Sermons 115–119

[On the law abrogated through grace. On the words of the same: “Do you not know, brothers, for I speak to those who know the law,” etc.] After we had soothed your minds and hearts by touching David's lyre with the plectrum and melody of spiritual understanding, and had offered the awesome opening of the thundering Gospel to rouse your senses, we thought that we should soon return to the apostolic teaching, so that the threefold order of the sermon might hold and offer the saving discipline of the church's teaching. For the psalm relaxes minds from continuous labour, the authority of the Gospel restores minds and rouses them to labour, and apostolic vigour does not let our senses be moved from the right path or wander. Today we find that the reading of the blessed Apostle follows in order. “Do you not know, brothers,” he says, “for I speak to those who know the law, that the law has dominion over a man as long as he lives?” (Rom 7:1). And he adds a comparison: “For the woman who is under a husband is bound by the law while the husband lives; but if her husband has died, she is released from the law of the husband. Therefore, while the husband lives, she will be called an adulteress if she is with another man; but if her husband has died, she is released from the law of the husband” (Rom 7:2–3). You see, brothers, the great proof of the blessed Apostle's heavenly teaching: how he asserts by legal testimonies that the times of the law have passed, and empties its whole prerogative by the wonderful example of marriage. And rightly is the law compared to a marriage of the flesh, since it did not achieve a spiritual partnership with the synagogue. For when it had taken her for the observance of discipline, for the fruitfulness of holy offspring, for the increase of modesty, for the guarding of chastity, for the sacred and revered secret of the heavenly bridal chamber, for the mystical unity of the heavenly bed, it found in her the filth of every kind of harlotry. For she met so great a husband, that is, the law, not adorned with good conduct, not decked with the necklaces of the virtues, not grave in her gait, not covered with the flame-coloured veil of virginal modesty, but wanton in her eyes, loose in her steps, given over to enticements, and wholly painted over with tricks and pretences. When so great a husband, having seen her, justly despised her with indignation, drove her far from his company and condemned her with all the judgment of his gravity, she neither blushed at being despised nor corrected herself at being scorned, nor came to her senses, but, rejected, flew headlong to the brothels of the idols, and preferred to undergo the infamy of fornication and incur the crime of adultery rather than shudder at the shamefulness of a wrongly pleasing way of life. Hence the blessed prophet rightly laments her, saying: “How has the faithful city Zion become a harlot?” (Isa 1:21). Her adulteries holy Ezekiel too records through almost his whole book. That is why, brothers, when in the Gospel this adulteress was accused before the Lord by the scribes and teachers of the law, the Lord turned his face away and bent down to the ground, so as not to see the crime he would have to punish; and he preferred, brothers, to write pardon in the dust rather than pass sentence on the flesh (John 8:3–11). The Apostle strives to call this adulteress back to fellowship with Christ, and does not let her be held back by fear of her former fall: she who, while her husband lived, rightly was an adulteress because she was with another man, now does not desert the law when she runs back to the author of the law; but she dies to the law, bound over to its legal sentences, so that she may live to grace and rise again through pardon, she who had been slain and put to death by the law. Then, while he asserts that she is released from the husband's right when the husband has died, he testifies in what follows that it is she rather than the husband who has died: because the law does not die to man, but man dies to the law; the commandment does not pass away, but he who falls from the commandment fails before the commandment. Hear what follows: “Likewise, my brothers, you too have been put to death to the law” (Rom 7:4). Does he say, “The law has died to you”? No: “You too have been put to death to the law.” And he rightly added, “through the body of Christ.” Because the law binds the guilty, constrains the liable, punishes and kills the criminal. So whoever has been freed and rescued from every crime through the body of Christ happily dies to the law, so that he may live to innocence and to grace. “So that you may belong to another,” he says, “who rose from the dead.” “Another”: he himself became another when he changed our corruption into incorruption and carried our mortality over into the glory of immortality. “So that we may bear fruit,” he says, “for God.” Made sharers through Christ in the heavenly nature, not the earthly, he declares that fruit is borne for God, not for the flesh; for life, not for death. “For when we were in the flesh,” he says, “the passions of