Letters 23.20–23.37

Yet when at last he understood God and was restored to his senses and his kingdom, he too became for us an example of faith, so that we may fear to lose the kingdom that is within us by sinning and remember to seek it again by repenting. Nor could Absalom, though proud of a handsome body and head, say what Samson said: “If I am shaved, my strength will leave me,” because he did not have in his hair, however beautiful, that strength which belonged not to bodily hair but to spiritual grace, which the wicked man could not have. For Christ is the power and wisdom of God, who did not enter a parricidal soul, because he did not dwell in a body subject to sins. Indeed, the necessity of shaving that is recorded testifies that his hair was cut because of the mass of his iniquities. For so you have it: “He shaved his head, because it weighed on him; and when he had been shaved, he weighed the hair of his head, and it was a hundred shekels by the king’s weight.” How could it be more plainly expressed that hairs are counted for works, since Scripture has marked in the wicked man’s head not any strength but only the burden of his hair? “He weighed,” it says, “the hair of his head.” For his iniquity is glory to the wicked man. And not only the wicked deed delights him, but also, as someone says, the reputation for wickedness. Hence you have that in the psalms: “Why do you glory in malice, you who are mighty in iniquity?” For the light of the wicked is darkness, their honor a shadow, their height a passing, their head the devil; and therefore their hair is a weight, for which reason Scripture says that the hair of that parricide was heavy by the king’s weight, that is, by the devil’s weight; for every wicked man is the devil’s kingdom. So too “those who are clothed in soft garments,” it says, “are in the houses of kings,” that is, of the princes of this air and the leaders of spiritual wickedness; in whose houses and kingdoms they live, either hard in impiety or soft in wantonness, whose riches are sin, their paths slippery, their end destruction, their glory in hell, their house in the tomb. The hairs of such men are crimes, and therefore they cannot be those hairs by which the holy warrior loosed the ropes of his enemies and the new cords like soft threads, but rather those of which it is written: “The cords of sinners have wound around me.” For the soul is both entangled and pressed down by its sins. The prophet fully proves this when he says: “My iniquities have gone over my head; like a heavy burden they weigh upon me.”

You see how heavy is the hair of the sinner. But he whose hair is Christ exults, light and winged, saying: “God, who girds me with strength and has made my way spotless, who has made my feet like a deer’s and set me upon the heights.” For, as I said, the yoke and the hair of Christ are light, because, serving Christ, we do good works, by which, given wings, we are carried up on high. Hence the apostle says even to Christians still in the flesh: “But you are no longer in the flesh but in the spirit.” For the flesh, made subject to a soul subject to God, passes over into spirit, not by a change of substance but of life. So I want Samson’s death and blindness too for myself, that I may live and see for God. For perhaps the reason he did not desire to receive back his eyes together with his strength, when his strength was restored in his hair for the sake of the mystery to come, as he had lost them together, was that that strength of heavenly grace, sound in its inner lights, did not need bodily sight.

By this example, then, let us too, with our senses stretched toward the Lord, blind the eyes of the flesh by turning away from worldly things, the eyes of which the prophet desired to be deprived when he said: “Turn away my eyes, lest they see vanity.” And the Lord himself, preferring blindness to the eyes of the Jews, says: “If you were blind, you would have no sin.” Let us remember with what ruin the eyes of those in paradise were opened, who had them enlightened for God as long as they kept them closed to sin. For only then did they drink in the shame of their age of puberty, when by the crime of transgression they lost the chastity of good conscience, with whose light they were clothed. And therefore it is a loss of the true light to use the eyes for the service of darkness and to blind eyes fixed on earthly things to heavenly ones. But the soul is enlightened by such a blindness as despises the world in order to behold God. Because, it says, “all that is in the world is the lust of the eyes,” the apostle, teaching that our sight should be clouded to this world and cleared for Christ, namely for him who enlightens every man coming into this world, that is, the mind of every man that comes, calls us from looking at present things to looking up at eternal ones, and says: “Do not seek the things that are in this world; for the form of this world passes away”; and again the same: “Seek the things that are above, where Christ is at the right hand of the Father.” For all things, as Ecclesiastes says, are vanity under the sun. Accordingly, above the sun is truth. So those who stand in the truth, even if they live within the world by bodily dwelling, are yet above the world by heavenly citizenship, and with the spirit flying out they climb and pass beyond the choirs of the stars or the poles of the heavens, and live higher than the elements, not subject to the things and uses of the elements, but, their life fixed in Christ, they become superior to the world, abiding in him who is over all, God blessed forever.

