Sermons 164–168

[On the heavenly fire, on the division made by Christ, and on the division of the Church and the Synagogue. On the text of Luke: “I came to cast fire on the earth,” etc.] As healthful food is always bitter to the feverish, so the Lord's word is often disagreeable to the unskilled: yet to each it happens differently, from weakness either of body or of mind. Today the Lord seems to have grated on the hearing of some by saying: “I came to cast fire on the earth, and what do I will but that it be kindled?” And below: “Do you think that I came to bring peace on the earth? No, I tell you, but division” (Luke 12). And where is that word, “Behold the Lamb of God” (John 1)? Where that, “Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter, and like a lamb dumb before its shearer, so he did not open his mouth” (Isa 53)? And also that, “Tell the daughter of Zion: Behold, your king comes to you, meek” (Matt 21)? And why does this Lamb strike so hard in his preaching? Why does he butt like a ram in his word, who in his passion is silent with such patience and in death gives way with all humility? And truly, brothers, Christ entered his world gentle and meek in everything: when he is born sweet in our offspring, when, sweeter himself, he is gently cherished in the cradle, when as a little one he pours himself out and relaxes in a human lap, when he is held tight on his parent's neck and holds tight with the whole embrace of love. And to nourish with all affection while he is nourished, he runs little by little through all the ages of life and grows up: he lives always poor, he always goes about alone, because the poor man is always common to all; the solitary is always open to all. And why is it that he scatters so much fire by his words, that he kindles and spreads such and so great conflagrations, saying, “I came to cast fire on the earth”? Why? Whenever a field turns into forest from long neglect and grows foul with all the bristling of wild luxuriance, it is always opened up and cleansed by fire by a very skilled cultivator; and the cultivator applies fire with kindly zeal, so that, the briars burned off, the first face of the field may be revealed, may be given free to the farmer, a way may be made easy for the plowshare, the long-barren land may be fruitful of seed and repay its long and gloomy rest with a most joyful harvest. So when the Jewish soil, exhausted to poverty by the continual plow of the law and constant cultivation, did not answer to seed or labor, but returned darnel for wheat and brought forth thorns for its strength, Christ turned the industry of divine cultivation to the sowings of the gentiles; and wishing to cleanse the fallow lands of the nations, long choked with thickets, the great Teacher first casts fire on the earth, and whatever natural luxuriance had befouled, whatever winter's stiffness had dried up, he cleanses and consumes by a skillful burning; so that the soils, exhausted by long fasting, might grow fat, enriched by their own ash, and after long hardness might be made tender and soft; and so might be made fit and suitable for the seed of the Gospel cultivation, and with a happy furrow give back fruit thirtyfold, sixtyfold and a hundredfold. But this cultivation is not new to the old and heavenly farmer, for in setting down the law and sowing grace he has always been accustomed to use the work of fire. When he was about to give the law, he sent fire first in the bush; but the bush carried the divine fire, it did not catch fire (Exod 3), prefiguring even then a people full of the thorns of malice and ungrateful for the cultivation of the law. And now, when he was sending the apostles to the fields of the gentiles, he so drenched them with a fiery shower, and fire sat upon them, that they could dry the wet, soak the dry, cook the raw, warm the cold, kindle the extinguished, burn up the harmful, and, by one and the same fire in different works, cultivate the whole desert of the lands for heavenly plenty, as the prophet says: “Their sound has gone out into all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world” (Ps 19:4 [LXX 18:5]). But let us now pass to what follows. “I came to cast fire on the earth, and what do I will but that it be kindled? But I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how I am constrained until it is accomplished!” Water presses on fire: such a joining, so divided, must be pondered. The wave presses the flame, the flame multiplies the wave. What is this so harmonious discord? Here, as we said, the figure of the divine farmer is acted out: for all things sprout by heat and are nourished by moisture. Hence God, the parent of things, makes us sprout and nourishes us by the commerce of fire and water, he who burns, glows, seethes, and pants for us with such great affection. “I have a baptism to be baptized with.” Christ is baptized in his own blood, so that whatever he took from our flesh may be washed, renewed, and brought back to the whole form of his divine majesty. Christ is baptized with the baptism of his passion, he who