Homilies on John 59.1–60.1

“And they cast him out. Jesus heard that they had cast him out, and having found him, he said to him, ‘Do you believe in the Son of God?’ He answered and said, ‘And who is he, Lord, that I may believe in him?’” and so on. Those who suffer something terrible and are insulted for the truth and for confessing Christ are the ones most honored. For as the one who loses money for his sake is the one who most finds it, and the one who hates his life is the one who most loves it, so too the one who is insulted is the one most honored; which happened in the case of the blind man. The Jews cast him out of the temple, and the Master of the temple found him. He was rid of the pestilent council, and came upon the spring of salvation; he was dishonored by those who dishonored Christ, and honored by the Master of the angels. Such are the prizes of truth. So we too, if we give up money here, find boldness there; if here we give to the afflicted, we shall rest in heaven; if we are insulted for God’s sake, we are honored both here and there. “When they had cast him out of the temple, Jesus found him.” The evangelist shows that he came for this purpose, to meet him. And see with what he repays him: with the chief of good things. For he made himself known to him, who did not know him before, and enrolled him in the company of his own disciples. And consider how exactly the evangelist relates it. For when he said, “Do you believe in the Son of God?”, he says, “Lord, and who is he?” For he did not yet know him, though he had been healed. For he was blind before he came to his benefactor, and after the healing he was dragged about by those dogs. So, like the president of the games, he receives the athlete who has toiled much and been crowned. And what does he say? “Do you believe in the Son of God?” What is this? After so much disputing with the Jews, after so many words, he asks, “Do you believe?”, not because he did not know, but wishing to make himself known, and showing that he valued his faith highly. “So great a people insulted me,” he says, “but I take no account of them; I care for one thing, that you believe.” For one who does the will of the Lord is better than ten thousand lawless men. “Do you believe in the Son of God?” He questions him as one who was present and approved what had been said; and he first set him longing for himself. For he did not say, “Believe at once,” but put it as a question. What then does the man say? “And who is he, Lord, that I may believe in him?” The words of a soul longing and eagerly seeking. He does not know the one for whom he had said so much, so that you may learn his love of truth; for he had not yet seen him. “He said to him, ‘You have seen him, and it is he who is speaking with you.’” He did not say, “I am he [who healed you]”, but still in a middle way and with reserve: “You have seen him.” This was still unclear; so he added the plainer words, “It is he who is speaking with you.” “He said, ‘Lord, I believe,’ and he worshiped him” at once. And he did not say, “I am the one who healed you, who said to you, ‘Go, wash in Siloam,’” but, passing over all that in silence, he says, “Do you believe in the Son of God?” Then the man, showing his great affection, worshiped him at once, which few of those who were healed did, such as the lepers and perhaps one other; by this he showed his divine power. For so that no one might think that what was said was merely a word, he added the deed too. When he had worshiped him, Christ says, “For judgment I came into this world, that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become blind.” Paul too says this: “What then shall we say? That Gentiles who did not pursue righteousness have attained righteousness, the righteousness that is by faith in Jesus; but Israel, pursuing a law of righteousness, did not attain to the law of righteousness.” And by saying, “For judgment I came into this world,” he made the man more firm in his faith, and roused those who were following him; for Pharisees were following him. By “for judgment” he meant “for greater punishment,” showing that those who had condemned him are the ones condemned, and that those who judged him a sinner are the ones judged. Here he speaks of two kinds of sight and two kinds of blindness, the bodily and the spiritual. “Some of those who were following him said to him, ‘Are we also blind?’” As elsewhere they said, “We have never been enslaved to anyone,” and, “We were not born of sexual immorality,” so now too they gape only at things of sense, and are ashamed of this blindness. Then, showing that it would be better for them to be blind than to see, he says, “If you were blind, you would have no sin.” Since they thought the misfortune a matter of shame, he turned it back on their own heads, saying, “This would have brought you a more tolerable punishment,” everywhere cutting down human thoughts and leading them to a great and wonderful understanding. “But now you say, ‘We see.’” As there he says, “of whom you say that he is your God,” so here too: “But now you say that you see; for you do not see.” Here he shows that what they thought a great praise brings them punishment. And he consoled the man blind from birth for his former blindness; then he speaks of their blindness. For so that they might not say, “It is not because of our blindness that we do not come to you, but we turn away from you, fleeing you as a deceiver,” he makes all his discourse on this point.

