Homilies on Jeremiah 16.0–16.10

Homily 16. On “Behold, I am sending many fishermen, says the Lord” as far as “The sin of Judah is written with an iron pen, with a diamond point engraved on the breast of their heart.”

It is recorded in the Gospel according to Matthew that our Savior came beside the sea of Galilee and saw “Simon and Andrew his brother casting a net into the sea; for they were fishermen.” Then the text says that the Savior, seeing them, said: “Come after me, and I will make you fishers of men. And they left their nets and followed him.” And Jesus made them take up fishing for men. And “he found two other brothers, James the son of Zebedee and John his brother, in the boat with their father, mending their nets; and he called them” to the same skill, and made them too fishers of men. And if anyone has considered those who have from God a grace of speech woven like nets and put together from the sacred Scriptures like a casting net, so that the mesh is thrown around the souls of the hearers, and has considered that this is done skilfully according to the knowledge, now our Savior sends fishers of men, having trained them, so that we may be able to come up out of the sea and escape its bitter waves. But those lifeless fish, brought up in seines and casting nets and nets or on hooks, die a death not succeeded by life. But the one caught by the fishermen of Jesus and brought up from the sea also dies, but dies to the world, dies to sin, and after dying to the world and to sin is made alive by the Word of God and takes up another life. As if you could, by supposition, conceive of the fish's soul changing after leaving the fish's body and becoming something better than a fish (I have taken an example; let no one take occasion from it † for what he did not hear), understand something of this kind. You have come up from the sea, having fallen into the nets of Jesus' disciples; coming out, you change your soul; you are no longer a fish living in the salty waves of the sea, but at once your soul changes and is transformed and becomes something better and more divine than it was before. And that it is transformed and changed, hear Paul saying: “But we all, with unveiled face beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, as from the Lord, the Spirit.” And this fish, caught by Jesus' fishermen and transformed, leaving its haunts in the sea, makes its haunts in the mountains, so that it no longer needs fishermen to bring it up from the sea, but a second group, called hunters, who hunt “from every mountain and from every hill.” So you, having come up from the sea and been caught in the nets of Jesus' disciples, change from the sea, forget it, come to the mountains, the prophets, and to the hills, the righteous, and make your haunts there, so that afterward, when your time comes, [the hunters may take you, as before] the fishermen. And who might these be but those appointed to receive the souls on the hills, the souls not lying below? And see whether the prophet has not cried out mystically in saying this and presenting this meaning in “Behold, I am sending many fishermen, says the Lord, and they will fish for them; and after this I will send many hunters, and they will hunt them on every mountain and on every hill.”

If, then, you wish to be caught by the hunters, see that you do not make your haunts in the valleys nor spend your time somewhere below, but seek the mountains. Go up to the mountain where Jesus was transfigured; go up to the mountain which Jesus ascended “seeing the crowds,” and his disciples followed him, where “opening his mouth he taught, saying: Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven,” and the beatitudes that follow. And these hunters may not catch from anywhere else but from the mountains and the hills and from the clefts of the rocks. For these three are mentioned in the prophet: “For I will send many hunters, and they will hunt them on every mountain and on every hill and from the clefts of the rocks.” From where, then, am I to understand the rocks and the clefts in the rocks? I come to Exodus; I seek to find a trace of an explanation of the clefts of the rocks; I find Moses there wishing to know God, and God promising him and saying: “Behold, I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and you will see my back parts; but my face will not be seen by you.” If you understand the rock there, and see the cleft in the rock, through which, seeing, he sees God through the cleft of the rock, you will also see the many rocks and their clefts. What, then, is that rock, the one rock? “And the rock was Christ”; “for they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them”; and “he set my feet upon a rock” is said in the thirty-ninth Psalm. What is the cleft in the rock? If you see Jesus' coming, understanding him wholly as the rock, you will see the cleft as his coming, through which cleft the things after God are seen. For this is what is meant in “and you will see my back parts.”