You see how the imitator of Christ transfers us from mortal things to God by teaching and example of virtue alike, taking away the veil from our heart, so that with unveiled face we may behold the glory of God, which is hidden from unbelievers by the veil of the law and disclosed to believers by the revelation of the gospel. So now we no longer need that fleshly hair. For “the old things,” it says, “have passed away, and behold, now all things are new,” since light has risen in the darkness for the upright of heart, the Lord merciful and compassionate and righteous. “Now the Lord is the Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.” And therefore long hair may have been an honor then, when that spiritual veil of the law still had to be displayed even in bodily appearance; now it is a burden, since the sun of eternal freedom has shone and Christ has become our head, to lift from us, as the yoke, so also the burden of bowed-down heads. Therefore we now dare to cry out as free men, with a voice of exultation and praise: “Let us burst their bonds and cast their yoke from us.” For now is the acceptable time, now the day of salvation, since the truth is present no longer in the shadow of a cloud but in the light of its own body. And fittingly, for the time of grace and the appearance of freedom, the barber is at hand, to lighten us of the longer covering of the head too, so that even the bodily form may bear witness to the gift of spiritual grace, and the serenity of a bared forehead may display the joy of inner freedom.

Apostolic authority has left long hair to women only, because, even if the one faith they share with us removes the veil from their heart, yet the grace of modesty requires a covering of the head and a shade for the forehead; and therefore the perfect teacher of faith and discipline teaches that long hair is unbecoming to a man, because the head of the man, Christ, cannot be hidden, who is also that city built upon a mountain, in the church, which is the body of Christ. So what is unbecoming to a man is an ornament to a woman, who is head to no one, but adorns the man with the attire of decency and, placed as it were in the foundation, supports the order of the body, which is woven from the head of Christ, God, and of the man, Christ, and of the woman, the man. But Christ makes her too, through the partnership of the body and the weaving together of the members, a sharer in the supreme head, in whom we are neither male nor female. Let them indeed have hair, with which, like that sinful woman of the gospel, they may wipe the footsteps of Christ and be entangled in the feet of wisdom, so as to know nothing but to love wisdom, to embrace virtue, to kiss chastity; and that, sprinkled at least with the last dew of the heavenly word, they may say: “For the dew that is from you is health to us.” Let our women have, for hair, the deeds of spiritual virtues: fasts, works of mercy, prayers; for such hair becomes a man too. Let the grace of Christ adorn them, not hair; the jewel of chastity, not of stone; and let the ointment of works, not of perfumes, be fragrant in them. Let them remember that they are daughters of that daughter of the king whose glory is all within. Let them understand why the apostle ordered them to be covered with a longer veil for the head: “because of the angels,” he says, those, that is, ready for seduction, whom the saints will judge. For these assail the weaker vessels more insolently, as the serpent attacked not Adam but Eve. Hence also they are forbidden to teach in the church, lest with exalted spirit they dare to look into the decrees of wisdom and, puffed up by knowledge, burst apart. For surely it avails to the confusion of the wicked if they see a woman covering her understanding by silence under an appearance of ignorance and confessing the discipline of her mind by a modest dress, so that the serpent may not dare to approach her again to tempt her, despairing of capturing her.

Not without reason does the apostle teach that this ought to be done especially at the time when a woman either prays or prophesies. For then she comes into the conception of the Spirit, and therefore then she more stirs up the envy of the tempter, when, breathing toward the perfect man, she goes beyond the bounds of her weakness. And that the apostle thinks the same of prayer as of prophecy is not surprising, since in another place too he says that one prays by the Spirit; “for when we pray,” he says, “we do not know how we ought to ask, but the Spirit himself teaches us.” Therefore, since in prayer too there takes place a spiritual conception, so that, as it is written, the enemy’s guile and snare may not meet a woman acting beyond the bounds of her vessel, the apostle wishes it to be shown in her dress that she has authority over her head, by which she is both ruled and defended; this very humility of heart gives her strength, by which she presses down the pride of knowledge with the rudder of discipline and prefers to fear rather than to be high-minded, safer silent through the fear of faith than skilled with her tongue; in vain will she press down her forehead with hair, unless she also veils it with modesty.

