Tractates 10–11

Having set out here what I had proposed to discuss, both from the reading of Exodus and from that of the Gospel, I have kept back for the Lord's day something fitting, which God is written to have commanded in the last part of that reading where he first proclaims the law of the Passover. For after the threat he had spoken, "Whoever eats what is leavened from the first day to the seventh day, that soul shall perish from Israel," he added, saying: "And the first day shall be called holy, and the seventh day, called holy, shall be yours; you shall do no servile work, except what must be done for every soul."

That the Lord's day is the first day of the world is proved by the Sabbath, the seventh day, on which God is declared to have rested, as Scripture says: "And God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because on it he rested from all his works which God had begun to make." The divine Scripture speaks carefully, not saying without qualification that God rested from his works, but "from the works which God had begun to make," so that you should not, when you hear that he rested, think that the Almighty, who makes all things by the command of his word, had laboured; but that you may understand that, having completed all the things of this world, from which he is described as having rested, that is, ceased, he does not cease to work other things pleasing to his will; as the Lord Jesus testifies in the Gospel, saying: "My Father works until now, and I work." God's rest, then, is not a remedy for labour but the end of the works he had begun; for after he completed the world he does not cease to govern his work. For by his nod the nature of all things either completes its course when commanded or withdraws when forbidden. For in the days of holy Noah his providence either destroyed by the cataclysm a world defiled by various iniquities, or restored it after the flood. He rained sulphur and fire from heaven, against the usual course, on the four cities of Sodom, where males practised shameful things with males, so that the fiery shower might extinguish those whom an unlawful passion had kindled to assault the very custom of nature. He chose a patriarchal race from the nations, namely the people of the Hebrews; for whose freedom he afflicted the kingdom of Egypt with nine plagues and destroyed it with the tenth. He divided the Red Sea, when the wave of the liquid element stiffened into the firmness of walls; for "the waters congealed like a wall; the waves congealed in the midst of the sea," as the faithful witness of that triumphal song in Exodus testifies. He, I say, divided the Red Sea, which the Greeks call the Erythraean, so as to prepare both a passage for his people and a pit for their pursuers. For when the Israelites had gone out with dry foot over the bed of the sea, and all the Egyptians had hastily entered by the same path after them, God, who had taken away from the astonished waters their proper liquidity, at once gave it back, and slew the armed lines of cavalry and Pharaoh himself, together with his four-horsed chariots and his whole army, as the waves overwhelmed them. The walls of water which had protected the believing people laid low the hostile band by their own collapse. He rained manna as food for his worshippers in the desert, he who had rained fire on those guilty of unspeakable sacrilege; the same who had rained flame in his indignation rained manna in his kindness.

But since the discourse on the first and the seventh day does not allow me to go through each thing in order, I shall pass over them with necessary brevity and touch on a few. He split the rock and the waters flowed for so many thousands of men thirsting in the desert; he laid low countless peoples of his adversaries; he destroyed very many kingdoms of hostile nations. He also dried up the river Jordan, to lead the believing people into the land of promise. He dried up the river Jordan who had turned the dry rock into the liquid of a stream: "For at the presence of the Lord the earth was moved, at the presence of the God of Jacob, who turns the solid rock into a pool of water, and the cliff into springs of water." Then the Law which he had given on Sinai he established in Zion, enlarged in Jerusalem, and, after the offence of the beloved people, extended the same to the Gentiles. For after the Son of God, through whom all these things were made and without whom nothing was made, came in human form and was not only rejected but even crucified by those who were once his own sons, whom he had protected and raised up, he cries out through the prophet: "I have begotten sons and raised them up, but they have despised me. The ox has known its owner, and the ass its master's crib; but Israel has not known me, and the people has not understood me": as if he said that the brute animals of the Gentile peoples once recognized the ruler of heaven, their owner and Lord, clothed in the rags of human sins and laid in the narrow manger of Judea, but the Israelite people would not recognize its deliverer. "I will take away," as was foretold, "from Judea and from Jerusalem the strong man and the strong woman": the Word incarnate, that is; "the strength of bread and the strength of water," the strength of the heavenly food and the strength of the regenerating water; "and the prudent captain of fifty," namely the jubilee year of remission; "and the wise architect," that is, the Holy Spirit, through whom I may build myself a new church from the Gentiles. For the Lord took away all the gifts of salvation, both those he had given and those he had promised to the ungrateful Jews, and bestowed them on those who were converted from every nation to his faith with ready service.

