Commentary on Matthew, Latin Series 54–59

“Truly I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.” Let us see what this generation is of which Christ speaks. The simple refer the words to the destruction of Jerusalem and think it said of that generation which was in the time of Christ and saw his passion, that it would not pass away before the destruction of that city took place. But I do not know whether they can explain word for word what he says from “Do you not see all these things? Truly I say to you, there will not be left here stone upon stone that will not be thrown down,” up to the saying, “It is near, at the doors.” Perhaps in some things they can, but in others not at all; and, being hard pressed, I do not know whether they will be able to say anything. But we, observing the word “generation” in many places, take it in two ways. For we think there are two generations, one of the Jews and the other of the Gentiles. So we understand Ecclesiastes too when he says: “A generation goes, and a generation comes, and the earth stands for ever.” For prophesying of the people of the Jews, which was to pass away, he says, “A generation goes”; and of the people of the Gentiles, which was to believe, he said, “A generation comes.” I think something like this is said also in the eighty-ninth psalm by Moses in his prayer: “Lord, you have become our refuge from generation to generation.” For God is the refuge of both generations, since one is God who justifies the circumcision by faith and the uncircumcision through faith. And since he is God not of the Jews only but also of the Gentiles, the generation of the New Testament, which is in the presence of the Saviour, will not pass away, nor depart to those blessed promises of that age, until all the things Christ spoke have taken place. For in each of us all the things foretold must take place, as we have handed on in each explanation. One generation, then, is that of the Church, which began from the teaching of the Lord and Saviour until the consummation; and this very generation will one day pass through this whole age and pass beyond it, so as to inherit that future age; yet it will not pass away until all these things take place. And when it has been equal to all these things, and has remained unmoved until the glorious coming of Christ, then it will pass over. Yet until all these things take place, not some of the things spoken while others are not to happen, this generation will not pass away; it will pass when all these things have taken place, when not only the earth but also heaven has passed away: that is, not only those men whose life is earthly and who are therefore called earth, but also those whose way of life is in heaven and who are therefore called heaven. They will pass to things to come, and their whole state, so that they come to higher and better things. The expectation of creation awaits their revelation, since they are sons of God; and the whole creation groans with them and suffers pain, until, receiving from the fear of the Lord in the womb, they have brought forth the spirit of salvation, bearing their offspring; and then the generation of which Christ speaks will pass over, and heaven in the sense we have explained, and earth in the sense we have handed on. But the words spoken by the Saviour will not pass away, because they work what is their own, and both now and always will work. But the perfect, and those who no longer receive further improvement, passing beyond what they are, come to what they are not. In the saying, “But my words will not pass away,” I think this too must be asked: whether perhaps the words of Moses and of the prophets have passed away, but the words of Jesus Christ have not passed away; since what was prophesied by them has been fulfilled, while the words of Christ are always full and always in the act of fulfilment, and are fulfilled daily and are never completely fulfilled. For they are the very things that in the saints have been fulfilled, are being fulfilled, and are still to be fulfilled. Or perhaps we ought not to say that the words of Moses or the prophets have been wholly fulfilled either; for those too are properly words of the Son of God and are always being fulfilled. It is good, then, to unfold the depths of the divine words in simple words; yet for the sake of the few let us examine these things, understanding only this: that the word which is human in the word of God has not passed away from the creation of the world until its consummation. For it stands and works, since it did not receive a beginning of working before the times of the days, but began with creation and will pass away with creation. But the Word who was before creation will not pass away with creation.