The evangelist did not mention without purpose that “some of the Pharisees who were with him heard these things and said, ‘Are we also blind?’”, but to remind you that these were the men who had earlier drawn away and then stoned him. For there were some who followed superficially and were easily changed to the opposite. How then does he establish that he is not a deceiver but a shepherd? By setting down the marks of each, of the shepherd and of the deceiver and destroyer, and by these giving them the means to examine the truth of the matter. And first he shows who the deceiver and the thief is, calling him so from the Scriptures and saying, “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever does not enter the sheepfold by the door [but climbs in another way, that man is a thief] and a robber.” See the marks of the robber: first, that he does not enter openly; second, that he does not enter according to the Scriptures; for this is the meaning of “not by the door.” Here he hints at those before him and those who would come after him: the Antichrist and the false christs, Judas and Theudas, and any others of that kind. And he rightly called the Scriptures a door. For they bring us to God and open the knowledge of God; they make sheep; they guard them and do not let the wolves come in. For like a secure door, they shut out the heretics, setting us in safety about all things we wish, and not letting us go astray. And if we do not undo it, we shall not be easily overcome by our enemies. Through it we shall know all, both the shepherds and those who are not shepherds. What is “into the fold”? To the sheep and to their care. For one who does not use the Scriptures, but “climbs in by another way,” that is, cutting for himself another way and not the established one, “he is a thief.” Do you see here too that he agrees with the Father, by bringing forward the Scriptures? That is why he said to the Jews, “Search the Scriptures,” and brought Moses forward and called him as a witness, and all the prophets. “For all,” he says, “who have heard the prophets will come to me”; and, “If you believed Moses, you would believe me.” Here he put the same thing in a metaphor. And by saying, “climbs in by another way,” [he hints at the scribes, for they taught] “as doctrines the commandments of men” and transgressed the law; which he himself reproached them with, saying, “None of you keeps the law.” And he said well, “climbs in,” not “enters,” which is the act of a thief wishing to leap over the wall and doing everything at risk. Do you see how he sketched the robber? Consider also the mark of the shepherd. What is it? “He who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep. To him the gatekeeper opens, and the sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own by name, and when he brings them out, he goes before them.” He has set down the marks of the shepherd and of the destroyer. Let us see again how he applied what follows to them. “To him,” he says, “the gatekeeper opens.” He kept to the metaphor, so as to make the discourse more vivid. But if you wish to examine the parable word by word, nothing prevents us from understanding the gatekeeper here as Moses; for he was the one entrusted with the oracles of God. “And the sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own by name.” For since they kept saying that he was a deceiver, and confirmed this from their own unbelief, saying, “Has any of the rulers believed in him?”, he shows that he ought not to be called a destroyer and deceiver because of their unbelief, but that they, because they did not attend to him, were rightly cast out of the rank of the sheep. For if it belongs to a shepherd to enter by the established door, and he entered by it, all who followed him might be sheep; but those who broke away did not discredit the shepherd, but cast themselves out of the kinship of the sheep. And if, going on, he says that he himself is the door, again we must not be disturbed. For he calls himself both shepherd and sheep, and proclaims his dispensations in different ways. When he brings us to the Father, he calls himself the door; when he cares for us, the shepherd. For so that you may not think that bringing us is his only work, he calls himself the shepherd too. “And the sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep, and leads them out, and he himself goes before them.” Yet shepherds do the opposite, following behind them. But he, showing that he will lead all to the truth, does the opposite of them; as also when he sent out the sheep, he sent them not out of the way of the wolves, but into the midst of wolves. For this shepherding is much more wonderful than ours. He seems to me to be hinting at the blind man too. For he called him and led him out from the midst of the Jews, and the man heard his voice and recognized it. “But a stranger they will not follow, for they do not know the voice of strangers.” Here he speaks either of Theudas and Judas and their followers (for “all who believed them were scattered,” it says), or of the false christs who would deceive afterwards. For so that they might not say that he was one of those, he separates himself from them in many ways. First he sets down as a difference the teaching from the Scriptures; for he brought them to himself through these, whereas those men did not draw them from this source. Second, the obedience of the sheep; for in him all believed, not only while he lived, but even after he died, whereas they abandoned those men at once. And one may add a third difference, not a small one: those men did everything like tyrants and for revolt, whereas he put himself so far from such a suspicion that he fled when they wished to make him king, and when they asked whether it was lawful to pay the census to Caesar, he bade them pay it, and himself paid the double drachma. Besides this, he came for the salvation of the sheep, “that they may have life, and have it abundantly,” he says; but those men deprived them even of the present life. And they betrayed those entrusted to them and fled; but he stood so nobly as to give up even his life. And they suffered what they suffered unwillingly, under compulsion, and while fleeing; but he endured everything willingly and by choice. “This figure Jesus spoke to them, but they did not understand what he was saying to them.” And why did he speak to them obscurely? Wishing to make them more attentive. Having achieved this, he then resolves the obscurity, saying, “I am the door; if anyone enters by me, he will go in and out and find pasture”; that is, he will be in safety and security (by “pasture” he here means the food and grazing of the sheep, and authority and lordship), that is, “He will remain inside, and no one will thrust him out”; which happened with the apostles, who went in and out freely, as having become lords of the whole world, and no one could cast them out. “All who came are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not hear them.” He does not speak here of the prophets, as the heretics say (for the sheep heard them, and through them believed, those who believed in Christ), but of Theudas and Judas and the other rebels. And besides, he said, “The sheep did not hear,” by way of praise; but nowhere does he appear to praise those who disobeyed the prophets, but on the contrary to blame and condemn them severely. So it is clear that “they