Sermons 34–38

[On the same.] All the Gospel readings, dearest brothers, bestow on us great benefits for the present and future life. But today's reading has conferred all that belongs to hope and shut out whatever belongs to despair. Our condition is hard and lamentable: inborn frailty forces us to sin, and the shame that is akin to sin forbids us to confess; for to do evil is no shame, yet to confess is a shame: we fear to say what we do not fear to commit. But today the woman, when she sought a silent medicine for her shameful wound, found a silence through which a sinner can come to pardon. The first happiness is not to have come into the shamefulness of sins; but the second happiness is to have found pardon of sins while the sins lie hidden. The prophet had perceived this, who said: “Blessed are those whose iniquities are forgiven and whose sins are covered” (Ps 32:1). “Behold,” says the evangelist, “a woman who had suffered a flow of blood for twelve years came up behind him and touched the fringe of his garment” (Matt 9:20). The woman, for whom long treatment had failed, fled to sudden faith: she who was ashamed to ask for medicine wanted to steal health; she wanted not to be known by him by whom she believed she could be saved. As the air is disturbed by the whirlwind of the winds, so the woman was disturbed by the storms of thoughts: the cause fought with faith, hope with fear, necessity with shame; the chill of fear put out the heat of belief, the force of shame darkened the light of faith, shamefaced necessity broke the confidence of hope. So the woman was tossed like a great sea in confused tides: she sought how to make something hidden out of something public, something secret out of a crowd; she acted so that health might return to her and her modesty not perish; she took care that her cure should not bring injury to the one who cured; she provided that salvation might be given back to her with the Savior's reverence kept safe. With such understanding, then, the woman rightly came from the edge of the fringe to the whole summit of the Godhead. “She came,” it says, “behind him.” But where is “behind”? “And she touched the fringe of his garment.” “She came behind him.” But where? There was nothing behind him; there she found the face she was avoiding. In Christ the body was manifold, but the Godhead was simple; he was all eye, who so saw the suppliant behind him. “She came behind him and touched the fringe of his garment.” O what did this woman see dwelling in Christ's inward parts, she who saw the whole power of the Godhead dwelling in Christ's fringe! O how this woman taught how great Christ's body is, she who showed that so much is in Christ's fringe! Let Christians hear, who daily touch the body of Christ, what medicine they can take from that very body, when the woman seized complete health from the fringe of Christ alone. But what we must weep over is this: the woman took medicine from a wound, while for us the medicine itself is turned back into a wound. This is why the Apostle warns and laments those who touch the body of Christ unworthily: “For whoever touches the body of Christ unworthily takes judgment on himself”; and, because rashness catches sickness from the place where faith ought to receive health, he went on: “That is why many among you are weak and sick, and many sleep” (1 Cor 11:29–30). He calls the dead “sleeping,” whom he mourns as already buried in a living body. Peter and Paul, the princes of the Christian faith, spread knowledge of Christ's name through the whole world; a woman first handed down the discipline of approaching Christ; a woman first gave the pattern of how a sinner by silent confession may blot out sin without shame; how one who offends, known to God alone, may not be forced to lay bare before men the shames of conscience concerning guilt; how a person can forestall judgment by pardon. “But Jesus,” it says, “turning and seeing her, said: ‘Take heart, daughter, your faith has saved you.’” “But Jesus turning”: not by a movement of the body but by the gaze of the Godhead Christ turned to the woman, so that the woman might be turned to Christ, so that she might receive a cure from him from whom she had received life, and might know that the cause of her present wound had been the matter of her perpetual salvation. “Turning and seeing her.” He saw her with divine eyes, not human; he saw her so as to restore her to health, not to recognize one he already knew; he saw her: whoever God has seen is given good things and is free of evils. The whole world perceives this from usage, saying of the fortunate: “God has looked on him.” So God looked on this woman, whom by healing he made so fortunate. And what more? Christ taught by the woman's example how faith alone avails for full salvation. But let us now speak of the ruler of the synagogue, who, while leading Christ to his daughter, gave the way by which the woman might come to Christ. Today's reading began thus: “Behold, a ruler came and worshiped him, saying: ‘Lord, my daughter has just died; but come, lay your