Sermons 13–16

[On the same.] Behold the time when the soldier goes out to the field, when the Christian hastens to God's fasts. Behold the time when idleness of the flesh, sloth of mind, care for the belly, and the whole torpor of household service must be laid aside. Behold the time when the strength of soul and body must be exercised in practice with heavenly arms. Behold the time when, with Christ presiding and the angels standing by, the courage of our wrestling must be exercised. Now is the time when gluttony fights with fasting, abstinence with excess, chastity with lust, faith with faithlessness, godliness with ungodliness, patience with fury, greed with generosity, mercy with avarice, humility with pride, holiness with guilt, with Christ as rewarder. If anyone, then, with God looking on, the heavenly trumpet already sounding, the angelic encounter pressing, ensnared by the allurements of the bedroom, unnerved by the softness of palms, wholly relaxed by conjugal caresses, neglects to come to the exercise of virtue, he loses the prize of the wrestling, the glory of virtue, the palm of the contest, the crown of righteousness, and will be fined in the future besides with the crime of a deserter. Today, brothers, Christ our King has addressed his fellow soldiers from the Gospel tribunal, declared war on the enemies, promised rewards to those who will fight, set out the causes of the wars, exposed the enemies' tricks and attempts, and by his triumphal ordinance marked where, when, and how we must fight. And although he alone can win the victory, yet for our sake and because of our fear he ordered all the forces from above to be present. Whoever, then, refused to hear these things, whoever knowingly despised such great ordinances of our King, judge whether he has not stripped himself of the oaths of our service and made himself an exile from the heavenly fellowship. But you, brothers, who wish in this Lenten fast to follow the pattern of the Lord's fast, prove from the very temptations that follow the Lord's fast that you will fight, as we said, against the troops of vices, the battle lines of crimes, the shapeless shapes of lusts, all the aerial, all the scattered and countless legions of demons, and that you will triumph. For when the Lord undertook the Lenten fast with that untiring proof of his power, the devil at once came to fight with tricks, because he could not resist one who fasted by force. For as much as he dominates those given to excess and the drunken, so much he fears the one who prays, so much he flees those who fast, as the Lord says: “It is not cast out except by fasting and prayer” (Matt 17:21). But let us hear with what deceit the devil dared to tempt: “If you are the Son of God, command that these stones become loaves.” You have heard what the enemy himself thinks and judges about fasting: “If you are the Son of God.” You see that he now believes him to be not a man but the Son of God, whom he had seen free from slavery to the belly. The devil perceived, he perceived, that fasting is set before all the virtues. He had seen John exchange the delights of cities for a dwelling in the rough wilderness, trample the softness of the flesh under the roughness of his garment, bridle the whole luxury of the world with rustic food, and, what is the sole mark of divinity, forgive people their sins. And yet he did not say to him, “If you are the Son of God.” But when he saw the Lord fasting continually, he cries out: “If you are the Son of God.” The devil errs who hurls the wickedness and arguments of his cunning against the Lord. “If you are the Son of God, command that these stones become loaves.” Why is it that when Christ fasts he looks for all the signs of divinity in the mere promise of bread? And the one whom by the continual sign of fasting he senses to be the Son of God, he wants to prove the Son of God by the provision of bread, by care for the belly? “If you are the Son of God, command that these stones become loaves.” Why did he not say, “If you are the Son of God, command that men or angels or something else come to be,” but “command that these stones become loaves”? He asks for the sign of bread who dreads the sign of fasting. He asks for the sign of bread to escape the sign of fasting that he finds so fearful. The evil counselor thrusts bread forward to change the virtue, to violate the resolve of the one fasting. But let us see what the Bread that came down from heaven answered about bread: “Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.” How truly the Word of God lives by the word of God! How truly the Bread does not need bread! How divinely he turns stones into men, who raises up children to Abraham from stones as a sign of his majesty! And since the shameless enemy does not know how to be conquered once, for the manifold triumph of the conqueror, “he set the Lord on the pinnacle of the temple and said: ‘If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down.’” What a sign! “Throw yourself down.” He would more fittingly have said, “If you are the Son of God, ascend to heaven,” since it is surely man's part to fall to the depths, God's to