Homilies of Maximus of Turin (Bruni's collection) 87.1–91.1

Your love remembers that last Sunday we preached that by good deeds and constant prayers we should unbar for ourselves the gates of justice, and by frequent almsgiving fortify ourselves as with a rampart of mercy. For it is a kind of impregnable wall against the adversary to resist with almsgiving and to fight with fasting. For though the enemy's arms are strong, these arms of the Saviour are stronger; whoever is clothed with them, though he may seem unarmed to the eyes of men, is armed enough, because the supreme Godhead guards him. It is good, then, in tribulation to pray, to fast, to sing psalms, to show mercy. For with these weapons, as we set forth the example of David against Goliath, Christians are accustomed to conquer their adversaries, and with these arms to guard the walls of the city. For the holy prophet says: "Unless the Lord guards the city, those who guard it keep watch in vain." In vain, then, does that man keep watch who thinks he arms the city while he himself does not have the arms of faith. In vain indeed does he labour who reckons that he can provide protection for another while he himself is destitute of the grace of God. The Lord says in the Gospel: "Physician, heal yourself." By this example it must be said: first, man, look after your own salvation, so that you may be able to provide for the salvation of many. Otherwise, when I see you weak and infirm and destitute of divine help, I not only have no confidence in the defence of the city that is prepared by you, but I fear that your despair may throw the city into confusion. The city, then, is fortified when God himself rather guards it; and God guards it, as it is written, when those who live in it are all moderate, serious, Christian and catholic. For God must preserve a city in which he finds something of his commandments to preserve. But where there is luxury, faithlessness and blasphemy, the Lord does not preserve that city, lest not so much the city as the sins in it be preserved. Whoever, then, provides a fortification for the city in the name of the Lord truly prepares security for the citizens. But whoever tries to build a fortification for the city without the grace of God seems, like a fox, to be preparing a hiding place in a den for himself. For is not that man like a fox in its den, who is always digging the earth and never looks at heaven? For the Lord says, as we heard in the reading lately: "Foxes have dens, and the birds of the sky nests where they may rest; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head." Let us attend carefully to what meaning this saying has. For the Lord did not speak specially of the animal itself, but of those men who, always crafty and cunning, are always eager to imitate foxes in their ways: while they fraudulently plunder other people's goods, they dig the den of their own perdition; and therefore the head of Christ, which is God, cannot find a dwelling in those who live in holes. And there is no doubt why heretics in particular are compared to foxes. For like foxes they are deceitful, troublesome and timid: where they sense quiet, there they exercise the frenzy of their fickleness; where they find watchfulness, they flee away from there in deceitful fraud. For as that animal is always false, always unreliable, and can never change the cunning of its ways, so every heretic is always false, always unreliable; and when he seems to speak with you simply, he changes his words but not his ways: he promises modesty in speech and brings out frenzy from the heart. The fox deceives with its tail, the heretic gets round you with his tongue; the fox feigns gentleness to the animals in order to catch them, the heretic promises moderation to men in order to harm them; the one plays first in order to kill, the other first flatters in order to rob. It is natural to the fox always to lie in wait for the hen and her chicks, so that if one of them wanders too far from its mother it may be caught as prey; so too the heretic always lies in wait for mother Church and her children, so that if perhaps he finds someone rather careless he may ensnare him with his frenzy. That the Church is rightly compared to a hen we read in the Gospel, where the Lord says to Jerusalem: "Jerusalem, how often I wished to gather your children as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings!" The hen is rightly compared to the Church. For just as the Church not only nourishes her own children but also receives strangers who come, so the hen not only nourishes those she has herself hatched but also rears strangers set under her. Therefore, brothers, let us arm ourselves during this week with fasts, prayers and vigils, so that by the intervention of God's mercy we may both drive back the ferocity of the barbarians and blunt the snares of the heretics.