sins, which were through the law, were at work in our members, so that we bore fruit for death” (Rom 7:5). When he says “when we were,” he indicates past time, when, placed, or rather exposed, in the flesh alone, we were compelled to savour, do and will only what belongs to the flesh, according to another word of the Apostle: “Those who are in the flesh cannot please God” (Rom 8:8). “For when we were in the flesh,” he says, “the passions of sins, which were through the law.” I will say as the Lord said: “If the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness!” (Matt 6:23). If through the law the passions of sins rule over human members, what will the passions do by themselves, which attend a man unhappily and as a penalty as soon as he is born? He is born so, begotten so; anguish presses him down, dangers urge him on, punishments afflict him. These are the passions, brothers, through which infancy is weakened, childhood dragged along, adolescence goes mad, youth and old age are heaped with many griefs; they accompany a man's whole life to his fall, with the enemy stirring them up; and the law, while it forbade them, called them to mind; while it examined them, enlarged them; while it accused them, made them dearer; and what lay hidden through ignorance it made better known through knowledge. And as thorns grow more when they are cut back with a sickle, so the passions sprout when they are cut back by the law, because they are fixed and made solid within, as in the root of the flesh. The law has within it a cultivation of faith that is just enough, but it does not succeed; hence by stirring them up it brings the very turf of human flesh to a crop of death. “The passions of sins,” he says, “which were through the law, were at work in our members, so that we bore fruit for death.” The instrument that was for life, the passions claim for themselves in us for a crop of death. So, wounded in this way, we are released from the law of death through Christ's grace, and we receive within us the Holy Spirit as the conqueror and victor over the vices; so that the passions, shut out, may knock from outside, tempt and provoke, but fall to the glory of our triumphs. For us, for us he desires to conquer, who, though he ruled over us, deigned to serve as a soldier, as he said. “So let us serve in the newness of the Spirit” (Rom 7:6), now freed from the servitude of the flesh, because true lordship is the service of the Lord's holiness; for both the old man and the old letter corrupted and ruined all discipline.

[On the knowledge of sin through the law. On the words of the same: “What then shall we say? Is the law sin? Far from it,” etc.] As often as a mystical song echoes back in different modes but with a harmonious voice, it feeds and delights the hearing with wonderful sweetness; so too, when divine and heavenly teaching is set forth in various ways but by one Spirit and with one and the same meaning, it lays open and discloses the mystery of gospel knowledge more gladly and with the greatest sweetness. And so, after the prophetic melody and the astonishing miracles of Christ's mighty works, let us return to the order of the apostolic readings. This, then, was the content of today's reading: “What then shall we say? Is the law sin? Far from it. But I did not know sin except through the law; for I would not have known desire unless the law had said, You shall not desire. But sin, taking occasion through the commandment, worked in me every kind of desire” (Rom 7:7–8). You have heard, brothers, with what disease the human condition laboured without Christ, how captive human frailty was without grace: it was not restrained by the law and the commandments but armed for crimes; it heard and knew for this purpose, not to conquer sins but to commit them. “I did not know sin except through the law.” Not to know vices is happiness; to know them is danger; to have conquered them is virtue. A noble and brave king goes far out to meet his enemies and so forestalls the tricks of the invaders that the soldiers' loyalty cannot be shaken nor the citizens' constancy disturbed: so now a generous mind, through the grace of Christ, goes beyond the wretched narrow bounds of its body and so wholly forestalls offences, tramples vices and lays crimes low in total slaughter, that they cannot deceive it with the lure of gain, deprave its wits with tricks, dissolve wretched and weak hearts with tumults, kindle smouldering occasions with heat and blood, or harass naturally weak members with various kinds of passions. What fire is to a dry crop, that vices are to the human body; they are more safely conquered by separation alone; they are killed by ignorance, and, unknown, happily vanish. For if they reach the mind and the senses, if they touch the soul, if once they penetrate the members, an inextinguishable fire is kindled and raised up; and unless heavenly water waters the heart, pours into the mind and soaks the limbs, all human strength is subdued and reduced to ashes. “Is the law,” he says, “sin? Far from it. But I did not know sin except through the law.” As if he were saying: Gold