Commentary on Matthew 4

So, when many crowds had gathered, he went up the mountain and taught; that is, placed in the height of the Father’s majesty, he laid down the precepts of heavenly life. For he would not have handed on the teachings of eternity unless he had been placed in eternity. Accordingly it is written thus: “He opened his mouth and taught them.” It would have been simpler to say that he spoke. But because he stood in the glory of the Father’s majesty and was teaching eternity, the office of a human mouth is therefore shown to have obeyed the movement of the Spirit speaking. “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” By his example the Lord had taught that the glory of human ambition must be left behind, saying: “You shall worship the Lord your God and serve him alone.” And since he had foretold through the prophets that he would choose a humble people, trembling at his words, he set the beginning of perfect blessedness in humility of spirit. So those who breathe humility, that is, who remember that they are men, are established in possession of the heavenly kingdom: aware that they have grown from filthy and slightest beginnings, that they are brought forth into this form of a complete body, and that they advance into this power of perceiving, beholding, judging, and acting as God supplies the progress; that nothing belongs to anyone as his own, nothing as his property, but that to all, by the gift of one parent, the same beginnings of coming into life are given and the means of using it supplied; and that we must imitate the goodness he has shown toward us, by the example of that most good one who gave us these things; so that we may be good to all and consider all things common to all; that no insolence of worldly pride, no greed for wealth, no ambition for empty glory corrupt us; but that we be subject to God and be held, from the fellowship of living, by the love of a common life toward all; considering that even in our being born there lies a great future advancement of divine goodness, whose reward and honor are to be earned by the works of the present life. And so, through this humility of spirit by which we remember that all things have been granted us by God and that better things are to be hoped for hereafter, the kingdom of heaven will be ours. To the meek he promises the inheritance of the earth, that is, of that body which the Lord himself took as his dwelling. Because through the meekness of our mind Christ will have dwelt in us, we too shall be clothed with the glory of his glorified body. “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.” To those who mourn the solace of eternal comfort is promised. Not for those grieving at bereavements or insults or losses, but for those weeping over old sins and distressed by the consciousness of the crimes with which we are soiled, this careful comfort is prepared in heaven. “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.” To those who thirst and hunger for righteousness he grants blessedness, signifying that the eagerness of the saints, stretched toward the teaching of God, will be filled with the good things of perfect satisfaction in heaven. “Blessed are the merciful, for God will have mercy on them.” For the merciful he prepares the gifts of mercy. For God is so delighted with the disposition of our goodwill toward all that he will show his mercy to the merciful alone. “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.” To the pure in heart he pledges the sight of God. For nothing polluted and filthy stands to meet the divine brightness, and the eye of a soiled mind is dulled for the sight of God; those, that is, are open to the sight and meeting of God who, by the brightness of the soul and purity of life, have the power of beholding. For only when we are perfected in spirit and changed by immortality shall we see that which in God is immortal, which is reserved for the pure in heart alone. The blessedness of the peacemakers is the reward of adoption, that they may remain sons of God; for God is the one parent of all. And it will not be possible to pass into the name of his family otherwise than by forgetting the things by which we could be offended and living in the peace of mutual brotherly love. “Blessed are those who suffer persecution for righteousness’ sake,” and the rest. Finally, he rewards with perfect blessedness those whose ready disposition is to suffer all things for Christ, because he himself is righteousness. For them, then, the kingdom is reserved and a great reward in heaven is promised, who, poor in spirit in contempt of the world, reproached with losses and forfeitures of present goods, confessors of heavenly righteousness against the curses of men, and then glorious martyrs of God’s promises, have spent all the use of life in testimony to his eternity. “You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt has become foolish, what is salted with it is worth nothing.” Salt, I think, belongs to no earth: how then did he call the apostles the salt of the earth? But the proper sense of the words must be sought, which both the office of the apostles and the nature of salt itself will show. Salt contains in itself alone the elements of water and fire, and it is one thing from two. Made for the single use of the human race, it gives incorruption to the bodies on which it has been sprinkled and is most suited to every sense of seasoned flavor. The apostles are preachers of heavenly things and, as it were, sowers of eternity, bestowing immortality on all bodies on which their word has been sprinkled, and, as John testified above, perfected by