Commentary on Matthew 22–24

“Hear another parable. There was a man, a householder, who planted a vineyard, put a hedge around it, dug a winepress in it, and built a tower,” and the rest. The whole question is plain. For even the chief priests and Pharisees themselves, understanding that these things were said about them, were kindled to anger. But the proper meaning of the persons and the comparisons of things must be brought out. By this householder we understand God the Father, who planted the people of Israel for the produce of the best fruits, and who enclosed them within their borders, as by a kind of hedge of special guard, by the sanctification of the fatherly name, that is, by the nobility of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; who also fitted the prophets as winepresses, into which a certain richness of the fervent Holy Spirit might flow like new wine: and in the tower he built the eminence of the law, which would carry them from the ground up into heaven, and from which the coming of Christ could be watched for. In the tenants is the figure of the chief priests and Pharisees, to whom power of teaching over the people was permitted. In the servants who were sent to receive the fruits is the varied and often repeated succession of the prophets. And the sending again of more than the first is that time in which, after the preaching of individuals, a very great number of prophets prophesying together was sent out; who at various times were beaten, stoned, and killed, demanding the fruits of the people they had established and taught. In the son sent last is both the coming and the passion of our Lord: who was cast out of Jerusalem, as out of the vineyard, to the sentence of condemnation. The plan of the tenants and their presumption of the inheritance once the heir was killed is the empty hope that the glory of the law could be kept when Christ was destroyed. In the householder’s return is the glory of the Father’s majesty standing in the Son at the time of judgment. And in the answer of the chief priests and Pharisees themselves, the inheritance of the law is given back more worthily to the apostles. But this Son is the stone rejected by the builders and raised to the top of the corner, marvelous in the eyes of all, and, between the law and the nations, the joining of side and of both buildings. “The kingdom of heaven is like a man, a king, who made a wedding for his son and sent his servants to call those invited to the wedding,” and so on. This parable too must be distinguished by times and recognized by persons. And about the person of the king and son the understanding is plain. But that the father made the wedding for the son, and invited in this way, is a new reasoning. For to make a wedding belongs both to the author and to the time of the wedding. But here the wedding is the mystery of heavenly life and of the eternal glory to be received in the resurrection. Rightly, then, it was made by the Father; because the fellowship of this eternity and the espoused union of the new body were already held perfected in Christ. And in this place we shall warn that, in the earlier passage where the condition of divorce was treated, one should look carefully at what was signified about the reason of the resurrection, and that what was said under the person of Adam to Eve, since it is a great mystery, should not be passed over carelessly. Those who are warned to come, invited earlier, are the people of Israel: for it was called through the law into the glory of eternity. The servants sent to call the invited are the apostles: for it was their proper work to remind those whom the prophets had invited. Those sent again with the condition of precepts are apostolic men and the successors of the apostles. The fatted bulls are the glorious figure of the martyrs, who were sacrificed as chosen victims for the confession of God. The fatlings are spiritual men, like birds fed with heavenly bread for flying up, who will fill the rest with the richness of the food they received. When all these have been prepared and gathered into the number of the multitude pleasing to God, the glory of the heavenly kingdom is announced like a wedding. But they so neglected their warning too that some of them were occupied with the ambition of the world as with a field: but many were detained in trade by the desire for money. The rest, having inflicted injuries on the servants sent, which was fulfilled in the apostles themselves, killed them. But fitting vengeance follows the crime of so monstrous a deed. Heavenly armies are sent; they will burn their whole gathering by the judgment of God and set it alight with the flames of eternal fire; because against the disposition of humanity they raged with the hatreds of murderers. And since he speaks these things about the time of judgment and resurrection, he turned the same speech to the gathering of the nations. For those who were first invited being found unworthy, he commands that they go to the outlets of the roads. For by the gift of grace the crimes of former life are passed over. For we have very often warned that by the road the time of the world is to be understood. And therefore we are commanded to go to the outlets of the roads; because all past things are forgiven. Then he commands that all be called to the wedding without any exception, and the bad come together with the good. The calling ought to have made them good, because it is holy and proceeds from the best disposition of the one inviting: but through the fault of an unamended will there is a difference among those called. And since pretense usually has very much skill in deceiving men, which, though it may deceive us either by the secret of another’s mind or by the simplicity of our judgment, yet cannot be hidden from God: therefore God, entering the gathering of this happy resurrection and seeing a man reclining without a wedding garment, asks how he got in. Had he designated the dress of those to be invited? Then, since he had commanded that anyone at all be invited, how could one be dressed like all? Or if there was usually a fixed dress by the custom of guests at weddings, he could have been stopped by those inviting and by the servants. But since it is not for all to understand the wicked, and human simplicity hardly understands the deceit of a pretending mind, God alone therefore finds out this wicked man, unworthy of the wedding gathering. The wedding garment is the glory of the Holy Spirit and the brightness of a heavenly dress: which, taken up by the confession of a good questioning, is to be kept spotless and whole until the gathering of the kingdom of heaven. So this man is taken away and sent into the outer darkness, because many are called and few chosen. So it is not fewness among those invited but rarity among the chosen: because in the one inviting there is the kindness of a common goodness without exception; but among those invited the choosing is made from the merit of uprightness at the judgment.