hand on her, and she will live.’” It did not escape Christ, who foreknows the future, that the meeting with this woman would take place, through which the ruler of the Jews would learn that God is not moved by places, not led by a journey, not drawn by bodily presence, but is to be believed in, since God is present everywhere, wholly everywhere, everywhere always; and that he can do everything by command, not by labor; send powers, not carry them; drive away death not by hand but by command; add life not by art but by precept. “My daughter has just died; but come.” That is to say: the warmth of life still remains, traces of the soul are still seen, the spirit is still on its way, the master of the house still has his daughter, hell does not yet know her as dead; so hurry, so that you can hold back the departing soul. The foolish man thought that Christ could not raise the dead girl unless he held her. This is why Christ, when he reached the house and saw the girl being wept over as lost, so as to move unbelieving minds toward faith, says that she is asleep, not dead, so that they might believe that one can rise from death more easily than from sleep. “The girl is not dead,” he says, “but sleeping.” And truly with God death is sleep: for God raises a dead person to life more quickly than a sleeper is roused from sleep by a man, and God pours life-giving warmth back into limbs cold with death before a man can pour vigor into bodies buried in sleep. Hear the Apostle: “In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, the dead will rise” (1 Cor 15:52). The blessed Apostle, because he could not express the speed of the resurrection in words, fitted it to examples. Or how could he compress the speed of speech there, where divine power outstrips speed itself? And how does time appear there, where eternal things are given without time? As time brought temporality, so eternity has shut out time.

[On the woman subject to a flow of blood.] What it is to touch Christ, the woman afflicted with a flow of blood taught today: when she touches Christ's fringe she knocks on the secret of the divine breast, and by a theft of faith she seized the summit of power from the edge of the fringe. A happy fraud, which both brought the gain of salvation and at once removed the losses of shame! The hearing of the Gospel reading proves it: “Behold,” it says, “a woman who had suffered a flow of blood for twelve years came up behind him and touched the fringe of his garment, saying within herself: ‘If I only touch his garment, I shall be saved’” (Matt 9:20–21). In severe illnesses the force of pain often gives counsel; in desperate cases necessity is often the teacher; suffering itself finds its own medicine. This is why the woman found how to help her shameful wound: to slip in by the silence of faith what she could not slip in by public outcry, so as to reach the heavenly physician by the secret way of the spirit, when she could not reach him by the open road of the flesh. The healer's kindness gave much boldness, but the necessity of a shameful sickness took away confidence; the greatness of her pain compelled her to approach Christ, but the foulness of her sore did not allow her to go up to Christ. So the woman, wavering and with faith's counsel trembling, preferred to be judged by her faith rather than perish so by a foul wound. “She came behind him and touched the fringe of his garment”: knowing that touch does not pollute God, nor sight offend him, nor smell irritate him, nor hearing wound him, nor human thought defile him. For if the sun touches dung and is not defiled by the dung, how much more does the Creator of the sun touch all things and yet cannot be defiled by any contacts? And if a physician, when he handles the pus of wounds, when he treats the private parts of the body, counts it not an insult but an honor, how much more does God not think it an insult, while he looks on our wounds to heal them, to be touched for a remedy, to visit for health? It is the wounds of sins, not of pains, that offend God's sight; the diseases of crimes, not the sufferings of bodies; the pus of vices, not the flux of the inward parts: a person is held willing in offences, unwilling in sicknesses. This is why the sinner receives punishment, the sick person receives healing. The woman, then, conscious not of a will but of a pain, confounded not by crime but by sickness, came from behind so as to avoid the eyes of the crowd, not to escape Christ's gaze; she wanted not to be known by the people, not by Christ; she was eager to hide not from God but from men: because one who was hidden could be seen, one silent heard, one concealed healed, only by God alone. “She came and touched the fringe of his garment”: because she believed nothing in Christ to be last, judged nothing in him to be outermost; because God is not diminished in man, nor power thinned out in the fringe, nor is the heavenly nature varied by the functions of the limbs. This is why the woman came to the face by way of the back, penetrated to the inner parts by way of the