Commentary on Matthew 20–21

Having heard these things, the disciples marvel and are afraid, saying that no one can be saved. The Lord answered that this is impossible with men, possible with God. Again they reply to the Lord’s words that they have left everything and are with him. To them the Lord promised that, when he sits on the seat of his majesty, they will sit on twelve seats and judge as many tribes of Israel; and that for all who have left everything for his name’s sake the fruit of a hundredfold reward is reserved: but that many of the last will be first, and of the first last. There are many things that do not allow us to receive the gospel sayings with a simple understanding. For by inserting some things that by the nature of human sense are contrary to one another, we are warned to seek the reason of heavenly understanding. The apostles say both that they follow Christ and that they have left everything: how, then, do they become sad, and how are they afraid, saying that no one can be saved? For it could also be done by others, if they themselves had done it. Then, since they themselves had done it, why or whence was the fear taken up? There is added too in the Lord’s answer that these things are impossible with men, possible with God. Were the things impossible with men which the apostles boast of having done, which the Lord acknowledges them to have done, and which many afterward would do, leaving everything even to the blessedness of martyrdom? Or is there anything God could lack, and anything left which is to be pursued by the loss of things he has, so that it should be possible for him alone to do this? So this whole speech is spiritual. For the apostles, hearing spiritually that no one can be saved from the law, since even then they themselves were in the law (for a strong love and favor for the law held them): these, then, not yet having fully discovered the truth of the gospel mystery, fear that no one can be saved without the law, because even then they set all salvation in the law. But the Lord, with a brief and plain reason, dissolves both their ignorance and their fear, saying: “This indeed is impossible with men, but possible with God.” For what seems to a Jew so without effect, expecting salvation rather from man and from the law, as that in the stumbling block of the cross the giving of the law, the covenant, the adoption, and the inheritance should be set aside? And what is so possible to the power of God as to save through faith, regenerate through water, conquer through the cross, adopt through the Gospels, and give life from death through the resurrection? Hearing this, the apostles quickly believe and profess that they have left everything. But the Lord quickly rewards this obedience of theirs, dissolving all the difficulty of the previous question, when he says: “You who have followed me in the regeneration will judge the twelve tribes of Israel.” They followed in the regeneration: in the bath of baptism, in the sanctification of faith, in the adoption of the inheritance, in the resurrection from the dead. For this is that regeneration which the apostles followed, which the law could not grant, which joined them on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel, in the glory of the twelve patriarchs. To the others too who follow him in contempt of the world he promises the abundance of a hundredfold fruit. This is the hundredth fruit which is completed with heavenly joy in the hundredth sheep. This is the hundredth fruit which the richness of perfect earth attains. This honor of the church was already destined in the name of Sarah, and it is to be earned by the loss of the law and by gospel faith: and so he promises that the first will be made out of the last, because the last are made out of the first. “The kingdom of heaven is like a householder who went out early in the morning to hire laborers,” and the rest. The whole comparison is plain in itself: but it must be distinguished by persons and discerned by times. This householder must be thought to be our Lord Jesus Christ: who, having the care of the whole human race, called all at every time to the cultivation of the law. By the vineyard we understand the work and obedience of the law itself; by the denarius, the reward of that obedience. We have already treated the denarius above. Of the vineyard we will give the reason more fittingly in what follows. That the market place is taken for the world the thing itself warns, being always equally tumultuous with crowds of men, with contentions of slanders and injuries, and with the difficulties of various businesses. At the first hour, then, the time of the covenant established with Noah is to be recognized from the meaning of morning; at the third hour, with Abraham; at the sixth, with Moses; at the ninth, with David and the prophets. For as many covenants are found established with the human race through each of these as there are goings out to the market place counted. At the eleventh hour he shows the time of the Lord’s bodily coming; for out of the whole number set as the span of the present age, his birth from Mary agrees with that reckoning in which the time of the eleventh hour stands in a day. For when division is made by the number five hundred in the whole sum of six thousand years, the time of his bodily birth is counted in the eleventh reckoning of the whole division. And indeed the speech to the workers of the eleventh hour is different. For to the first, but also to the others, it was said: “Go to the vineyard”: yet the wage of a denarius was agreed with the first; for to the others the hope of a just payment was promised, but to the last it is said: “Why do you stand here?” because, although the law had been given to Israel, the will of the nations was not shut out from the law. They answered: “No one has hired us.” For it was owed that the Gospel be preached through the whole world and the nations be saved by the justification of faith. These, then, are sent to the vineyard. And when it had begun to be evening, the workers of the first hour receive the gift of the wage agreed for the labor of the whole day. There is no wage from a gift, since it is owed from work; but God has given free grace to all from the justification of faith: but, in keeping with the insolence of a people already stubborn under Moses, hence the grumbling of the workers, hence the resentment at the free wage, because, without the difficulty of long labor, and under the name of heat, the burning of the devil’s prompting not raging against them for long, the same reward is paid back to the workers. But for this reason, what is impossible with men is possible with God: that he grants first to those from the last, to those who believe through faith, the gift of grace, the wage of the law kept excellently and blamelessly. “And Jesus, going up to Jerusalem, took the twelve disciples and said to them: Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem,” and