received a pound of gold, with what joy would you be seized? Look, and question avarice: I gave a pound of silver, I receive a pound of gold. What likeness is there between silver and gold? Much more, then, what likeness is there between earth and heaven? Both the gold and the silver you were going to leave here; but you are not going to remain here forever. I will give something else, I will give more, I will give better, I will give what is eternal. So, brothers, let our avarice be restrained in such a way that another avarice, a holy one, may be kindled. She who forbids you to do good speaks to you wholly badly: you want to serve a bad mistress, not recognizing the good Lord. And sometimes two mistresses occupy the heart and tear apart, in different directions, the bad slave, who deserves to serve such mistresses.

Sometimes two contrary mistresses possess a man, avarice and luxury. Avarice says, “Keep”; luxury says, “Spend.” Under two mistresses giving different orders, making different demands, what will you do? Both have their speeches. And when you begin to refuse to obey and to go off into your freedom, since they cannot command, they flatter. And their flatteries are more to be guarded against than their orders. What does avarice say? “Keep for yourself, keep for your children. If you are in need, no one will give to you. Do not live for the moment: provide for yourself for the future.” Luxury, on the other hand: “Live while you live; do well by your soul. You are going to die, and you do not know when; you do not know whether the one to whom you leave it will possess it. You take away and withhold from your own throat: when you are dead, perhaps he will not set a cup on your grave; or if perhaps he does set a cup there, he himself will get drunk, and not a drop will come down to you. So do well by your soul when you can, while you can.” Avarice commanded one thing: “Keep for yourself; provide for yourself for later.” Luxury another: “Spend; do well by your soul.”

Be weary, O free man called into freedom; be weary of the slavery of such mistresses. Recognize your Redeemer, your Liberator. Serve him: he commands easier things; he does not command contrary things. I dare to say more. Avarice and luxury commanded contrary things, so that you could not obey both; and the one said, “Keep for yourself, and provide for later”; the other said, “Spend; do well by your soul.” Let your Lord come forward, your Redeemer, who will say the same things and will not say contrary things. If you are unwilling, his house has no need of one who serves unwillingly. Consider your Redeemer, consider your price. He came to redeem; he shed his blood. He held you dear, whom he bought so dearly. You know who bought you; consider from what he redeems you. I pass over the other vices that proudly lord it over you, for you were serving countless bad masters. I speak of these two, commanding contrary things, dragging you in different directions, avarice and luxury. Rescue yourself from them; come to your God. If you were a slave of iniquity, be a slave of righteousness. The very words that they spoke to you while commanding contrary things you hear from your Lord, and he does not command contrary things. He does not take away their words; he takes away their power. What did avarice say to you? “Keep for yourself; provide for later.” The word is not changed; the man is changed. Now, if you please, compare the counselors: that one is avarice, this one is justice.

Examine the very contraries. “Keep for yourself,” says avarice. Suppose you want to obey: ask where you are to keep it. She will show you a fortified place, a walled room, an iron chest. Fortify everything: perhaps a thief in your own household will break into even the inner rooms; and while you look after your money, you will fear for your life. Perhaps while you keep much, he who wants to snatch it is also planning to kill. Finally, though you fortify your treasure and your clothing against thieves with whatever defenses, fortify them against rust and moth. What are you going to do? It is not an enemy outside who takes away, but one inside who consumes.

So avarice did not give good counsel. See, she commanded you to keep, and could not find a place to give you where you might keep. Let her also say what follows: “Provide for later.” For how much later? For a few uncertain days. She says, “Provide for later,” to a man who perhaps will not live even till tomorrow. But suppose he lives as long as avarice thinks—not as long as it shows, not as long as it teaches, not as long as it is sure of, but as long as it thinks: he has lived, grown old, reached his end; still the old man, bent, leaning on a stick, seeks gain, and hears avarice saying, “Provide for later.” For what later? He is already speaking as he breathes his last. “For your children,” she says. Would that we did not have old men who are avaricious even when they have no children! Even to them, even to such, even to those who excuse their iniquity with no semblance of family affection, she does not stop saying, “Provide for later.” But perhaps they quickly blush: let us look at those who have children, whether they are sure that their children will possess what they leave. Let them consider, while they live, the children of others: some losing what they had through the dishonesty of others, some consuming through their own wickedness what they had possessed; and the children of the rich remain destitute. Stop being born slaves of avarice. “But my children will possess it,” he says. It is uncertain: I do not say it is false, but what you are doing is uncertain. Finally, make it certain: what do you want to leave them? What you acquired for yourself. Certainly what you acquired had not been left to you, and yet you have it. If you could have what was not left to you, they too can have what you do not leave them.

The counsels of avarice have been refuted; but let the Lord say the same things, let justice speak now: the words will be the same, not the meaning. “Keep for yourself,” says your Lord, “provide for later.” And ask him: “Where shall I keep?” “You will have treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys.” For how much later will you keep? “Come, blessed of my Father, receive the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.” How many days this kingdom lasts the very end of the sentence shows. When he had said of those on the left, “So they will go into eternal burning,” he said of those on the right, “But the righteous into eternal life.” This is providing for later: a later with nothing after it. Those days without end have been called days, and called a day. For someone said, “That I may dwell in the house of the Lord for length of days,” speaking of those days. And it has been called a day: “Today I have begotten you.” And those days are one day, because there is no longer time: that day is neither preceded by a yesterday nor shut out by a tomorrow. Let us provide, then, for that later; the words are not different from what avarice said to you, and yet avarice has been overthrown. It remains for you to say: “And what do I do about my children?” Hear on this too the counsel of your Lord. If your Lord says to you, “I who created them think better about them than you who begot them,” perhaps you will have nothing to say. But you will look at that rich man who went away sad and was reproved in the Gospel; and perhaps you will say to yourself: “This rich man did wrong in not selling everything and giving to the poor, because he had no children; but I have children; I have those for whom to keep.” And in this weakness of yours your Lord stands by you. Let me dare to speak by his mercy—let me dare to say something, not from my own presumption but from his compassion: Keep for your children too; but hear me. If, as human things go, someone loses one of his children—pay attention, brothers, pay attention, for avarice has no excuse, neither here nor in the age to come—see, these are human things; we do not wish for them, but we see examples. Some Christian has been lost; you have lost a Christian son: you have not lost him, then, but sent him ahead. For he has not departed, but gone before. Question your faith: certainly you too are going where he has gone ahead. I say a short thing, to which I think no one can reply. Is your son alive? Question your faith. If, then, he is alive, why is his share seized by his brothers? But you will say: “Is he going to come back and possess it?” Then let it be sent to him where he has gone ahead: he cannot come to his property; his property can go to him. See with whom he is. If your son were serving in the palace and became the emperor’s friend, and said to you, “Sell my share there and send it to me,” would you find anything to answer? Now your son is with the Emperor of all emperors, the King of all kings, the Lord of all lords: send to him. I do not say that he himself needs it: his Lord, with whom your son is, is in need on earth. Here he wants to receive what he gives in heaven. Do what some misers are accustomed to do: make a transfer of funds; give to strangers what you may receive back in your homeland. Finally, I say nothing now of you; I speak of your son. You hesitate to give what is yours; you hesitate also to return what is another’s: you are surely proved not to have been keeping it for your children. See, you do not give to your children, since you will take from your children. From this one, certainly, you will take. Why is he unworthy to receive, because he lives with one more worthy? There would be reason for it if he with whom he lives were unwilling to receive it. As it is, you will be rich not for your own house but for the house of God. Far be it, then, that I say to you, “Give what you have”; I say to you, “Return what you owe.” “But his brothers,” you say, “will have it.” O evil teaching, teaching your children to wish death on their brothers! If they become richer from the property of their dead brother, see how they will watch one another in your house. What will you do, then? Divide the patrimony and teach parricide?

But I do not want to speak of the loss of one child, lest I seem to threaten human misfortunes. Let us speak in a more favorable and happy way. I do not say, “You will have one less”; count that you have one more. Make room for Christ among your children; let your Lord join your family, let your Creator join your offspring, let your brother join the number of your children. For though the difference is so great, he has deigned to be a brother too. And though he is the Father’s only Son, he willed to have co-heirs. See how generous he is! Why are you so barren? You have two sons: count him as the third. You have three: let him be counted as the fourth. You have five: let him be called the sixth. You have ten: let him be the eleventh. I do not want to say more: keep the place of one of your children for your Lord. For what you give to your Lord will profit both you and your children; but what you wrongly keep for your children will harm both you and them. You will give one portion, the one you had allotted to one child. Reckon that you have begotten one more.

What great thing is this, my brothers? I give counsel; do I tie your throat? As the Apostle says: “I say this for your benefit, not to throw a noose on you.” I think, brothers, it is a small and easy thought for a father of children to think that he has one more son, and so to purchase estates that you may possess forever, both you and your children. Avarice has nothing to say. You cried out at these words. Speak against her; let her not conquer you; let her not have more power in your hearts than your Redeemer. Let her not have more power in your heart than he who admonishes us to have our hearts lifted up. So let us now dismiss her. What does luxury say? What? “Do well by your soul.” See, the Lord too says: “Do well by your soul.” What luxury said to you, justice says to you. But see here too how it is said. If you want to do well by your soul, consider that rich man who, by the counsel of luxury and avarice, wanted to do well by his soul. His land yielded well, and he had nowhere to store his produce, and he said: “What shall I do? I have nowhere to gather it. I have found what I will do: I will pull down the old storehouses and build new ones, and fill them, and I will say to my soul: You have many goods; rejoice.” Hear the counsel against luxury: “Fool, this night your soul will be taken from you: the things you have prepared, whose will they be?” And where will that soul go that will be taken from him? It will be taken this night, and he does not know where it will go.

See another rich man, luxurious and proud. He feasted splendidly every day and was clothed in purple and fine linen; and a poor man covered with sores lay at his gate and longed in vain for the crumbs from the rich man’s table; he fed the dogs with his sores, and was not fed by the rich man. Both died: one of them was buried; what was said of the other? “He was carried by the angels into Abraham’s bosom.” The rich man sees the poor man—or rather now the poor man sees the rich man: the rich man longs for a drop of water from the poor man’s finger on his tongue, from him who longed for a crumb from his table. Certainly the roles have been reversed. In vain does the dead rich man say this; let us not hear it in vain, we who live. For he too wanted to be called back to those above, and was not permitted; he wanted one of the dead to be sent to his brothers, and this too was not granted him. But what was said to him? “They have Moses and the prophets there.” And he: “They will not listen, unless someone goes from the dead.” Abraham said to him: “If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they believe if someone goes from the dead.”

So concerning giving alms and acquiring rest for the soul for later, so that we may do well by our soul—what luxury said perversely, Moses said too, and the prophets said. Let us hear while we live. For there he longs in vain to hear who despised these things when he heard them. Or are we waiting for someone to rise from the dead too and tell us to do well by our soul? This too has already happened: your father has not risen, but your Lord has risen. Hear him; accept good counsel. Do not spare your treasures; pay out as much as you can. It was the voice of luxury; it has become the voice of the Lord. Pay out as much as you can, do well by your soul, lest your soul be taken this night. You have, in the name of Christ, as I think, a sermon on giving alms. This voice of yours as you praise is acceptable to the Lord only if he also sees your hands at work.

From the holy Gospel you heard a parable suited to the present season, about those who work in the vineyard. For it is now the time of the bodily grape harvest. But there is also a spiritual vintage, in which God rejoices at the fruit of his vineyard. For we worship God, and God cultivates us. But we do not worship God in such a way that by our cultivation we make him better. For we cultivate him by adoring, not by ploughing. But he cultivates us as a farmer cultivates a field. That he cultivates us, then, makes us better; for a farmer too makes his field better by cultivating it; and the very fruit he seeks in us is that we worship him. His cultivation of us is this: he does not cease by his word to root out evil seeds from our hearts, to open our heart as with the plough of his speech, to plant the seeds of his commands, and to wait for the fruit of godliness. For when we have so received this cultivation into our heart that we worship him well, we are not ungrateful to our farmer, but yield fruit in which he rejoices. And our fruit does not make him richer, but us happier.

See, hear how, as I said, God cultivates us. For that we worship God need not be proved to you; everyone has it on his lips that men worship God. But that God cultivates men—the hearer is almost alarmed when he hears it, because it is not usual among people to say that God cultivates men, but that men worship God. We ought, then, to prove to you that God too cultivates men, lest perhaps we be thought to have spoken an undisciplined word, and someone argue against us in his heart and, not knowing what we meant, find fault with us. So we have resolved to show you that God too cultivates us; but, as I have already said, as a field, to make us better. The Lord says in the Gospel: “I am the vine, you are the branches, my Father is the farmer.” What does a farmer do? I ask you who are farmers: what does a farmer do? I think he cultivates a field. If, then, God the Father is a farmer, he has a field, and he cultivates his field and expects fruit from it.

Indeed, he planted a vineyard, as the Lord Jesus Christ himself says, and let it out to tenants who would render him the fruit at the proper seasons. And he sent his servants to them to ask for the vineyard’s rent. But they treated them with insults, killed some, and refused to render the fruit. He sent others; they suffered the same. And that householder, the cultivator of his field, the planter and lessor of his vineyard, said: “I will send my only son; perhaps they will respect him at least.” And he sent, it says, his son too. They said among themselves: “This is the heir; come, let us kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.” And they killed him and threw him out of the vineyard. “When the Lord of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those wicked tenants?” The answer was given: “He will destroy the wicked wickedly, and let out his vineyard to other tenants, who will render him the fruit in its season.” The vineyard was planted when the law was given in the hearts of the Jews. The prophets were sent, seeking fruit, their good life: the prophets were treated with insults by them and killed. Christ too was sent, the householder’s only Son; and they killed the heir himself, and so lost the inheritance. Their evil plan turned against them. They killed in order to possess; and because they killed, they lost.

And now you have heard the parable from the holy Gospel, that the kingdom of heaven is like a householder who went out to hire workers for his vineyard. He went out in the morning and hired those he found, and agreed with them on a denarius as wages. He went out also at the third hour, found others, and brought them to the work of the vineyard. At the sixth hour he did this, and at the ninth. He went out also at the eleventh hour, near the end of the day, found some idle and standing, and said to them: “Why do you stand here? Why do you not work in the vineyard?” They answered: “Because no one hired us.” “Come,” he said, “you too, and what is just I will give you.” He was pleased to make the wage a denarius. Those who were going to work one hour—when would they dare to hope for a denarius? Yet they rejoiced that they would receive something. They too were brought in for one hour. When the day was ended, he ordered the wages paid to all, from the last to the first. Then he began to pay from those who had come at the eleventh hour, and ordered that a denarius be given them. Those who had come at the first hour, seeing that the others had received a denarius, the sum agreed with themselves, hoped they would receive something more; it came to them too, and they received a denarius. They grumbled against the householder, saying: “See, we who bore the burden of the day and the heat, you have made us equal and on a par with those who worked one hour in the vineyard.” And the householder, giving a most just answer to one of them, said: “Friend, I have done you no wrong”—that is, I have not defrauded you; I paid you what I agreed. I have not cheated you, because I paid what I contracted. To this man I do not want to pay, but to give. “Am I not allowed to do what I want with what is mine? Or is your eye evil because I am good?” If I took what belongs to another from someone, I would rightly be blamed as a cheat and unjust; if I did not pay someone what was owed, I would rightly be blamed as a cheat and one who withholds another’s due; but when I pay what is owed, and also give to whom I wish, neither can the one to whom I owed blame me, and the one to whom I gave ought to rejoice the more. There was nothing to answer; and all were made equal, and the last became first and the first last—by being made equal, not by being put in reverse order. What is “the last became first and the first last”? That the first and the last received the same amount.

What does it mean, then, that he began paying from the last? Will not all, as we read, receive at the same time? For we read in another place of the Gospel that he will say to those whom he places at his right: “Come, blessed of my Father, receive the kingdom prepared for you from the beginning of the world.” If, then, all will receive at the same time, how do we understand here that those who worked from the eleventh hour received first, and those who worked from the first hour later? If I can say it so that it reaches your understanding, thanks be to God. For you ought to give thanks to him who pays out to you through us; for we do not pay out from our own. If you ask about two men, for example, which received first, the one who received after one hour, or the one who received after twelve, everyone answers that the one who received after one hour received sooner than the one who received after twelve. So, although all received at one hour, yet since some received after one hour and others after twelve hours, those are said to have received first who received after a short time. The first righteous, like Abel, like Noah, called as it were at the first hour, will receive the happiness of the resurrection with us. Other righteous after them, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and whoever belonged to their age, called as it were at the third hour, will receive the happiness of the resurrection with us. Other righteous, Moses and Aaron and whoever were with them, called as at the sixth hour, will receive the happiness of the resurrection with us. After them the holy prophets, called as at the ninth hour, will receive the same happiness with us. At the end of the age all Christians, called as at the eleventh hour, will receive the happiness of that resurrection with them. All will receive at the same time; but see after how long a time those first ones receive. If, then, they receive after a long time and we after a short time, though we receive at the same time, we seem to have received first, because our reward will not be delayed.