So in common, every soul of us, let us strive to be adorned with those hairs which God holds numbered, as he himself says: “But even the hairs of your head are all numbered.” And whose hairs would he deign to number rather than those of the one of whose crown he himself is the head? Of him it is said: “His head is like gold, cephas,” by which name I think some purer and more refined gold is signified, like that of the land of Havilah. For this gold is the form of the saints, who shine like lights in the head of the body and are gold refined in fire for God. For he found them, as it is written, worthy of himself, smelted through the trials of sufferings in the furnace of this world, and in them he struck the sacred coin of his image, impressing on their hearts and tongues the word of his truth and setting them up as money-changers, so that they might strike coins acceptable to the Lord according to his form and, the figure of Caesar being removed from us, might stamp the living coin of the eternal King; so that, inscribed with the spirit of redemption, our neck now free of the yoke and our forehead fortified with the title of salvation, we might sing: “The light of your countenance is signed upon us, O Lord.”

With all our strength, then, let us strive so to prepare ourselves that we may be worthy to be the hair and the gold of the divine head, which for us, by the grace of God, is Christ. For from that very head sprouts that hair of which it is written: “His locks are like flocks of goats.” And well are the flocks of Christ designated by the name of those animals whose chief use is in their milk, because everyone who believes in Christ as God embraces with the faith of devotion the whole fullness of the Trinity in him whom the Father anointed with the Holy Spirit. And therefore the very mother of all the living, the church, the body of Christ, overflows with the juice of devotion, and “her breasts are better than wine.” In this I think it is signified that the freedom of grace in the milk of mercy is sweeter than the severity of the law in the wine of justice. For “the letter,” it says, “kills”: you see the pure wine of strictness; “but the Spirit gives life”: you see the gift of the breasts and the effect of milk. But let this be granted to the seed, as you prefer it to be understood, by which the first milk of the newborn grows. Good, then, are the breasts which the good shepherd, who laid down his life for his sheep, milked for those infants from whose mouth he perfected praise for himself, to destroy the enemy of good and the defender of evil.

From the flocks of these goats was that man of the flock who suckled the little ones of Christ, not yet fit for solid food, with tender nourishment, saying to them: “I gave you milk to drink, not solid food; for you were not yet able, and even now you are not able.” But when we have grown by the nourishment of this milk, our steps first made firm by the conception of faith, we shall grow up into the strength of youth, and, with patience confirmed through faith and love, we shall lift up our hands to more vigorous action and live on the works of virtues as on stronger food, so that we may become also those locks of which it is written: “His locks are black firs, like a corax,” that is, a raven; but this is a good raven, not the one that forgot to return to the ark, but the one that remembered to feed the prophet, to which are well compared the locks that rival those firs, of which it says: “good and black firs, bringing the ships of Tarshish.” Hence this corax is now a raven not of night but of light, the saints, whose hair is beautiful with its color, a royal and priestly race, with which he empurples the divine head as with the purple of his glory; because the grace of youth too clothes the flowering age above all in hair of this color.

It must not be concealed, however, that this bird is found in the Scriptures sometimes as a figure of sin, sometimes as an image of grace. For it seems deadly when it is brought forth for the punishment of the wicked, since God sends evils, as it is written, through evil angels, or when it is said in vengeance of a curse: “The eye that mocks father and mother, let the ravens of the valleys dig it out.” But the same bird is praiseworthy, both when it feeds the prophet with bread in the morning and meat in the evening and when the young of the ravens call on the name of the Lord. Its color too is applied sometimes to the saints, sometimes to the wicked. For the bride of Christ says that she is dark and comely, and the Lord made darkness his hiding place. And again, on the contrary, we are warned by the apostle lest darkness overtake us. But those black and good firs bringing the ships of Tarshish are after the form of her who is both dark and comely. For the saints are her members, who, as they are flourishing palms and multiplying cedars, so are also black and good firs, because in the church, that is, the mountain of God, they stand out with the summits of their merits like firs on their mountains. And as firs are fit for building ships, so those princes of the people, cut from the mountain of the law as from Lebanon, built the ark of the Lord, or the ship, that is, the church, which was to sail through the floods of this world, from nations hewn by the word of God, and taught it, joined in the framework of love bound by faith, to cut through the waves of this world without decay.