the rest. The Lord now sets out the mystery of the cross to the apostles, who would hear it without stumbling (in fact, no sadness followed this speech): they having been strengthened, that is, by the earlier speech, that through faith in the cross the last will be first; but that for the rich, that is, those trusting in the law and stumbling at that same cross, the road of the kingdom of heaven would be impassable. “Then the mother of the sons of Zebedee came to him with her sons,” and the rest. It must not be thought that it was done thus without some significance that the mother of the sons of Zebedee entreated the Lord. Did the sons not have the familiarity to ask? But it had to be prophesied by the effects of the events. The apostles had indeed already believed from the law, which had nourished them into gospel faith. So in the mother of the sons of Zebedee the law is understood, which, by confidence in its privilege, prays for the peoples who believe from it. Since she had heard above that the first would be last and the last first, she prays that it be granted to her sons that in the Lord’s kingdom one sit at his right and the other at his left. The Lord answered her that she did not know what she was asking. There was indeed no doubt about the glory of the apostles, and the preceding speech had set out that they would be judges. Then in the middle of the speech he asks whether they could drink his cup. He was certainly not speaking of a common kind of drink; for it is no labor to drink from a cup: but he asks about the cup of the mystery of the passion. And they, who already held the freedom and constancy of martyrdom, promise that they will drink. The Lord, praising their faith, says that they can indeed suffer with him in martyrdom; but that to sit at his left and right had been arranged by God the Father for others. And indeed, as far as we think, this honor has been reserved for others in such a way that the apostles too will not be strangers to it: they who, sitting in the seat of the twelve patriarchs, will judge Israel. And as far as one may perceive from the Gospels themselves, Moses and Elijah will sit beside him in the kingdom of heaven. For when the Lord had promised that some of the apostles would see, before they tasted death, the Son of Man coming in his kingdom, taking Peter, James, and John, he appeared with the appearance of his glory, Moses and Elijah accompanying him on the mountain. And we understand these same two prophets to be those who go before his coming, whom the Apocalypse of John says are to be killed by the Antichrist: though there have been various opinions of many, either about Enoch or about Jeremiah, that one of them must die like Elijah. But we cannot corrupt by the opinion of our own mind the truth of faith which the Lord revealed to the three witnesses above: nor think that others will come than those who were seen to have come for the pledge of faith. And although there is no need to form opinions beyond the gospel truth, yet if anyone has carefully noted the condition of Moses’ death, burial, and tomb, and has attained, according to the apostle’s authority, the knowledge of the secret Scriptures, he will understand that all things were so handled that Moses could already be seen. And let these things be said for the sake of instruction. But so that the reason of spiritual understanding might be full, the mother prayed to the Lord for two. For there are two callings from Israel: one of the disciples of John, the other, through the apostles, of the Pharisees. For after John’s passion we read above that his disciples passed over to the Lord. So prayer is made for two, because these twin callings believed the Gospel of Christ. After this, then, the ten disciples were saddened about the two brothers: but of these two disciples themselves there is no sadness. Reason does not allow that one should be made sad by the affront to another. Certainly the ten could also have been sad for themselves; for under the names of the two this seemed denied to all; but the typological order was kept. The apostles were sure about themselves: therefore they are sad only about the two, because they wished for these two callings too, which are from the law, a share in this glory. For the speech so governs the reason of both future and present that neither the ten nor the two are written as anxious about themselves, and in the anxiety of the ten about the two the effect of the present business was obeyed. So the Lord, wishing to show us the proper meaning of this prefiguration, and that those who were to come from the law wished to presume this privilege from the prerogative of the Israelite name, teaches that leadership is to be taken up by them not after the manner of the nations, but that ministers and servants, and not those who are ministered to, are called to the glory of the highest honor: by the example, namely, of the patriarchs and prophets who served, also by the example of the apostles who ministered, and also by the example of the Lord, who spent his soul for the redemption of our salvation. And for the glory of this humility he instructs them in the manner of a supper and banquet: warning that one ought not to recline in the more prominent places, lest perhaps, when one more distinguished comes, being warned by the master of the supper that the place is taken, he leave with fitting disgrace. But if he reclines in the lowly places, when lowlier ones come he will go up to the glory of a higher place. And so it is fitting not to presume any honor, but to earn it by works of humility. “And as they went out from Jericho, a great crowd followed him; and behold, two blind men sitting by the road heard that Jesus was passing,” and so on. Above, under the figure of the two sons of Zebedee, the Israelite people, which sprang from the seed of Shem, was treated. Fittingly, then, two blind men sit by the road: that is, the two peoples of the nations, begotten from Ham and Japheth, watch his going out and his way, and pray that sight be given back to them, blind as they are. Then the crowd rebukes them for crying out and orders them to be silent: not that they demanded silence for the sake of honor, but they bitterly hear from the blind what they denied, that the Lord is the Son of David. For when the minds of the blind were enlightened, God in man was being proclaimed, so that what was said by the Lord might be true: “For judgment of this world I came, that those who see may not see, and the blind may see.” But they cry out the more: and while the people of the law delays, they declare the more vehement heat of their faith. But the Lord has pity and asks what they want. They pray that their eyes be opened. He, pitying, touched their eyes and gave back the sight of knowing God. And so that the type of the nations that would believe might be fulfilled, having received the knowledge of heavenly grace, those who had been blind, seeing their Lord, followed him.