the mystery of water and fire. Rightly, then, they are called the salt of the earth, preserving bodies for eternity by the power of their teaching in the manner of salting. But the nature of salt is always the same and can never be changed. But since man is subject to change, and he alone is blessed who has persevered to the end in all the works of God, he therefore warns those called the salt of the earth to persist in the strength of the power handed to them, lest, having become foolish, they salt nothing, and, having lost the sense of the flavor received, they cannot give life to what is corrupted, and, thrown out of the storehouses of the church, they are trampled under the feet of those who walk by, together with those they salted. “You are the light of the world.” The nature of light is to send out light wherever it is carried, and, brought into houses, to destroy the darkness as the light prevails. So the world, set outside the knowledge of God, was darkened by the darkness of ignorance; to it the light of knowledge is brought through the apostles, the knowledge of God shines, and from their small little bodies, wherever they go, light is supplied to the darkness. “A city built on a mountain cannot be hidden, nor do they light a lamp and put it under a bushel,” and the rest. He calls the flesh he had taken up a city: because, as a city consists of a variety and multitude of inhabitants, so in him, by the nature of the body he took, a kind of gathering of the whole human race is contained. And so he becomes a city from our being gathered into him, and we, through fellowship in his flesh, are the inhabitants of the city. So it can no longer be hidden: because, set in the height of God’s loftiness, he is lifted up to be contemplated and understood by all through wonder at his works. But neither is a lamp lit to be hidden under a bushel. For what is the use of keeping the expense of light shut up? Rather, the Lord fittingly compared the synagogue to a bushel: which, receiving within itself only the fruits it took in, kept a fixed measure of measured observance; now, however, it is empty of all fruit since his coming, yet still not able to hide the light. And therefore the lamp of Christ is no longer to be hidden under a bushel nor concealed by the covering of the synagogue, but, hung on the wood in the passion, it will give eternal light to those who dwell in the church. He warns the apostles too to shine with the same light, so that praise may be given to God through wonder at their work: not that glory is to be sought from men, since all things are to be done for the honor of God, but that, even if we keep it hidden, our work may shine out to those among whom we live. “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have not come to abolish but to fulfill.” The force and power of the heavenly words contain great moments in themselves. For the law of works was laid down, and it enclosed all things in faith in the things that were to be revealed in Christ, whose teaching and passion are a great and deep decision of the Father’s will. The law, under the veil of spiritual words, spoke of the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ, his embodiment, passion, and resurrection; and that this was arranged so before the ages for the time of our age, prophetic and apostolic authority frequently declares. So after the fast of forty days, Satan, anxious with such great suspicions, broke out into the boldness of tempting, greatly fearing in Jesus the secret of a heavenly undertaking. For the name Jesus belongs to our Lord from the body. And so his embodiment and passion are both the will of God and the salvation of the world; and it is beyond the eloquence of human speech that God from God, the Son from the substance of the Father and existing within the substance of the Father, first was embodied as man, then was subjected to death by the condition of man, and finally, returning from death to life after three days, carried back to heaven the matter of the body he assumed, joined to the eternity of the Spirit and of his substance. So, lest we should think that there was anything in his works other than what was contained in the law, he professed that he did not abolish the law but fulfilled it: that heaven and earth indeed, chiefly, as we think, the elements, are to be dissolved, but that not even the least of the commandments of the law can be left undone; for in him the whole law and prophecy is fulfilled. In his passion, about to give up his spirit, certain of this great secret in himself, after drinking the vinegar he professed that all things were finished: for then all the sayings of the prophets took on the truth of the events. So he ruled that not even the least of God’s commandments may be broken without guilt before God, declaring that those who break the least will be least, that is, last and almost nothing. And there can be nothing less than the things that are least. The least of all is the Lord’s passion and the death of the cross: if anyone does not confess it, as something to be ashamed of, he will be least; but to the one who confesses it he promises the glory of a great calling in heaven. “But I tell you that unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.” With a most beautiful entrance he began to go beyond the work of the law, not abolishing it but going ahead of it by a greater advance: declaring that the apostles would have no entrance into heaven unless they surpassed the righteousness of the Pharisees in fairness. So, having set out the things prescribed in the law, he goes beyond them by advance, not abolition. The