Homilies on the Gospel of Matthew 16.11–17.4

Some say that by the name of “adversary” he hints at the devil himself, and bids us have nothing of his, for this is what being well disposed toward him means, since it is not possible to settle after our departure from here, when inexorable punishment awaits us thereafter. But to me he seems to be speaking about the judges here, and the road to the court, and this prison. For since he had shamed them from the higher things and the things to come, he frightens them also from those in the present life. This is what Paul too does, leading on the hearer both from the things to come and from the present ones. For example, when turning men away from vice, he shows the evildoer the ruler armed, speaking thus: “But if you do evil, be afraid; for he does not bear the sword in vain; for he is God’s minister.” And again, bidding us be subject to him, he puts forward not only the fear of God but also that one’s threat and his care: “Therefore one must be subject, not only because of wrath but also because of conscience.” For, as I said before, the things that are visible and close at hand are accustomed to set right the more unreasoning sort. That is why Christ too mentioned not only hell but also the court and being led away and the prison and all the misery there, by all these removing the roots of murder. For he who neither reviles nor goes to law nor prolongs enmity, how will he ever commit murder? So it is clear from this too that our advantage lies in our neighbor’s advantage. For he who is well disposed toward his adversary will benefit himself much more, freeing himself from courts and prisons and the misery there.

Let us obey, then, what is said, and not resist nor contend in return; for above all, even before the prizes, these commands have pleasure and benefit in themselves. And if to the many they seem oppressive and to give much toil, consider that you do these things for Christ’s sake, and what is painful will be sweet. For if we keep this thought always, we shall experience nothing burdensome, but shall reap much pleasure from every side. For the toil will no longer appear toil, but the more it is intensified, the sweeter and more pleasant it becomes. When, then, the [habit] of evil things persists in bewitching you, and the desire for money, set against it that thought which says that we shall receive a great reward by despising momentary pleasure; and say to your soul: “Are you very dejected because I deprive you of pleasure? But rejoice, because I am procuring heaven for you. You do it not for man’s sake, but for God’s. Bear up, then, a little, and you will see how great the gain is. Endure in the present life, and you will receive unspeakable boldness.” For if we reason with it in this way, and do not consider only the burdensomeness of virtue but also reckon up its crown, we shall quickly draw it away from all vice. For if the devil, though he shows pleasure to be momentary and pain to be continual, nevertheless prevails and wins, when with us these things are the other way round, the toilsome momentary and the pleasant and profitable deathless, what excuse will we have if we do not pursue virtue after so much encouragement? For the purpose of our toils is enough for us in place of everything, and being clearly persuaded that we endure all these things for God’s sake. For if a man who has the king as his debtor thinks he has security enough for his whole life, consider how great will be the one who has made the God who loves mankind and lives forever his debtor for good deeds small and great. Do not, then, put forward to me toils and sweat. For God has made virtue light not only by the hope of things to come but also in another way, lending us a hand everywhere and helping us. And if only you are willing to bring a little zeal, everything else follows. For this reason … For as a king wants his own son to be present at the battle, and to shoot, and to be seen, so that the trophy may be reckoned to him, while he himself accomplishes the whole, so too God does in the war against the devil. For he asks one thing only of you, that you show genuine enmity toward him; and if you give him this, he himself accomplishes the whole war. Even if anger is blazing, even if the desire for money, even if any other tyrannical passion, he comes quickly, if only he sees you stripped for the contest against it and prepared; and he makes everything easy, and sets you above the flame, as he did those youths then in the Babylonian furnace; for they too brought nothing more than their resolve.

So that we too, then, quenching here every furnace of disorderly pleasure, may escape hell there, let us deliberate and take thought and act on these things every day, drawing God’s goodwill by our purpose toward the good and by frequent prayers. For so even the things that now seem unbearable will be very easy and light and lovely. For as long as we are in the passions, we think virtue rough and hard and uphill, and vice desirable and most pleasant; but if we stand back from them a little, then the latter will appear loathsome and ugly, and the former easy and smooth and desirable. And this can be clearly learned from those who have achieved it. Hear, at any rate, how Paul is ashamed of the former even after his release from them, saying, “For what fruit did you have then in the things of which you are now ashamed?”; while the latter he calls light even after the toil, calling the toilsome affliction momentary and light, and rejoicing in sufferings, and exulting in afflictions, and thinking highly of the marks borne for Christ. So that we too, then, may be established in this habit, ordering ourselves every day by what has been said, forgetting what lies behind and stretching forward to what lies ahead, let us press on toward the prize of the upward call; which may we all obtain, by the grace and love for mankind of our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory and the might to the ages of ages. Amen.