“But of that day and hour no one knows, not the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone.” These words seem to refute those who claim to comprehend the consummation and corruption of the world and announce that the day of the Lord is at hand; such as certain Thessalonians are said to have been in the Apostle's time, about whom he writes: “We ask you, brothers, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our gathering to him, not to be quickly shaken from your mind or troubled, either by spirit, or by word, or by letter as if sent by us, as though the day of the Lord were at hand.” Perhaps because among the Jews there were some who professed to know about the times of the consummation, whether from the Scriptures or from secret writings, he writes this, teaching his disciples to believe no one who professes such things. And the Saviour, according to this passage, joins himself to those who do not know that day and hour. And it is reasonable to ask how he who is confident that he knows the Father, saying, “No one knows the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him,” knows the Father but does not know the day and hour of the consummation; and how the Father hid this from the Son. For there must certainly be a reason why the time of the consummation was hidden from the Saviour and he was ignorant of it. Someone will venture to say that the man who is understood in the Saviour advanced in wisdom and age and grace before God and men, and that in advancing he advanced indeed beyond all in knowledge and wisdom, yet not so that what was perfect had already come before he fulfilled his own dispensation. It is no wonder, then, if he did not know this one thing of all, that is, the day and hour of the consummation. And perhaps he said that he did not know the day and hour of the consummation before his dispensation, “because no one knows, not the angels, nor the Son, but the Father alone.” But after the dispensation had been fulfilled he never said this, after God had highly exalted him and given him the name which is above every name. For afterwards the Son too knew, receiving knowledge from the Father, even about the day and hour of the consummation, so that now not only the Father knew of it but also the Son. And in the Acts of the Apostles, the apostles, coming together, asked him, saying: “Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” But he said to them: “It is not for you to know the times or seasons which the Father has set in his own authority.” And since he set in his own authority the times and seasons of the consummation of the world and of the restoration of the kingdom to Israel, for that reason no one could know what had not yet been predetermined by God. Each of the things he predetermined he did not predetermine from something unknowable, for this is not possible; but what he predetermined, he predetermined by making the beginning of the predetermining. If so, he predetermined to make the consummation of the world, but did not also predetermine the times and seasons which he set in his own authority, so that if he wishes to lengthen them, judging so, he may lengthen them, and if to shorten them, he may shorten them, with no one knowing. And for this reason he set in his own authority the times and seasons of the consummation of the world, so that he may accordingly fix the due judgment for the human race, set in its own free choice and acting in this way or that. In the prophets too one can find many things written for the benefit of the hearers, with precepts and warnings, as though he determined nothing beforehand about them, but punished them if they sinned and saved them if they kept the precepts. And as in those passages Scripture did not present God as predetermining but as speaking beforehand for the benefit of the hearers, so too it must be understood of the day and hour of the consummation. Another explanation, more widely known than those already given, says something else about the words “nor the Son, but the Father alone.” The Apostle, it says, speaks somewhere of the Saviour and of the things to be ordered at the end of the age in this way: “And when all things have been subjected to him, then the Son himself also will be subjected to him who subjected all things to himself, that God may be all in all.” By these words he seems to show that before he subjected all things to him, he was not subjected to him who subjected all things to himself. This is shown from the fact that unless the Son had been subjected to the Father, who subjected all things to himself, the Father would never have subjected all things to him. And by this he seems to say that the subjection of the Son is the subjection of all who were to be subjected, and their coming through the Son to God, and their perfection. If, then, this is rightly said of the Son's future subjection to the Father, that then those who are to be Christ's and have clung to him are subjected to the Father with Christ himself, why shall we not likewise explain that no one knows that day and hour, not even the Son? For as long as the Church, which is his body, does not know that day and hour, so long the Son himself is said not to know that day and hour, so that he is understood to know it then, when all his members also know it. And “to know” is rightly said in its proper meaning, as is the custom of the Scriptures. What is “to know”? That he will know that day and hour who has come … to the shortening of that day and hour. That such is a meaning of “to know” and “to come to know” in the Scriptures is plain from what is said in Ecclesiastes in this way: “He who keeps the commandment will not know an evil word,” that is, will not experience an evil word. And in the Apostle it is said of the Saviour himself, “Him who did not know sin he made sin for us”; and he calls the Saviour one who did not know sin, as if he said one who did not sin, nor was sin in his nature. Something of this kind is also signified by the saying, “Adam knew Eve his wife”; for as long as she had not been joined to him, he did not know her. So no one knows the day of such a consummation and corruption of the age, not the angels of heaven, nor the Son of God, since God provides something better concerning the saints, that they may all together be in the blessedness that is to come after the day and hour of that consummation. And just as it is written in the letter to the Hebrews of those who have testimony in faith, that “all these, though commended through faith, did not receive God's promise, since God had provided something better for us, that they should not be made perfect without us,” so it must be known in this case too that, since God provided something better for those who were to be saved, they have not yet received the promise, who did not know that day and hour, neither the angels of heaven nor the Son. For the Son kept back the knowledge of that day and hour for the co-heirs of that promise, from the time when he emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, working the way that leads to the restoration of all for whose sake he took the form of a servant; so that all together may know, that is, may experience in reality, that hour and day; since “what eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered the heart of man, God has prepared for those who love him,” exercising in the knowledge of earlier things and preparing everyone whom he wishes to know that day and hour with the holy angels and with our Lord Jesus Christ himself. And of each one's … in these future things mentioned above, and about each, the Father alone knows; since the Son, accompanying and going ahead of those who follow, and willing, so to speak, is to come, and delays so that those who strive to follow him may be able to follow him, and, following him, may be found with him on that day and hour.