When, then, did the Lord rest, who has always been at work, whom we are most certainly sure, from the few of his works that I have mentioned in passing, to have always worked, and whom we see working every day? For that the elements, both heavenly and earthly, serve the human race is his work. For how would they not despise small, earthly man, unless they obeyed the command of their Creator? That we ourselves are born, that we know in part these very works of the Lord, that by living we seek life, that bearing the hope of things to come we live and speak devoutly: these are works of God, I say, of God. And this too is a great work of his kindness, that he patiently bears even the wicked and unbelieving, waits for them mercifully, and, if they repent, embraces them like a merciful father. The Son of God too rested then, plainly, from all his works which God had begun to make, when, all his wonders having been completed and the whole work of the passion fulfilled on the sixth day, on the seventh day, that is, the Sabbath, he rested in the tomb. But since God's rest is active, that rest itself could not be idle. For while his body was laid aside in the tomb, his divinity, descending with the human soul to the underworld, called from their places the souls of the saints, whose bodies the evangelist Matthew testifies rose, saying: "And many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep arose; and coming out of the tombs," he says, "after his resurrection, they entered the holy city and appeared to many." That the Saviour's soul went down to visit the underworld is testified not only by the Epistle of blessed Peter but also by the prophecy of blessed David, when he says: "For you will not leave my soul in hell, nor give your holy one to see corruption." For the Son of God did not then go down to the underworld with the soul of the man he had assumed in order to leave it in the underworld, but to call back very many souls to the bodies of the saints that were to rise. For this reason he who was always in the form of God, taking the form of a servant, took also the cross, so that by rising on the third day he might triumph over the death he had undergone, which the Lord of life could by no means be allowed to suffer to the end.

Since, then, after his passion the Lord Jesus was to rise from the dead as the Lord's day dawned, and to confer the first holiness on the first day of his resurrection, therefore the old Law foretells: "And the first day," he says, "shall be called holy, and the seventh day, called holy, shall be yours." It declares that the first day, of the resurrection, is to be called holy; it says that the seventh, already called holy, will be holy in the future: namely the seventh millennium, of which the prophet says to the Lord, "For a thousand years in your eyes are as one day." So the whole festivity was to be transferred to the first day of Christ's resurrection, in such a way that the rest and at the same time the holiness of the seventh day should be awaited by us; since it is said, "The first day shall be called holy," and at once it is added, "and the seventh day, called holy, shall be yours. You shall do no servile work, except what must be done for every soul." For all of us who call the first day, that is, the Lord's day, holy, believing it sanctified by the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, also await that truly holy day, the day of the seventh millennium, which will come after these six days, the six thousand years of the world, that is; when these are completed, there will be rest for those who are truly holy and who believe faithfully in the resurrection of Christ. For there will be no fight there against the devil, who will then be held bound in punishments; no struggle against the vices of the body, which will no longer be subject to desires. For the body will rise spiritual, as the Apostle says: "What is sown in corruption will rise in incorruption; what is sown in dishonour will rise in glory; what is sown in weakness will rise in power; what is sown an animal body will rise a spiritual body." And again, shortly after, the same most blessed Paul: "This corruptible," he says, "must put on incorruption, and this mortal put on immortality. And when this mortal puts on immortality, then will come to pass," he says, "the saying that is written: Death is swallowed up in victory. Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?" And what this sting of death is, the connected words of the same blessed Apostle reveal: "The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the Law."

The sting of death is sin, beloved, because through sin came death; and the power of sin is the Law, since without the Law sin is dead. For sin is not imputed when there is no law. For neither would Adam have died because he ate of the fruit of that tree had he not eaten against the prohibition, despising the law of the commandment; nor does anyone today incur the guilt of sin unless either the natural law, or the law of commandment, or the law of the letter binds him. The natural law is that by which the Gentiles, who do not have the Law of the letter, do by nature the things of the Law; because the rational nature of the human soul understands by a certain natural law that it should perceive its Creator, should not harm its neighbour, should not do what it does not wish to suffer. Hence every man is inexcusable who either denies his author or does an evil which by the law of nature he is not ignorant to be evil. Again, the law of commandment is: "Of every fruit of the trees that is in paradise you shall eat for food; but of this one you shall not eat," and whatever the Lord is known to have commanded by word only before Moses. The law of the letter is: "You shall not kill, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not bear false witness," and the rest, which, when half the number of the years of the world had already passed, were forbidden by the Law of the letter so that a written reminder, the Law, might be given to negligent man of either the natural law or the law of commandment, and forgetfulness might have a tutor and pretence a constrainer; as the Apostle says: "For the Law was our tutor in Christ." The law, whether of nature, of commandment, or of the letter, rules over a man when his age has begun to be capable of law. And hence it is that the apostle Paul, born of Jewish parents, a Hebrew of Hebrews, says: "I was once alive without the Law," to show that only the age of infancy, which does not yet grasp the law, lives without the law; "but when the Law came," he says, "sin revived, and I died": that is to say, sin, which was dead to me while I did not know, began to live once I understood; and I, who lived before without the Law, became liable to death unless I turn aside from sin, which now, since I understand, brings forth death for me; and the commandment that was given me for life begins to be for death.