In that reward, then, we shall all be equal, the first as the last and the last as the first: because that denarius is eternal life, and in eternal life all will be equal. For although they will shine with a diversity of merits, one more, another less, yet as regards eternal life it will be equal for all. For what is equally everlasting will not be longer for one and shorter for another: what has no end will have none for you and none for me. In one way there will be conjugal chastity there, in another way virginal integrity; in one way the fruit of good work, in another the crown of suffering. This in one way, that in another; yet as far as living forever is concerned, neither does this one live more than that one, nor that one more than this. For they live equally without end, though each lives in his own glory: and that denarius is eternal life. Let not the one who received after a long time grumble, then, against the one who received after a short time. To the one it is paid, to the other it is given; yet one and the same thing is given to both.

There is also something similar in this life. Apart from that explanation of this parable by which those called at the first hour are understood as Abel and the righteous of his age, at the third Abraham and the righteous of his age, at the sixth Moses and Aaron and the righteous of their age, at the ninth the prophets and the righteous of their age, at the eleventh, as at the end of the age, all Christians—apart from this explanation of the parable, the parable can also be observed in our own life. For those are called as at the first hour who begin to be Christians fresh from their mother’s womb; as at the third, boys; as at the sixth, young men; as at the ninth, those declining into old age; as at the eleventh, the altogether decrepit: yet all will receive the one denarius of eternal life.

But pay attention and understand, my brothers, lest anyone delay coming to the vineyard because he is secure that, whenever he comes, he will receive the same denarius. He is secure, indeed, that the denarius itself is promised him; but he is not commanded to delay. For when the householder went out to hire those he found at the third hour, for example, and hired them, did those hired for the vineyard say to him, “Wait, we are not going there until the sixth hour”? Or did those he found at the sixth hour say, “We are not going until the ninth”? Or those he found at the ninth, “We are not going until the eleventh; for he will give everyone the same: why should we tire ourselves more?” What he will give and what he will do rests in his own counsel: you, when you are called, come. For an equal wage is promised to all; but about the hour of working there is a great question. For if, for example, those called at the sixth hour—placed in that age of the body where the years of youth burn hot, as the sixth hour itself is hot—if those young men, when called, said: “Wait; for we heard in the Gospel that we will all receive one wage; when we have grown old, we will come at the eleventh hour; we will receive the same, so why labor?”, it would be answered them: “You do not want to labor, you who do not know whether you will live to old age? You are called at the sixth hour: come. The householder has promised you a denarius even if you come at the eleventh; but no one has promised you that you will live until the seventh.” I do not say until the eleventh, but until the seventh. Why, then, do you put off him who calls you, sure of the wage, unsure of the day? Take care lest perhaps what he would give you by promising you take away from yourself by delaying. If this is rightly said of infants, as belonging to the first hour; if rightly said of boys, as belonging to the third hour; if rightly said of young men, as placed in the heat of the sixth hour: how much more rightly is it said to the decrepit: “See, it is already the eleventh hour, and are you still standing, slow to come?” Or perhaps the householder has not gone out to call you? If he has not gone out, what is it that we are saying? Surely we are servants of his household; we have been sent to hire workers. Why, then, do you stand? You have already completed the number of your years: hurry to the denarius. For this is the householder’s going out: becoming known. For one who is in the house is hidden and is not seen by those outside; but when he has gone out of the house, he is seen by those outside. Christ, when he is not understood and not recognized, is in secret; but when he is recognized, he has gone out to hire. For he has come forth from hiddenness into knowledge: Christ is known, Christ is preached everywhere; all things under heaven proclaim the glory of Christ. He was in a certain way laughed at and found fault with among the Jews; he was seen as lowly; he was despised. For he was hiding his majesty and displaying his weakness. What was displayed in him was despised, and what was hidden was not recognized. For if they had recognized it, they would never have crucified the Lord of glory. Is he still to be despised as he sits in heaven, if he was despised when he hung on the wood? Those who crucified him shook their heads, and standing before his cross, as if they had reached the fruit of their cruelty, they mocked him and said: “If he is the Son of God, let him come down from the cross. He saved others; can he not save himself? Let him come down from the cross, and we believe in him.” He did not come down, because he was hiding himself. For he who could rise from the tomb could much more easily come down from the cross. For our instruction he showed patience and deferred his power, and he was not recognized. For he had not yet gone out then to hire workers; he had not gone out; he had not become known. On the third day he rose, showed himself to the disciples, ascended into heaven, and sent the Holy Spirit on the fiftieth day after the resurrection, the tenth after the ascension. The Holy Spirit, when sent, filled all who were in one room, a hundred and twenty people. Filled with the Holy Spirit, they began to speak in the tongues of all nations; the call was made manifest; he went out to hire. For the power of truth began to become known to all. For then even one man who had received the Holy Spirit spoke in the tongues of all nations. But now in the Church unity itself, as one man, speaks in the tongues of all nations. To what language has the Christian religion not come? To what borders has it not reached? Now there is no one who hides himself from its heat; and still there is delay on the part of the one who stands at the eleventh hour!

It is plain, then, my brothers, altogether plain—hold it, be sure of it—that when anyone turns to the faith of our God Jesus Christ from his way, whether vain or most wicked, all his past is forgiven him, and, as when debts are remitted, the accounts are made new with him. Absolutely everything is forgiven. Let no one be anxious that anything is not forgiven him. But again, let no one be perversely secure. For these two things kill souls: despair or perverse hope. Hear a few things about these two evils. For as good hope, right hope, sets free, so perverse hope deceives. First notice how despair deceives. There are people who, when they begin to think of the evils they have done, think they cannot be forgiven; and while they think they cannot be forgiven, they give their soul over to perishing now; they perish by despair, saying in their thoughts: “Now there is no hope for us; for the great things we have committed cannot be pardoned or forgiven us; why, then, do we not satisfy our desires? Let us at least fill up the pleasure of the present time, since we have no reward in the future. Let us do whatever we like, even if it is not lawful, so that we may have at least a temporal sweetness, since we do not deserve to receive an eternal one.” Saying such things they perish by despairing, whether before they believe at all, or as Christians who have fallen into some sins and crimes by living badly. The Lord of the vineyard comes out to them, and, as to men who despair and turn their backs on him who calls, he knocks and cries out through the prophet Ezekiel: “On whatever day a man turns from his most wicked way, I will forget all his iniquities.” Hearing and believing this voice, they are revived from despair and emerge from that deepest, bottomless pit in which they had been sunk.

But these must fear lest they fall into another pit, and those who could not die by despairing die by hoping perversely. For they change their thoughts to others, far different indeed but no less deadly, and begin again to say in their hearts: “If on whatever day I turn from my most wicked way God in his mercy forgets all my iniquities, as he truly promised through the prophet, why should I turn today and not tomorrow? Why today and not tomorrow? Let today be like yesterday; let it be spent in most wicked pleasure, in a whirlpool of vices; let it wallow in deadly delight: tomorrow I will turn, and that will be the end of it.” The answer to you is: “The end of what?” You say: “Of my iniquities.” Good: rejoice that tomorrow there will be an end of your iniquities. What if before tomorrow there is an end of you? So you rightly rejoice that God has promised you pardon for your iniquities when you turn; but no one has promised you tomorrow. Or if perhaps an astrologer promised it, that is far different from God. Astrologers have deceived many, for they often promised themselves gains too, and found losses. So because of these too who hope badly, the householder comes out. As he came out to those who had despaired badly and were perishing by despair, and called them back to hope, so he comes out also to these who want to perish by hoping badly, and says to them through another book: “Do not delay to turn to the Lord.” As he had said to the others, “On whatever day the wicked man turns from his most wicked way, I will forget all his iniquities,” and took away the despair by which they had already given their soul to perdition, despairing of pardon in every way, so he comes out also to these who want to perish by hoping and delaying; and he speaks to them and rebukes them: “Do not delay to turn to the Lord, and do not put it off from day to day. For his wrath will come suddenly, and in the time of vengeance he will destroy you.” So do not put it off; do not shut against yourself what stands open. See, the giver of pardon opens the door to you; why do you delay? You ought to rejoice if he ever opened to you when you knocked: you did not knock, and he opens, and you remain outside? So do not put it off. Concerning works of mercy Scripture says in a certain place: “Do not say, Go and come back, tomorrow I will give, when you can do good at once; for you do not know what will happen the next day.” You have heard the command not to delay being merciful to another, and are you cruel to yourself by delaying? You ought not to put off giving bread, and you put off receiving pardon! If you do not put off showing mercy to another, “have mercy also on your own soul, pleasing God.” Give alms to your own soul too. We do not say that you should give to it, but that you should not push away the hand of the giver.

But sometimes people harm themselves very much by fearing to offend others. Good friends are very powerful for good, and bad friends for evil. Therefore the Lord, so that we might despise the friendships of the powerful for the sake of our salvation, did not choose senators first, but fishermen. Great is the mercy of the Craftsman! For he knew that if he chose a senator, the senator would say, “My rank was chosen.” If he chose a rich man first, the rich man would say, “My wealth was chosen.” If he chose an emperor first, the emperor would say, “My power was chosen.” If he chose an orator first, the orator would say, “My eloquence was chosen.” If he chose a philosopher, the philosopher would say, “My wisdom was chosen.” “Meanwhile,” he says, “let these proud men be put off; they are very swollen.” There is a difference between greatness and swelling: both are large, but not both are healthy. “Let these proud men be put off, then,” he says; “they must be healed by something solid. Give me first,” he says, “that fisherman. Come, you poor man, follow me; you have nothing, you know nothing: follow me. Unlearned poor man, follow me. There is nothing in you to be dreaded, but there is much in you to be filled.” To so abundant a fountain an empty vessel must be brought. The fisherman let go his nets, the sinner received grace, and became a divine orator. See what the Lord did, of whom the Apostle says: “God chose the weak things of the world to confound the strong; and God chose the low things of the world, and the things that are not as though they were, so that the things that are might be brought to nothing.” And now the words of fishermen are read, and the necks of orators are bowed. Let the empty winds, then, be taken away; let the smoke be taken away, which vanishes as it grows; let these things be utterly despised for the sake of salvation.

Suppose someone in a city were sick in body, and there was a most skilled doctor there who was an enemy of the sick man’s powerful friends—suppose, I say, someone in a city were sick with some dangerous bodily disease, and there was in the same city a most skilled doctor, an enemy, as I said, of the sick man’s powerful friends, who said to their friend, “Do not call him in; he knows nothing,” and said it not from judgment but from envy: would not that man, for the sake of his health, put aside the tales of his powerful friends, and, so as to live a few days longer, call in that doctor whom report had commended as most skilled, to drive out the disease of his body, whatever offense he gave them? The human race is sick, not with bodily diseases but with sins. Throughout the whole world, from east to west, lies a great sick man. To heal the great sick man the almighty physician came down. He humbled himself even to mortal flesh, as if to the sick man’s bed. He gives the precepts of health; he is despised; those who listen are set free. He is despised when powerful friends say, “He knows nothing.” If he knew nothing, his power would not fill the nations. If he knew nothing, he would not have existed before he was among us. If he knew nothing, he would not have sent the prophets before him. Are not the things foretold long ago now being fulfilled? Does not this physician prove the power of his art by fulfilling his promises? Are not deadly errors being overthrown throughout the whole world, and desires being tamed by the threshing of the world? Let no one say, “The world was better before than now; since this physician began to practice his art, we see many horrible things here.” Do not be surprised. Before anyone was being treated, the physician’s surgery seemed clean of blood. Rather, now that you see this, shake off vain delights and come to the physician; it is a time for health, not for pleasure.

Let us be healed, then, brothers. If we do not yet recognize the physician, let us not rage against him like the frenzied, nor turn away from him like the lethargic. For many have perished by raging, many by sleeping. The frenzied are those who go mad without sleeping. The lethargic are those who are weighed down by too much sleeping. People are exactly like this. Some want to rage against this physician; and since he now sits in heaven, they persecute his faithful members on earth. He heals even such as these. Many of them, converted, have become friends instead of enemies, preachers instead of persecutors. Such were even the Jews themselves, who raged against him when he was here; he healed them as frenzied men, praying for them as he hung on the wood. For he said: “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do.” Many of them, when their fury was calmed, as if the frenzy had been subdued, came to know God, came to know Christ. After the ascension, when the Holy Spirit was sent, they were converted to him whom they had crucified, and, believing, drank in the sacrament his blood, which they had shed in their rage.

We have examples. Saul was persecuting the members of him who already sat in heaven; he was persecuting grievously in frenzy, out of his mind, with a severe disease. But he, with one voice crying to him from heaven, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?”, struck down the frenzied man and raised up a healthy one; he killed the persecutor and gave life to the preacher. Many lethargic people too are healed. For like them are those who do not rage against Christ and are not malicious toward Christians, but merely grow languid by delaying, with sleepy words, are too lazy to open their eyes to the light, and find troublesome those who want to rouse them. “Get away from me,” says the languid, lethargic man, “I beg you, get away from me.” “Why?” “I want to sleep.” “But you will die from it.” He, for love of sleep, answers, “I want to die.” And charity answers from above, “I do not want you to.” Often a son shows this affection of charity even to an aged father who is going to die in a few days, his old age certainly already at its end. If he sees him lethargic, and learns from the doctor that his father is seized by the lethargic disease—the doctor saying to him, “Wake your father, do not let him sleep, if you want him to live”—the boy is at the old man’s side; he knocks, plucks, pricks him; out of devotion he is troublesome; he does not let him die quickly, though by his very old age he will die quickly; and if he lives, the son rejoices that he, the successor, may live some few days more with the one about to depart. With how much greater charity ought we to be troublesome to our friends, with whom we may live not a few days in this world, but forever with God! Let them love us, then, and do what they hear through us, and worship him whom we also worship, so that they may receive what we also hope for. Turning to the Lord, etc.

Your Holiness knows well, as we do, that our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ is the physician of our eternal salvation, and that he took on the weakness of our nature so that our weakness might not be everlasting. For he took a mortal body in which to kill death. And though he was crucified out of our weakness, as the Apostle says, yet he lives by the power of God. They are the words of the same Apostle: “And since he no longer dies, death will no longer have dominion over him.” These things, then, are well known to your faith. And it also follows that we should know that all the miracles he did on bodies serve to admonish us, so that we may receive from him what will not pass away nor have an end. He gave back eyes to the blind, which death was certainly going to close at some time; he raised Lazarus, who would die again. And whatever he did for the health of bodies, he did not do so that they would be everlasting, though at the end he will give everlasting health even to the body itself. But because the things that were not seen were not believed, through these temporal things that were seen he built up faith in those that were not seen.

Let no one, then, brothers, say that our Lord Jesus Christ does not do these things now, and on this account prefer the earlier times of the Church to the present. For in a certain place the same Lord prefers to those who see, and therefore believe, those who do not see and believe. For in that time the weakness of his disciples wavered so far that they thought they must even handle him whom they saw already risen, in order to believe. It was not enough for their eyes that they saw, unless their hands too were put to his limbs and the scars of the fresh wounds were touched; so that the disciple who doubted, suddenly touching and recognizing the scars, cried out, “My Lord and my God!” The scars revealed him who had healed all wounds in others. Could not the Lord have risen without scars? But he knew the wounds in his disciples’ hearts, and to heal them he had kept the scars in his body. And what did the Lord say to him as he now confessed and said, “My Lord and my God”? “Because you have seen me,” he said, “you have believed: blessed are those who do not see, and believe.” Whom did he mean, brothers, but us? Not us alone, but also those after us. For after a short time, when he withdrew from mortal eyes so that faith might be strengthened in hearts, all who believed believed without seeing, and their faith had great merit: to acquire that faith they brought only a godly heart, not a hand to handle him.

These things, then, the Lord did to invite people to faith. This faith now burns in the Church spread through the whole world. And now he works greater healings, for whose sake he did not disdain then to display those lesser ones. For as the soul is better than the body, so the health of the soul is better than the health of the body. Now blind flesh does not open its eyes by a miracle of the Lord; but a blind heart opens its eyes at the word of the Lord. Now a mortal corpse does not rise; a soul rises that lay dead in a living corpse. Now the deaf ears of the body are not opened; but how many have the ears of the heart closed, which yet open as the word of God penetrates, so that those who did not believe believe, and those who lived badly live well, and those who did not obey obey? And we say, “That man has believed”; and we marvel when we hear of those whom we once knew to be hard. Why, then, do you marvel now at one who believes, is innocent, serves God, unless because you see seeing one whom you knew blind, see living one whom you knew dead, see hearing one whom you knew deaf? For see the dead in another sense, of whom the Lord spoke to someone who delayed following the Lord because he wanted to bury his father: “Let the dead,” he said, “bury their own dead.” Certainly those dead buriers were not dead in body; for if they were, they could not bury dead bodies. Yet he calls them dead: where, if not inwardly, in the soul? For as often, visibly, in a house that is sound and intact the master of the house lies dead, so in a sound body many have a dead soul within; and these the Apostle rouses thus: “Rise, you who sleep, and arise from the dead, and Christ will enlighten you.” He who rouses the dead is the one who enlightens the blinded. For it is by his voice that the cry goes out through the Apostle to the dead, “Rise, you who sleep.” The blind man will be enlightened with light when he has risen. And how many deaf people did the Lord see before his eyes when he said, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear”? For who stood before him without bodily ears? What other ears, then, was he looking for, but those of the inner man?