“For as it was in the days of Noah, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. For as in the days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until Noah entered the ark, and they did not know until the flood came and swept them all away, so will be the coming of the Son of Man.”

For those who know the text of the present words, whether they wish to understand them spiritually or simply, it follows to say of the consummation of the world that it will come suddenly, not as of one who has first fallen sick with a sickness fit to show his coming corruption. For this is shown especially by his saying that the coming of the Son of Man will be like the days of Noah; for then all that was on the earth perished suddenly. But one who wishes to say that the consummation of the world will come gradually will say that it happened likewise in the days of Noah. For when rain fell for forty days and forty nights, it followed that first those perished who lived in the lower parts of the earth, after them those a little higher, and so last those who dwelt on the highest mountains. So, he says, at the consummation of the world, when fire comes down, it will begin from the higher places and gradually come down to the lower. But Luke, adding also the likeness of the fire of Sodom, gives us occasion to understand that the consummation will be sudden. Someone will say that by this it is declared that that rain or fire was not natural but came because of the abundant sins of men. The corruption of the world, then, is thought likely to come in two ways: one according to a natural holding back of the fire, the other according to the judgment of God. The Gentiles say that the cause of that conflagration was not sins but the power of fire; but the divine words teach that all things are held and governed by God, and they do not blame the violence of fire but declare the will of God, who saves on earth those who are worthy of salvation in it, and destroys those in whom, because of the abundance of iniquity, love grows cold. The comparison with the fire of Sodom most plainly teaches that the corruption of the world will be sudden, from what the angel said to Lot: “Behold, I have regarded your face in this matter too, not to destroy the city of which you spoke. Hasten, then, to be saved there, for I cannot do anything until you go there.” You see that that fire which was sent upon Sodom was held back by the divine will until Lot entered Zoar. So I think it will be at the consummation, according as Lot was saved, that that fire of the consummation will take hold of the world according to the judgment of God when the righteous, having been saved, shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father; then they will gather the wicked out of the kingdom of Christ and cast them into the furnace of fire. For how is it not plain that the corruption of the world will be sudden, from his saying that they will be eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, which are signs of peace and security? For famines and pestilences will perhaps come some time before the consummation; but around the consummation itself there will be neither famine nor war. And how will they be overtaken eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, planting and building, buying and selling, unless it is so ordained? This is also shown by what the Apostle says: “For the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. When they say, Peace and security, then sudden destruction will come upon them, as labour pains on a woman with child, and they will not escape.” He teaches us that the day of the consummation will come upon men suddenly and unexpectedly, when the state of affairs seems to have turned as it were for the better: from former famine to plenty, from pestilence and battles to peace and security. But those who hear the Gospel more deeply, and do everything so that the Gospel is veiled to them in no part at all, do not care much about the general consummation of the age, whether it is to be sudden and general or in parts; but they consider only this: that each one's consummation comes without his knowing either the day or the hour of his departure, and that the day of the Lord will come upon each of us like a thief. Therefore we must keep