did not hear” is said here of those rebels. “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy”; which happened then, when all were slaughtered and perished. “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” And what is more abundant than life, tell me? The kingdom of heaven. But he does not yet say this, but keeps to the word “life,” which was familiar to them. “I am the good shepherd.” Here he now speaks of the passion, showing that it happens for the salvation of the world, and that he does not come to it unwillingly. Then he gives the mark of the shepherd, and again of the hireling. “The good shepherd lays down his life [for the sheep]; but the hireling, who is not a shepherd, whose own the sheep are not, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees, and the wolf comes and snatches them.” Here he shows that he has authority as the Father has, since he himself is the shepherd and the sheep are his own. Do you see how in the parables he speaks more loftily, where the discourse is veiled and gives no open handle to the hearers? What then does this hireling do? “He sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep, and the wolf comes and snatches them.” This is what those men did; but he did the opposite. For when he was arrested, he said, “Let these men go,” so that the word might be fulfilled, that “none of them was lost.” One may also understand a spiritual wolf here. For he did not let him either go off and snatch the sheep. And he is not only a wolf, but a lion too; for “our enemy the devil,” it says, “prowls around like a roaring lion.” He is a serpent too, and a dragon: “Tread upon serpents and scorpions.”

So, I beg you, let us remain feeding under the shepherd; and we shall remain if we hear his voice, if we obey him, if we do not follow a stranger. And what is his voice? “Blessed are the poor in spirit; blessed are the pure in heart; blessed are the merciful.” If we do these things, we shall remain under the shepherd, and the wolf will not be able to get in; or even if he attacks, he will do it to his own harm. For we have a shepherd who loves us so much that he gave up his life for us. When, then, he is both powerful and loving, what is there to prevent us from being saved? Nothing, unless we ourselves fall away. And how shall we fall away? Hear him saying, “You cannot serve two masters, God and mammon.” If, then, we serve the former, we shall not submit to the latter’s tyranny. For the desire of money is more bitter than any tyranny. For it has no pleasure, but cares and envies and plots and hatred and false accusations, and countless hindrances to virtue: slackness, licentiousness, greed, drunkenness; which make even the free slaves, and worse than slaves bought with money, and slaves not of men but of the harshest of the passions and diseases of the soul. Such a man dares many things that please neither God nor men, fearing lest someone take this lordship from him. O bitter slavery and devilish domination! For this is the hardest thing of all, that while held fast in such evils we take pleasure in them, and embrace the chain, and, living in a prison full of darkness, do not wish to come out into the light, but tighten the evils on ourselves and delight in the disease. So we cannot even be freed, but are in a worse state than those who work in the mines, enduring the toil and the misery but not enjoying the fruits. And worst of all, even if someone wishes to free us from this bitter captivity, we do not bear it, but are vexed, [being no better than madmen, or rather] far more wretched than all those, inasmuch as we do not even wish to be freed from the madness. Were you brought into this world, O man, for this? Were you made a man for this, to work these mines and gather gold? Not for this did he fashion you in his image, but that you might please him, that you might attain the good things to come, [that you might share the company of the angels. Why] then do you cast yourself out of such kinship and thrust yourself into the utmost dishonor and ignobility? The one who was born of the same birth-pangs as you (I mean the spiritual birth-pangs) is wasting away with hunger, while you burst with surfeit. Your brother goes about with his body naked, while you provide garments for your garments, building a fortress of such clothing for the moths. And how much better it would be to clothe the bodies of the poor! For so they would remain safe from destruction, and would free you from all care, and would bring you the life to come. For if you do not wish them to become moth-eaten, give them to the poor; for they are the ones who know how to shake out these garments well. For the body of Christ is more precious and safer than a chest. For it not only keeps the garments, nor only preserves them from destruction, but also makes them more splendid. The chest has often been taken with the garments and involved you in the utmost loss; but not even death can harm this safekeeping. For here we need no doors and bars, no wakeful servants, no other security of that kind. For they are beyond all plotting and are laid up in safekeeping, as is natural for things laid up in heaven. For that place is inaccessible to all wickedness. We do not cease always saying these things, nor do you, hearing them, obey. And the cause is that we are of a mean soul, gaping toward the earth and dragging along the ground. Or rather, may it not be that I condemn all of you of wickedness, as though all were incurably sick. For even if those drunk with wealth block their hearing against what is said, those who live with poverty will be able to look toward what is said. “And what has this to do with the poor?” someone says. “For they have no gold, nor so many garments.” But they have bread and cold water; but they have two obols, and feet to visit the sick; but a tongue and speech to comfort the [bedridden; but a house and roof to take in] the stranger. For we do not demand so many talents of gold from the poor, but these things from the rich. And if anyone is poor and goes to the doors of others, our Master is not ashamed to receive even an obol; but he will even say that he has received more from him than from those who threw in much. How many of those standing here prayed to have lived at that time when Christ went about the earth in the flesh, so as to live with him and eat with him? See, now it is possible to do this, and to invite him to dinner and be feasted with him, and with greater gain. For of those who dined with him then, many perished, such as Judas and others of the same kind; but each of those who now invite him into his own house and share with him their table and roof will enjoy a great blessing. “For come, [you who are blessed of my Father,] inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry, and you gave me food; I was thirsty, and you gave me drink; I was a stranger, and you welcomed me; I was sick, and you visited me; I was in prison, and you came to me.” So that we may hear these words, then, let us feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, visit the sick, see the one in prison, so that we may enjoy boldness, receive forgiveness of sins, and share in those good things that surpass both word and mind; may we all attain them, by the grace and love for humankind of our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom be glory and might to the ages of ages. Amen.

