Homilies on Hebrews 9.1–9.4

“Therefore, leaving the word of the beginning of Christ, let us press on to maturity, not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God, of the teaching of baptisms and of laying on of hands, of the resurrection of the dead and of eternal judgment. And this we will do, if God permits.” Have you heard how much Paul charged against the Hebrews, who wished always to learn about the same things? And rightly. “For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you again need someone to teach you the elements of the beginning of the oracles of God.” But I fear that this might fitly be said to you too: that though by this time you ought to be teachers, you do not even hold the rank of disciples, but, always hearing the same things and about the same things, you are disposed as if you heard nothing; and if anyone questions you, no one will be able to answer, except a very few who are easily counted. And this is no small loss. For often, when the teacher wishes to go further and touch on more mystical things and loftier discourses, the inattention of the learners does not let him. For just as with schoolmasters, if the child, always hearing the letters, does not master them, the master will always have to din the same things into the child, and will not stop teaching until he can learn them exactly (for it is great folly, without having implanted the first things well, to lead him on to others), so too in the church: if, though we always say the same things, you learn nothing more, we shall never stop saying the same things. For if our discourse were for display and ambition, we ought always to leap and pass on, caring nothing for your sake but only for your applause; but since we have not set our zeal on this, but all our toil is for your benefit, we shall not stop discoursing to you about the same things until you achieve them. For it would have been possible to say much about the Greek superstition, and about the Manichees, and about the Marcionites, and to strike them hard by the grace of God; but the discourse has no fitting time. For to those who do not yet know their own things exactly, to those who have not yet learned that covetousness is evil, who would speak such discourses, and lead them on to other things before the time? We, then, will not stop saying the same things, whether you are persuaded or not; but we fear lest by continually saying the same things, if you do not listen, we make the condemnation greater for those who disobey. But I must not say these things to all; for I know many who are benefited by their coming here, who might justly cry out against those others as laying a snare for them by their own ignorance and inattention. Yet not even so will they be ensnared; for to hear the same things continually is useful even to those who know them. For what we know, when we hear it often … that humility [is good], and that Christ discoursed about it often; but when we hear the very words and the reflections on them, we are affected more, even if we hear them ten thousand times. It is fitting, then, for us too to say to you now, “Therefore, leaving the word of the beginning of Christ, let us press on to maturity.” And what the beginning of the word is, he himself explains next, saying, “not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God, of the teaching of baptisms and of laying on of hands, of the resurrection of the dead and of eternal judgment.” If this is the beginning, what other is our doctrine than to repent from dead works, and through the Spirit to receive faith in the resurrection of the dead and eternal judgment? And what is “beginning”? He calls this nothing else than the beginning, when an exact life is not present. For just as one entering on the learning of letters must first hear the elements, so too the Christian must first know these things exactly and doubt nothing about them. But if he should need teaching again, he does not yet have the foundation; for one who is founded ought to be fixed and stand, and not be moved. But if someone, having been instructed and baptized, is after ten years to hear again about faith, and that one must believe in the resurrection of the dead, he does not yet have the foundation; he is again seeking the beginning of Christianity. For that faith is the foundation, and the rest the building, hear him saying, “I have laid a foundation, and another builds on it. If anyone builds on this foundation gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw.” That is why he said, “not again [laying a foundation of repentance from dead] works.”