Likewise, what kind of eyes was he looking for when he spoke to those who certainly saw, but saw through the eyes of the flesh? For when Philip said to him, “Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us,” he understood rightly that the Father, if shown, could be enough; but how could the Father be enough for one for whom the one equal to the Father was not enough? And why was he not enough? Because he was not seen. Why was he not seen? Because the eye by which he could be seen was not yet healthy. For what was seen with these eyes in the Lord’s flesh was seen not only by the disciples who honored him, but also by the Jews who crucified him. He, then, who wished to be seen otherwise was looking for other eyes. And so he answered the one who said, “Show us the Father, and it is enough for us”: “Have I been with you so long, and you have not known me? Philip, he who has seen me has seen the Father too.” And to heal meanwhile the eyes of faith, Philip is first admonished concerning faith, so that he may be able to come to sight. And lest Philip think that God was to be conceived as he saw the Lord Jesus Christ in the body, he immediately added: “Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father in me?” He had said just before, “He who has seen me has seen the Father too.” But Philip did not yet have a healthy eye with which to see the Father, and therefore not one with which to see the Son himself, equal to the Father. So he took up the gaze of his mind, still wounded and unable to look at so great a light, to heal and strengthen it with the medicines and poultices of faith, and said: “Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father in me?” Let him, then, who cannot yet see what the Lord will show not first seek to see what he is to believe; but let him first believe, so that the eye by which he may see may be healed. For only the form of a servant was shown to servile eyes; because if he who did not think it robbery to be equal to God could already be seen as equal to God by those whom he wished to heal, he would have no need to empty himself and take the form of a servant. But because there was nothing by which God could be seen, but there was something by which man could be seen, he who was God became man, so that what was seen might heal that by which he was not seen. For he himself says in another place: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” Philip could certainly have answered and said: “Lord, see, I see you: is the Father such as this which I see, since you said, He who has seen me has seen the Father?” Before Philip could answer this, or perhaps before he could think it, when the Lord had said, “He who has seen me has seen the Father too,” he at once added, “Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father in me?” For with that eye he could not yet see either the Father or the Son equal to the Father; but so that the eye might be healed for seeing, it had to be anointed for believing. So before you see what you cannot see, believe what you do not yet see. Walk by faith, so that you may come to sight. Sight will not gladden in the homeland one whom faith does not console on the way. For so the Apostle says: “While we are in the body, we are away from the Lord.” And at once he adds why we are still away, though we have already believed: “For we walk by faith,” he says, “not by sight.”

Our whole work in this life, then, brothers, is to heal the eye of the heart by which God may be seen. To this end the most holy mysteries are celebrated; to this end the word of God is preached; to this end are the Church’s moral exhortations, that is, those concerned with correcting morals, amending fleshly desires, and renouncing this world not by voice only but by a changed life; to this end the divine and holy Scriptures do whatever they do: that the inner eye may be cleansed of what hinders us from the sight of God. For the eye was made for seeing this temporal light—heavenly indeed, yet bodily and visible not only to humans but even to the lowliest animals (for it was made to see this light); yet if something is thrown in or falls in by which it is troubled, it is shut off from this light; and though the light surrounds it with its presence, it turns itself away and is absent; and not only is it made absent from the present light by its disturbance, but even the light for which it was made becomes painful to it. So also the eye of the heart, troubled and wounded, turns away from the light of righteousness, and neither dares nor is able to contemplate it.

What troubles the eye of the heart? Desire, avarice, iniquity, worldly concupiscence trouble, close, and blind the eye of the heart. And yet how a doctor is sought when the eye of the flesh is troubled! How there is no delay in having it opened and cleaned, so that the eye by which this light is seen may be healed! People run; no one rests, no one delays, if even a bit of straw falls into the eye. Certainly God made the sun, which we want to see with healthy eyes. Much brighter is he who made it; nor is the light that concerns the eye of the mind of this kind. That light is eternal wisdom. But God made you, O man, in his image. Would he give you the means to see the sun that he made, and not give you the means to see him who made you, since he made you in his image? He gave this too; he gave you both. But you love these outer eyes very much, and you very much neglect that inner one: you carry it worn and wounded. It is a punishment to you if your Maker wants to show himself; it is a punishment to your eye, before it is cured and healed. For Adam too sinned in paradise and hid himself from the face of God. While he had a heart healthy with a pure conscience, he rejoiced at the presence of God; after that eye was wounded by sin, he began to dread the divine light; he fled into darkness and the thickets of the trees, fleeing truth, seeking shadows. So, brothers, since we too were born from there, and, as the Apostle says, “in Adam all die”—for we were all once those two human beings—if we would not obey the physician so as not to fall sick, let us obey him so as to be freed from sickness. The physician gave us precepts when we were healthy; the physician gave precepts so that we would not need a physician. “It is not the healthy who need a physician,” he says, “but the sick.” When healthy we despised the precepts, and we have felt by experience into what great ruin we came by despising that precept. Now we have begun to be sick; we suffer; we are on the bed of weakness; but let us not despair. For since we could not come to the physician, he deigned to come to us himself. Despised by man when healthy, he did not despise him when wounded. He did not cease to give other precepts to the sick man, who would not keep the first ones so as not to fall sick; as if he said: “Surely you have felt by experience that I spoke the truth when I said, Do not touch this. Be healed, then, at last, and come back to life. See, I bear your weakness: drink the bitter cup. For you yourself have made those precepts of mine, which were so sweet when given to you in health, so laborious. They were despised; you began to suffer: you cannot be healed unless you drink the bitter cup, the cup of temptations, in which this life abounds, the cup of tribulations, straits, and sufferings. Drink,” he says, “drink, that you may live.” And lest the sick man answer him, “I cannot, I cannot bear it, I will not drink,” the healthy physician drank first, so that the sick man would not hesitate to drink. For what is bitter in such a cup that he did not drink? If insult: he heard it first, when he was casting out demons: “He has a demon,” and “he casts out demons by Beelzebub.” Hence, to console the sick, he says, “If they called the householder Beelzebub, how much more his household?” If pains are bitter: he was bound and scourged and crucified. If death is bitter: he even died. If weakness shudders at the kind of death: nothing at that time was more shameful than death on a cross. Not in vain did the Apostle, commending his obedience, add, saying: “Made obedient unto death, even death on a cross.”

But because he was going to honor his faithful at the end of this age, he first honored the cross in this age, so that the princes of the earth, believing in him, have forbidden any criminal to be crucified; and the cross which the Jewish persecutors procured for the Lord with great mockery, his servants, even kings, now bear with great confidence on their foreheads. What kind of death the Lord deigned to undergo for us is not now so apparent—as the Apostle says, “Made a curse for us.” And when the blindness of the Jews mocked him as he hung, he who would not have been on the cross if he had not willed it could certainly have come down from the cross; but it was a greater thing to rise from the tomb than to come down from the cross. So the Lord, doing divine things and suffering human things, admonishes us by bodily miracles and bodily patience to believe, and to be healed so as to behold those invisible things which the eye of the flesh does not know. Doing this, then, he cured these blind men of whom the Gospel has now been read. And see, in the healing, what he admonished the inner sick man.

Pay attention to the outcome of the deed itself and the order of events. Those two blind men sitting by the road cried out, as the Lord passed by, that he have mercy on them. But they were checked by the crowd that was with the Lord, so that they would not cry out. Do not think this was recorded without a mystery. But they overcame the crowd that checked them by most persevering crying, so that their voice reached the ears of the Lord—as if he had not already anticipated their thoughts. So the two blind men cried out to be heard by the Lord, and could not be suppressed by the crowds. The Lord was passing by, and they were crying out. The Lord stood still, and they were healed. For the Lord Jesus stood still, and called them, and said: “What do you want me to do for you?” And they said: “That our eyes may be opened.” For their faith the Lord did it: he restored their eyes. If we have now understood the inner sick man, the inner deaf man, the inner dead man, let us look there also for the inner blind man. The eyes of the heart are closed: Jesus passes by, so that we may cry out. What is “Jesus passes by”? Jesus does temporal things. What is “Jesus passes by”? Jesus does transitory things. Notice and see how many of his deeds have passed. He was born of the Virgin Mary: is he always being born? As an infant he was nursed: is he always nursing? He ran through the ages of life to young manhood: is he always growing bodily? Infancy was succeeded by boyhood, boyhood by adolescence, adolescence by young manhood, each passing and giving way. Even the miracles he did have passed: they are read and believed. For because they were written so that they could be read, they passed while they were being done. Finally, not to dwell on many things, he was crucified: does he always hang on the cross? He was buried, he rose, he ascended into heaven: he no longer dies, and death will no longer have dominion over him; and his divinity remains forever, and the immortality of his body will now never fail. But yet all those things that were done by him in time have passed; they are written to be read and preached to be believed. In all those things, then, Jesus passed by.

What are the two blind men by the road but two peoples, whom Jesus came to heal? Let us show these two peoples in the holy Scriptures. It is written in the Gospel: “I have other sheep that are not of this fold; I must bring them also, that there may be one flock and one shepherd.” Who, then, are the two peoples? One of the Jews, and the other of the Gentiles. “I was sent,” he says, “only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” To whom did he say this? To the disciples, when that Canaanite woman was crying out, who confessed herself a dog so as to be granted crumbs from her masters’ table. And because she was granted them, the two peoples to whom he had come were now shown: the Jewish people, of whom he says, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel,” and the people of the Gentiles, whose type this woman displayed, whom he had at first rejected, saying, “It is not good to throw the children’s bread to the dogs,” and to whom, when she said, “Yes, Lord, for the dogs too eat of the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table,” he had answered, “O woman, great is your faith; be it done to you as you wish.” From there too was that centurion, of whom the same Lord says, “Amen I say to you, I have not found such faith in Israel,” because he had said, “I am not worthy that you should come under my roof; but only say the word, and my servant will be healed.” So the Lord, before his passion and glorification, was already marking out two peoples: one to which he had come because of the promises to the fathers, and the other which he did not reject because of his mercy, so that what had been promised to Abraham might be fulfilled: “In your seed all nations will be blessed.” That is why the Apostle too, after the Lord’s resurrection and ascension, when he was despised by the Jews, went to the Gentiles. Yet he did not keep silent toward the churches that had believed from among the Jews: “I was unknown by face,” he says, “to the churches of Judea that are in Christ. They only heard that he who once persecuted us now preaches the faith he once ravaged; and they glorified God in me.” So too Christ is called the cornerstone, who made both one. For a corner joins two walls coming from different directions. What is so different as circumcision and uncircumcision, having one wall from Judea, the other wall from the Gentiles? But they are joined by the cornerstone. “For the stone which the builders rejected has become the head of the corner.” There is no corner in a building except when two walls coming from different directions meet in one and are joined in a certain unity. These two walls, then, were figuratively the two blind men crying out to the Lord.

Pay attention now, dearly beloved. The Lord was passing by; the blind men were crying out. What is “he was passing by”? He was doing transitory works, as we have already said. By these transitory works our faith is built up. For we believe in the Son of God not only because he is the Word of God, through whom all things were made: for if, always remaining in the form of God, equal to God, he had not emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, the blind men would not have perceived him so as to be able to cry out. But when he worked transitory things, that is, humbled himself, made obedient unto death, even death on a cross, the two blind men cried out, “Have mercy on us, Son of David.” For this very thing, that the Lord and creator of David willed also to be the son of David, he did in time; he did it in passing.

But what is crying out to Christ, brothers, except corresponding to the grace of Christ by good works? I say this, brothers, lest perhaps we be noisy in voice and mute in conduct. Who is it who cries out to Christ, so that inner blindness may be driven away as Christ passes by, that is, as he dispenses to us the temporal sacraments by which we are admonished to lay hold of eternal things? Who is it who cries out to Christ? He who despises the world cries out to Christ. He who spurns the pleasures of the age cries out to Christ. He who says not with the tongue but with his life, “The world has been crucified to me, and I to the world,” cries out to Christ. He who scatters and gives to the poor, so that his righteousness remains for ever and ever, cries out to Christ. For let him who hears, and hears not as a deaf man, “Sell your possessions and give to the poor; make yourselves purses that do not grow old, a treasure in heaven that does not fail”—let the blind man, as if hearing the sound of the footsteps of Christ passing by, cry out at this, that is, do these things. Let his voice be in his deeds. Let him begin to despise the world, to distribute his goods to the needy, to count as nothing what people love; let him despise injuries, not seek to be avenged, offer his cheek to the one who strikes him, pray for his enemies; if anyone takes away his goods, let him not demand them back; if he has taken anything from anyone, let him restore it fourfold. When he begins to do these things, all his relatives, in-laws, and friends are stirred up. Those who love the world contradict him: “Why are you mad? You go too far: are others not Christians? This is foolishness, this is madness.” And the crowd cries out other such things, so that the blind may not cry out. The crowd rebuked those who cried out, but did not overcome their cries. Let those who want to be healed understand what they should do. Now too Jesus passes by: let those who are by the road cry out. For these are those who honor God with their lips, but their heart is far from God. These are the ones by the road, to whom, blinded in heart, the Lord gives his commands. For when the transitory things that the Lord did are recited, Jesus is always shown to us passing by. For until the end of the age there is no lack of blind men sitting by the road. They need, then, to cry out, those sitting by the road. The crowd that was with the Lord suppressed the cry of those seeking health. Brothers, do you see what I am saying? For I do not know how to say it; but still less do I know how to keep silent. I say this, and I say it openly. For I fear Jesus passing by and Jesus remaining; and therefore I cannot keep silent. Good Christians, truly zealous, wanting to do God’s commands that are written in the Gospel, are hindered by bad and lukewarm Christians. The very crowd that is with the Lord hinders those who cry out; that is, it hinders those who do good, lest by persevering they be healed. Let them cry out, let them not grow faint, nor be led as if by the authority of crowds; nor let them imitate those who became Christians before them, who live badly and envy good works. Let them not say, “As so many live, let us live.” Why not rather as the Gospel says? Why do you want to live according to the rebuke of the crowd that hinders, and not according to the footsteps of the Lord passing by? They will mock, they will blame, they will call you back: you, cry out until you reach the ears of Jesus. For those who persevere in doing such things as Christ commanded, and do not heed the hindering crowds, and do not think much of seeming to follow Christ, that is, of being called Christians, but love the light that Christ is going to restore more than they fear the din of those who hinder—they will in no way be separated, and Jesus will stand still and heal them.

For how are our eyes healed? As by faith we perceive Christ passing by in the temporal dispensation, so let us understand Christ standing still in unchangeable eternity. For the eye is healed there, when the divinity of Christ is understood. Let your Charity grasp this; pay attention to the great sacrament I am going to speak of. All the things done in time by our Lord Jesus Christ plant faith in us. We believe in the Son of God, not only in the Word through whom all things were made, but in that very Word made flesh to dwell among us, born of the Virgin Mary, and the other things that the faith contains, which were shown to us so that Christ might pass by, and so that the blind, hearing the footsteps of the one passing by, might cry out by their works, recalling in their life the profession of their faith. Now, so that those who cry out may be healed, Jesus stands still. For he already sees Jesus standing still who says: “Even if we knew Christ according to the flesh, we no longer know him so now.” For he saw the divinity of Christ, as far as is possible in this life. There is the divinity of Christ; there is the humanity of Christ. The divinity stands still; the humanity passes by. What is “the divinity stands still”? It does not change, is not shaken, does not withdraw. For he did not come to us in such a way as to depart from the Father, nor did he ascend in such a way as to move from place to place. The flesh that was assumed changed place; but God, in assuming flesh, since he is not in a place, does not change place. Let us be touched by Christ standing still, and let our eyes be healed. But whose eyes? Those of the ones who cry out when he passes by, that is, of those who do good through that faith which was dispensed in time to instruct us little ones.

When our eyes have been healed, brothers, what more precious can we have? Those who see this light that was made, which shines from heaven or is given by a lamp, rejoice. And how miserable those seem who cannot see it! But why do I speak, why do I say these things, except to exhort all of you to cry out when Jesus passes by? I commend to your Holiness a light to be loved, which perhaps you do not see. Believe while you do not yet see; and cry out, so that you may see. How great is thought the unhappiness of people who do not see this bodily light! Someone is blinded: at once it is said, “He had God angry with him; he committed some evil.” This is what Tobit’s wife said to her husband. He cried out over the kid, lest it come from theft; he did not want to hear the sound of theft in his house. She, defending what she had done, struck her husband with reproach; and when he said, “Give it back, if it is from theft,” she answered mockingly, “Where are your righteous deeds?” How blind she was, who defended the theft; and what light he saw, who commanded the theft to be returned! She was outside, in the light of the sun; he was inside, in the light of righteousness. Which of them was in the better light?

To love this light, brothers, I exhort your Love: cry out by works when the Lord passes by; let the voice of faith sound, so that Jesus standing still, that is, the unchangeably abiding Wisdom of God and the majesty of the Word of God, through whom all things were made, may open your eyes. That same Tobit, admonishing his son, admonished him to cry out, that is, he admonished him to good works. He told him to give to the poor, commanded him to give alms to the needy, and taught him, saying: “Son, alms do not let one go into darkness.” The blind man gave counsel for receiving and obtaining light. “Alms,” he says, “do not let one go into darkness.” Suppose his son had answered in surprise: “What then, father? Did you not give alms, that you now speak to me blind? Are you not now in darkness, you who say to me, Alms do not let one go into darkness?” But he knew of what light he was teaching his son; he knew what he saw in the inner man. The son held out his hand to his father so that he might walk on earth; and the father to the son, so that he might dwell in heaven.

