Tractates on the Gospel of John 13.2–13.16

Now, then, the order of the reading compels us to return to the same John. He is the one prophesied by Isaiah: “The voice of one crying in the desert, ‘Prepare the way for the Lord, make his paths straight.’” Such testimony he gave to his Lord and (since the Lord deigned it) his friend; and his Lord and friend himself also bore testimony to John. For he said of John, “Among those born of women there has not arisen a greater than John the Baptist.” But because he placed himself above him, in that in which he was more than John, he was God. “But he who is less,” he says, “in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.” Less in birth, greater in power, greater in divinity, majesty, glory: as “in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” But in the earlier readings John had borne testimony to the Lord in such a way as to call him Son of God, yet not to call him God, though without denying it: he had been silent about his being God, he had not denied that he was God. But he was not altogether silent about his being God: for perhaps we find this in today's reading. He had called him Son of God; but men too have been called sons of God. He had said that he was of such excellence that he himself was not worthy to loose the strap of his sandal. Now this greatness gives much to understand: that he, than whom no greater had arisen among those born of women, was not worthy to loose the strap of his sandal. For he was more than all men and angels. For we find that an angel forbade a man to fall at his feet. For when an angel was showing certain things in the Apocalypse to John, who wrote this Gospel, John, terrified by the greatness of the vision, fell at the angel's feet. And the angel said, “Get up, see that you do not do this; worship God; for I am your fellow servant and of your brothers.” So the angel forbade a man to fall at his feet. Is it not plain that he is above all angels, of whom such a man, than whom no greater has arisen among those born of women, says that he is unworthy to loose the strap of his sandal?

Yet let John say something more plainly: that our Lord Jesus Christ is God. Let us find it in the present reading, for perhaps we have sung of him too: “God has reigned over all the earth.” Those who think that he reigns in Africa alone are deaf to this. For it was said of Christ when it was said, “God has reigned over all the earth.” For who else is our king, if not our Lord Jesus Christ? He is our king. And what did you hear in that same psalm, in the verse just now sung? “Sing praises to our God, sing praises; sing praises to our king, sing praises.” Him whom he called God he called our king: “Sing praises to our God, sing praises; sing praises to our king, sing praises with understanding.” Do not take the one to whom you sing to be in one part only: “For God is the king of all the earth.” And how is he king of all the earth who was seen in one part of the world, in Jerusalem, in Judea, walking among men, born, nursing, growing, eating, drinking, waking, sleeping, sitting tired at the well, arrested, scourged, smeared with spittle, crowned with thorns, hung on wood, struck with a lance, dead, buried? How then is he king of all the earth? What was seen in a place was flesh: flesh appeared to fleshly eyes; in mortal flesh immortal majesty lay hidden. And with what eyes can immortal majesty be beheld, penetrating the fabric of the flesh? There is another eye, there is an inner eye. For Tobit too was not without eyes when, blind in his bodily eyes, he gave his son precepts for life. The son held his father's hand so that he might walk on his feet; the father gave his son counsel so that he might keep the way of righteousness. These eyes I see, and those eyes I understand. And better are the eyes of the one who gives counsel for life than the eyes of the one who holds his hand. Such eyes Jesus too was looking for when he said to Philip, “Have I been with you so long, and you have not known me?” Such eyes he was looking for when he said, “Philip, he who sees me sees the Father also.” These eyes are in the understanding, these eyes are in the mind. That is why, when the psalm had said, “For God is the king of all the earth,” it added at once, “Sing praises with understanding.” For when I say, “Sing praises to our God, sing praises,” I say that God is our king. But you saw our king among men as a man; you saw him suffer, crucified, dead: something lay hidden in that flesh which you could see with fleshly eyes. What lay hidden there? “Sing praises with understanding”: do not seek with the eyes what is beheld by the mind. Sing praises with the tongue, because the flesh is among you; but because “the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us,” render sound to the flesh, render to God the gaze of the mind. Sing praises with understanding, and you see that “the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.”

Let John too give his testimony: “After these things Jesus and his disciples came into the land of Judea, and he stayed there with them and baptized.” The baptized one was baptizing. He did not baptize with the baptism with which he was baptized. The Lord, baptized by a servant, gives baptism, showing the way of humility and leading to the Lord's baptism, that is, his own baptism, by giving an example of humility, in that he himself did not reject the servant's baptism. And in the servant's baptism the way was prepared for the Lord; and the Lord, baptized, made himself the way for those who come. Let us hear him: “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” If you seek the truth, keep to the way: for the way is the very same as the truth. It is where you are going, it is the way by which you go. You do not go by one thing to another; you do not come to Christ by something else: you come to Christ by Christ. How by Christ to Christ? By Christ the man to Christ the God; by the Word made flesh to the Word that in the beginning was God with God; from what man ate to what the angels eat daily. For so it is written: “He gave them the bread of heaven; man ate the bread of angels.” What is the bread of angels? “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” How did man eat the bread of angels? “And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.”

