Tractates on the Gospel of John 17.1–17.16

A miracle done by God ought not to be a wonder: it would be a wonder if a man had done it. We ought to rejoice more than wonder that our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ became man, rather than that God did divine things among men. For it is more for our salvation that he became man for the sake of men than that he did works among men; and it is more that he healed the faults of souls than that he healed the illnesses of bodies that were going to die. But since the soul itself did not know him by whom it was to be healed, and had eyes in the flesh with which to see bodily deeds, but did not yet have sound eyes in the heart with which to recognize the hidden God, he did what it could see, so that it might be healed in that with which it could not see. He entered a place where a great multitude of sick people lay, blind, lame, withered; and though he was the physician of both souls and bodies, and had come to heal all the souls of those who would believe, he chose one of those sick to heal, so as to signify unity. If we consider the doer with a mediocre heart and, as it were, with human capacity and intelligence, as regards power he accomplished nothing great, and as regards kindness he did little. So many were lying there, and one was cured, though he could have raised them all with one word. What then is to be understood, except that that power and that goodness were concerned more with what souls might understand from his deeds for eternal salvation than with what bodies might gain for temporal health? For the true health of bodies, which is awaited from the Lord, will be at the end, in the resurrection of the dead. Then what will live will not die; then what will be healed will not fall sick; then what will be satisfied will not hunger or thirst; then what will be renewed will not grow old. But now, in those deeds of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, both the opened eyes of the blind were closed by death, and the braced limbs of the paralyzed were loosened by death, and whatever was healed for a time in mortal limbs failed in the end; but the soul that believed made its passage to eternal life. So to the soul that would believe, whose sins he had come to forgive, to heal whose weaknesses he had humbled himself, he gave a great sign by healing this sick man. The deep mystery of this matter and of this sign I will speak of as I can, as far as the Lord deigns to grant, with you attentive and helping my weakness by praying. And whatever I cannot do, he himself will supply in you, with whose help I do what I can.

I remember that we have often discussed this pool, which was surrounded by five porticoes in which a great multitude of sick people lay; and I am going to speak of something that many will recognize with me rather than learn. But it is not out of place to repeat even things known, so that those who did not know may be instructed, and those who knew may be confirmed. So they are to be touched on briefly as things known, not pressed home at leisure. That pool and that water seem to me to have signified the people of the Jews. For that peoples are signified by the name of waters, the Apocalypse of John plainly shows us: where, when many waters were shown him and he asked what they were, he received the answer that they were peoples. So that water, that is, that people, was enclosed by the five books of Moses as by five porticoes. But those books brought out the sick; they did not heal them. For the law convicted sinners; it did not absolve them. Therefore the letter without grace made people guilty, whom grace set free when they confessed. For this is what the apostle says: “For if a law had been given that could give life, righteousness would indeed be from the law.” Why then was the law given? He goes on and says: “But Scripture has shut up all things under sin, so that the promise from faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe.” What is plainer? Have not these words explained to us both the five porticoes and the multitude of the sick? The five porticoes are the law. Why did the five porticoes not heal the sick? Because “if a law had been given that could give life, righteousness would indeed be from the law.” Why then did they hold those whom they did not heal? Because “Scripture has shut up all things under sin, so that the promise from faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe.”

What, then, happened, that those who could not be healed in the porticoes were healed in that water when it was stirred? For suddenly the water was seen stirred, and the one by whom it was stirred was not seen. You may believe that this was usually done by angelic power, yet not without signifying some mystery. After the water was stirred, the one who could would throw himself in, and he alone was healed; whoever threw himself in after him did so in vain. What then does this mean, except that the one Christ came to the people of the Jews, and by doing great things and teaching useful things, he stirred up sinners, stirred the water by his presence, and roused it toward his Passion? But he stirred it while hidden. “For if they had known, they would never have crucified the Lord of glory.” To go down into the stirred water, then, is to believe humbly in the Lord's Passion. There one was healed, signifying unity; whoever came afterward was not healed, because whoever is outside unity cannot be healed.