climb to the heights. “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down.” So he always persuades his own, so he always provides for his own; so he raises his own up, to hurl them from on high more violently to ruin. “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down.” The devil betrays himself by his counsels. “Throw yourself down.” He seeks falls, commands headlong plunges; and by such counsel he makes martyrs throughout Africa without clamor, saying: “If you want to be a martyr, throw yourself down,” so as to drive them from on high to death, not to lift them from low places and raise them to a crown. And as the devil betrays himself by his counsels, so the Lord reveals himself by his answer, when he says: “You shall not tempt the Lord your God” (Deut 6:16). By saying this he surely wished himself to be understood as Lord, as God, he who gave himself not only from the pinnacle of the temple to the earth, but cast himself down from heaven even to the lower world, so that it might be not the pattern of those who fall but the resurrection of the dead. Notice, brothers, whether a more savage enemy could be found, who, though often defeated, yields to man, hears and perceives the Lord God, and yet does not stop tempting. “He set him on a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory, and said to him: ‘All these I will give you if you fall down and worship me.’” He says this not as one who can give but as one who can deceive; not to bestow what he promises but by promises to take away what is possessed. “All these I will give you.” He offers to God the things that are God's; he promises to the Author what belongs to the Author; he urges him to worship who is to be worshiped by all; and, blinded by his daring, he confesses to the judge before the judgment how he deceives the simple. The Lord answers him not so much with the testimony of the law as with the command of his own divinity: “You shall worship the Lord your God” (Deut 6:13); you shall worship that Lord God to whom every knee bends, not only of things in heaven and on earth but also of things under the earth (Phil 2:10). You then, gnashing and howling in hell, shall worship him whom now, reckless deserter, you invite to worship you. So the devil, so often and so thoroughly beaten back by the Lord, now rushes about us his servants in full fury; and as Christ addresses his soldiers, so he addresses his and arms his ministers. The devil then says: “The season now heavily defeats us by the observance of fasting; we cannot attack men through gluttony, excess, drunkenness, or lust. Arm lawsuits, sow discords, stir up hatreds, rouse angers, breathe in lies, extort perjuries, suggest blasphemies, spread idle talk, pour in deceits, fan avarice, provide shameful profits, so that what the belly does not now spend on luxury the purse may at least shut up and store away for punishment. Beware above all that mercy, almsgiving, and kindness do not wipe out our past labors, take away our present ones, and remove our future ones.” But let us, brothers, recognizing our King's warnings and hearing what the devil has commanded his own, carry out our fasts without strife, without clamor, without anger, without guile, without pretense, with complete mercy, charity, and kindness, so that the Lord Christ, who spurned the bloody victims of cattle and required the sacrifice of a contrite spirit and a crushed heart, may, appeased and favorable, accept the offerings of our fast in the silence of peace.

[On the fruits of almsgiving. On Psalm 41.] To those skilled in battle the military trumpet sounds out discipline; to the unskilled it gives only a terrifying noise; as teacher of wars it gives strength to its own and fear to the enemy. Whoever fights without a trumpet is no soldier: he is carried by fury, not by battle; he acts not by courage but by danger; he seeks to perish, not to conquer. We have said this so that the soldier of Christ may understand why heavenly song has been provided. Set on the field of the world, we sustain a fight with the devil and with the vices. So whenever the prophetic blast thunders to us, it makes us cautious in peace, brave in the battle line, and unconquered in combat. For today the blessed Psalmist calls us by his shout to a higher understanding: “Blessed is he who understands concerning the needy and the poor” (Ps 41:1). And what understanding is there where poverty is professed? The power of understanding lies in searching the inward parts, detecting what is hidden, laying bare what is covered. But things placed before the eyes, exposed in public, thrust upon us, are not understood but seen. When a man is stiff with cold from nakedness, wasted with hunger, parched with thirst, trembling with weariness, pale from want, what labor is there in understanding that he is needy? And if there is no labor of understanding, where is the fruit of understanding? Let us pray, brothers, that he who shows that he is to be understood in the poor may grant us to understand what is to be understood. That he who covers the heaven is naked in the poor man, that the fullness of all things hungers in the