garment, and through the fringe touched the summit of the head. Nor is this without mystery; hear the prophet saying: “Like the ointment that comes down on the edge of his garment” (Ps 133:2). You see, brothers, that into the fringe of this garment the whole fullness of the divine anointing, the whole power of the divine head, has passed. Knowingly, then, the woman was eager to touch Christ's sacred fringe, so as to take medicine from the hidden mystery for her wound. Brothers, this woman is great and very wonderful: she surpassed the teachers of the law in knowledge, outdid all the Jews in grasp of the sacrament, went before an apostle in faith. For Judea with its scribes and teachers despised the whole of God in the body; the apostle Thomas, in order to believe Christ to be God, put in his hands, thrust in his fingers, opened the wounds, and to believe Christ, made Christ suffer again (John 20:25–27). But let us inquire by spiritual understanding whose person this woman bears, whose type she shows, whose image she presents. Who is she whom inborn blood, natural weakness, original sickness so brought to the causes of death, to a deadly wound, to the straits of a foul sickness? Whom vices so defiled, crimes so fouled, secret wounds so wounded, that art could not heal her, the eye could not bear to see her, decency could not bear her; whom the law itself could not cleanse; rather, whom the law had ordered to be kept from the temple, forbidden the sacred rites, kept away from all holy things; and whom it had so declared unclean that whatever she touched was held unclean? This is she, brothers, this is the Church, which, wounded by the sin of the first man, was flowing wholly with blood and running wholly, from her origin, toward death.

[On the woman with the hemorrhage and the daughter of the ruler of the synagogue.] [Note in the printed edition: At this point blessed Peter fell silent; the reason for his silence is given fully in Sermon 86.] It is the mark of a debtor with a sense of shame to pay what he has promised at once, and neither to mock the creditor's mind with delays nor keep it in suspense with long waiting. Since the narrative of the ruler of the synagogue and of the woman with the hemorrhage, joined together and drawn out, departed from the customary brevity of our sermon, we preferred to divide the treatment in half, so that your hearing would not be burdened as much as it would be refreshed. The ruler of the synagogue meets the Lord and falls flat on the ground; he states his case, makes known his grief, moves the affection of the one who grants, and bids him hurry and come to heal; on the other hand, the Lord, not sought, meets the woman, and, passing by, offers her the occasion of health; in silence he recognized the cause of the silent woman, and saw the hidden wound even of one who concealed it. Between the Lord and the woman so great a transaction of stolen health is carried on; and while, at a public request, he makes his way as one entreated, the thought of faith penetrates the divine and reaches the secret. Happy woman, who in so great a multitude is alone with Christ, so that she alone knows both the health restored and the exalted power! Blessed is she who found such an approach that no one could block! Blessed is she who by such a way rushed and crept to her Author; who, before she could be put to shame by a man over her wound, was rid of the foulness of the wound itself, knowing that with men and through men every approach to health was closed to her, since they are accustomed to shudder at wounds more than to heal them! God wipes away human wounds; he does not despise them; nor does he shudder at the sicknesses of men but drives them away, nor does he detest the uncleanness of the human body but amends it: because God knows no defilement at the touch of his own creature; God cannot be soiled. But the evangelist raises a question when he says: “And Jesus, perceiving in himself that power had gone out from him, turned to the crowd and said: ‘Who touched my garments?’” (Mark 5:30). In asking, does he as it were profess ignorance? Does he perceive that power has gone out from him and not know to whom it went? Does he know what he has bestowed and not know on whom? Does he doubt the person, who is certain of the health conferred? But here the Lord asks not by the error of one who does not know, but by the majesty of one who knows and foreknows; nor does he seek what was hidden from him, but shows that it is well known to him, since by asking in this way he alone discloses to all who do not know what lay hidden. The silent petitioner, pleading by her thoughts alone and clinging behind his back to the counsels of his power, he brings into the middle, not as an ignorant examiner but as a foreknowing inquirer, and makes her stand before his eyes, so that she who had carried off health for herself might bring back faith for all, and she who had proved his power might recognize his majesty, and might not return unknown, as she thought, she who had given full knowledge of herself. While she