Sermons 1–4

[On the two sons, the prodigal and the thrifty; and first, on the prodigal's departure from his father.] Today the Lord has called a father with two sons and brought them out into our midst, to set forth in a beautiful figure the immense proof of his own fatherly love, the savage envy of the Jewish nation, and the suppliant return of the Christian people. “A certain man had two sons, and the younger of them said to his father: ‘Father, give me the share of the property that falls to me.’ And he divided,” it says, “the property between them” (Luke 15). As loving as the father was, so impatient was the heir: he grows weary of his father's living on, and since he cannot take away his father's time, he strives to carry off his father's property. He deserved not to have the very privilege of a son, who refused to possess with his father what was his father's. But let us ask what drove the son to such daring, what lifted him to the confidence of so great a request. What? Surely this: he knew that the heavenly Father is to be closed by no end, concluded by no time, undone by no power of death. And so, since he would not wait to be enriched by the goods of one who was dying, he wants to enjoy his freedom while the father lives. That this was the offence in his request, the father's very generosity proved: “And he divided,” it says, “the property between them.” Though only one asked, he at once divided the whole property between both, so that the sons might know that what the father had held before he had held not from greed but from love, and had not given it out of foresight, not out of grudging. The father was holding the property to keep it for his sons, not to deny it to them, wanting it to remain for his children, not to perish. Blessed are the sons whose whole property lies in their father's love! Blessed are those whose whole possession remains in obedience to their father, in the care of their father! Otherwise, possessions split unity, separate brotherhood, scatter kinship, and ruin and violate the love of parents, as becomes clear from what follows: “Father, give me the share of the property that falls to me. And he divided,” it says, “the property between them. And not many days after, the younger son gathered everything together and set out abroad into a far country, and there he squandered his property by living extravagantly. And after he had spent everything, a severe famine arose in that country, and he began to be in want; and he went and attached himself to one of the citizens of that country, and he sent him into his farm to feed pigs. And he longed to fill his belly with the pods that the pigs were eating, and no one gave him anything.” See what greed headlong for wealth does! See how wealth without the father stripped the son instead of enriching him: wealth took the son from his father's lap, threw him out of the house, removed him from his homeland, robbed him of his good name, stripped him of chastity. Of life, of morals, of devotion, of freedom, of glory, it left him nothing. It changed the citizen into a foreigner, the son into a hireling, the rich man into a beggar, the free man into a slave; it joined to pigs the one it had separated from a most loving father, so that he who scorned to obey holy devotion should serve a filthy herd. “Having gathered everything,” it says, “the younger.” Younger plainly not in age but in sense: he gathered his father's goods and went far away, much more in mind than in place, so as to sell himself wretchedly into slavery, paying the price instead of receiving it. So the merchant comes to such a bargain who does not know how to pay what is owed to parents, who does not know how to give back in return to the one who begot him. With the father there is a sweet condition, a free service, complete protection, a joyful fear, a gentle punishment, a rich poverty, a secure possession. For the labor looks to the father, the fruit overflows to the sons. “He squandered,” it says, “his property.” What had been put in order under the father's management is scattered by the son's prodigality, so that he may learn, if only too late, that his father had been the guardian of the property, not one who brooded over it. “By living extravagantly.” That life is deadly, because it dies to the virtues: whoever lives for vices is buried to good repute and perishes to glory; whoever remains in shamefulness grows in infamy. “And after he had spent everything, a severe famine arose in that country.” Famine is set as torturer over extravagance, belly, and gullet, so that avenging punishment may rage where punishable guilt had blazed up. “A severe famine arose.” To such an end gluttony always tends; to such a limit comes the outpouring of pleasure that should be shunned. “And he began to be in want.” The property once given makes the son to be in want, the property that, when denied, would have kept him rich; so that he who had abounded with his father by not having now fails on his own by having. “And he attached himself to one of the citizens of that country, and he sent him into his farm to feed pigs.” So he who denies himself to his father, who entrusts himself to a stranger, finds a severe judge, having fled a most indulgent provider. The deserter of affection, the runaway from devotion, is assigned to pigs, handed over to pigs, delivered into the service of pigs; he runs through the muddy pastures of pigs, is trampled by the restless herd and soiled by its running about, so that he may feel how wretched, how bitter it is to have lost the blessedness of his father's peace. “And he longed to fill his belly with the pods that the pigs were eating, and no one gave him anything.” What a cruel service: he cannot even share the pigs' food, he who lives for pigs! Wretched is he who falls short of the filthy herd and hungers for their fodder! Wretched is he who longs for filthy food and does not obtain even that! Taught by these things, instructed by such examples, let us remain in our father's house, let us stay in our mother's lap, let us be held close in the embrace of our relatives, let a father's heart hold us fast, so that the pitiable freedom of youth may not drag us into the evils described above. Let reverence for a father hedge us in, a mother's affection settle us, the affection of relatives guard us. Among the eyes of kinsfolk sins cannot move about: as many eyes of kinsfolk, so many lamps. A mother's look is daylight; the sun shines in a father's face. So for one who lives among so many lights of virtues, the darkness of crimes cannot come near. But the father's table feeds us with the food of virtue, the banquet of salvation, the delights of honor and glory. And since the long series of the reading compels us to set out this parable at greater length, we will inquire in the next sermon, with our common prayers, who the father is who is ready in giving and readier in receiving back; who the brother is who is most saddened at his brother's salvation; who the younger son is, foolish in his going away, most wise in his return.