Let us see, then, what he wished to signify in that one man, whom, keeping the mystery of unity, as I said before, he deigned to heal alone out of so many sick. He found in his years a certain number of sickness: “He had been thirty-eight years in his infirmity.” How this number belongs to sickness rather than to health must be explained a little more carefully. I want you attentive; the Lord will help, so that I may speak fittingly and you may hear sufficiently. The number forty is commended to us as hallowed in a certain perfection. I think it is known to your Charity: the divine Scriptures testify to it very often. Fasting is consecrated by this number, as you well know. For Moses fasted forty days, and Elijah as many, and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ himself fulfilled this number of fasting. By Moses the law is signified, by Elijah the prophets, by the Lord the Gospel. That is why those three appeared on that mountain where he showed himself to the disciples in the brightness of his face and garments. For he appeared in the middle between Moses and Elijah, as if the Gospel had witness from the law and the prophets. Whether, then, in the law or in the prophets or in the Gospel, the number forty is commended to us in fasting. But the great and general fasting is to abstain from iniquities and from the unlawful pleasures of the world, which is the perfect fast: “that, denying ungodliness and worldly desires, we may live soberly, justly, and godly in this world.” What reward does the apostle add to this fast? He goes on and says: “Looking for that blessed hope and the manifestation of the glory of the blessed God and our Savior Jesus Christ.” In this world, then, we keep a kind of Lent of abstinence when we live well, when we abstain from iniquities and unlawful pleasures. But because this abstinence will not be without reward, we look for that blessed hope and the revelation of the glory of the great God and our Savior Jesus Christ. In that hope, when the hope has become reality, we shall receive our reward, the denarius. For this is the reward paid to the workers laboring in the vineyard according to the Gospel, which I believe you remember; for not everything has to be recalled, as to the ignorant and inexperienced. So the denarius, which received its name from the number ten, is paid, and added to forty it makes fifty. Hence we keep Lent before Easter with labor, but with gladness, as having received our wages, the fifty days after Easter. For to this, as it were, salutary labor of good work, which belongs to the number forty, is added the denarius of rest and happiness, so that it makes fifty.

The Lord Jesus himself signified this much more openly when, after the resurrection, he spent forty days on earth with his disciples; and when he had ascended into heaven on the fortieth day, after ten days had passed he sent the reward of the Holy Spirit. These things were signified, and the realities themselves were anticipated by certain significations. We are fed on significations, so that by persevering we may reach the realities themselves. For we are workers, and we are still laboring in the vineyard: when the day is finished, when the work is finished, the reward will be paid. But what worker perseveres to receive the reward unless he is fed while he labors? For you too will not give your worker only his wages; will you not also bring him something with which to restore his strength in his labor? You certainly feed the one to whom you are going to give wages. So too the Lord feeds us, as we labor, with these significations of the Scriptures. For if this joy of understanding the mysteries were taken from us, we would fail in our labor, and there would be no one to reach the reward.

How, then, is work perfected by the number forty? Perhaps because the law was given in ten commandments, and the law was to be preached throughout the whole world; and the whole world is described by four parts, East and West, South and North; hence ten multiplied by four comes to forty. Or because the law is fulfilled through the Gospel, which has four books; for it is said in the Gospel, “I have not come to abolish the law, but to fulfill it.” Whether, then, for that reason or this, or for some other more probable one which is hidden from us but not hidden from the more learned, it is certain nevertheless that by the number forty a certain perfection in good works is signified; and good works are chiefly exercised in a certain abstinence from the unlawful desires of the world, that is, in the general fast. Hear the apostle too saying, “Love is the fulfillment of the law.” Love from where? Through the grace of God, through the Holy Spirit. For we would not have it from ourselves, as though we made it for ourselves. It is the gift of God, and a great gift: “For the love of God,” he says, “has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” So love fulfills the law, and it is most truly said, “Love is the fulfillment of the law.” Let us look for this love, how it is commended by the Lord. Remember what I proposed: I want to explain the number of thirty-eight years in that sick man, why that thirty-eighth number belongs to sickness rather than to health. So, as I was saying, love fulfills the law. To the fulfillment of the law in all works belongs the number forty; but in love two commandments are commended to us. Look, I beg you, and fix in memory what I say; do not be despisers of the word, lest your soul become a path where the grains thrown do not sprout: “And the birds of the air,” he says, “will come and gather them up.” Take it in, and store it in your hearts. The commandments of love commended by the Lord are two: “You shall love the Lord your God with your whole heart, and with your whole soul, and with your whole mind”; and, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments the whole law and the prophets depend.” Rightly that widow too put all her means, two small coins, into the gifts of God; rightly too the innkeeper received two coins for that man wounded by robbers, so that he might be healed; rightly Jesus spent two days with the Samaritans, to strengthen them in love. So when something good is signified by this number two, the twofold love is chiefly commended. If, then, the number forty holds the perfection of the law, and the law is not fulfilled except in the twofold commandment of love, why do you wonder that he was sick who lacked two of forty?