washed the sin of the whole world, which could not be abolished except by him who had made the world. “Do you think,” he says, “that I came to bring peace on the earth? No, I tell you, but division.” Why? Because heavenly union lies in this earthly division. No one can be bound to earth and joined to heaven. Let this earthly division, then, be welcome and dear, which so separates us from earthly things as to graft us into divine things. “From now on,” he says, “there will be five in one house divided, three against two and two against three: father will be divided against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.” Though he said five are to be divided from one house, he names six: father, son, mother, daughter, mother-in-law, daughter-in-law; but since the mother-in-law is the same as the mother, it is certain that only five persons are found in these names. Three are divided against two, when the bride is joined to the bridegroom and the mother-in-law, who is the third, will remain divided in the house. So, in this union in which the Church is joined to Christ, the Synagogue, who is mother and mother-in-law, remains wholly divided from her husband. Two, then, are divided against three, while from this partnership of Christ and the Church the other heir, the Synagogue, is cut off and divided, so that Christ and the Church, divided from the heretics, may remain and be joined in one Spirit. And father is divided against son and son against father, when the Jewish people, which through Christ's fleshly generation obtained the name of father, is separated by envy from Christ the Son; the envious father turns affection into hatred, to whom the son's glory is a constant punishment, a continual torment, as the Apostle says: “Whose are the fathers, from whom is Christ according to the flesh, who is God over all, blessed forever” (Rom 9). And mother is divided against daughter: for the Synagogue is the mother from whom, through Peter and the other apostles, the Church is born as daughter, who, when she deserved to have the partnership of Christ the divine King, endured her mother as both rival and stepmother. And what sort of mother to her daughter is such a one, what sort of mother-in-law to her daughter-in-law? For this Synagogue, the mother, when she saw the Church come from the gentiles as a bride, wickedly killed her son so as not to see the partnership of the daughter-in-law: she killed Christ, to see whether even so, in her fury, she could extinguish his love for the daughter-in-law. But from death Christ rose wholly into marriage with the Church, to prove that love is not separated by death but grows. But the Lord rebukes those who study with excessive curiosity to search out the face of the sky, the risings of clouds, the courses of the stars, the regions of the world, and strive by no studies, no signs, to recognize the time of their salvation. “Hypocrites,” he says, “you know how to test the face of the sky and the earth; and how is it that you do not test this time?” An eye spread out loses its light, because a man's whole sight is contained within the pupil. So do not strive to see many things, so that you may see yourself; do not presume to gaze at lofty things, nor try to look at distant ones, because the narrow eye does not take in many things, does not penetrate lofty things, does not see through distant things; and so he sees nothing who thinks he sees everything. Recognize, then, the day of salvation, the acceptable time, through Christ Jesus our Lord, if you will, by yourself…

[On the consecration of St Projectus, bishop of Forum Cornelii.] I confess that I owe veneration and most faithful service to all the churches; but I am compelled to serve the Church of Cornelius more particularly by love of its very name. For Cornelius, of most blessed memory, famous in life, shining everywhere with every title of virtue, known to all for the greatness of his works, was a father to me; he begot me through the Gospel, he devoutly nourished me most devoutly, he, a holy man, trained me in holy service, he, a bishop, offered and consecrated me to the sacred altars; and so the name of Cornelius is famous, to be honored, and wonderful to me. Love of the namesake, then, compels me to meet eagerly the desires of the Church of Cornelius, and the more lovingly to consecrate Projectus, a venerable man, as bishop. I said Projectus, cast forth, but not cast off, according to that word: “On you I was cast from the womb; from my mother's belly you are my God” (Ps 22:10 [LXX 21:11]). And truly this Projectus, cast forth from the womb of a human mother, remained continually in the womb of the divine mother; not knowing his own house, he persisted as a dweller in the house of God. But how, brothers, he climbed from the cradle itself through the ranks and offices of the Church's service, since it would be long for me to tell, as the Lord says, “he is of age, let him speak for himself” (John 9), through our Lord Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with the Holy Spirit for ages of ages. Amen.