But I have found one cleft of one rock; I pass over in thought from the cleft to the hole of the rock, and I also seek the many rocks. If I come to the choir either of the prophets or of the apostles, or even of the holy angels who have gone up higher, I say that all the imitators of Christ, as he is a rock, become rocks. And just as he has a cleft through which the back parts of God are perceived, in the same way each, giving a way for God to be understood through the things he says, makes a cleft in himself, or, if you wish to name it otherwise, a hole. Through this cleft or hole you will see, through Moses the law, through Isaiah his prophecy, through Jeremiah other words of God. And if it is an angel speaking, as he spoke according to what is said in “and the angel who spoke in me,” there too I stand upon the angel, and see there too a rock and a cleft of the rock, and I see God in an angelic way.

But I need an example to show how one can come to an angel and see God through an angel. For it is written in Exodus: “An angel of the Lord appeared to Moses in a flame of fire from the bush. And Moses sees that the bush is burning with fire, and the bush is not consumed.” And Scripture did not say, as it said at the beginning that “an angel appeared,” so here, “I am an angel of the Lord,” but, “I am the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.” So God was seen there in the angel, as God is known through the rock and the cleft in it. You do not know, then, when the hunters are sent. For this reason never come down from the mountains, nor leave the hills, nor be outside the clefts of the rocks; for if you are found outside, it will be said to you, as to one who is outside and speaks the things of those outside: “Fool, this night they demand your soul from you; and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?” This will be said to you if you say: “I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and I will say to my soul: Soul, you have good things laid up for many years; take your ease, eat, drink, be merry.” You see the one below the mountains, below the hills, outside the clefts of the rocks, how he errs even in his judgment about good things, thinking these to be good. That is why he says: “And I will say to my soul: Soul, you have good things laid up for many years.” He has thought grain and the abundance of earthly things to be good; for he did not see that the truly good things are not in the cursed earth, but the truly good things are in heaven. He laid up treasure on earth because he thought the things on earth were good. But if someone passes over from laying up treasure “on earth,” obeying Jesus, to laying up treasure “in heaven,” it will not be said to him, “Fool, this night they demand your soul from you,” but the hunters will come, seeking not the creatures below but those on the mountains, those on the hills, those sheltered in the clefts of the rocks, and will take them and lead them away from that hunt. Where? To the rest of the saints and the blessed in Christ Jesus. “For my eyes,” he says, “are upon all their ways.” God has his eyes upon all the ways of such people, those who make their haunts on the mountains and on the hills and in the clefts of the rocks. “And they were not hidden from my face,” such people; for it is the base who hide from God's face. Adam, after the transgression, heard “the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the evening” and hid; but the holy man does not hide, but has a heart with boldness toward God, the boldness that comes from a holy way of life. For “if our conscience does not condemn us, it has boldness toward God, and whatever we ask we receive from him.” Adam, though he sinned, did not sin a sin grievous to excess; that is why he hid “from the face of God.” But Cain, more sinful than he and most impious, the fratricide, what did he do? “He went out from the face of God.” So, by comparison of evils, hiding from God's face is the lesser; for such a one hides not shamelessly but out of respect for God. “They were not hidden,” then, “from my face.” These, who have done these things, were once in sins and were fished out of the sins in the sea.