blushes at her wound, while in such a cure she fears him as God, the woman suffered no small clouds over her faith, and in the light of her mind she was herself darkened by the mists of confusion. So the voice of the Lord inquiring, like a saving breeze, put the clouds to flight, scattered the mists, lit up her faith, and made her who lay hid in the darkness of night brighter than the sun itself. Or is she less than the sun, she who shines through the whole world, who gleams and shines out in the whole assembly of the Church? If she had returned unseen in this way, forgive me, she would have cheated the physician, not proved him; and she could have ascribed what she obtained to herself, not to the healer; she who believed that she had seized her cure from the healer's fringe, not from his mind. Or what did she believe to be his, whose power she had felt in herself, while in her wish she judged him a stranger? And indeed, even if before the cure it was from modesty that she hid, from humility that she judged herself unworthy, why after the cure did she not come forward of her own accord to give thanks, to render honor, to report the glory of so great a work? But after she saw the Lord persist in his inquiry, and saw, with the disciples excusing and pleading the pressing of the crowd, that she could not stay hidden, after fear and trembling of conscience began to accuse her, she came into the middle, to profess openly as physician him whom she had secretly felt, to worship him as God, and so that from so great a sickness of hers there might be medicine for those present as well as those to come, as the evangelist says: “But the woman, fearing and trembling, knowing what had been done to her, came and fell down before him and told him the whole truth.” But since the historical account must always be raised to a higher understanding, and future mysteries are to be known through present figures, we must now lay open in an allegorical sermon what sacrament the ruler of the synagogue, or his daughter, or the woman with the flow of blood hold under the appearance of these persons. The daughter of the ruler of the synagogue, to whom Christ comes, to whom he goes and hurries and makes a journey with human step, he who in his divinity cannot be moved in place, is without doubt the Synagogue, as the Lord says: “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Matt 15:24). But while Christ is going toward her, the Church, set among all the nations, having lost the good of nature, was losing and pouring out the blood of the human race; and while human skill strove to cure her sickness, it only heaped it up: for the censure of human frailty and the strictness of worldly discipline always shed the blood of peoples, and yet could neither abolish enemies, nor check the wars of citizens, nor wipe out the madness of crimes. She, then, pierced through by such cures, when she saw that whatever of her substance had been and was had been used up, that is, mind, intelligence, sense, talent, labor, industry, reason, which we lend to rulers as to physicians for our progress, when she perceived the presence of Christ passing by, came from behind, because, polluted with blood, she did not deserve to see him. She comes from behind, that is, she follows the hearing of faith and touches the outermost parts of Christ as if his very fringe, since she is not honored in the fathers, not sanctified in the law, does not boast in the prophets, is not honored by the Lord's own body, since she is held a stranger to that order of Christ's lineage. Behind his back, that is, in the last time, she follows Christ and is consecrated by the hidden sacrament of faith; and she truly touched the garment, which she found in the tomb, through which she believed and proclaimed the signs of the Lord's rising. But while Christ is occupied with his powers around her, the Synagogue fails and dies in the ruler's daughter, so that she too might return to life through faith, she who had died through the law and perished through nature. “Meanwhile they come from the ruler's house and say: ‘Do not trouble the teacher; the girl is dead.’” Even today the Jews do not want Christ troubled, wishing that he not come, and they pronounce death, having unbelievingly lost the hope of resurrection. And how well this fits our assertion, that the ruler's daughter is reported to have lived twelve years, and this woman is recorded to have persisted twelve years in her wound, since at the last and completed time of each, health and life were restored. For this number encloses the time of human life, which, to make a year, is divided and counted in twelve months; hence the prophet indicates that Christ came under the acceptable year of the Lord, and the Apostle confirms that Christ came in the fullness of time, saying: “When the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son” (Gal 4:4). Pray, brothers, that as the Synagogue died to itself and to the law so that it might live to Christ, so we too may die to sins and to the flesh, so that we may be able to live in Christ.

