Sermons 29–33

[On the same, and on gold.] When the Lord calls Matthew the tax collector to the summit of the apostolate and raises him up, he gives a hand to the fallen, restores hope to the desperate, gives back to life those whom death was already holding as its own. “As Jesus passed by,” it says, “he saw Levi the son of Alphaeus sitting at the tax office” (Mark 2:14). He was sitting, surely, because he could not stand, weighed down by the burden of greed and wholly bent by the very consciousness of fraud. Gold, heavy by nature, becomes much heavier by avarice. This is why it weighs down the one who has it more than the one who carries it, and burdens hearts more heavily than bodies. It is born in the deep earth, follows the very foundations of the mountains, and runs through the lowest veins in blind windings; and while it always seeks its own nature, it brings heavenly minds down to the lower world: it always darkens the senses, always sinks the heights of minds into earthly things. To pay gold out is good, to store it up is bad, to despise it is strong, to flee it is quite safe: as to conquer it belongs to virtue, so to have escaped it belongs to good fortune. The madness for gold burns more fiercely in the human breast than a whole furnace blazes with fire, and dissolves men on earth more sharply than it is dissolved in the heat of the flames. A master of cruelty, a savage enemy, it harms by being loved, strips by enriching, captivates even the very sight, breaks faith, violates affection, wounds charity, disturbs quiet, takes away innocence, teaches theft, persuades to frauds, commands robbery. And what more? This is what the Apostle said: “The root of all evils is avarice” (1 Tim 6:10). There is indeed one exchange, if a prudent man sends it ahead to heaven before he, like a fool, is sent by it into hell. Let him send it by the hand of the poor, because whatever he has given to the poor for God's sake he sends to heaven without delay. Rightly, then, the Lord, wishing to free Matthew from such chains, raises him up, hindered as he was, saying: “Follow me.” That is: follow me as I go from the heights to the heights, and not gold sinking from the lower world to the lower world. “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also” (Matt 6:21). Gold so corrupted the stock of the patriarchs, the holy offspring, the singular crown of so great a brotherhood, and made it so exiled from all devotion, that they handed Joseph to the Egyptians, a brother to barbarians, an innocent to the guilty, a freeborn man to slavery (Gen 37). So it dried up their minds, so it pressed down their hearts, so it changed whatever human feeling had been in them into bestial madness, that it did not allow them to remember offence to God, the grief of their holy father, or the feeling of their own blood. Consider what is heavier than gold, which, when it destroys men's morals, destroys their nature as well. Gold so captivated the Jewish people with its look, conquered them with its allurements, so thoroughly deceived them with its appearance, that they believed it to be God and denied the true God, the God known by so many benefits; it so turned men into beasts of burden that they believed a calf's head to be their head and set a beast's head before the head of all things (Exod 32). Notice how this plague is to be fled, which, having destroyed men's morals, honor, and life, wished and strove to take even God himself away from man. This is what made Judas a traitor, so as to force a man to deny God, to sell a brother of his own blood, to put up for sale the Creator, and to set a price on the very blood that the Lord was freely going to give as our price (Matt 26). But lest many examples on this point breed weariness, let us pass to the rest. “Follow me. And rising, he followed him.” A useful virtue is often read of even in an enemy, often proved even in an adversary. Matthew is not withdrawn from his work but changed, and he takes up his tax office rather than leaves it, so as to acquire for God what will last, not for man what will perish; so that he is no longer a sad accountant reducing the thirtieth coin to the fortieth and the fiftieth, but a glad one storing up the thirtyfold into the sixtyfold and hundredfold fruit of joy, to profit divine interests. “Rising, he followed him.” A noble spirit, who so easily, as if they were nothing, despised the things he had thought great: it appears that he had formerly acquired present gains through ignorance, and as soon as he felt and saw himself free from them, he was swept up to divine things. “And it came to pass, as he reclined in his house, that many tax collectors and sinners reclined