hungry, that the fountain of fountains thirsts in the thirsty: how is it not a great thing to understand this? How is it not blessed to understand that poverty is ample for one for whom heaven is narrow; that he who enriches the world is in need in the needy; that the giver of all things seeks a crust of bread and a cup of water; that God so lays himself down for love of the poor man as not merely to stand by the poor man but to be himself poor? To whom God has given to see this, he sees it. But how he has either poured the poor man into himself or poured himself into the poor man, let him now tell us himself: “I was hungry,” he says, “and you gave me to eat.” He did not say, “The poor man was hungry and you gave him to eat,” but, “I was hungry and you gave me to eat” (Matt 25:35). He cries that what the poor man received was given to him; he says that he eats what the poor man has eaten; what the poor man drinks he testifies was poured into him. O what love of the poor does! God glories in heaven over what makes the poor man blush on earth, and reckons as an honor to himself what is counted an insult to the poor. It would have been enough to say, “You gave me to eat, you gave me drink”; but he puts first, “I was hungry, I was thirsty,” because the love of the poor would have been small had he taken on the poor man without taking on the poor man's sufferings; and certainly true love is proved only by sufferings. True love has made another's hardships its own. It is a great thing that the poor man's food tastes good to God: he who does not hunger for the goods of all creation proclaims that he has been fed in the poor man's food, in the kingdom of heaven, before all the angels, in the assembly of those who rise again. What Abel suffered (Gen 4), how Noah preserved the world (Gen 6), what Abraham received by faith (Gen 15), how Moses brought the law (Exod 20), how Peter mounted the cross head downward, God passes over in silence, and proclaims only this: what the poor man ate. In heaven the first ration is that of the hungry; the poor man's pay is dealt with first in heaven; the outlay for the poor is written first in the divine daily ledgers. Blessed is he whose name is read before God as often as the account of the poor is recited in heaven. But let us hear the fruit of this blessedness: “In the evil day the Lord will deliver him.” Whoever knows that he leads his life amid the evils of the world, let him always lead with him the help of almsgiving, let him call to his defense troops of the poor, let him overflow as a generous provider in feeding the poor, let him often give to the poor and not tremble in giving out: he cannot fail to whom a sparing receiver stretches out his hand; that treasure cannot be exhausted from which a coin is enough. “In the evil day the Lord will deliver him.” In the evil day God will stand by as deliverer for him who delivered the poor man from evils. In distress God will hear him crying who heard the poor man when he cried. He will not see an evil day who made the poor man have good days. He will see an evil day who enters the day of judgment without the advocacy of poverty. Sins accuse in vain him whom the poor man excuses. He cannot be excused whom the poor man's hunger has accused. “May the Lord,” it says, “preserve him and give him life.” It did not say, “preserves and gives life,” but “may he preserve and give life.” It said it so that this might be the voice not of one announcing but of one praying. He who heard the needy man praying, behold, has heard the Church throughout the world praying for him in this way: “May the Lord preserve him and give him life.” May he preserve him, so that he is not snatched away to punishment; may he give him life, so that he may rise from the dead and receive life. “And may he not hand him over into the hand of his enemy.” Which enemy? Surely the devil: he is the prince of enmities; he despises enemies who has trampled on the very author of enmities. “But may the Lord help him on the bed of his pain.” The prophet goes through all the hardships of human frailty. “But may the Lord help him on the bed of his pain.” What is the bed of our pain but our body, in which the soul lies, and lies in pain, and grieves, because, longing to return to heaven, it is pressed down by the earth of the body? “You have turned all his bedding in his sickness.” The Lord does not turn the bedding of the just nor of the unjust, but turns the bedding for the sick. It is the flesh, then, that is turned and turns. It is the flesh that is rolled about in adversity and turns about in prosperity. So the Lord turns our bedding when he turns adversity into prosperity for us; and since the sick mind was rolling on the bed of pain, that is, on the bed of the body, the one who was rolled about cries out: “I said, Lord, have mercy on me; heal my soul, for I have sinned against you.” Because he perceives that his mind has contracted sickness through consent to the flesh, he begs that his soul be healed; and he asks for mercy confidently, because he showed mercy to the poor. Blessed is he who, by lending to the poor, has made his very judge his debtor.

