Letters 121.3–121.7

What sense has what is written in the evangelist Matthew: "If anyone wishes to come after me, let him deny himself"? What is self-denial, or how does one who follows the Savior deny himself? — Of this I spoke briefly as follows in the third book of my commentaries on Matthew: "He who puts off the old man with his deeds denies himself, saying, 'I live, yet not I, but Christ lives in me'; and he takes up his cross and is crucified to the world. And he to whom the world is crucified follows the crucified Lord." To this we can now add the following. After he had shown his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the priests and scribes and chief priests and be killed, Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, "Far be it from you, Lord; this shall not happen to you." He turned and said to Peter: "Get behind me, Satan; you are a stumbling block to me, because you do not savor the things of God, but those of men." For, terrified by human fear, Peter dreaded the Lord's passion. And just as, on hearing that he would suffer many things and be killed, he was afraid, so on hearing "and on the third day he will rise" he ought to have rejoiced and softened the sorrow of the passion with the glory of the resurrection. So, having rebuked Peter for his fear, he spoke to all the disciples, or, as Mark has it, called the crowd together with his disciples, or, according to Luke, said to all: "If anyone wishes to come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me." The sense of this exhortation is: confession toward God is not a dainty and untroubled thing. He who believes in me must shed his blood. For he who loses his life in the present will gain it in the future. Daily the one who believes in Christ takes up his cross and denies himself. He who was unchaste, turning to chastity, denies self-indulgence by self-control; he who was fearful and timid, taking on the strength of fortitude, no longer knows himself as he was. The unjust man, if he follows justice, denies injustice; the foolish man, if he confesses Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God, denies foolishness. Knowing this, let us deny ourselves, what we were before, not only in time of persecution and under the necessity of martyrdom, but in every part of our life, in deed, thought, and word, and let us confess ourselves as those who have been reborn in Christ. For the Lord was crucified for this reason, that we too, who believe in him and have died to sin, may be crucified with him and say what the apostle Paul taught: "I have been crucified with Christ," and, "But far be it from me to glory except in the cross of my Lord Jesus Christ, through whom the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world." Let him who has been crucified with Christ strip the principalities and powers and triumph over them on the wood. Hence also, as a type of those who were to believe in the Lord and to crucify themselves with him, Simon of Cyrene carries his cross.

What is meant by what is written in the same Matthew: "Woe to those who are pregnant and those who are nursing in those days," and, "Pray that your flight may not be in winter or on the sabbath"? — It is plain that this depends on what goes before. For when the gospel of Christ has been preached to all nations and the consummation has come, and they see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place, then those who are in Judea are commanded to flee to the mountains, and he who is on the roof not to come down to take anything from his house, and he who is in the field not to turn back to take his tunic. Of these things we spoke more fully in the commentaries on the same Matthew. And at once there follows: "Woe to those who are pregnant and those who are nursing in those days." In which days? When the abomination of desolation stands in the holy place. No one doubts that, according to the letter, this foretells the coming of the Antichrist, when the magnitude of the persecution compels flight, and heavy wombs and nursing infants slow the flight; although some would have it refer to the siege and war of Titus and Vespasian against the Jews and especially against Jerusalem. The winter and the sabbath they also interpret thus: that they may not be compelled to flee at a time when the harshness of the cold does not allow those fleeing to hide in the fields and deserted places, and when observance of the sabbath either makes them transgressors if they flee, or exposes them to the swords of the enemy if they keep the sabbath rest and its precepts. But we, hearing the Lord Savior bid those who are in Judea flee to the mountains, also lift up our eyes to the mountains, of which it is written, "I lifted up my eyes to the mountains, from where my help will come," and in another place, "His foundations are on the holy mountains," and, "Mountains are round about it, and the Lord round about his people," and, "A city set on a mountain cannot be hidden"; and we take off the skin of the letter and, going up barefoot with Moses on Mount Sinai, we say, "I will turn aside and see this great sight," so that we may understand as pregnant the souls that have conceived the beginnings of faith from the seed of teachings and of the word of God, and say with Isaiah: "From fear of you, O Lord, we have conceived and been in labor and given birth; we have brought forth the spirit of your salvation upon the earth." For just as seeds are gradually formed in the womb, and it is not reckoned homicide until the scattered elements receive their shapes and members, so a thought conceived by reason, unless it has broken out into deeds, is still held in the womb