“You have heard that it was said to the ancients, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman to desire her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” Having completed the first commandment and stretched it to the height of philosophy, proceeding now by method and order, he goes on to the second, obeying the law here too. “And yet this is not the second,” someone says, “but the third. For the first is not ‘You shall not kill,’ but ‘The Lord your God is one Lord.’” So it is worth asking why he did not begin from there. Why, then? Because if he had begun from there, he would have had to heighten that one too and bring himself in along with it. But it was not yet the time to teach anything of the kind about himself. Besides, for the time being he was training them in moral teaching, wishing first by this and by the miracles to persuade his hearers that he was the Son of God. For to say at once, before saying or doing anything, “You have heard that it was said to the ancients, ‘I am the Lord your God, and besides me there is no other’; but I say to you, worship me too, as him,” would have made everyone attend to him as to a madman. For if even after his teaching and so many signs, when he was not yet saying this openly, they called him possessed by a demon, if before all these things he had attempted to say anything of the kind, what would they not have said, what would they not have thought? But by keeping the teaching about these things for the fitting time, he made the doctrine easy for the many to receive. That is why he now passed it by; and having established it everywhere from the signs and from his excellent teaching, later he revealed it in words too. For the present, by the display of the signs and by the very manner of his teaching, he opens it a little, gradually and gently. For to legislate and correct such things with authority led the attentive and sensible hearer little by little to the meaning of the doctrine. “For they were astonished at him,” it says, “because he did not teach as their scribes.”

For beginning from the most general of our passions, I mean anger and desire (for these above all are the tyrants in us, and more natural than the others), with great authority, and as much as befitted a lawgiver, he both corrected them and ordered them with all precision. For he did not say only that the adulterer is punished, but what he did in the case of the murderer he does here too, punishing even the licentious look, so that you may learn where he puts the “more” beyond the scribes. That is why he says, “He who looks at a woman to desire her has already committed adultery with her”; that is, he who makes it his business to pry into beautiful bodies, to hunt after comely faces, to feast his soul on the sight, and to nail his eyes on fair countenances. For he came to free not only the body from wicked deeds but, before it, the soul too. For since we receive the grace of the Spirit in the heart, he cleanses it first.

“And how is it possible,” someone says, “to be rid of desire?” First, if we are willing, it is possible for this too to be put to death and to remain inactive. Besides, here he does not simply remove desire, but the desire that comes from looking. For he who is eager to look at comely faces is the very one who most kindles the furnace of the passion, makes his soul captive, and soon comes to the act too. That is why he did not say, “whoever desires so as to commit adultery,” but “whoever looks so as to desire.” And in the case of anger he set a qualification, saying “without cause” and “for nothing”; but here not so, but he removed desire once for all. And yet both are implanted in us, and both lie in us usefully, anger and desire: the one so that we may punish the wicked and correct the disorderly; the other so that we may beget children and our race may be held together by such successions. Why then did he not set a qualification here too? Indeed, if you pay attention, you will see a very great qualification lying here too. For he did not simply say, “whoever desires” (since one can desire even while sitting on the mountains), but, “whoever looks so as to desire”; that is, he who gathers desire for himself, who with nothing compelling him brings the wild beast in upon a reasoning that is at rest. For this no longer comes from nature but from indolence. This the Old Testament too corrects long before, saying, “Do not gaze at another’s beauty.” Then, so that no one might say, “What then if I gaze and am not caught?” he punishes the look, lest, emboldened by this impunity, you should at some time fall into sin. “What then,” someone says, “if I look and desire, but do nothing wicked?” Even so you stand with the adulterers. For the lawgiver has pronounced, and there is no need to inquire further. For if you look in this way once, twice, three times, perhaps you will be able to master yourself; but if you do this continually and kindle the furnace, you will certainly be caught; for you do not stand outside human nature. As, then, if we see a child holding a knife, even if we do not see it struck, we beat it and forbid it ever to hold one, so God too removes the licentious look even before the deed, lest it should ever fall into the deed. For he who has once kindled the flame, even when the woman he saw is absent, continually fashions within himself images of shameful things, and from them often goes on to the deed. That is why Christ removes even the embrace in the heart.