“Then the Pharisees went and took counsel how to trap him in his speech,” and so on. The Pharisees are often stirred up, and they cannot find an occasion for accusing him from past things: for no fault could fall on his deeds and words. But from a disposition of malice they stretch themselves into every inquiry for finding an accusation. For he was calling all from the vices of the world and the superstitions of human religions to the hope of the heavenly kingdom. So they test, by the condition of the question put, whether he would violate the power of the world: namely, whether tribute ought to be paid to Caesar. He, knowing the inner secrets of their thoughts (for God beholds nothing of the things hidden within men that he does not see), ordered a denarius to be brought to him and asked whose inscription and image it bore. The Pharisees answered that it was Caesar’s. To them he said that the things that are Caesar’s are to be paid back to Caesar, and the things that are God’s to God. O answer full of wonder, and perfect resolution of a heavenly saying! He so tempered everything between contempt of the world and the insult of offending Caesar that he freed minds devoted to God from all human cares and duties, when he decided that what is Caesar’s should be paid back to Caesar. For if nothing of his remains with us, we shall not be held by the condition of paying back to him what is his. But if we brood over his things, if we use the right of his power, and subject ourselves like hirelings to the management of another’s estate, it is beyond complaint of injury that what is Caesar’s should be paid back to Caesar, and that we ought to give back to God the things that are properly his: body, soul, will. For we hold these as having come from him and been increased by him: so it is fitting for those who recall that they owe him both their origin and their progress to give themselves back wholly to him. “On that day Sadducees came to him, who say there is no resurrection,” and the rest. The Sadducees are outside faith in the resurrection. And since the Lord preached it, they put forward a cavil against divine things from their will to win, namely, of seven brothers with the same wife, whose wife he would answer she would be in the resurrection. And indeed public opinion holds that nothing is contained in the prophetic Scriptures about the conditions of the resurrection. But the Lord says: “You err, not knowing the Scriptures nor the power of God.” So it is written; and the doubt which so great an authority condemns ought to cease. For many are accustomed to bring forward this same cavil: in what form the female sex will rise, and whether it will be re-formed with the very functions of its nature and body. We indeed touch this passage, passed over by almost all, rashly: but we point out only that what was put to the Lord was whose wife out of the seven she must be reckoned; and that the Lord rebuked them for erring, not knowing the Scriptures and the power of God, because they will neither marry nor be given in marriage. And indeed it would have been enough against the Sadducees, who thought thus, that the opinion of bodily allurement had fallen away and that, the functions ceasing, these empty joys of bodies had been taken away: but he added: “They will be like the angels of God.” Since, then, the mystery of the Scriptures and the might of divine power show that they will be like angels, such as the authority in the Scriptures is for forming opinions about angels, such must be the understanding of our hope in the resurrection about women. And this is what he answered to the question put about the conditions of the resurrection. But about the resurrection itself he spoke thus against their unbelief: “Have you not read what was said to you by God, saying: I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? He is not the God of the dead but of the living.” For this word came to Moses when these holy patriarchs had long been at rest. So those whose