and quickly perishes by miscarriage when it sees the abomination of desolation standing in the church and Satan transformed into an angel of light. Of offspring of this kind Paul speaks, saying: "My little children, with whom I am again in labor until Christ is formed in you." These, then, I think, according to the mystical senses, are the women of whom the same apostle writes: "The woman, being deceived, came into transgression; but she will be saved through childbearing, if they continue in faith and love and holiness with modesty." If at some time these have given birth from the divine word, what has been born must grow and first receive the milk of infancy until they come to solid food and to the mature age of the fullness of Christ. For everyone who is fed on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, for he is a child. These souls, then, which have not yet given birth, or have not yet been able to nourish what they have borne, when they see heretical teaching standing in the church, are quickly scandalized and perish, and cannot endure in storm and persecutions, especially if they are idle of good works and have not walked in the way, which is Christ. Of this abomination of heretical and perverse doctrine the apostle said that the man of iniquity and the adversary exalts himself against everything that is called god or religion, so that he dares to stand in the temple of God and show himself as though he himself were God; and his coming, according to the working of Satan, makes what has been conceived perish by miscarriage, and prevents what has been born from reaching childhood and full age. Therefore we must pray the Lord that at the beginning of faith and of our growing age winter may not arise, of which it is written, "Winter has passed, it has gone away," lest we grow torpid in idleness; but, when shipwreck threatens, let us wake the sleeping Lord and say: "Master, save us, we are perishing."

What is meant by what is written in the gospel according to Luke: "And they did not receive him, because his face was set toward Jerusalem"? — The Lord was hastening to go to Jerusalem, so that the days of his being taken up might be fulfilled, that he might celebrate the Passover of which he had said, "With desire I have desired to eat this Passover with you," and drink the cup of which he says, "The cup that the Father has given me, shall I not drink it?" and strengthen all his teaching by the gibbet, according to what is written, "When I am lifted up, I will draw all things to myself"; and so he set his face firmly to go to Jerusalem. For firmness and fortitude are needed by one who hastens of his own accord to his passion; hence to Ezekiel too, to whom God had said, "Son of man, you dwell in the midst of scorpions; do not fear them," he said, "I have set your face firm, and made your face bronze and your forehead iron," so that, if the hammer of the whole earth should rise against him, he might resist it like the hardest anvil and break the hammer of which it is written, "How is the hammer of the whole earth broken and crushed!" "And he sent messengers," that is, angels, "before his face." For it was fitting that angels should minister to the Son of God; or he calls the apostles angels, since John too, the Lord's forerunner, was called an angel. "And when they had entered a village of Samaria to prepare for him, they did not receive him, because his face was set toward Jerusalem." Samaritans and Jews are at odds with hostile hatred; and though they hate all nations, they rage against each other with a special fury, since both contend over possession of the law; and they persecute each other so much that, after the Jews returned from Babylon, the Samaritans hindered the building of the temple. And when the Samaritans wished to build the temple together with them, the Jews answered: "It is not for us and you to build the house of the Lord." Thus the Pharisees, as the greatest insult, reproach the Lord: "Do you not have a demon, and are you not a Samaritan?" And in the parable of the man going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, a Samaritan is put forward as a sign and wonder, because a bad man did good; and at the well of the Samaritan woman it is written: "For Samaritans have no dealings with Jews." The Samaritans, then, seeing the Lord going to Jerusalem, that is, to their enemies, recognized from what they had heard from his disciples, who had come to prepare lodging, that he was a Jew, and were unwilling to receive him as a Jew, a stranger, and one going to their enemies. Yet another understanding also suggests itself to us: that it was the Lord's will not to be received by the Samaritans, because he was hastening to go to Jerusalem and there to suffer and shed his blood, lest, occupied with the Samaritans' welcome and with teaching that people, he should put off the day of the passion he had come to endure. Hence he says in another place too, "I came only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel," and he commanded the apostles, "Do not enter the cities of the Samaritans," wishing to remove every pretext for persecution by the Jews, so that they could not say afterwards, "We crucified him because he had joined himself to our enemies and foes." His face, then, was that of one going to Jerusalem, and therefore, according to the second understanding, the Samaritans did not receive him, because he was hastening to enter Jerusalem; and that they should not receive him was the Lord's will. Then the apostles, versed in the law, in which they knew only the justice of "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth," strive to avenge the injury and to