Tractates on the Gospel of John 59.1–62.6

We have heard the Lord speaking in the holy Gospel and saying: "Amen, amen, I say to you, a servant is not greater than his lord, nor is an apostle greater than he who sent him. If you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them." He said this because he had washed the disciples' feet, the teacher of humility both by word and by example. But we shall be able, with his help, to discuss what needs more laborious discussion if we do not linger on what is plain. So when the Lord had said this first, he added: "I do not speak of you all: I know whom I have chosen; but that the Scripture may be fulfilled, He who eats bread with me will lift up his heel against me." What is this but "he will trample on me"? It is well known of whom he speaks: that Judas, his betrayer, is meant. So he had not chosen him, since by this saying he separates him from those whom he chose. "What I say, then," he says, "'You will be blessed if you do them,' I do not say of you all: there is one among you who will not be blessed, nor will he do them. I know whom I have chosen." Whom, if not those who will be blessed by doing what he commanded and showed must be done, he who can make them blessed? "Judas the betrayer," he says, "was not chosen." What, then, is it that he says in another place, "Did I not choose you twelve, and one of you is a devil?" Or was he too chosen for something, for which he was certainly necessary, but not for the blessedness of which he now says, "You will be blessed if you do them"? This he does not say of all; for he knows whom he has chosen for the fellowship of this blessedness. This man is not one of them, who ate his bread in such a way as to lift up his heel against him. They ate the bread that was the Lord, he the bread of the Lord against the Lord; they life, he punishment. "For he who eats unworthily," says the Apostle, "eats judgment to himself." "From now on," he says, "I tell you before it happens, so that when it has happened you may believe that I am he": that is, I am he of whom that Scripture went before, where it is said, "He who eats bread with me will lift up his heel against me."

Then it follows, and he says: "Amen, amen, I say to you, he who receives anyone I send receives me; and he who receives me receives him who sent me." Did he wish it to be understood that there is as great a distance between the one he sends and himself as between himself and God the Father? If we take it in that way, we shall make some kind of degrees, after the manner of the Arians, which God forbid. For they, when they hear or read these words of the Gospel, at once run to those degrees of their doctrine by which they do not ascend to life but are cast headlong into death. For they say at once: "As far as the Son's apostle is distant from the Son, though he said, 'He who receives anyone I send receives me,' so far is the Son distant from the Father, though he said, 'He who receives me receives him who sent me.'" But if you say this, heretic, you have forgotten your degrees. For if because of these words of the Lord you separate the Son from the Father by as great an interval as you separate the apostle from the Son, where will you put the Holy Spirit? Has it slipped your mind that you are accustomed to put him after the Son? Then he will be between the apostle and the Son; and the Son will be much further from the apostle than the Father from the Son. Or perhaps, so that this distinction between the Son and the apostle and between the Father and the Son may remain at equal intervals, the Holy Spirit will be equal to the Son? But you do not want this either. Where, then, will you put him, if you set the Son below the Father by as great a separation as the apostle below the Son? So restrain the boldness of your presumption, and do not seek in these words a distance between Father and Son as great as that between the Son and the apostle. Hear rather the Son himself saying, "I and the Father are one." There the Truth has left you no suspicion of distance between the Begetter and the Only-begotten; there Christ has smashed your degrees; there the rock has broken your ladders.

But now that the heretics' slander has been refuted, how are we to take these words of the Lord, "He who receives anyone I send receives me; and he who receives me receives him who sent me"? For if we wish to understand that "he who receives me receives him who sent me" was said because the Father and the Son are of one nature, it will seem to follow, by the rule of the same words in which it was said, "He who receives anyone I send receives me," that the Son and the apostle are of one nature. This too, indeed, could be understood not unfittingly, since that giant who exulted to run his course is of twofold substance; for the Word was made flesh, that is, God was made man. So he might seem to have said, "He who receives anyone I send receives me" according to the man; "but he who receives me" according to God "receives him who sent me." But when he was saying this, it was not the unity of nature that was being commended by him, but the authority of the sender in the one who is sent. So let each one receive him who was sent in such a way that in him he attends to him who sent him. If, then, you look to Christ in Peter, you will find the teacher of the disciple; but if you look to the Father in the Son, you will find the Begetter of the Only-begotten: and so in the one who is sent you receive the sender without any error. What follows in the Gospel is not to be cramped by the shortness of time. And so, dearly beloved, let this sermon, as food for holy sheep, be taken wholesomely if it suffices; if it is meagre, let it be chewed over with longing.