[On the centurion.] You are going to hear today, brothers, how a centurion of a Roman cohort became a leader of the Christian army; and rightly, because he began to teach before he believed. “Jesus came,” it says, “to Capernaum, and a centurion came to him, entreating him and saying: ‘Lord, my servant lies at home paralyzed and is terribly tormented.’ And Jesus said to him: ‘I will come and heal him.’ And the centurion answered and said: ‘Lord, I am not worthy that you should come under my roof; but only say the word, and my servant will be healed. For I too am a man placed under authority, with soldiers under me; and I say to this one, Go, and he goes; and to another, Come, and he comes; and to my slave, Do this, and he does it’” (Matt 8:5–9). You see that the centurion, before he took on the office of discipleship, was allotted the place of teacher. For he gives a pattern for asking, a rule for believing; he lays open the grounds of faith; he commends examples of the virtues, though he had not yet entered the discipline of the Christian school. “The centurion came to him, entreating him.” This is to be wise, not merely to ask. “My servant lies at home.” He pleads the servant's case like a teacher: truly a centurion, who changed earthly pay into the hundredfold fruit of heaven and raised the servitude of worldly soldiering to divine dignity. “Lord, my servant lies at home.” Whoever calls him Lord faithfully confesses his own servitude. And how did this centurion, who so recognizes the Lord, dare to profess the servant as his own, as if not knowing that a slave's property belongs to the master? Or is he ignorant of common things who teaches such secret, such deep ones? “My servant”: I say “mine” because he lies prostrate; if he were yours, Lord, he would not lie prostrate. The prophet proves this when he says: “Behold now, bless the Lord, all you servants of the Lord, who stand in the house of the Lord” (Ps 134:1). “Who stand,” he says, not “who lie”: your servants stand, the servants of men lie prostrate. My servant who lies prostrate, let him rise so that he may be yours; mine, because paralyzed; so that he may be yours, let him now be healed. Mine, because terribly tormented; so that he may be yours, let him no longer be in pain. Lord, it does not befit your servants to lie under evils; the punishment of your servants is an insult to you; the force of evils ought not to possess your servants. Your servants, even if they suffer evils, do not suffer them as punishment, but undergo them for crowns. Adversities are not for them the causes of necessity but the cause of victory. It is the servants of men who suffer evils unwillingly, because their masters, in despair of them, cannot help them. But you, Lord, whom powers serve, whom cures obey, whom healings follow, how will you count as your servant one whom you see to be the servant of such diseases? Your goodness toward the wicked is known; even the ungodly confess your kindness; outsiders proclaim your mercy. Should I call this one yours, whom your kindness does not seek out as he lies there? “He lies at home and is terribly tormented.” This is why the greatness of the pain does not allow him to be brought and offered to you, lest a household sickness, shown in public, should cause both pain and shame. The centurion moved the judge as he pleaded such great things; and he so moved him that he brought the very Lord of heaven to want to go to his servant. “I will come,” says Christ, “and heal him.” Brothers, the centurion did not draw the author of kindness to kindness, nor did he compel Christ to go to what Christ had come for; rather, the centurion is taught to perceive and understand why Christ came to a servant in the form of a servant, why God came to man in a man: surely to lift up those lying prostrate, to raise up the crushed, to free those in chains, and, as most merciful carrier of his own work, to carry those whom no one could any longer bring or offer. But let us now hear what the centurion answered: “Lord,” he says, “I am not worthy that you should come under my roof.” He gave the answer owed by humility, and by his singular awe he marked him out as the Lord, fearing to bring him into the house of his soul, into the secret of his heart, under the roof of his conscience, into the inner room of his mind, where the household of thoughts moves about disordered and confused and does not allow the hall of the human breast to remain in the silence of sincerity without the din of vices. So he answered with a master's fear: “Lord, I am not worthy that you should come under my roof.” Hence Peter too, when he recognized Christ as the author of all things, cried out, saying: “Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man” (Luke 5:8). Peter asks him to depart from him in the same way that the centurion begs him not to come to him; for each acts so that the unworthiness of the lodging may not result in an insult to the guest. “I am not worthy that you should come under my roof.” This would have been well said before God entered the lodging of our flesh; but now why does the centurion forbid Christ to enter his roof, when he sees him already dwelling wholly under the roof of his body? Brothers, the