watch, whether in the evening, that is, in youth; or at midnight, that is, in the middle of dark human life; or at cockcrow, when one is already older; or in the morning, when one is far advanced in old age; so that when God the Word comes, bringing the consummation of the progress of this life, he may be found who has given no sleep to his eyes nor slumber to his eyelids, and has kept the commandment of him who says, “Watch at all times.” Yet all are vain, whether those who profess to know when the consummation of the world will be, or those who boast that they know the end of their own life, led astray either by the signs of birds, or by ventriloquists, or by magicians, and thinking they know the day and hour of their departure. For as things are, no one can know, unless perhaps some prophet has been enlightened by the Holy Spirit, like the one who prophesied to the king's wife, who wished to know whether her son would rise from his sickness; and as Elijah prophesied to Ahaziah, saying what had been decreed by the Lord: “Thus says the Lord: Because there was no God in Israel, you go to inquire of Baal, or Beelzebub, the lord of flies, the god of Ekron; therefore thus says the Lord: From the bed on which you have gone up you shall not come down, for you shall surely die.” Although we have said these things in a digression, we have brought them in as useful, since no one can know about each one's consummation, that is, about the day of his own departure, though many profess to know such things, unless perhaps those who have heard from the prophets. I know also another consummation, that of the righteous man, who with apostolic progress can say: “But far be it from me to glory except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me and I to the world.” For the one to whom the world has been crucified, for him in a way the consummation of the world has already come; and to one who has died to worldly things, who has passed beyond, there comes not the day of the world but the day of the Lord, in which the coming of the Son of Man takes place upon his soul, because he no longer lives to sin and to the world.

“Then two will be in the field; one will be taken and the other left.” Just as in the saying, “Either make the tree bad and its fruit bad, or make the tree good and its fruit good,” there are two general trees in the hearts of men, either the good tree of virtue or the bad tree of malice; so, as the world is the field according to a certain parable, there are in general two in it: one like Noah, a tiller of the earth, and the other like Cain, working the earth. When such men are set in such a field, one will be taken, that is, the one who is like Noah, a tiller of the earth; and the other left, who, like Cain, works the earth. For such is everyone who hates his brother, and because of hatred of his brother is called a murderer by John the apostle. So also of the souls grinding at the heavy mill of the world or of the body: the good soul is taken, but the bad is left until it is made worthy to be taken. Or thus: the two in the field are the mind of the good man and the mind of the bad man; the good mind is taken, the bad left. For we cannot say that the spirit of the bad man is not taken, since I have learned in Ecclesiastes about every spirit that it returns to God who gave it, as every flesh returns to the earth from which it was taken; and as the Lord himself taught us to fear him who can destroy both body and soul in Gehenna, and by saying nothing about the spirit he plainly shows that the spirit is not punished together with the sinful body or soul. For one who has sinned is divided, and part of him is placed with the unbelievers; but what is not his own returns to God who gave it.

“Two in one bed: one will be taken and the other left.” Besides the two who are in the field, and besides the two women who are at the mill, there are two bodies of one matter, of which bodies one is the body of the righteous man, which is taken, and the other a body of the same matter, which is left. And the body, though it is taken, lies as it were sick in the bed of fleshly passions; the soul, because of the many things it endures in this world, grinds at the mill of the world; and the mind, in the sense we have given, works in the field what it works.