with Jesus and his disciples.” Jesus reclined more in Matthew's mind than on his couch, and feasted not on food but on the sinner's return, so as to call back by the banquet, by fellowship, by human affection, by his own sweetest conversation, those reclining, whom he knew could be undone if they recognized the judge's power, struck down by the terror of his majesty, and at once laid low by his naked presence: he who wished to help man was veiled in a human body. He hid the Lord, who deigned not to deny confidence to his servants; he covered his majesty, who was eager to embrace the frail with a parent's love. But the Jews are offended, saying: “Why does your teacher eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?” You wonder, Jew, why he mingles in the banquet of sinners, who for sinners' sake was willing to be born and did not refuse to be killed; you bark at him for drinking the wine of sinners, who poured out his own blood for sinners. And if you want to hear more, he himself took on sin so as not to lose sinners; the judge turned his sentence back on himself, so as to show that he loved sinners, more by paying the debt than by forgiving it. But let it suffice that the Lord himself answered such people: “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; for I came not to call the righteous but sinners.” And who was not sick, when the very nature of the human race was so sick? He came, then, to all, since he found all sick so that he might heal them; but he plainly deserved to die who despised the physician so as not to accuse himself or confess himself sick. But the Lord at once disclosed the figure of his saying, saying: “For I came not to call the righteous but sinners.” Here the Lord does not reject the righteous but the proud, and marks those who boast that they are righteous when they are not. And where were the righteous, when, according to the prophet, “there was none who did good, no, not one” (Ps 14:3)? Let them understand their sickness, admit the physician so as to be healed, confess themselves sinners, so that Christ, now as parent and fellow guest, may grant pardon, and not afterward as judge pronounce against the stubborn the sentence they deserve, without end.

[On the same.] Today's Gospel reading so changed Matthew the tax collector into an apostle that he who was a defrauder of money became a distributor of grace, and came from the school of ungodliness to the mastery of godliness, and he who had been a trainer in avarice became a teacher of mercy. “As Jesus passed by, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax office” (Matt 9:9). “As Jesus passed on from there”: well did he pass on from there: he was passing Judea to come to the Gentiles; he was passing by the Synagogue so that the Church might remain; he was passing beyond the homeland of the flesh to return to the seat of his divinity. In Christ, brothers, the injury of the flesh is transitory; in him the honor of divinity is everlasting. “As he passed on from there, he saw a man.” He saw more with divine eyes than with human. He saw a man, so as not to see the man's sins. He saw his own work, so as to look past the works of sins. God saw him, so that he might see God. Christ saw him, so that he might no longer see the hiding places of money. Christ saw him sitting, because, pressed by the weight of greed, he could not rise. Brothers, this tax collector sat at the tax office in a worse state than the paralytic, of whom we spoke before, lay on his bed. For the one suffered paralysis of the flesh, the other of the mind; in the one the joints of the limbs had been disturbed, in the other the whole order of the senses had been scattered; the one lay captive in the flesh, the other sat captive in body and soul; the one succumbed to pains unwillingly, the other served vices willingly; the one seemed to himself innocent in the crime of avarice, the other knew himself a sinner amid his wounds; the one heaped up the sins of gains, the other blotted out sins with the groans of pains. Rightly, then, it is said to the paralytic, “Take heart, son, your sins are forgiven you” (Matt 9:2), because he had made up for his offences by pains; but to the tax collector it is said: “Come, follow me”; that is, so that by following me you may recover what you lost by pursuing money. But someone says: Why is the tax collector, who seems greater in crime, held greater in gift? For he was at once marked out with the sure dignity of the apostolate, and he not only received forgiveness of sins himself but granted it to others; he illumines the whole world with the splendor of Gospel preaching, while the paralytic is scarcely held worthy of pardon