Tractates on the Gospel of John 47.1–47.14

You who hear the word of our God not only gladly but also carefully no doubt remember our promise. For the same gospel reading has been read today that was read last Lord's day, because, delayed by certain necessities, we were not able to discuss everything we owed to your understanding. So what has already been said and treated we do not take up today, lest by repeating the same things we be prevented from reaching what has not yet been said. You already know, in the Lord's name, who the good shepherd is, and how good shepherds are his members, and therefore there is one shepherd. You know which hireling is to be tolerated; which wolf, and thieves, and robbers are to be guarded against; who the sheep are, what the door is by which both the sheep and the shepherd enter; how the doorkeeper is to be understood. You know too that whoever has not entered by the door is a thief and a robber, and comes only to steal and to kill and to destroy. All these things have been said and, I think, sufficiently treated. Today we must say, as far as the Lord helps—since Jesus Christ our Saviour himself said that he is both the shepherd and the door, and said that the good shepherd enters by the door—how he enters through himself. For if no one is a good shepherd except one who enters by the door, and he himself is preeminently the good shepherd, and he himself is the door, I can only understand that he himself enters to his sheep through himself, and gives them his voice so that they follow him, and that they, going in and going out, find pasture, which is eternal life.

I say it briefly, then. When I seek to enter to you, that is, to your hearts, I preach Christ; if I were to preach something else, I would be trying to climb up another way. So Christ is my door to you; through Christ I enter, not to your walls, but to your hearts. Through Christ I enter: you have gladly heard Christ in me. Why have you gladly heard Christ in me? Because you are Christ's sheep; you were bought with Christ's blood. You recognize your price, which is not given by me but preached through me. For he bought you who shed precious blood: his blood, the blood of one without sin, is precious. Yet he made the blood of his own precious too, those for whom he gave the price of his blood; for if he had not made the blood of his own precious, it would not be said, “Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints.” So also what he says, “The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep,” he alone has not done; and yet, if those who have done it are his members, he himself alone has done it. For he could do it without them; how could they do it without him, when he himself said, “Without me you can do nothing”? And we show from this that others too have done it: the apostle John himself, who preached this gospel that you have heard, said in his epistle, “As Christ laid down his life for us, so we too ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.” “We ought,” he said: he who first showed it made us debtors. Therefore it is written in a certain place, “If you sit down to dine at the table of a ruler, consider wisely what is set before you; and put out your hand, knowing that you must prepare such things.” You know what the ruler's table is: there are the body and blood of Christ. Whoever approaches such a table, let him prepare such things. And what is “let him prepare such things”? As he laid down his life for us, so we too ought, for building up the people and defending the faith, to lay down our lives for the brothers. Therefore to Peter, whom he wished to make a good shepherd—not in Peter himself, but in his body—he says, “Peter, do you love me? Feed my sheep.” This once, this again, this a third time, until he was grieved. And when the Lord had questioned him as much as he judged he should be questioned, so that he who had denied three times should confess three times, and when he had commended his sheep to him to feed a third time, he said to him, “When you were younger, you girded yourself and walked where you wished; but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will gird you and lead you where you do not wish.” And the evangelist explained what the Lord had said: “This he said,” he says, “signifying by what death he would glorify God.” This, then, is what “Feed my sheep” means: that you lay down your life for my sheep.