[On the Lenten fast.] Simplicity indeed has the grace of its innocence, it has the fruit of its faith; it cannot have the reward of knowledge, it cannot have the palm of virtues. It is one thing to live for one's own leisure and security, another to bear watches and labors for all. Simplicity makes a good citizen, it does not make a brave soldier: hence the one pays tax, the other receives pay and honors. The citizen either yields or gives way to adversity; the soldier withstands adversity and drives it back; the one has not learned to fight, the other not to fear; the one always takes care, the other conquers. We have said this to show the difference between one who simply receives and follows the mystery of the Christian faith, and one who is eager both to grasp knowingly and to know the mystery of that faith. See, the Lenten fast, which the universal Church takes up tomorrow with solemn devotion: many think that it was handed down to us, or carried out by the Lord on our behalf, only out of zeal for abstinence, and that it contains no mystery of higher understanding, but was provided only for chastising bodies, cutting off vices, and moderating minds. But this number forty is found to have been so sacred and so mystical from the ages that it is set down by inviolable law as always used in accomplishing divine things and in carrying out God's greatest business. To make this shine clearly, let us run through very abundant examples. When the world at the beginning of the human race grew foul with the lamentable, unspeakable filth of vices, and stank with all the horror of crimes, and almost strove to darken the great brightness of heaven with the very smoke of its iniquity, a heavenly rain was poured out for forty days and nights to cleanse the earth (Gen 7): so that the world, which ought by then to perish for itself, since it had been made, might rejoice to be reborn by such a baptism, and know that what it is it now owes not to nature but to the grace of its Author; and so that the earth, the origin of our body, might foreshadow the very form of our baptism; so that the earth which before brought forth men born for death might now bring them forth reborn for life. Notice, brothers, how great this number forty is, which then opened heaven to wash the earth, and now opens the font of baptism to the whole world for renewing the nations. Rightly we run through forty days by fasting, so as to come to the font of baptism and salvation. For forty years a bread-making rain fed the Jewish people in the desert (Exod 16): the earth did not by its usual service produce the increase of seed, but the rain itself rather poured grain on the earth; and he took away all the labor of human servitude who with a gentle dew supplied and carried down heavenly rations to the hungry. For forty days the reconnaissance sent by God went round the land of promise (Num 13), so that this sacred number might call the people of Israel to the promised lands, the number that calls us by the forty-day courses of fasting and leads us to heaven. For now too a heavenly inspection explores and goes round the land of our body for forty days, so that, the nations of vices being conquered and driven out, the host of virtues may possess the region of our heart. And since nothing must be omitted, Moses himself by a fast of forty days was so purged and emptied of the human body (Exod 24) that he was changed wholly into the glory of the Godhead; and while still in the darkness of our body he shone with the whole light of deity, so that mortal sight could not look on him, who, fed long by the substance of God, had wholly forgotten the help of mortal food: hence he learned that those who dwell before God and with God do not lack the supports of life. And truly, brothers, he cannot grow weary or die, whose bread, whose life, is God. Rightly such a man deserved to establish the law, who had laid aside everything in man that the law could press upon. Perhaps a continual fast had given this to Moses; but it would not yet have made him such if this sacred number forty had been lacking. Fasting raised Elijah to heaven (2 Kgs 2 [4 Kgdms 2]), and assigned the service of fiery chariots to a body so purified, to show how Gehenna, which burns the guilty, serves the innocent: but for Elijah to come to this, the mystical way of the number forty ran before (1 Kgs 19 [3 Kgdms 19]). Ezekiel, the most excellent of the prophets, lying forty days on one side (I speak to those who know the law), while he prefigures a future captivity, releases it (Ezek 4): this sacred number takes on iniquities so as to blot them out; it enters captivities so as to release them; it suffers chains so as to loosen them. Hence the Lord, the Author of the mystery hidden in this number from the ages, entered within