alone. Do you want to know why the tax collector obtained more? Because, according to the Apostle, “where sin abounded, grace abounded all the more” (Rom 5:20). We know that the tax collector bears the type of the Gentile people, and the paralytic is a figure of the Jewish people, which even today is held in bed with bad health, so that, unless it is carried by the faith of the Gentiles, offered to Christ by the compassion of the saints, and saved by the belief of the Christian people, it cannot reach the house of faith, the house of its homeland. “And as he reclined in the house, behold,” it says, “many tax collectors and sinners came and reclined with him and his disciples. And the Pharisees, seeing this, said to his disciples: ‘Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?’” God is accused because he bends down to man, why he reclines with the sinner, why he hungers for repentance, why he thirsts for the return of sinners, why he accepts the dishes of mercy, why he takes the cup of devotion. Brothers, Christ came to the meal, Life came to the banquet, so as to make those who were to die live with him; the Resurrection reclined, so that those who lay in tombs might rise; Pardon lay down, so as to lift sinners to forgiveness; divinity came to humanity, so that humanity might come to divinity; the judge came to the meal of the guilty, so that kindness might forestall the sentence of guilt; the physician came to the sick, so as to restore the weary by eating with them; the good shepherd bent his shoulders, so as to carry the lost sheep back to the saving folds. But the Pharisee detests and reproves this, who thinks the Lord's meal is a matter not of virtue but of the belly; not of the spirit but of the flesh; not of divine goodness but of human pleasure; of earthly luxury, not of heavenly grace. So, so he sees himself who does not see God. Who blames a physician for lying beside those who lie sick, except an enemy of human health? Who reproaches a shepherd for supporting a weary sheep, except one who does not know love for a profitable flock? Who judges a judge for his kindness, except one who was in despair? Who spurns communion with God, except the sacrilegious? Who shudders at pardon, except the cruel? “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” And who is a sinner, except one who denies that he is a sinner? He is more a sinner, and, to speak more truly, he is himself already sin, who does not understand that he is a sinner. And who is unrighteous, except one who judges himself righteous? You have read, Pharisee, that “no living person will be justified in your sight” (Ps 143:2). As long as we are in a mortal body and frailty rules in us, even if we conquer sins in act, we cannot conquer the sins of thoughts and flee unrighteousness: even if we can avoid them in the body, and even if we can overcome a bad conscience, how can we abolish the faults of negligence and the sins of ignorance? Pharisee, confess your sin, so that you may come to Christ's table, so that Christ may be bread for you, and the bread itself may be broken for the pardon of your sins, so that Christ may become a cup for you, who is poured out for the remission of your offences. Pharisee, dine with sinners, so that you may dine with Christ; acknowledge yourself a sinner, so that Christ may dine with you; enter your Lord's banquet with sinners, so that you may cease to be a sinner; enter the house of mercy with Christ's pardon, so that you may not be punished, shut out from the house of mercy with your own judgments. Recognize Christ, hear Christ, hear your Lord, hear the heavenly physician decisively refuting your false charges: “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick.” If you want healing, acknowledge your sickness. “I came not to call the righteous but sinners.” If you desire mercy, crush your sin. “Go,” he says, “and learn what this means: I desire mercy, and not sacrifice” (Hos 6:6). Christ desires mercy and not sacrifice; or what sacrifice will he seek, who himself became a sacrifice in order to seek you? “I came not to call the righteous but sinners.” He did not reject the righteous, but no one is held innocent on earth without Christ. “I came not to call the righteous but sinners.” In saying this he did not reject the righteous, but he found all to be sinners. Hear the Psalmist: “The Lord looked down from heaven on the children of men, to see if there is anyone who understands or seeks God. All have turned aside, together they have become useless; there is none who does good, no, not one” (Ps 14:2–3). Brothers, let us be, let us be sinners by our confession, so that by Christ's pardon we may not be sinners.