“Then Jesus sent two of his disciples, saying: Go into the village opposite you,” and so on. Two disciples are sent to the village to loose a tied donkey with her colt and bring them to him; and if anyone asks why this is done, they are to answer that the Lord needs them and will send them back at once. After the preceding discourse, in which we remember that a twofold calling from Israel was signified in the two sons of Zebedee, two disciples are now fittingly assigned to loose the donkey and the colt: because a twofold calling of people from the nations was to follow. For there were, and are, the Samaritans, who once went out from the law by secession and serve under a certain custom of their own observance; there were also the nations, untamed and fierce. So two are sent to loose those tied and bound and hampered by the chains of error and ignorance: and they are sent outside Jerusalem; for these two callings were held outside it. But the mother of the sons of Zebedee prayed to the Lord within Jerusalem: for Israel is saved from the law by two callings, either through the apostles or through John. But likewise Samaria believed through Philip; and through Peter Cornelius was brought to Christ as the firstfruits of the nations. That they are instructed to answer whoever asks that the Lord needs them and will soon send them back means that these very ones are to be given back to their nation as preachers of the gospel faith. So the prophecy was fulfilled which announced that the Lord would come into Jerusalem riding on a donkey and a new colt. But it is prophesied by the effects of the events. For the donkey that is loosed from the village and presented, namely Samaria, held by a foreign and alien dominion, is loosed through the apostles and given back to her Lord. The same Lord mounts the colt, young, stubborn, hard: and all these vices of pagan ignorance hold sway, and the fierceness of so many souls has been made into a carriage for God. All this image of the future keeps its order: and by parabolic meanings and the conditions of present things a form is sent ahead for the future. For the Lord will be, at the coming of his glory, possessing the nations: and, sitting on their minds as a rider, he will be proclaimed by the whole train of his retinue, of patriarchs, prophets, and apostles. For the patriarchs spread their glory under the Lord as garments: for by their generations, names, and persecutions the Lord was prophesied. And yielding with all the adornment of their dignity and spreading themselves under his seat, they teach that all their glory was spread beneath the preparation for the Lord’s coming. There the prophets too spread their garments on the road of the one advancing; for they preached this way of God carried by the nations: and, putting aside the love of the world, by offering themselves to deaths and stonings, they stripped themselves in a manner of their very bodies, offered for the entrance on such a road. The apostles too spread branches cut from trees after the garments: but in this there is no reverence of human duty. For branches would hinder the one advancing and make the road tangled for the entry of one hurrying: but the whole reason of prophecy is unfolded and the form of the future kept. So the branches of the unfruitful nations, that is, the fruit of the once unbelieving nations, are spread through the apostles on the Lord’s road and justified by the Savior’s entry: and he advances over them, and the service from the branches of an unfruitful root becomes most pleasing to God as he advances. “But the crowd going before and following cried out: Hosanna to the Son of David; blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.” But how does the crowd praise one who is to be crucified, or how did it earn hatred from favor? Rather, the words of praise express the power of redemption in him. For “hosanna” in the Hebrew language means the redemption of the house of David. Then they call him Son of David, in whom they recognize the inheritance of the eternal kingdom. Finally they confess blessed him who comes in the name of the Lord. Yet they were going to shout “Crucify the blasphemer.” But present deeds carry out the form of the future; and although the dispositions of those among whom these things were being done fought against it, though soon different things would follow, the working of heavenly things nevertheless rehearses the truth even of the unwilling. Then Jerusalem is stirred; for the novelty of the events brought commotion to the astonished. He entered the temple, that is, the church, by the entry of the preaching he had handed on. From it he first expels by right of power all the vices of the priestly ministry: for he had handed on that all should give freely what they had received freely: because the freedom of the gift ought not to admit anything to be bought or sold through the corruption of a priest. He overturned the chairs, especially of those selling doves. What dignity is there in the market of doves? Or what privilege is reserved in the trade of these birds, that their sellers should claim for themselves the honor of chairs? But in every place we warn that the force of the words must be looked at more deeply in meanings of this kind. In the dove, according to the examples of prophecy, we understand the Holy Spirit: in the chair is the seat of priesthood. So he overturns the chairs of those who hold the gift of the Holy Spirit for sale, for whom the ministry entrusted by God is