Sermons 17–20

[On the demoniac.] From today's Gospel reading we have learned that the Lord came across the lake into the region of the Gerasenes, and that as he came out of the boat a man from the tombs with an unclean spirit, bound with chains and fetters, at once met him (Mark 5:1–3). The author of death, who had his dwelling in the tombs, broods over the mansions of death, and, greedy for human slaughter, longs to bury alive in deadly fashion those whom he cannot kill by his cruelty. The greedy exactor of our destruction rages and storms: it is punishment to him that a man is born, torment that he dies too slowly; he strives to banish even this very short life of man into horrid tombs; a confused enemy, perverse in both directions, he thrusts the living into tombs and sets food before the dead; he pours out wine, so as both to kill the living and to disturb the dead. The man was held bound with chains and fetters: bound for another's crime, the innocent dwelling was tortured for the crime of its inhabitant. The devil's guilt overflowed into the man's punishment, and the robber, shut in, fattened on the miseries of his prey; accursed envy exposes not the doer but the sufferer. Wishing to help this disease, the Lord crosses the sea: that is, in the ship of our body he crosses to the ends of the tossing world; he reaches the shores of our salvation, filled with shipwrecks, and floods with the splendor of his light a region steeped in the blind darkness of ignorance, to catch the snares of the crafty enemy and to put to flight with royal power the very prince of spiritual wickedness with his legions, so as at last to make free those whom the enemy's power had long held captive. “Seeing Jesus from afar,” it says, “he ran and worshiped him, and crying out with a loud voice he said: ‘What have I to do with you, Jesus, Son of God Most High? I adjure you by God, do not torment me.’” At Christ's nod the order of punishments was reversed: before, while the devil played the robber, an innocent man was harassed; now the man runs, but the devil runs into trouble; the flesh bows, but the unclean spirit lies flat and is laid low. “He ran and worshiped” (Mark 5:6). What is this, devil? The one whom you provoked to a fall with a threefold temptation, the one whom you craftily canvassed to worship you for a kingdom, do you now, trembling and pitiable, fall down and worship? See, he who promised all the honors of a kingdom and of glory is found dwelling in tombs in the fetid corruption of corpses. So, so he deceives when he promises, so as to drag down to the lower world with him those whom, as a lying promiser of heavenly things, he mocks when they consult him. “What have I to do with you, Son of God Most High?” For even now he worships as a flatterer, not as one devoted and obedient, wishing to escape punishment and dreading to lose his prey. The wretch believes that he can sway by flattery the one whom he could not conquer by temptation nor bend by gifts; but he is accustomed to release the bound, recall captives, and restore to himself the bounds, not of what he acquired but of what he created; to strike the enemy with free power, not to seek back from the enemy by seductive dealing the owner of his own. “And crying with a loud voice he says: ‘What have I to do with you, Jesus, Son of God Most High? I adjure you by God, do not torment me.’” What is happening? What does human frailty suffer, subject to such great miseries? See, the devil cries out with the man's voice as his advocate, to seek the man; and all the man's limbs fight for their enemy to their own ruin. “What have I to do with you, Jesus, Son of God Most High?” “What have I to do with you?” What one to be punished has to do with the judge, a deserter with the king, an invader with the master. “What have I to do with you, Jesus, Son of God Most High?” If you recognize the Son, you surely know the heir; if you know the heir, why do you presume to seize the inheritance? “I adjure you by God, do not torment me.” The evasive one is afraid, and pretends: he confesses the Son, but with solid art he contends that he should not be understood as God; he adjures God by God, so as to make him seem another than himself, to deceive and mislead the hearing of those standing by. “Jesus asked him: ‘What is your name?’” He asks: he is not ignorant, but fulfills the role of judge and keeps the procedure of an examiner. He asks the name so as to examine his condition, judge his guilt, sentence him for his crime, and by passing sentence demonstrate that he is God. “Legion answered, for we are many.” Christ's question thus drives away our ignorance; it opens to us what was hidden: a legion against one man. The cowardice of a soldier is evident if he deserts the battle line, draws back his step, dreads to engage; here he foresees that one man, a captive, is stronger than a numerous enemy. What are these in the presence of the King, who to capture one man, not even a recruit, gathered with the whole column of their cohort? Where would they be if they had already seen the banner of the cross there, the standards of Christ? Come, Christian, march on secure: so great and so numerous a force, which so fears an unarmed man, will flee far if it sees, perceives, recognizes him armed. “The spirits begged him, saying: ‘Send us into the pigs.’” See where Satan wants to set up his seat: from tombs into pigs. Once infected with rottenness, he seeks fetid and unclean dwellings; he delights in filth and mud, he who always feeds on the stench of crimes and the squalor of vices. But his stench is so hellish and cruel that not even the nature of pigs could bear it: in the end they preferred to be drowned in the sea and perish in the waves rather than suffer his uncleanness and endure his rottenness. But what can the demons presume to do, who cannot even touch pigs unless the divine power permits them? Wretched is he who, abandoning the judge, has in vain abandoned himself to the favor of the executioner, who can neither harass nor spare, neither lessen nor add torments, but, himself a condemned slave, does everything according to the law and decision of the judge.