Let us see, then, by what mystery this sick man is cured by the Lord. For the Lord himself came, the teacher of love, full of love, “cutting short,” as was foretold of him, “the word upon the earth”; and he showed that the law and the prophets depend on the two commandments of love. On these Moses depended with his forty, on these Elijah with his; this number the Lord brought in his testimony. This sick man is cured by the Lord in person; but what does he first say to him? “Do you want to be made well?” He answered that he had no man to put him into the pool. Truly he needed a man for his healing, but that man who is also God. “For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.” So the man who was needed came: why should healing be delayed? “Get up,” he says, “take up your bed, and walk.” He said three things: “Get up, take up your bed, and walk.” But “Get up” was not a command to work, but the working of healing. To the healed man he gave two commands: “Take up your bed, and walk.” I ask you, why would “Walk” not have been enough? Or at least, why would “Get up” not have been enough? For when he had got up healed, he would not have remained in that place. Would he not have got up in order to go away? So it strikes me too that he who found him lying there two short gave two commands: as though, by commanding two things, he filled up what was lacking.

How, then, shall we find in these two commands of the Lord those two commandments of love signified? “Take up your bed,” he says, “and walk.” What those two commandments are, brothers, recall with me. For they ought to be very well known, and not only come to mind when we mention them, but never be erased from your hearts. Always think, altogether always, that God and neighbor are to be loved: God with your whole heart, your whole soul, and your whole mind; and your neighbor as yourself. These things must always be thought on, meditated on, held fast, done, fulfilled. Love of God comes first in the order of commanding; but love of neighbor comes first in the order of doing. For he who commanded you this love in two commandments would not commend to you first your neighbor and afterward God, but first God, afterward your neighbor. But you, because you do not yet see God, by loving your neighbor earn the sight of him; by loving your neighbor you cleanse your eye to see God, as John plainly says: “If you do not love the brother whom you see, how can you love God whom you do not see?” See, it is said to you, “Love God.” If you say to me, “Show me whom I am to love,” what shall I answer but what John himself says: “No one has ever seen God”? And lest you think yourself altogether a stranger to seeing God, he says: “God is love; and he who abides in love abides in God.” So love your neighbor, and look within yourself at that from which you love your neighbor: there you will see God, as you can. So begin to love your neighbor. “Break your bread for the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; if you see the naked, clothe him, and do not despise those of your own flesh.” And by doing these things, what will you attain? “Then your light will break forth like the morning.” Your light is your God: morning for you, because he will come to you after the night of this world; for he neither rises nor sets, because he always remains. He will be morning to you as you return, who had made himself a setting for you as you perished. So by “Take up your bed” he seems to me to have said, “Love your neighbor.”

But it is still shut and needs explanation, I think, why love of neighbor is commended in the taking up of the bed; unless perhaps this offends us, that the neighbor is commended by a bed, a dull and senseless thing. Let the neighbor not be angry if he is commended to us by a thing that is without soul and without sense. Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ himself was called the cornerstone, so as to build up the two in himself. He was also called the rock from which water flowed: “And the rock was Christ.” What wonder, then, if Christ is a rock and the neighbor is wood? Yet not just any wood: just as it was not just any rock, but the one from which water had flowed for the thirsty; nor just any stone, but the cornerstone, which joined in itself two walls coming from opposite sides. So do not take the neighbor to be just any wood, but a bed. What then is there in a bed, I ask you? What, except that that sick man was carried on a bed? But the healed man carries the bed. What was said by the apostle? “Bear one another's burdens, and so you will fulfill the law of Christ.” So the law of Christ is love, and love is not fulfilled unless we bear one another's burdens. “Bearing with one another in love,” he says, “eager to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” When you were sick, your neighbor carried you; you have been made well, carry your neighbor: “Bear one another's burdens, and so you will fulfill the law of Christ.” So you will fill up, O man, what was lacking to you. So “take up your bed.” But when you have taken it up, do not stay; “walk.” By loving your neighbor and having care for your neighbor, you are making your journey. Where are you journeying, if not to the Lord God, to him whom we ought to love with our whole heart, our whole soul, our whole mind? For we have not yet reached the Lord, but we have our neighbor with us. So carry him with whom you walk, so that you may reach him with whom you long to remain. So “take up your bed, and walk.”