is not avarice, but I did not know avarice except through gold. Wine is not drunkenness, but I did not know drunkenness except through wine. Bodily beauty is not desire, but the comeliness of a form seized me for desire and led me to a fall. So things created by God for usefulness, for health, for grace are not evil in themselves, but through them occasion is given for offending. So the greedy man accuses gold, the drunkard wine, the lustful or the charming man would have it be the form that brought about his ruin. So too the law, which had been given by God for salvation and was in itself heavenly and holy, became through man the ruin of wretched man, as the Apostle proves from what follows, saying: “So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and just and good” (Rom 7:12). What was good, then, did not bring death; it was sin that had brought death in the first place and had made frail, weak, human nature prone to falls and vices. What lay hidden and raged like an enemy in the human body, the law rebuked and the law exposed, while it reminds man of innocence, holiness, righteousness, virtue and faith, and reproves vices, offences and crimes. But man began indeed to hear of the virtues and began to will them, but did not attain them; he began to detest vices, yet followed them; to hate offences, yet committed them; to shudder at crimes, yet carried them out. Hence late in the day he felt himself a captive slave bound over to the evil of madness, and he began to cry out: “Wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from the body of this death?” And the answer is given him: “The grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Rom 7:24–25). When he heard this, he began to seek freedom through his author, salvation through pardon, and to hope for life through grace alone. For he had long not known why innocence was difficult, righteousness laborious, holiness anxious, virtue arduous, faith full of all dangers; why offences had such great forces, why crimes grow while they are cut down and virtues fail while they are cultivated. The law disclosed, the law taught, the law showed in full light that crimes rule in human senses and in the human mind through sin, and virtues through God; and that offences cannot be overcome before the author of offences has been destroyed, that is, sin, which Christ took away, as John testifies when he says: “Behold the Lamb of God, behold him who takes away the sins of the world” (John 1:29). “For without the law,” he says, “sin was dead. I was once alive without the law; but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died; and the commandment that was for life was found to be for death to me. For sin, taking occasion through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me” (Rom 7:8–11). Sin was dead, not because it did not exist, but because it was unknown; and it is properly said that “sin revived,” because it was buried in our ignorance. It was not the commandment that revived through sin, but sin through the commandment, since it makes a transgressor of one who before was a sinner, makes the guilty man defiant as well, and rouses a deserter and a rebel. Hence man rightly cries out that he is already dead, once he has recognized whence, why and through whom he would die. Brothers, we now see what a cruel tyrant sin is. “Through the commandment it deceived me, and through it killed me”: because it stretched the proof of salvation into a snare, made the cure into a sickness, changed the instrument of health into a deadly wound, and turned life itself into a lethal sword. “Through the commandment it deceived me, and through it killed me.” But how could one already dead provide for himself, since he had been killed? Who could help the slain except Christ, who, being slain, restored life? He repaid death in kind through death; he killed death and exposed it as defiant, since, though ordered to keep watch over the punishment of the guilty, it dared to attack the judge himself and presumed to invade the very author of innocence. Hence rightly death has died, and in me it is not I who live, but Christ lives, acts, reigns and commands.

[On the first and the last Adam. On the words of the same: “The first man Adam became a living soul,” etc.] Today the blessed Apostle has told us that two men gave the human race its beginning, namely Adam and Christ: two men equal in body but unequal in merit, entirely alike in the true structure of their limbs, but entirely unlike in truth in their very beginning. “The first man Adam,” he says, “became a living soul; the last Adam a life-giving Spirit” (1 Cor 15:45). The first was made by the last, from whom he obtained the soul by which to live; the last was formed by himself as his own author, so that he would not wait for life from another but would himself alone grant life to all. The first is moulded from the most worthless mud; the last comes forth from the precious womb of the Virgin; in the first earth is changed into flesh, in the last flesh is promoted into God. And what more? This is the Adam who, when he was forming the other, placed his own image