Briefly, to conclude this sermon, brothers, with what touches and pains us most: see that there are crowds that rebuke the blind who cry out. All of you in this crowd who want to be healed, let them not deter you; for many are Christians in name and ungodly in works; let them not deter you from good works. Cry out amid the crowds that check you, call you back, mock you, and live badly. For bad Christians suppress good Christians not only by their voices but also by bad works. A good Christian does not want to go to the shows. By the very fact that he reins in his desire not to go to the theater, he cries out after Christ, he cries out to be healed. Others run there; but perhaps they are pagans, perhaps Jews? On the contrary, so few would be in the theaters that they would leave for shame if Christians did not go to the theaters. So Christians run there too, bearing the holy name to their own punishment. Cry out, then, by not going, pressing down temporal desire in your heart; and hold yourself to a strong and persevering cry at the ears of the Saviour, so that Jesus may stand still and heal you. Cry out amid the very crowds; do not despair of the Lord’s ears. For those blind men did not cry out from the side where there was no crowd, so as to be heard where there was no hindrance from those forbidding them. They cried out amid the very crowds; and yet the Lord heard. So you too, even among sinners and the luxurious, among lovers of worldly vanities, cry out there, so that the Lord may heal you. Do not cry out to the Lord from another side; do not go to the heretics and cry out to the Lord there. Notice, brothers, that it was in the very crowd that forbade crying out that those who cried out were healed.

For let your Holiness notice this too, what it is to persevere in crying out. I will say what many have experienced with me in the name of Christ; for the Church does not cease to give birth to such people. When a Christian begins to live well, to be fervent in good works, and to despise the world, in the very newness of his works he suffers cold Christians as critics and opponents. But if he perseveres, and overcomes them by enduring, and does not fail in good works, the very same people who before forbade him will now defer to him. For they rebuke, disturb, and forbid him as long as they presume he can be made to yield to them. But if they are overcome by the perseverance of those who make progress, they turn around and begin to say: “A great man, a holy man; happy he to whom God has granted this.” They honor, congratulate, bless, and praise him, like that crowd which was with the Lord. It forbade the blind men to cry out; but after they had so cried out as to deserve to be heard and to obtain the Lord’s mercy, that same crowd says in turn, “Jesus is calling you.” Those who a little before rebuked them to keep them silent now become encouragers. He alone is not called by the Lord who does not labor in this age. But who in this life does not labor in his sins and iniquities? If all labor, it has been said to all, “Come to me, all you who labor.” If it has been said to all, why do you blame your inviter for your own fault? Come. His house will not become too narrow for you: the kingdom of God is possessed equally by all and wholly by each; it is not diminished as the number of possessors grows, because it is not divided. What is held in concord by many is whole for each. Yet this we have learned, brothers, in the mystery of this reading, which in other places of the holy books is shown most plainly: that within the Church there are both good and bad, what we often call wheat and chaff. Let no one leave the threshing floor before the time; let him bear with the chaff in the threshing, bear with it on the threshing floor. For what he bears there he will not have in the barn. The winnower will come, who will separate the bad from the good. There will also be a bodily separation, which a spiritual separation now precedes. Always be separated from the bad in heart; for the time being, be joined with them in body, with caution. Yet do not be negligent in correcting your own, those who in any way belong to your care, by admonishing, teaching, exhorting, frightening. Act by whatever means you can. And when you find in the Scriptures and in the examples of the saints, whether of those who lived before the Lord’s coming or after it, that the bad do not stain the good in unity, do not become lazy about correcting the bad. In two ways the bad man does not stain you: if you do not consent, and if you rebuke him; that is, not sharing, not consenting. For one shares when the partnership of will or approval is added to his deed. Admonishing us of this, the Apostle says: “Do not take part in the unfruitful works of darkness.” And since not consenting would be too little if neglect of discipline followed, he says: “But rather even rebuke them.” See how he has embraced both: “Do not take part; but rather even rebuke.” What is “Do not take part”? Do not consent, do not praise, do not approve. What is “But rather even rebuke”? Reprove, rebuke, restrain.

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.

The Lord’s banquet is twofold: one here, of the faithful; the other in heaven, of the blessed. All the faithful know of the marriage of the king’s son and of his banquet, and the furnishing of the Lord’s table is set before all who will. But it matters how each one approaches, since no one is forbidden to approach. For the holy Scriptures teach us that there are two banquets of the Lord: one to which good and bad come, the other to which the bad do not come. So the Lord’s banquet, of which we heard just now when the Gospel was read, certainly has good and bad. All who excused themselves from this banquet are bad; but not all who came in are good. I speak, then, to you who recline as good guests at this banquet, all of you who attend to what is said: “Whoever eats and drinks unworthily eats and drinks judgment to himself.” All of you who are such, I speak to you: do not look for the good outside, but bear with the bad inside.

I do not doubt that your Charity wants to hear who these are whom I addressed in my discourse, telling them not to look for the good outside but to bear with the bad inside. If all inside are bad, whom have I addressed? But if all inside are good, whom have I warned to bear with the bad? First, then, with the Lord’s help, let us get out of this question as best we can. If good is weighed perfectly and purely, “no one is good but God alone.” You have the Lord saying most plainly, “Why do you ask me about the good? No one is good but God alone.” How then does that wedding have good and bad, if no one is good but God alone? First you should know that in a certain way we are all bad. Quite simply, in a certain way we are all bad; but in a certain way we are not all good. Can we compare ourselves with the apostles? To them the Lord himself said, “If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children.” If we consider the Scriptures, there was one bad man there among the twelve apostles, on whose account the Lord says in a certain place, “And you are clean, but not all.” Yet addressing them all together he said, “If you, though you are evil.” Peter heard this, John heard it, Andrew heard it, all the other eleven apostles heard it. What did they hear? “If you, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him?” Hearing that they were evil, they despaired; hearing that God in heaven was their Father, they breathed again. “Though you are evil,” he says: what then is owed to the evil but punishment? “How much more,” he says, “your Father who is in heaven”: what is owed to sons but a reward? In the name of the evil, the fear of punishment; in the name of sons, the hope of heirs.

In some respect, then, those same men were evil who in some respect were good. For to those to whom it was said, “If you, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children,” there was added at once, “How much more your Father who is in heaven.” The Father, then, of the evil, but not of those to be abandoned; for he is the physician of those to be healed. In a certain way, then, they were evil. And yet those guests of the householder at the king’s wedding, I think, were not of the number of whom it was said, “They invited good and bad,” in such a way that they would be reckoned among the bad, whom we heard were shut out in that one man who was found not to have a wedding garment. In what respect, I say, were the good evil, and in what respect were the evil good? Hear John say in what respect they were evil: “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” See in what respect they were evil: because they had sin. In what respect were they good? “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” If, then, according to this explanation, which you have heard me bring forth, as I think, from the holy Scriptures, we say that the same people are good in a certain way and evil in a certain way; if we wish to take in this sense what was said, “They invited good and bad,” that is, the very same people both good and bad: if we wish to take it so, we are not allowed, because of the man who was found without a wedding garment, and was thrown out not in just any manner, so as only to be deprived of that banquet, but so as to be condemned to the eternal punishment of darkness.

But someone says: “Why make much of one man? What is surprising, what is great, if in the crowd one man without a wedding garment slipped past the householder’s servants? Surely it could not be said on his account, ‘They invited good and bad’?” Pay attention, then, and understand, my brothers. That one man stood for a kind; for they were many. Here a careful hearer may answer me and say, “Do not tell me your suspicions; I want it proved to me that that one man was many.” The Lord will be present; I will prove it plainly, and I will not look far to be able to prove it. In his own words God will help me, and through me he will supply what may be clear to you. See, the householder came in to look at the guests. Notice, my brothers, that it was the servants’ part only to invite and bring in good and bad; notice that it is not said, “The servants looked over the guests, and found there a man who had no wedding garment, and said to him.” That is not written. The householder looked, the householder found, the householder distinguished, the householder separated. This was not to be passed over. But what we undertook to prove is something else: how that one man was many. The householder, then, came in to look at the guests, and found a man who had no wedding garment, and said to him, “Friend, how did you come in here without a wedding garment?” And he was silent. For the one who questioned him was such that he could feign nothing before him. That garment was looked for in the heart, not on the body; if it had been put on outwardly, it would not have been hidden even from the servants. Learn where the wedding garment is to be put on, where it says, “Let your priests be clothed with righteousness.” Of that garment the apostle says, “If indeed, being clothed, we shall not be found naked.” So he was found by the Lord, who was hidden from the servants. Questioned, he falls silent; he is bound, thrown out, condemned: one out of many. Lord, I had said that you prompt me to warn everyone. Recall with me the words you have heard, and you will now find, and now judge, that that one man was many. Certainly the Lord had questioned one; to one he had said, “Friend, how did you come in here?” One had fallen silent; and of that one it had been said, “Bind his hands and feet, and throw him into the outer darkness; there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” Why this? “For many are called, but few are chosen.” Who can gainsay this plain showing of the truth? “Throw him,” he says, “into the outer darkness”: certainly that one, of whom the Lord says, “For many are called, but few are chosen.” So the few are not thrown out. Certainly he was one, the man who had no wedding garment. “Throw him out.” Why is he thrown out? “For many are called, but few are chosen.” Leave the few; throw out the many. Certainly he was one. This one man, all told: they were not only many, but by their multitude they exceeded the number of the good. For the good too are many; but in comparison with the bad the good are few. Many grains of wheat have sprung up: compare them with the chaff, and the grains are few. The same people are many in themselves, few in comparison with the bad. How do we prove that they are many in themselves? “Many will come from the east and from the west.” Where will they come? To that banquet which good and bad enter. Speaking of the other banquet he added, “And they will recline with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven.” That is the banquet to which the bad will not come. Let this one that now is be received worthily, so that we may arrive at that one. The same, then, are many who are few: many in themselves, few in comparison with the bad. So what does the Lord say? He found one, and says, “Let the many be thrown out, let the few remain.” For to say, “Many are called, but few are chosen,” is nothing other than to show openly who in this banquet are held to be such that they will be brought to the other banquet, to which none of the bad will come.

What then? All of you who approach the Lord’s table, which is here, I do not want you to be with the many who are to be separated, but with the few who are to be kept. How will you manage this? Take the wedding garment. “Explain the wedding garment to us,” you will say. Beyond doubt it is that garment which only the good have, those to be left at the banquet, kept for the banquet to which no bad person comes, and brought there by the Lord’s grace: they have the wedding garment. Let us look, then, my brothers, among the faithful, for who those are who have something the bad do not have, and that will be the wedding garment. If we say the sacraments, you see how they are common to the bad and the good. Is it baptism? Without baptism, indeed, no one comes to God; but not everyone who has baptism comes to God. So I cannot understand baptism, that is, the sacrament itself, to be the wedding garment, for I see this garment on the good and on the bad. Perhaps it is the altar, or what is received from the altar. We see that many eat, and eat and drink judgment to themselves. What then is it? Fasting? The bad fast too. Running to church? The bad run there too. Finally, miracles happen? Not only do the good work them, and the bad as well, but sometimes the good do not work them. See, among the ancient people Pharaoh’s magicians worked miracles; the Israelites did not. Among the Israelites only Moses and Aaron worked them; the rest did not, but they saw, they feared, they believed. Were Pharaoh’s magicians, who worked miracles, better than the people of Israel, who could not work miracles and yet belonged to God as his people? In the church itself, hear the apostle: “Are all prophets? Do all have gifts of healing? Do all speak in tongues?”

What, then, is that wedding garment? This is the wedding garment: “The aim of the commandment,” the apostle says, “is love from a pure heart and a good conscience and faith unfeigned.” This is the wedding garment. Not just any love: for often even people who share a bad conscience seem to love one another. Those who commit robberies together, who practice sorcery together, who are fond of actors together, who shout together for charioteers and beast-fighters, often love one another; but in them there is no love from a pure heart and a good conscience and faith unfeigned. Such love is the wedding garment. “If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels,” he says, “but have not love, I have become like sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal.” Tongues alone have come, and it is said to them, “Why did you come in here without a wedding garment?” “If I have prophecy,” he says, “and know all mysteries and all knowledge, and have faith so as to move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.” See, there are those miracles of people who often have no wedding garment. “If I have all these,” he says, “and have not Christ, I am nothing.” “I am nothing,” he says. Is prophecy then nothing? Is the knowledge of mysteries then nothing? Those things are not nothing; but I, if I have them and have not love, am nothing. How many good things are of no profit without the one good thing! If I have not love, though I give alms to the poor, though I go to the confession of Christ’s name even to blood, even to the flames: these things can be done even from love of glory, and then they are empty. Because, then, they can be done from an empty love of glory and not from love rich with godliness, he mentions these too; hear them as well: “If I give all my goods to feed the poor, and if I hand over my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing.” This is the wedding garment. Question yourselves: if you have it, you are secure at the Lord’s banquet. There are two things in one person, love and desire. Let love be born in you, if it is not yet born; and if it is born, let it be fed, nourished, made to grow. As for desire, even if it cannot be wholly put out in this life (for “if we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us,” and so far as desire is in us, so far we are not without sin), let love grow and desire decrease, so that one day the one, that is love, may be made perfect, and desire consumed. Put on the wedding garment: I speak to you who do not yet have it. You are already inside, you already come to the banquet, and you do not yet have the garment in honor of the bridegroom: you still seek your own things, not those of Jesus Christ. For the wedding garment is taken in honor of the union, that is, of the bridegroom and the bride. You know the bridegroom: it is Christ. You know the bride: it is the church. Give honor to her who is married, give honor to him who marries. If you honor them well, you will be their children. So make progress in this. Love the Lord, and there learn to love yourselves; so that when by loving the Lord you have loved yourselves, you may safely love your neighbors as yourselves. For when I do not find someone who loves himself, how shall I entrust to him a neighbor to love as himself? “And who is there,” someone says, “who does not love himself?” See who: “He who loves iniquity hates his own soul.” Does he love himself who loves his flesh and hates his soul, to his own harm, to the harm of his soul and his flesh? Who, then, loves his own soul? He who loves God with all his heart and with all his mind. To such a one I now entrust his neighbor. Love your neighbors as yourselves.

“Who,” someone says, “is my neighbor?” Every human being is your neighbor. Did we not all have two parents? Animals of each kind are neighbors to one another, dove to dove, leopard to leopard, asp to asp, sheep to sheep; and is a human being not neighbor to a human being? Recall how creation was established. God spoke; the waters brought forth swimming things, great sea monsters, fish, birds, and the like they brought forth. Did all birds come from one bird? All vultures from one vulture? All doves from one dove? All snakes from one snake? All gilt-heads from one gilt-head? All sheep from one sheep? Surely the earth brought forth all the kinds together. When it came to man, the earth did not bring forth man. One father was made for us: not even two, father and mother. One father, I say, was made for us, not even two, father and mother; but from the one father one mother. He from no one, but made by God; and she from him. Consider our race: we flowed from one spring; and because that one was turned to bitterness, we all became wild olives from an olive. Grace came too. One begot unto sin and death, yet one race, yet all neighbors to one another; yet not only alike, but also kin. One came against one: against one who scattered, one who gathers. So against one who killed, one who gives life. “For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive.” But just as everyone born of him dies, so in Christ everyone who believes is made alive: but only if he has the wedding garment, if he is invited to be kept, not to be separated.

So have love, my brothers. I have explained to you the wedding garment, I have explained the garment to you. Faith is praised; it is agreed, it is praised: but which faith, the apostle distinguishes. For the apostle James rebukes some who boasted of faith and did not have good conduct, and says: “You believe that God is one; you do well. The demons also believe, and tremble.” Recall with me why Peter was praised, why he was called blessed. Because he said, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God”? He who pronounced him blessed looked not to the sound of the words but to the affection of the heart. Do you want to know that Peter’s blessedness did not lie in those words? The demons said them too: “We know who you are; you are the Son of God.” Peter confessed the Son of God; the demons confessed the Son of God. “Distinguish, sir, distinguish.” I distinguish plainly. Peter spoke from love, the demons from fear. Then he says, “I am with you even to death.” They say, “What have we to do with you?” So you who have come to the banquet, do not boast of faith alone. Distinguish faith itself too, and then the wedding garment is recognized in you. Let the apostle distinguish and teach us: “Neither circumcision,” he says, “counts for anything, nor uncircumcision, but faith.” Say which faith: do not the demons too believe and tremble? “I tell you,” he says, “listen, I distinguish, now I distinguish: but faith working through love.” Which faith, then? What kind of faith? That which works through love. “If I have all knowledge,” he says, “and all faith, so as to move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.” Have faith with love; for you cannot have love without faith. This I urge, this I exhort, this in the name of the Lord I teach your Charity: that you have faith with love; for you can have faith without love. So I do not exhort you to have faith, but love. For you cannot have love without faith; I mean love of God and neighbor: how can that be without faith? How does he love God who does not believe in God? How does the fool love God, who says in his heart, “There is no God”? It can happen that you believe Christ has come and do not love Christ. But it cannot happen that you love Christ and do not say that Christ has come.