this very number of forty days of fasting (Matt 4), so that the Truth itself, by itself, might now complete what had been done and begun in his servants, strengthen what was tender, supply what was begun, and confirm by example what he had established by precepts; for it would not have been enough to have commanded the mystery of so great a number in words if he had not also commended it by deed. And yet, brothers, we have attempted to open the mystery of this sacrament from the time of the flood, not daring to touch earlier things, search out higher things, speak of things kept silent, or bring forth things laid away for so long: especially since I see that it would be rash for me and not necessary for you to search into such and so great origins of causes. It belongs to true devotion, to most faithful service, to ask what the ruler wants done, not why he wants it. If, then, a simple, pure, equal fast of forty days is shown to have been handed down to us by the Lord with so many testimonies, under the mystery of so great a number, whence this variety, whence this novelty, whence weeks now relaxed, now rigid, now too indulgent, now severe? Whence this practice of immoderate fasting, which either afflicts without relief or slackens into debauchery? That is, to assign hot things separately, cold things separately, salt separately, the remedies of food separately to their uses, and to neglect the whole Maker of life? Surely those who season the foods of the body should wisely learn to temper the food of the soul, lest too much salt or none at all produce a deadly disgust for saving food. Let the fast be equal; and, as it was handed down to us (Matt 4), let it be kept for the discipline of body and soul. Certainly whoever cannot fast should not presume to introduce novelty, but confess that what he relaxes belongs to his own frailty, and redeem with almsgiving what he cannot make up by fasting; for the Lord does not require the groaning of one who has thus redeemed himself by the groans of the poor.

[On St John the Baptist preaching, and on doing repentance.] Most blessed John comes to us at the right moment, in the time of fasting, as a teacher of repentance; a teacher in word and deed, a true master, who shows by example what he asserts by word. Teaching stands on knowledge, but the authority of teaching is established by life; one who does what is to be taught makes his hearer obedient. To teach by deeds is the only rule of doctrine: doctrine in words is knowledge, in deeds virtue. That knowledge, then, is true which has been mixed with virtue; that, that knowledge is divine, not human, as the evangelist proves when he says: “What Jesus began to do and to teach” (Acts 1). When a teacher does what is to be taught, he both instructs by hearing and shapes by example. “In those days,” it says, “came John the Baptist, preaching in the desert of Judea and saying: Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has drawn near” (Matt 3). “Repent”: why not rather “Rejoice”? Rejoice rather, because divine things succeed human ones, heavenly things earthly, eternal things temporal, good things evil, secure things anxious, blessed things troubles, lasting things perishing. “Repent.” Let him repent, plainly, let him repent who has preferred human things to divine, who has wished to serve the world and not to have the Lord of the world as lord of the world. Let him repent who has preferred to perish with the devil rather than reign with Christ. Let him repent who, fleeing the freedom of the virtues, has wished to be a captive of the vices. Let him repent, and repent enough, who, so as not to hold on to life, has surrendered to death. “For the kingdom of heaven has drawn near.” The kingdom of heaven is the reward of the just, the judgment of sinners, the punishment of the impious. Blessed, then, is John, who wished judgment to be forestalled by repentance; he wished sinners to have not judgment but reward, he wished the impious to enter the kingdom, not punishment. And John sang of the kingdom of heaven as near then, when the world, still a boy, was gaining increases in its state. Now we know how very near the kingdom of heaven is, when the world, wearied by extreme old age, is emptied of strength, lays down its limbs, loses its senses, is pressed by pains, rejects care, dies to life, lives to diseases, cries out its failing, testifies to its end. We, then, are harder than the Jews, we who follow a world that is fleeing, who forget the times to come and gape after the present, who, placed in the very judgment, do not fear, who do not go out to meet the Lord who is already coming, who want death to remain and do not want the resurrection of the dead, who want to serve and do not want to reign, so that we put off so great a kingdom for our Lord. Where