in him. Hence he took on both his person and his name, so that what he had made to his own image might not perish. The first Adam, the last Adam: the first has a beginning, the last has no end. For the last is truly himself the first, as he himself says: “I am the first, and I am the last” (Isa 48:12). “I am the first,” that is, without beginning; “I am the last,” surely without end. “But it is not the spiritual that is first,” he says, “but the natural, then the spiritual” (1 Cor 15:46). Certainly the earth comes before the fruit; but the earth is not so precious as the fruit; the earth demands groans and labours, the fruit gives sustenance and life. Rightly does the prophet glory in such fruit, saying: “Our earth has given its fruit” (Ps 85:12). What fruit? Surely the one of which he says elsewhere: “Of the fruit of your womb I will set upon your throne” (Ps 132:11). “The first man,” he says, “was from the earth, earthly; the second man from heaven, heavenly” (1 Cor 15:47). Where are those who think that the Virgin's conception and the Virgin's childbearing are to be put on a level with the childbearing of women, when that is from earth and this from heaven; this belongs to divine power, that to human weakness; that is wholly in the suffering of the body, this wholly in the tranquillity of the divine Spirit and in the rest of the human body? The blood was silent, the flesh was stunned, the limbs were put to sleep, and the whole hall of the Virgin was held suspended in a heavenly sojourn, until the author of flesh took on the garment of flesh and became a heavenly man, to give man back not only earth but heaven as well. A Virgin conceives, a Virgin gives birth, a Virgin remains. So the flesh is conscious of power, not of pain; by giving birth it rather receives increases of integrity and knows no loss of modesty; she rather stands as witness to her childbearing who suffered none of the pains of childbearing; and the new mother marvels that she has been present at heavenly mysteries, since she understands that the manner of the birth had nothing of human custom. If the magus confesses by his gift that God was born in this way, confesses it as he adores, consider what a Christian ought to understand and believe. But let us hear what follows. “As was the earthly man, such are the earthly; and as is the heavenly man, such are the heavenly” (1 Cor 15:48). How can those who were not born in that way be found such, except by remaining not what they were born but what they were reborn? That is why, brothers, the heavenly Spirit makes fruitful the womb of the virginal font by the secret mingling of his light, so that it may bring forth as heavenly those whom the muddy origin of their stock had poured out as earthly under a wretched condition, and lead them to the likeness of their author. So, now reborn and now re-formed to the image of our Creator, let us fulfil what the Apostle commands: “So, as we have borne the image of the earthly, let us also bear the image of the heavenly” (1 Cor 15:49). It was a necessity that, formed from earth, we could not breathe heavenly things; that, born from desire, we could not avoid desire; that, acquired under the rule of enticements, we were compelled to bear the shamefulness of enticements; that, received into the dwelling of this world, we were held captive by evils. But now, reborn in the likeness of our Lord, as we said, we whom a virgin conceived, the Spirit gave life, modesty carried, integrity bore, innocence nourished, holiness taught, virtue trained, and God adopted as sons, let us bear the whole image of our author in full likeness: not in the majesty in which he alone is, but in the innocence, simplicity, gentleness, patience, humility, mercy and concord in which he deigned to become one of us and to share our lot. Let the pestilent itch of the vices cease, let the deadly allurements of offences be conquered; let the accursed fury, the origin of crimes, be suppressed; let the whole fog of worldly pomp be shaken off from our senses; let the illusion of worldly desire be cast out of our minds; let the poverty of Christ be sought, which possesses everlasting riches in heaven; let all holiness of soul and body be guarded, so that the image of our Creator may be borne and may shine in us not in greatness but in action. The Apostle confirms what we have said when he says: “But this I say, brothers, that flesh and blood cannot possess the kingdom of God” (1 Cor 15:50). See how the resurrection of the flesh is preached, because there the flesh will be possessed by the spirit, not the spirit by the flesh, as becomes clear from what follows: “nor will corruption possess incorruption.” You see that it is not the flesh that perishes but corruption; not the man but the guilt; not the person but the crime; so that man, living in God and before God, may rejoice that he has at last reached the end of his offences. Of the resurrection, brothers, a sermon of its own must be given, because it is not fitting to speak in passing, at the very end of a sermon, of that which carries us across to the eternal ages and to everlasting life.

