Sermons 43–47

[On prayer, fasting, and almsgiving.] To the people we must speak in a popular way; the community must be addressed in common speech; what is necessary for all must be said in the manner of all; natural language is dear to the simple and sweet to the learned; let the teacher speak what will profit all; so today let the learned pardon an unskilled word. There are three things, three, brothers, by which faith stands, devotion holds firm, virtue remains: prayer, fasting, mercy. What prayer knocks for, fasting obtains, mercy receives. Prayer, mercy, fasting: these three are one, and they give life to one another. For fasting is the soul of prayer; mercy is the life of fasting. Let no one cut them apart; they do not know how to be separated. Whoever has only one of them, or does not have them together, has nothing. So let whoever prays fast; let whoever fasts show mercy; let him who, when he asks, wants to be heard, hear the one who asks; he opens God's hearing to himself who does not close his own hearing to the suppliant. Let the one who fasts understand fasting; let him feel for the hungry who wants God to feel for his hunger; let him show mercy who hopes for mercy; let him who seeks kindness do it; let him who wants it granted to himself grant it. He is a shameless petitioner who asks for himself what he denies another. O man, be for yourself the pattern of mercy: in the way you want mercy shown to you, in the measure you want, as quickly as you want, so quickly, in such measure, in such a way, show mercy yourself to others. So let prayer, mercy, fasting be one advocacy for us before God, let these be one plea for us, let these be one threefold prayer for us. These are they, brothers, these are they that hold the citadel of heaven, that knock at the secret of God the judge, that plead the cases of the human race before the tribunal of Christ, that ask indulgence for the unjust and earn pardon for the guilty. Whoever does not have these standing by him in heaven does not stand firm on earth: since these hold the leadership in heaven, they govern the sum of things on earth: these rule prosperity, these drive away adversity; these extinguish vices, these kindle virtues; these make bodies chaste, hearts pure; these give peace to the limbs and quiet to minds; these make human senses a school of discipline; through these human breasts rise up into a temple of God; these make a man an angel; these bring to man the honor of divinity. This is why by their support Moses becomes a god (Exod 7:1), and commands all the elements for his military triumphs: he orders the sea to part, the waves to harden, the depths to dry (Exod 14), the sky to rain; he gives grain, compels the winds to scatter meat (Exod 16); he lights up the night with the brightness of the sun, he tempers the sun with the veil of a cloud (Exod 13); he strikes the rock so that from the fresh wound it may give cool streams to the thirsty (Num 20); he is the first to give the earth the law of heaven, he writes the rule of life, he fixes the boundaries of discipline (Exod 24; 34). Through these Elijah does not know death, leaves the earth, enters heaven, lives among angels, dines with God; and an earthly guest possesses the mansions above (2 Kgs 2). Through these John becomes an angel in the flesh, heavenly on earth, and alone grasps, holds, and embraces the whole Trinity by hearing, sight, and touch. And we, brothers, if we wish to be joined to the glory of Moses, the life of Elijah, the virtues of John, the merits of all the saints, let us persist in prayer, devote ourselves to fasting, serve mercy. Whoever lives in these, whoever is fortified by them, will not fear, as a Christian armor-bearer, a soldier of the Lord, the javelins of sin, the darts of the devil, the engines of the world, the wedges of vices, the evils of the flesh, the snares of pleasures, the weapons of death. But we who rise to an uncertain day, who spend the day amid snares, who endure the changes of the hours, the movements of moments, the slips of words, the dangers of acts, why is it that we do not want to enter the church in the morning? Why is it that we do not want to ask by morning prayer for protection for the whole day? Why is it that it pleases us to attend on a man all the time, and it does not please us to stand before God even for a moment? It is not our doing, brothers, it is not our doing; this stealthy suggestion is the enemy's: he prepares to deceive those whom he does not allow to be fortified by prayers. Why does he complain of adversity who does not pray for prosperity for himself? Let us hear the voice of God warning: “Pray, so that you may not enter into temptation” (Matt 26:41). He goes into temptation who does not go to prayer. Knowing this, the prophet sang: “Come, let us worship and fall down before him, and weep before the