That seventh millennium, then (to return to the proposed chapter), will itself be the truly most blessed day, when, the struggle of this contest that we now endure having ceased, the victors will take their longed-for rest and enjoy a happy leisure, doing there no servile work, that is, no work of sin; for "whoever commits sin is the servant of sin," as the Saviour says; but they will plainly do only what will have to be done by every holy soul: namely, joined to the hosts of angels, to render to our Lord perpetual hymns and thanksgivings for ever. According to the historical sense, indeed, the Jews had been commanded to rest on the Sabbath days from every work of sin and to do only what was fitting for the soul; but since, neglecting this saving observance, they had turned the whole law of the Sabbath to idleness and luxury, it is clear why God declares that he hates no longer his own Sabbaths but theirs. I have often explained to your brotherhood, in the Gospel readings where the senseless Jews accuse the Saviour of having violated the Sabbath, that he rather fulfilled the law of the Sabbath, as we taught with evident proof from the works he performed on the Sabbath, instructed from nowhere else than from the Law itself, which we read together with the Jews. For it is written: "There shall be one law for the native and for the stranger." The natives were doubtless the Jews, fellow citizens of the patriarchs and prophets; the strangers, called in the Greek tongue προσήλυτοι (proselytes), were surely we Gentiles, "foreigners," as the Apostle says, "and strangers to the covenants and their promise, having no hope and without God in this world." But after we believed, the same blessed Paul says to us: "You are no longer strangers and sojourners, but fellow citizens of the saints and members of God's household." So there is one Law for us with the Jews; but they receive it in a fleshly sense, seeking nothing of spiritual understanding in it, while we find Christ in it, "in whom are hidden all the treasures" of heavenly "wisdom and knowledge." Finally, in this reading of Exodus too, which lays out the order for celebrating the Passover, we find the true Lamb of God with all the mysteries of our life, recognizing him as true God and man, Lord of the flock and the sheep, the shepherd and at the same time the pasture. For "the merciful and compassionate Lord has given" himself as "food to those who fear him." For we have known that the Law of the whole old observance has been fulfilled, through the grace of the Son of God, in the truth of the New Testament, proving how the law of the Passover was given through Moses, and grace and truth came through Jesus Christ; to whom be all honour, power and glory, with the Father and with the Holy Spirit, for all ages. Amen.

I remember that in the previous discourse I promised your holy love that, with the Lord's help, I would explain more fully why the Lord declared that he had done one work, at which the most sluggish people of the Jews took offence and, inflamed with a most wicked fury, assailed the giver of blessing with blasphemous curses, saying, "You have a demon; who is seeking to kill you?", and moreover planned to hand over the Lord of life to the punishment of death. We proved, indeed, by the testimony of this evangelist, that not one but many, innumerable works were performed by Christ. For so he writes at the end of the book: "There are also many other things that Jesus did; if they were written one by one, I think the world itself could not contain the books that would be written." But perhaps an attentive hearer may say: "In the first parts of the Gospel the Lord says, 'I have done one work, and you all marvel'; in the later parts that heap of mighty works is celebrated; and so no question seems to be left about this." But I, going back over the earlier words of this book from this saying, find that up to this place in the Gospel Christ our God had performed very many wonderful works. He had already seen Nathanael before he was called by Philip while placed under the fig tree; he had already by his power turned the simplest liquid of clear water into the colour and taste of wine; he had already, as a heavenly physician, healed by a word the dying son of the official, while he was being asked, before he visited him. He had already revealed the hidden vices of that Samaritan woman and cleansed her, when she confessed, at the spiritual fountain; he had already cured, or rather re-formed, by the command of a single word, the limbs of the paralytic, dead for thirty-eight years. He had already satisfied the hunger of five thousand men with five barley loaves and two fish, ending the banquet with a greater miracle; for a heap of leftovers was found larger than the quantity of food set out, when the hungry companies of so many people had been satisfied. He had already walked on the sea with his feet, so that the swelling wave did not touch the soles of his steps. But in this catalogue of mighty works he had so far done one work by which he seemed to have given the ignorant people of the Jews, raging against him, a plausible opening for their fury: namely, that he had cured a paralytic on the Sabbath, when the Law had commanded rest on the Sabbath. And so Christ, who had come not to destroy the old Law but to fulfil it, suffers the persecution of the Jews as though guilty of violating the Sabbath.