centurion already saw in Christ the form of his own body, but he did not see in him the passions of his own body. Christ was born in the flesh, but born of the Holy Spirit; he took the lodging of flesh, but in the hall of a virgin, so that there might be the truth of a human body and yet he might have nothing of the pollution of the human body. Rightly, then, the centurion judges his roof unworthy of Christ, because Christ dwelt under a singular roof of our body, according to the prophet's word: “I kept watch and became like a lone sparrow on the roof” (Ps 102:7). “But only say the word, and my servant will be healed.” This centurion, though he was without the law, did nothing without the law. He says: “Only say the word,” because it had been said: “He spoke, and they were made” (Ps 148:5). And if all things were made perfect by speaking, how should a single sickness not be burned away by speech alone? “Only say the word”: and what is said without a word? But he asks for a word not in the ordinary sense of speaking but in the power of doing: the word of which it was said: “He sent his word and healed them” (Ps 107:20). “Only say the word.” For he believed that all powers abide in the Word. Your word, Lord, is health; your word is life; where your word comes, pain at once flees from there, sickness soon withdraws; the word in which Peter let down his nets and caught a multitude of fish, without which he spent a night of ignorance and, though a wakeful fisherman, found no fruit: “Lord,” he says, “we toiled all night and caught nothing, but at your word I will let down the nets” (Luke 5:5). And as if what he had argued about the word were not enough, he establishes by facts and commends by example that what he asks can be accomplished by a word: “For I too am a man placed under authority, with soldiers under me; and I say to this one, Go, and he goes; and to another, Come, and he comes; and to my slave, Do this, and he does it.” “For I too am a man”: that is to say, you are God; “placed under authority”: that is, you are the very authority of authorities; “with soldiers under me”: that is, you have the powers; “and I say to this one, Go, and he goes”: that is, say to the sickness, Go, and it goes; “to another, Come, and he comes”: that is, say to health, Come, and it comes; “and to my slave, Do this, and he does it”: that servant of mine will also be your servant when he has recovered his health. Let him hear; hear what? “You have been made well; sin no more” (John 5:14). Let him do righteousness, so that he may be freed from the paralysis of all sins and be able to sing with the prophet: “Turn, my soul, to your rest, for the Lord has done good to you; for he has rescued my soul from death, my eyes from tears, my feet from falling. I will please the Lord in the land of the living” (Ps 116:7–9). Brothers, let whoever desires to reach the hundredfold fruit imitate the centurion. So that we may not pass lightly over this centurion's wisdom, let what has been said about him today suffice; for the mystery by which the Gentile is figured is very great.

[On the two demoniacs.] That Christ crosses seas and goes around places is not a matter of human desire but the cause of human salvation. Christ walks about not to see places but to find people who had perished by various misfortunes. What new thing would he who had made the places see in them? Or what was absent to him who was everywhere? As man he was seen in places, but as God he saw everywhere; he surely saw, and he saw the desperate, to whom he was going to bestow divine remedies; he went to the care of those for whom human care had already failed, as today's reading has proved. “When Jesus had come,” it says, “across the lake into the region of the Gerasenes, two men who had demons met him, coming out of the tombs, exceedingly fierce, so that no one could pass by that way” (Matt 8:28). It is pleasing that the Lord knew and saw what evil, what danger was found in those places, and went there in order to help those so desperate, afflicted, and wretched. “Two men who had demons met him, coming out of the tombs.” The authors of death had made their dwelling in the tombs. Notice what savagery, what fury, what madness the demons have toward the human race: they cannot bear even the short time of human life; they are not content that men die, but long to bury men alive; they commit themselves to tombs so as to bring men back into tombs; they feed on corpses, grow fat on decay, take delight in stench, they whose whole pleasure is that men perish. But let us perceive what they contrive by frauds, what they work by evils, whose cruelty has no limit when it is in the open. What do they do when they show off riches, but sow avarice? To implant pride they set display before us. They sell singularity, so as to shut out what belongs to communion. To nourish anger they color its causes. To violate affection they give grievances to the feelings. They feign philosophy, so that by seeking more men may know nothing. They fashion many gods, so that God, who is one and true, may not be known. “Two men who had demons met him.” When it indicates that many demons came together against two men, a whole legion against one, it