Lord who made us” (Ps 95:6). Do you think he will deign to shed tears before God who does not deign to bring out words? Let us rise early, let us pray, at least from human fear if not from divine love; if not invited by good things, at least compelled by evil ones. It is contempt of God that makes bad times for us, not the course of the times. So what we have lost by contempt, let us recover by fasts: let us sacrifice our souls by fasts, because there is nothing more excellent we can offer God, as the prophet proves when he says: “A sacrifice to God is a crushed spirit; a contrite and humbled heart God does not despise” (Ps 51:17). O man, offer God your soul, and offer the oblation of fasting, so that it may be a pure offering, a holy sacrifice, a living victim, which both remains for you and is given to God. Whoever does not give this to God will not be excused, because one who is to give himself cannot fail to have it. But so that these may be accepted, let mercy follow; fasting does not sprout unless it is watered by mercy; fasting dries up with the drought of mercy: what rain is to the earth, mercy is to fasting. However much the one who fasts cultivates his heart, cleanses his flesh, roots out vices, sows virtues, if he does not release the streams of mercy he gathers no fruit. You who fast, your field fasts when mercy fasts; you who fast, what you pour out in mercy overflows for you in the granary. So, O man, do not lose by keeping, but gather by spending; O man, by giving to the poor, give to yourself: because what you leave to another you will not have.

[On the counsel of the ungodly, the way of sinners, and the chair of pestilence. On Psalm 1.] A skilled physician, whenever he wishes to give full medicine to those worn out by various sicknesses, lays open the deep causes of diseases, explains the hidden onsets of plague, warns them to beware of pestilential regions, shows very many kinds of remedies, discloses the powers of herbs, speaks of the qualities of medicines, and promises very long health to the obedient: so he persuades the sick and leads them to hard and harsh treatments. This is why the holy prophet, about to bring forth from heaven medicine for body and soul, lays open the deep recesses of ungodliness, lays bare the hidden ways of sinners, displays iniquities, and with wonderful reasoning brings out the secret poison, the natures of vices, the origins of offences, the roots of crimes. So with devoted moderation, according to age, sex, time, and strength, he leads the sick minds of mortals by divine treatment continually to health. The psalm we sang today is the preface of the Psalms, rather the psalm of psalms, the title of titles; it is the argument that begets arguments, the whole cause of the songs that follow. And as the key of a royal hall, once it has opened the first door, makes the inner and manifold apartments accessible, so this psalm, once it has unlocked the first approaches of understanding, lays open the mystery, lays open the secret, of all the psalms. “Blessed is the man who has not walked away in the counsel of the ungodly, and has not stood in the way of sinners, and has not sat in the chair of pestilence” (Ps 1:1). “Blessed is the man”: as for one about to fight with beasts and undergo the dangers of the hardest contests the prizes, rewards, and crowns are announced beforehand, so the prophet put blessedness first, to challenge man to conquer the whole savagery of crimes that he enumerates afterward. “Blessed is the man who has not walked away in the counsel of the ungodly, and has not stood in the way of sinners.” That he spoke of walking away in counsel and standing in the way may perhaps seem absurd, since to stand in counsel and walk in the way is more in human usage. To the perverse indeed all things are perverse, and things not done in order cannot keep order. Yet here the prophet speaks not of the gait of the body but of the mind, and does not forbid slips of the feet but wards off the ruin of souls. “Blessed is the man who has not walked away in the counsel of the ungodly.” He walked away, walked away from himself, when the ungodly man withdrew from God; nor does he stand in counsel who wanders with ungodly thoughts. Such a man is now carried to heaven, now brought back to earth; he is tossed through the seas, lifted by the waves, sunk in the deep; and since he always rolls about in his own mind like a drunkard, he does not reckon himself, and he reckons the heavens. He who thinks he knows everything does not know himself; for if he knew himself he would never worship the heaven, the sun, the moon, wood, stones, which are all given and subjected to his service; but he worships stone and serves wood, who has despised serving the living God, the true God. And to go over the deeds of ungodliness from the very beginning of things: the counsel