[On the fasting of the Pharisees and of John's disciples.] Goodness is the mother of virtues, malice the origin of vices; glory accompanies the virtues, its kindred shame clings to the vices; as vices are covered by guile, so virtues are made illustrious by freedom. This is why Christ, the light of virtues, acted freely, spoke purely, bestowed as God, suffered as a parent, rebuked as Lord; but the Jews, the brood of vipers, the death of their mother, the murder of their father, burst the womb of their mother the Synagogue when they killed Christ. Truly, as it is written, “brood of vipers” (Matt 3:7): they lowered their heads, flattered with the tongue, gave wounds by guile, poured out poison in blasphemies; and as if contempt were not enough for hatred, nor scorn for injury, they so persecuted Christ with snares, tried him with tricks, battered him with questions, attacked him with insults, and surrounded him with every kind of eager pretense. They put before him people to be healed on the sabbath, so that if he did not heal, contempt might arise from his inability; if he healed, a false charge might flow from the law. They asked by what authority he worked miracles at his command (Luke 20:2), so that if he said, “by that of divinity,” they might stir up ill will; if he kept silent, they might bring the charge of magic. For they said: “He casts out demons by Beelzebul, the prince of demons” (Matt 12:24); and, as was read today, they put together before the disciples a slur against the master about the tax collectors' banquet. Before the master they accused the disciples of not knowing fasting and being given to gluttony; and so out of spite they scattered causes of hatred and seeds of discord, to the disciples about the master and to the master about the disciples. “John's disciples came to him,” it says, “saying: ‘Why do we and the Pharisees fast often, but your disciples do not fast?’” (Matt 9:14). And what fellowship have John's disciples with the Pharisees, except that envy had joined those whom discipline had separated? Here jealousy now loses its own laws: accustomed to separate, it joined. The Jews could not bear Moses to be placed after the Lord; John's disciples did not want Christ to be set above John in any way: so both raged against Christ with a common fury. “Why do we and the Pharisees fast often, but your disciples do not fast?” Why? Because with you fasting comes from the law, not from the will; fasting looks not to one who fasts but to one who does so gladly. And what fruit of fasting do you have, who fast an unwilling fast? Fasting is the singular plow of holiness: it cultivates hearts, roots out crimes, pulls up offences, overturns vices, sows charity, nourishes abundance, prepares the harvest of innocence. Christ's disciples, then, set amid the whole crop of holiness and gathering the sheaves of virtues, already having the bread of the new fruit, cannot fast the old fasts, which are boasted of in words, displayed by pallor, advertised by weakness, which please human eyes, not divine. “Why do we and the Pharisees fast often, but your disciples do not fast?” The Lord answered: “Can the sons of the bridegroom fast as long as the bridegroom is with them?” What is this? John, when asked, so testified that Christ is the bridegroom: “He who has the bride is the bridegroom; but the friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears with joy, rejoices at the voice of the bridegroom” (John 3:29). Fittingly, then, he answered John's disciples with the voice of their own master, so that they at least might believe and not force the joyful times of the bridegroom to enter a sad fast: because he who seeks a bride lays aside fasts, leaves austerities, gives himself wholly to joys, indulges in feasts, goes about all gentle, all lovable, all festive, and does everything that the tender affection of a bride requires. Christ, then, who was at that time betrothing the Church, gave himself to tables, did not deny himself to those who dined, made himself humane, courteous, and gentle with devoted love, until he should join human things to divine and make a heavenly partnership out of an earthly fellowship. The Lord added, saying: “No one puts a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment, for it takes away its fullness from the garment, and a worse tear is made.” He calls the old law's furnishing a garment worn out by Jewish pursuits, torn by corrupt senses and by sects, made shabby by impure acts; he calls the Gospel's clothing unshrunk cloth. But understand the cloth not as part of a tear but as the beginning of a weaving. For then the web of the royal garment was first being woven from Christ's fleece, from the fleece the Lamb gave: “The Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world” (John 1:29). And the royal garment was being woven which the blood of the passion would dye to purple brightness. Rightly, then, Christ forbade this unshrunk cloth to be put on the Jewish oldness, so that a worse tear might not be made if Christian newness tore the Jewish oldness. And he doubles the example, saying: “Nor do they put new wine into old wineskins; otherwise the skins burst, and the wine is spilled, and the skins perish; but they put new wine into new skins, and both are preserved.” He calls the Jews old wineskins; he names Christians new wineskins: for as skins are cleansed of all filth and smeared with fragrant ointments so that they can keep the flavor of the wine unspoiled, so by fasting human bodies are cleansed of all the filth of carnal offences and become skins fit for the divine winepresses, so as to receive new wine from the press of the cross and keep its newness uncorrupted. But as Christians receive this, so Jews, unless they become Christians, will not have it: corrupted by vices and grown old in evils, they would receive the new wine, which is the word of the Gospel, only to burst and spill it. We must recognize, then, that by these examples Christ did not refuse to let his disciples fast, but refused to mix true fasting with deceitful fasting.