And what is, “let us press on to maturity”? Let us go on now to the roof itself, he says; that is, let us have the best life. For just as among the letters alpha holds everything together, and the foundation the whole building, so too full assurance about the faith holds together purity of life. And without this it is not possible to be a Christian, just as there is no building without foundations, nor being skilled in letters without the elements. But just as, if someone is always busy with the elements, or keeps turning about the foundation and does not go up to the building, he will never have anything more, so it is with us too; for if we always stay at the beginning of faith, we shall never go up to its perfection. But do not think that faith is lessened by being called an element; for it is the whole power. For when he says, “For everyone who partakes of milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, for he is an infant,” he does not call this milk; but still to doubt about these things, this belongs to a weak mind needing many words. For these doctrines are the sound ones; for we call that man mature who, along with faith, has a right life. But if someone has faith but does evil, and doubts about this very faith, and insults the teaching, we shall rightly call him an infant, having run back to the beginning. So even if we have been ten thousand years in the faith and are not firm in it, we are infants, when we display a life not agreeing with it, when we are still laying a foundation. And with life he calls them to something else too, as people who had been shaken and needed to lay a foundation of repentance from dead works. For one who passes from one thing to another, leaving the one and choosing this, must first condemn the former and withdraw from it in his disposition, and then come to the other; but if he is to hold to the former again, how will he lay hold of the second? “What then,” one says, “about the law? We condemned it, and we run back to it again.” This is not a change; for here too we have law. “Do we then nullify the law through faith?” he says. “God forbid; rather we establish the law.” But I spoke of evil things. For he who is to pass over to virtue must first condemn vice, and then pursue virtue. For repentance was not able to show them clean; that is why they were baptized at once, so that what they could not accomplish by themselves might come about through the grace of Christ. So neither is repentance sufficient for cleansing, but one must receive baptism. At any rate one must come to baptism having first condemned one’s sins and given sentence against them. And what is “the teaching of baptisms”? Not as though there were many baptisms, but one. Why then did he say it in the plural? Because he had said, “not laying again a foundation of repentance.” For if he had baptized them again, and instructed them again from the beginning, and, having been baptized again from the beginning, they were taught what should be done and what should not, they would remain uncorrected forever. “And of laying on of hands.” For so they received the Spirit: “For when Paul laid his hands on them,” it says, … the dead. For this happens in baptism, and is confirmed in the confession. “And of eternal judgment.” Why does he say these things? Since it was likely that they, having already believed, were either being shaken or living badly and carelessly. He says, then, “Be sober.” Leading them away from such carelessness, then, and making them more attentive, he takes up this argument. For one cannot say, “If we live carelessly now, we shall be baptized again, we shall be instructed again, and we shall receive the Spirit again,” or that “if we fall from the faith now, we shall be able, by being baptized again, to wash away our sins and obtain the same things as before.” You are mistaken, he says, thinking this. “For it is impossible for those who have once been enlightened, and have tasted the heavenly gift, and have become partakers of the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come, and have fallen away, to renew them again to repentance, since they crucify for themselves the Son of God …” And he begins in the language of prohibition: “impossible,” he says; that is, no longer expect what is not possible. For he did not say, “It is not fitting,” nor “It is not expedient,” nor “It is not permitted,” but “impossible,” so as to cast into despair, if at all.

3. Then he adds, “and have tasted the heavenly gift,” that is, the forgiveness. “And have become partakers of the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the good word of God.” Here he means the teaching. “And the powers of the age to come.” What powers do you mean? Either the working of miracles, or the pledge of the … “to … to repentance, since they crucify for themselves the Son of God and put him to open shame.” “To renew,” he says, “to repentance,” that is, through repentance. What then? Has repentance been cast out? Not repentance, God forbid, but renewal again through the washing. For he did not say, “It is impossible to be renewed to repentance,” and fall silent; but having said “impossible” … that is, to become new; for to make men new belongs to the washing alone: “Your youth,” it says, “will be renewed like the eagle’s.” But it belongs to repentance, when men who were made new have then grown old through sins, to free them from the oldness and make them new; yet to bring them to that brightness is not possible; for there the whole was grace. “Since they crucify for themselves,” he says, “the Son of God and put him to open shame.” What he says is this: baptism is a cross: “For our old man was crucified with him”; and again, “We have become conformed to the