He did this, and the Jews were scandalized. For they saw a man on the Sabbath day carrying his bed; and they did not bring a charge against the Lord for having made him well on the Sabbath, so that he could have answered them that if an animal of any of them had fallen into a well, he would certainly pull it out on the Sabbath day and save his animal. So they no longer objected that a man had been made well on the Sabbath day, but that he was carrying his bed. If healing was not to be delayed, did a work have to be commanded as well? “It is not lawful for you,” they say, “to do what you are doing, to carry your bed.” And he set the author of his healing against his accusers: “He who made me well,” he says, “himself said to me, ‘Take up your bed and walk.’” Should I not accept a command from him from whom I had received healing? And they said: “Who is the man who said to you, ‘Take up your bed and walk’?”

“But the man who had been made well did not know who it was” from whom he had heard this. “For Jesus,” having done and commanded this, “had withdrawn from him in the crowd.” See how this too is fulfilled. We carry our neighbor and walk toward God; but we do not yet see him toward whom we walk: so that man too did not yet know Jesus. This mystery is commended to us, because we believe in him whom we do not yet see; and so that he may not be seen, he withdraws into the crowd. It is difficult to see Christ in a crowd: a certain solitude is necessary for our mind; God is seen by a certain solitude of attention. A crowd has noise; this vision wants secrecy. Take up your bed, you who were carried, carry your neighbor; and walk, so that you may arrive. Do not look for Jesus in the crowd; he is not as one of the crowd: he has gone ahead of all the crowd. That great fish has first come up from the sea, and sits in heaven interceding for us: as the great high priest, he alone has entered within the veil; the crowd stands outside. Walk, you who carry your neighbor, if you have learned to carry, you who used to be carried. In short, now you do not yet know Jesus, you do not yet see Jesus: what follows afterward? Since he did not stop taking up his bed and walking, “afterward Jesus saw him in the temple.” He did not see him in the crowd; he saw him in the temple. The Lord Jesus, indeed, saw him both in the crowd and in the temple; but the sick man does not recognize Jesus in the crowd; he recognizes him in the temple. So he came to the Lord: he saw him in the temple, he saw him in a consecrated place, in a holy place. And what does he hear from him? “See, you have been made well; sin no more, lest something worse happen to you.”

Then, after he saw Jesus and recognized Jesus as the author of his healing, he was not slow in proclaiming the one he had seen: “He went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well.” He was proclaiming, and they were raving; he was preaching his salvation, they were not seeking their own.

“The Jews persecuted the Lord Jesus because he was doing these things on the Sabbath.” Let us hear, then, what the Lord now answered the Jews. About men made well on the Sabbath, I have said what he used to answer: that they did not neglect their animals on the Sabbath, whether to free them or to feed them. What did he answer about the carrying of the bed? A plain bodily work had been done before the eyes of the Jews: not the healing of a body, but the work of a body, which did not seem as necessary as healing. So let the Lord say openly that the sacrament of the Sabbath, and the sign of keeping one day, was given to the Jews for a time, but that the very fulfillment of the sacrament had come in him. “My Father,” he says, “is working until now, and I am working.” He threw them into great turmoil: at the Lord's coming the water is stirred, but he who stirs it is hidden. Yet by the stirred water one sick man, a great one, is to be healed: by the Lord's Passion, the whole world.