God he was had God. But they could have nothing if they did not exist; because it is in the nature of the thing that that must exist to which something else belongs. And so to have God belongs to the living; since God is eternity, and it does not belong to things that are dead to have what is eternal. And how will they be denied to be and always to be, whose God eternity professes itself to be? “But the Pharisees, hearing that he had silenced the Sadducees, gathered together against him, and one of them, a teacher of the law, asked him,” and the rest. The Pharisees succeed the testing Sadducees. And to those an answer about the resurrection had fittingly been given, so that they were convicted that the faith of the hoped-for resurrection is contained in the very law from which they had come. But the Pharisees boasted that they had the knowledge of the law, which, set forth as an image of things to come, contained the likeness of the truth that would follow. They ask which commandment was the greatest in the law: not seeing that the meditation of the law was perfected in Christ. And indeed the ignorance of the insolent was answered in the very words of the law: and this answer embraced in itself the whole teaching of truth. For it is the proper office of our Lord Jesus Christ to bring the knowledge of God and to supply the understanding of his name and power. For he had come sent, and, brought forth from eternity, he was carrying out the things that were pleasing to God. So he answered that the first commandment is: “You shall love the Lord your God with your whole heart, and with your whole soul, and with your whole mind.” For he was doing nothing else than what the law contained; because the precepts of the law embraced the form of the things he himself would do. So he reminds them of the knowledge of him which they boasted of having in the law, that God almighty is to be loved with every disposition of mind, heart, and soul, so that the commandments of the law set forth beforehand might confirm his warning. Then he added: “This is the great and first commandment. And the second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” But the following and like commandment signifies that the duty and the merit are the same in both. For neither love of God without Christ nor of Christ without God can be useful. So one without the other brings no progress to our salvation. And therefore on these two commandments the whole law and the prophets hang; because the law and all prophecy was assigned to Christ’s coming, and his coming, by fulfilling them, supplied the understanding of knowing God. For we have often warned that by the neighbor no other is to be understood than Christ. For since we are forbidden to put father, mother, and sons before the love of God, how is love of neighbor a commandment like that of loving God? Or will anything be left that can be equaled to the love of God? Unless that the likeness of the precept required an equal love in loving the Father and the Son. And so that they could be refuted by the words of the law itself, and a clearer understanding about the neighbor might be opened, he asks what they thought of the Christ, whose son he would be. They answered: David’s. He said to them: how was he called Lord by David in the Spirit, who would be his son; and how was it said by him: “The Lord said to my Lord: Sit at my right hand, until I put your enemies as a footstool for your feet”? It was indeed true that Christ was to be begotten from David’s seed: but the likeness of the name, by which the Lord spoke to the Lord, and by which he placed him at the right hand until he subjected all enemies under his feet, signified both the unity of substance from the sharing of the name, judgment from the invitation to sit beside, and power from the subjection of all things; so that they might remember that in him who was rising from David the substance of eternal power, might, and origin is contained, and that God would remain in man.