likeness of his death”; and again, “We were buried, then, with him through baptism into death.” Just as, then, it is not possible for Christ to be crucified a second time (for this is to put him to open shame), so neither is it possible to be baptized [a second time]. For if “death no longer has dominion over him,” if he rose, having become stronger than death by the resurrection, if through death he wrestled death down, and then he is crucified again, all those things are a fable and a mockery. He, then, who baptizes himself a second time crucifies him again. And what … For just as Christ died on the cross, so we in baptism, not in the flesh, but to sin. See death and death: he died in the flesh, we to sin. Through baptism our old man was buried, and the new one rose, conformed to the likeness of his death. If, then, there must be a second baptism, this one must die again; for baptism is nothing else than the slaying of the one baptized, and the raising of the other. And he rightly said, “crucify for themselves”; for one who does this, as though he had forgotten the former grace and managed his life carelessly, does everything as if there were another baptism. That is why one must give heed … “and of the heavenly [gift]?” That is, of the forgiveness of sins; for this belongs to God alone to bestow, and the grace is grace once for all. “What then? Shall we continue in sin, so that grace may abound? God forbid.” But if we are always to be saved by grace, we shall never be good. For when there is one grace, and even so we are careless, if we knew that it was possible to wash away our sins again, would we ever stop sinning? I do not think so. Here he shows the gifts to be many; and that you may learn this, hear: you were counted worthy, he says, of so great a forgiveness, you who sat in darkness, the enemy, the one hostile; such a man, then, suddenly enlightened, counted worthy of the Spirit, of the heavenly gift, of adoption, of the kingdom of heaven, of the other good things, of unspeakable mysteries, of so great a forgiveness; for he who was in darkness … and not even so becoming better, but, though worthy of destruction, having obtained salvation and honor as one who had achieved great things, how could he be baptized again? In two ways, then, he said the thing is impossible, and he put the stronger one last: in one, that he who has been counted worthy of such things and has betrayed all that was given him is not worthy to be renewed again; in the second, that it is not possible for him to be crucified again; for this is to put him to open shame. There is not, then, a second washing, there is not; and if there is, there is a third too, and a fourth, and the first is always undone by the later, and this again by another, and so on without end. And having said, “and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come,” he does not reveal it, but hints at it, and all but says this: that to live as the angels, to need nothing of the things here, to know that adoption becomes for us the means of enjoying the ages to come, to expect to enter that inner sanctuary, these things it is possible to learn through the Spirit. What is “the powers of the age to come”? Either eternal life or the angelic way of life. Of these we have already received the pledge through faith from the Spirit. Tell me, then: if you had been brought into a palace and entrusted with everything there, and then betrayed everything, would you be entrusted again with the things there?

What then? Is there no repentance, one says? There is repentance, but there is not a second baptism. And repentance has great strength, and is able, if one wishes, to free from the burden of sins even one who is utterly drowned in sins, and to set the one in danger in safety, even if he has come to the very bottom of wickedness. And this it is possible to show from many places. “Does not he who falls,” it says, “rise again? Or does not he who turns away turn back?” It is possible, if we wish, for Christ to be formed in us again; for hear Paul saying, “My little children, with whom I am again in labor until Christ is formed in you.” Only let us lay hold of repentance. For see God’s loving-kindness: we ought to have been punished in every way at the beginning, because, [having received the law and] good things, we both ignored the Master and lived an impure life; yet he not only did not punish, but gave us countless good things, as though we had achieved great things. Again we fell away, and not even so does he punish, but he has given the remedy of repentance, able to blot out and wipe away all our sins, if only we know what the remedy is and how it must be applied. What then is the remedy of repentance, and how is it prepared? First, from the condemnation of one’s own sins, and from confession. “For I acknowledged my iniquity,” it says, “and I did not hide my sin”; and, “I will confess my iniquity against myself to the Lord, and you forgave the ungodliness of my heart”; and again, “Tell your sins first, that you may be justified”; and, “The righteous man is his own accuser at the beginning of his speech.” Second, from great humility; for it is like a golden chain: if it gets a beginning, all follows. For if you confess your sin as one ought to confess, the soul is humbled; for conscience, turning upon it, makes it shrink. And other things must be added to humility, so that it may be such as the blessed David sought, saying, “Create in me a clean heart, O God”; and again, “A broken and humbled heart God will not despise.” For what is broken does not rise up, does not strike, but is ready to suffer ill, and itself does not rise up. Such is contrition of heart: even if it is insulted, even if it suffers ill, it