Tractates on the Gospel of John 101.1–103.3

These words of the Lord, where he says, "A little while, and you will no longer see me, and again a little while, and you will see me, because I go to the Father," were so obscure to the disciples, before what he said was fulfilled, that when they asked among themselves what he meant, they confessed that they did not know at all. For the Gospel continues: "So some of his disciples said to one another, What is this that he says to us, A little while, and you will not see me, and again a little while, and you will see me, and, Because I go to the Father? So they said, What is this that he says, A little while? We do not know what he is saying." For this is what troubled them, that he said, "A little while, and you will not see me, and again a little while, and you will see me." For in what went before, since he had not said "a little while" but had said, "I go to the Father, and you will no longer see me," he seemed to them to have spoken plainly, and they asked nothing about it among themselves. Now, then, what was obscure to them then and was soon made plain is certainly plain to us now: for after a little while he suffered, and they did not see him; again, after a little while he rose, and they saw him. But as for his saying, "you will no longer see me," meaning by this word "no longer" that they would not see him any more, we explained how it is to be taken at the place where he said, "The Holy Spirit will convict the world of righteousness, because I go to the Father, and you will no longer see me": namely, that they would no longer see Christ as mortal.

But Jesus knew, as the evangelist goes on to say, that they wanted to ask him, and he said to them: "You are asking among yourselves about this, that I said, A little while, and you will not see me, and again a little while, and you will see me. Truly, truly, I say to you, you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice; you will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will turn into joy." And this can be taken thus: that the disciples were saddened by the Lord's death and at once gladdened by his resurrection; but the world, by which name are signified the enemies by whom Christ was killed, certainly rejoiced when Christ was killed, at the very time when the disciples were saddened. For by the name "world" can be understood the malice of this world, that is, of the men who are friends of this world. Hence the apostle James says in his Epistle, "Whoever wishes to be a friend of this world is made an enemy of God"; and by this enmity toward God it came about that not even his Only-begotten was spared.

Then he adds and says: "A woman, when she gives birth, has sorrow, because her hour has come; but when she has borne the child, she no longer remembers the anguish, for joy that a man is born into the world. So you too now have sorrow; but I will see you again, and your heart will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you." Nor does this likeness seem difficult to understand, since its comparison is ready to hand, as he himself explains why it was said. For labor is compared to sorrow, and birth to joy, which is usually greater when not a girl but a boy is born. But what he says, "No one will take your joy from you," since their joy is Jesus himself, signifies what the Apostle says: "Christ, rising from the dead, dies no more, and death will no longer have dominion over him."

Up to this point in this chapter of the Gospel, which we are discussing today, everything has run along as if easy to understand; but sharper attention is needed in what follows. For what is it that he says, "And in that day you will not ask me anything"? This verb "ask" (rogare) means not only to request but also to question; and the Greek Gospel, from which this was translated, has a verb that can be understood both ways, so that the ambiguity is not resolved from there either; although even if it were resolved, not on that account would no question remain. For we read that the Lord Christ, after he rose, was both questioned and asked. For he was questioned by the disciples, as he was about to ascend into heaven, about when he would be present again and when the kingdom would be Israel's; and when he was already in heaven, he was asked by holy Stephen to receive his spirit. And who would dare to think or say that Christ seated in heaven is not to be asked, though he was asked while he remained on earth? That the immortal is not to be asked, though the mortal had to be asked? Rather, beloved, let us ask him to untie the knot of this question himself, by shining in our hearts so that we may see what he means.