law forbade killing, intending to expiate the guilt of homicide by the severity of judgment. But in the Gospels the disposition of a mind badly stirred against another carries the same penalty; and by the precept of faith anger taken up without reason is no less guilty than homicide in the works of the law. “And whoever says to his brother, Raca, will be liable to the council.” Raca is a reproach of emptiness; and he who charges one full of the Holy Spirit with the insult of emptiness becomes liable to the council of the saints, to pay the penalty of insulting the Holy Spirit by the punishment of the saints’ judgment. “But whoever says, Fool, will be liable to the Gehenna of fire.” It is the danger of a great guilt to provoke with the insult of a foolish mind him whom God has called salt, and to exasperate with the curse of foolish understanding the understanding that salts the foolish. Such a one, then, will be fuel for eternal fire. So what the law did not condemn even in deeds, the faith of the Gospels condemns merely for careless insulting words. Binding all, then, in mutual love, he does not allow any prayer to be made without peace; but he commands those offering gifts at the altar, if they remember having some quarrel with their brothers, to return reconciled in human peace to the divine peace, so as to pass from the love of men into the love of God. And since he allows no time to be empty of the disposition to be reconciled, he commanded that we be quickly reconciled to our adversary by kindness on every road of our life: lest, slow in returning to favor, we come to the time of death without making peace, and the adversary hand us over to the judge and the judge to the officer, and we be put in prison and not come out until we pay the last penny. In the precepts of the Lord’s Prayer we pray that our sins be forgiven us after the example, and, having granted pardon to our adversaries on that condition, we beg his pardon. It will be denied us, then, if we deny it to others; and we are guilty by our own judgment if we pass into the time of judgment with quarrels not forgiven, the adversary handing us over to the judge, because the anger of our quarrel against him accuses us. And since love covers a multitude of sins and is an earnest advocate before God for our errors, we shall pay the last penny of punishment unless the guilt of some crimes is redeemed by its price. What many have thought about this passage I did not think should be discussed. For they referred our being commanded to be reconciled to our adversary by goodwill to the harmony of body and spirit, which oppose each other; but we, holding to the order of the teaching and going beyond the work of the law by the advances of the Gospel, did not think the continuity of the meaning ought to be torn apart. “You have heard that it was said to the ancients, You shall not commit adultery,” and so on. The order of precepts runs its course, and, the works of the law being passed over, now in the Gospels the mere movement of an eye falling on another is made equal to adultery, and the alluring disposition of a passing glance is punished with the deed of sexual immorality. “But if your right eye causes you to stumble, tear it out and throw it from you,” and so on. The step of innocence becomes higher and faith takes an advance. For we are warned to be free not only of our own vices but also of those that come upon us from outside. For losses of the body were not commanded because of members that sin: for the left eye would err no less than the right. Certainly a foot, lacking the sense of desire, is uselessly cut off, since the cause of punishment does not fall upon it. But since, though the members are different from one another, we are all one body, we are warned to cast away from us, or rather to tear out, the closest ties of the dearest names, if we see anything such in them, lest from familiarity we come into fellowship in their crime: it is better to be without things useful and most necessary, like the members of eye and foot, than to be held by the affection of a vicious closeness even into the fellowship of Gehenna. The cutting off of members would be useful if the cutting out of the heart were also possible. For since desire is compared with the deed, the loss of the body is idle if the impulse of the will is left. “It was said: Whoever puts away his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce,” and so on. Reconciling fairness toward all, he commanded that it remain above all in the peace of marriages, adding many things to the law and taking nothing away. Nor can advance be faulted. For whereas the law had granted the freedom to give a divorce on the authority of a written certificate, now the faith of the Gospel has not only enjoined on the husband the will for peace but has also laid on him the guilt of a wife forced into adultery, if she must marry another through the necessity of the separation: prescribing no other cause for ceasing from marriage than that which would pollute the husband by fellowship with a wife who has prostituted herself. “Again you have heard that it was said to the ancients: You shall not swear falsely,” and so on. The law had set a penalty for perjury, so that the solemnity of an oath might restrain the deceit of liars, and at the same time that an untrained and insolent people might often make mention of their God through familiarity with swearing. But faith removes the habit of the oath, setting the business of our life in truth, casting off the disposition to deceive and prescribing simplicity in speaking and hearing: so that what was might be, and what