So have faith with love. That is the wedding garment. Love one another, you who love Christ: love your friends, love your enemies. Do not let this be hard for you. What do you lose, where you gain so much? Why do you ask God, as if it were a great thing, that your enemy should die? That is not the wedding garment. Look at the bridegroom himself hanging on the cross for you and asking the Father for his enemies: “Father,” he says, “forgive them, for they do not know what they do.” You have seen the bridegroom saying this; see also the friend of the bridegroom, invited with the wedding garment. Look at blessed Stephen, how he rebukes the Jews, as though fierce, as though angry: “Stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, you have resisted the Holy Spirit. Which of the prophets did your fathers not kill?” You have heard how his tongue raged. You are still ready to say this against anyone you like; and would that you said it against one who has offended God, not one who has offended you! He offends God, and you do not rebuke; he offends you, and you shout: where is that wedding garment? You have heard, then, how Stephen raged; hear how he loved. He offended those whom he rebuked, and was stoned by them. And while on every side he was pressed and beaten by the hands of the raging men and the blows of the stones, first he said: “Lord Jesus Christ, receive my spirit.” Then, after he had prayed standing for himself, for those who were stoning him he knelt and said: “Lord, do not hold this sin against them”: let me die in the flesh, not they in the heart. And having said this he fell asleep. After these words he added nothing: he spoke and departed; his last prayer was for his enemies. Learn to have the wedding garment. So you too, bend your knees, strike your forehead on the ground, and as you are about to approach the Lord’s table, the banquet of the holy Scriptures, do not say, “If only my enemy would die,” or “Lord, if I have deserved anything from you, kill my enemy.” If perhaps you do say it, are you not afraid he may answer you: “If I wanted to kill your enemy, would I not have killed you first? Or do you boast because you have now come at my invitation? Think a little what you were before. Did you not blaspheme me? Did you not mock me? Did you not want to wipe my name from the earth? But you applaud yourself because you came when invited. If I had killed you when you were an enemy, whom would I have made a friend? Why do you, by praying wrongly, teach me what I did not do to you? Rather,” God says to you, “let me teach you to imitate me. Hanging on the cross I said, ‘Forgive them, for they do not know what they do.’ I taught this to my soldier. Be my recruit against the devil. You will in no way fight unconquered unless you pray for your enemies.” Say it outright, say even this, say that you pursue your enemy; but say it knowingly; distinguish what you say. See, your enemy is a human being: answer me, what in him is hostile to you? Is it that he is a human being that is hostile to you? No. Then what? That he is bad. “That he is a human being, which I made, is not hostile to you. He says to you: I made a human being, not a bad one; he became bad through disobedience, obeying the devil rather than God. What he himself made, that is hostile to you: he is your enemy from what makes him bad, not from what makes him human.” For I hear “a human being” and “bad”: one is the name of a nature, the other of a fault: I heal the fault and keep the nature. This your God says to you: “And see, I avenge you, I kill your enemy: I take from him that he is bad, I keep that he is human. If I make him a good human being, have I not killed your enemy and made him your friend?” So ask what you ask in such a way that people do not perish, but enmities themselves perish. But if you pray that a person should die, you are bad praying against the bad; and when you say, “Kill the bad one,” he answers you, “Which of you?”

Extend your love, then, not only as far as your wives and children. That love is found even in cattle and sparrows. You know how sparrows and swallows love their mates, warm the eggs together, feed the young together, by a certain kindly and natural goodness, with no thought of reward. For the sparrow does not say, “I will feed my young so that when I grow old they may feed me.” It thinks nothing of the kind: it loves freely, feeds freely; it shows a parent’s affection and seeks no return. And you too, I know, I am sure, love your children so. For children ought not to lay up treasure for their parents, but parents for their children. Hence many of you even stir up your greed, because you are acquiring for your children and saving for them. But extend your love, let this love grow: to love children and wives is not yet that wedding garment. Have faith toward God. First love God. Reach out to God, and whomever you can, carry off to God. Is he an enemy? Let him be carried off to God. Is it a son, a wife, a slave? Let him be carried off to God. Is he a stranger? Let him be carried off to God. Is he an enemy? Let him be carried off to God. Carry off, carry off your enemy: by being carried off he will no longer be an enemy. So let progress be made, so let love be nourished, so that once nourished it may be made perfect; so let the wedding garment be put on; so let the image of God, after which we were created, be re-engraved by progress. For by sinning it had been worn away, rubbed down. How rubbed down? How worn away? When it is rubbed against the earth. What does it mean to be rubbed against the earth? It is worn by earthly desires. “For though man walks in the image, yet he is disquieted in vain.” Truth is sought in God’s image, not vanity. By loving the truth, let that image after which we were created be re-engraved, and let his own coin be rendered to our Caesar. For so you heard from the Lord’s reply, when the Jews were testing him and the Lord said, “Why do you test me, hypocrites? Show me the coin of the tax,” that is, the impress of the image and the inscription. “Show me what you pay, what you prepare, what is demanded of you; show me.” They showed him a denarius, and he asked whose image and inscription it bore. They answered, “Caesar’s.” Caesar too looks for his image. Caesar does not want what he ordered to be lost to him, and God does not want what he made to be lost. Caesar, my brothers, did not make the coin: the mint workers make it; craftsmen are ordered; he commanded his servants. The image was stamped on the coin: on the coin is Caesar’s image. And yet what others stamped is sought back: he stores it up, he does not want it refused him. Christ’s coin is the human being. There is Christ’s image, there Christ’s name, Christ’s gift, and Christ’s duties.

The Jews were asked, as we heard just now from the Gospel when it was read, how our Lord Jesus Christ was the son of David when David himself called him his Lord, and they could not answer. For they knew in the Lord what they saw. The son of man appeared to them; but the Son of God was hidden. That is why they believed he could be overcome, and mocked him when he hung on the tree, saying, “If he is the Son of God, let him come down from the cross, and we will believe in him.” One thing they saw; another they did not recognize. For if they had recognized it, they would never have crucified the Lord of glory. Yet they knew that the Christ was the son of David. For even now they hope that he will come. It is hidden from them that he has come; but it is hidden from them because they will it so. For even if they did not recognize him hanging on the cross, they ought to have recognized him reigning. In whose name are all the nations called and blessed, if not in his whom they think was not the Christ? For the son of David, being of the seed of David according to the flesh, is certainly the son of Abraham. And if it was said to Abraham, “In your seed all the nations will be blessed,” and they now see all nations blessed in our Christ, why do they wait for what has already come, and not fear what is still to come? For our Lord Jesus Christ himself said he was a stone, using a prophetic testimony to assert it of himself; and a stone of such a kind that if anyone stumbles against it he will be shattered, but on whomever that stone comes, it will crush him. For when he is stumbled against, he lies low: lying low he shatters the one who stumbles; coming on high he crushes the proud. The Jews, then, have already been shattered by that stumbling; it remains that they will be crushed at his glorious coming as well, unless perhaps while they are alive they recognize him, so as not to die. For God is patient, and invites them daily to faith.

But the Jews could not answer the Lord when he put the question to them and asked whose son they said the Christ was. And when they answered, “David’s son,” he added and put to them: “How then does David in the Spirit call him Lord, saying, ‘The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand, until I put your enemies under your feet’? If David, then,” he says, “in the Spirit calls him Lord, how is he his son?” He did not say, “He is not his son,” but, “How is he his son?” When he says “how,” it is the word of one asking, not of one denying; as if he were saying to them, “You say rightly that the Christ is the son of David; but David himself calls him Lord: how is he the son of one who calls him Lord?” If the Jews had been instructed in the Christian faith that we hold; if they did not close their hearts against the Gospel; if they had wished to have spiritual life in themselves, they would have answered this question, instructed in the church’s faith, and said: “Since ‘in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God’: see how he is David’s Lord. But since ‘the Word became flesh and dwelt among us’: see how he is David’s son.” But not knowing, they fell silent; and they did not even, with closed mouths, open their ears, so as to learn by being taught what they could not answer when questioned.

But it is a great thing to know the mystery: how he is David’s Lord and David’s son; how one person is man and God; how in the form of man he is less than the Father, in the form of God equal to the Father; how he says again, “The Father is greater than I,” and, “I and the Father are one.” Because the mystery is great, conduct must be formed if it is to be grasped. It is shut to the unworthy, opened to the deserving. Not stones, nor bars, nor fists, nor heels are what we knock with at the Lord’s door. Life knocks, and to life it is opened. With the heart one asks, with the heart one seeks, with the heart one knocks; to the heart it is opened. But this heart, if it is to ask rightly, knock and seek rightly, must be godly: first, to love God freely, for that is godliness; and not to set for itself, apart from him, a reward to expect from him. For nothing is better than he. And what does he ask from God that he holds dear, to whom God himself is cheap? He gives earth, and you rejoice, lover of earth, you who have become earth. If you rejoice when he gives earth, how much more ought you to rejoice when he gives you himself, he who made heaven and earth? So God is to be loved freely. For the devil, not knowing what was going on inside holy Job, brought against him a great charge, saying, “Does Job worship God for nothing?”

So if the adversary brought this charge, we ought to fear that it may be brought against us. For we have to do with a great slanderer. If he tries to invent what is not, how much more will he charge us with what is? Yet let us rejoice, because our judge is such that he cannot be deceived by our accuser. For if we had a human judge, the enemy would invent whatever he liked before him. No one is more cunning at inventing than the devil. For even now he himself makes up all the false charges against the saints. Since his accusations can have no force before God, he spreads them among men. And what does this profit him, when the apostle says, “This is our glory, the testimony of our conscience”? Do you think, though, that there is no cunning in his inventing false charges? He knows what harm he does by it, unless the vigilance of faith resists him. For he spreads evil reports even about the good so that the weak may think no one is good, and may give themselves up to be carried off and squandered by lusts, saying within themselves, “Who is there that keeps God’s commandment? Or who is there that keeps chastity?” While he thinks that no one does, he himself becomes no one. This, then, is what the devil does. But Job was such a man that nothing could be invented about him: his life was known and exceedingly plain. But because he had great riches, the devil charged him with something which, even if it were so, could be in the heart but could not appear in his conduct. He worshipped God, he gave alms; and with what heart he did it, no one knew, not even the devil himself; but God knew. God bears witness to his servant; the devil slanders the servant of God. He is allowed to be tempted; Job is proved, the devil is put to shame. Job is found to worship God freely, to love him freely: not because God gave something, but because God did not take himself away. For he says, “The Lord gave, the Lord has taken away; as it pleased the Lord, so it was done; blessed be the name of the Lord.” The fire of temptation came; but it found gold, not straw: it removed the dross; it did not turn it to ash.

So, since the heart must be cleansed in order to understand God’s mystery, how Christ is both man and God; and it is cleansed by conduct, by life, by chastity, by holiness, by love, and by faith that works through love (and all that I am saying is like a tree that has its root in the heart: for deeds come only from the heart’s root; if you have planted desire there, thorns come up; if you have planted love, fruits come up): immediately after the Lord had put this question to the Jews, and they could not answer, he went on to speak about conduct, to show why they were unworthy to understand what he asked. For the wretched proud men, since they could not answer, certainly ought to have said, “We do not know; Master, tell us.” They fell silent at the question, and did not open their mouths to inquire. And at once the Lord spoke of their pride: “Beware,” he says, “of the scribes, who love to preside in the synagogues and love the first place at banquets.” Not because they accept them, but because they love them. Here he accused their heart; and he could not be the accuser of the heart if he were not the searcher of the heart. For it is right that a servant of God who holds some office in the church should be given the first place; because if it is not given him, it is bad for the one who does not give it; but it is not good for the one to whom it is given. So it is right that in the assembly of Christians those set over the people should sit higher, so that they are distinguished by their very seat and their office is plain enough; yet not so that they are puffed up by the seat, but so that they think of the burden for which they will give account. But who knows whether they love this or not? That is a matter of the heart; it can have no judge but God. The Lord himself warned his own not to fall into such leaven, as he says in another place: “Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees.” And when they thought he said this because they had brought no bread, he answered them: “Have you forgotten how many thousands were filled from five loaves?” “Then,” it says, “they understood that he meant their teaching by leaven.” For those men loved these temporal things; but they neither feared eternal evils nor loved eternal goods. With their hearts shut, they could not understand what the Lord asked.

What, then, should God’s church do so as to be able to understand what it first deserved to believe? Let it make the mind able to receive what will be given. So that this might happen, that is, so that the mind might be able to receive, the Lord our God has held his promises in suspense, not taken them away. He holds them in suspense so that we may stretch out; we stretch out so that we may grow; we grow so that we may reach them. See the apostle Paul stretched out toward things held in suspense: “Not that I have already received, or am already perfect. Brothers, I do not consider that I have laid hold of it; but one thing, forgetting what lies behind and stretched out toward what lies ahead, I press on in purpose toward the prize of God’s upward call in Christ Jesus.” He was running on earth; the prize hung from heaven. So he ran on earth, but he was ascending in the Spirit. See him stretched out, see him reaching toward what hangs above: “I press on,” he says, “toward the prize of God’s upward call in Christ Jesus.”

So one must walk; and no feet need anointing, no beasts of burden need finding, no ship need providing. Run by affection, walk by love, ascend by charity. Why look for the way? Cling to Christ, who by descending and ascending made himself the way. Do you want to ascend? Hold on to the one who ascends. For by yourself you cannot be lifted up. “For no one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man, who is in heaven.” If no one ascends except he who descended, and he is the Son of Man, our Lord Jesus, do you too want to ascend? Be a member of him who alone ascends. For he, the head, with the other members is one man. And since no one can ascend except one who has been made a member of him in his body, it is fulfilled that “no one has ascended except he who descended.” For you cannot say, “See, then, why did Peter, for example, ascend, why did Paul ascend, why did the apostles ascend, if no one ascends except he who descended?” The answer to you is: Peter, Paul, the other apostles, and all the faithful, what do they hear from the apostle? “Now you are the body of Christ, and members in part.” If, then, the body of Christ and the members belong to one, do not make two. For he left father and mother and clung to his wife, so that the two should be in one flesh. He left his Father, because here he did not show himself equal to the Father, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant. He left his mother too, the synagogue, from which he was born according to the flesh. He clung to his wife, that is, to his church. And when he himself recalled that testimony, he showed that marriage may not be dissolved: “Have you not read,” he says, “that God who made them from the beginning made them male and female? The two,” he says, “will be in one flesh. What God has joined, then, let man not separate.” And what does “two in one flesh” mean? He continues and says, “So they are no longer two, but one flesh.” No one ascends except he who descended.

For so that you may know that bridegroom and bride are one man, according to Christ’s flesh, not according to his divinity (for according to his divinity we cannot be what he is, since he is the creator and we the creature, he the maker and we the made, he the founder and we the founded; but so that we might be one with him in him, he willed to be our head, taking flesh from us in which to die for us): so that you may know, then, that this whole is one Christ, he said through Isaiah: “As a bridegroom he has bound a turban on me, and as a bride he has clothed me with ornament.” He himself the bridegroom, he himself the bride: plainly the bridegroom in the head, the bride in the body. “For the two,” he says, “will be in one flesh; and now they are no longer two, but one flesh.”

So, belonging to his members, so that we may understand this mystery, as I said, brothers, let us live godly lives, let us love God freely. He who shows the form of a servant to those on pilgrimage keeps the form of God for those who arrive. By the form of a servant he paved the way; by the form of God he founded the homeland. Since, then, it is much for us to grasp this, but it is not much to believe it (“For unless you believe,” says Isaiah, “you will not understand”), let us walk by faith as long as we are on pilgrimage away from the Lord, until we come to sight, where we shall see face to face. Walking by faith, let us work well. In good works let our love of God be free, our love of neighbor beneficent. For we have nothing to give God; but because we have something to give our neighbor, by giving to one in need we shall earn the favor of the one who abounds. So let each give to another what he has; whatever he has in excess, let him bestow on the needy. One has money: let him feed the poor, clothe the naked, build a church, do with money whatever good he can. Another has counsel: let him guide his neighbor, drive away the darkness of doubt by the light of godliness. Another has learning: let him dispense from the Lord’s storeroom, serve food to his fellow servants, strengthen the faithful, call back the wandering, seek the lost, do what he can. There are things even the poor can give one another: one may lend his feet to the lame, another offer his eyes to the blind as guides; one may visit the sick, another bury the dead. These things are within everyone’s reach, so that one can hardly find anyone who has nothing to offer another. And there is that final and great thing the apostle says: “Bear one another’s burdens, and so you will fulfill the law of Christ.”

The question put to the Jews Christians ought to answer. For the Lord Jesus Christ, who put it to the Jews, did not answer it himself for the Jews; but for us he has answered it. And I will remind your Charity, and you will find that he has answered it. First see the knot of the question. He asked the Jews what they thought of the Christ, whose son he was; for they too hope for the Christ. They read of him in the prophets, they awaited him as one to come, they killed him when he was present: for where they read that the Christ would come, there they read that they would kill the Christ. But they hoped for his coming in the future in the prophets; their own future crime they did not see. So he questioned them about the Christ, not as of someone unknown, or whose name they had never heard, or whose coming they had never hoped for. For it is because they still hope for him that they go astray. We too hope for him; but as the judge who is to come, not as one coming to be judged. The holy prophets prophesied both: that he would come first to be judged unjustly, and would come afterward to judge justly. “What do you think,” he says, “of the Christ? Whose son is he?” They answered, “David’s.” Quite right, from the Scriptures. But he said: “How then does David in the Spirit call him Lord, saying, ‘The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies the footstool of your feet’? If David, then, in the Spirit calls him Lord, how is he his son?”