For I think that what he says, "But I will see you again, and your heart will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you," is not to be referred to the time when he rose and showed them his flesh to be seen and touched, but rather to that of which he had already said, "Whoever loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and will manifest myself to him." For he had already risen, already shown himself to them in the flesh, and was already seated at the right hand of the Father, when the same apostle John, whose Gospel this is, said in his Epistle: "Beloved, we are now children of God, and it has not yet appeared what we shall be; we know that when it appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is." That vision belongs not to this life but to the life to come; it is not temporal but eternal. "And this is eternal life," says the Life himself, "that they may know you, the one true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent." Of this vision and knowledge the Apostle says: "We see now through a mirror in an enigma, but then face to face: now I know in part, but then I shall know even as I am known." This fruit of all its labor the church now travails with by desiring, and will then bring forth by beholding; now travails with in groaning, and will then bring forth in rejoicing; now travails with in praying, and will then bring forth in praising. And therefore it is a male child, since all the duties of action are referred to this fruit of contemplation. For it alone is free, because it is sought for its own sake and is not referred to anything else. Action serves it; for whatever is done well is referred to it, because it is done for its sake; but it is held and possessed for the sake of nothing else, only for itself. There, then, is the end that suffices us. So it will be eternal: for no end suffices us except one that has no end. This was inspired in Philip when he said, "Show us the Father, and it is enough for us." In that showing the Son promised himself too, saying, "Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father is in me?" Of this, then, which suffices us, we most rightly hear, "No one will take your joy from you."

Of this too, I think, the words spoken above are better understood: "A little while, and you will no longer see me, and again a little while, and you will see me." For this whole span in which the present age flies past is "a little while"; hence the same evangelist says in his Epistle, "It is the last hour." For he added, "because I go to the Father," which is to be referred to the first statement, where he says, "A little while, and you will no longer see me," not to the latter, where he says, "and again a little while, and you will see me." For by going to the Father he would bring it about that they would not see him. And so it was not said because he was going to die and withdraw from their sight until he rose, but because he was going to go to the Father, which he did after he rose and had spent forty days with them, when he ascended into heaven. To those, then, who saw him bodily at that time he said, "A little while, and you will no longer see me," because he was going to the Father, and thereafter they would not see him as mortal, such as they saw him when he was saying these things. But what he added, "and again a little while, and you will see me," he promised to the whole church; just as he promised to the whole church, "Behold, I am with you until the consummation of the age." The Lord does not delay his promise: a little while, and we shall see him, where we shall ask nothing and question nothing; because nothing will remain to be desired, nothing will lie hidden to be sought. This little while seems long to us because it is still going on; when it is finished, then we shall feel how little it was. Let our joy, then, not be such as the world has, of which it was said, "But the world will rejoice"; and yet let us not be sad without joy in the travail of this desire, but, as the Apostle says, "rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation"; because the woman in labor herself, to whom we have been compared, rejoices more over the offspring soon to come than she is sad over the present pain. But let this be the end of this sermon: for what follows contains a most troublesome question, and must not be squeezed into brevity, so that it may be explained more fittingly, if the Lord wills.

These words of the Lord must now be treated: "Truly, truly, I say to you, if you ask the Father anything in my name, he will give it to you." It has already been said in earlier parts of this discourse of the Lord, on account of those who ask some things of the Father in Christ's name and do not receive them, that whatever is asked against the principle of salvation is not asked in the name of the Savior. For when he says "in my name," he is to be understood to mean not the sound of letters and syllables, but what the sound itself signifies and what is rightly and truly understood by that sound. Hence one who thinks of Christ what is not to be thought of the only Son of God does not ask in his name, even if he does not leave out Christ in letters and syllables; for he asks in the name of the one he thinks of when he asks. But one who thinks of him what is to be thought, asks in his name; and he receives what he asks, if he does not ask against his own eternal salvation. But he receives it when he ought to receive it. For some things are not denied but deferred, so as to be given at the fitting time. So we must indeed understand his words "he will give to you" in such a way that the benefits signified by these words are known to be those which belong properly to the ones who ask. For all the saints are heard for themselves, but they are not heard for all, whether their friends or enemies or anyone else; because it is not said indiscriminately "he will give," but "he will give to you."