[On the death and resurrection of the flesh.] Since the whole hope of Christian faith rests on the resurrection of the dead, so that no one may dare to doubt it, we have had read to you today the very long reading of blessed Paul, who affirms it by authority, by facts and by examples, and our sermon has been unable to find anything to add to it. But since your charity always demands the service of our office, we long to repeat these same things and press them home more vehemently, out of ardour for the resurrection itself. Brothers, it is always a pleasure to speak of the resurrection, always a delight to hear of the resurrection, because dying is never pleasing and living always delights. So let the resurrection always resound in our mouth, let the resurrection always be carried to the hearing of our mind, so that death, which always besieges our senses with its terror and its laments, may be put to flight from our senses. For so the farmer sings of rich fruits and full feasts, so as not to feel the huge labour and sweat of the plough. So the sailor sings of harbours and gains, so as not to fear the crashing of the waves and the perils of the sea. So the soldier, so as not to fear wounds or dread swords, sings of plunder and triumphs. So let the Christian look upon, sing and think of the resurrection with mind, mouth and eyes, so that he may despise and trample on all the dread of death. Death, brothers, is the mistress of despair, the mother of unbelief, the sister of corruption, the parent of hell, the wife of the devil, the queen of all evils, who attacks the whole human race insatiably in this order. First she sends ahead her whisperer, despair, urging such things: “O man, why do you waste your time? See, your mistress death is coming, reducing your soul to nothing, consuming your flesh with rot and your bones with age, so as to make you, who did not exist before you were born, not exist after death. So pay your debts before death, since you will soon die: pay them to yourself and to your ages: give your infancy to games, your adolescence to delights, your youth to pleasures, and your old age to me, so that you may not spend it in vain, despairing.” After her she sends her daughter unbelief, who threatens thus: “Do you so arrange your life as though you were not going to die, as though you would escape death? O man, faith deceives you; you trust a faith which, to take away present things, promises future ones, and to take away what is before death promises I know not what invisible things after death. Who has come from there? Or what wise man believes promises made for so many ages and never paid? Oh, if only you would eat and drink! Eat and drink, for tomorrow you will die” (Isa 22:13). The third sister of her wickedness, corruption, she sends with such fury that it invades, draws and occupies the sight of men: pointing through the tombs to her uttermost prisons, she shows her own lying there motionless in chains; and to disturb men's senses with total horror and total dread, she pours out rot, belches out pus, scatters stench, and proclaims that she has given countless executioners, worms, to one human body. Why should Christians not believe despair, why not unbelief? These are the wars of death; with these leaders, these counsels, in such a conflict she captures, lays waste and kills all whom nature has brought to the present life. She leads kings, drags off peoples, drives nations; she could never be bought off by riches, bent by prayers, softened by tears or overcome by strength. They erred, brothers, who tried to write on the good of death. And what wonder? The wise men of the world think themselves great and illustrious when they have persuaded the simple that what is the highest evil is the highest good. Rightly Scripture says of them: “Woe to those who call good evil and evil good; woe to those who put darkness for light and light for darkness” (Isa 5:20). And truly, whom would they not deceive, whom could they not blind, who brought the incautious to believe that to live is evil and to die is good? But these things, brothers, truth removes, light puts to flight, faith attacks, the Apostle brands and Christ destroys, who, while he restores the good of life, exposes, condemns and shuts out the evil of death. For the Apostle began thus: “Now I make known to you, brothers, the gospel which I preached to you, which you also received, in which you also stand, through which you are also saved, in what terms I preached it to you; you must hold it fast, unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you first of all what I also received, that Christ died for our sins, and that he was buried, and that he rose on the third day according to the Scriptures” (1 Cor 15:1–4). God's generosity enriches one who will live, not one who will die. Or what good does he receive, if he who receives will not himself exist? “In which you also stand.” Surely he stands who always lives, because a dead man always lies down. “Through which you are also saved.” If anyone dies, he perishes; but he is saved who lives for ever. “In what terms I preached it to you; you must hold it fast, unless you believed in vain.” Not only did he believe in vain, brothers, but he also lived in vain who believed that he was born only to perish. O man, what rises for you that does not set? What of yours that has set does not rise again? The day rises in the morning, is buried in the night at evening, and rises again in the morning. The sun is born daily, dies daily, and itself rises again daily; the seasons perish while they pass and revive while they return. So, O man, if you do not believe God, if you do not accept the law, if you do not assent to what you hear, at least believe your eyes, at least accept the elements that continually preach your resurrection to you. Surely, if these far inferior things, which are in your hands and are raised from death by your work, teach you that you can be raised by God's work. Go to the seed, as the Apostle teaches you: take a dry grain of wheat, without sense or motion; draw a furrow, dig the earth, make a tomb, bury the wheat; see how it perishes in death, swells with moisture and is corrupted by rot; and when it has come to all that despair, unbelief and corruption suggested to you above, then it quickly revives in the shoot, grows into a blade, becomes young in the stalk, ripens in the grain, and rises again to the whole appearance and form which you lamented as lost; so that the wheat, O man, may teach you not so much to eat as to understand, and may compel you not so much to labour as to believe. Let us be silent about the rest, because whence, when, how and through whom death came, the blessed Apostle declares in plain, clear and divine language. O man, receive faith, because it is given free; believe the resurrection, because he who promises it asks no price.