Now as for his saying, “As the Father knows me, and I know the Father,” who does not understand it? For he knows the Father through himself, we through him. That he knows him through himself we know; that we too know him through him, this also we know; for this too we know through him. For he himself said, “No one has ever seen God, except the only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father; he has declared him.” So we know him through him, we to whom he has declared him. Likewise he says elsewhere, “No one knows the Son except the Father, nor does anyone know the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal him.” As, then, he knows the Father through himself, but we know the Father through him, so he enters the fold through himself, and we through him. We were saying that through Christ we have a door to you. Why? Because we preach Christ. We preach Christ, and therefore we enter by the door. But Christ preaches Christ, because he preaches himself; and therefore the shepherd enters through himself. When light shows other things that are seen in the light, does it need anything else to be shown? Light, then, shows both other things and itself. Whatever we understand, we understand by the understanding; the understanding itself, by what do we understand it, but by the understanding? Do you in the same way see with the eye of the flesh both other things and the eye itself? For though people see with their eyes, they do not see their own eyes. The eye of the flesh sees other things; itself it cannot see. But the understanding understands both other things and itself. As the understanding sees itself, so also Christ preaches himself. If he preaches himself, and by preaching enters to you, he enters to you through himself. And to the Father he himself is the door, for there is no way by which one comes to the Father except through him. “For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.” Many things are said by a word: these very things that I have said, I have surely said by a word. If I wish to speak of the word itself, by what do I speak but by a word? And so by a word other things are spoken which are not what a word is; and the word itself cannot be spoken except by a word. With the Lord's help we have given plenty of examples. Hold fast, then, how the Lord Jesus Christ is both door and shepherd: the door by opening himself, the shepherd by entering through himself. And indeed, brothers, his being shepherd he has given to his members also; for Peter is a shepherd, and Paul is a shepherd, and the other apostles are shepherds, and good bishops are shepherds. But none of us calls himself the door; this he kept as his own, that through him the sheep should enter. Indeed the apostle Paul was fulfilling the office of a good shepherd when he preached Christ, because he entered by the door. But when the sheep, without discipline, began to make schisms and to set up other doors for themselves—not by which they might enter to be gathered, but by which they might wander to be divided—some saying, “I am of Paul,” others, “I am of Cephas,” others, “I of Apollos,” others, “I of Christ,” he was horrified at those who said, “I am of Paul,” and, as if crying out to the sheep, “Poor things, where are you going? I am not the door,” he says, “Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?” But those who said, “I am of Christ,” had found the door.

About the one fold and the one shepherd you are already used to hearing constantly; for we have strongly commended the one fold, preaching unity, so that all the sheep might enter through Christ and none follow Donatus. Yet why the Lord said this in particular is plain enough. For he was speaking among the Jews, and he had been sent to the Jews themselves—not on account of some who persisted in monstrous hatred and remained in darkness, but on account of some in that very nation whom he calls his sheep, of whom he says, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” He knew them even in the raging crowd, and he foresaw them in the peace of believers. What, then, is “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel,” except that he showed his bodily presence only to the people of Israel? To the Gentiles he did not go himself, but sent; but to the people of Israel he both sent and came himself, so that those who despised him would receive the greater judgment, because his presence too was shown to them. The Lord himself was there; there he chose his mother; there he willed to be conceived, there to be born, there to shed his blood; there are his footprints, now venerated, where he last stood, from where he ascended into heaven. But to the Gentiles he sent.

But perhaps someone thinks that, since he did not come to us himself but sent to us, we have not heard his voice, but the voice of those whom he sent. Far from it; let that thought be driven from your hearts: he himself was in those whom he sent. Hear Paul himself, whom he sent—for he sent the apostle Paul chiefly to the Gentiles—and Paul himself says, alarming them not about himself but about him, “Do you want proof of Christ who speaks in me?” Hear the Lord himself too: “And I have other sheep”—that is, among the Gentiles—“which are not of this fold”—that is, of the people of Israel—“I must bring them also.” So it is not another but he who brings them, even through his own. Hear further: “They will hear my voice.” See, he himself speaks through his own, and his voice is heard through those whom he sends. “That there may be one fold and one shepherd.” Of these two flocks, as of two walls, he was made the cornerstone. So he is both the door and the cornerstone: all by likeness, none of these properly.

For I have already said it and strongly commended it—those who grasp it are wise, or rather those who are wise grasp it—and let those who are not yet wise in understanding hold by faith what they cannot yet understand: by likeness Christ is many things which by proper sense he is not. By likeness Christ is the rock, Christ is the door, Christ is the cornerstone, Christ is the shepherd, Christ is the lamb, Christ is the lion. How many things by likenesses, and others which it would take long to recount! But if you examine the proper senses of the things you are used to seeing, he is not a rock, for he is not hard and without feeling; nor a door, for no carpenter made him; nor a cornerstone, for he was not set in place by a builder; nor a shepherd, for he is not a keeper of four-footed sheep; nor a lion, for he is not a wild beast; nor a lamb, for he is not a farm animal. All these, then, are by likeness. What, then, properly? “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” What of the man who appeared? “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.”