But since we have said that the angels eat, brothers, do not think it is done with bites. For if you understand it so, God whom the angels eat is, as it were, torn apart. Who tears righteousness apart? But again someone says to me: And who is it that eats righteousness? How then is it said, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied”? The food that you eat in the flesh fails so that you may be refreshed; it is consumed so that it may restore you. Eat righteousness, and you are refreshed, and it remains whole. Just as these eyes of ours are refreshed by seeing this bodily light; and it is a bodily thing that is seen by bodily eyes. For many, when they have been too long in darkness, have their sight weakened, as if by a fast from light. The eyes, cheated of their food (for they feed on light), are wearied and weakened by the fast, so that they cannot see the very light by which they are refreshed; and if it is absent too long, they are extinguished, and the very power of sight, as it were, dies in them. What then? Because so many eyes feed daily on this light, does it become less? They are refreshed, and it remains whole. If God could provide this from bodily light for bodily eyes, does he not provide for pure hearts that tireless light, remaining whole, failing in no part? What light? “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God.” Let us see whether it is light. “For with you is the fountain of life, and in your light we shall see light.” On earth a fountain is one thing, light another. When thirsty you look for a fountain, and to reach the fountain you look for light; and if it is not day, you light a lamp to reach the fountain. That fountain is itself the light: to the thirsty it is a fountain, to the blind it is light. Let the eyes be opened to see the light; let the throat of the heart be opened to drink of the fountain. What you drink, this you see, this you hear. God becomes everything to you, because of all the things you love he is the whole to you. If you look at visible things: God is not bread, God is not water, God is not this light, God is not a garment, God is not a house. For all these things are visible, and they are each one single thing: what bread is, water is not; what a garment is, a house is not; and what these things are, God is not, for they are visible. God is everything to you: if you are hungry, he is bread to you; if you are thirsty, he is water to you; if you are in darkness, he is light to you, for he remains incorruptible; if you are naked, he is to you the garment of immortality, when this corruptible shall put on incorruption, and this mortal shall put on immortality. All things can be said of God, and nothing is said worthily of God. Nothing is wider than this poverty of speech. You look for a fitting name, you do not find it; you try to speak in any way at all, you find all things. What likeness is there between a lamb and a lion? Both are said of Christ: “Behold the Lamb of God.” How a lion? “The lion of the tribe of Judah has conquered.”

Let us hear John: “Jesus was baptizing.” We have said that Jesus was baptizing. How Jesus? How the Lord? How the Son of God? How the Word? But “the Word was made flesh.” “And John too was baptizing in Aenon near Salim.” Aenon is a kind of lake. How is it understood that it was a lake? “Because there was much water there, and people were coming and being baptized. For John had not yet been put in prison.” If you remember (see, I say it again), I said why John baptized: because it was fitting that the Lord should be baptized. And why was it fitting that the Lord should be baptized? Because many were going to despise baptism, because they would seem to themselves already endowed with greater grace than they saw in other believers. For example, a catechumen already living in continence might despise a married man and say that he is better than that baptized believer. That catechumen might say in his heart, “What need have I to receive baptism, to have what that man has, when I am already better than he?” So that this proud neck might not throw down headlong some who were greatly puffed up by the merits of their righteousness, the Lord willed to be baptized by a servant, as though saying to his leading sons: “Why do you exalt yourselves? Why do you lift yourselves up because one of you has prudence, another learning, another chastity, another the fortitude of patience? Can you have as much as I who gave it? And yet I was baptized by a servant; you disdain to be baptized by the Lord.” This is “that all righteousness may be fulfilled.”

But someone will say: Then it was enough for John to baptize the Lord; what need was there for others to be baptized by John? We have said this too: that if the Lord alone were baptized by John, people would not lack the thought that John had a better baptism than the Lord. For they would say: So great was the baptism John had that Christ alone was worthy to be baptized with it. So, to show that the baptism the Lord was to give was better, and that the one might be understood as the servant's and the other as the Lord's, the Lord was baptized to give an example of humility; but he was not the only one baptized by John, lest John's baptism should seem better than the Lord's. And for this our Lord Jesus Christ showed the way, as you have heard, brothers, so that no one, claiming to have an abundance of some grace, should disdain to be baptized with the Lord's baptism. For however much a catechumen advances, he still carries the load of his iniquity; it is not forgiven him until he comes to baptism. Just as the people of Israel were not rid of the people of the Egyptians until they had come to the Red Sea, so no one is rid of the weight of sins until he has come to the font of baptism.