I have often urged you, brothers, while it is allowed, while there is time, to look to your salvation in every way and in this short life to provide eternal life for yourselves. For every wise man understands that this life of men was not given for rest but for labour, that is, so that one may labour here and rest hereafter. Here there is no rest; for this life is filled with such great evils that in comparison with it death is thought to be a remedy, not a punishment. That is why God made it short, so that its troubles, which could not be ended by prosperity, might be ended by the shortness of time. Hence holy Job says: "The life of man upon earth is a piraterium"; that is, either because in this life men experience all evils, for piraterium can be called in Latin 'trial'; or certainly 'piraterium' because in this life the devil rages around men like a pirate, for a piraterium is the dwelling of pirates. So long, then, are we in the pirates' den as long as, set in this flesh, we lie open to the temptations of spiritual robbers. Although even in this very life fleshly pirates, the barbarians, are not lacking to us; yet I fear them less, for even if they take away our inheritance, they cannot take away justice; if they take gold, they certainly cannot take Christ; if they plunder silver, they cannot plunder the Saviour. Who, then, does not hasten to have Christ for himself, whom no robber can plunder from him, no enemy take away, no captivity separate? For whoever has Christ does not fear a human enemy. For what will the enemy do to a wise man? Drive off his flocks? A plague of disease has also been known to do that. Plunder his herds? He has already learned to bear that loss from cattle thieves. Kill the man himself? Perhaps he does not bring troubles on him but removes them; for he inflicts on him what a fever would bring with greater distress, especially since the Lord says: "Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul." Those spiritual pirates, then, are more to be feared, who are accustomed to despoil not only the bodies of men but also their souls; who strive to take away not so much the gold of the world as the gold of faith; who plunder not so much the substance of the world as the wisdom of Christ. For these spiritual enemies themselves send these fleshly ones against us, so that, set in tribulation, we may be tested as to how confident we are in God, whether we ask for a remedy from him alone. For there are some who, set in tribulation, say that enemies who conquer by evil arts must be overcome by the same arts; despairing of God, they demand victory from demons. Wretched men, they do not know what they are doing, what they are saying. For while they fear for their property, they have forgotten religion and faith; perhaps they do not lose their property, but, what is more, they have lost their souls. Holy Job says: "If we receive good things from the hand of the Lord, why shall we not bear evil things?" That is, if we rejoice when good things come, why should we not be strengthened when adversities befall? To bear adversity is for the wise man an exercise of virtue, for the foolish an occasion of transgression. I have often said that in this short life you should provide eternal life for yourselves, and I grieve that you despise doing it. For when we say that you must fast, hardly anyone fasts except a few; when we say that alms must be given, greater avarice constrains you. As for praying and giving thanks to God, I think that many of you do not know what it is: rising at first dawn, they think of nothing but their lunch; when they have lunched, they give themselves to sleep, never giving thanks to the Godhead, which has given them both lunch for refreshment and sleep for rest. Surely, you Christian, if you are of any use, you ought to remember whose bread you eat and say praise to him. Tell me: if you give anyone something of yours, do you not expect him to thank you and bless the one from whom kindness was bestowed on him? And if perhaps he does not thank you, how he is marked by you as ungrateful! So, then, God who feeds us expects of us too that we give thanks for the food he has supplied and, filled with his gifts, speak his praises. For this is the return for divine benefits: that when we have been refreshed, we confess that we have received good things. But if, receiving divine gifts, we remain silent and forgetful, we shall be cheated of their supply as ungrateful and unworthy; so that we seek, when evils come upon us, the God whom we did not acknowledge through his benefits, and are spurred by adversity to ask, because we did not give thanks in prosperity for our enjoyment; just as now it happens that we who were lazy in peace in giving praise are now trembling in tribulation, bewailing our dangers.