Here we must beware lest it be thought that Christ denied that he was David’s son. He did not deny that he was David’s son; he asked about the manner. “You have said he is David’s son; I do not deny it. But David calls him Lord: tell me how he is son who is also Lord; tell me how.” They did not say; they kept silent. Let us say it, with Christ himself explaining. Where? Through his apostle. First, how do we prove that Christ himself explained it? The apostle says: “Or do you want proof of Christ, who speaks in me?” So in the apostle he deigned to answer this question. First, Christ speaking through the apostle, what did he say to Timothy? “Remember that Christ Jesus has risen from the dead, of the seed of David, according to my gospel.” See, Christ is David’s son. How is he also David’s Lord? Say it, apostle: “Who, though he was in the form of God, did not count it robbery to be equal with God.” Acknowledge David’s Lord. If you acknowledge David’s Lord, our Lord, the Lord of heaven and earth, the Lord of the angels, equal to God in the form of God: how is he David’s son? Mark what follows. The apostle shows you David’s Lord by saying, “Who, though he was in the form of God, did not count it robbery to be equal with God.” How David’s son? “But he emptied himself, taking the form of a servant; made in the likeness of men, and found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself, becoming obedient unto death, even death on a cross. Therefore God also exalted him.” Christ rose of the seed of David, son of David, because he emptied himself. How did he empty himself? By taking what he was not, not by losing what he was. He emptied himself, he humbled himself. Though he was God, he appeared as man. He who made heaven was despised walking on earth. He was despised as a man, as one of no power. Not only despised, but killed as well. He was a stone lying on the ground; the Jews stumbled on it and were shattered. And what does he himself say? “Whoever stumbles on this stone will be shattered; but on whomever this stone comes, it will crush him.” First he lay, and they stumbled; he will come from above and crush the shattered. You have received both David’s son and David’s Lord: David’s Lord always, David’s son from a point in time; David’s Lord born of the substance of the Father, David’s son born of the Virgin Mary, conceived of the Holy Spirit. Let us hold both. One of these will be our eternal dwelling; the other is our deliverance from pilgrimage. For if our Lord Jesus Christ had not deigned to become man, man would have perished. He became what he made, so that what he made should not perish. True man, true God: God and man, the whole Christ. This is the Catholic faith. Whoever denies that Christ is God is a Photinian; whoever denies that Christ is man is a Manichee. Whoever confesses Christ as God equal to the Father and as true man, who truly suffered and shed true blood (for the truth would not free us if he gave a false price for us): whoever confesses both is a Catholic. He has the homeland, he has the way. He has the homeland: “In the beginning was the Word”; he has the homeland: “Though he was in the form of God, he did not count it robbery to be equal with God.” He has the way: “The Word became flesh”; he has the way: “He emptied himself, taking the form of a servant.” He himself is the homeland to which we go; he himself the way by which we go. Through him let us go to him, and we shall not go astray.

Those of you who were here yesterday remember our promise, which today, with the Lord’s help, is to be paid not to you alone but also to the many others who have gathered. Who the ten virgins are, of whom five are wise and five foolish, cannot easily be traced out. Yet according to what is contained in the reading itself, which I wished to have read to your Charity again today, so far as the Lord deigns to give me understanding, this parable or likeness does not seem to me to concern only those who in the church are called virgins because of a special and more excellent holiness, whom by a more common word we are also accustomed to call nuns; but, unless I am mistaken, this likeness concerns the whole church. Even if we understood it of those alone who are called nuns, are there only ten? God forbid that so great a multitude of virgins should be brought down to so small a number. But perhaps someone may say: “What if they are many in name, and so few in truth that scarcely ten are found?” It is not so. For if he wished only ten to be understood as good, he would not have shown five foolish ones there. For if those called virgins are many, why is the door of the great house shut against five?

Let us understand, then, dearly beloved, that this parable concerns all of us, that is, the whole church without exception: not only those set over others, of whom we spoke yesterday, nor only the people, but absolutely all. Why, then, five and five virgins? These five and five virgins are all the souls of Christians whatever. But to tell you what we think, by God’s inspiration: not souls of any sort, but such souls as hold the Catholic faith and seem to have good works in the church of God; and yet of them five are wise and five foolish. First let us see why they are called five, and why virgins; and then let us consider the rest. Every soul in a body is reckoned by the number five, because it uses five senses. For there is nothing we perceive through the body except by a fivefold door: by seeing, by hearing, by smelling, by tasting, or by touching. Whoever, then, abstains from unlawful seeing, unlawful hearing, unlawful smelling, unlawful tasting, unlawful touching, has received the name of virgin because of that very integrity.

But if it is good to abstain from unlawful movements of the senses, and for that reason every Christian soul has received the name of virgin, why are five admitted and five turned away? They are virgins, and they are turned away. It is not enough that they are virgins: they also have lamps. Virgins, because of abstinence from unlawful sensations; they have lamps, because of good works. Of these works the Lord says: “Let your works shine before men, so that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father who is in heaven.” Again he says to the disciples: “Let your loins be girded and your lamps burning.” In the girded loins, virginity; in the burning lamps, good works.

Virginity is not usually spoken of among the married; yet there too there is a virginity of faith, which shows itself in married chastity. For so that your Holiness may know that it is not inappropriate to call each man or each woman a virgin in soul, and in the integrity of faith by which one abstains from unlawful things and good works are done: the whole church, which consists of virgins and boys, married women and married men, is called by one name, a virgin. How do we prove this? Hear the apostle, speaking not to the nuns alone but to the whole church without exception: “I have betrothed you to one husband, to present you as a chaste virgin to Christ.” And because the devil, the corrupter of this virginity, must be guarded against, the same apostle, having said, “I have betrothed you to one husband, to present you as a chaste virgin to Christ,” at once added: “But I fear lest, as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, so your minds too may be corrupted from the chastity that is in Christ.” Few have virginity in the body; all ought to have it in the heart. If, then, abstinence from unlawful things is good, from which virginity took its name, and good works are praiseworthy, which are signified by the lamps: why are five admitted and five turned away? If someone is a virgin and carries lamps, and yet is not admitted, where does he see himself who neither keeps virginity from unlawful things nor wishes to have good works, but walks in darkness?

About these, then, my brothers, about these rather let us reason. Whoever does not wish to see what is evil, does not wish to hear what is evil, turns his smell away from the unlawful fumes of sacrifices, turns his taste away from the unlawful food of sacrifices, flees the embrace of another man’s wife, breaks bread for the hungry, brings the stranger into his house, clothes the naked, reconciles the quarrelsome, visits the sick, buries the dead: see, a virgin; see, he has lamps. What more do we look for? I look for more still. “What more are you looking for?” someone says. I look for more still: the holy Gospel has made me attentive. Even of these virgins carrying lamps it called some wise and others foolish. How do we see it? How do we tell them apart? By the oil. The oil signifies something great, very great. Do you think it is not love? We say it as inquirers; we do not rush to a verdict. I will tell you why it seems to me that love is signified by the oil. The apostle says, “I show you a still more excellent way.” What more excellent way does he show? “If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal.” That is the more excellent way, that is, love, which is rightly signified by oil. For oil rises above all liquids. Pour in water and pour oil on top: the oil rises above. Pour in oil, pour water on top: the oil rises above. If you keep the order, it wins; if you change the order, it wins. “Love never fails.”

What then, brothers? Now let us discuss the five wise virgins and the five foolish. They wished to go out to meet the bridegroom. What is it to go out to meet the bridegroom? To go with the heart, to await his coming. But he delayed. While he delays, they all slept. What does “all” mean? Foolish and wise, they all grew drowsy and slept. Do we think this sleep is good? What is this sleep? Is it perhaps that, while the bridegroom delays, “because iniquity abounds, the love of many grows cold”? Are we to understand this sleep so? I do not like it; I will tell you why. Because the wise are there too; and certainly when the Lord said, “Because iniquity has abounded, the love of many will grow cold,” he went on to say, “But whoever perseveres to the end will be saved.” Where do you want these wise virgins to be? Are they not among those who persevered to the end? For no other reason, brothers, for no other reason at all would they be admitted, except that they persevered to the end. So the chill of love did not creep upon them; love did not grow cold in them, but stays fervent to the end. Because it stays fervent to the end, the bridegroom’s doors opened; therefore it was said to them that they should enter, as to that excellent servant: “Enter into the joy of your Lord.” What, then, does “they all slept” mean? There is another sleep, which no one escapes. Do you not remember the apostle saying, “But concerning those who sleep I do not want you to be ignorant, brothers,” that is, about those who have died? For why are they called sleepers, except that they are raised on their day? So they all slept. Do you think that because she is wise she does not have to die? Whether the virgin is foolish or wise, all undergo the sleep of death.

Sometimes people say to themselves: “See, the day of judgment is now coming; so many evils are happening, such great tribulations are multiplying; see, all that the prophets said is almost fulfilled; the day of judgment is now at hand.” Those who say this, and say it in faith, go out as it were to meet the bridegroom with such thoughts. But see, war upon war, tribulation upon tribulation, earthquake upon earthquake, famine upon famine, nation against nation, and still the bridegroom has not come. So while he is awaited, all those who say, “See, he is coming, and the day of judgment will find us here,” fall asleep. While he says it, he falls asleep. So let him look to his sleep, and persevere in love until his sleep: let sleep find him waiting. For suppose he has fallen asleep: “Will not he who sleeps rise again?” So they all slept: of the wise and of the foolish, all slept.

“See, at midnight a cry arose.” What does “at midnight” mean? When it is not expected, when it is not believed at all. He put night for ignorance. Someone reckons to himself, as it were: “See, so many years have passed since Adam, and see, six thousand years are being completed, and at once (as some commentators have reckoned) at once the day of judgment will come.” And the reckonings come and go, and still the bridegroom’s coming is delayed, and the virgins who had gone out to meet him are asleep. And see, while it is not expected, while it is being said, “Six thousand years were awaited, and see, they have passed; how do we know now when he will come?”, he will come at midnight. What does “he will come at midnight” mean? He will come while you do not know. Why will he come while you do not know? Hear the Lord himself: “It is not for you to know the times which the Father has set by his own authority.” “The day of the Lord,” says the apostle, “will come like a thief in the night.” So keep watch in the night, so that you do not suffer the thief. For the sleep of death, whether you will or not, will come.

But when the cry arose at midnight: what is this cry, if not that of which the apostle says, “In the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet; for the trumpet will sound, and the dead will rise incorrupt, and we shall be changed”? Then, when the cry arose at midnight, by which it will be cried, “See, the bridegroom is coming,” what follows? “They all rose.” What does “they all rose” mean? “The hour will come,” the Lord himself said, “when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come forth.” So at the last trumpet they all rose. “But the wise took oil with them in their vessels; the foolish did not take oil with them.” What does “they did not take oil with them in their vessels” mean? What does “in their vessels” mean? In their hearts. Hence the apostle says, “This is our glory, the testimony of our conscience.” There is the oil, the great oil: this oil comes from God’s gift. Indeed, people can put oil into a vessel; they cannot create the olive. See, I have oil: did you create the oil? It is from God’s gift. You have oil: carry it with you. What does “carry it with you” mean? Have it within; please God there.

For see, these foolish virgins, who did not carry oil with them, want to please men by their abstinence, for which they are called virgins, and by their good works, in which they seem to carry lamps. And if they want to please men, and do all these praiseworthy things for that reason, they do not carry oil with them. You, then, carry it with you; carry it within, where God sees; there carry the testimony of your conscience. But whoever walks by the testimony of others does not carry oil with him. If you abstain from unlawful things and do good works so as to be praised by men, there is no oil within. And so when people begin not to praise, the lamps fail. Let your Charity attend, then. Before those virgins slept, it was not said that their lamps were going out. The lamps of the wise were burning with inner oil, with the security of conscience, with inner glory, with inmost love. Yet the lamps of the foolish were burning too. Why were they burning then? Because the praises of men were not lacking. But after they rose, that is, in the resurrection from the dead, they began to trim their lamps, that is, to prepare to render God an account of their works. And because then there is no one to praise, everyone is taken up with his own case, there is no one then who does not think of himself; so there were none to sell them oil. Their lamps began to fail, and the foolish turned to the five wise: “Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.” They sought what they were used to, that is, to shine with another’s oil, to walk by others’ praises. “Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.”

But they said: “Perhaps there will not be enough for us and for you; go rather to those who sell, and buy for yourselves.” This reply is not that of people giving advice, but of people mocking. Why mocking? Because they were wise, because wisdom was in them. For they were not wise of themselves; but that wisdom was in them of which it is written in a certain book, which says to those who despise her, when they come to the evils she threatened them with: “And I too will laugh at your destruction.” What wonder is it that the wise mock the foolish? What does it mean to mock?

“Go to those who sell, and buy for yourselves,” you who were not accustomed to live well except because people praised you, who sold you oil. What does “they sold oil” mean? They sold praises. Who sell praises but flatterers? How much better if you had not yielded to flatterers, and had carried oil within, and had done all your good works for the sake of a good conscience: then you would say, “The righteous man will correct me in mercy and rebuke me; but the oil of the sinner shall not anoint my head.” Better, he says, that the righteous should correct me, the righteous rebuke me, the righteous strike me, the righteous set me right, than that the sinner’s oil should anoint my head. What is the sinner’s oil but the flatterer’s blandishments?

“Go, then, to those who sell”: you are used to doing this. “But we do not give to you.” Why? “Perhaps there will not be enough for us and for you.” What does “there will not be enough” mean? It was not said in despair but in sober and godly humility. For although a good person has a good conscience, how does he know how he will be judged by him who is deceived by no one? He has a good conscience; crimes conceived in the heart do not tickle him; but because of certain daily sins of human life, though his conscience is good, he still says to God, “Forgive us our debts,” because he has done what follows, “as we also forgive our debtors.” He broke bread for the hungry from the heart, clothed the naked from the heart; from the inner oil he did good works; and yet at that judgment even a good conscience trembles.

See what “Give us oil” means. They heard: “Go rather to those who sell.” Because you were used to living well for human praise, you do not carry oil with you; and we do not give, lest perhaps there be not enough for us and for you. For we can scarcely judge about ourselves; how much less can we judge about you? What does “we can scarcely judge about ourselves” mean? Because “when the righteous king sits on his throne, who will boast that he has a pure heart?” Perhaps you find nothing in your conscience; and he who sees better, whose divine gaze penetrates higher things, finds something: perhaps he sees something, perhaps he finds something. How much better to say to him, “Do not enter into judgment with your servant”! How much better, too, to say, “Forgive us our debts”! For it will be said to you, because of those torches, because of those lamps: “I was hungry, and you gave me food.” What then? Did those others not do this? They did not do it before him. But how did they do it? As the Lord forbids, who said, “Beware of doing your righteousness before men, to be seen by them; otherwise you will have no reward with your Father who is in heaven. And do not be like the hypocrites when you pray; for they love to stand in the streets and pray, to be seen by men. Amen I say to you, they have received their reward.” They bought oil, they paid the price; they bought, they were not cheated of human praise; they sought human praise, they had it. These human praises do not help them on the day of judgment. But how did the wise do it? “Let your works shine before men, so that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father who is in heaven.” He does not say, “you.” For you do not have the oil from yourself. Boast and say, “I have it”: but from him. “For what do you have that you did not receive?” So the wise did thus, the wise did thus.

It is no wonder that while they go to buy, while they look for people to praise them and do not find them, while they look for people to console them and do not find them, the door is opened, the bridegroom and the bride come, the church then glorified with Christ, so that the individual members gather themselves into the whole. “And they went in with him to the wedding, and the door was shut.” And afterward the foolish came: but had they bought oil, or found anyone to buy from? So they found the doors shut; they began to knock, but too late.

It was said, it is true, it was not said deceitfully: “Knock, and it will be opened to you”; but now, when it is the time of mercy, not when it is the time of judgment. For these times cannot be confused, since the church sings to her Lord of mercy and judgment. It is the time of mercy: repent. Will you repent at the time of judgment? You will be among those virgins against whom the door was shut. “Lord, Lord, open to us.” Did they not repent that they had not carried oil with them? And what did late repentance profit them, when true Wisdom was mocking them? So the door was shut. And what was said to them? “I do not know you.” Did he not know them, who knows all things? What, then, does “I do not know you” mean? I disapprove of you, I reject you. In my art I do not recognize you; my art knows no vices. And this is a great thing: it both does not know vices and judges vices. It does not know them by doing them; it judges them by convicting them. So, then, “I do not know you.”

“The five wise went, they went in.” How many you are, my brothers, in the name of Christ! Let there be among you the five wise; but not five persons only. Let there be among you the five wise, those who belong to that wisdom of the number five. For the hour will come, and it will come when we do not know. It will come at midnight: keep watch. So the Gospel closed: “Keep watch, for you know neither the day nor the hour.” If, then, we are to fall asleep, how do we keep watch? Keep watch with the heart, keep watch by faith, keep watch by hope, keep watch by love, keep watch by works; and when you have slept in the body, the time will come for you to rise. And when you have risen, make ready your lamps. Then let them not go out; then let them be kept alive by the inner oil of conscience; then let that bridegroom embrace you with bodiless bonds; then let him bring you into the house where you will never sleep, where your lamp can never be put out. But today we labor, and our lamps flicker among the winds and temptations of this world; but let our flame burn strongly, so that the wind of temptation may rather increase the fire than put it out.