[On the true race for the crown of glory. On the words of the same: “Do you not know that those who run in the stadium,” etc.] The blessed apostle Paul urges us on to the crown of heavenly glory not only through the teaching of the law but by an example from this world. For among other things he says this, as you, beloved, have heard: “Do you not know that those who run in the stadium all run, but one receives the prize?” And he added: “So run that you may obtain it” (1 Cor 9:24). In the earthly example, many indeed run in the stadium, as the Apostle says, but one receives the crown, that is, the one who runs best; so too in the stadium of the present life many run, but one receives the crown. The Jews run through the law, the philosophers run through empty wisdom, the heretics run through false preaching, the catholics run through the true preaching of faith; but of all these one receives the crown, that is, the catholic people, who, having taken up the course of faith, strive toward Christ so as to reach the palm and the crown of immortality. So the Jews, the philosophers and the heretics run in vain, since they do not go along the straight path of faith. For what does it profit the Jews to run through the observance of the law, when they do not know Christ, the Lord of the law? The philosophers too run through the empty wisdom of the world, but their running is superfluous and empty, since they do not know the true wisdom of Christ. For the true wisdom of God is Christ, which is not adorned with words or brilliant oratory but is recognized by the faith of the heart. The heretics too run through the poisoned assertion of their faith; they run through fasting, they run through almsgiving, but they cannot reach the crown, because they do not run with faithful running; for their false faith does not deserve to receive the grace of true faith. The Apostle shows this in another place when he says: “And if I distribute all my substance to the poor and if I hand over my body to the fire to burn, but have not charity, it profits me nothing” (1 Cor 13:3). For he does not have the charity of Christ who does not believe faithfully in Christ. And so the Apostle rightly added: “So run that you may obtain it.” We must run, then, with faithful running, in the faith of Christ, in the commandments of God, in works of righteousness, so that we may reach the crown of eternal life. Then the same Apostle shows next how we must run, saying: “Everyone who competes in the contest exercises self-control in all things; they do it to receive a corruptible crown, but we an incorruptible one” (1 Cor 9:25). See by what examples the Apostle invites us to the crown of promised immortality. In this earthly contest those who want to win abstain from certain foods and from too much drink, and abstain from all impurity, with such great chastity that they do not even seek their own wives; nor do they hope to be able to win unless they keep their body chaste and pure. And after so much labour what do they receive but a small, corruptible and indeed worthless crown? If, then, some undertake so much labour for a corruptible crown, how much more ought we to bear every labour, to whom a heavenly reward and the crown of eternal glory are promised? We must, then, contend in no light contest; for we struggle against the spiritual forces of wickedness, against the devil and his angels; we struggle against injustice, against impiety, against malice, against unchastity, against the various allurements of sins. And if we conquer in the struggle, we receive as many crowns as the vices over which we have been victorious. Great, then, is this contest, in which we offer a spectacle to the Lord: for we are watched as we struggle by the Lord, we are watched by his angels; we conquer on earth, but we receive the reward of virtue in heaven. Indeed the holy martyrs, placed in the contest of the struggle, conquered not only the vices of sins but death itself, and received the rewards of immortality. In this contest our Lord and Saviour first both struggled and conquered, to show us an example of the struggle and the victory. So, in treating these things with you, we cast the seed of the good struggle into your hearts, finding your breasts furrowed, as it were, by the plough of righteousness. Cultivate, then, the word which we have scattered in you, so that what has been sown may sprout. And may God by his visitation pour the dew of his love on you and give increase to our seeds, so that with your sheaves of merits gathered you may come to the hundredfold fruit.