“Then Jesus spoke to the crowds and to his disciples, saying: The scribes and Pharisees have sat on the chair of Moses,” and the rest. He set forth the glory of the law testifying of him, which had expressed in itself the image of the future truth. For in all things it was meditating Christ’s coming. For whatever was contained in it was taken up for the advance of making knowledge of him manifest. So he commands that the precepts of the Pharisees be obeyed, because they have sat in the chair of Moses: he commands that all the commandments of the law be obeyed, but that their deeds and works be avoided; so that it is men’s manners and unbelief, not the teaching of the law, that is shunned. For they lay the heaviest burdens of the law on the people subject to them, not even moving their own finger to touch them. Indeed they command that the Lord be loved with the whole heart and the neighbor as oneself, while they themselves, against the testimony of the law given to them, persecute God in Christ with sufferings. Broadening the glory of their words like phylacteries, by which God the author of eternal life is not understood in Christ, and magnifying themselves as sent out from the honor of the law, like fringes from a garment, they who, ignorant of the whole law, have recognized neither the works nor the power of that law itself: loving the first places at banquets, they who are assigned to eternal fire (while the nations rather feast with Abraham); and the first chairs in the synagogues, they who do not know their teacher according to the testimonies of the law and the prophets; and greetings in the market place, they to whom humility of heart and service toward all is commanded. They also wish to be called teachers by men, ignorant of the teaching of the law and forever rejecting the teacher of salvation. Since all these things were profane and perverse, they are condemned for imitation of their deeds. But hearing of the law and obedience to its words, because they spoke of Christ, is required. But in contrast he completes, for the disciples who now knew him, the precepts of all humility: that they should remember that all are brothers, that is, sons of one parent, and by the birth of a new nativity have gone beyond the beginnings of earthly birth, and that there is one teacher of heavenly doctrine for them all, and that the glory of eternal honor is to be seized by the consciousness of humility; because God will make insolence humble and will raise humility into glory. “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, who shut the kingdom of heaven.” He condemns their pretense by the signification of punishment. For “woe” is the voice of one grieving. He says they shut the kingdom of heaven because in the law they hide the meditation of the truth that is in Christ and conceal by pretended teaching the bodily coming proclaimed by the prophets; and, not themselves going on the road of eternity in Christ, they do not allow others to go either. “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, who devour the houses of widows.” Hence that denial of the truth, hence the hindering of others from salvation, and the barring of the heavenly kingdom: so that ambition may be kept in visiting the houses of widows, so that they may be despoiled by the honor of a long prayer, so that the knowledge of heavenly things may be sought from them as from a treasure of stored wealth, so that the dignity of the law may persist by silence about grace. And therefore they will receive greater judgment, because they will owe both the penalty of their own sin and the guilt of another’s ignorance. “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, who travel around sea and dry land.” By traveling over sea and land he signifies that in all the ends of the world they will disparage the Gospel of Christ and subject some to the yoke of the law against the justification of faith: for proselytes are those received from the nations into the synagogue. The rarity of these to come is indicated by the “one”: for after the preaching of Christ, no faith has been left to their teaching. But whoever has been acquired for the people becomes a son of Gehenna, an offspring of punishment, and an inheritance of eternal judgment: because adoption from the nations will make up the family of Abraham. And he will be a son of double punishment for this reason, because he has neither obtained the forgiveness of sins of the nations and has followed the fellowship of those who persecuted Christ. “Woe to you, blind guides, who say: Whoever swears by the temple, it is nothing.” He reproaches their reverence for human observances and their insult to prophetic tradition, because they gave honor to empty things and took it from things to be honored. For he himself had given the law, and the law did not contain the efficacy but meditated the effects. For the adornment of altar and temple did not win dignity from its decoration but shaped an image of things to come by its beauty. For gold, silver, bronze, brass, pearls, and crystal contain their own meaning according to the nature of each metal. So he refutes them because they venerated the gold of the temple and the gifts of the altar for the reverence of the sacred things; whereas the honor of both altar and temple was greater, because both the gold was dedicated to the temple and the gift to the altar as an image of things to come. And therefore, when Christ comes, confidence in the law is useless: because Christ is not sanctified in the law, but the law in Christ, in which a seat and throne, as it were, has been set for him. Since it is held as sacred, it must have received sacredness from him who sits on it: and so they are foolish and blind, venerating what is sanctified while passing over what sanctifies. “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, who