"Until now," he says, "you have asked nothing in my name. Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full." This joy that he calls full is surely not carnal but spiritual joy; and when it is so great that nothing can any longer be added to it, then beyond doubt it will be full. Whatever, then, is asked that pertains to attaining this joy is to be asked in the name of Christ, if we understand divine grace, if we seek a truly blessed life. But whatever else is asked, nothing is asked: not because it is no thing at all, but because in comparison with so great a thing whatever else is desired is nothing. For a man is not altogether nothing, of whom the Apostle says, "He who thinks himself to be something, when he is nothing." For in comparison with the spiritual man, who knows that by the grace of God he is what he is, whoever presumes on vain things is nothing. In this way too, then, can rightly be understood, "Truly, truly, I say to you, if you ask the Father anything in my name, he will give it to you": so that by "anything" is understood not just anything, but something that is not nothing in comparison with the blessed life. And what follows, "Until now you have asked nothing in my name," can be understood in two ways: either, you have not asked in my name, because you have not known the name as it is to be known; or, you have asked nothing, since in comparison with what you ought to have asked, what you have asked is to be counted as nothing. So that they may ask in his name not nothing but full joy (since if they ask something else, that something is nothing), he exhorts them, saying, "Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full"; that is, ask this in my name, that your joy may be full, and you will receive. For divine mercy will by no means cheat his saints who persevere in asking for this good.

"These things I have spoken to you in proverbs; the hour is coming when I will no longer speak to you in proverbs, but will tell you plainly about my Father." I could say that this hour of which he speaks is to be understood as the age to come, where we shall see openly, as blessed Paul says, face to face; so that his saying, "These things I have spoken to you in proverbs," is what was said by the same apostle, "We see now through a mirror in an enigma"; and "I will tell you," because the Father will be seen through the Son, according to what he says elsewhere, "Nor does anyone know the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him." But what follows seems to stand in the way of this sense: "In that day you will ask in my name." For in the age to come, when we have reached the kingdom, where we shall be like him because we shall see him as he is, what shall we ask, when our desire will be satisfied with good things? Hence it is said in another psalm too: "I shall be satisfied when your glory is made manifest." For asking belongs to some need, and there will be none where there is this fullness.

It remains, then, as far as I can understand, that Jesus is to be understood as having promised that he would make his disciples spiritual instead of carnal or natural; not yet such as we shall be when we have a spiritual body too, but such as he was who said, "We speak wisdom among the perfect," and, "I could not speak to you as to spiritual people, but as to carnal," and, "We have received not the spirit of this world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we may know the things given us by God; which we also speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in words taught by the Spirit, comparing spiritual things with spiritual. But the natural man does not perceive the things of the Spirit of God." So the natural man, not perceiving the things of the Spirit of God, hears whatever he hears about the nature of God in such a way that he cannot think of anything but a body, however vast or immense, however bright and beautiful, yet a body. Therefore whatever wisdom says of the incorporeal and immutable substance is proverbs to him; not that he regards it as proverbs, but because he thinks in the way of those who are used to hearing proverbs and not understanding them. But when the spiritual man has begun to judge all things, while he himself is judged by no one, then, even if in this life he still sees as through a mirror and in part, yet he perceives, not by any bodily sense nor by any imaginative thought that grasps or forms likenesses of bodies of any kind, but by the most certain understanding of the mind, that God is not a body but spirit: the Son so telling plainly of the Father that he himself who tells is seen to be of the same substance. Then those who ask, ask in his name; because in the sound of his name they understand nothing other than the very reality called by this name, and they do not, through vanity or weakness of mind, imagine the Father in one place and the Son in another, standing before the Father and asking for us, each of them with a mass occupying its own space, and the Word speaking words for us to him whose Word he is, with an interval between the mouth of the speaker and the ears of the hearer; and other such things which the natural, who are also carnal, fabricate for themselves in their hearts. For whatever of this kind occurs to the spiritual from the habit of bodies when they think of God, they drive away from their inner eyes like troublesome flies, by denying and rejecting it; and they rest in the purity of that light by whose testimony and judgment they prove altogether false these very images of bodies rushing upon their lower sight. These can in some way think that our Lord Jesus Christ, insofar as he is man, intercedes for us with the Father, but, insofar as he is God, hears us together with the Father. This I think he signified where he says, "And I do not say to you that I will ask the Father for you." For only the spiritual eye of the mind rises to see how the Son does not ask the Father, but the Father and the Son together hear those who ask.