[On the man who had a withered hand.] All the works of Christ's signs, amazing works of power, are to be believed to have happened not humanly, nor by chance, but by divine provision, as the Gospel word has shown us today. “And Jesus entered,” it says, “the synagogue, and a man was there who had a withered hand” (Mark 3:1). Christ indeed enters the synagogue, but the Jew neither receives him as he enters, nor recognizes him as present, nor, blinded, understands him as he works. See how bodily presence is nothing where there is a pitiable separation of mind; as, on the contrary, bodily absence does no harm where hearts have been joined by faith. “And a man was there who had a withered hand.” In this man the image of all men is figured; in him the cure of all is carried out; in him the long-awaited health of everyone is restored. For the man's hand had withered more from the numbness of faith than from the dryness of the sinews, and more from the guilt of conscience than from fleshly weakness. This sickness was very old, one that had befallen at the very beginning of the world, and it could not be healed by human art or kindness: contracted by God's just indignation, it had touched forbidden things, presumed on what was not granted, when it stretched itself out to the tree of knowing good and evil (Gen 3); it needed an author, not one to put on a poultice, but one who could relax the sentence imposed and by pardoning loosen what he had bound in indignation. In this man only a shadow of our health is carried out; perfect salvation is kept for us in Christ, because the withering of our hand is dissolved by compassion when it is bathed in the blood of the Lord's passion, when it is stretched out on that life-giving wood of the cross, when it plucks fruitful power from pain, when it embraces the whole tree of salvation, when it is fixed with the nails to the Lord's body, so that it may never return to the tree of concupiscence and of a withered will. “The Pharisees,” it says, “were watching to see whether he would heal on the sabbath, so that they might accuse him.” To the infamy of the judge and the wickedness of the examiner, a crime is sought from a cure, an accusation from kindness, guilt from power, punishment from health. But it is no wonder: good things always offend the wicked, devout things the ungodly, holy things the profane; or when does the wanton not accuse discipline, the vicious virtue, the criminal innocence? The priests anxiously watched on the sabbath, not whether he would sin but whether he would heal, so that they might accuse him. Lovers of crimes keep watch, lie in wait to accuse virtues, as if the sabbath had been provided against health, not for health. “Whether he would heal on the sabbath,” they watch: with such an interpreter of the law, not to say a sick man labors too much, he even breathes his last. The sabbath did not ungodlily deny healing to the sick, but with full kindness sometimes gave rest to mortals wearied by too much labor. “And he said to the man who had the withered hand: Rise up into the middle”: you who profess your own weakness, you who demand heavenly kindness, witness of divine power, proof of Jewish unbelief. Rise up into the middle, so that those whom so great a power of signs does not move, whom the works of so great a healing do not bend, may at least be bound and softened by pity for so great a weakness. “Then he said to them: Is it lawful on the sabbath to do good or evil, to save a life or to destroy it?” By saying this he commends the goodness of his work and accuses the conscience of the malice they had conceived: for while he was eager to save the man in body and soul, they in their zeal to accuse were working to destroy him, they who were letting him heal on the sabbath, lying in wait in their minds to see whether he would heal, so that when he had healed they might be condemned by the malignity of their own minds, and be by such patience more wicked than malice itself, and more raging in guile than mad in such a judgment. “But they were silent; and looking around at them with anger, grieved at the blindness of their heart.” It says “looking around,” not “looking at”; that is, not looking only at the face like a man, but, like God, contemplating bodies, hearts, minds, senses, past, present, and future. “Looking around at them with anger, grieved.” He is angry as Lord, grieved as parent, pained as man, observing as God. “He says to the man: Stretch out your hand. And he stretched it out, and his hand was restored.” “Stretch out your hand”: it is loosed by command, which had been bound by command. “Stretch out your hand.” The punishment recognized its judge, the work betrayed God