imitate Elijah, at whose word fire had consumed two captains of fifty soldiers, and they say to the Lord, "Do you wish us to say that fire should come down from heaven and consume them?" They rightly say, "Do you wish us to say?" for Elijah too had said, "If I am a man of God, let fire come down from heaven upon you." So, for the apostles' word to have effect, the Lord's will is needed. For unless he commands, the apostles say in vain that fire should come down upon them; and in a way they are saying this in other words: "If for an injury to the servant Elijah fire came down from heaven, and the blaze consumed not Samaritans but Jews, how much more ought flame to rage against the impious Samaritans for their contempt of the Son of God!" On the other side the Lord, who had come not to judge but to save, not in power but in humility, not in the Father's glory but in the lowliness of man, rebukes them for not remembering his teaching and the goodness of the gospel, in which he had said, "Whoever strikes you on the cheek, offer him the other also," and, "Love your enemies."

You have put forward another small question from Luke's gospel: who is the steward of unrighteousness who was praised by the Lord's voice. Wishing to know its reason and from what source it came, I unrolled the gospel volume and found, among other things, that when tax collectors and sinners drew near to the Savior to hear him, the Pharisees and scribes murmured, saying: "Why does this man receive sinners and eat with them?" He told them the parable of the hundred sheep and of the one lost, which was found and carried back on the shepherd's shoulders; and why it was told he at once added: "I tell you, so there will be joy in heaven over one sinner who repents, more than over ninety-nine righteous who have no need of repentance." When he had put forward another parable too, of the ten drachmas and the one lost and found, he ended it in the same way: "So I tell you, there will be joy before the angels of God over one sinner who repents." He also put forward a third parable, of a man who had two sons and divided his property between them. When the younger, having lost his means, began to be in want and to eat pods, the food of pigs, he returned to his father and was received by him. The elder brother too, envious, is rebuked by his father, because he ought to have been glad and rejoiced that his brother was dead and had come to life, was lost and is found. These three parables he spoke against the Pharisees and scribes, who would not accept the repentance of sinners and the salvation of tax collectors. "And he said," it says, "to his disciples also" (no doubt a parable), as earlier to the scribes and Pharisees, a parable by which he might urge the disciples to clemency and say in other words, "Forgive, and you will be forgiven," so that in the Lord's Prayer you may ask with a clear brow, "Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors." What, then, is the parable of one urging his disciples to clemency? "There was a certain rich man who had a steward," or manager; for this is what οἰκονόμος means. A uilicus (steward) is properly the manager of a farm (uilla), and so the uilicus takes his name from the uilla. But an οἰκονόμος is the manager of money as well as of crops and of everything the master possesses. Hence Xenophon's very beautiful book, the Οἰκονομικός, which, as Tullius translates it, means not the management of a farm but the management of a whole household. "This manager, then, was accused to his master of having squandered his property. He called him and said: What is this I hear about you? Give an account of your management; for you can no longer be manager. And he said within himself: What shall I do, since my master is taking the management away from me? I am not strong enough to dig; I am ashamed to beg. I know what I will do, so that when the management is taken from me, they may receive me into their houses. And he called each of his master's debtors and said to the first: How much do you owe my master? He said to him: A hundred baths of oil. He said to him: Take your bond, sit down quickly, and write fifty. Then he said to another: And how much do you owe? He answered: A hundred cors of wheat. He said to him: Take your bond and write eighty. And the master praised the steward, or manager, of unrighteousness because he had acted prudently; for the children of this age are more prudent than the children of light in their generation. And I say to you: make friends for yourselves from the unrighteous mammon, so that when it fails they may receive you into eternal dwellings. He who is faithful in little is faithful also in much, and he who is unjust in the least will be unjust also in much. If then you have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will entrust to you what is true? And if you have not been faithful in what is another's, who will give you what is your own? No servant can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will listen to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon. Now the Pharisees, who were covetous, heard all these things, and they scoffed at him." I have set down the whole text of this parable so that we may not seek its meaning elsewhere, nor strive to find definite persons in the parable, but may interpret it as a parable, that is, a likeness, which takes its name from being set beside (παραβάλλεται), that is, likened to, something else, and is a kind of shadow and prelude of the truth. If, then, the manager of the unrighteous mammon is praised by the master's voice because he prepared righteousness for himself out of an unrighteous thing, and the