business; recalling the authority of his warning, which is held in the prophet. For it is written: “My house will be called a house of prayer; but you have made it a den of robbers.” But it must not be thought that the Jews could buy or sell the Holy Spirit in the synagogue. For they did not have it so as to be able to sell it, nor was there anything anyone could buy: but the prefiguration of future things is contained in present sayings, that the vices of the church are to be purged at the very coming of the Lord’s glory. He also healed the infirmities of the blind and lame in the temple: and the favor of the people followed his public works. But the chief priests envy the shouts of the children and warn him, asking why he listens to these things; for he was being proclaimed as having come for the redemption of the house of David. He answered them that they had not read: “Out of the mouth of infants and sucklings you have perfected praise”: that, the judgments of the prudent failing, this glory of confession had been prepared for him by children and infants, whose is the kingdom of heaven; because the prudent and the rulers of the world rejected the wisdom of God, but the little ones and sucklings of regeneration would proclaim Christ. “And having said these things, he went out of the city and left them, and stayed in Bethany”: leaving, that is, the unbelieving synagogue, he stays in the church of the nations. “But in the morning, passing into the city, he was hungry; and seeing a fig tree by the road, he came to it,” and the rest. The same order of heavenly things is still sent ahead. For in the fig tree an example has been placed for the synagogue. For a space of repentance being given, namely during the time that lies between the passion and the return of his glory, he will come hungry for the salvation of this people, and will find it unfruitful, clothed only with leaves, that is, glorying in empty words, but empty of fruits, barren indeed of good works and bare of the expected produce. And since the time for repenting will have passed, it will wither for ever by the sentence of heavenly judgment. And in this we shall find a proof of the Lord’s goodness. For where he wished to bring an example of the salvation provided by him, he exercised the power of his strength on human bodies, commending the hope of future things and the salvation of the soul by the cure of present sicknesses. But now, where he was setting up a figure of severity against the stubborn, he indicated the image of the future by the destruction of a tree, so that the danger of unbelief might be taught without harm to those for whose redemption he had come. The disciples marvel that the tree withered at the moment of his very word: because the efficacy of the present deed bore the image of the future. For when he comes in the heavenly kingdom, at the very time of his coming the sentence of eternal damnation will overtake the barrenness of Jewish unbelief. The Lord confirms that they, if they have faith, can do not only these things but also greater than these. They would indeed judge all Israel, according to the preceding promises: but they would also obtain all right over the devil, whom he calls a mountain. For he says thus: “If you have faith, you will not only do what was done to the fig tree, but even if you say to this mountain: Be taken up and cast into the sea, it will be done.” O great reward of faith, by whose merit the power of believers is lifted up so far that, about to judge all, by a like sentence of severity for the condemnation of the world they sink the height and mass of the devil! But we must consider for what reason the synagogue is compared to a fig tree. For this tree flowers unlike the others in nature and condition. For its first flower is in the fruits, but not in those that reach ripeness once they have come out. For common usage and prophetic authority have called these green figs. But afterward, by the power of inner fruitfulness overflowing, fruits of the same appearance and form burst out; as these burst out, those are pushed out and fall, the stalks by which they were held being loosened; and those others coming out are carried on to the ripeness of fruits. But of those earlier ones, if it happens that any have come out in the fork of twigs coming from the same small branch, they always remain, and do not fall like the other green figs, but they alone hold on and precede the other fruits in ripening. And the tree will give these most beautiful fruits of itself, which, coming out together with the other green figs, are put forth from the knot between both twigs. So from the proper condition of the tree a fitting likeness has been set out for the synagogue. For it lost the first fruits of the people, which it had put forth from the beginning, after the example of the green figs: because the faithful and persistent people of the nations, remaining until the completion of the times, pushed out its useless people. Yet the apostles, the first believers from Israel, clinging like green figs between the law and the Gospels, will go before the others in the glory and time of the resurrection. And indeed already at the beginning of Genesis, as a figure of this thing, Adam and Eve covered their shame with the leaves of this tree when they hid themselves at the coming of the Lord calling them: because the unbelieving synagogue, transgressing the commands of the law, was to cover the foulnesses of its shamelessness and the confusion of its