as its Creator by his pardon. Pray, brothers, that the Synagogue alone may be darkened by such a weakness, and that there may be no one in the Church whose hand greed withers, avarice contracts, robbery weakens, stinginess binds in sickness; but if this very thing happens, let him hear the Lord and quickly stretch it out in the work of kindness, relax it, and hold it out in mercy and almsgiving. He does not know how to be healed who does not know how to lend to the poor. “Then the Pharisees went out and at once took counsel with the Herodians how they might destroy him.” The Jew is always joined to the Herodians to attack Christians. “Jesus,” it says, “withdrew with his disciples to the sea,” so as to prove and show by comparison with the waves that the error of the Jews was more crooked. But since Jesus, with the little boat, that is, the Church, at his service, separates himself from the confusion of the crowds, and the helmsman of the Christian people sits untiring with various kinds of healing, he also commanded the winds and the sea (Mark 4), so that they might at last rest in the obedience of calm, according to the prophet: “Let us break their bonds and cast their yoke from us” (Ps 2:3), so that, remaining under the yoke of devotion, we may deserve to be sharers in divine glory.

[On the daughter of the ruler of the synagogue, and on the woman suffering from a flow of blood.] You are going to hear today, brothers, and, as the holy evangelist Mark reports, you will learn together with me how the rulership of the Synagogue falls down and prostrates itself before Christ, and confesses him in two ways as God and Lord: when it worships him according to the command of the law, which says, “You shall worship the Lord your God” (Deut 6:13), and when it shows him to be the restorer of life by begging for the health of a dying daughter. “There came to him,” it says, “one of the rulers of the synagogue named Jairus; and seeing him he fell at his feet and begged him earnestly, saying: ‘My daughter is at the point of death; come, lay your hand on her, so that she may be saved and live’” (Mark 5:22–23). Before the sermon opens the sacrament of the Gospel meaning, I would like here to set out a little the sufferings of parents, which they take on and show out of their affection and love for their children. With the household standing around amid the tender and gentle attentions of relatives, the daughter lies on a soft little bed; the father lies prostrate on the dry ground and rolls on the earth; she fails in body, he wastes away in mind and spirit; she endures the hidden sufferings of her sickness, he, all disheveled and mournful, is carried and tossed about among the whole people; she dies to rest, he lives to punishment. And indeed we have left out the anxious prayers of parents when they beget, the dangerous stages when they bring forth offspring, when they nurse them, the sad labors and constant pains when they are sick: worse than death is the day when children go before them. Alas! Why do children not know such things? Why do they not feel them? Why do they not labor to repay their parents? And yet the parents' devotion perseveres, because whatever parents spend on their children, God, the parent of all, will repay to the parents. But let us return to our subject. “One of the rulers of the synagogue named Jairus came, and seeing him he fell at his feet and begged him earnestly, saying: ‘My daughter is at the point of death; come and lay your hand on her, so that she may be saved.’” That he so laments his daughter's last moments with tearful supplication, that he so asks for a remedy for her sickness, proves and shows well enough an affection in despair; this is why he asks for an order of cure: “Come, lay your hand on her.” A sick man does not command how he is to be cured, but only begs to be cured. But since he was a ruler of the synagogue, he had knowledge of the law; and while everything else was made by a word, he had read that man was fashioned by the hand of God. So he believed God, that by the same hand by which he perceived his daughter had been created, she could be recreated and brought back to life. We have learned what it means: “Come and lay your hand on her”: that he who of his own accord laid it on to create, being entreated, may lay it on again to restore. This is what the prophet confesses when he sings in the Psalms: “You formed me and laid your hand upon me” (Ps 139:5). For he who laid it on when he formed from nothing laid it on again to re-form from what was lost. Then the same Psalmist, when he felt the saving power of this hand and obtained its generosity, broke out in a repeated cry: “The right hand of the