I believe I said quite enough last Sunday to rebuke those who, enjoying God's gifts, give no thanks to the Creator, and, using heavenly benefits, make no return to their author, as men ungrateful and unworthy of benefits: ungrateful, I say, who neither fear God as servants fear a master nor honour him as sons honour a parent. God says through the prophet: "If I am Lord, where is my fear? If I am father, where is my love?" That is: if you are a servant, render the Lord the service of fear; if a son, show the head of the household affection. But you, when you do not give thanks, neither love God nor fear him; so you are either a stubborn servant or a proud son. The Christian, then, who is of any use ought always to speak praises to his Father and Lord and to manage all things for his glory, as the blessed Apostle says: "Whether you eat or drink or do anything else, do all things for the glory of God." See what kind of banquet the Apostle wished a Christian man's to be: that faith in Christ rather than the fat of the lunch should be eaten, that the frequent calling on the Lord's name should refresh a man more than a manifold and abundant supply of dishes, and that religion should feed the hungry man better than fattening food. "Do all things," he says, "for the glory of God." All our acts, then, are to be carried out with Christ as companion or witness; for this reason, that we may do good things with him as author and avoid evil things because of his companionship. For one who knows that he has Christ as a sharer is ashamed to do evil. And Christ is our helper in good things and our preserver from evil things. So when we rise at dawn, before we go out of the bedroom, we ought to give thanks to the Saviour and, before all the acts of the world, perform acts of piety to him who guarded us as we rested and slept in our beds. For who but God guards a sleeping man? He is so loosened in sleep and forgetful of his human strength that he becomes a stranger to himself, so that he does not know what he is or where he is, and certainly cannot help himself. God, then, is necessarily present with those who sleep, since those who sleep cannot help themselves; and he himself guards the human race from the snares of the night, because at that time no one else keeps watch. I owe thanks, then, to him who keeps watch so that I may sleep securely. For God himself, when we are going to bed, receives us quietly as in a kind of lap, keeps us in a hidden treasury of peace, and defends us until the light by a kind of protection of darkness; so that the malice of hostile men, which cannot be dispelled by kindness, is repelled by the darkness, and the darkness grants peace to the weary which human kindness did not grant; for while a man does not know where to pursue his adversary, he grants unwillingly the peace which, when willing, he would not grant. We ought, then, on rising to give thanks to God and to do every work of the day in the sign of the Saviour. When you were still a pagan, did you not use to search out signs and gather with great inquiry which signs were favourable for which things? Now I do not want you to go wrong in number: know that in the one sign of Christ is the safe prosperity of all things. Whoever begins to sow in this sign will obtain the fruit of eternal life; whoever undertakes a journey in this sign will reach as far as heaven. In this name, then, all our acts are to be directed, and to him the movement of our whole life is to be referred; for, as the Apostle says, "In him we live and move and have our being." And when evening closes the day, we ought to speak praise to him with the psalter and sing his glory in measured sweetness, so that, the contest of our works being finished, we may gain rest like victors, and the forgetfulness of sleep may be a kind of palm for our labour. That we should do this, brothers, we are not only taught by reason but also reminded by examples. Do we not see even the tiniest birds, when dawn brings on the brightening day, sound out with varied sweetness in the little chambers of their nests, and do this zealously before they go out, so that they may charm their Creator with sweetness because they cannot with speech; and as each of them, since it cannot by confession, shows its service in melodies, so that the one that has sung more sweetly seems to itself to give thanks more devoutly; and that they do the same when the course of the day is done? What, then, does this song arranged at fixed times and this constant attention mean, if not a kind of unrestrained confession of thanks? For the innocent bird, because it cannot by speech, flatters its shepherd with sweetness; for the birds too have their shepherd, as the Lord says: "Look at the birds of the sky, for they neither sow nor reap, and your Father who is in heaven feeds them." And with what food are the birds fed? The cheapest and earthly, of course. The birds, then, give thanks for cheap food; you are fed with the most costly dishes, and you are ungrateful. Who, then, having the understanding of a man, would not be ashamed to close the day without the celebration of the psalms, when the birds themselves leap with the sweetness of a psalter to give thanks; and not to sound out with the sweetness of verses the glory of him whose praise the birds proclaim in measured song? Imitate, then, brother, the tiniest birds by giving thanks to the Creator morning and evening; and if you are more devout, imitate the nightingale, which, since the day alone is not enough for it to sing praises, runs through the spaces of the night with wakeful song. You too, then, outdoing the day with your praises, add the running courses of the night to your work, and console the sleepless industry of the labour you have undertaken with the psalter. And since I have mentioned those birds that keep watch at night, I do not want you to be an imitator of the owl, which, though it keeps watch through the night, is sluggish or blind through the day; which with its great eyes loves the gloom of darkness and shudders at the brightness of the sun; for in a marvellous way it is lit by darkness and blinded by light. That animal is a figure of heretics and pagans, who embrace the darkness of the devil, shudder at the light of the Saviour, and with the great eyes of their disputations see vain things and do not look at eternal ones. Of them the Lord says: "They have eyes and will not see; they walk in darkness." For they are sharp for superstitious things and dull for divine; and while they think they fly higher with their words, like owls they are confused by the brightness of the true light.