“Watch, therefore, for you do not know at what hour your Lord is coming,” and the rest: giving no sleep to the eyes of our soul nor slumber to our eyelids, so that we may await either our own end or that of the age, whether that we depart from this life or that this world be brought to its consummation for us. Someone will ask how the Lord, being present beside his disciples, speaks as though not present but about to come to them, saying, “Watch, for you do not know at what hour your Lord is coming.” The simpler will say that he spoke this word about the second coming in which he was to come. But another will say that he spoke of an intelligible coming, still to come, into the minds of the disciples of the Word, because he was not yet in their minds as he was to be; since, as he shows through this passage, in those who watch he works the day of his coming into the soul of those who are enlightened by the true light coming to their souls. “But know this, that if the householder knew in what watch the thief was coming, he would watch and would not let his house be broken into.” How would he not let it? Without doubt through his watchfulness. “Therefore you too be ready, for the Son of Man is coming in a watch you do not expect.” Matthew speaks indefinitely, but Mark also defines the times of the day as of a thief coming, saying: “Watch, therefore, for you do not know when the master of the house is coming, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or in the morning.” The householder is a man's mind, and his house is the soul. And the thief who comes suddenly while the householder sleeps and breaks into the house is, I think, the devil, or every contrary word, according as the evangelist John teaches us, saying thus: “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who does not enter the sheepfold by the door but climbs up another way is a thief and a robber.” Just as, then, he who enters the sheepfold by the door is the shepherd of the sheep, for whom the doorkeeper opens, while he who does not enter by the door but climbs up another way is a thief and a robber, so the master of the house confidently enters it by the door when he wishes, rewarding the one who watches. But the thief, as a thief, does not enter the house of the negligent man's soul by the natural entrance, but as one who has already dug through it, first destroying certain natural buildings of his soul, and the natural understandings which God the Word had built in him who did not watch. And entering through that very breach, the thief plunders it, disarming the mind, when, burying the householder who did not watch, he will distribute his spoils. But otherwise, someone finds the thief in the very act of breaking in, and seizing him, as one who has his weapons, strikes the thief and, changing the word that strikes him, kills him; and in killing him he is not thought a murderer, killing him without any delay. But if someone has caught the one who stole his goods, not in himself but before him who makes all hidden things manifest, and has recognized him and refuted him, that is, killed him, he has no pardon for the thief who is dead and exposed; for he himself too will die. And see whether the law of Moses does not signify something of this kind, saying: “But if a thief is found in the very act of breaking in, and is struck and dies, there is no bloodguilt for him. But if the sun has risen upon him, he is guilty; he shall die in his place.” For one who recognizes evil before he does it and crushes it in himself is the one who catches and kills it in himself while it is breaking in on him. But one who, after he has done evil, though he refutes it, seems to have caught the evil outside himself and to have killed it outside his house, gains nothing, for he has become guilty of death. For when any man has returned to himself after he has sinned, the divine sense that is in us enlightens him like a light, so that we understand that the evil we did was to our hurt, not to our salvation. Yet in this text of the Gospel of which we are speaking, the thief does not come by day, when the soul of the earnest man has been enlightened by the sun of righteousness, but by night, in the time when evil still remains. One who is in it may, even if he does not have the power of the sun, yet be illumined by some small brightness of the Word, which is a lamp, still remaining in evils yet already having the purpose of better things, and watchfulness, so that his purpose, looking to better things, is not broken into. For as we read in the Shepherd, no one readily tastes full vessels, for they are not easily changed; but half-full ones, because they are thought easily changed, are often tasted. And see whether you can draw to such an understanding what is written elsewhere: “Let your loins be girded and your lamps burning, and be like men waiting for their master, when he returns”; since one who is not yet in the light and the day of the virtues, but offers himself already to the teaching that enlightens his soul, is first girded as far as possible, and turning himself away from the outpouring of evil uses, not yet the clear daylight of virtue, but a lamp by which even one who is in evil can be illumined. This man, then, whose lamp is so lit, is waiting for his Lord, God the Word, that he may return and come to the one who meanwhile had the lamp in himself, and may illumine his whole mind as a sun. And each one, according to his progress, lights his lamp less or more from the light of knowledge, and pours in oil by meditation, and keeping watch in it against sinful works, hopes by such abstinence and meditation to receive the Lord into himself. And yet to one who advances more abundantly and forgets what lies behind, that is, evil, but still has a little of it in himself, and is already drawing near to virtue, it is fittingly said: “The night is far gone, the day is at hand.” It must be noted that he said, “The day is at hand.” For it is present to the perfect, who have no trace of night in themselves; but it draws near to one who is advancing to better things, and meditates on the things of the day, and takes up honesty as in the day; and he who is such is now near to saying: “We are not of the night nor of darkness.”