But now too souls trained in the apostolic faith are black and good firs: black, I think, no longer from sin, but rather still blackened either by dwelling in the body or by the warlike dust, as it were, or dusty sweat, of inner training; yet good because of their spiritual way of life even in the nights of their bodies. So too the ships which float on the waves of the world are armed, as with oars, with the faith of the true and the work of the just on the right and, as it is written, on the left; they are steered by the word of God as by a rudder, they spread the folds of their senses to the breeze of the Holy Spirit, and bind the sail of their heart with the cords of love as with ropes to the yard of the cross. Their mast is the rod from the root of Jesse, which rules the whole quadrireme of our body; and if, following that poetic fable in prophetic truth, we are bound to it with voluntary bonds, our ears stopped not with wax but with faith, not the ears of the body but of the heart, we sail safe and unharmed past the reefs of pleasures, like the rocks of the Sirens, against the allurements of this world, varied for capturing, equal for harming. Let us be bound to this mast with the strongest rope, tied in hope, faith, and love, believing with our hearts and confessing with our mouths the undivided Trinity, which is the threefold cord that is not broken. With this cord let our works too be woven, so that with the cable of our faith the yard of love may be raised on the mast and the sails of our life may billow, so that we may be both those firs which were brought from Tarshish on great rafts to be built into the temple, and also the ships that rival the one which once brought chosen gold and the riches of Tyre to Solomon. Our trading must be carried on the more zealously and profitably the more our eternal King Jesus surpasses that temporal Solomon. “For behold,” he says, “something greater than Solomon is here,” who will not crush us with a violent wind among the ships of Tarshish if by the good conduct of our life we bring him profit, which is the most precious merchandise for God, so that he may receive from us his own price, since he himself is the pearl, and the whole conduct of this spiritual trade strives to buy it. If our means suffice to buy it, we shall carry a load that does not weigh us down but lifts us up through this great and wide sea; and the Lord asleep in us because of our sloth, if we are worthy to carry him even asleep, we shall dare to wake, so that, rebuking the winds of hostile spirits or even of our own senses, he may save us from faintness of spirit and from the storm, calm the seas for us as we make for his calm, lead us like ships laden with his riches into the harbor of salvation, and gladly set green crowns on the sterns that have conquered the waves.

Let us also be the right hand of him who is all right hand, having no left hand in our actions, so that we may be worthy to stand at the right hand of the Judge, or rather to be the right hand of the Judge himself, and that on the day of recompense the Lord, our rewarder, may count our works like the hairs of his head, as he has already said in the gospel, to be pronounced at the judgment, when with divine blessing and royal bestowal he will reward the merits of spiritual virtues, that is, the most beautiful locks of his head. With such locks that woman too, in the figure of the church, wiped the footsteps of Christ, watering them with ointment and tears, she who pleased not so much by the price of her gifts as by the affection of her service. For the Lord loved in her not the ointment but the love by which, modestly shameless and devoutly importunate, without fear of reproach or rebuff, uninvited, she boldly broke into the Pharisee’s house, a stranger to her, with that force by which the kingdom of heaven is seized; and hungering only for the heavenly word, she ran not to his riches but to the feet of Christ, and in them washed and fed herself, and made those very feet her sanctuary, so to speak, and altar. On them she poured out her weeping as a libation, offered ointment as sacrifice, sacrificed her affection. For “a sacrifice to God is a broken spirit,” and she, offering it to God, deserved not only the remission of her sins but also the glory of having her deed proclaimed with the gospel.