of ungodliness brought down to hell the angel from on high, changed the messenger of the heavenly secret into the devil, sent man from the government of life into the exile of a mortal dwelling, drove him from the delights of paradise to the wearisome labors of the world; it cast woman down from the glory of virginity to childbirths that know groaning. Hence it is that before she rejoices she does not escape pains, and pays the penalty for guilt before she rejoices in the coming forth of offspring. “I will greatly multiply,” he says, “your sorrows and your groanings; in sorrow and groaning you shall bear children” (Gen 3:16). What sort of end is there where the origin is penal? Whom will joy hold on the way, who takes the beginning of life from grief? The prophet knew this, who said: “In iniquities I was conceived, and in offences my mother bore me” (Ps 51:5). If so, brothers, we are thrown from the womb onto the way of sinners and run the whole road of offences through every age, let us think of the vanities of infancy, the slips of adolescence, the ruins of youth, the diseases of old age, and then we will see that we are taking not the way of life but the way of sinners. Christ marks this way, saying: “How wide and spacious is the way that leads to perdition, and many are those who enter by it” (Matt 7:13). Wide with offences, spread out with waves, spacious with crimes; and truly the present life is a way, into which man comes and on which he goes. “A generation goes,” it says, “and a generation comes, and the earth stands forever” (Eccl 1:4). And so he first said: “Blessed is the man who has not walked away in the counsel of the ungodly and has not stood in the way of sinners.” He did not say, “has not come”; for no one does not come onto the way of sinners, onto which the very law of nature and of death leads us; but blessed is he who does not stand on it. He stands, he lingers on it, who lifts the burdens of sins, and, a loaded traveler, arrives late and finds the heavenly dwelling shut against him. Hindered by these weights the prophet wept, saying: “My iniquities have gone over my head, and like a heavy burden they are heavy upon me.” And since he bore them all the time of his life, he cries: “I have become wretched and am bowed down to the end” (Ps 38:4, 6). That traveler passes through the way of sinners who sees the evils of this life but despises them, feels them but tramples them, suffers them but conquers them, and, while he flees them, runs the more: so the heavenly doorkeeper comes to meet him, the heavenly dwelling does not shut itself against him. But why is it that he put the counsel of ungodliness before the way of sinners: “Blessed is the man who has not walked away in the counsel of the ungodly and has not stood in the way of sinners”? Because although man, once born, at once comes onto the way of sinners, yet he first lies there: he does not at once run on the way of sin, but when he has begun to taste the poisons of ungodliness, then he draws flavor from the richness of sins. The ungodly man strains against God, goes away from God when he offends; sinners despise God, who commanded beforehand that they ought not to sin. Darkness flees light; darkness returns when light withdraws: where God is, there is no sin; where sin is, God is not there. And so that you may know, O man, that a man runs about on the way of sinners away from the sight of God, hear the prophet: “God is not in his sight; his ways are polluted at all times” (Ps 10:4–5). So a man slips more heavily on the way of sinners when he glides onto it over the precipices of ungodliness. “And has not sat in the chair of pestilence.” He who does ungodliness approves it; he who approves loves it; he who loves cannot fail to teach it: hence it is that, teaching ungodliness, he sits in the chair of pestilence, and with honeyed speech pours out the poison of deadly doctrine on his hearers. He set philosophy as the chair of pestilence, which taught either many gods, or that he who is either does not exist or cannot be found: which gave creation itself to nature so as to deny nature's Author. The Pharisee set up a chair of pestilence, who, setting human traditions before heavenly decrees, poured out a vast plague on the Jewish people. In the chair of pestilence the heretic has sat, who under the appearance of faith splits, breaks, and tears apart unity. “Blessed, then, is the man who has not walked away in the counsel of the ungodly, and has not stood in the way of sinners, and has not sat in the chair of pestilence.” And plainly blessed, because by turning away from these three he has deserved to come to the blessedness of the Trinity. Let him meditate, then, on the law of the Lord, and meditate on it day and night, so that he may deserve to see in the future and to hear more fully at a suitable time what follows.