So that those who were fished out and afterward came to the mountains may not suppose that these things came to them from their own righteousness, the Word reminds not only them but us too of our former sins. That is why it is said after the benefits: “And their iniquities were not hidden from before my eyes.” What follows is going to cause us a struggle. For whether we understand it as consequent, we shall think carefully about the requital of sins; or whether it seems not consequent on what was said before about those fished and hunted, even so it throws us into no ordinary struggle. For he says: “And I will repay first their iniquities and their sins double, because they profaned my land with the carcasses of their abominations and with their lawlessness, with which they filled my inheritance.” Whether some, not understanding it, removed “first” from what was written, or the Seventy removed it for some purpose, God would know. We, however, comparing it with the other editions, found it standing: “And I will repay first their iniquities double,” so that it might be shown that, even if they are worthy of blessedness because of their later works, since they are human beings and have been in sins, they must first receive back their sins. And see whether the word is not true. Who will not receive back his sins, except the one who, after believing and receiving forgiveness of sins (so as to hear Jesus saying, “Your sins are forgiven you”), sins no more? But if, after the forgiveness of sins and the dispensation of the washing of regeneration, we sin, as we do, the many of us who have not been made perfect like the apostles, and after sinning, and while sinning, we also do some things as we ought, we must consider what awaits us. If we depart this life having sins, but having good deeds too, shall we be saved because of the good deeds and released from the sins committed knowingly? Or shall we be punished for the sins and receive no reward anywhere for the good deeds? But neither the one, I mean receiving back the worse and not receiving the better, is in keeping with a just God, nor the other, I mean receiving the better and not receiving back the worse, is in keeping with a just God, who wishes to cleanse and cut away wickedness. For suppose that, on the foundation, Christ Jesus, whom you have been taught, you have built not only “gold and silver and precious stone” (if indeed you have gold, much gold or little); suppose you have silver, precious stone; but I do not say these only; suppose you also have “wood and hay and straw”: what do you wish to happen to you after your departure? To enter into the holy places with your wood and your hay and straw, so as to defile the kingdom of God? Or again, do you wish to remain in the fire because of the hay, the wood, the straw, and receive nothing for the gold and silver and precious stone? Nor is this reasonable.

What, then? It follows that first, because of the wood, we receive the fire that consumes the wood and the hay and the straw; for our God is said, to those able to understand, to be in his being a consuming fire. And the prophet was silent about what it consumes, saying, “Our God is a consuming fire,” and left it to us to understand. Since he said, “God is a consuming fire,” there is something consumed. What, then, is consumed? For it does not consume what is according to the image and likeness; it does not consume its own creation, but the hay built upon it, the wood built upon it, the straw built upon it. The passage was very hard to explain. There were promises, and after the promises he says: “And I will repay first their iniquities double.” “First” is added of necessity; for first the things of iniquity, then the things of righteousness are repaid; God does not repay in reverse. If he first repaid the good things, so that we received the good things, and then repaid the evil, the good things would have to cease so that we might receive the evil. But we shall first receive the evil things and after that the good, so that the punishment of those who suffer may come to an end through the destruction of the evils, and after this he may repay the good. That is why you will find in the sacred Scriptures God saying first the things that seem gloomier and after them the better: “I will kill and I will make alive; I will strike, and I will heal.” “He causes pain and restores again; he struck, and his hands healed.” On these things one who understands and is piously disposed toward what is said may say: “Lord, who shall sojourn in your tent? Or who shall dwell on your holy mountain? He who walks blameless and does righteousness, who speaks truth in his heart; who has not deceived with his tongue, and has done no evil to his neighbor, and has not taken up a reproach against those nearest him.” (But we reproach even those who repent and turn back, though Scripture says, “Do not reproach a man who turns away from sin.”) “He has not taken up a reproach against those nearest him; the evildoer is despised in his sight, but those who fear …” we shall receive back our sins.

But one of the hearers will say: “Explain ‘double’ too. Suppose I receive back my sins first, so that, when I have received back my sins, after that what the apostle said may be fulfilled: ‘If anyone's work is burned up, he will suffer loss, but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire.’ Why, then, do I receive back my sins ‘double’?” But one must say that “the servant who knew his master's will and did not act according to his will shall be beaten” not with few but “with many.” So it is fitting that those from the nations who sin receive back their sins single, but that we receive back our failings double; “for if we sin willfully after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful expectation of judgment and a zeal of fire about to consume the adversaries.” The things about those who were to be fished and hunted and to receive back first their sins double have been prophesied. After this the calling of the nations is prophesied more clearly, of those not being called but already called, and not ignorant of what to confess and what to give thanks for, but already taught. For in the former words we learned that they were called, fished, hunted; but what they will experience, in the latter. Let us see what he prophesies about us, who are already learning to pray, or rather have learned.