master, though he suffered loss, praises the manager's prudence, because he acted fraudulently against his master but prudently for himself, how much more will Christ, who can suffer no loss and is inclined to clemency, praise his disciples if they are merciful toward those entrusted to them! Then after the parable he added: "And I say to you: make friends for yourselves from the unrighteous mammon." In the language not of the Hebrews but of the Syrians, riches are called mammon, and "unrighteous" because they are gathered from unrighteousness. If, then, unrighteousness well managed is turned into righteousness, how much more will the divine word, in which there is no unrighteousness and which was entrusted to the apostles, raise its managers to heaven if it is well managed! Therefore there follows: "He who is faithful in the least," that is, in carnal things, "will be faithful also in much," that is, in spiritual things. But he who is unjust in little, so as not to give his brothers the use of what God created for all, will also be unjust in distributing spiritual money, so as to distribute the Lord's teaching not according to need but according to persons. "But if," he says, "you do not manage well the carnal riches, which slip away, who will entrust to you the true and eternal riches of God's teaching? And if you have been unfaithful in what belongs to another" (and everything that belongs to the world is another's to us), "who will be able to entrust to you what is yours and properly assigned to man?" Hence he rebukes avarice and says that he who loves money cannot love God; so the apostles too, if they wish to love God, must despise money. Hence the scribes and Pharisees, who were covetous, understanding that the parable was spoken against them, scoffed at him, preferring carnal, sure, and present things to spiritual, future, and seemingly uncertain ones. Theophilus, seventh bishop of the church of Antioch after the apostle Peter, who left us monuments of his genius by joining the sayings of the four evangelists into one work, spoke thus about this parable in his commentaries: "The rich man who had a steward or manager is God almighty, than whom nothing is richer. His manager was Paul, who learned the sacred letters at the feet of Gamaliel and had received the law of God to manage. When he began to persecute, bind, and kill believers in Christ and to squander all his master's property, he was rebuked by the Lord: 'Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? It is hard for you to kick against the goad.' And he said in his heart: 'What shall I do? I who was teacher and steward am compelled to be a disciple and a laborer. I am not strong enough to dig; for I see all the commandments of the law, which weighed upon the earth, destroyed, and the law and the prophets ended at John the Baptist. I am ashamed to beg, that I, who had been teacher of the Jews, should be compelled to beg the teaching of salvation and faith from the Gentiles and from the disciple Ananias. I will do, then, what I understand to be useful to me, so that after I have been removed from my stewardship the Christians may receive me into their houses.' And he began to teach those who had previously been engaged in the law and had believed in Christ in such a way as to think that they would be justified by the law, that the law had been abolished, that the prophets had passed away, and that what had formerly been gain was reckoned as dung. So he called two of the many debtors. The first, who owed a hundred baths of oil, are those who had been gathered from the Gentiles and needed great mercy from God; instead of the number one hundred, which is full and perfect, he made them write fifty, the number that properly belongs to penitents, according to the jubilee and to that parable in the gospel in which five hundred denarii are forgiven to one and fifty to the other. The second he called was the Jewish people, which had been nourished on the wheat of God's commandments and owed him the number one hundred, and he compelled them to make eighty out of a hundred, that is, to believe in the Lord's resurrection, which is contained in the number of the eighth day, and to be completed from eight into tens, so as to pass from the sabbath to the first day of the week. For this reason he is praised by the Lord, because he acted well and for the sake of his salvation changed from the severity of the law to the clemency of the gospel. And if you ask why he is called a steward of unrighteousness in the law, which is God's: the steward was unrighteous who offered rightly but did not divide rightly, believing in the Father but persecuting the Son, having God almighty but denying the Holy Spirit. So the apostle Paul was more prudent in transgressing the law than those who were once children of light, who, engaged in observing the law, lost Christ, who is the true light of God the Father." What Ambrose, bishop of Milan, thought of this passage you will be able to read in his commentaries. I could not find an explanation of this parable by Origen or Didymus, and whether it has been lost through the passage of time or they did not write one, I hold uncertain. To me, following the former interpretation, it seems that we ought to make friends for ourselves from the unrighteous mammon, not of any poor people whatever, but of those who can receive us into their houses and into eternal dwellings, so that, when we have given them small things, we may receive great things from them, and, giving what is another's, may receive what is ours, and sow in blessing so that we may reap blessing; for he who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly.