[On the sign of the prophet Jonah.] Brothers, the deeds of the saints are not to be put down to accidents but to signs; and what are thought to be their faults are to be applied to mysteries, not to lapses, as the Lord's instruction marked and disclosed today, saying: “As the crowds were gathering, Jesus began to say: ‘This generation is an evil generation; it seeks a sign, and no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah; for as Jonah became a sign to the Ninevites, so will the Son of Man be to this generation’” (Luke 11:29–30). See, the prophet's flight is turned into a figure of the Lord himself, and what is celebrated as a deadly shipwreck becomes the sacrament of the Lord's resurrection. For the text of the history written about him shows how Jonah held and fulfilled the type of the Savior in every respect. “Jonah fled,” it says, “from the face of God” (Jonah 1:3). Did not the Lord, in order to put on the face and form of man, flee the face and form of his own Godhead? As the Apostle says: “Who, though he was in the form of God, did not think equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant” (Phil 2:6–7). The Lord took the form of a servant so as to be hidden from the world, so as to forestall the devil; he puts himself to flight into man. And the type of Christ is well kept in Jonah's very words. He did not say, “I flee God,” but, “I flee from the face of God.” God, who is everywhere, has nowhere to flee from himself; but Christ, so as to flee the face of the Godhead not in place but in appearance, took refuge wholly in the countenance of our servitude. “Jonah,” it says, “went down to Joppa to flee to Tarshish.” Hear the one who goes down: “No one,” he says, “has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven” (John 3:13). The Lord descended from heaven to earth, the Godhead descended to human things, the supreme lordship descended to our servitude. And yet he who had gone down to the ship went up into the ship to sail: so Christ, who descended into this world, by powers and wonders went up into the ship of his Church. And what does the storm stirred up by the winds mean, except the devil, who, entering the heart of Judas, lifted up kings, nations, peoples, soldiery, judges, like the sea, and blew them into waves, so that the rising and falling waves sought their author for the calm of the world? Hear the waves of the world, hear the prophet saying: “Why have the nations raged, and the peoples devised vain things? The kings of the earth stood up, and the rulers gathered together against the Lord and against his Christ” (Ps 2:1–2). And since the lot that would betray Jonah was not lacking, it fulfills concerning Christ the prophecy of David, which says: “And for my clothing they cast lots” (Ps 22:18). That Jonah was the author of his own sinking, when he says, “Take me up and throw me into the sea,” indicates the Lord's voluntary passion; for why do they endure being commanded to do this, who could have helped themselves of their own accord in such danger? For when the safety of many demands the death of one, the death is placed in the decision of the one who is to die, because the will can delay the death of one who is to die, and the death of one in danger can forestall the danger: so here, where everything is carried out as a figure of the Lord, the authority of the one dying is awaited, so that dying may be not a necessity but a power. Hear the Lord saying: “I have power to lay down my life, and I have power to take it up again; no one takes it from me” (John 10:18). How? Because Christ, though he gave up his spirit, did not lose it; for he who receives and holds the souls of all in his hand is not seen to be able to lose his own soul. Hear the prophet saying: “My soul is always in your hands” (Ps 119:109). And elsewhere: “Into your hands I commend my spirit” (Ps 31:5). But what more? The beast from the deep runs, meets him, is there, to fulfill and betray, or rather to conceive and give birth to, the whole mystery of the Lord's resurrection; the beast is there, the horrid and cruel image of hell, which, while it is carried with greedy jaws upon the prophet, felt and tasted the vigor of its Author, for in devouring it ran into a fast. But trembling it fits and prepares the dwelling of its heart as a lodging for the heavenly guest, so that the very thing that had been the whole cause of danger might become the unheard-of carriage for the necessary voyage, keeping its passenger and after three days bringing him back to the upper