disgraces with unfruitful coverings of words, as with fig leaves. And these things have been inserted about the nature of this tree so that the propriety of the comparison could be understood. So the remaining order of the events must be looked at. The Pharisees had seen many things since then more worthy of great wonder: but now they are especially anxious, and ask by what power he does these things. For the matter, under the effects of present deeds, embraced a great secret of the future. And therefore the impulse to ask is found specially from that under which the prefiguration of the whole danger was being put forward. The Lord answers that he will say by what power he does these things, if only they, as he asks, answer him whether they thought John’s baptism was from heaven or from men. But they hesitate at the danger of their answer, thinking that if they professed it to be from heaven they would be caught guilty by their own confession for not having believed the authority of a heavenly testimony; if they said from men, they feared the crowds, for many held John to be a prophet. So they answered that they did not know. They certainly did not fail to know that it was from heaven, since they fear being convicted by the truth of their profession. But they spoke the truth about themselves even with the will to deceive. For through their unbelief they did not know that John’s baptism was from heaven. And that it was from men they could not know, because it was not. “A certain man had two sons,” and the rest. Many and grave are the things that can confuse the understanding unless we hold to the order of the earlier and later sense. For who can be thought to be the elder son, who said he would not go to the work and, corrected by repentance, went again? Yet Israel did not repent, but laid hands on the Lord, and its whole body crucified its God with impious mouth. And whom shall we understand as the younger, who promised he would go and did not go? But the people of the nations and of sinners did what it promised. For it went and set out to the work to which it was called: how then shall it be understood to be the one who did not go? Then we must ask what weight the Pharisees’ answer itself has. They say that the younger obeyed the will. The reason of things does not allow that a pretended profession should obtain the merit of perfect truth: that it should be more to have deceived when promising than to have done everything without promising. And who would not prefer to have what he asks refused him, provided what he asked is done, rather than that what is promised to be done should not be done; since the effect of a deed is more welcome after despair, while disappointed hope grieves more? Unless perhaps the will of those asking flatters itself only with the flattery of those promising. So we must remember that the setting out of this comparison comes down from that discourse which began about John, so that such an example was set to rebuke the hesitation of unbelief and the necessity of silence that came from it. But, as we have warned in other things, here too we must remember that sometimes something is lacking to the reason of present things on this condition, that the image of the future may be fulfilled without any loss of the prefigured effect. The first son is the people of the Pharisees, warned in the present by God through John’s prophecy to obey his precepts. This was insolent, disobedient, and stubborn against the present words, having confidence in the law, and despising repentance for sins by the glory of the prerogative of nobility from Abraham: which afterward, repenting at the miracles of the works after the Lord’s resurrection, believed under the apostles, and, returning by the truth of the deed to the will of gospel working, confessed by repenting the guilt of its former insolence. The younger son is the people of tax collectors and sinners, later by the very condition of sin in which it then lived, which was commanded through John to expect salvation from Christ, and, baptized by him, believed. But in saying that it promised it would go and did not go, he shows that it indeed believed John, but since it could not receive the gospel teaching except after the Lord’s passion through the apostles (for then the mysteries of human salvation were to be accomplished), he signifies that it did not go. In fact he does not say it refused, but that it did not go. The matter is outside the fault of unbelief, because it lay in the difficulty of the deed that it should not be done. So it did not refuse to go at once to the work that was commanded; but since it could not go, it did not go. For in this a delay of necessity without crime of the will is shown. And in the Pharisees’ answer there is a certain necessity of prophecy. For though unwilling, they confess who obeyed the will, namely the younger son, obedient by profession, though not accomplishing it in time; because faith alone justifies. And therefore tax collectors and harlots will be first in the kingdom, because they believed John, and, baptized for the forgiveness of sins, confessed the coming of Christ, praised the works of healing, received the mystery of the passion, and acknowledged the power of the resurrection. But the chief priests and Pharisees, seeing these things and despising them, were not justified through faith, nor returned through repentance to salvation: and therefore their fruit withers for ever under that curse which was prefigured in the fig tree.