is that word: “When you pray, say: Your kingdom come” (Luke 11)? We need a greater repentance, then, and the measure of the medicine must be applied according to the measure of the wound. Let us repent, brothers, let us repent quickly, because space of time is already denied us, the very hour is already closing on us, the presence of judgment already shuts us out from the place of satisfaction. Let repentance run, lest the sentence run ahead: for that the Lord has not yet come, that he still waits, that he delays, means that he desires us to return to him, not to perish, he who has always addressed us with such kindness: “I do not will the death of the sinner, but that the impious turn from his way and live” (Ezek 33). Let us return, then, brothers, repenting, and not be afraid of the shortness of time, because the Author of time does not know how to be cramped: the thief of the Gospel proves this, who on the cross and in the hour of death seized pardon, invaded life, broke into paradise, penetrated to the kingdom (Luke 23). And we, brothers, who have not sought merit from free will, let us acquire virtue at least from necessity; lest we be judged, let us be our own judges; we owe ourselves repentance so that we can take the sentence away from ourselves. The first happiness is to rejoice in the perpetual security of innocence, to keep the holiness of mind and body inviolate, to feel no unclean defilements of the world, to have no consciousness of guilt, not to know the wounds of sin, always to possess the grace of the virtues, always to live in hope of heavenly rewards. But if perhaps our mind has been pierced by the dart of sin, if the flesh swells from crime, if human frailty is corrupted by the pus of vices, then let the medicine of repentance, which is for the sick, not the healthy, come to our aid; then let the knife of compunction approach, then let the cautery of pain be applied, then let the poultices of sighs be laid on, let the inflammation of a swollen conscience evaporate; then let the ulcers of guilt be washed away with tears, then let sackcloth wipe off the uncleanness of the body. Let him bear, let him bear the bitter cure of repentance who would not keep the health he owed. To one whose life is dear to him, no cure is hard: let him not be ungrateful to the physician who calls him back to health through pain. He who keeps what was entrusted to innocence does not pay the interest of repentance. The Lord reveals this when he says: “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are ill.” And he showed who were ill, saying again: “I did not come to call the just, but sinners” (Matt 9). John calls back through repentance, Christ calls through grace: hence John goes about wholly shaped by repentance in dress, food and place. “John the Baptist came,” it says, “preaching in the desert of Judea and saying: Repent.” John cries repentance through the deserts of Judea, which by its barrenness was losing the cultivation of the law, the labor of the prophets, the fruitfulness of the fathers, the harvest of God: so it is the deserts of disciplines, not of men or places, that are rightly called to repentance: the cry calls where no hearer stands by. “John himself had a garment of camel's hair.” He could have had one of goat's hair, but there was no need of sackcloth; he took the hair of a most crooked animal, which has nothing straight, nothing graceful, nothing beautiful, which nature gave to hard labor, assigned to great burden, handed over to extreme servitude. The teacher of repentance had to be clothed in such a garment, so that those who had twisted away from the discipline of uprightness and had made themselves wholly deformed by the forms of sins might be put more under the burdens of repentance, be added to the hard anguish of satisfaction, carry the laborious sighs of compunction, so that, straightened and thinned like a needle, they might enter through the narrow eye of repentance into the broad spaces of remission, and the Lord's saying might be fulfilled: that a camel can pass through the eye of a needle (Matt 19). “His food was locusts and wild honey.” The locust, assigned to chastise sinners, is rightly figured as the food of repentance, so that, leaping out of the place of sin into the place of repentance, one may fly to heaven on the wings of pardon. The prophet had perceived this, when he said: “Like a shadow when it declines I am taken away, and I am shaken off like locusts; my knees are weakened by fasting, and my flesh is changed for mercy's sake” (Ps 109:23–24 [LXX 108:23–24]). You hear how he was shaken off from sin into repentance like a locust, and bent his knees so as to carry the weights of repentance; and the food of honey is added, so that sweet mercy might temper the bitterness of repentance.