Hear the rest too. “For this reason the Father loves me,” he says, “because I lay down my life, that I may take it again.” What does he say? For this reason the Father loves me: because I die that I may rise again. For “I” was said with great weight: “Because I lay down,” he says, “I lay down my life; I lay it down.” What is “I lay it down”? I lay it down: let the Jews not boast. They were able to rage; they were not able to have power. Let them rage as much as they can: if I do not wish to lay down my life, what will they accomplish by raging? They were laid low by one answer: when it was said to them, “Whom do you seek?” they said, “Jesus”; and he said to them, “I am he”; they went backward and fell down. Those who fell at one word of Christ when he was about to die—what will they do under the voice of Christ when he comes to judge? “I, I,” I say, “lay down my life, that I may take it again.” Let the Jews not boast as though they had prevailed: he himself laid down his life. “I slept,” he says. You know the psalm: “I slept, and took my rest; and I rose up, because the Lord will uphold me.” The psalm itself was read just now; we heard just now, “I slept, and took my rest; and I rose up, because the Lord will uphold me.” What is “I slept”? Because I willed it, I slept. What is “I slept”? I died. Did he not sleep, who, when he willed, rose from the tomb as from a bed? But he loves to give glory to the Father, so as to build us up to give glory to the Creator. As for his adding, “and I rose up, because the Lord will uphold me,” do you think that here his strength as it were failed, so that he could die by his own power but could not rise by his own power? For so the words seem to sound when not understood more attentively: “I slept,” that is, because I willed it, I slept; “and I rose up”: why? “Because the Lord will uphold me.” What then, were you not able to rise of yourself? If you were not able, you would not say, “I have power to lay down my life, and I have power to take it again.” Hear in another place in the Gospel that not only did the Father raise the Son, but the Son also raised himself. “Destroy,” he says, “this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” And the evangelist: “But he spoke,” he says, “of the temple of his body.” For what was raised was what was dying. For the Word did not die; that soul did not die. If not even yours dies, would the Lord's die?

“How do I know,” you say, “whether mine does not die?” Do not kill it, and it does not die. “How,” you say, “can I kill my soul?” To pass over other sins for the moment: “The mouth that lies kills the soul.” “How,” you say, “am I sure that it does not die?” Hear the Lord himself giving his servant assurance: “Do not fear those who kill the body, and afterward have nothing that they can do.” But what does he plainly say? “Fear him who has power to kill both body and soul in Gehenna.” See: it dies; see: it does not die. What is its dying? What is it for your flesh to die? For your flesh to die is to lose its life; for your soul to die is to lose its life. The life of your flesh is your soul; the life of your soul is your God. As the flesh dies when it loses the soul, which is its life, so the soul dies when it loses God, who is its life. Certainly, then, the soul is immortal. Plainly immortal, for it lives even when dead. For what the apostle said of the widow who lives in pleasure can also be said of the soul if it has lost its God: “Living, she is dead.”

How, then, does the Lord lay down his life? Brothers, let us look into this a little more attentively. The hour that usually presses on us on the Lord's day does not constrain us: we have time; let those who gather for the word of God even on this day profit by it. “I lay down,” he says, “my life.” Who lays it down? What does he lay down? What is Christ? Word and man. And not man in the sense of flesh only; but because he is man, he consists of flesh and soul, and the whole man is in Christ. For he would not have taken up the worse part and left out the better part; and the better part of a human being is the soul rather than the body. Since, then, the whole man is in Christ, what is Christ? The Word, I say, and man. What is the Word and man? The Word, soul, and flesh. Hold fast to this, because there have not been lacking heretics on this point too, driven long ago, indeed, from the Catholic truth, yet, like thieves and robbers who do not enter by the door, they do not cease to lie in wait for the fold. They were called the Apollinarian heretics, who dared to teach as dogma that Christ is only Word and flesh; they contend that he did not take a human soul. Yet some of them could not deny that there was a soul in Christ. See the absurdity and the intolerable madness. They would have him have an irrational soul; they denied him a rational one. They gave him the soul of a beast; they took away that of a man. But they took reason from Christ by not keeping to reason. Far be this from us, who have been nourished and founded in the Catholic faith. So I would take this occasion to admonish your Charity: as in the earlier readings we instructed you sufficiently against the Sabellians and the Arians—the Sabellians, who say that the Father is the same as the Son; the Arians, who say that the Father is one thing and the Son another, as if the Father and the Son were not of the same substance—and as we also instructed you, as you remember and ought to remember, against the Photinian heretics, who said that Christ was only a man without God, and against the Manichees, who say he was only God without man—so on this occasion let us instruct you about the soul also against the Apollinarians, who say that our Lord Jesus Christ did not have a human soul, that is, a rational soul, an intelligent soul—the soul, I say, by which we differ from the beast in being human.