In what sense should we take what we read in the letter to the Romans: "For scarcely will anyone die for a righteous man; for perhaps for a good man someone would dare to die"? — Two heresies, taking occasion from this testimony, which they do not understand, blaspheme with different errors but equal impiety. Marcion, who makes the just God the creator and the God of the law and the prophets, but the good God the God of the gospels and the apostles, whose Son he would have Christ be, introduces two gods, one just and the other good; and he asserts that for the just God either no one or few have met death, but for the good one, that is, for Christ, countless martyrs have appeared. Arius, on the other hand, refers "the just" to Christ, of whom it is said, "O God, give your judgment to the king and your righteousness to the king's son" (and he himself says of himself in the gospel, "For the Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son," and, "As I hear, so I judge"), but "the good" to God the Father, of whom the Son himself confesses, "Why do you call me good? No one is good but the one God, the Father." And though up to this point Arius could find devious paths for his blasphemy, in what follows he stumbles and falls. For how would anyone dare to die for the Father and scarcely die for the Son, when so much blood of martyrs has been shed for the name of Christ? He who expounds this passage simply can say this: under the old law, in which there is justice, scarcely a few were found who shed their blood, but in the new instrument, in which there is goodness and clemency, countless martyrs have appeared. But from the fact that he put "perhaps someone would even dare to die," tempering his statement with a hesitant step, he shows that some can be found who dare to die for the gospel; and so it must not be taken in this way, but the sense of this passage must be drawn from what comes before and after. For the apostle Paul says that he glories in tribulations, because tribulation works patience, patience approval, approval hope, and hope does not put to shame, since it has a sure promise from this, that the love of God has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us, according to what God had said through the prophet, "I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh"; and he marvels at the goodness of Christ, that he was willing to die for the weak, the ungodly, and sinners, and to die at the appointed time, of which he himself says, "At an acceptable time I have heard you, and on the day of salvation I have helped you," and again, "Behold, now is the acceptable time; behold, now is the day of salvation." When all had sinned, together they became worthless; there was none who did good, not even one. Incredible goodness, then, and unheard-of clemency, to die for the ungodly (for scarcely does anyone shed his blood for a just and good man, since the fear of death terrifies everyone; though it is sometimes found that someone dares to die for a just and good cause); but the love of God which he had toward us is proved most of all by this, that while we were still sinners Christ died for us, and his life was taken from the earth, and for the iniquities of the people he was led to death, and he bore our sins, and his soul was delivered to death, and he was reckoned with the wicked, so that he might make us, who were ungodly and weak and sinners, godly and strong and righteous. Some interpret thus: if he died for us who were ungodly and sinners, how much more ought we, without any hesitation, to die for Christ, the just and good! But let us not think that "just" and "good" are different, nor that they properly signify some person, but simply a just and good cause, for which it is sometimes hard to find anyone who will shed his blood.