And because she bore the image of the church to be called from the Gentiles, she carried in herself all the signs of the saving mystery: she was anointed with the chrism of her own gift, she had tears of repentance for her washing, the bowels of love for her sacrifice, and she took beforehand, with hands and mouth, the living and life-giving bread itself, and with sucking kisses tasted beforehand the blood of the cup, before the cup of the blood came to be. Blessed is she who tasted Christ in the flesh and received the body of Christ in his very body, rightly preferred to the Pharisee, though he was feeding Christ; while the Jew feasted, she fasted and served, eager, as I said, not for food but for salvation. Blessed is she who was found worthy to be figured in this way too, as a type of the church, that in the house and at the banquet of the Pharisee not the Pharisee himself but the sinful woman was justified to pardon. Her importunity accomplished more. For the order of the mystery arranged from the ages required, according to that prophetic blessing of father Noah, that the dwelling of Japheth should pass into the tents of Shem, that is, that the church, younger in age but greater by the law of grace, should rather be justified in the house of the law and the prophets; hence, in the person of John, the law itself declares of the church: “He who comes after me has been made before me, because he was before me.”

And so that the church might agree with its head even in figure, she had rightly taken the form of a sinner, because Christ too took the form of a sinner. But the Jew, who was to have neither head nor foundation in Christ, had anointed neither the head nor the feet of Christ, both of which the woman of the gospel had watered with precious ointments. Therefore the synagogue has neither the oil of grace nor the water of refreshment from Christ; its figure was borne by that Pharisee, in whom, though he was beside the very fountain of the oil and water of salvation, both the water and the oil of love dried up. Of this fountain he had foretold through the prophet: “Let not the oil of the sinner fatten my head,” as he could say to his church: “You have fattened my head with oil”; for she had brought ointment precious not only in its making but also in its vessel, fragrant with the grace and power of many herbs or flowers mixed into one. Who but the church could have made such? She, fragrant from the various flowers and juices of heavenly graces, breathes manifold sweetnesses to God from different nations, and exhales the prayers of the saints like spices burned in bowls aflame with the Spirit of truth; so that the Bridegroom himself thanks her, flowing with the scents of such flowers or the dews of such liquids, with that voice with which he caresses her in the Song of Songs: “My dove,” he says, “my perfect one, for my head is filled with dew”: the head of Christ is God, and his locks are the elect saints, in whom the Father rejoices in Christ; “and my locks with the drops of the night.” Dew, as we know, is not the moisture of rain but of refreshment, by which the grasses parched by the day’s heat are restored. The earth is sprinkled with the shining drops of this dew only on a clear night. Hence it is given us to understand that those drops of the night, with which Wisdom rejoices that her head and locks are wet, are the figure of the saints, whom the apostle too shows shining as stars, which likewise glitter on clear nights when the dews fall. And what is to be understood by the night in a spiritual sense, if not the passion of the Lord, which also lit up the day? Of it, I think, it is written: “And night is my illumination in my delights.” But you may also take this age as the night, which, by the conversion of the nations, through whose faithlessness it formerly bristled with darkness, has been cleared as of clouds; and now, by the light of the church as by the mirror of a full and perfect moon, and by holy men as by pure stars in a clear sky, the works of the faithful, by which each one, giving life to his soul, refreshes it from the thirst of its past dryness, drip down like dews in this night of the age, as we said.

And therefore Christ rejoices that his head is filled with such dew, and, though he is the illuminator of our nights, he rejoices that his locks are drenched with the drops of our night, because his refreshment and restoration is that working of the faithful by which brothers are helped or the needy cherished. For this reason he spurned the voice of Judas, who, having received into his heart the spirit of the devil, begrudged the woman’s ointment to Christ’s feet. For Christ is anointed, lent to, and fed by works of devotion and mercy. But the traitor, before he betrayed the Lord, betrayed his own faithlessness; he was moved not by care for the poor but for his thefts, and by the envy of an unbelieving mind, so that, judging that ointment, however precious, yet most cheap in comparison with the Lord’s blood, more precious than the saving body, he was indignant at the devoutly prodigal woman, whom the Lord himself testifies had done a good work on him; teaching not that care for the needy is to be put second, but only to himself, in order to show in this that Judas, with perverse heart, had preferred mercy to faith, since faith is the kindling of works and the commander himself comes before his commands. Except that in this too the son of perdition showed how cheap he held Christ, saying that the ointment poured over Christ was wasted. And therefore he has no part in the price of Christ’s blood, because he cannot have as redeemer the one he preferred to have for sale; and the contractor of death is justly excluded from the commerce of life, to be condemned by his own judgment, by which he sold for thirty pieces the one whom the woman, as he himself had assessed, anointed with three hundred; but perverse in this, that, valuing the Lord himself cheaply, he valued dear the ointment that was being sent ahead for his saving burial for us. Truly, like the devil, ignorant of the grace of God, in which he had no share, he valued highly, not from love but from envy, the price of the death by which he who bought us at a great price saves us freely, not sells us. For he wants to make us precious by the cheapness of his gift. He is more precious to us for this goodness, that he wishes to be valued cheaply, so that he may be bought by all. “For he himself,” it says, “made the poor and the rich, and he cares equally for all.” Hence he says: “Freely you have received grace, freely give.” Rich in the free wealth of this grace, Peter, having no money, enriched with health the poor cripple who desired only a beggar’s coin.