[On frail man praying God not to rebuke him in anger. On Psalm 6.] Your affection proves and recognizes with me that the responsory we sang today with the prophet in supplication is timely and fitting for our present evils. “Lord,” he says, “do not rebuke me in your anger, nor chastise me in your fury” (Ps 6:1). Does God swell with anger? Does he grow hot with fury? Far from it, brothers. God is neither subject to passion, nor kindled with anger, nor disturbed by fury; but the anger of God is the punishment of offenders, the fury of God is the penalty of sinners. Brothers, compacted from dust, molded from mud, we are trodden down by vices, subjected to offences, worn out by cares, withered in our limbs, dissolved by death, made horrible in fetid tombs; and so we are found unfit for virtues and fit for vices. The prophet, then, mindful of human frailty and conscious of his fleshly substance, because he did not trust in merits, flew to the help of mercy, so that God's judgment on him might rest on kindness, not severity. “Lord, do not rebuke me in your anger.” That is to say: rebuke me, but not in anger; chastise me, but not in fury; rebuke me as a father, not as a judge; chastise me not as a master but as a parent; rebuke me not to destroy but to correct; chastise me not to kill but to amend. And why? Because I am weak. “Have mercy on me, Lord,” he says, “for I am weak.” What is weaker than man, whom sense misleads, ignorance deceives, judgment circumvents, display harms, time deserts, age changes, infancy dulls, youth throws headlong, old age breaks? For God, then, to be angry with him in anger, indignant in fury, is not the mark of a devoted Creator but of a most severe examiner. “Have mercy on me, Lord, for I am weak.” And what do you want? “Heal me, Lord.” He feels the wounds of his state, feels the bite of the ancient serpent, feels the ruin of the first parent, recognizes that he came into these weaknesses by being born, recognizes that he has come by nature to death; and since human art could not remove death, he is compelled to seek divine medicine; and so as to obtain treatment for his sickness more easily, he lays open the causes of the sickness itself, recounts its qualities, discloses its greatness, expresses the force of the pain. “Heal me, Lord.” Why? “Because my bones are troubled.” The bones carry the whole structure of the body; and if the bones are troubled, what firmness of limbs is there? What strength of sinews? Where is the pitiable substance of the flesh? The bones are troubled, brothers, by the weight of sins, by fear of death, by terror of judgment. Hear him say this elsewhere: “There is no health in my flesh because of your anger; there is no peace in my bones because of my sins” (Ps 38:3). And afterward: “My soul is filled with mockeries, and there is no health in my flesh” (Ps 38:7). Rightly, then, he adds: “And my soul is greatly troubled.” Between God's commands and the passions of the heart, between virtues and vices, between adversity and prosperity, between punishments and rewards, between life and death, standing in the battle line, sustaining wars, receiving wounds, rarely standing, falling in sense, the soul is troubled, greatly troubled, because, hindered by the weights of the flesh, before it comes to the virtues it is first made captive to the vices. The Apostle describes these wars when he says: “The flesh lusts against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh, so that you do not do the things you want” (Gal 5:17). And elsewhere: “I see another law in my members fighting against the law of my mind and leading me captive in the law of sin” (Rom 7:23). So the blessed prophet, pleading these weaknesses, these wars, these disturbances of minds, addresses God with this cry: “And you, Lord, how long?” That is: how long do you endure? How long do you overlook? How long do you not help? How long do you allow your work to be scattered, your image blotted out, your creature to perish? Where is your Christ, announced so often through the law, through us, promised in many ways through the prophets? Let him come, let him come, before the world perishes and he finds nothing in the world to save. Let him come, let him come, to restore the flesh, renew the soul, change nature itself into a heavenly substance. Let him come to take away sin, blot out death, destroy hell, give back life, grant heaven, so that the earthly stain may no longer find in us anything to destroy. That the prophet asks this the following verse shows: “Turn, O Lord.” Does a man speak so to God, a defendant to the judge, a condemned man to the examiner? “Turn, O Lord.” Man sins, and God turns? Yes, brothers, because, according to the prophet: “He bears our sins and grieves for us” (Isa 53:4, according to the Septuagint). And blessed John: “Behold the Lamb of God, behold him who takes away the sins of the world” (John 1:29). He took on sin so as to take sin away, not to have it. “Turn, O Lord.” From where? To where? From God into man, from master into servant, from judge into father, so that turning may show you devoted, whom power threatens as terrible. “Turn, O Lord; deliver my soul” from the lower hell. “Save me for your mercy's sake.” Not for my merit, whom labor afflicts, groaning wounds, tears dissolve, anger disturbs, the enemy attacks. But so that this may be clear, let the prophet's own prayer be sung: “Save me for your mercy's sake.” Why? “Because in death there is no one who remembers you, and in hell who will confess to you? I have labored in my groaning; every night I will wash my bed; I will water my couch with my tears.” Holy David said this while set on the royal summit, who so exercised the leadership of human power as to keep in himself the holiness of the spirit and the grace of a prophet; and we, set wholly under God's anger, do not know how to say: “Lord, do not rebuke me in your fury.” The earth denies its fruits, the sky its mildness, the air its healthfulness: hence a pestilence spread everywhere through cities and fields consumes every race of mortals with various kinds of diseases; and yet we do not say: “Lord, do not rebuke us in your fury, nor chastise us in your anger.” He, after his triumphs, filled his nights with groans and his days with tears; we, lying under the enemy's sword, give God no times, shed no tears to God even for an hour; but continually we hand ourselves over and give ourselves to robberies, frauds, perjuries, deceits, detractions, so as to rouse more and more God's anger against us with the fuel of crimes. Come, brothers, come with the prophet: “Come, let us worship and fall down before him, and weep before the Lord who made us” (Ps 95:6); come, let us say: “Lord, do not rebuke us in your anger, nor chastise us in your fury,” so that, mindful of his mercy, he may change anger into mercy, give back what is lost, free the captives, and grant us now to serve him with joy, who lives and reigns for ages of ages. Amen.

[On spiritual rejoicing and the confession of sins. On Psalm 95.] As a cool spring, very welcome and very wholesome, meets one who is burning hot and inflamed with long thirst, so today the prophetic song rouses us, set in grief and pressed down by too great a weight of troubles, to joys: “Come,” he says, “let us exult in the Lord” (Ps 95:1). “Come”: where to, or from where? From yourself, O man, into yourself, where not a change of place but a conversion of the senses drives off adversity, puts griefs to flight, casts away despair, shuts out distress, and, entering the dwelling of a sincere breast, prepares an eternal mansion for divine joy. “Let us exult in the Lord.” And where is that saying: “Blessed are those who mourn” (Matt 5:4), and “Woe to you who laugh” (Luke 6:25)? Plainly, blessed are those who mourn to the world and woe to those who laugh to the world; but blessed are those who exult in the Lord, who do not know how to rejoice in robberies, in frauds, in the tears of their neighbors. “Let us exult in the Lord.” He exults in the Lord who by word, act, and work exults not for himself but for his Author. “Let us exult in the Lord.” He exults in the Lord for whom God is always the sole and whole joy. “Let us shout with joy,” he says, “to God our salvation.” This is not the voice of sheep but of the shepherd, who with sweet joyful shouting and varied melody either leads the flock out to pasture, or keeps the tired flock at rest under a shady grove, or urges them to climb the heights of the hills by desire for more wholesome grass, or to descend gradually, with every need, to the slopes of the valleys. But blessed are those sheep who take in, draw on, nourish, and gather to the voice of their shepherd, and truly shout for joy to their shepherd: who strive to multiply for the Lord the offspring of his flock. “Let us come before his face with confession.” And who comes before the examiner of sins, the searcher of hearts, the one aware of thoughts, the foreknower of the future, present always and everywhere? But he is to be come before not by nearness