“I am the good shepherd; I know my own, and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep.” A great thing, beloved, a great thing is the leadership of the church, requiring much wisdom and as much courage as Christ spoke of: to lay down one’s life for the sheep, never to leave them deserted and stripped, to stand nobly against the wolf. For in this the shepherd differs from the hireling. The one [always looks to his own safety, and cares nothing for the sheep; the other] everywhere seeks the safety of the sheep, passing over his own. So, having stated the marks of the shepherd, he sets down two kinds of destroyers: one, the thief who kills and snatches; the other, one who does none of these things, but when they happen does not take notice or prevent them; by the former hinting at Theudas and his followers, and by the latter at the teachers of the Jews, [who took no thought for] the sheep entrusted to them. Which Ezekiel too long ago said, accusing them: “O shepherds of Israel, do shepherds feed themselves? Do not the shepherds feed the sheep?” But they did the opposite, which is the greatest form of wickedness and the cause of all the others. For this reason, it says, “they did not bring back the strayed, nor seek the lost, nor bind up the broken, nor heal the sick,” since they fed themselves and not the sheep. Paul too showed this again in other words, saying, “For they all seek their own interests, not those of Christ Jesus,” and again, “Let no one seek his own good, but each that of his neighbor.” But Christ separates himself from both: from those who came to destroy, by saying, “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly”; and from those who look on while the sheep are snatched by the wolves, by not abandoning them, but even laying down his life for them, so that the sheep might not die. For when they wished to kill him, he neither changed his teaching nor betrayed those who believed, but stood firm and chose to die. That is why he kept saying, “I am the good shepherd.” Then, since what he said seemed to be without proof (for “I lay down my life” received its demonstration not long after, while “that they may have life, and have it abundantly” was to come about after his departure from here, in the age to come), what does he do? He confirms the one from the other: from his giving his life, that he also gives life. As Paul too said, “For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death [of his Son, much more, being reconciled,] shall we be saved.” And again elsewhere: “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?” But why do they not now charge him as before, saying, “You testify about yourself; your testimony is not true”? Because he had often silenced them, and his boldness toward them had grown from the signs. Then, since he had said above, “And the sheep [hear his voice and follow] him,” so that no one might say, “What then of those who did not believe?”, hear what he added: “And I know my own, and my own know me.” Which Paul too showed, saying, “God has not rejected his people, whom he foreknew”; and Moses: “The Lord knew those who are his.” “I mean those,” he says, “whom I foreknew.” Then, so that you may not think the measure of the knowledge is equal, hear how he corrects this by what he adds: “I know my own,” he says, “and my own know me. But the knowledge is not equal. Where then is it equal? In the case of the Father and myself.” For there it is, “just as the Father knows me and I know the Father.” For if he did not wish to establish this, why did he add it? For since he often places himself in the rank of the many, so that no one might think that he knew as a man knows, he added, “just as the Father knows me and I know the Father”: “I know him as exactly as he knows me.” That is why he also said, “No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son,” speaking of a knowledge set apart, such as no one else can have. “I lay down my life.” He says this continually, showing that he is not a deceiver. For the apostle too, when he wished to show that he was a genuine teacher, and set his account against the false apostles, commends himself by his dangers and deaths, saying, “with countless beatings, often near death.” For to say, “I am the light,” and, “I am the life,” seemed to the foolish to be pride; but to say, “I wish to die,” had nothing invidious or envious in it. That is why they do not say to him, “You testify about yourself; your testimony is not true.” For the saying showed great care for them, if indeed he wished to give himself up for those who were stoning him.