[On Peter's mother-in-law, sick and healed.] From today's reading the attentive hearer has learned why the Lord of heaven, the restorer of all things, entered earthly and servile dwellings. But it is no wonder that he graciously came to everything who mercifully came to help everyone. “When Jesus had come,” it says, “into Peter's house, he saw his mother-in-law lying sick with a fever” (Matt 8:14). You see what invited Christ to Peter's house: surely not the pleasure of reclining at table but the sickness of one lying down; not the need to dine but the occasion of salvation; a work of divine power, not the display of a human banquet. In Peter's house it was not wine but tears that were being poured out; the household was disturbed there not by the care of a banquet but by care for the sick woman; there fever, not appetite, was burning. So Christ entered there not to receive a feast but to give back life. God seeks people, not human things; he wants to give heavenly things, not to find earthly things he covets; Christ came, then, to receive us, not to seek what is ours. “When he had come,” it says, “into Peter's house, he saw his mother-in-law lying sick with a fever.” Having entered Peter's house, Christ saw what he had come for: he did not look at the quality of the house, at the crowds coming to meet him, at the display of those greeting him, at the gathering of the household, certainly not at the decoration that had been prepared; but he looked at the groaning of the sick woman, he gave his attention to the burning of the fevered one. He saw the danger of one given up for lost, and at once stretched out his hands to the work of his divinity; Christ did not recline at the human meal before the woman who lay sick rose to divine things. “He took,” it says, “her hand, and the fever left her.” You see how fever leaves the one whom Christ has held: sickness does not stand where the author of health stands by; there is no approach of death where the life-giver has entered. “He took,” it says, “her hand.” What need was there of touching where there was the right of commanding? But Christ took the woman's hand for life, because Adam had received death from the woman's hand. “He took her hand”: so that the hand of the Author might restore what had been lost by the hand of the presumptuous one. “He took her hand”: so that the hand that had plucked the sentence of death might receive pardon. “And she rose,” it says, “and served him.” Did Christ need a woman's service, and that of a woman of advanced age, of extreme old age, weighed down with children? Was there in Peter's house no house-slave, no servant, no member of the household, no relative, certainly no wife, who might go before the mother in service? And finally, did Peter himself not see the grounds for his own shame, that an old woman, a mother-in-law, should do for the master what the disciple owed? Brothers, Christ did not require human service from her on whom he had spent the ministry of his divinity; but he allowed her to serve as a sign of her restored health. Christ so drives away diseases as soon to bring back former strength: where art cures, the weariness of sickness remains; where power heals, weakness leaves no trace. But if we want to know what spiritual understanding lies hidden in this choice, let us not seek little flowers of words: whoever seeks the fruit of fullness despises the pleasantness of the fields; violets, roses, lilies, narcissus are pleasing flowers, but bread is more pleasing. What fragrance is to the nostrils, ornament of speech is to the ears; what bread gives to life, knowledge gives to salvation. The pleasure of eloquence must therefore be set aside when the strength of knowledge is demanded. “When Jesus had come,” it says, “into Peter's house.” Christ came to Peter's house so that Peter's house might come to Christ. Christ came to Peter's house when he entered the dwelling of our flesh. “When Jesus had come into Peter's house” (Matt 8:14). What is Peter's house? That of which the Lord says: “And you, Bethlehem, house of Judah, are by no means least among the princes of Judah; for from you shall come forth a leader who will rule my people Israel” (Mic 5:2). Hence the Apostle too: “From whom is Christ according to the flesh, who is God blessed forever” (Rom 9:5). “When he had come into Peter's house, he saw his mother-in-law lying sick with a fever.” He saw the synagogue lying in the darkness of its unbelief, prostrate under the burden of its sins, feverish with vices to the