How, then, did the Lord say here, “I have power to lay down my life”? Who lays down the life and takes it again? Does Christ, in that he is the Word, lay down the soul and take it again? Or, in that he is a human soul, does the soul lay itself down and take itself again? Or, in that he is flesh, does the flesh lay down the soul and take it again? I have proposed three things; let us examine them all, and choose what agrees with the rule of truth. For if we say that the Word of God laid down his soul and took it again, we must fear that a wrong thought may creep in and it be said to us: “Then at some time that soul was separated from the Word, and at some time that Word, from the time he took up that soul, was without a soul.” For I see that the Word was without a human soul, but only when “in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” But from the time the Word was made flesh to dwell among us, and man—that is, the whole man, soul and flesh—was taken up by the Word, what did the passion do, what did death do, but separate the body from the soul? It did not separate the soul from the Word. For if the Lord died—indeed, because the Lord died, for he died for us on the cross—without doubt his flesh breathed out its soul; for a short time the soul left the flesh, but the flesh was to rise again when the soul returned. But I do not say that the soul was separated from the Word. To the soul of the thief he said, “Today you will be with me in paradise.” Did he not desert the faithful soul of the thief, and desert his own? Far from it: he kept the thief's as Lord, but his own he held inseparably. But if we say that the soul laid itself down and took itself up again, it is a most absurd sense: for what was not separated from the Word could not be separated from itself.

Let us say, then, what is both true and easily understood. Take any man, consisting not of Word and soul and flesh, but of soul and flesh: about that man let us ask how any man lays down his soul. Or perhaps no man lays down his soul? You may say to me, “No man has power to lay down his soul and take it again.” If a man could not lay down his soul, the apostle John would not say, “As Christ laid down his soul for us, so we too ought to lay down our souls for the brothers.” So it is permitted to us too—if we are filled with his strength, since without him we can do nothing—to lay down our souls for the brothers. When some holy martyr has laid down his soul for the brothers, who laid it down, and what did he lay down? If we understand this, we shall see in it how Christ said, “I have power to lay down my soul.” O man, are you ready to die for Christ? “Ready,” he says. I will say this in other words: are you ready to lay down your soul for Christ? And to these words he answers me thus: “I am ready,” just as he had answered when I said, “Are you ready to die?” So to lay down the soul is the same as to die. But for whose sake is the contest there? For all men, when they die, lay down the soul; but not all lay it down for Christ. And no one has power to take up what he has laid down; but Christ both laid it down for us, and laid it down when he willed, and took it up when he willed. To lay down the soul, then, is to die. So also the apostle Peter said to the Lord, “I will lay down my soul for you,” that is, I will die for you. Ascribe this to the flesh: the flesh lays down its soul, and the flesh takes it up again—yet not by the flesh's own power, but by the power of him who dwells in the flesh. The flesh, then, lays down its soul by breathing it out. Look at the Lord himself on the cross. He said, “I thirst.” Those who were present dipped a sponge in vinegar, fastened it to a reed, and put it to his mouth; and when he had received it, he said, “It is finished.” What is “It is finished”? All things are fulfilled which had been prophesied of me as to come before my death. And because he had power to lay down his soul when he willed, after he said, “It is finished,” what does the evangelist say? “And bowing his head he gave up the spirit.” This is laying down the soul. Here let your Charity pay attention. “Bowing his head he gave up the spirit.” Who gave it up? What did he give up? He gave up the spirit; the flesh gave it up. What is “the flesh gave it up”? The flesh sent it forth, the flesh breathed it out. For to expire is so called because it is to come to be out of the spirit. As “to be exiled” is to come to be out of one's soil, and “to go off the track” is to come to be out of the track, so “to expire” is to come to be out of the spirit, which spirit is the soul. When, then, the soul goes out of the flesh and the flesh remains without the soul, then a man is said to lay down his soul. When did Christ lay down his soul? When the Word willed. For the sovereignty was in the Word: there lay the power as to when the flesh should lay down the soul and when it should take it up.