“So a discussion arose between John's disciples and the Jews about purification.” John was baptizing, Christ was baptizing: John's disciples were disturbed. People were flocking to Christ, and coming to John; for those who came to John he sent to Jesus to be baptized, but those who were baptized by Christ were not sent to John. John's disciples were troubled and began to argue the question with the Jews, as usually happens. You may understand that the Jews said Christ was greater and that people ought to flock to his baptism. They, not yet understanding, defended John's baptism. They came to John himself, to settle the question. Let your Charity understand. Here too the very usefulness of humility is recognized, and it is shown whether, in that question, when men were in error, John wished to glory in himself. For he might have said: “You speak the truth, you contend rightly; my baptism is better. For that you may know my baptism is better, I baptized Christ himself.” John could have said this, having baptized Christ. How far, if he had wished to puff himself up, he had grounds to do so! But he knew better before whom to humble himself: the one whom he knew he preceded in birth, to him he willed to yield by confessing him; he understood that his salvation was in Christ. He had already said above, “We have all received of his fullness”; and this is to confess him God. For how do all men receive of his fullness, unless he is God? For if he were man in such a way as not to be God, he too would receive of God's fullness, and so would not be God. But if all men receive of his fullness, he is the fountain, they are those who drink. Those who drink from a fountain can both thirst and drink; a fountain never thirsts, a fountain has no need of itself. Men need the fountain: with dry bowels, with dry throats, they run to the fountain to be refreshed; the fountain flows to refresh. So is the Lord Jesus.

Let us see, then, what John answered. “They came to John and said to him, ‘Rabbi, he who was with you beyond the Jordan, to whom you bore witness, see, he is baptizing, and all are coming to him’”: that is, what do you say? Should they not be stopped, so that they come to you instead? “He answered and said, ‘A man cannot receive anything unless it is given him from heaven.’” Of whom do you think John said this? Of himself. As a man, he says, I have received from heaven. Let your Charity attend. “A man cannot receive anything unless it is given him from heaven. You yourselves bear me witness that I said, ‘I am not the Christ.’” As if saying: Why do you deceive yourselves? How did you yourselves put this question to me? What did you say to me? “Rabbi, he who was with you beyond the Jordan, to whom you bore witness.” So you know what kind of witness I bore to him: am I now to say that he is not what I said he is? Because I have received something from heaven so as to be something, do you want me to be empty, so as to speak against the truth? “A man cannot receive anything unless it is given him from heaven. You yourselves bear me witness that I said, ‘I am not the Christ.’” “You are not the Christ: but what if you are greater than he, because you baptized him?” “I was sent: I am the herald, he is the judge.”

And hear a testimony much more forceful, much more explicit. See what is going on among us; see what we ought to love; see that to love any man in place of Christ is adultery. Why do I say this? Let us attend to John's voice. People could have been mistaken about him; he could have been thought to be the one he was not. He rejects false honor from himself, so as to hold to the solid truth. See what he says Christ is, and what he says he is: “He who has the bride is the bridegroom.” Be chaste, love the bridegroom. But what are you, who tell us, “He who has the bride is the bridegroom”? “But the friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly because of the bridegroom's voice.” The Lord our God will help me according to the emotion of my heart; for it is full of much groaning to say what grieves me. But I beseech you by Christ himself to think what I shall not be able to say; for I know that my grief cannot be expressed worthily enough. For I see many adulterers who want to possess the bride bought at so great a price, loved when ugly so that she might become beautiful, by him as her purchaser, him as her deliverer, him as her adorner; and by their words they act so as to be loved in place of the bridegroom. Of him it was said, “This is he who baptizes.” Who comes out here and says, “I baptize”? Who comes out here and says, “What I give, that is holy”? Who comes forward here and says, “It is good for you to be born of me”? Let us hear the friend of the bridegroom, not the adulterers against the bridegroom; let us hear one who is jealous, but not for himself.