point of frenzy; and so he took her hand, because he works the salvation of the Jewish nation not only by word but with his hands. Hear the prophet: “But God our King before the ages has worked salvation in the midst of the earth” (Ps 74:12). “He took her hand”: so that her hand might be cleansed of the blood of the prophets before it received the sacrament of the Church's ministry. “And she rose and served.” Hence she who lay prostrate has been raised up and serves Christ, when she now sanctifies in good works the hands that she formerly polluted with evil works. “When evening came,” it says, “they brought to him many who had demons, and he cast out the spirits with a word.” How can this be understood in human terms, that, letting the day go by, people eager for health should carry many, and those badly wounded, to the remedies of health in the evening? But it is evening when the day of the world ends, when the world declines from the light of the times. The restorer of light came late, so that to us Gentiles, who came in the night of the ages, he might give back the everlasting day. “When evening came, they brought to him many who had demons.” In the evening, that is, in the last time, the devout and solemn zeal of the apostles offers us Gentiles to God; and the demons are driven from us, who used to command us to worship idols. Hear the prophet: “All the gods of the nations are demons” (Ps 96:5). For, not knowing the one God, we served countless gods in a sacrilegious and most sordid servitude. “And he cast out the spirits with a word” (Matt 8:16). Because Christ did not come to us in the flesh, he came in words: so when faith came from hearing, and hearing through the word, he made us free from slavery to demons, and made the demons captives of their own impious domination. This is why the demons are tortured under our hands at our command, they who used to subject us to wood, attach us to stones, and daily harass us with empty fear through vain images. Now, brothers, let unbelief not call us back to their servitude: let us not be ensnared by auguries, deceived by divination, caught by lots, led on by the spirits of the dead, seduced by deaths, held captive by panting plagues; but let us commend ourselves and our actions to the Lord, entrust them to the Father, believe God; for God directs the times of men as God, and therefore guides the actions of his children as a father, and as Lord does not abandon the care of his household.

[On the scribe whom Christ did not allow to follow him.] Today the evangelist began thus: “When Jesus saw great crowds around him,” it says, “he ordered them to cross to the other side” (Matt 8:18). Whenever the unteachable crowd spreads itself around the Lord, and, tossed in the storm of conscience, deserts calm, seeks the waves, deserts the harbor, enters shipwrecks, and, straining toward the heights, is plunged into the depths, then Christ orders this sea, so troubled by such crowds, to be crossed. “When Jesus saw great crowds around him, he ordered them to cross to the other side.” Not to flee men, he who had come for the salvation of men; but he gives the foolish a truce in which to believe, he waits for the wandering to return; he offers patience and pardon, not wishing to pronounce sentence; he bears with the stubborn, wishing not to destroy but to save what he made. “One of the scribes,” it says, “came up and said to him: ‘Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.’” He who rashly promises to follow the Lord goes away rather than comes near. Who can promise that he is able for everything? He would have spoken more cautiously had he said, “I will follow you wherever you command”; more humanly certainly, “wherever you wish.” “I will follow you wherever you go.” So speaks one who does not know what difference there is between himself and the Lord; so speaks one who understands Christ not as God but as a teacher. “I will follow you wherever you go.” Peter follows across the sea, but sinks; he follows to the passion, but denies. And if Peter so fails, gives way in a few things, who is this who so promises to follow the Lord in everything? “I will follow you wherever you go.” He speaks as if he could undergo the conflict with Christ, go through the shame of the cross to glory, enter the citadel of death, kill death by death, penetrate the unknown recesses of hell, break the bonds of the lower world, call back to their own bodies souls long hardened through the ages and forgetful of the light, shake the earth, split