"For the Father himself loves you," he says, "because you have loved me." Does he love because we love, or rather do we love because he loves? Let the same evangelist answer from his Epistle: "We love," he says, "because he first loved us." So it came about that we love because we were loved. Plainly, to love God is the gift of God. He who loved when he was not loved gave us to love him. We were loved while we displeased, so that there might be in us that by which we would please. For we would not love the Son unless we loved the Father too. The Father loves us because we love the Son, since we have received from the Father and the Son the power to love both the Father and the Son: for the Spirit of both pours out love in our hearts, the Spirit through whom we love both the Father and the Son, and whom we love together with the Father and the Son. So God made our devout love, by which we worship God, and he saw that it was good; that is why he himself loved what he made. But he would not make in us something to love unless he loved us before he made it.

"And you have believed," he says, "that I came forth from God. I came forth from the Father and have come into the world; again I leave the world and go to the Father." We have fully believed. Nor should it seem incredible on this account that in coming to the world he came forth from the Father in such a way as not to desert the Father, and goes to the Father, leaving the world, in such a way as not to desert the world. For he came forth from the Father because he is of the Father; he came into the world because he showed the world his body, which he took from the Virgin. He left the world by bodily departure, he went to the Father by the ascension of the man, and he did not desert the world, which he governs by his presence.

What Christ's disciples were like when he spoke with them before his passion, saying great things to little ones, but as great things had to be said even to little ones, is shown by many signs throughout the Gospel: not yet having received the Holy Spirit as they received him after his resurrection, either by his breathing on them or from above, they thought of human things more than of divine. And from this too comes what they said in this reading. For the evangelist says: "His disciples said to him, See, now you are speaking plainly and are using no proverb. Now we know that you know all things and do not need anyone to question you; by this we believe that you came forth from God." The Lord himself had said a little before, "These things I have spoken to you in proverbs; the hour is coming when I will no longer speak to you in proverbs." How then do they say, "See, now you are speaking plainly and are using no proverb"? Had the hour already come in which he had promised that he would no longer speak in proverbs? That that hour had certainly not yet come is shown by the continuation of his words, which runs thus: "These things I have spoken to you in proverbs; the hour is coming when I will no longer speak to you in proverbs, but will tell you plainly about my Father. In that day you will ask in my name; and I do not say to you that I will ask the Father for you; for the Father himself loves you, because you have loved me and have believed that I came forth from God. I came forth from the Father and have come into the world; again I leave the world and go to the Father." By all these words he is still promising that hour in which he will no longer speak in proverbs but will tell them plainly about the Father; the hour in which, he says, they will ask in his name, and he will not ask the Father for them, because the Father himself loves them, since they have loved Christ and believed that he came forth from the Father and came into the world, and would again leave the world and go to the Father. Since, then, that hour in which he will speak without proverbs is still being promised, why do they say, "See, now you are speaking plainly and are using no proverb," unless because what he knows to be proverbs to those who do not understand, they understand so little that they do not even understand that they do not understand? For they were little ones, and did not yet judge spiritually the things they heard about matters belonging not to the body but to the spirit.