We read in the prophets that when overthrow from God hung over the city of Nineveh, and the time for destroying it according to God's sentence was coming on, those who lived in it had no other defence than to throw away their drunken feasts and undertake continuous fasts, and, setting aside the ambition for riches, to clothe themselves with the humility of poverty; so that they might receive a remedy from the very place from which ruin was coming on them; that is, that by abstaining they might soften the wrath of the Godhead which they had provoked by luxury, and humility might mitigate the offence which pride had brought on them. For in that tribulation the king himself is said to have laid aside the imperial purple, put away royal ambition, girded his limbs with sackcloth, and rolled himself in sackcloth day and night. A wise king, then, who knew how he ought to overcome his adversities: he overcame enemies by courage, but he conquered God by humility. A wise king indeed, who understood which arms to use according to the nature of the time: when men lay snares for him, he takes up the arms of war; when God is angry with him, he seizes the arms of justice. A wise king, I say, who for the safety of his citizens confesses himself a sinner rather than a king; for he forgets that he is a king when he fears God the king of all, and he does not remember his own power when he acknowledges the power of the Godhead. He forgets, then, that he is a king when he throws off the purple and lays down the diadem, and is clothed with haircloth and sackcloth, persists in fasts, and lingers in prayers. A marvellous thing: while he does not remember that he is king of men, he begins to be king of justice. The devout prince, then, did not lose his rule but changed it. For before he held the principate of military discipline; now he holds the principate of heavenly disciplines. He did not lose his rule, I say, because whether by iron or by justice he is the first to keep watch for the safety of the citizens. Indeed he is the first to keep watch; for, so that the whole city might fast, the king first proclaimed hunger on himself, and for the sake of all began to be hungry before the soldier; for it was necessary that he who had been more powerful than the rest should become more devout than all. By his example, then, he prepares an army for religion, fortified not with arms but with devotion alone: he orders every sex and every age to abstain from the day's meals. Numbers are added to the devout army when even infancy is compelled to serve in such devotion. For in such a cause it is believed to be piety to deny even little children the substance of food; for the satisfaction of the sinners was not enough to appease God unless the innocence of the little ones also wept for the sins of their elders, and youth washed away its own faults with the tears of others. That all these things, brothers, were done for our admonition there is no one who does not know, so that whenever we are pressed by tribulations we may run to these defences: for instance, the adversary threatens, the enemy is at hand; let us fast and conquer. Some men, whenever they suffer a very hard necessity, are accustomed to send ambassadors to neighbouring nations to ask for help. Let us, what is better, send an embassy to God through fasts; let us implore help from him, let us betake ourselves to him with heart and prayers. For those people did not ask for help by begging elsewhere, but exacted it from their own bowels by fasting. Why, then, should one ask from another who can find within himself what he seeks? For the nearer we are to God, the farther our adversaries will be driven from us. We must, then, become near to God; since the prophet says: "Behold, those who withdraw themselves far from you shall perish." But if those who are far from God shall perish, surely those who are near will be saved; and we cannot be near God otherwise than by drawing near to him with fasts, prayers and alms. For God himself is merciful, fasting and holy; and so whoever wishes to be near God must imitate being what God is. The whole city of the Ninevites, then, fasted in tribulation. Well did he say 'whole'; for we read that not only old men, young men and infants, but even the cattle fasted. A marvellous thing: one whom the condition of sin does not bind fasts for the sin of the city. Hence we too, dearest brothers, enduring the straits of the times, ought all to fast alike and implore the mercy of God by the abstinence of all. For what kind of Christian would this be, not to do for his own salvation what the cattle did for the salvation of men? Except that he is more stupid than a beast who does not fast when a fast has been proclaimed for him by the priest; for is he not a beast who does not understand what threatens him, what lies on him? And a beast, seeing a pit, turns aside and avoids precipices. But you do not wish to avoid by fasting the danger that you see? For it is a kind of despair to eat when you ought to abstain, to rejoice when you ought to lament. Of this despair, which may God turn away from us, the Apostle says: "Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we shall die." Let us fast, then, brothers, without ceasing, so that we may be able to overcome our enemies by prayers and abstinence, with the help of our Lord, who lives and reigns with the Father and the Holy Spirit for ever and ever. Amen.