Brothers, go back in your hearts to your own homes. I speak of fleshly things, I speak of earthly things; I speak in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh. Many of you have wives, many want to have them, many, even if you do not want them now, have had them; many of you who do not want to have wives at all were born of your fathers' wives. There is no heart that this feeling does not touch; no one in human affairs is so remote from the human race as not to feel what I am saying. Suppose a man setting out abroad has entrusted his bride to his friend: “See to it, I beg you, since you are dear to me, that no one is loved in my place while I am away.” What sort of man, then, is he who, guarding his friend's bride or wife, does indeed take care that no other is loved, but wants himself to be loved in place of his friend and wants to use her who was entrusted to him? How detestable he appears to the whole human race! Let him see her looking out of the window rather too wantonly, or joking with someone; he stops her, as one who is jealous. I see one who is jealous, but let me see for whom: for his absent friend or for himself who is present? Suppose our Lord Jesus Christ has done this. He entrusted his bride to his friend; he has gone abroad to receive a kingdom, as he himself says in the Gospel; and yet he is present in his majesty. A friend who has gone across the sea may be deceived; and if he is deceived, woe to him who deceives! Why do they try to deceive God, God who sees the hearts of all and searches the secrets of all? Some heretic appears and says, “I give, I sanctify, I justify; I do not want you to go to that sect.” He is jealous indeed, but see for whom. “Do not go to idols”: he is rightly jealous. “Not to sorcerers”: he is rightly jealous. Let us see for whom he is jealous: “What I give is holy because I give it; he whom I baptize is baptized, he whom I do not baptize is not baptized.” Hear the friend of the bridegroom; learn to be jealous for your friend. Hear his voice: “This is he who baptizes.” Why do you want to claim for yourself what is not yours? Is he who left his bride here so far away? Do you not know that he who rose from the dead sits at the right hand of the Father? If the Jews despised him hanging on the wood, do you despise him sitting in heaven? Let your Charity know that I suffer great grief over this matter; but, as I said, I leave the rest to your thoughts. For I do not say it if I speak all day; if I lament all day, I am not equal to it. I do not say if I had, as the prophet says, a fountain of tears; but if I were turned into tears and became tears, into tongues and became tongues, it would be too little.

Let us return; let us see what he says: “He who has the bride is the bridegroom”; she is not my bride. And do you not rejoice at the wedding? Yes, I rejoice, he says: “But the friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly because of the bridegroom's voice.” I do not rejoice, he says, because of my own voice, but I rejoice because of the bridegroom's voice. My part is in hearing, his in speaking; for I am one to be enlightened, he is the light; I am in the ear, he is the Word. So the friend of the bridegroom stands and hears him. Why does he stand? Because he does not fall. Why does he not fall? Because he is humble. See him standing on solid ground: “I am not worthy to loose the strap of his sandal.” You humble yourself well; rightly you do not fall, rightly you stand, rightly you hear him, and rejoice greatly because of the bridegroom's voice. So too the apostle, a friend of the bridegroom, is jealous himself, not for himself but for the bridegroom. Hear the voice of one who is jealous: “I am jealous for you,” he says, “with the jealousy of God”; not my own, not for myself, but with God's jealousy. Why? How? For whom are you jealous, or for whose sake are you jealous? “For I betrothed you to one husband, to present you as a chaste virgin to Christ.” What then do you fear? Why are you jealous? “I fear,” he says, “lest, as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, so your minds may be corrupted from the chastity that is in Christ.” The whole Church has been called a virgin. You see that the members of the Church are different, that they are strong in different gifts and rejoice in them: some men married, some women married; some men widowed who seek no more wives, some women widowed who seek no more husbands; some men preserving their integrity from early youth, some women who have vowed their virginity to God. The gifts are different, but all these are one virgin. Where is this virginity? For it is not in the body. Holy integrity even of the body belongs in the Church to few women, and, if virginity can be spoken of in men, to few men, and it is the more honorable member; but the other members keep virginity not in the body, but all of them keep it in the mind. What is virginity of mind? Whole faith, firm hope, sincere love. This virginity he who was jealous for the bridegroom feared might be corrupted by the serpent. For as a member of the body is violated in a certain place, so the seduction of the tongue violates the virginity of the heart. Let her who does not want to keep virginity of body to no purpose not be corrupted in mind.