Finally, admonishing them about that age of theirs, still small and weak according to the inner man, "Jesus answered them: Do you now believe? Behold, the hour is coming, and has now come, when you will be scattered, each to his own, and will leave me alone. And I am not alone, because the Father is with me." A little before he had said, "I leave the world and go to the Father"; now he says, "The Father is with me." Who goes to one who is with him? But this is a word to one who understands, a proverb to one who does not understand; yet what is not yet understood by little ones is somehow sucked in; and even if it does not give them solid food, because they do not yet grasp it, at least it does not deny them the nourishment of milk. It was from this nourishment that they knew he knew all things and that there was no need for anyone to question him; why they said this may be asked. For it seems that they should rather have said, "You have no need to question anyone," not, "that anyone should question you." For they said, "We know that you know all things"; and certainly one who knows all things is more usually questioned by those who do not know, so that the questioners may hear what they want from the one who knows all things, rather than that he himself, who knows all things, should question others as though wishing to know something. What then does it mean that to him whom they knew to know all things, when it seems they should have said, "You have no need to question anyone," they thought they should rather say, "You have no need that anyone question you"? And what of the fact that we read of both, that the Lord both questioned and was questioned? But this is quickly solved: because the need was not his, but rather theirs whom he questioned or by whom he was questioned. For he did not question anyone in order to learn something from them, but rather to teach them. And those who questioned him, wishing to learn something from him, certainly needed this, so as to know something from him who knew all things. Surely, then, it was for this reason that there was no need for anyone to question him. For when we are questioned by those who want to know something from us, we learn from their very questions what they want to learn; so we need to be questioned by those we want to teach something, so that we may know the inquiries we must answer. But he did not need even this, who knew all things; nor did he need to learn through anyone's questioning what each wanted to know from him, because before he was questioned he knew the will of the one who was going to question him. But he allowed himself to be questioned so that he might show, either to those who were then present or to those who would hear these things spoken or read them written, what sort of people those were by whom he was questioned; and so that in this way we might know by what frauds he was not deceived, or by what approaches one made progress with him. To foresee the thoughts of men, and so not to need anyone to question him, was no great thing for God; but it was a great thing for the little ones who said to him, "By this we believe that you came forth from God." But much greater was the truth to the understanding of which he wanted them to stretch out and grow: when they had said, and said truly, "You came forth from God," he said, "The Father is with me," lest they think the Son came forth from the Father in such a way as to have withdrawn from him.

Then, concluding this great and long discourse, he says: "These things I have spoken to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation; but take courage, I have overcome the world." The beginning of the tribulation they were to have was that of which he spoke above, to show them that they were little ones, to whom, since they did not yet understand and took one thing for another, whatever great and divine things he had said were in a way proverbs, when he said, "Do you now believe? Behold, the hour is coming, and has now come, when you will be scattered, each to his own." See the beginning of tribulation, but not one that would continue in that way. For as to what he added, "and will leave me alone," he does not want them to be such in the tribulation that followed, which they would have in the world after his ascension, as to leave him; but rather that they should have peace in him, abiding in him. For when he was seized, they left not only his flesh with their flesh, but also faith with their mind. To this belongs his saying, "Do you now believe? Behold, the hour is coming when you will be scattered to your own and will leave me"; as if he said, Then you will be so troubled that you will abandon even what you now believe. For they came to such despair and, so to speak, death of their former faith as appeared in that Cleopas who, after his resurrection, not knowing that he was talking with him and telling him what had happened, said, "We had hoped that he was the one who would redeem Israel." See how they had left him, deserting even the faith with which they had believed in him before. But in the tribulation which they endured after his glorification, having received the Holy Spirit, they did not leave him; and although they fled from city to city, they did not flee from him; rather, so that, having tribulation in the world, they might keep peace in him, they did not flee from him but had him as their refuge. For when the Holy Spirit was given them, there was done in them what was now said to them: "Take courage, I have overcome the world." They took courage, and they overcame. In whom, if not in him? For he would not have overcome the world if the world overcame his members. Hence the Apostle says, "Thanks be to God, who gives us the victory," and at once added, "through our Lord Jesus Christ," who had said to his own, "Take courage, I have overcome the world."