keeps quiet and does not rush to revenge. And after humility there is need of earnest prayers, of many tears, by day, by night: “I will wash my bed every night,” it says, “and drench my couch with my tears; I am weary with my groaning”; and again, “For I have eaten ashes like bread, and mingled my drink with weeping.” And after prayer so earnest, there is need of much almsgiving; for this is what above all makes the remedy of repentance strong. And just as among physicians’ remedies there is a remedy that takes many herbs, but one that is most important, so too in repentance this is the more important herb, and it may become the whole. For hear what the divine Scripture says: “Give alms, and all things will be clean”; and again, “By almsgiving and faithfulness sins are purged away”; and again, “Water will quench a blazing fire, and [almsgiving] will make an end of great sins.” Then, not to be angry, nor to bear grudges, to forgive all their sins: “Man cherishes anger against man,” it says, “and seeks healing from the Lord?” “Forgive, so that you may be forgiven.” And to turn brothers back from error: “Go,” it says, “and turn back your brothers, so that your sins may be forgiven you.” To be on good terms with the priests: “For even if he has committed sins,” it says, “they will be forgiven him.” To stand up for those who are wronged, not to be angry, to bear all things gently. If, then, before learning that it is possible to wash away sins through repentance, you were not in anguish, knowing that there is no other washing, and you despaired of yourselves, now that you have learned by how many means repentance and forgiveness are achieved, and that we shall be able to escape everything if we will use it as we should, what pardon would we obtain if we did not even call our sins to mind? For if this were done, all would be accomplished. For just as he who has gone in at the door is inside, so is he who reckons up his own evils. For if he reckons them up every day, he will certainly come to their cure too; but if he says, “I am a sinner,” but does not reckon them up one by one and say, “I committed this sin and that,” he will never stop, always confessing but never caring about amendment. For if he begins, all the rest follows, if he shows an entrance; for everywhere the beginning and the opening … Let us begin, then, I beg you, one by intensifying his prayers, another by weeping continually, another by being downcast; for not even this, small as it is, is without profit: “I saw,” it says, “that he was grieved, and went about gloomy, and I healed his ways.” And let all of us, by almsgiving, by forgiving our neighbors their sins, by not bearing grudges nor taking revenge, humble our souls. If we continually call to mind the sins we have committed, nothing outward will be able to lift us up, not wealth, not power, not office, not honor; but even if … bitter. For the blessed David too was a king, and said, “I will wash my bed every night”; and [was lifted up] in nothing by the purple and the diadem, [but remembered that he was] a man; and since he had a broken heart, he lamented. For what are human things? Ash and dust, and like chaff before the face of the wind; smoke and shadow, a leaf carried about and a flower, a dream and a tale and a fable, wind and slack air simply flowing away, a feather that does not stand still, a stream running past, and anything more worthless than these. For what, tell me, do you think great? What rank do you consider great? That of consul? For most people think there is no rank greater than this. Yet, compared with one who has been in such splendor, who has been greatly admired, the man who is not consul has nothing less; this one and that are in the same rank; both alike in a little while are no more. When was he made one, for how long a time, tell me? Two days? This happens in dreams too. “But that,” one says, “is a dream.” And what of it? Is what happens by day not a dream? Tell me, why do we not rather call these things a dream? For just as dreams, when day overtakes them, are proved to be nothing, so these things too, when night overtakes them, are proved to be nothing; for night and day have received equal shares of time, and have divided all time equally between them. Just as, then, one does not rejoice by day in what happened by night, so neither is it possible by night to enjoy what was by day. Have you been consul? So have I. But you by day, I by night. And what of it? Not even so do you have anything more than I, unless perhaps being called “So-and-so the consul,” and having the pleasure of the words, makes you have more. For example (for I will say it more clearly), if I say, “So-and-so is consul,” and grant you the word, was it not said and gone at once? So too are the things themselves: as soon as he appeared as consul, he is no more. But let us suppose it is a year, and two years, and three, and four; where then are those who have been consul ten times? Nowhere. But Paul is not so; for he was glorious throughout while living, not one day, nor two, nor ten, not twenty, not thirty, nor for ten years and twenty and thirty; but since he died, the four hundredth year has now passed, and still even now he is more glorious, and much more glorious than when he lived. And these things are on earth; but the glory of the saints in heaven, what speech will set it forth? So, I beg you, let us seek this glory, let us pursue this, so that we may obtain it; for this is truly glory. Let us withdraw at last from the things of this life, so that we may find grace and mercy in Christ Jesus our Lord, with whom to the Father, together with the Holy Spirit, be glory, might, honor and worship, now and always and to the ages of ages. Amen.