If, then, the flesh laid down the soul, how did Christ lay down the soul? Is not Christ flesh? Yes, plainly: Christ is flesh, and Christ is soul, and Christ is the Word; and yet these three are not three Christs, but one Christ. Question a man, and from yourself take a step to the things that are above you—if not yet to be understood, at least to be believed. For as one man is soul and body, so one Christ is Word and man. See what I have said, and understand. Soul and body are two things, but one man; Word and man are two things, but one Christ. Ask, then, about a man. Where is the apostle Paul now? If someone answers, “At rest with Christ,” he speaks the truth. Again, if someone answers, “At Rome in the tomb,” he too speaks the truth. The one answers me about his soul, the other about his flesh. Yet we do not on that account say there are two apostles Paul, one who rests in Christ, another who is laid in the tomb, although we say that the apostle Paul lives in Christ, and say that the same apostle Paul lies dead in the tomb. Someone dies; we say, “A good man, a believing man, he is at peace with the Lord”; and immediately, “Let us go to his funeral and bury him.” You are going to bury the one whom you had just said was at peace with God: for the soul which lives on immortally is one thing, the body which lies corruptibly is another. But since the union of flesh and soul has received the name “man,” each of them, even singly and separated, has kept the name of man.

So let no one waver when he hears that the Lord said, “I lay down my soul, and I take it again.” The flesh lays it down, but by the power of the Word; the flesh takes it up, but by the power of the Word. Even flesh alone was called the Lord Christ. “How,” he says, “do you prove it?” I dare to say that even the flesh of Christ alone was called Christ. We certainly believe not only in God the Father, but also in Jesus Christ his only Son, our Lord. Just now I spoke of the whole: “in Jesus Christ his only Son, our Lord.” There I understand the whole: the Word, the soul, and the flesh. But surely you also confess what the same faith holds, that you believe in that Christ who was crucified and buried. So you do not deny that Christ was buried; and yet only the flesh was buried. For if the soul had been there, he would not have been dead; but if it was a real death, so that his resurrection might be real, he was in the tomb without a soul; and yet Christ was buried. So the flesh even without the soul was Christ, for only the flesh was buried. Learn this also from the apostle's words. “Have this mind in you,” he says, “which was also in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not think it robbery to be equal with God.” Who, but Christ Jesus, as regards what he is as the Word, God with God? But see what follows: “But he emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men, and found in appearance as a man.” And who is this, but the same Christ Jesus? But here everything is already included: the Word in the form of God, which took the form of a servant; and soul and flesh in the form of a servant, which was taken by the form of God. “He humbled himself, becoming obedient unto death.” Now in death only the flesh was killed by the Jews. For if he said to the disciples, “Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul,” could they do more in his case than kill the body? And yet when the flesh was killed, Christ was killed. So when the flesh laid down the soul, Christ laid down the soul; and when the flesh, in order to rise, took up the soul, Christ took up the soul. Yet this was not done by the power of the flesh, but by the power of him who took up both soul and flesh, in which these things were to be fulfilled.

“This commandment,” he says, “I received from my Father.” The Word did not receive a commandment by a word, but in the only-begotten Word of the Father is every commandment. And when the Son is said to receive from the Father what he has substantially—as it was said, “As the Father has life in himself, so he has given to the Son to have life in himself,” though the Son is himself the life—his power is not lessened, but his generation is shown. For the Father did not add something to a Son born imperfect, but by begetting gave everything to the Son whom he begot perfect. So he gave his equality to him whom he did not beget unequal. But as the Lord said these things, since the light was shining in the darkness and the darkness did not comprehend it, “there was a division again among the Jews because of these words. Many of them said, He has a demon and is mad; why do you listen to him?” This was the thickest darkness. “Others said, These are not the words of one who has a demon; can a demon open the eyes of the blind?” The eyes of these were already beginning to be opened.