[On the parable of the hundred sheep.] As a skilled traveler has found how to enter the depths of the sea and cross the pathless ways of the liquid road, so the divine law has granted and taught us to hear something of God's sayings and to penetrate to the secret of the divine meaning. Hence, loosing the boat of our mind from the shore of the flesh, we enter the open sea of the Gospel word, believing that by the breath of the Holy Spirit we shall come to the harbor of heavenly understanding. Our Lord today has advanced the hope of sinners toward pardon and has checked the murmuring of the proud by a most kindly example. “The tax collectors and sinners,” it says, “were drawing near to the Lord to hear him; and the Pharisees and scribes murmured, saying: This man receives sinners and eats with them” (Luke 15). No less envious than proud, they took malice from the Lord's goodness: from God's kindness they were made impious, from Christ's compassion they became cruel, from the heavenly cure they took sickness, and they turned the pardon of penitents into the guilt of the judge. “He receives sinners and eats with them.” So the envious man sees, so the proud man thinks; so the greedy man tastes it, so the malicious man understands. “He receives sinners.” They do not say “takes up.” What had he lost, who receives back? Whoever finds what he has lost forgives faults, turns anger into joy, changes pain into grace. “He receives sinners.” God receives sinners, but God does not allow those he receives to remain sinners; the sinner does not violate God by drawing near; God sanctifies the sinner when he draws near. Pharisee, Christ does not receive sins when he receives the sinner, because God is the receiver not of crime but of man. So the Pharisee ought to have seen the sinners not as they came but as they went back. Certainly they soon saw Paul, whom they had sent as a persecutor, come back a preacher. But let us now hear by what comparison, by what likeness God suggests his joy at the return of a sinner. “And he told them a parable: Which man of you who has a hundred sheep, if he loses one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the desert and go after the one that was lost, until he finds it? And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders rejoicing; and coming home he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them: Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost. So, I tell you, there will be joy in heaven over one sinner who repents, more than over ninety-nine just who need no repentance.” Always indeed, when we find what was lost, we gain a new heap of joys, and it is more pleasant for us to have found what was lost than not to have lost what was kept. But this parable speaks of divine kindness more than of human custom, and expresses the truth. To leave great things and love smaller ones belongs to God's power, not to human greed: because God makes even things that are not to be; and he so follows what is lost as to keep what he has left; and he so finds what was lost as not to lose what was kept. So this is not an earthly shepherd but a heavenly one, and this whole parable is not modeled on human labors but overshadowed by divine mysteries, as at once becomes clear from the number itself when he says: “Which man of you who has a hundred sheep, if he loses one of them?” Why not fifty, why not two hundred, but a hundred? Why not four, why not five, but one? To show that the pain came more from the number than from the loss. For the loss of one had broken up the whole number one hundred, and had brought it all back from the right hand to the left, so that by the loss of one the left hand enclosed all, and the right had nothing. The number ninety-nine lies hidden, enclosed, stuck fast, held pressed in the left hand: but when it receives and feels the increase of one, it passes at once to the palm of the right hand, it comes at once to the crown of the number one hundred; and if it is a grief not to have had the number one hundred, what a grief is it to have lost it? You see that through the loss of one sheep this shepherd had grieved that the whole flock had fallen from the right hand and fallen back into the left; and so, leaving the ninety-nine, he follows the one, seeks the one, so as to find all in the one and restore all in the one. But now let us open the secret of the heavenly parable. The man having a hundred sheep is Christ. The good shepherd, the kind shepherd, who in one sheep, that is, in Adam, had placed the whole flock of the human race, set it among the delights of paradise, in the region of the life-giving pasture; but it forgot the shepherd's voice while it believed the howling of wolves, and lost the saving folds, and was wholly wounded with deadly wounds. Christ, then, coming into the world to seek it, found it in the womb of the virginal region. He came in the flesh of his nativity, and, raising it onto the cross, he laid it on the shoulders of his passion; and, rejoicing with the whole joy of the resurrection, by his ascension he carried it and brought it through to the heavenly mansion. “And he called together his friends and neighbors,” that is, the angels, “saying to them: Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.” The angels rejoice and are glad with Christ at the return of the Lord's sheep, and they do not resent its presiding over them on the very throne of majesty, because envy had already been put to flight from heaven with the devil; nor could the sin of envy any longer penetrate the regions above through the Lamb who had taken away the sin of the world. Brothers, he sought us on earth; let us seek him in heaven; he carried us to the glory of his Godhead; let us carry him with all holiness in our body: “Glorify,” says the Apostle, “and carry God in your body” (1 Cor 6). He carries God in his body who carries no sin in the working of his flesh.