world; and it gave the Gentiles what it had taken from the Jews, to whom, when they sought a sign, the Lord decrees that only this sign is to be given, through which they might know that the glory they had hoped for in Christ was wholly to be conferred on the Gentiles. “This generation,” he says, “is an evil generation; it seeks a sign, and no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was a sign to the Ninevites, so will the Son of Man be to this generation.” For by the tossing of Jewish unbelief Christ was sunk into the depth of hell; and running in a three days' course through all the hidden places of the lower world, when he rose he gave proof of Jewish cruelty, of his own majesty, and of death destroyed. Rightly, then, the Ninevites will rise at the judgment and condemn that generation, because they were corrected by the preaching of one prophet, shipwrecked, a stranger, unknown; these, after such great powers, such great wonders, with the whole flash of the resurrection, do not come to faith, are not moved to repentance. For they do not believe the very sign of the resurrection, but are eager to defame it, while with the soldiers' bribe they shut eyes and corrupt hearts so that they might keep silent about what they knew and saw, buying a lie to take away the truth. They turned their own crime back on Christ's disciples, saying: “Say that his disciples came by night and stole him” (Matt 28:13). You are wrong, Jew: it was not the disciples who took this away, but the master; and he who seemed to have been killed stole himself away. But I wonder that the Jew seeks Christ, whom he had cruelly placed between two robbers: he entrusts him wickedly, guards him impiously, seeks him more unjustly; Jew, Christ cannot perish, but you have lost him for yourself by your crime. The queen of the south will come, will come to the judgment, and with him who was thought to have been stolen as judge she will condemn you: because she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon, and you, most unhappy one, killed the wisdom of God coming to you. The Ninevites were then provided as a figure of the nations who would believe, the queen of the south of the Church. Blessed are we, brothers, because what went before in type, what was promised in figure, we venerate, see, and possess in reality and truth.

[On bearing injury with equanimity.] How great is the greatness of the heavenly philosophy, how great the virtue of Christian soldiering, the Lord taught today, saying: “If anyone strikes you on the right cheek, offer him the other also” (Matt 5:39). He thinks this hard who does not know how great are the rewards of patience. Do you think a man can find victory through wounds who will not acquire a crown even at the blow of a palm? Can he seek glory by death, to whom a human insult seems heavy compared with divine honor? O man, are not the first lessons of your infancy arranged by such precepts? Slaps are the blows of little children, not of men. This is why the childhood of Christ's people is encouraged by light commands, so that the Gospel youth may now come with full strength to heavier ones, so that it may rejoice to obtain by labors, punishments, and death what it could not acquire in infancy by small injuries. And so that what has been commanded may be shown not to be hard, let the very series of commands be unfolded. “You have heard that it was said to the men of old, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, do not resist evil; but if anyone strikes you on your right cheek, offer him the other also; and if anyone wants to go to law with you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well; and if anyone forces you to go a mile, go with him two more” (cf. Exod 21:24; Deut 19:21). “You have heard that it was said to the men of old.” To which men of old? Surely to the Jews, whom malice more than age had made old, whom the fury of vengeance held so greedy that for an eye they demanded a head, for a tooth a life. This is why the law restrained them to an exchange in vengeance, so that those who could not know how to pardon a fault might at least know the measure of retribution and exact only as much vengeance as the force of the one raging had inflicted injury. But this was for the men of old; let us hear what divine goodness commands us, renewed through grace: “But I say to you.” To whom? Surely to Christians: “Do not resist evil.” In saying this, he wants us not to repay vices with vices but to overcome them with virtues, and to put out anger while