was not might not be; because between “is” and “not” there would be open matter for deceit, and whatever goes beyond is all from evil. For what is, has it as its own that it always is; what is not, has it by nature that it is not. So for those living in simplicity there is no need for the solemnity of swearing, since with them what is, always is, and what is not, is not; and through this all their work and speech is in truth. “Do not swear by heaven, because it is the throne of God,” and the rest. He not only does not allow us to give oaths to God, since all the truth of God is to be kept by the simplicity of our word and deed, but he condemns the superstition of an old stubbornness. For the Jews made it a religious practice to swear by these names of elements, by heaven, earth, and Jerusalem, and even by their own head, offering by the oath a veneration to these things in insult to God. For what weight was there in swearing by heaven, the throne of God, in swearing by the earth, the footstool of his feet, in swearing by Jerusalem, a city soon to be destroyed for the insolence and sins of its inhabitants, especially since it had been established as a prefiguration of the church, that is, of the body of Christ, which is the city of the great king? And why should they wish to swear by their head? Could the swearer have the power of changing even one hair, when nature, proceeding from God, supplies the color to all? And so he shows that these pledges of oaths among them were full of guilt, since, their maker unknown or neglected, they gave religious honor to his works. “You have heard that it was said, An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,” and the rest. The Lord wishes the hope of our faith, stretched out to eternity, to be shown by the very events, so that the very endurance of overlooking injury may be a witness of the judgment to come. The law kept unfaithful Israel within bounds by fear and restrained the will to injure by the requital of injury. But faith does not allow the pain of any injury to be so heavy that one seeks vengeance and makes himself the avenger of an insult done to him; because in the judgment of God there is both more consolation for those who have suffered injury and a more severe penalty for those who injure. And so the Gospels command us not only to keep away from iniquities but also require us to overlook the avenging of injury. For when we receive a slap we are commanded to offer the other cheek, and, carrying a burden for a mile, to go on for a distance of two miles, so that we shall have an advance of vengeance through the increase of injury, the very Lord of the heavenly powers offering, for the increase of glory, his cheeks to blows and his shoulders to scourges. He commands that not only are the decisions of human judgment to be fled, but that they are to be avoided even at the cost of willing loss; so that to one wishing to strip us of our tunic by a lawsuit we give up our cloak as well, and, despising worldly goods through the hope of future good things, we may refute the empty greed of the nations and the vanity of fruitless avarice. He also commands that what they ask be given to all, and that we not turn away mouth and mind from the requests of those who wish to borrow; so that those in need may be satisfied through our generosity, and we may refresh their thirst with drink, their hunger with food, or their nakedness with clothing given; and so may be found worthy of the good things we need from God, since the habit of giving wins the merit of obtaining. He also shows that we must be ready in the duty of dispensing the grace we have received, so that the dispensing of a free gift may be free, and we may not deny to those who wish to borrow what we borrow from God, always performing the service of sharing without loss of what we have. “You have heard that it was said, You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy,” and the rest. He concluded all things with perfect goodness. For the law required that the neighbor be loved and gave license for hatred toward the enemy. But faith commands that enemies be loved, and breaks the wanton movements of human minds by the disposition of a common love; not only driving anger away from vengeance but softening it into love for the one who injures: because it belongs to the nations to love those who love, and it is common to love those who love us. So he calls us to the inheritance, and so to the imitation, of God, who by the coming of his Christ gives both sun and rain, in the mysteries of baptism and the Spirit, to the good and the unjust. So, through this harmony of common goodness, he has trained us for the perfect life, because the perfect Father in heaven is to be imitated by us. “Take care not to do your righteousness before men,” and so on. He removes all care for present things and commands us to be intent only on the hope of the future, and not to pursue the favor of men by display of goodness or the boasting of religion by a public abundance of prayer, but to keep the fruit of good work within the conscience of faith: because the pursuit of human praise will receive only the reward it seeks from men; whereas the expectation of earning God’s favor will obtain the reward of long patience. He commands also that the left hand not know the work of the right. But does the nature of the body allow this? Or do the services of the hands have a share of understanding? Rather, the meaning is that our works should rest in the knowledge of God: since under the name of members, in the things we do, the awareness of those who are ours and with us is to be kept away