rocks, open tombs, lead the buried out of the lower world, bring forth witnesses of his resurrection. Let him add, further, that he will go wherever Christ goes: sit on the shoulders of angels, climb the heavens, sit with the Father, hold the summit of all heavenly dignities. To such things, to these things, why does the foolish scribe, the proud slave, promise to follow the Lord? But he receives from Christ an answer worthy of so great a presumption: “Foxes have holes, and the birds of the air nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” What is this? The fox, weak in strength, powerful in cunning, inventor of guile, artisan of fraud, mistress of pretense, empty of simplicity, full of tricks, plunderer of domestic birds, enemy of household roofs: rightly does Christ make it a type of Herod, the ruler of the Jews, who, forgetful of former liberty and standing under Roman power, ruled by art, reigned by cunning, commanded by fraud, presided by guile, and was strong in pretense; and since he could not bring back plunder from foreign nations, he devoured his own common people, his home-born populace, like domestic birds. Christ proves this when he sends word to Herod: “Go and tell that fox” (Luke 13:32). Truly a fox, who seized by guile a kingdom that he had earned neither by birth nor by life. This Herod, then, set up for himself in the hearts of the scribes, even to the killing of Christ, holes for his crimes, and left no place where Christ could lay his head, which is God (1 Cor 11:3). “Foxes have holes, and the birds of the air nests.” Here he also calls birds the demons flying in the air, who themselves have made nests of their malice in the breasts of the scribes, where they might breed all the offspring of their wickedness. Hence, when the devil mingled himself with Judas's mind, he at once conceived the fruit of guile and gave birth to the traitor's crime. You see that Christ did not repel the scribe because he was willing, but exposed him as pretending and shrank from him as presumptuous. Or why would Christ, the author of kindness, the bestower of salvation, forbid this man who wished to come, when he at once kept back another disciple who wanted to go, so that he would not leave? “Another,” it says, “of the disciples said: ‘Lord, let me first go and bury my father.’ But Jesus said to him: ‘Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead.’” Does Christ thus deny the last service of devotion? Does he forbid the final duty owed to parents? He does not deny the service of devotion, but he sets divine service before human affections. Hear what the disciple said: “Let me first go and bury my father.” This ought to have been not first for him, but second; the earthly father is to be placed after the heavenly Father. “Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead.” That is to say: follow me to the shame of the passion, so that with me you may come to the glory of the resurrection. “Let the dead bury their own dead.” Why should a son of faith return to the house of unbelief? Why should the offspring of salvation weep over the lost with the lost? Why should the pledge of the resurrection concern himself with a parent's tomb? “Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead.” How do the dead bury their own dead? Brothers, he himself said: “I am the life” (John 14:6). What the soul is to the body, Christ is to the soul; without the soul the body does not live, the soul does not live without Christ: when the soul withdraws, stench, corruption, decay, worm, ashes, horror, and everything detestable to see at once follow for the body; when God departs, the stench of sins, the corruption of crimes, the decay of vices, the worm of conscience, the ashes of vanities, the horror of unbelief at once come into the soul, and in the tomb of the living body there is the funeral of the soul already buried. Added to the case was that the corpse of unbelief was being handled with unbelieving rites, and devotion was being cared for by a ministry of impiety. “Jesus,” it says, “having entered the ruler's house, saw the flute players” (Matt 9:23). Do not such people make a sacrilege out of devotion, who hire music for mourning and strangers' lamentations for the funerals of their own? Where there is no lament, there is a bought and hired song. Not the professional's pipe but simple affection mourns the dead. Christ, then, did not wish his disciple to be absent from his father's funeral rites, but did not wish him to take part in profane mourning.

