Homilies on Philemon 3.2

He closed the letter with a prayer. Prayer is a great good, and saving, and a safeguard of our souls; but it is great when we act worthily of it, and do not make ourselves unworthy. You, then, when you come to the priest and he says, “God will have mercy on you, child,” do not trust in the word only, but add works too: do things worthy of mercy. “God will bless you, child” — if you do the things that deserve blessing; he will bless you, if you show mercy to your neighbour. For the things we want to obtain from God we ought first to share with our neighbours; but if we deprive our neighbours of them, how do we want to obtain them? “Blessed,” he says, “are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.” For if men pity such people, much more will God; but those who do not show mercy, no longer; “for judgment is without mercy to one who has shown no mercy.” Mercy is a good thing; what then have you done for another? You want to be pardoned when you offend; why then did you not yourself pardon the one who offended? But you come to God asking for the kingdom of heaven, while you yourself, asked for silver, did not give it. That is why we do not obtain mercy, because we do not show mercy. “Why?” someone says. “Yet this too belongs to mercy, to show mercy to the unmerciful.” But one who has shown kindness to the cruel and harsh man, who does countless evils to his neighbour, how would he be merciful? “What then,” he says, “did not the bath save us when we had done countless evils?” It freed us from them, not that we might do them again, but that we might not do them. “For if we died to sin,” he says, “how shall we still live in it?” “What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law? God forbid!” That is why he freed you from those things, so that you would no longer run back to that dishonour. For doctors heal not so that people may use their health for harm and unworthily (for it would be better to be sick, if one were going to be healthy only to nail himself to the bed again), but so that, having learned the evils of sickness, they may no longer fall into the same things, that they may hold to health more securely, that they may do everything that contributes to it. “How then,” he says, “is God loving, if he is not going to save the wicked?” For in many places I hear many saying this too, that he is loving and will certainly save all. So that we may not deceive ourselves in vain (for I remember making such a promise), come, let us take up this discourse today. I discoursed to you about Gehenna lately, and I postponed the discourse about God's lovingkindness; today, then, it is good to pay it. That there will be a Gehenna I have perhaps sufficiently shown, as it seems to me, by bringing forward the flood and the former evils, and by saying that it is not possible for him who did those things to leave the people of today unpunished. For if he so punished those who sinned before the law, he will not leave unpunished those who did greater evils after grace. The question, then, was: How then is he good, how loving, if he punishes? And we postponed the discourse, so as not to bury your ears under too many words. Come, today let us pay the debt, and show how God is good even in punishing. For this discourse would fit our dealings with the heretics too; so let us attend with earnestness. God made us, needing nothing from us. That he needed nothing he showed by making us afterwards. For if he needed us, he would have made us long ago; but if he existed even without us, and we came into being in later times, he made us without needing us. He made heaven, earth, sea, all things that exist, for our sake. Is this not goodness, tell me? One could say much; but to shorten the discourse: “He makes his sun rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the just and the unjust.” Is this not goodness? “No,” someone says. For I once said to a certain Marcionite, “Are these things not goodness?” And he said, “If he did not demand an account of sins, it would be goodness; but if he demands it, it is not goodness.” But he is not present now. Come, let us say what was said then, and more than this. For I show, out of abundance, that if he did not demand an account, he would not be good; but since he demands it, for this reason he is good. For tell me, if he did not demand an account of us, would human life have stood? Would we not have sunk to the level of beasts? For if, with fear and accounts and courts set over us, we have outdone the fish in devouring one another, have outshone lions and wolves in snatching each other's goods; if he did not demand an account of us, and we were persuaded of this, with how much confusion and turmoil would life have been filled? What would the fabled labyrinth be beside the disorder of the world? Would you not have seen countless absurdities and disorders? For who would respect a father any more? Who would spare a mother? Who would have abstained from any pleasure, any wickedness? And that these things are so, I will try to persuade you from one house alone. How? If, of you who ask these questions and have servants, I make it plain to them that, even if they ruin your property and outrage your persons, even if they carry everything off and turn everything upside down and treat you as enemies, you will not threaten, will not punish, will not take vengeance, will not even grieve them with words: does this seem to be goodness? But I show that it is the utmost cruelty, not only because wife and children are betrayed through this untimely kindness, but also because the servants themselves perish before them. For they will be drunkards and licentious and dissolute and insolent and more irrational than all beasts. Is this goodness, tell me, to trample on the nobility of the soul, and to destroy both themselves and one another? Do you see that demanding accounts is what belongs to great kindness? And why do I speak of servants, who come more readily to these sins? Let someone have sons, and let him allow them to dare everything, and not punish them; whom will they not be worse than, tell me? Then with men punishing is goodness and not punishing is cruelty, but with God not? So, because he is good, he prepared Gehenna. Do you want me to tell another goodness of God too? Not only this, but also that he does not let the good become bad. For if they were to receive the same things, all would be bad; but as it is, this too consoles the good not a little. For hear the Prophet saying, “The righteous will rejoice when he sees the vengeance on the ungodly; he will wash his hands in the blood of the sinner.” Not rejoicing over it — God forbid! — but fearing lest he suffer the same things, he will make his own life purer. So this belongs to great care. “Yes,” someone says, “but he should only threaten, and not punish too.” If he punishes, and you say that the thing is a threat, and on this account become slacker, if it really were only a threat, would you not have become more careless? If the Ninevites had known that the thing was only a threat, they would not have repented; but since they repented, they made the threat stop at words. Do you want it to be a threat? You are master of the matter: become better, and it stops at the threat; but if — may it be far from you! — you despise the threat, you will come to the experience of it. Those before the flood, if they had feared the threat, would not have suffered the experience. And we, if we fear the threat, will not undergo the experience — God forbid it! — but may the loving God grant that all of us, brought to a sound mind from now on, may obtain those unspeakable good things; which may we all be counted worthy of, by the grace and lovingkindness of our Lord Jesus Christ, with whom to the Father together with the Holy Spirit be glory, might, honour, now and always, and to the ages of ages. Amen.