My lords and brothers, my fellow bishops, have deigned to visit us and gladden us with their presence; but I do not know why they are unwilling to help me in my weariness. I have said this to your Charity in their hearing so that your listening may in a way intercede with them for me, so that when I ask them they too may give a sermon. Let them pay out what they have received; let them deign to work rather than to excuse themselves. From me, tired and scarcely able to speak, receive a few words gladly. For we also have a booklet about the benefits God has given through the holy martyr; let us listen to it as well, the more gladly. What is it, then? What shall I say to you? You heard in the Gospel both the merit of the good servants and the punishment of the bad. And the whole wickedness of that servant who was rejected and severely condemned was this: that he would not pay out. He kept intact what he received; but his master was looking for profit. God is greedy for our salvation. If he who did not pay out is condemned so, what should those who squander expect? We, then, are stewards: we pay out, you receive. We look for profit: live good lives. For these are the profits of our paying out. But do not think that paying out does not concern you as well. You cannot pay out from this higher place, but you can wherever you are. Where Christ is found fault with, defend him; answer the grumblers, rebuke the blasphemers, keep yourselves apart from their company. So you pay out, if you gain some. Act in our place in your homes. A bishop is so called because he oversees, because he takes care by watching over. So each one in his own house, if he is the head of his house, must have the bishop’s office belong to him: how his people believe, so that none of them falls into heresy, neither his wife, nor son, nor daughter, nor even the slave, since he was bought at so great a price. The apostolic teaching set the master over the slave and subjected the slave to the master; yet Christ gave one price for both. Do not despise the least of your people; look after the salvation of your household with all vigilance. If you do this, you are paying out; you will not be lazy servants; you will not fear so dreadful a condemnation.

When we explain the holy Scriptures to you, it is as if we were breaking bread for you. Receive it hungrily, and let your hearts belch forth the rich fare of praise; and you who are rich in feasts, do not be lean in works and good deeds. What I pay out to you is not mine. What you eat, I eat; what you live on, I live on. We have a common storeroom in heaven: for from there comes the word of God.

The seven loaves signify the sevenfold working of the Holy Spirit; the four thousand men, the church established under the four Gospels; the seven baskets of fragments, the perfection of the church. For by this number perfection is very often figured. For why was it said, “Seven times a day I will praise you”? Does a man go wrong who has praised the Lord that many times? What, then, does “seven times I will praise” mean, if not, “I will never cease from praise”? For he who says “seven times” signifies all time. Hence the ages roll on in a cycle of seven days. What, then, is “seven times a day I will praise you,” if not what is said in another place, “His praise is always in my mouth”? Because of this very perfection John writes to seven churches. The Apocalypse is a book of holy John the evangelist: he writes to seven churches. Be greedy eaters; recognize the baskets. For those fragments were not lost; but because you too belong to the church, they have surely profited you. In explaining these things to you, I serve Christ; you, when you listen quietly, are reclining at table. I sit in body, I stand in heart, and I serve you anxiously, lest perhaps the dish, not the food, should offend any of you. You know God’s banquets; you have often heard: they look for minds, not bellies.

Certainly four thousand men were fed on seven loaves: what more wonderful? And yet it was too little unless seven baskets were also filled from the fragments left over. O great mysteries! They were doing works, and the works were speaking. Those deeds, if you understand them, are words. You too belong to the four thousand, because you live under the fourfold Gospel. Children and women were not counted. For so it was said: “Those who ate were four thousand men, not counting children and women.” As if the foolish and the effeminate were without number. Yet let them eat too. Let them eat: perhaps the children grow and will no longer be children; perhaps the effeminate are corrected and made chaste. Let them eat: we pay out, we spend. But who they are, God looks over his banquet; and if they do not correct themselves, he who knows how to invite knows also how to separate.

You know, dearly beloved; recall the Gospel parable, that the Lord came in to look at those reclining at a banquet of his. The householder who had invited them, as it is written, found there a man not clothed in a wedding garment. For that bridegroom “fair in form beyond the sons of men” had invited them to a wedding: that bridegroom who became ugly for the sake of an ugly bride, to make her beautiful. How was he who became ugly beautiful? If I do not prove it, I blaspheme. A prophet gives me testimony to his beauty, saying, “Fair in form beyond the sons of men.” Another prophet gives me testimony to his ugliness, saying, “We saw him, and he had no form or comeliness; but his face was despised, his bearing unsightly.” O prophet who said, “Fair in form beyond the sons of men,” you are contradicted: another prophet comes out against you and says, “You lie: we saw him.” What does it mean that he says, “Fair in form beyond the sons of men”? “We saw him having no form or comeliness.” Are these two prophets, then, at odds in the corner of peace? Both spoke of Christ; both spoke of the cornerstone. At the corner the walls agree. If they did not agree, there is no building, but a ruin. The prophets agree; let us not leave them quarrelling. Rather let us recognize their peace: for they do not know how to dispute. O prophet who said, “Fair in form beyond the sons of men,” where did you see it? Answer, answer, where did you see it? “Though he was in the form of God, he did not count it robbery to be equal with God.” There I saw it. Or do you doubt that he who is equal to God is fair beyond the sons of men? You have answered; let him answer who said, “We saw him, and he had no form or comeliness.” You have said it; say where you saw it. He takes his beginning from the other’s words: where the one ended, there the other begins. Where did the one end? “Who, though he was in the form of God, did not count it robbery to be equal with God.” See where he saw him fair in form beyond the sons of men. You, say where you saw that he had no form or comeliness. “But he emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, made in the likeness of men and found in appearance as a man.” Of his ugliness he says further: “He humbled himself, becoming obedient unto death, even death on a cross.” See where I saw it. So both agree, peaceable both, and both at peace. What is fairer than God? What uglier than the Crucified? So this bridegroom, fair in form beyond the sons of men, became ugly to make his bride beautiful, to whom it is said, “O fairest among women!”, of whom it is said, “Who is this who comes up made white?”, made bright, not darkened by the color of falsehood. This man, then, who called them to the wedding found a man without a wedding garment, and said to him, “Friend, why did you come in here without a wedding garment?” And he was silent: for he found nothing to answer. And the householder who had come in said: “Bind his hands and feet, and throw him into the outer darkness; there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” For so small a fault so great a punishment? Great indeed. Not to have a wedding garment is called a small fault: small, but only to those who do not understand. When would he have been so angry, when would he have judged so as to send him, bound hand and foot, into the outer darkness where there would be weeping and gnashing of teeth, because of the wedding garment he did not have, unless it were a very grave fault not to have a wedding garment? I say this because you were invited through me; and if he invited you, he invited you through us. You are all at the banquet; have the wedding garment. I am explaining what it is, so that you may all have it; and if anyone who does not have it is listening to me, let him change for the better before the householder comes and looks over his guests; let him take the wedding garment and recline in safety.

For truly, dearly beloved, the man who was thrown out from there does not signify one man; God forbid. They are many. And the Lord himself who set forth this parable, the bridegroom himself, the one who called the banquet together and gives life to the guests, has himself explained to us that that man signifies not one man but many: there, in that very place, in the same parable. I do not go far afield; there I explain, there I break the bread and set it out to be eaten. For when the man without a wedding garment had been sent from there into the outer darkness, he went on and added: “For many are called, but few are chosen.” You threw out one from here, and you say, “For many are called, but few are chosen.” Without doubt the chosen were not thrown out; and they were the few who had remained reclining; and the many were in that one, because that one who has no wedding garment is the one body of the wicked.

What is the wedding garment? Let us look for it in the holy writings. What is the wedding garment? Without doubt it is something that the bad and the good do not have in common: let us find this, and we have found the wedding garment. Among God’s gifts, what is it that good and bad do not have in common? That we are human and not cattle is God’s gift; but it is common to good and bad. That light rises for us from heaven, that rains come down from the cloud, that springs flow, that fields bear fruit: these are gifts, but common to good and bad. Let us go in to the wedding; let us leave outside the others, who did not come when called. Let us consider the guests themselves, that is, Christians. Baptism is God’s gift; good and bad have it. The sacraments of the altar good and bad alike receive. Saul the wicked prophesied, hostile to a holy and most righteous man; while he was persecuting him he prophesied. Are only the good said to believe? “The demons also believe, and tremble.” What shall I do? I have shaken out everything, and I have not yet come to that garment. I have unrolled my bundle, I have considered everything or almost everything, and I have not yet come to that garment. In a certain place the apostle Paul brought me a great bundle of great things; he spread it out before me, and I said to him, “Show me whether perhaps you have found that wedding garment here.” He began to shake out the items one by one and to say: “If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, if I have all knowledge and prophecy and all faith, so as to move mountains; if I give away all my goods to the poor and hand over my body to be burned.” Great garments; yet that is not yet the wedding garment. Now bring out the wedding garment for us. Why do you keep us in suspense, apostle? Perhaps prophecy is God’s gift which good and bad do not both have. “If I have not love,” he says, “I am nothing; it profits me nothing.” See the wedding garment: put it on, guests, so that you may recline in safety. Do not say, “We are too poor to have that garment.” Clothe others, and be clothed. It is winter: clothe the naked. Christ is naked; and to all of you who do not have the wedding garment he will give it. Run to him, ask him: he knows how to sanctify his faithful, he knows how to clothe his naked ones. So that, having the wedding garment, you may not fear the outer darkness, the bonds on your limbs, hands and feet: let works not fail. If they fail, what will he do with his hands bound? Where will he flee with his feet bound? Hold on to that wedding garment, put it on, and recline in safety when he comes to look. The day of judgment will come: now he grants a long space, so that whoever was once naked may be clothed.

It seems hard and heavy, what the Lord commanded: that if anyone wants to follow him, he must deny himself. But what he commands is not hard or heavy, since he helps us do what he commands. For both are true: what is said to him in the Psalm, “Because of the words of your lips I have kept hard ways”; and what he himself said, “My yoke is gentle and my burden light.” For whatever is hard in the commandments, love makes light. We know how much love itself can do. Often love is even reprobate and lustful: how many hard things have people endured, how many shameful and unbearable things have they suffered, to reach what they loved, whether a lover of money, who is called greedy; or a lover of honor, who is called ambitious; or a lover of beautiful bodies, who is called lustful? And who could count all the loves? Yet consider how much all lovers labor, and they do not feel that they labor; and they labor the more when anyone is kept from the labor. Since, then, people are for the most part such as their loves are, and nothing else ought to concern us about how we live except that we choose what is to be loved, why are you surprised if he who loves Christ and wants to follow Christ denies himself by loving? For if a man is lost by loving himself, surely he is found by denying himself.

The first ruin of man was love of himself. For if he had not loved himself, and had put God before himself, he would have wished always to be subject to God; he would not have turned to neglect God’s will and do his own. For this is what it is to love oneself: to wish to do one’s own will. Put God’s will before these: learn to love yourself by not loving yourself. For so that you may know that loving oneself is a vice, the apostle says: “For men will be lovers of themselves.” And does he who loves himself trust in himself? He begins, having deserted God, to love himself; and he is driven out of himself to love the things that are outside himself: so much so that the same apostle, having said, “Men will be lovers of themselves,” added at once, “lovers of money.” Now you see that you are outside. You began to love yourself: stand in yourself, if you can. Why do you go outside? Have you been made rich by money, lover of money? You began to love what is outside you; you have lost yourself. So when a man’s love goes out even from himself to the things outside, it begins to vanish with vain things and, like a prodigal, to squander its strength. It is emptied, poured out, made destitute; it feeds pigs; and laboring at feeding pigs, it at last remembers and says, “How many hired men of my father eat bread, and I am perishing here of hunger?” But when he says this, what is told of that son who poured out everything on harlots, who wanted to have in his own power what was kept safe for him with his father, wanted to have it at his own disposal, poured it out, and became destitute? What is said of him? “And he came back to himself.” If he came back to himself, he had gone out from himself. Because he had fallen from himself and gone out from himself, he first returns to himself, so as to return to him from whom he had fallen in falling from himself. For as in falling from himself he remained in himself, so in returning to himself he must not remain in himself, lest he go out from himself again. Having come back to himself, so as not to remain in himself, what did he say? “I will arise and go to my father.” See whence he had fallen from himself: he had fallen from his father. He had fallen from himself; he had gone out from himself to the things outside. He returns to himself and goes on to his father, where he may keep himself most safely. If, then, he had gone out from himself, he had also gone out from him from whom he had gone out; in returning to himself so as to go to his father, let him deny himself. What does “deny himself” mean? Let him not presume on himself; let him know he is a man, and look at the prophetic saying: “Cursed is everyone who puts his hope in man.” Let him withdraw himself from himself, but not downward. Let him withdraw himself from himself so as to cling to God. Whatever good he has, let him ascribe it to him by whom he was made; whatever evil he has, he made for himself. God did not make what is evil in him: let him destroy what he himself made, he who fell away from it. “Let him deny himself,” he says, “and take up his cross, and follow me.”

Where is the Lord to be followed? We know where he went: we celebrated that very feast a very few days ago. For he rose again and ascended into heaven: there he is to be followed. Plainly we must not despair, because he himself promised, not because man can do anything. Heaven was far from us before our head had gone into heaven. Why should we despair now, if we are members of that head? There, then, he is to be followed. And who would not want to follow him to such a seat? Above all since on earth there is much toil with fears and sorrows. Who would not want to follow Christ there, where there is the highest happiness, the highest peace, everlasting security? It is good to follow him there; but we must see by what road. For the Lord Jesus did not say these words when he had already risen from the dead. He had not yet suffered; he was to come to the cross, to come to dishonor, to insults, to scourges, to thorns and wounds, to mockery, reproaches, death. The road seems rough; it makes you slow; you do not want to follow. Follow. What man made for himself is rough; but what Christ trod on his way back has been worn smooth. For who would not want to go to exaltation? Height delights everyone: but humility is the step. Why stretch your foot beyond yourself? You want to fall, not to climb. Begin with the step, and you have climbed. That step of humility those two disciples would not notice who said, “Lord, command that one of us may sit at your right hand in your kingdom, and the other at your left.” They looked for the height; they did not see the step. But the Lord showed them the step. For what did he answer? “Can you drink the cup that I am about to drink?” You who seek the summit of exaltation, can you drink the cup of humility? So he did not say merely, “Let him deny himself and follow me,” but added, “Let him take up his cross and follow me.”

What does “let him take up his cross” mean? Let him bear whatever is troublesome: so let him follow me. For when he begins to follow me in my way of life and my commandments, he will have many to oppose him, many to forbid him, many to dissuade him, and that from among Christ’s companions, as it were. Those who were forbidding the blind men to cry out were walking with Christ. So whether threats or flatteries or any prohibitions whatever, if you want to follow, turn them into a cross; endure, carry, do not give way. In these words of the Lord martyrdoms seem to be encouraged. If there is persecution, should not everything be despised for Christ? The world is loved; but let him by whom the world was made be put first. The world is great; but greater is he by whom the world was made. The world is beautiful; but more beautiful is he by whom the world was made. The world is alluring; but sweeter is he by whom the world was made. The world is evil, and good is he by whom the world was made. How shall I be able to resolve and explain what I have said? May God help. For what did I say? What did you applaud? See, there is a question, and yet you have already applauded. How is the world evil, if he by whom the world was made is good? Did not God make all things, and behold, very good? Does not Scripture testify one by one that God made good things, by saying, “And God saw that it was good”? And at the end it concluded all of them, how God made all things, and behold, very good.

How, then, is the world evil, and good he by whom the world was made? How? Because “the world was made through him, and the world did not know him.” The world was made through him: heaven and earth and all that is in them. The world did not know him: the lovers of the world; lovers of the world and despisers of God: this world did not know him. So the world is evil in this way, because those are evil who prefer the world to God. And good is he who made the world, heaven and earth and sea, and those very people who love the world. For only the fact that they love the world and do not love God he did not make in them. But themselves, as far as nature is concerned, he made; as far as fault is concerned, he did not make. This is what I said a little earlier: let a man destroy what he made, and he will please him who made him.

For there is also a good world in men themselves; but it was made out of an evil one. For the whole world (if you take men as the world, apart from what we call the world, heaven and earth and all that is in them), if you call men the world, the whole world was made evil by the one who first sinned. The whole lump was corrupted at the root. God made man good; so Scripture has it: “God made man upright, and men themselves have sought out many thoughts.” From the many run to the one; gather what is scattered into one; flow together, be fortified, stay with the one; do not go off into the many. There is blessedness. But we flowed away, we set out for perdition: we were all born with sin, and to what we were born with we added by living badly, and the whole world was made evil. But Christ came, and chose what he made, not what he found: for he found all evil, and by his grace made them good. And another world was made: and the world persecutes the world.

Which is the world that persecutes? That of which it is said to us: “Do not love the world or the things in the world. Whoever loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world is the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the ambition of the age, which is not from the Father but from the world. And the world passes away, and its lust; but whoever does the will of God abides forever, as God also abides forever.” See, I have named both “world,” the one that persecutes and the one it persecutes. Which is the persecuting world? “All that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the ambition of the age, which is not from the Father but from the world; and the world passes away.” See, that is the persecuting world. Which is the world it persecutes? “Whoever does the will of God abides forever, as God also abides forever.”