does so to teach that demons are to be guarded against, not feared; and at the same time it shows how singular Christ's power is, since by the name of Christ alone the whole multitude of demons is put to flight. “Two men who had demons met him.” They came, presented against their will, at the command of the one who ruled, not by their own daring; they were drawn unwilling, not running of their own accord. Then, at Christ's presence, the men come out of the tombs, and in turn carry as captives those by whom they had been taken captive; they bring to punishment those by whose tortures they had been racked; they fit for sentence those by whom they had already been consigned to the tombs. “Two men who had demons met him, exceedingly fierce, so that no one could pass by that way.” You see that the demons had closed the way to those coming to Christ and had denied passage. For this is the demons' concern, that men may not find a way back to God. For they cannot possess men except by drawing them away from fellowship with their Author. “So that no one could pass by that way.” This is why Christ became the way. “So that no one could pass by that way”: that way, not this one. “I am,” he says, “the way” (John 14:6); so that the force of demons might not be able to resist those coming to the way by the way, to God by God: one cannot arrive at God except through God. But let us now hear what the demons cried out: “What have we to do with you, Son of God?” That is to say: Author of life, what have you to do with the dead? Dweller in heaven, what have you to do with tombs? Fragrance of paradise, what have you to do with stench? We whom you cast down from heaven, shut out of paradise, from whom you now take away cities and to whom you deny habitable regions, let us at least inhabit tombs; and if we deserve so great a persecution, you do not deserve so great an injury. “What have we to do with you?” What? What a judge has to do with a defendant, an avenger with a criminal, a king with a deserter. “What have we to do with you, Son of God?” Thieves say this to the owner, robbers to the master; they hold the spoils, they carry the plunder, and they ask what they have to do with him who claims back what is his. “What have we to do with you, Son of God?” What? That you give back the men, that you restore the world to its Author, and that, now the Creator has come, you know that nothing more is permitted you among his creatures. “What have we to do with you, Son of God? Have you come to torment us before the time?” “What have we to do with you?” And what have you to do with men? “What have we to do with you, Son of God?” They recognize, they recognize God, they confess him as judge, they cry that they are owed to judgment, and they plead the time limit. “What have we to do with you, Son of God? Have you come to torment us before the time?” They set time against the Author of times. “Have you come to torment us before the time?” They complain about time as if they had made it together with time, as they had buried the living in tombs. “Have you come to torment us before the time?” Untimely cruelty cuts time short, forestalls death, buries the living; and it complains about time, as if it ought unjustly to have what it desires before the time, and not be punished as soon as its malice arose: the hardened wickedness of the age makes time its pretext. To the wicked patience is short, to the good vengeance is slow; what is long to the injured is narrow to those who injure. “There was,” it says, “not far from them a herd of many pigs feeding. And the demons begged him, saying: ‘If you cast us out, send us into the herd of pigs.’” An unworthy servitude asks for what is worthy of it. “Send us into the herd of pigs.” Wickedness begs to be sent from the tombs into pigs, because it does not know how to give up stenches, only to change them. “Send us into the herd of pigs.” Those who fell from heaven seek mud; after heavenly dwellings they canvass for the wallows of pigs. “Send us into the herd of pigs.” A herd is sent into a herd, so that the multitude of the demons may be betrayed, so that it may appear that two men had carried what a great number of pigs could not bear. “He said to them: ‘Go.’ And they came out and went into the pigs; and behold, the whole herd rushed down the steep bank into the sea and died in the waters.” The worthless beasts are handed over not at the will of the demons, but so that by such a deed it might become known how they rage against men, how they seek the deaths of men, who sought the pigs in order to destroy them. The demons burn to destroy, not to possess, everything that exists, is driven, moves, and lives. Let no one presume, then, that a man becomes such as they are: they have an ancient enmity toward the human race, a fixed anger, a determined malice. Demons do not yield unless bound; they cannot harm unless ordered. So the worthless beasts are handed over, so that it may be clear that the demons, who needed a command even to be allowed into the pigs, are permitted nothing against men. Either, then, we by our vices make them receive the power to harm, or by our virtues, with Christ triumphing, we trample the necks of the demons, subjected to us.