[On the same; where it treats of the son's return to the father.] In the previous sermon we touched, as well as we could, on the evils that so struck the extravagant son, the son who deserted a most loving father, that, wasted by hunger, he sat down to the service of pigs. Now, with a better hope and in happier words, let us follow his return and his repentance. “Coming to himself,” it says, “he said: ‘How many hired servants of my father have bread in plenty’” (Luke 15:17), and so on. He came to himself; he first returns to himself, so that he might return to his father, he who had first gone away from himself when he went away from his father. He moves away from himself and passes entirely from man into beast, forgetful of fatherly love, unmindful of his parent's kindness. “How many hired servants of my father have bread in plenty, but I am perishing here with hunger.” Hunger calls back the one whom fullness had exiled; hunger gave him the sense to think of his father, when plenty had taken away his feeling for his parent. And if hunger, even unwilling, achieved so much, prove what voluntary fasting can bestow. A loaded belly lays the heart down to vices, weighs down the mind, so that it cannot feel the love from above. “The body,” it says, “which is corrupted weighs down the soul, and the earthly dwelling presses down the mind that thinks many things” (Wis 9:15). Hence the Lord too says: “Take heed that your hearts be not weighed down with carousing and drunkenness” (Luke 21:34). The belly must therefore be emptied by the moderation of fasting, so that the mind, unburdened, may reach up to the heights, climb to the virtues, and fly, all on wings, to the very author of love. Elijah proves this: purged of the weight of the flesh by continuing the Lord's fast, he flew up to heaven as conqueror of death (1 Kgs 19:8; 2 Kgs 2:11). “I will arise and go to my father.” He who said “I will arise” was lying down: he recognized his fall, felt his ruin, saw himself lying in the slippery mire of shameful extravagance, and so he cries out: “I will arise and go to my father.” With what hope? What trust? What confidence? With what hope? With this: that he is his father. I have lost what belonged to a son; he has not lost what belongs to a father. No stranger intercedes with a father; within the father's breast is the very affection that intervenes and pleads. A father's heart is moved to beget his son again through pardon. I will go to my father guilty; but the father, at the sight of his son, will soon cover the guilt; he will set aside the judge, wishing rather to fulfill the parent; and he will quickly turn the sentence into pardon, wishing his son to return, not to perish. “I will arise and go to my father, and I will say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you.” Confession opens up the father; repentance speaks the parent. “I have sinned against heaven and before you.” The one against whom sin is committed in heaven is not an earthly father, but the heavenly one; therefore he added, “before you,” before whose eyes, in heaven and on earth, all things that are done stand. “I have sinned against heaven and before you, and I am no longer worthy to be called your son.” This man set out abroad and fled into a far country, but he did not escape his accusers, his witnesses, the eyes of the divine Father. David opens this more clearly, saying: “Where shall I go from your Spirit? And where shall I flee from your face? If I ascend into heaven, you are there; if I descend to hell, you are present. If I take my wings at dawn and dwell in the uttermost part of the sea, even there your hand will lead me, and your right hand will hold me” (Ps 139:7–10). He sees that through the whole world sins stand naked before the eyes of God: that not heaven, not earth, not the seas, not the abyss, not night itself can veil sins from God. He perceives how great a crime, how great an evil it is to sin in the very sight of God, and therefore he cries: “Against you only have I sinned and done evil before you” (Ps 51:4). So this younger son likewise cries out and calls: “I have sinned against heaven and before you, and I am no longer worthy to be called your son.” He does not say, “I am not worthy to be your son,” but “I am not worthy to be called your son,” because being called belongs to grace, being belongs to nature. Hear the Apostle saying: “From him who called you into his grace” (Gal 1:6). This younger son, then, because he had lost what belonged to nature, judges that he does not deserve what belongs to grace. “Make me like one of your hired servants.” See what the son in his own power has come