What then would those say who have virgins living with them? For by the setting of this law they would be liable for countless adulteries, looking at them every day with desire. That is why the blessed [Job] too laid down this law for himself from the beginning, walling off from himself every such gazing. For the struggle is greater after seeing and not enjoying the beloved; and we do not reap as much pleasure from the sight as the ruin we endure from increasing the desire, making our adversary strong and giving the devil more room, and no longer able to repel him when we have let him into the innermost parts and thrown open our mind to him. Therefore do not commit adultery with your eyes, and you will not commit adultery in your mind. For there is another way of looking too, as the chaste look. That is why he did not simply remove looking, but looking with desire. If he had not meant this, he would have said, “He who looks at a woman,” simply; but as it is he did not speak so, but, “he who looks so as to desire,” he who looks so as to delight his sight. For God did not make your eyes for this, that you might bring in adultery through them, but that, seeing his creatures, you might admire the Creator. As, then, it is possible to be angry without cause, so it is possible to look without cause, when you do it for desire. For if you want to look and take delight, look at your own wife and love her always; no law forbids it. But if you are going to pry into others’ beauty, you wrong her by letting your eyes wander elsewhere, and you wrong the one you looked at by touching her unlawfully. For even if you did not touch her with your hand, you handled her with your eyes; that is why this too is reckoned adultery, and even before that punishment it brings on a punishment of no ordinary kind. For all within is filled with tumult and disturbance, the storm is great and the pain most grievous, and the man who suffers this will be in no better state than captives and prisoners. And often the woman who shot the arrow has flown away, but the wound remains even so. Or rather, it was not she who shot the arrow, but you who dealt yourself a mortal wound by looking licentiously.

And I say these things to free chaste women from the charge. For if a woman should adorn herself and call to herself the eyes of those she meets, even if she does not wound the one who comes upon her, she pays the utmost penalty. For she mixed the poison and prepared the hemlock, even if she did not offer the cup; or rather she even offered the cup, even if no one was found to drink. “Why then does he not speak to them too?” someone says. Because he lays down his laws everywhere in common, even if he seems to address men only; for in speaking to the head, he makes his exhortation common to the whole body as well. For he knows man and woman to be one living being, and nowhere divides the race.

And if you want to hear the rebuke directed specifically against them, hear Isaiah saying much addressed to them and mocking their bearing, their glance, their gait, their trailing tunics, their tripping feet, their bent necks. Hear after him the blessed Paul too, laying down many laws for them, about garments and gold and braiding of hair and luxury and other such things, and rebuking this sex sharply. And Christ too showed this very thing in a veiled way by what follows; for when he says, “Pluck out and cut off the one who causes you to stumble,” he speaks showing his anger against them. That is why he added, “If your right eye causes you to stumble, pluck it out and throw it from you.” For so that one might not say, “What then if she is a relative? What then if she is otherwise connected to me?” he gave these commands, not speaking about limbs, away with the thought! For nowhere does he say that the charges belong to the flesh, but everywhere the accusation is of the wicked will. For it is not the eye that sees, but the mind and the reasoning. Often, at any rate, when we are turned elsewhere, the eye does not see those present; so the whole is not of its working. For if he had been speaking about limbs, he would not have spoken about one eye, nor about the right one only, but about both. For he who is caused to stumble by the right one will clearly suffer the same from the left too. Why then did he put the right one, and add the hand? So that you may learn that the discourse is not about limbs but about those closely related to us. For “if you love someone so much,” he says, “as to have him in place of a right eye, or think him so useful as to hold the rank of a hand, and he harms your soul, cut these off too.” And see the emphasis. For he did not say, “Stand away,” but, showing the great separation, “pluck it out,” he says, “and throw it from you.” Then, since he had commanded severely, he shows the gain on both sides, both from the good things and from the evil, keeping to the metaphor: “For it is better for you,” he says, “that one of your members perish, than that your whole body be thrown into hell.” For when he neither saves himself and destroys you as well, what love for mankind is it for both to be drowned, when by separating at least one could be saved? “Why then did Paul choose to become accursed?” someone says. Not so as to gain nothing, but so that others might be saved. But here the harm comes to both; that is why he did not say only, “pluck it out,” but also, “throw it from you,” so as no longer to take it back, if he remains such. For in this way you will both free him from a greater charge and set yourself free from destruction. And so that you may see the gain of the law more clearly, let us, if you will, examine what was said in the case of the body, as a supposition. For if a choice were set before you, and it were necessary either to keep the eye and be thrown into a pit and perish, or to pluck it out and save the rest of the body, would you not accept the second? That is plain to everyone. For this would be the act not of one hating the eye but of one loving the rest of the body. Reason the same way in the case of men and women. For if the one who harms you by his friendship should remain incurable, being cut off in this way he will both free you from all ruin and himself be freed from the greater charges, no longer giving account for his own evils together with your destruction. Do you see how full of gentleness and care the law is, and how great a love for mankind what seems to the many to be severity displays? Let those who hasten to the theaters hear these things, who make themselves adulterers every day. For if the law bids us cut off one who is our own when he does harm, what defense could they have who every day draw to themselves, through their time spent there, people not yet even known to them, and prepare for themselves countless occasions of destruction? For he no longer allows even looking licentiously; but since he had shown the harm from the thing, he even intensifies the law as he goes on, bidding us cut off and sever and throw far away. And he who has spoken countless words about love lays down these laws, so that from both sides you may learn his providence, and how in every way he seeks what is good for you.