I am compelled at this point, dearest brothers, leaving the present sequence of the reading, to explain the meaning of the Sabbath, lest the persecution of the wicked against the Just One be thought to have been just. For that paralytic who is recorded to have been cured by Christ on the Sabbath day suffers the false accusation of the Jews because on the very day on which he had been healed he was seen carrying his bed. "It is the Sabbath," they say, "and it is not lawful for you to carry your pallet." The cured man answered: "He who made me well said to me: Take up your pallet and walk." And in what follows: "It is Jesus," he says, "who made me well." Still unformed by his Jewish infirmity, but already grateful for the health he had received, since he is not able to give the false accusers a reason for the deed, he points out the author of the command and of the work. "He who made me well said to me: Take up your pallet and walk"; and he added: "It is Jesus," he says, "who made me well"; not "It is the son of David who made me well," or "the son of Joseph who made me well." For these names were then commonly used among the people of the Jews of Christ the Lord and Saviour. But what? "It is Jesus," he says, "who made me well"; for, being a Hebrew, he knew that the name of Jesus comes from the power of health. For Jesus means "Saviour," as the angel declares when he speaks of Christ to Joseph in a dream: "You shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins." "He, then," he says, "made me well, whose very name is salvation." And how could salvation be prevented by a prescribed law from saving, or be changed by the condition of the Sabbaths so as not to be salvation?

Let us see, however, dearest brothers, whether the Law itself excluded the work of salvation from the rest of the Sabbath. "Six days," he says, "you shall do your works; but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. You shall not do any work of yours on it, except what is done for every soul." The human race is inclined by its will, and above all the Jews, to carnal works rather than divine; and therefore one day of the week was appointed, the Sabbath, on which they would be compelled to cease from carnal things and be free for divine things alone. For it was not permitted on the Sabbath either to cook food or to make a journey, lest anyone, under the pretext of human necessity, should put earthly things before divine. But after the Jews, neglecting the spiritual business which the Lord had commanded to be done for the salvation of the soul, had turned all the lawful observances of the Sabbath to idleness and luxury, the Lord at once cries out to them through the prophet: "Your new moons and your Sabbaths and the great day I cannot bear; your fast and your holidays and your feast days my soul hates." "Your Sabbaths," he says, not "mine"; for what you do is not mine. My fast and my Sabbaths, which I commanded to be kept, order you to fast from vices, to cease from evil works, and to cleave to good actions. But on the contrary your Sabbaths and your fasts are restless with quarrels and full of enticements and luxuries. The giver of the Law himself, then, coming in human form, when he did works of salvation for every soul (for on the Sabbath he taught what he had commanded by provident reason), did not destroy the Law but rather fulfilled it. For it is written: "You shall not do any work of yours on the Sabbath": "your" work, he says, that is, human work. And it is added: "except what is done for every soul," that is, to save the soul. And therefore we read that the earlier just men under the Law worked on Sabbaths for the salvation of souls. For seven days Joshua the son of Nun, at the Lord's command, went round the city of Jericho, with the Levites and priests carrying the ark of the covenant; and the hostile walls fall at the divine nod, so that the souls of the Jews might be freed from the danger of war. And you will find that a Sabbath is counted among the seven days, whatever day you begin to count from.

So when it is said, "It is Jesus who made me well," the Jews are reminded, by the sharing of the name, not to condemn similar works. And therefore Christ the Lord, when he cured a withered hand, or dropsy, or paralysis on the Sabbath, as truly Lord of the Sabbath, defended his cause by the testimonies of his Law, saying to the Jews: "Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good to a living being; to save a soul, or to destroy it?" He wished, I think, to lead them into the sense of the Law that we set out above, and at the same time reproached them for not understanding what "his work" was, and "except what is done for every soul." Christ, then, works on the Sabbath for the salvation of the soul; and he works on the Sabbath and fulfils the Law, while he interprets the condition of the Law, while he sheds light on the differences of works, while he does what the Law excepted from the rest of the Sabbath, while he makes the Sabbath day itself, sanctified by his blessing, holier by his benefits. For by bestowing divine help on every believing soul on that day, he rendered to the Sabbath the works owed to it. And to show the Jews that he who was then working in the flesh had always been working with the Father, he said to them: "My Father works until now, and I work." "And for this reason the Jews persecuted him the more wickedly, because he not only broke the Sabbath but also called God his Father, making himself equal to God." The blessed evangelist plainly taught that he who is his true Son by the property of nature is equal to God the Father.