So let us be poor in the greed for gold, that we may abound in grace, and, becoming cheap to this world through voluntary poverty, become precious ointment to the Lord. For we shall breathe the good odor of Christ to God if, carrying about in our body the death of Christ and showing forth his life in the spirit, we are fragrant with the odor of both the Lord’s passion and his resurrection. And we pour ointment on the body of Christ if we devote our substance and our life to faith in his truth and obedience to his command. Then, in his body, we shall be fragrant ointments filling the whole house, if with perfect love we can ever say: “But to me the world is crucified,” to me who do not love riches, nor the honors of the world, nor what is my own, but what is Christ’s, nor the things that are seen, but those that are not seen. These will be for us hair for strength and holy service, with which we may wipe Christ’s feet, and be able to break the cords of sins, and, rejoicing in the spirit of freedom, say: “You have broken my bonds; I will offer you a sacrifice of praise.”

But while there is space to run, while there is time to serve, let us grow such hair and imitate not only the love of that sinful woman of the gospel, so as to wash away great debts with great love, but also her importunity, so as to snatch salvation from the wrath that threatens. In season and out of season, seeking the bread of life, let us knock at the householder’s door even at night. “For in the nights,” it says, “lift up your hands to the holy place.” Wearing out, as we are commanded, the thresholds of everyone wise in Christ, let us catch the food of life everywhere, let us hunt the word of God wherever it is; let us hang on the mouth of all the faithful, because the Spirit of God breathes into every believer; and it must be that even from the least servant of God a drop at least of heavenly wisdom will fall, to bedew the dryness of my heart and overflow for me, above the rivers of the wise of this world, into a drink of benefit; because I prefer to speak five words in the law rather than many thousands in a tongue, as I prefer to live one day in the courts of the Lord rather than thousands in the tents of sinners, since the Spirit breathes where he wills, and I hear his voice and do not know where he comes from. So wherever I catch his breeze, from wherever I gather even a slight breath, whether of the unworthy, or if I hear that the righteous one has come even into the house of a Pharisee, I will strive to snatch the grace of the guest, to snatch, if I can, the kingdom of heaven. Wherever the name of Christ sounds for me, I will run; into whatever man’s inner house I learn that Jesus has entered, I too will hasten. When I have found wisdom, when I have found righteousness reclining in someone’s inner rooms, I will run to the feet of Christ, to be marked at least with the last footprint of wisdom; nor will I disdain his feet; rather I will pray that Christ may touch my head even with his feet. She touched the fringe and was healed; others even the passing of the apostle’s body healed by overshadowing them.

Let us spread out our hair before him, that is, lay down before him all the dignities of our distinctions, and let us cast ourselves down from ourselves, that we may be exalted by him who dwells on high and regards the lowly. Let us confess our sins with tears, so that that heavenly Righteousness may say of us too: “She has watered my feet with tears and wiped them with her hair.” Perhaps the reason he did not have his own feet washed, when he washed the disciples’, was that we might wash them with our tears. No small merit has the soul of whom Wisdom can say: “From the time she came in, she has not ceased to kiss my feet.” What is this kiss but the eternal pledge of that love which covers a multitude of sins? These kisses the church was already then preparing for her Bridegroom when she sang: “Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth.” This privilege catholic love alone rightly claims for herself, which, one and perfect, asks for one husband the kisses of truth from the mouth of the Word himself, lest she be polluted by the poison of heretical fraud as by the kisses of a strange, unchaste mouth.