“O Lord, my strength and my help and my refuge in the day of evils: to you nations will come from the end of the earth and will say: How false are the idols our fathers acquired, and there is no profit in them.” Have the nations come to God from the end of the earth, and have the nations said, “Our fathers acquired false idols, and there is no profit in them”? How “from the end of the earth”? There are some who are first of the earth and some who are last of the earth. Who are the first? “The wise of the world” are the first of the earth, not simply first: “the wise of the world, the well-born,” the rich, the dignitaries. Who are the last? “God chose the foolish things of the world, the low-born, the despised, the things that are not.” “Nations,” then, “will come from the end of the earth,” as if he said: from the last of the people on earth, from the foolish, from the low-born, from the despised, “and will say: How false are the idols our fathers acquired, and there is no profit in them.” Not that there are some true idols, in contrast with which false ones are spoken of, but idols that are by nature false; “and there is no profit in them.”

“Will a man make gods for himself?” Not only from statues do men make gods for themselves; but you will also find men making gods for themselves from fabrications. For all who can fabricate another god and another creation of the world besides the one recorded by the Spirit, an ordering of the world besides the true world, all these have made gods for themselves and worshipped the works of their hands. For example, consider either among the Greeks those who begot the doctrines, let us say, of this philosophy or that, or in the heresies those who first begot doctrines: these made idols for themselves and fabrications of the soul, and turning worshipped the works of their own hands, accepting their own fabrications as truth. So the Word, refuting all who make gods for themselves, perceptibly and intellectually, says: “Will a man make gods for himself, and these are not gods? Therefore I will show them my hand at this time, and I will make known to them my power.” What time but this one? Showing the time of the Lord's coming, “and they will know,” he says, “that my name is the Lord.”

Then there is another prophecy, which, I do not know how, we did not find in the Seventy, but found in the other editions, clearly because it stands in the Hebrew; and it is full of most necessary matters, able, if we pay attention, to turn our soul. The words run thus: “The sin of Judah is written with an iron pen, with a diamond point engraved on the breast of their heart.” One can give oneself to the easier course and say: “This is written about the Jews, that their sin ‘is written.’” But if you see, as we have often shown, that Christ is figuratively called Judah, perhaps “the sin of Judah” is ours, who believe in Christ, who is from the tribe of Judah. And if you can hear it in another, more mystical way, perhaps he prophesies about Judas the betrayer, so that the prophecy is about him, saying: “The sin of Judas is written with an iron pen, with a diamond point engraved on the breast of the heart”; but again “their” does not follow in his case. So perhaps he was saying that these prophesied things reach us, if we become sinners. We have sinned, and our sin is written not outside us but in our heart, and it is written “with an iron pen, with a diamond point.” That the sins we commit are written into us by sinning, the matter itself will show. I was not conscious in myself of this deed or this sin; having done it, I have an imprint of it, and the imprint of my sin, the sin committed, is as it were written in my soul. And if my sin were written in ink, I would have wiped it out; but as it is, it is written “with an iron pen,” written “with a diamond point,” written “on the breast of” our “heart,” so that I may come to the judgment seat and the prophecy may be fulfilled that says: “Nothing is hidden that will not be made manifest, and nothing covered that will not be revealed.” My breast is laid bare, and my heart having the letters of sin written in it, the imprints of my sins in my breast and in my heart. “For nothing is hidden that will not be made manifest,” but “their thoughts among themselves accusing or even excusing them,” and “do not judge anything before the time, until the Lord comes, who will also bring to light the things hidden in darkness and make manifest the counsels of the hearts.” To whom will he make them manifest? Not to himself; for he knows “all things before they come to be.” To whom, then, will he make them manifest? To all who will see, because of their purity, the sin of the sinner, so that sinners “may rise to reproach and to everlasting shame”; from which may the God of the universe deliver us, so that we may rise to the glory that is in Christ, to whom be the glory and the power for ever. Amen.