No small question, brothers, is set before us from the Gospel of blessed John, where it says: "When Jesus had said these things, he was troubled in spirit, and testified, and said: Amen, amen, I say to you that one of you will betray me." Was Jesus troubled by this, not in the flesh but in the spirit, because he was about to say, "One of you will betray me"? Did this then come into his mind for the first time, or was it then suddenly revealed to him for the first time, and did the sudden novelty of so great an evil trouble him? Was he not speaking of this a little before, saying, "He who eats bread with me will lift up his heel against me"? Had he not also said earlier, "And you are clean, but not all"? Where the evangelist added, "For he knew who it was that would betray him"; whom he had already indicated even before, saying, "Did I not choose you twelve, and one of you is a devil?" What, then, is it that he is now troubled in spirit, when he testified and said, "Amen, amen, I say to you that one of you will betray me"? Was he troubled in spirit because he was now about to point him out, so that he would not lie hidden among the rest but be distinguished from the rest? Or because the betrayer himself was now about to go out to bring the Jews to whom the Lord was to be betrayed by him, was he troubled by his impending passion, the danger close at hand, and the hand of the betrayer hanging over him, whose mind had been known beforehand? For that Jesus was troubled in spirit is of the same kind as what he said, "Now is my soul troubled; and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour; but for this purpose I came to this hour." As, then, his soul was troubled then as the hour of his passion drew near, so now too, as Judas was about to go out and to come back, and so great a crime of the betrayer drew near, he was troubled in spirit.

He was troubled, then, who had power to lay down his life and power to take it again. So great a power is troubled, the firmness of the rock is troubled: or is it rather our weakness that is troubled in him? Yes, truly: let the servants believe nothing unworthy of their Lord, but let them recognize themselves as members in their head. He who died for us was himself troubled for us. He, then, who died by power was troubled by power: he who will transform the body of our lowliness to be conformed to the body of his glory transformed in himself too the feeling of our weakness, sympathizing with us by the feeling of his soul. Accordingly, when the great, the strong, the sure, the unconquered one is troubled, let us not fear for him as though he were failing; he is not perishing, but seeking us. Us, I say, he seeks altogether in this way: let us see ourselves in his trouble, so that when we are troubled we may not perish by despair. When he is troubled who would not be troubled unless he willed it, he consoles one who is troubled even against his will.

Away with the arguments of the philosophers who deny that disturbances of mind befall the wise man. "God has made foolish the wisdom of this world"; and "the Lord knows the thoughts of men, that they are vain." Let the Christian mind certainly be troubled, not by misery, but by mercy: let it fear lest men be lost to Christ, be saddened when anyone is lost to Christ; let it desire that men be gained for Christ, rejoice when men are gained for Christ; let it fear also for itself lest it be lost to Christ, be saddened that it is a pilgrim away from Christ; let it desire to reign with Christ, rejoice while it hopes that it will reign with Christ. These are certainly the four that they call disturbances: fear and sadness, love and joy. Let Christian minds have them for just causes, and let there be no consent to the error of the Stoic philosophers or of any like them; who indeed, just as they take vanity for truth, so they reckon insensibility as health; not knowing that a man's mind, like a member of the body, is more desperately sick when it has lost even the sense of pain.

But someone says: "Ought a Christian's mind to be troubled even when death is at hand? Where, then, is what the Apostle says, that he has a desire to depart and be with Christ, if what he desires can trouble him when it comes?" It is easy indeed to answer this for those who call even joy itself a disturbance. For what if he is troubled when death is at hand precisely because he rejoices when death is at hand? "But this," they say, "should be called gladness, not joy." What is this but to feel the same things and to wish to change the names of things? But let us lend our hearing to the sacred Scriptures, and, with the Lord's help, solve this question rather according to them; and, because it is written, "When Jesus had said these things, he was troubled in spirit," let us not say that he was troubled by joy, lest he refute us by his own words where he says, "My soul is sorrowful even unto death." Something of that kind is to be understood here too, when, with his betrayer now about to go out alone and to return at once with his associates, Jesus was troubled in spirit.