Lord,” he says, “has done mightily; the right hand of the Lord has exalted me; the right hand of the Lord has done mightily” (Ps 118:16). And to show that he had obtained what the ruler of the synagogue had asked, he added: “I shall not die, but live.” The one, when he asked, had said: “Come, lay your hand, so that she may be saved and live”; the other, having already obtained it, exults: “I shall not die, but live.” Christ is the right hand of the Lord, as we are taught by the prophetic word. And truly he has done mightily when he conquers the devil; when, having bound the strong man, as he himself said, he plunders the strong man's goods (Matt 12:29); when he destroys hell, when he kills death itself. And truly he has exalted us, whom he lifted from the depth and raised to heaven. But now let the sermon pass to the woman, who so sought a remedy for her hidden wound and shameful sickness as both to cover her own modesty and to keep reverence for the one who healed. “And he went with him, and a great crowd followed him,” it says, “and pressed upon him. And behold, a woman who had had a flow of blood for twelve years, and had suffered much from many physicians, and had spent all she had, and had gained nothing but rather grew worse, when she heard about Jesus came up in the crowd behind him and touched his garment, saying: ‘If I touch even his garment, I shall be saved.’ And at once the source of her blood was dried up, and she felt in her body that she was healed of her affliction.” Two seas are not so confounded by their waves as this woman's mind was tossed by a doubtful heap of thoughts. After the desperate struggles of physicians, after costly medicines, after empty and most anxious treatment, when the art and skill of those treating her had failed, when all the sick woman's substance had been used up, her shameful wound met its very Author, not by chance but by divine design, so that what could not be cured by human art for so many years might be cured by faith and humility alone. The woman stood at a distance, she whom nature had suffused with shame, whom for this reason the Jewish law had marked as unclean, saying: “She shall be unclean and shall not touch what is holy” (Lev 12:4; 15:19–27); fearing to touch, lest she incur Jewish fury, lest she fall under the sentence of the law. She did not dare to speak, lest she confound and burden the hearing of those standing around, lest she become the talk of the people, she who for so many years had been a stadium and arena of sufferings. For the long and continuous pain did not allow her to bear and endure any longer, and the speed of Christ passing by cut off time for deliberation, and on the other hand she knew that health would not be given to one who was silent, who hid her disease. Amid these wars of thoughts, the woman found the only way of salvation, to steal her cure, so that silently she might seize what she could not ask for, both for her own modesty and for reverence toward the one who would grant it; and that she, who did not deserve it in body, might reach the physician with her heart, God by faith, and touch only his garment with her hand: knowing that this fraud would bring not only pardon but also a remedy, since not will but shamefaced necessity had produced it; especially since it sought the thief's gain and caused no loss to the one from whom it was taken. A devout robbery, committed with faith as servant and faith drawing it on! See where power was sought by contrary means, where fraud, with faith agreeing, obtained what it strove for. The woman comes among those pressing upon him so as not to be known, and presumed that she could steal a cure by faith alone, so as to stay hidden in her dress and body; she comes from behind, and judged herself unworthy to be seen. Faith healed in a moment of time what human art could not heal in twelve years. After this example, whoever does not know how to be healed by faith alone, but is burdened with the expense of spices, drags out long times in sicknesses through his own fault and labors long by his own negligence. The woman touched his garment and was healed, and was freed from an old sickness. Wretched are we, who daily handle and receive the body of the Lord, and are not healed of our wounds. It is not Christ who is lacking to the sick, but faith: for much more now, abiding in us, can he heal the wounded, who, passing by, so healed the hidden woman. Let it suffice today, brothers, to have told of the thefts of faith and the power of the Lord passing by; but why the Lord, as if not knowing, asks for the woman whom he knows to have been healed by the work of his power, since it is long now, we will tell in the next sermon.