of the senses but by sharpness of mind; not by swiftness of feet but by the foresighted service of confession: for he did not say only, “Let us come before him,” but, “Let us come before his face with confession.” That is, while there is hope of mercy, while it is the time of pardon, while there is room for repentance, let us confess to the Father so as not to feel the judge; let us disclose what we have done to kindness, so as not to be forced to pay to severity for what we keep silent; let us tell our offences in the time of indulgence, so that if we keep silent we may not weep at receiving the sentence. And what more, brothers? The most merciful prophet urges us to come before not the judge but the judgment. “And in psalms,” he says, “let us shout with joy to him”: so that the shouting might not be thought irrational, uttered without being spoken in our breast. “In psalms let us shout with joy”: so that in psalms the divine sacrament may resound and move the minds of the hearers to the advancement of salvation. “For God,” he says, “is a great Lord.” Here he opens the sacrament of the Lord's body, because God even in our body is a great Lord. “And a great king above all gods.” According to that saying: “Who will be like God among the sons of God?” (Ps 89:6): because all the powers above, though they rule the rest, are themselves ruled by Christ. “For in his hand are all the ends of the earth.” Because what is in God's hand cannot be obtained without God, if we desire to widen our borders, extend our boundaries, recover what is lost. Let us, then, entreat God with the strength of faith, by offending whom these things are lost to us, and by appeasing whom they return enlarged, who gives as he wills and takes away when he wills; if he cannot give back, he is not held almighty; he does many things as a sign of his majesty and as an example for our amendment and correction. Foreign defenses are empty if our King's help does not come to our aid. “For the sea is his, and he made it.” Do not think it sought out and found, and not founded by God. “The sea is his, and he made it, and his hands formed the dry land.” Where are those who imagine that God shaped the world out of matter, and above all out of water? Our God in heaven and on earth, not as discoverer but as creator of matter, made all things perfect from nothing. “Come,” he says, “let us worship.” What follows, brothers, shows to the ignorant the prophet as if forgetful of his exultation, since he at once calls those whom he had invited to joys to weeping: “Come,” he says, “let us worship and fall down before him, and weep before the Lord who made us.” He had said, “Come, let us exult”; but here the prophet desires us to shed with him tears of his joys: because tears are always brought forth by great joy as by great grief, and they set out and attest the affection of the inner breast. So he wants those who used to prostrate themselves before stones and wood, now that the true God is at last known, to worship, fall down, and make up with tears and with continual service of devotion what we neglected for a long time. So he weeps while he repents of the past, rejoices in the present, burns and fears for the future. That the weeping was of perfect joy the following words show: “Come, let us worship and fall down before him, and weep before the Lord who made us.” And as if he were asked why, he gives the causes, opens the reasons: “Because he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture and the sheep of his hand.” From this, surely, as devoted as one who rejoices is, so ungrateful certainly is one who is saddened. But let us now hear more attentively what he warns: “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts, as in the provocation, according to the day of temptation in the desert, where your fathers tempted me; they tested me and saw my works. For forty years I was near to that generation, and I said: they always err in heart; and they did not know my ways; so I swore in my anger, they shall not enter into my rest.” When he says “today,” he addresses you, he speaks to you, whoever you are, O man, who hear, so that having heard his voice you may not incur the guilt of contempt and the crime of stubbornness, you whom neither precepts nor example have corrected. For this is why he narrated Jewish hardness in a long passage, to make you more cautious, Christian, with whom God lives and dwells not for forty years only, but for the whole time of life provides and fights for your salvation.