“It was said, ‘Whoever puts away his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.’ But I say to you that whoever puts away his wife, except for the cause of sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery; and whoever marries a woman who has been put away commits adultery.”

He does not go on to what lies ahead until he has cleaned out the former things well. For see, he shows us yet another kind of adultery. What is this? There was an old law laid down that the man who hated his own wife for any cause whatever was not prevented from casting her out and bringing in another in her place. Yet the law did not bid him do this simply, but by giving the woman a certificate of divorce, so that she would not be free to return to him again, so that at least the form of marriage might remain. For if it had not commanded this, but it had been allowed to cast her out and take another and then bring back the first, there would have been great confusion, with everyone continually taking one another’s wives, and the thing would then have been plain adultery. That is why he devised no small mitigation, the certificate of divorce. And these things came about because of another, much greater wickedness. For if he had compelled the man to keep her inside even when hated, the one who hated her would have slaughtered her; for such was the nation of the Jews. For those who did not spare children, who killed prophets and poured out blood like water, would much less have spared women. That is why he allowed the lesser, cutting out the greater. For that this law was not the primary intention, hear him saying, “Moses wrote these things because of your hardness of heart,” so that you might not slaughter them inside, but cast them out. But since he himself removed all anger, forbidding not only murder but even simply being enraged, he brings in this law too with ease. That is why he always reminds them of the former words, to show that what he says is not contrary to them but in agreement, intensifying them, not overturning them, and correcting, not dissolving.

And see him everywhere speaking to the man. For “he who puts away his wife,” he says, “makes her commit adultery; and he who marries a woman who has been put away commits adultery.” For the one, even if he does not take another, by this very act has made himself liable to the charge, having made her an adulteress; and the other, by taking another man’s wife, has in turn become an adulterer. For do not tell me that he cast her out; for even when cast out she remains the wife of the one who cast her out. Then, so that putting the whole on the one who casts her out might not make the woman more presumptuous, he also shut against her the doors of anyone who would receive her afterward, by saying, “Whoever marries a woman who has been put away commits adultery,” chastening the woman even against her will, walling off from her the entrance to all, and not allowing her to give occasions for pettiness. For she who learns that there is every necessity either to keep the husband allotted to her from the beginning, or, if she is put out of that house, to have no other refuge, was compelled even against her will to love her partner. And if he says nothing to her about these things, do not wonder; for woman is the weaker. That is why, leaving her aside, he corrects her indolence by the threat against the men. Just as if someone who had a prodigal son were to leave him aside and rebuke those who make him such, and forbid them to associate with him or come near him. And if this is burdensome, remember, I beg you, what was said before, for which he called his hearers blessed, and you will see that it is very possible and easy. For the meek man and the peacemaker and the poor in spirit and the merciful, how will he cast out his wife? He who reconciles others, how will he himself quarrel with his own? And not in this way only, but in another way too he made the law light. For he leaves him too one way of release, saying, “except for the cause of sexual immorality”; since otherwise it would come round again to the same thing. For [if] he had commanded him to keep inside even a woman who associates with many, he would again have turned the matter into adultery. Do you see how these things agree with the former ones? For he who does not look at another woman with licentious eyes will not commit sexual immorality; and not committing sexual immorality, he will not give her husband occasion to cast out his own wife. That is why he now builds up fear as a wall with full freedom, shaking before the husband the great danger if he should cast her out; for he makes himself liable for her adultery. For so that, hearing “pluck out the eye,” you might not think that these things are said about a wife too, he opportunely added this further correction, allowing her to be cast out in one way only, and in no other.

“Again, you have heard that it was said to the ancients, ‘You shall not swear falsely, but you shall render to the Lord your oaths.’ But I say to you, do not swear at all.” Why did he not go straight on to theft, but to false witness, passing over that commandment? Because the thief sometimes also swears; but he who knows neither how to swear nor how to lie will much less choose to steal. So by this he overturned that sin too; for falsehood comes from stealing. And what is “You shall render to the Lord your oaths”? That is, you shall tell the truth when you swear. “But I say to you, do not swear at all.”