Very firm indeed are the Christians, if there are any, who are not troubled at all when death is at hand; but are they firmer than Christ? What madman would say this? What, then, does it mean that he was troubled, if not that he consoled the weak in his body, that is, in his Church, by the voluntary likeness of his weakness: so that if any of his own are still troubled in spirit when death is at hand, they may look to him, lest, thinking themselves reprobate for this very reason, they be swallowed up by the worse death of despair? How great a good, then, ought we to expect and hope for from sharing in his divinity, whose very trouble calms us and whose weakness makes us firm? Whether, then, in this place he was troubled in pity for Judas himself perishing, or troubled as his own death drew near, there is still no doubt at all that he was troubled, not by weakness of mind, but by power, lest despair of salvation should arise in us when we are troubled, not by power, but by weakness. For he bore the weakness of the flesh, which weakness was consumed by the resurrection. But he who was not only man but also God surpassed the whole human race in strength of mind by an ineffable distance. So he was not troubled by anyone compelling him, but he troubled himself; which was expressly said of him when he raised Lazarus: for there it is written that he troubled himself, so that this may be understood also where it is not read so written, and yet it is read that he was troubled. For he who took up the whole man by his power stirred human feeling in himself by his power when he judged it fitting.

This chapter of the Gospel, brothers, has been set before us in this reading for exposition in such a way that we must now also say something of the Lord's betrayer, who is quite plainly pointed out by the bread dipped and handed to him. And of the fact that Jesus, when about to point him out, was troubled in spirit, I spoke in the previous sermon; but perhaps the Lord deigned to signify to us by his trouble this too, which I did not say there: namely, that false brothers, those tares of the Lord's field, must be so tolerated among the wheat until the time of harvest that, when some urgent cause compels some of them to be separated even before the harvest, it cannot be done without trouble to the Church. This trouble of his saints, which was to come through schismatics and heretics, the Lord in a way foretold and prefigured in himself when, as Judas, a wicked man, was about to go out and leave by a most open separation the mixture with the wheat in which he had long been tolerated, he was troubled, not in the flesh, but in the spirit. For his spiritual ones are troubled in scandals of this kind, not by perversity but by love, lest perhaps in separating some of the tares some wheat be rooted up with them.

So "Jesus was troubled in spirit, and testified, and said: Amen, amen, I say to you that one of you will betray me." "One of you" in number, not in merit; in appearance, not in virtue; by bodily mixture, not by spiritual bond; by fleshly conjunction, not as a partner in the unity of the heart: therefore not one who is of you, but one who is to go out from you. For how will what the Lord testified and said, "One of you," be true, if what the same one says in his Epistle, whose this Gospel is, is true: "They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would surely have remained with us"? Judas, then, was not of them: for he would have remained with them if he had been of them. What, then, is "One of you will betray me," if not "One of you is about to go out who will betray me"? For he who said, "If they had been of us, they would surely have remained with us," had already said, "They went out from us." And so both are true, both "of us" and "not of us": in one respect of us, in another not of us; of us according to the communion of the sacraments, not of us according to the character of their own crimes.

"So the disciples looked at one another, uncertain of whom he spoke." For there was in them such devout love toward their Master that human weakness nevertheless stirred them about one another. Each one's own conscience was indeed known to himself; but because his neighbour's was unknown, each was so sure of himself that each individually was uncertain about the rest, and the rest about each.