Although, then, the precedents of the ancients came first, the Lord did not care to set any of them against such an assertion, lest, since they are rare and ancient, they should be thought uncertain by some, or accidental; but he chose rather to strike them back with everyday and familiar examples, so that they could not deny that they had been most justly refuted. "I have done one work," he says, "and you all marvel." What work? That I cured a paralytic on the Sabbath. And he added: "For this reason Moses gave you circumcision, not because it is from Moses," he says, "but from the fathers": that is, from Abraham, who was the first to be circumcised, and from the other patriarchs. "And on the Sabbath," he says, "you circumcise a man. If a man receives circumcision on the Sabbath day so that the law of Moses may not be broken, are you angry with me because I made a whole man well on the Sabbath? Do not judge by appearance, but judge a just judgment." As if he said: "The Law commanded that only this work be done on the Sabbath, what is for the soul. And concerning circumcision the same Law commands that whoever does not circumcise every male on the eighth day after birth, that soul shall be rooted out from its people. It is for the soul, then, that you circumcise a man on the Sabbath; it is likewise for the soul that I have healed a whole man on the Sabbath. It is lawful, then, to do a good work for the soul on the Sabbath. But if you judge that I have violated the Sabbath by this work, you decree that you yourselves are incessantly guilty of violating the Sabbath. Do not judge by appearance, but judge a just judgment." With such reasonable patience our Lord Jesus conquers his enemies, he who had come down from the Father into this world precisely to conquer by suffering.

But let us consider briefly the force of this last saying. "Do not judge by appearance," he says, "but judge a just judgment." This is, I think, a general sentence, the teacher of keeping equity, set before all, known to many, loved by few. For it commands that we should not, by flattering the persons of the rich of this world, favour unbelievers with a most wicked judgment; and that we should not only not nourish the impious, cruel, rapacious, luxurious and dishonourable by timid silence, but should not even proclaim with unjust praises those worthy of all reproof; or, what is more hideous than any foulness, catching at shameful gain, notoriously serve another's money, forgetful of Christian freedom; nor, enticed by the beauty of anyone's bodily form, be moved by a crooked judgment from the region of truth and right opinion: since of despising riches it is written, "If riches abound, do not set your heart on them"; and of disregarding the comeliness of the flesh God speaks to the priest Samuel when he was about to choose a king from the sons of Jesse: "Do not admire," he says, "the tallness of their stature or the beauty of their face, for man looks on the face, but God looks on the heart." And therefore blessed David, the least and despised, is raised to the kingdom by the holy oil, and glories in a song of his own that by God's grace he grew from humility to the highest summit of dignity, saying: "I was small among my brothers," and the rest. Usefully, then, in every way Christ says: "Do not judge by appearance, but judge a just judgment." And which of us, dearest ones, is found fit to keep each of the things I have mentioned? "Blessed are those who keep judgment and do righteousness at all times."

Though this sentence is general, then, as I said above, it is nevertheless directed particularly at the Jews, who judged Christ, as he did wonderful things, only as a man by his appearance, not seeing God in his mighty works. It also strikes hard at the heretics who blaspheme the Son of God, in that, looking at the humility of the flesh he assumed, they try to measure the substance of his immense divinity. But let us, brothers, saved by his grace through faith, judge a just judgment, keeping equity in every action of our way of life. For the just judgment of a rational soul is to choose to serve God rather than the world; to resolve to obey the commandments of Christ, not to be depraved by the counsels of the devil; to decide to cleave to spiritual pursuits, not to be entangled in carnal vices; and to judge that the eternal blessedness of things to come must be preferred to the very brief pleasures of the world. Let us walk, then, with the equal judgment of an upright heart in all the precepts and justifications of the Lord, so that we may be counted worthy to obtain a share in eternal life from the everlasting Son of God himself, whose omnipotence remains with the Father and the Holy Spirit for all ages. Amen.