[On the parables of the pearl found and of the net cast into the sea.] Christ our God, in that he founded heaven, earth, and sea and in them great, many, and varied creatures, showed wonderful proofs of his power; but in that he takes up human things, acts as man, enters times, passes through ages, teaches by word, heals by power, speaks in likenesses, sets forth examples, he discloses the weight of our affection in himself, and shows the unspeakable love for humanity that is in him. This is why he commends heavenly things by earthly examples, gives understanding of future things from present ones, and represents invisible things by visible proofs; the likenesses that the Gospel hearing cries to us today prove it: “The kingdom of heaven is like a merchant seeking fine pearls; and having found one precious pearl, he went and sold all that he had and bought it” (Matt 13:45–46). Let the name of merchant offend no one who hears this: he speaks here of a merchant who gives mercy, not one who always gives interest on a loan; who provides the ornaments of the virtues, not the incentives of vices; who carries the gravity of morals, not the weight of stones; who bears the necklaces of honor, not of luxury; who wears not the display of pleasure but the insignia of discipline. This merchant, then, sets forth these pearls of heart and body, not for human commerce but for divine exercise, not for present advantage but to purchase the future; not for earthly glory but for heavenly; so that he may acquire the kingdom of heaven as the reward of virtues, and with countless goods buy the one pearl of everlasting life. The Lord added a likeness, saying: “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net cast into the sea and gathering fish of every kind; when it was full, they drew it out, and sitting on the shore they chose the good into vessels but threw the bad away.” “The kingdom of heaven is like a net cast into the sea.” This likeness discloses why Christ chose fishermen for the apostolate and made catchers of fish fishers of men: so that the type of divine judgment might be shown by the fisherman's art. The catch gathers fish mixed together, but discernment puts the chosen into vessels: so the Christian calling gathers righteous and unrighteous, bad and good; but divine choice separates good and bad. “The kingdom of heaven is like a net cast into the sea.” Into the sea of this world, swelling with display, lifted up at its crest, billowing with sects, tossing with ignorance, noisy with lawsuits, roaring with anger, savage with unbelief, shipwrecked with sins, sunk in ungodliness, Christ sent his fishermen, that is, Peter, Andrew, James, John, proven in their craft, when he says: “Come after me; I will make you fishers of men” (Matt 4:19). So he sent his fishermen carrying nets knotted with the precepts of the law and of the Gospel, bound round with warnings, widened with the gifts and grace of the virtues, gathering a catch without end into the Gospel's fold. This is happening now, brothers, this is being done: through nations, through peoples the nets of Christ are now drawn, and they draw catches mixed together from the whole world, persons without distinction. But since the end of the world is near, and the nets of our catch are now drawing near to the shore of judgment, the fish, that is, men, who will wander free and at leisure through the deep running of the world, disturbed by the dryness of the shore, that is, by the nearness of the end, dash themselves against the whole ordering of things: seeing ungodly nations grow with successive triumphs, Christian peoples taken captive and hard pressed throughout the world, the ungodly rejoice in prosperous successes, the godly trampled by a continuous succession of evils, masters subjected to slavery, slaves lording it over masters, sons rebellious against parents, old men held in contempt by the young, and every state of nature and order of life lost. But though this is so, these things do not disturb the strong; rather they disturb the weak; they cannot disturb the strong, because they take strength from the likeness, firmness from the figure. Fish thrown up from the deep roll about a little on the shore in their confusion, but quick separation, while it throws away the bad, chooses the good; it makes the good not disturbed by this short and soon-passing confusion. This is the heavenly separation, which gives the bad to punishments, carries the good off to honor, brings the ungodly down to hell, sends the godly over to the kingdom, about to console fathers, old men, the righteous, the chosen, all, with perpetual glory after slight insult. The comparison itself proves this, when it is said: “At the end of the world the angels of God will go out and separate the bad from among the righteous.” “At the end of the world”: whoever believes in the end of the world, why does he complain of the world's decline? Whoever trusts that lasting things will follow, why does he seek to have passing things? Brothers, the world takes its beginning from its end; creation is renewed by its end, it does not fail; the world fails not for the Creator but for crime; nor are the elements ended for the righteous but for sinners. “At the end of the world the angels will go out to separate the righteous.” Nor let anyone doubt that angels will obey the saints, to whom Christ too promises his service. The voice of Christ is: “I will gird myself and serve you” (Luke 12:37). “The angels of God will go out and separate the bad from among the righteous.” Bear, righteous ones, bear with them, or rather grant a truce, righteous ones: this brief mixture will be repaid by a long separation. “They will separate the bad from among the righteous and throw them into the furnace of fire.” See what dwelling those choose for themselves who throw out their neighbors and drive out guests; see how those who here prepare delights for themselves by the poor man's hunger and others' punishments kindle there for themselves as much fire as their little pleasure. “There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” How wretchedly he gnashes there, who here laughs wretchedly; and he who now rejoices in the evils of the poor will then mourn over the goods of the poor, because he could have rejoiced with the poor man but would not. But you, faithful ones, rejoice in the Lord always.