to! Pleasure of extravagance, freedom of youth, see where they have brought the son! “Make me like one of your hired servants”: so that his servitude may be renewed by yearly hire, his hired condition worn down by constant labor, so that he may sigh all day at work as a wretched slave for wages, may always be the seller of himself and never be able to deny his servitude. And he asks this because he who had felt with a stranger a freedom that was slavery believed that with his father he would have a servitude that was free. I would now wish, brothers, to open the mystery of this reading, if regard for its usefulness did not call me back: for I see that you hear these things not as our own concern, with the grief they deserve, but hurry to pass over them in your understanding as if they concerned others. Christ always speaks to us of things that are ours, ours, and profitable to all, and to correct us the Lord repeatedly uses mystical examples, he who wished to be the father of his servants, who wished to be loved rather than feared, who gave himself as the bread of life, who poured out his blood as the cup of salvation. By past comparisons he corrects the present and the future, so that we may not desert the good Father, the loving parent, and head for the distant and all too foreign parts of the world, and there, living extravagantly, squander the whole substance of salvation and life, and, everything spent, suffer a most grievous famine of hope; and so be handed over to the chief man of that country, that is, the devil, the author of despair, and he send us into his farm, that is, into the alluring valleys of this world; send us to feed pigs, that is, those who, always bent toward the earth, live for the belly, and cool the heat of the flesh in a wallow of mud, press it in the filth, refresh it in the whirlpool of vices. That he sends his hired men to the pigs is done by insatiable cruelty, which is not content that people become criminals unless it makes them leaders in vices and teachers of crimes. When he has made them such, he does not let them be filled even with the pigs' food and drink, so that, hungry for vices, they may sin the more: satiety cannot hold the extravagant, pleasure does not know how to be filled. So let us be with the good Father, let us remain with the loving parent, so that we may avoid the devil's snares and enjoy our Father's goods without end. We shall search out the depths afterward, because we owe more to the common good and to morals.

[On the same; where it treats of the father's running to meet the son.] So far, in two sermons, we have run through the extravagant son's departure, return, guilt, and repentance; now let us follow the father's meeting, the father's goodness, the father's unspeakable mercy. “Rising,” it says, “he came to his father; but while he was still far off, his father saw him and was moved with mercy, and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him” (Luke 15:20). “Rising, he came to his father.” He rose from the ruin of mind and body; he rose from the depth of hell, reaching the heights of heaven; with the heavenly Father a son rises more by pardon than he fell by guilt. “Rising, he came to his father.” He came not by the steps of his feet but by the movement of his mind; he did not need the length of an earthly journey, because he found the shortcuts of the way of salvation. He does not know how to seek the divine Father by running along roads, who, seeking by faith, soon finds him present. “Rising, he came to his father; but while he was still far off.” How is he far off who comes? Because he has not yet arrived. He who comes has come to repentance, but has not yet arrived at grace; he has come to his father's house, but has not yet arrived at the glory of his former dress or honor. “But while he was still far off, his father saw him.” That Father saw who dwells on high and looks on lowly things and knows lofty things from afar (Ps 113:5–6). “His father saw him.” The father saw him, so that he too might be able to look at his father; the father's look lit up the face of the son coming, so that all the darkness that guilt had spread around him might be put to flight. The darkness of night is not like the darkness that comes from the confusion of sins. Hear the prophet saying: “My iniquities have taken hold of me, and I could not see” (Ps 40:12). And elsewhere: “My iniquities have become heavy upon me” (Ps 38:4). And afterward: “And the light of my eyes is not with me” (Ps 38:10). Night buries yesterday's light; sins bury the senses; the limbs confound the mind. Unless, then, the heavenly Father had shone into the face of