it is still in sparks, for if it reaches the full blaze of fury it is not calmed without blood. Anger is conquered by gentleness, fury put out by meekness, malice soothed by goodness, cruelty laid low by kindness, impatience punished by patience, contention overcome by courtesies, pride laid flat by humility. So, brothers, whoever wants to conquer vices, let him hold the arms of kindness, not of fury. And although it may be clear to the wise why the Christian beginnings are trained by injuries, yet because some do not understand that this is the summit of virtue, the height of goodness, the pinnacle of kindness, that this belongs to divine, not human, philosophy: not to resist evil but to overcome evil with good, to bless the one who curses, not to deny the one who strikes leave to strike again, to let the one who takes the tunic have the cloak, to make a generosity out of the plunder of the one who seizes, to add to the one who forces a mile one's own service for two thousand more paces, so that will may conquer necessity, kindness ungodliness, and the virtue of the one who suffers may do what the force of the one compelling commands; therefore, although these things teach how the soldier of Christ is strengthened for virtue by injuries, yet, so that it may be more evident, let us ask more deeply for what reason they were commanded. Brothers, when the disease of sins, the crime of vices, the frenzy of ungodliness poured itself into human minds and extinguished whatever there was of knowledge, sense, and reason, it made the nations spread over the world, in insane fury, flee God, follow demons, worship creatures, despise the Creator, desire vices, shudder at virtues, be driven by swords, rush into wounds, perish alive by deaths. So men could not be healed otherwise than if the heavenly physicians, armed with all kindness and patience, strove, bearing the injuries of the sufferers' frenzy, carrying their curses, enduring their blows, being torn by their wounds, until they brought them back to soberness of sense, sincerity of spirit, health of mind; and so brought them to seek God, flee demons, feel their sickness, savor health, throw off vices, take up virtues, avoid wounds, shudder at blood, refuse death, desire life. And if you want what we have said to be more fully known, let us speak of the examples of physicians of the flesh. Is it not so that whenever the fire of bile has inflamed a wretched man and, with fever ruling him, has made the sick man insane, his sense is disturbed, his mind perishes, savagery comes on, humanity departs, and, in short, while the man is dying the fury lives? This is why he gnashes with his teeth, tears his parents, rends his neighbors, strikes with his fist, attacks with biting, and assails those who serve him. Then the physician, for the praise of his virtue, the glory of his art, the increase of his reputation, is armed with patience: he takes up endurance, despises injuries, bears bites, carries labors, and suffers no light pains, so as to free the sufferer from pain; he soothes him with oil, persists in care, dispenses medicine, certain that the sick man will repay his services with the reward of honor when he has recovered health. I ask, what greater frenzy, what heavier force of fury, what madness is equal to striking the cheek of a holy man? To beating the face of a gentle brother? To suffusing the grace of a calm face with a sad bruise? To stripping a man of the only garment that covers him, and for a cheap prize to leave nothing to God, nothing to man, nothing to nature, nothing to shame? To force a man busy with his own affairs into service, and to count another's pain one's own comfort? So, brothers, if we have recognized that those who do such things suffer from the gravest frenzy, let us obey Christ and bear the bites, blows, and burdens of our raging brothers with the full virtue of kindness, so that we may both free our brothers from punishment and obtain the eternal reward of patience. Nor let a servant disdain to receive from fellow servants what the Lord graciously received from servants and for servants: he did not withhold his face from slaps; to the one who took his tunic he gave up his cloak and his body too; the one who forced him to labor he followed gratefully and willingly to death. So, brothers, if the Lord counted it worthy to suffer, how, how can it seem unworthy for a servant to suffer? We are wrong, we are wrong, brothers: whoever does not do what the Lord commanded hopes in vain for what the Lord promised.