"Now one of his disciples, whom Jesus loved, was reclining in Jesus' bosom." What he meant by "in the bosom" he says a little later, where he says "on Jesus' breast." This is John, whose Gospel this is, as he makes plain afterwards. For it was the custom of those who ministered the sacred writings to us that, when the divine history was being narrated by one of them and he came to himself, he spoke as if of another; and so he placed himself in the order of his narrative as the writer of what was done, not as the herald of himself. For holy Matthew too did this, who, when in the course of his narrative he had come to himself, says, "He saw a publican sitting at the tax office, named Matthew, and said to him, Follow me"; he does not say, "He saw me, and said to me." Blessed Moses also did this, narrating everything about himself as if of another, and saying, "The Lord said to Moses." Less usually the apostle Paul did this, not in a history, where a narrative of events is undertaken, but in an Epistle. For he certainly says of himself: "I know a man in Christ fourteen years ago (whether in the body or out of the body, I do not know; God knows), such a one caught up to the third heaven." Therefore, since here too the blessed evangelist does not say, "I was reclining in Jesus' bosom," but says, "one of the disciples was reclining," let us recognize the custom of our authors rather than wonder at it. For what does truth lose when both the fact itself is told and boasting is avoided by a certain manner of speaking? For he was narrating what belonged to his own highest praise.

But what is "whom Jesus loved"? As if he did not love the others, of whom this same John said above, "He loved them unto the end." And the Lord himself: "Greater love than this no one has, that one lay down his life for his friends." And who could count all the testimonies of the divine pages in which the Lord Jesus is shown to be the lover, not of him alone nor only of those who were then present, but also of his members who were to come afterwards, and of his whole Church? But surely something lies hidden here, and it relates to the bosom in which he who was saying these things was reclining. For what is signified by the bosom but something secret? But there is another more fitting place where the Lord may grant us to say something of this secret, as much as suffices.

"So Simon Peter beckons, and says to him." The expression is to be noted, that something is said not by sounding but only by beckoning: "He beckons," it says, "and says"; that is, he says by beckoning. For if something is said by thinking, as Scripture speaks, "They said within themselves," how much more by beckoning, where what had been conceived in the heart is now brought forth outwardly by some sort of signs? What, then, did he say by beckoning? What, but what follows? "Who is it of whom he speaks?" These words Peter beckoned, because he said them not by the sound of the voice but by the movement of the body. "So he, reclining on Jesus' breast": this is surely the bosom of the breast, the secret of wisdom. "He says to him: Lord, who is it? Jesus answered: It is he to whom I shall hand the bread I have dipped. And when he had dipped the bread, he gave it to Judas, son of Simon, Iscariot. And after the bread, then Satan entered into him." The betrayer was pointed out, the hiding-places of darkness were laid bare. What he received is good, but he received it to his own harm, because, being evil, he received the good in an evil way. But much must be said about this dipped bread that was handed to the false disciple, and about what follows: for which more time is needed than we now have at the end of this sermon.

I know, beloved, that some may be troubled, the devout so that they inquire, the ungodly so that they find fault, because it was after the Lord gave the dipped bread to his betrayer that Satan entered into him. For so it is written: "When he had dipped the bread, he gave it to Judas, son of Simon Iscariot; and after the bread, then Satan entered into him." For they say: "Did the bread of Christ, handed from the table of Christ, deserve this, that after it Satan should enter into his disciple?" We answer them that by this we are taught rather how much one must beware of receiving a good thing badly. For what matters greatly is not what is received but who receives it; not what kind of thing is given but what kind of person he is to whom it is given. For good things do harm and bad things do good, according to the people to whom they are given. "Sin," says the Apostle, "that it might be shown to be sin, worked death in me through what is good." See, through a good thing evil was done, when the good was received badly. And again he says: "Lest I be exalted by the greatness of the revelations, there was given me a goad in my flesh, an angel of Satan to buffet me. For this I asked the Lord three times that he would take it away from me, and he said to me: My grace is sufficient for you; for power is made perfect in weakness." See, through an evil thing good was done, when the evil was received well. Why then do you wonder if the bread of Christ was given to Judas, through which he would be handed over as a slave to the devil, when you see, on the contrary, an angel of the devil given to Paul, through which he would be made perfect in Christ? So the good harmed the bad man, and the evil benefited the good man. Remember where it is written: "Whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord unworthily will be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord." And the Apostle, when he said this, was speaking of those who were taking the Lord's body without discrimination and carelessly, like any other food. If then he is rebuked here who does not discern, that is, does not distinguish the Lord's body from other foods, how is he condemned who comes to his table feigning to be a friend while he is an enemy? If the carelessness of a guest is touched by reproof, with what punishment is the man struck who sells his host? And what was the bread given to the betrayer but a demonstration of the grace to which he had been ungrateful?