the returning son and removed all the gloom of confusion by the light of his look, this son would never have seen the brightness of the divine face. “He saw him from afar and was moved with mercy.” He who cannot be moved from place is moved with mercy; he ran, not by advancing his body but by the affection of love. “He fell on his neck.” Not by a collapse of his body but by a collapse of compassion. “He fell on his neck,” to raise up the one lying so low. “He fell on his neck,” to lift off the burden of sins by the burden of love. “Come to me,” he says, “all you who labor and are burdened. Take my burden upon you, for it is light” (Matt 11:28–30). You see that the son is helped by this father's burden, not weighed down. “He fell on his neck and kissed him.” So the father judges, so he corrects, so he gives his sinning son kisses, not lashes. The force of love does not see offences, and so the father redeemed his son's sins with a kiss and shut them in with an embrace, so that the father might not lay bare his son's crimes, so that the father might not disgrace his son. So the father heals his son's wounds, so as to leave his son no scar, no blemish. “Blessed,” it says, “are those whose iniquities are forgiven and whose sins are covered” (Ps 32:1). If this young man's deed displeases us, if his departure horrifies us, let us never depart from such a Father. The Father's look puts crimes to flight, drives out guilt, repels all wickedness and temptations. Certainly, if we have departed, if we have scattered the whole of our Father's property by our way of living, if we have committed any crime and offence anywhere, if we have come to the whole precipice of ungodliness, to total ruin, let us rise at last and return to such a Father, invited by such an example. “But when he saw him, he was moved with mercy, and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him.” I ask, what place is there here for despair? What occasion for excuse? What pretense of fear? Unless perhaps the meeting is feared, the kiss terrifies, the embrace disturbs, and the father is believed to seize for punishment, not to receive for pardon, when he draws his son with his hands, encloses him in his lap, binds him with his arms. But this thought, the destroyer of life, the enemy of salvation, is utterly overcome, utterly removed, by what follows: “But the father said to his servants: ‘Quickly bring out the first robe and put it on him, and put a gold ring on his hand and shoes on his feet; and bring the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and feast, for this son of mine was dead and has come to life again; he was lost and is found.’” Having heard this, do we still delay? Do we still not return to the Father? “Quickly bring out the first robe and put it on him.” He bore with his son's crimes, who did not bear his nakedness: hence he wanted his son clothed by the servants before he was seen, so that his nakedness might be known to the father alone, because only the father could not see his son's nakedness. “Quickly bring out the first robe.” This father, who did not allow the sinner to be in second place, wants to have joy from pardon more than from justice. “Quickly bring out the first robe.” He did not say: Where do you come from? Where have you been? Where are the things you took? Why have you exchanged such glory for such disgrace? But: “Quickly bring out the first robe and put it on him.” You see that the force of love does not see offences. A father does not know slow mercy. Whoever examines offences exposes them. “And put a ring on his hand.” A father's love is not content to restore innocence alone unless it also restores his former honor. “And put shoes on his feet.” How poor he returned who had gone away enriched, and from his whole property does not bring back even shoes on his feet! “Put shoes on his feet”: so that the ugliness of nakedness might not remain even on his foot; surely, so that, shod, he might return to the course of his former life. “And bring the fatted calf.” An ordinary calf is not enough unless it is fat, unless it is fattened: the fat calf bears witness to the richness of the father's love. “And bring the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and feast; for this son of mine was dead and has come to life again; he was lost and is found.” We are still speaking the literal story, and already we are thinking of laying bare the hidden mystery: the dead son is raised from death by the calf, and one calf is poured out as a feast for the whole household. But this must be put off, so that we may follow the elder brother's long-standing grief and his yet older envy.