What then shall I say, brothers? Heretics too have virgins, and the virgins of the heretics are many. Let us see whether they love the bridegroom, so that this virginity may be kept. For whom is it kept? “For Christ,” they say. Let us see whether it is for Christ and not for Donatus; let us see for whom this virginity is preserved: you will be able to test it quickly. See, I show you the bridegroom, for he shows himself: John bears him witness, “This is he who baptizes.” O virgin, if you keep your virginity for this bridegroom, why do you run to him who says, “I baptize,” when the friend of your bridegroom says, “This is he who baptizes”? Then, your bridegroom holds the whole world: why are you corrupted in a part? Who is the bridegroom? “For God is the king of all the earth.” This bridegroom of yours holds the whole, because he bought the whole. See at what price he bought, so that you may understand what he bought. What price did he give? He gave his blood. Where did he give it, where did he shed his blood? In the Passion. Do you not sing to your bridegroom, or pretend to sing, when the whole world was bought: “They pierced my hands and feet, they counted all my bones; and they looked and stared at me; they divided my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots”? You are a bride: recognize your bridegroom's garment. Over what garment was the lot cast? Ask the Gospel; see to whom you are betrothed, see from whom you receive your pledge. Ask the Gospel; see what it tells you in the Lord's Passion. There was a tunic there; let us see what kind: woven from the top. What does a tunic woven from the top signify, if not love? What does a tunic woven from the top signify, if not unity? Look at this tunic, which even Christ's persecutors did not divide. For it says, “They said to one another, ‘Let us not divide it, but cast lots for it.’” See where your psalm comes from. The persecutors did not cut up the garment: Christians divide the Church.

But what shall I say, brothers? Let us see openly what he bought. For he bought where he gave the price. For how much did he give it? If he gave it for Africa, let us be Donatists, and not be called Donatists but Christians, since Christ bought Africa alone; although even here there are not only Donatists. But he did not keep silent in his bargain about what he bought. He drew up the deed: thanks be to God, he has not deceived us. That bride needs to hear it and to understand there to whom she has vowed her virginity. There, in that very psalm where it is said, “They pierced my hands and feet, they counted all my bones,” where the Lord's Passion is most openly declared (a psalm that is read every year in the last week, with all the people attentive, as Christ's Passion approaches; and this psalm is read both among us and among them), attend, brothers, to what he bought there; let the deeds of sale be read out; hear what he bought there: “All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord; and all the families of the nations shall worship before him; for the kingdom is his, and he shall rule over the nations.” See what he bought. See, your bridegroom is God, the king of all the earth. Why then do you want so rich a man reduced to rags? Recognize it: he bought the whole, and you say, “You have a part here.” O, if you pleased the bridegroom! O, if you did not speak as one corrupted, and, what is worse, corrupted in heart, not in body! You love a man in place of Christ; you love one who says, “I baptize.” You do not hear the friend of the bridegroom saying, “This is he who baptizes”; you do not hear him saying, “He who has the bride is the bridegroom.” “I do not have the bride,” he said; “but what am I? But the friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly because of the bridegroom's voice.”

Clearly, then, my brothers, it profits these people nothing to preserve virginity, to practise continence, to give alms; all those things that are praised in the Church profit them nothing, because they tear apart unity, that is, the tunic of love. What do they do? Many among them are eloquent, great tongues, rivers of tongues. Do they speak like angels? Let them hear the friend of the bridegroom, jealous for the bridegroom, not for himself: “If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal.”

But what do they say? “We have baptism.” You have it, but not as your own. It is one thing to have, another to be lord of it. You have baptism, because you received it so as to be baptized; you received it as one enlightened, if indeed you have not darkened yourself; and when you give it, you give it as a minister, not as its owner; you cry out as a herald, not as a judge. The judge speaks through the herald, and yet it is not written in the record, “The herald said,” but, “The judge said.” So see whether what you give is yours by authority. But if you received it, confess with the friend of the bridegroom: “A man cannot receive anything unless it is given him from heaven.” Confess with the friend of the bridegroom: “He who has the bride is the bridegroom; but the friend of the bridegroom stands and hears him.” But O, if you would stand and hear him, and not fall so as to hear yourself! For by hearing him you would stand and hear: but you speak, and puff up your head. “I,” says the Church, “if I am the bride, if I have received the pledge, if I have been redeemed by the price of his blood, hear the voice of the bridegroom; and I hear the voice of the bridegroom's friend only if he gives glory to my bridegroom, not to himself.” Let the friend say, “He who has the bride is the bridegroom; but the friend of the bridegroom stands and hears him, and rejoices greatly because of the bridegroom's voice.” See, you have the sacraments, and I grant it. You have the form, but you are a branch cut off from the vine. You show the form; I look for the root. Fruit does not come from the form except where there is a root; and where is the root, if not in love? And hear about the form of the branches; let Paul speak: “If I know,” he says, “all mysteries, and have all prophecy and all faith” (and how much faith?) “so as to move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.”