But see, the one that persecutes is called the world; let us prove whether the one that suffers persecution is also called the world. Or are you deaf to the voice of Christ saying, or rather of holy Scripture testifying, “God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself”? “If the world hates you,” he says, “know that it hated me first.” See, the world hates. Whom, if not the world? Which world? “God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself.” The condemned world persecutes; the reconciled world suffers persecution. The condemned world is whatever is outside the church; the reconciled world is the church. “For the Son of Man did not come,” he says, “to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through him.”

But in this holy, good, reconciled, saved world; rather, to be saved, but now saved in hope (“for in hope we have been saved”): in this world, then, that is, the church, which follows Christ as a whole, he said universally, “Whoever wants to follow me, let him deny himself.” For it is not that virgins ought to hear this and married women not; or widows ought and wives not; or monks ought and the married not; or clergy ought and laity not: but let the whole church, the whole body, all the members, distinguished and distributed by their proper offices, follow Christ. Let her follow as a whole, the only one; let the dove follow, let the bride follow, redeemed and endowed with the bridegroom’s blood. Virginal integrity has its place there; widowed continence has its place there; married chastity has its place there: adultery has no place there; unlawful and punishable lust has no place there. But let these members that have their place there, each in its kind, its place, and its measure, follow Christ: let them deny themselves, that is, not presume on themselves; let them take up their cross, that is, endure in the world for Christ whatever the world inflicts. Let them love him who alone does not deceive, who alone is not deceived and alone does not deceive: let them love him, because what he promises is true. But because he does not give it now, faith wavers. Hold out, persevere, endure, bear the delay, and you have taken up the cross. Let the virgin not say, “I alone shall be there.” For not Mary alone will be there; Anna the widow will be there too. Let the married woman not say, “The widow will be there, not I.” For it is not that Anna will be there and Susanna will not. But let those who will be there prove themselves in this: that those who have a lower place here do not envy, but love in others the better place. For example, my brothers, so that you may take note: one has chosen married life, one has chosen a life of continence. If the one who chose married life lusts after adulteries, he has looked back: he has lusted after what is unlawful. But whoever wants afterward to go back from continence to marriage has looked back: he has chosen what is lawful, and yet he has looked back. Is marriage, then, to be condemned? No. Marriage is not to be condemned; but see where he had come who chose it. He had already gone on ahead. When he lived lustfully as a youth, marriage was ahead of him; he was stretching toward it; but when he chose continence, marriage is behind him. “Remember,” says the Lord, “Lot’s wife.” Lot’s wife, by looking back, stayed where she was. So let each one fear to look back from where he has been able to reach; and let him walk on the road, let him follow Christ: “forgetting what lies behind, and stretched out toward what lies ahead,” let him press on inwardly in purpose toward the prize of God’s calling in Christ Jesus. Let the married put the unmarried before themselves; let them confess that they are better; let them love in them what they themselves do not have; and in them let them love Christ.

Brothers, as for what you heard just now, Scripture warning us and saying that we should keep watch for the last day: let each one think of his own last day, lest perhaps, when you feel or think that the last day of the world is far off, you fall asleep toward your own last day. You heard what he said about the last day of this world: that no one knows it, “neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father.” Here indeed there is a great question, lest, thinking in a fleshly way, we suppose that the Father knows something the Son does not know. For certainly when he said, “The Father knows,” he said it because in the Father the Son also knows. For what is there in a day that was not made in the Word, through whom the day was made? So let no one inquire when the last day will be; but let us all keep watch by living well, lest the last day of any one of us find us unprepared, and as each one departs from here on his last day, so he will be found on the last day of the world. Nothing you have not done here will help you. Each one’s works will help him, or each one’s works will weigh him down.

And how is it that we sang to the Lord in the Psalm, “Have mercy on me, Lord, for man has trampled on me”? He is called “man” who lives according to man. Indeed to those who live according to God it is said, “You are gods, and all of you sons of the Most High.” But to the reprobate, who were called to be sons of God and preferred to be men, that is, to live according to man, he says: “But you will die like men, and fall like one of the princes.” For the fact that man is mortal ought to serve him for discipline, not for boasting. Why does a worm that will die tomorrow boast? I tell your Charity, brothers: proud mortals ought to blush before the devil. For he, though proud, is nevertheless immortal: he is a spirit, though a malignant one. A last day of punishment is kept for him at the end; yet the death we suffer he does not suffer. But man heard, “You shall surely die.” Let him make good use of his punishment. What is it that I said, “Let him make good use of his punishment”? Let him not go on to pride from that by which he received punishment; let him recognize that he is mortal, and break his self-exaltation. Let him hear it said to him, “Why is earth and ashes proud?” Even if the devil is proud, he is not earth and ashes. So it was said, “But you will die like men, and fall like one of the princes.” You do not consider that you are mortal, and you are proud like the devil. So let man make use of his punishment, brothers: let him make good use of his evil, to profit his good. Who does not know that it is a punishment that we must die, and, what is heavier, that we do not know when? The punishment is certain, the hour uncertain; and of this punishment alone are we certain in human affairs.

All our other things, good and bad, are uncertain: death alone is certain. What do I mean? A child is conceived: perhaps it is born, perhaps it miscarries. So it is uncertain: perhaps he grows up, perhaps he does not; perhaps he grows old, perhaps he does not; perhaps he will be rich, perhaps poor; perhaps honored, perhaps humbled; perhaps he will have children, perhaps not; perhaps he will marry, perhaps not; and whatever else you name among good things. Look at the bad things too: perhaps he falls ill, perhaps not; perhaps he is bitten by a snake, perhaps not; perhaps he is devoured by a beast, perhaps not. Look at all the evils: everywhere it is “perhaps it will be, perhaps it will not.” Can you say, “Perhaps he dies, perhaps he does not”? As when doctors have examined a sickness and know it to be fatal, they declare: “He is dying; he will not escape it.” From the moment a man is born it must be said, “He will not escape.” When he was born, he began to be sick. When he has died, he ends his sickness indeed; but he does not know whether he goes on to a worse one. That rich man had ended a luxurious sickness and came to a tormenting one. But that poor man ended his sickness and came to health. But here he chose what he would have afterward; and what he reaped there, he sowed here. So while we live we must keep watch, and must choose what we are to hold in the future.

Let us not love the world. It weighs down those who love it; it does not lead them to the good. We must labor rather that it may not take hold of us than fear that it may fall. See, the world falls; the Christian stands, because Christ does not fall. For why does the Lord say, “Rejoice, for I have overcome the world”? Let us answer him, if you please: “Rejoice, but you. If you have overcome, you rejoice. Why we?” Why does he say to us, “Rejoice,” unless because he overcame for us, fought for us? For where did he fight? Because he took on a man. Take away that he was born of a virgin, take away that he emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, made in the likeness of men and found in appearance as a man: take this away, and where is the wrestling? Where the contest? Where the temptation? Where the victory, which no fight preceded? “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him nothing was made.” Would a Jew crucify this Word? Would an ungodly man insult this Word? Would this Word be struck with fists? Would this Word be crowned with thorns? But so that he might suffer these things, “the Word became flesh”; and having suffered them, he conquered by rising again. So he conquered for us, to whom he showed the security of the resurrection. You say to God, then, “Have mercy on me, Lord, for man has trampled on me.” Do not trample on yourself, and man does not conquer you. For see, a powerful man frightens you. With what does he frighten you? “I despoil, I fine, I torture, I kill.” And you cry, “Have mercy on me, Lord, for man has trampled on me.” If you speak the truth, you are looking at yourself: because you fear a man’s threats, a dead man tramples on you; and because you would not fear unless you were man, man tramples on you. What, then, is the remedy? O man, cling to God, by whom you were made man: cling to him, trust in him, call on him; let him be your strength. Say to him: “In you, Lord, is my strength.” And then you will sing in the face of men’s threats; and what you are to sing afterward, the Lord himself says: “In God I will hope; I will not fear what man can do to me.”

The miracles of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ move all who hear and believe them, but some in one way and others in another. For some, astonished at his bodily miracles, do not know how to look at greater ones; but others now admire more in souls what they hear was done in bodies. The Lord himself says, “For as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whom he will.” Not, of course, some the Son and others the Father, but the same ones the Father and the Son: for the Father does all things through the Son. So let no one who is a Christian doubt that even now the dead are raised. Every man has eyes with which he can see the dead rise as the son of this widow rose, who was read about just now from the Gospel; but the eyes with which people may see the dead rise in heart not all have, but only those who have already risen in heart. It is a greater thing to raise one who will live forever than to raise one who will die again.

Over that young man restored to life his widowed mother rejoiced: over people raised daily in the spirit mother church rejoices. He indeed was dead in body; they in mind. His visible death was visibly mourned; their invisible death was neither sought out nor seen. He sought it who knew the dead: he alone knew the dead who could make them alive. For if the Lord had not come to raise the dead, the apostle would not say, “Arise, sleeper, and rise from the dead, and Christ will give you light.” You hear of a sleeper when he says, “Arise, sleeper”; but understand a dead man when you hear, “and rise from the dead.” Those visibly dead are often called sleepers. And plainly all are asleep to him who can wake them. For to you a dead man is dead, who, however much you knock, however much you pluck at him, however much you tear him, does not wake. But to Christ he was asleep to whom it was said, “Arise,” and at once he arose. No one wakes someone in bed as easily as Christ wakes someone in the tomb.

We find three dead people raised by the Lord visibly, thousands invisibly. But how many dead he raised visibly, who knows? For not all that he did was written: John says this, “Jesus did many other things, which if they were written, I think the whole world could not contain the books.” So without doubt many others were raised; but not for nothing are three recorded. For our Lord Jesus Christ wanted what he did bodily to be understood spiritually as well. For he did not do miracles merely for the sake of miracles, but so that what he did might be wonderful to those who saw and true to those who understood. Just as someone who sees letters in a beautifully written book and does not know how to read praises the copyist’s hand, admiring the beauty of the strokes, but does not know what they mean or what those strokes indicate; and he praises with his eyes but does not understand with his mind: while another both praises the workmanship and grasps the meaning, namely the one who can not only see what is common to all, but also read, which one who has not learned cannot do. So those who saw Christ’s miracles and did not understand what they meant, and what they in a way signaled to those who understood, only wondered that they were done; but others both wondered at the deeds and attained to their meaning. Such we ought to be in the school of Christ. For whoever says that Christ did miracles only so that they would be nothing but miracles can say that he did not even know it was not the season for figs when he looked for figs on the tree. For it was not the season for that fruit, as the evangelist testifies; and yet, hungry, he looked for fruit on the tree. Did Christ not know what a peasant knew? Did the creator of the tree not know what the tree’s cultivator knew? So when, hungry, he looked for fruit on the tree, he signified that he hungered for something and was seeking something else; and he found that tree without fruit and full of leaves, and cursed it, and it withered. What had the tree done by not bearing fruit? What fault in a tree is barrenness? But there are those who cannot give fruit by their will. Barrenness is the fault of those whose fruitfulness lies in their will. So the Jews were those who had the words of the law and did not have the deeds, full of leaves and bearing no fruit. I have said this to persuade you that our Lord Jesus Christ did miracles so as to signify something by those miracles, so that, besides their being wonderful and great and divine, we might also learn something from them.

Let us see, then, what he wanted us to learn in the three dead whom he raised. He raised the dead daughter of the ruler of the synagogue, for whom, when she was sick, he was asked to free her from her sickness. And as he goes, she is announced dead; and as if he were now troubling himself in vain, word was brought to her father: “The girl is dead; why trouble the Master further?” But he went on and said to the girl’s father, “Do not fear; only believe.” He comes to the house and finds the rites due to a funeral already prepared; and he says to them, “Do not weep; for the girl is not dead but sleeping.” He spoke the truth: she was sleeping, but to him by whom she could be woken. Waking her, he gave her back alive to her parents. He also woke this young man, the widow’s son, about whom we have now been prompted to speak with your Charity on the things he deigns to grant. You heard just now how he was woken. The Lord was approaching the city; and see, a dead man was already being carried out beyond the gate. Moved with mercy, because the widowed mother was weeping, bereft of her only son, he did what you heard, saying, “Young man, I say to you, arise.” The dead man rose, began to speak, and he gave him back to his mother. He also woke Lazarus from the tomb. And there, when the disciples with whom he was speaking knew that he was sick (and he loved him), he said, “Lazarus our friend is asleep.” They, thinking of a sick man’s healthy sleep, said, “Lord, if he is asleep, he will be well.” And he, now speaking more plainly: “I tell you, Lazarus our friend is dead.” Speaking truly both times: he is dead to you, asleep to me.

These three kinds of dead are three kinds of sinners, whom Christ still raises today. That dead daughter of the synagogue ruler was inside the house; she had not yet been carried out from the private walls into public. There inside she was raised and given back alive to her parents. This young man was no longer in the house, but not yet in the tomb: he had been carried out of the walls, but not committed to the earth. He who raised the dead girl not yet carried out raised the dead man already carried out but not yet buried. A third remained: that he should raise one buried as well; and he did this in Lazarus. There are, then, those who have sin inside in the heart, but not yet in the deed. Someone is stirred by some lust. For the Lord himself says, “Whoever looks at a woman to lust after her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” He has not yet approached with the body, but he has consented in the heart: he has a dead person inside, he has not yet carried it out. And as happens, as we know, as people daily experience in themselves, sometimes, when they hear God’s word, as though the Lord were saying, “Arise,” the consent to iniquity is condemned, and one breathes again unto salvation and righteousness. The dead rises in the house; the heart revives in the secret place of thought. This resurrection of a dead soul has happened inside, within the hiding places of conscience, as within the walls of the house. Others after consent go on to the deed, as if carrying out the dead, so that what lay hidden in secret appears in public. Are these, who have gone on to the deed, now beyond hope? Was it not said to that young man too, “I say to you, arise”? Was he not given back to his mother too? So also one who has already done it, if perhaps, warned and moved by the word of truth, he rises at Christ’s voice, is given back alive. He could go forward; he could not perish forever. But those who, by doing what is evil, also entangle themselves in evil habit, so that the very habit of evil does not let them see that it is evil, become defenders of their evil deeds: they are angry when they are rebuked, so much so that the men of Sodom once said to the righteous man who rebuked their most wicked will, “You came to live here, not to make laws.” So great was the habit of unspeakable shamelessness there that wickedness was now justice, and the one who forbade was rebuked rather than the one who did it. Such people, weighed down by malignant habit, are as if buried. But what shall I say, brothers? So buried that, as was said of Lazarus, “He already stinks.” That mass laid on the tomb is the hard force of habit itself, by which the soul is pressed down and not allowed to rise or breathe.

But it was said, “He has been dead four days.” Truly, the soul reaches this habit I am speaking of by a kind of fourth step. For first there is, as it were, the tickle of pleasure in the heart; second, consent; third, the deed; fourth, habit. For there are those who so throw off unlawful things that present themselves to their thoughts that they take no pleasure in them. There are those who take pleasure and do not consent: death is not yet complete, but in a way begun. Consent is added to pleasure: now there is condemnation. After consent one goes on to the deed; the deed turns into habit; and a kind of hopelessness arises, so that it is said, “He has been dead four days; he already stinks.” So the Lord came, to whom of course all things were easy; and he shows you a certain difficulty. He groaned in spirit; he showed that much loud rebuke is needed for those who have hardened in habit. Yet at the cry of the Lord the bonds of necessity were broken. The dominion of hell trembled; Lazarus was given back alive. For the Lord frees from evil habit even those four days dead: for he too, four days dead, was only sleeping to Christ, who willed to raise him. But what does he say? See the manner of the raising. He came out of the tomb alive, and could not walk. And the Lord said to the disciples, “Unbind him and let him go.” He raised the dead; they unbound the bound. See that something belongs to the proper majesty of God who raises. Someone set in evil habit is rebuked by the word of truth. How many are rebuked and do not listen! Who, then, works inwardly with the one who listens? Who breathes life within? Who is it that drives out hidden death and gives hidden life? Are not people, after rebukes and reproofs, left to their own thoughts, and do they not begin to turn over within themselves what an evil life they lead, by what a very bad habit they are pressed down? Then, displeased with themselves, they resolve to change their life. These have risen; those have come back to life who are displeased with what they were: but coming back to life they cannot walk. These are the bonds of guilt itself. So the one who has come back to life must be unbound and allowed to go. This office he gave to the disciples, to whom he said, “Whatever you loose on earth is loosed in heaven also.”

Let us hear these things, then, dearly beloved, so that those who are alive may live, and those who are dead may come back to life. If the sin has so far been conceived in the heart and has not gone on to the deed, let there be repentance, let the thought be corrected, let the dead rise inside the house of conscience. If he has already committed what he thought, even so let there be no despair. The dead did not rise inside; let him rise when carried out. Let him repent of the deed, let him come back to life at once: let him not go into the depth of burial, let him not receive on top of him the mass of habit. But perhaps I am now speaking to one who is already pressed down by the hard stone of his own practice, who is already burdened with the weight of habit, who already stinks, four days dead. Let not even him despair: he is dead deep down, but Christ is on high. He knows how to burst earthly burdens by his cry; he knows how to give life within by himself, and to hand over the man to the disciples to be unbound. Let even such people repent. For in Lazarus, raised after four days, no stench remained once he was alive. So let those who live, live; and let all who are dead, in whichever of these three deaths they find themselves, act so that they may now rise quickly.