[On the same; where it treats of the elder son's jealousy toward the returning prodigal.] Rejoicing at the younger son's return and salvation, we now set out with tears and lament the envy of the elder, who lost the highest good of thrift through the extreme evil of jealousy and spite. “Now his elder son,” it says, “was in the field; and as he came and drew near to the house, he heard music and dancing, and he called one of the servants and asked what these things were. And he answered: ‘Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fatted calf, because he has received him safe.’ But he was angry and would not go in.” “Now his elder son,” it says, “was in the field.” He was in the field tilling the earth while neglecting himself; he breaks up the hardness of the sod, yet hardens the disposition of his heart; he roots out thorns and weeds, yet does not pull out the goads of envy. So in the crop of greed he gathers the fruit of jealousy and spite. “And as he came,” it says, “and drew near to the house, he heard music and dancing.” The music of love puts the envious to flight, the dance of charity shuts him out; and the one whom the reason of nature calls to come to his brother and draw near to the house, jealousy does not let arrive, spite does not allow to enter. Envy is an ancient evil, the first stain, the old poison, the venom of the ages, the cause of death. In the beginning it cast the angel himself out and down from heaven. It shut out of paradise the man who was the head of our race. It shut this elder brother out of his father's house. It armed the offspring of Abraham, a people of holiness, for the slaughter of its own author, for the death of its own Savior. Envy is an enemy within: it does not batter the walls of the flesh or break down the enclosures of the limbs, but rams the very citadel of the heart, and before the inward parts feel it, the robber, given life, seizes the very mistress of the body and leads her off captive. If, then, we wish to deserve heavenly glory, if we wish to possess the blessedness of paradise, to inhabit the house of the eternal Father, if we wish not to be held guilty of heavenly parricide, let us drive off the dark snares of envy by watchful faith and by the light of the Spirit and shut them out, let us crush envy with the whole strength of heavenly arms; because as charity joins us to God, so envy separates us from God. “So his father came out and began to entreat him.” The anxious heart of the father is pressed by the varied movements of his sons, and between the different fortunes of his children the father's love runs about bewildered; for he sees one brother at once put to flight by his brother's return, and one lost to him through the other's salvation, and a long grief, made up for by a brief joy, disturbed by the spite of envy. O swelling of jealousy: an ample house cannot hold two brothers! And what wonder, brothers? Envy brought it about, it brought it about that the whole breadth of the world was too narrow for two brothers; for it raised Cain to the murder of the younger (Gen 4), so that the spite of jealousy made him alone whom the law of nature had made first. “But he answered and said to his father: ‘Father, see, these many years I have served you.’” So thinks one who dares to judge his father's love. “See, these many years I have served you.” See with what servitude a son repays his father for the benefit of birth! “I never transgressed your command.” Not your innocence but your father's pardon gave you this, because in his great love he preferred to cover his son's faults rather than expose them. “And you never gave me a kid, that I might feast with my friends.” A mind envious of a brother cannot be grateful to a father; and he who is unmindful of brotherly love is not mindful of a father's generosity. He denies that a kid was given him, who received the whole part of the property at the time of the division. For when the younger brother asked that the share of the property be given him, the father at once divided the whole between both brothers, as the evangelist says: “And he divided the property between them.” But the envious man always pretends; the envious man always lies. “And you never gave me a kid, that I might feast with my friends.” He does not count his father's friends as his own: he believes those to be not friends but strangers by whom he saw himself loved for his father's sake. “But when this son of yours came, who has devoured his property with harlots, you killed for him the fatted calf.” Here he grieves that his brother has returned, not that the property has perished; nor is the complaint made on account of loss, but of spite: he ought to have honored his returning brother from his own goods, not so to have disgraced him over what was lost. The father's whole property is in his son, and so the father lost nothing when he received his son back. The brother thought it a loss when he saw that a co-heir had returned. And when is the envious man not greedy, when does he not count as lost whatever another has? “But he said to him: ‘Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours; but it was fitting to feast and rejoice, for this brother of yours was dead and has come to life again; he was lost and is found.’” O what the force of love does! Though to a bad son, he does not know how not to be a father, he cannot not be a father. He sees that his son has degenerated in spirit; he sees that he has nothing of a father's love or of his father's stock; and yet he calls him son; he urges his affection back to kindness, or to the hope of his generosity, saying: “You are always with me, and all that is mine is yours.” That is to say: Allow the son to have returned to his father; permit the father to have received his son; he sought nothing other than a father, who on coming wished to be placed not as a son but in the place of a hired servant, saying: “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you, and I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired servants.” Let all things be yours; the father is enough for him; and that you may not think anything of the present or the old has been diminished for you, I will seek new and future things for him. Surely, if you follow your father's counsel and command, share the present with your brother, so that the future may be common to you with him. Rejoice then, and rejoice at the one found, so that he may rejoice that you have not perished. But let us now conclude the historical sermon, so that afterward, with Christ revealing, we may lay open what is mystical and deep.