tithe mint and dill and every herb,” and the rest. He refutes the hidden things of the mind and the dark iniquity of wills: that they do the things the law prescribes in the tithes of mint and dill, so that they are thought by men to fulfill the law; but have left mercy, justice, faith, and every disposition of kindness, which is the proper duty of man. Because that tithing of herbs, which was useful as a prefiguring of things to come, ought not to be omitted: but this ought to be done, that, having performed the parts of faith, justice, and mercy, we might please him not by imitation of a pretended will but by works of a will kept in truth. And since it would be less guilt to pass over the tithing of herbs than the duty of kindness, he mocks their care in straining out gnats, whose carelessness lay in swallowing camels, that is, of those who avoid light sins and devour heavy ones. A like announcement of punishment is made against those who wash cups and dishes outside but do not clean their insides, and, following the boast of useless zeal, leave the ministry of perfect usefulness. For the use of a cup is inner: if it is filthy, what will the whole outside profit? And therefore the brightness of inner conscience is to be obtained, so that the things of the body may be washed on the outside. He also compared them to tombs, which, shining with human work and decoration, are filthy within with the bones of the dead and the uncleanness of corpses: that is, they put forward the beauty of righteousness in empty words, but have within them the stench of their mind’s conscience. “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, who build the tombs of the prophets,” and the rest. The form of judgment is plain, and on each of us, from nature, a sense and opinion of fairness is laid; and the work of iniquity has the less pardon from this, the less fairness was unknown. For the people of the law killed all the prophets. For they were kindled to hatred of them by the bitterness of their rebuke: for they convicted with public voice its thefts, murders, adulteries, and sacrileges. And since they announced that it was unworthy of the heavenly kingdom for these works, and proclaimed that the nations would be heirs of God’s covenant, they were destroyed by various kinds of punishments. But posterity so detested the deeds of its parents that it venerates the books of prophecy, adorns their memorials, restores their tombs: and by such reverence testifies that it is outside the guilt of its fathers’ crime. Those, then, who admit that the prophets were killed with the gravest guilt, with what pardon will they condemn Christ, who is the work of the prophets, when they carry out with multiplied crime the very things they detest? And therefore they are both serpents and a brood of vipers, because they will fill up the measure of their fathers’ will. And how will they escape judgment, detesting the slaughter of the prophets and persecuting their Lord even to the death of the cross? By whom, on account of the apostles, who are prophets from the revelation of things to come, wise from the knowledge of Christ, scribes from the understanding of the law, beaten, stoned, crucified, and driven from city to city, all the blood of the righteous from Abel to Zechariah overflowed: so that, whereas if these had been obeyed pardon for their own crimes would have been granted, because these same were killed the penalty of their fathers’ crimes too would be heaped on those who killed them. “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kill the prophets and stone those who are sent to you,” and so on. Among many kinds of rebukes he always declares the disposition of his mercy: whose whole complaint here is that they refused to return to the salvation he was offering. For Jerusalem had killed the prophets and stoned those sent to it. In the naming of the city the crime of its inhabitants is shown. And therefore the blood of Abel and of Zechariah is shown to come upon this posterity of theirs: because Christ, now dwelling among them and preaching, had suffered. If he had been believed, not only would the faith of believers be outside the penalty for the killing of the prophets, but even that very sentence of the Lord’s passion would have obtained pardon. But truly, since he was not believed even after the resurrection, even vengeance for the blood of Abel and Zechariah will be demanded from them. For although he speaks these things in the body and, found as a man, gives help to all, yet he often wished to gather them by the preachings of the prophets. But he spent this affection in vain and to no purpose. Like a hen gathering her chicks, he wished to hold them under his wings: having become, that is, an earthly and domestic bird, granting, as to his chicks, the warmth of immortal life by a kind of covering of his body as of wings, and bringing them out to flight as by a new generation. For chicks have one manner of being born and another of flying. For first they are held in the shells of eggs as in the enclosure of the body: then afterward, warmed by the care of the parent, they go out into flight. In the manner of this familiar and almost earthly bird, then, he wished to gather them into himself: so that those who had already been brought forth by the condition of birth, now arisen by another generation and reborn by the warmth of one cherishing them, might fly into the heavenly kingdom as with feathered bodies. Since they were unwilling, their house will be left deserted and empty, that is, they will be unworthy of the dwelling of the Holy Spirit. For they began to be their own house, not God’s: and, remaining in the stubbornness of unbelief, they will not see him until the time when, as he returns in the name of the Lord, they will bless him even with the confession of an unwilling unbelief.