Let us see, then, the answer of the Truth: “My Father is working until now, and I am working.” Did Scripture, then, say something false, that God rested from all his works on the seventh day? And does the Lord Jesus speak against this Scripture, administered through Moses, when he himself says to the Jews, “If you believed Moses, you would believe me also; for he wrote of me”? See, then, whether Moses did not want to signify something by saying that God rested on the seventh day. For God had not grown weary in making his creation and needed rest like a man. How had he grown weary who had made by a word? Yet both that is true, that God rested from his works on the seventh day, and this is true which Jesus says, “My Father is working until now.” But who can explain in words, a man to men, the weak to the weak, the unlearned to those who want to learn, and one who, if he perhaps understands something, is not able to bring it out and explain it to men who perhaps grasp with difficulty even what can be explained? Who, I say, my brothers, can explain in words how God both works while at rest and rests while working? I beg you to put this off until you make progress; for this vision seeks the temple of God, seeks a holy place: carry your neighbor and walk; there you will see him, where you will not look for the words of men.

This perhaps we are better able to say: that in the very fact that God rested on the seventh day, he signified by a great mystery our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ himself, who was speaking these things and saying, “My Father is working until now, and I am working.” For the Lord Jesus too is surely God. For he is the Word of God, and you have heard that “in the beginning was the Word”; and not just any word, but “the Word was God,” and “all things were made through him.” Perhaps he was signified as one who would rest on the seventh day from all his works. For read the Gospel, and see how much Jesus worked. He worked our salvation on the cross, so that all the predictions of the prophets might be fulfilled in him: he was crowned with thorns, he was hung on the wood; he said, “I thirst,” he received vinegar in a sponge, so that what was said might be fulfilled, “And in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.” But when all his works were completed, on the sixth day of the week, bowing his head, he gave up his spirit, and in the tomb on the Sabbath he rested from all his works. So it is as though he said to the Jews: “Why do you expect me not to work on the Sabbath? The Sabbath day was commanded to you to signify me. You look at the works of God: I was there when they were done, all things were made through me, I know. ‘My Father is working until now.’ The Father made light; but he said, ‘Let there be light.’ If he said it, he worked by the Word; I was his Word, I am: through me the world was made in those works, through me the world is ruled in these works. My Father was working then when he made the world, and is working until now when he rules the world: so through me he made it when he made it, and through me he rules it when he rules it.” He said this, but to whom? To the deaf, the blind, the lame, the sick, who did not recognize the physician, and, as if in frenzy, out of their minds, wanted to kill him.

Accordingly, what did the evangelist go on to say? “For this reason the Jews sought all the more to kill him, because he not only broke the Sabbath, but also called God his Father.” Not in just any way; but how? “Making himself equal to God.” For we all say to God, “Our Father, who are in heaven”; we read that the Jews too said, “Since you are our Father.” So they were not angry at this, that he called God his Father, but that he did so in a way far different from men. See, the Jews understand what the Arians do not understand. For the Arians say that the Son is unequal to the Father, and that is why the heresy was driven out of the Church. See, the very blind, the very killers of Christ, nevertheless understood Christ's words. They did not understand him to be the Christ, nor did they understand him to be the Son of God; but they did understand that in those words a Son of God was being proclaimed who was equal to God. Who he was they did not know; yet they recognized that such a one was being proclaimed, because he called God his Father, making himself equal to God. Was he not, then, equal to God? He did not make himself equal; rather, the Father had begotten him equal. If he made himself equal to God, he would fall through robbery. For he who wanted to make himself equal to God when he was not, fell, and from an angel became the devil; and he offered to man to drink this pride by which he himself was cast down. For he said to the man, whose standing he envied when he had fallen, “Taste, and you will be like gods”: that is, seize by usurpation what you were not made; for I too was cast down by seizing. This he did not reveal, but this he urged. But Christ was born equal to the Father, not made; born of the substance of the Father. Hence the apostle commends him thus: “Who, though he was in the form of God, did not count it robbery to be equal with God.” What does “did not count it robbery” mean? He did not usurp equality with God, but was in it, in which he had been born. And how would we come to the equal God? “He emptied himself, taking the form of a servant.” So he did not empty himself by losing what he was, but by taking what he was not. Despising this form of a servant, the Jews could not understand the Lord Christ as equal to the Father, though they had no doubt at all that he was saying this of himself, and that is why they raged; and still he bore with them, and sought the healing of those who raged against him.