So after this bread Satan entered into the Lord's betrayer, to possess more fully one already handed over to him, into whom he had entered before in order to deceive him. For he was not absent from him when he went to the Jews and bargained over the price for handing over the Lord, since the evangelist Luke testifies to this most plainly and says: "Then Satan entered into Judas, who was surnamed Iscariot, one of the twelve; and he went away and spoke with the chief priests." See where it is shown that Satan had already entered into Judas. He had entered before, then, by putting into his heart the thought of handing Christ over; for he had come to the supper already in that state. But now after the bread he entered into him, not to tempt one who still belonged to another, but to possess one who was now his own.

But it was not then, as some think who read carelessly, that Judas received the body of Christ. For it must be understood that the Lord had already distributed to all of them the sacrament of his body and blood, where Judas himself was also present, as holy Luke narrates most plainly; and after that the account came to this point where, according to John's narrative, the Lord most openly identifies his betrayer by the morsel dipped and handed to him, perhaps signifying by the dipping of the bread the man's feigning. For not everything that is dipped is washed; some things are dipped in order to be stained. But if the dipping signifies something good here, condemnation not undeservedly followed the man who was ungrateful for that same good.

Yet with Judas now possessed, not by the Lord but by the devil, when the bread had entered the belly of the ungrateful man and the enemy his mind, there still remained, I say, the full carrying-out of so great an evil already conceived in the heart, whose damnable desire had already gone before. And so, when the Lord, the living bread, had handed bread to a dead man, and by handing the bread had shown up the betrayer of the bread, he said: "What you are doing, do quickly." He did not command the crime; he foretold evil for Judas, good for us. For what was worse for Judas, and what better for us, than Christ handed over, by him and to his own ruin, for us and apart from his intent? "What you are doing, do quickly." O word of one ready rather than angry! O word that expresses not so much the punishment of the traitor as it signifies the reward of the Redeemer! For he said, "What you are doing, do quickly," not so much raging for the ruin of the faithless man as hastening toward the salvation of the faithful; for "he was handed over for our offenses," and "he loved the church and handed himself over for her." Hence the Apostle also says of himself: "who loved me and handed himself over for me." Unless Christ handed himself over, then, no one would hand Christ over. What does Judas have but sin? For in handing Christ over he did not think of our salvation, for which Christ was handed over, but thought of the gain of money and found the loss of his soul. He received the wage he wanted, but the wage he deserved was given him against his will. Judas handed Christ over, Christ handed himself over: the one was doing the business of his sale, the other the business of our redemption. "What you are doing, do quickly": not because you have the power, but because he wills it who has all power.

"But no one of those reclining at table knew why he said this to him. For some thought, because Judas had the money-box, that Jesus was saying to him, Buy what we need for the feast; or that he should give something to the poor." The Lord, then, also had a money-box, and keeping what was offered by the faithful, he gave both to the needs of his own and to other people in need. Then for the first time the pattern of church funds was established, so that we might understand that his command not to take thought for tomorrow was not a command that no money be kept by the saints, but that God not be served for the sake of money, and that justice not be abandoned through fear of want. For the Apostle too, providing for the future, says: "If any believer has widows, let him provide for them sufficiently, so that the church is not burdened, so that it may have enough for those who are truly widows."

"When he had taken the morsel, then, he went out at once. And it was night." And he who went out was himself night. "When" the night "had gone out, then, Jesus said: Now the Son of Man is glorified." So "day poured forth speech to day," that is, Christ to his faithful disciples, that they might hear him and love him by following him; "and night announced knowledge to night," that is, Judas to the unbelieving Jews, that they might come to him and seize him by pursuing him. But from here on, in the Lord's discourse, which was spoken to the godly before he was seized by the ungodly, a more attentive listener is required; and therefore the expounder ought not to rush it but rather to put it off.