Last Sunday we said that the Ninevites, set in tribulation, won the mercy of the Godhead by abstinence and freed their city from danger by fasting; and that they were so wise as not to defend themselves with the help of others but to save themselves by their own devotion. For they did not at once despair of their safety because they had heard from the prophet that they were to be overthrown together with the walls of the city. But the nearer the destruction was announced to be, the more they armed themselves with acts of religion; nor did they abandon their city to be overthrown, but rather remained in it: wisely, so that the city which was troubled by the sins of the citizens might be saved by the prayers of the citizens, and devout religion might bring salvation to the city on which bad conduct had brought ruin. For it was just that it should have as its own defenders the same people whom it had suffered as sinners. For destruction is brought on a city only because of the sins of its citizens. Stop sinning, then, and the city will not perish. Why do you flee your homeland? If you wish to be safe, flee rather from your sins. If you stop sinning, the enemy is conquered. Divine Scripture says to Abraham that a homeland can be saved through ten just men. If, then, it is the just who save the homeland, surely it is the unjust who abandon it; and if the former obtain grace by their presence, the latter must deserve desolation by their flight. Plainly unjust and impious is the son who deserts his mother in danger. For one's homeland is in a way a sweet mother, who bore you, who nourished you, who made you rich so that you are able to flee. For if you did not have an abundant supply of means, you would not have the resource of flight; and so, led by avarice, while you fear to lose your riches, you do not hesitate to be impious toward your mother. From this we understand that you look after your money more than your salvation. Tell me, good citizen, why are you planning to flee? Why are you abandoning your homeland? Perhaps you fear captivity, and do you not understand that this is the first captivity, not to see one's homeland, and, what is heavier than every evil, to endure the exile of a sojourn among enemies? It is usual for one who has committed some crime to be condemned to this kind of punishment: to be driven from his homeland and banished to unknown regions. So you are providing for yourself by your own will the evil that one condemned for punishment usually receives. But suppose you are of strong mind and can bear the hardship of living abroad with equanimity: tell me, with what freedom will you live among strangers? When you begin to speak, will it not be thrown at you: 'Where is this man exiled from, where has this fugitive come from? For he is trying to oppress our city as he oppressed his own homeland.' You will be so perplexed, so troubled, that, fearing for your liberty, you will be afraid that you will find no one there to vouch for your free birth. Believe me: in another's homeland you will hear as much as you have often said to others in your own homeland. And I do not wish to say that, however rich you are in your homeland, however much you enjoy plenty, as soon as you go out of your house you are a beggar and a poor man. God, then, says to Abraham that a city can be saved through ten just men. You think badly of yourself, then, Christian people, if you do not believe that in so great a congregation of ours there are ten just men to save the city. For when you desert your homeland, you declare that there are not in it worthy men by whose merits it may be freed. But I fear that, all the just in it being left behind, you alone, who desert it, may be found unjust. But I do not want you to be troubled about the number of ten just men. For we read that in the destruction of the Sodomites Lot alone by his merits freed a city, so that the grace of one availed more to save than the sins of many to overthrow. For to him as he went out of Sodom little Segor was granted for the sake of hospitality. But if a city is given to a just guest, how much more is a homeland granted to a just owner!