[On the calming of the storm at sea.] The Church's readings are so arranged by a divine secret that they confer higher knowledge on the learned and bestow on the simple the grace of saving understanding. When Christ went up into the boat, it says, a storm dared to make a great disturbance. “When he went up into the boat,” it says, “his disciples followed him; and behold, a great disturbance arose on the sea, so that the boat was covered by the waves; but he was asleep” (Matt 8:23–24). The sea that lowered its swollen back to Christ's feet, laid its crests flat, bridled its motion, bound its waves, and served him as a watery road with the firmness of stone (John 6): why does it now rage, storm, and strive even to the danger of its Author? Why did Christ himself, who foreknows the future, seem so ignorant of the present that he did not guard against the coming squall, the hour of the storm, the time of danger, but, while all were awake, he alone was held in sleep at the very moment so great a danger threatened him and his own? Brothers, calm weather does not prove the helmsman's skill, but a stormy tempest: with a gentle breeze the lowest sailor steers the ship; in the confusion of the winds the art of the chief master is sought. This is why the disciples, after they saw that the sailors' industry had failed them, that the seas were raging against them, that the waves were attacking them, that the whirlwinds had joined against them, fled trembling to the very helmsman of all things, the ruler of the world, the master of the elements, asking him to calm the waves, remove the danger, and restore safety to the desperate. Then, when his command alone subdued the sea, beat back the winds, removed the whirlwinds, and gave calm, the sailors perceive, believe, and confess that he is the Author of all things. But let us now bring out what is within. When Christ boarded the ship of his Church to cross the sea of the world, the blasts of the Gentiles, the whirlwinds of the Jews, the squalls of persecutors, the clouds of the mob, the mists of demons so rushed upon it that there was one storm of the whole world. The waves of kings foamed, the billows of authorities boiled, the madness of subjects roared, the whirlpools of peoples rolled, the rocks of unbelief stood out, the Christian shores bellowed, the shipwrecks of the lapsed were tossed about, and there was one danger, one shipwreck, of the whole world. “Then the disciples came to the Lord and woke him, saying: ‘Lord, save us, we are perishing.’ And Jesus says to them: ‘Why are you afraid, you of little faith?’” Roused by the disciples, then, Christ rebukes the sea, that is, the world; he calms the globe, softens kings, appeases authorities, stills the waves, settles peoples, makes Romans Christians. From them too he has made executors of the word of the Christian faith those who had been persecutors of the Christian name. This calm Christian princes preserve, the Church holds, Christendom possesses, paganism admires. “Then,” it says, “rising, he commanded the winds and the sea, and there was a great calm. And the men marveled, saying: ‘What sort of man is this, that even the winds and the sea obey him?’” Those who come to the Lord, who wake him, who beg with humble supplication to be saved, are disciples; but those who marvel that the elements so obeyed Christ are called men. They are truly men, and men of the world, who marvel that the world has been so turned to obedience to Christ, who are astounded that the summits of the temples have been cast down like swollen waves, who see that the foam of idols and the whirlwinds of demons have fled, whom the deep and widespread calm of the Christian name throughout the world leaves astonished. And truly, brothers, when Christ slept in death a great storm arose in the Church; when Christ rose from the dead, as it is written, a great calm was given back to the Church. Now let us wake Christ, asleep in us, with the whole groaning of our hearts, the voice of faith, Christian tears, deep weeping, apostolic cries, and let us say: “Lord, save us, we are perishing.” And since the reading fits the time well, and, as it is written, “The north wind is a harsh wind” (Prov 27:16), but by name it is called the right-hand wind, which carries to us such fierce, such bitter nations: so this north wind, a harsh wind, through the west, through the southwest, through the south, through the east spreads itself in a grim whirlwind, confounds the seas, blots out the sky, casts down mountains, swallows cities, drowns provinces, and forces the whole world into one shipwreck. This is why Christ's little boat is now lifted to heaven, now goes down to the depths of fear, now is steered by Christ's strength, now tossed by dread, now covered by the waves of sufferings, now swims out with the oars of confessions. But let us, brothers, cry again and again: “Lord, save us, we are perishing.” And truly, brothers, if we were one human body, if we believed that those who are perishing are our own inward parts, we would cry continually, with the affliction of fasting, the groaning of prayers, the pouring out of tears: “Lord, save us, we are perishing.” And we would be eager to help ourselves in our brothers: we would not see a sea of our blood on earth from the raging sword, nor feel such great shipwrecks of bodies, and now of souls too, and we would pray with humble voice: “Lord, save us, we are perishing.” And yet no compassion, no devotion, no fear, no shame or compunction rouses us to grief. It is God, it is God, who causes us to be pressed by evils, to be always beaten, the nations to be strong, the hail to fall, the blight to infect, ungodliness to prevail, diseases to dominate, death to rage, the earth to tremble: yet we neither tremble nor fear, nor turn from evil, nor strive for good. Avarice rages, display pants, iniquity pleases, others' goods delight us, but our own perish; God's scourges come, but our faults provoke them. If God is just, he is surely merciful to us. Brothers, let us return to the Lord so that God may return to us; let us renounce evils so that good things may answer us; let us serve God, who is good, so that we may not serve evil nations and wicked powers, with the help of Christ our Lord and helmsman, whose honor and majesty abide without end for ages of ages. Amen.