Sermons 5–8

[On the same, as figuring the Jew and the Gentile.] It is the mark of a crafty and shameless debtor often not to pay what he has agreed, and to put off a most patient creditor with long and artful quibbling. This is our fifth sermon on the departure and return of the extravagant son, in which, as we promised, we shall try to raise the historical sense to a mystical and singular understanding of the Godhead. Pray that, since in so great a debt I am not a fit debtor by myself, I may prove a fit payer to you through God. “A certain man,” it says, “had two sons.” Since Christ took up the burden of our flesh and God put on human remains, God truly calls himself a man; the Lord truly names himself the father of two sons, because the Godhead mingled with humanity and love joined to the Godhead have blended man and God, and have united the Lord into a father. This man, then, this father, had two sons by the kindness of a Creator, not by the necessity of one who begets; he had two sons whom he did not earn but commanded to be: for Christ was a man before our eyes in such a way that as God he always remained in the secret of his majesty. “He had two sons”: that is, two peoples, the Jewish and the Gentile; but he made the Jewish the elder by the wisdom of the law, and the folly of paganism rendered the Gentile the younger. For as wisdom gives gray hairs, so folly takes away whatever is manly. Character, then, not age, made this one the younger; not years but sense made that one the elder. “And the younger of them,” it says, “said to his father: Father, give me the share of the property that falls to me.” He asks the knower of the heart not with his voice but with his whole self, because our own will brings back good or evil from God. Then this son, possessor of the whole lot together with his father, came by his own will to a part, saying: “Give me the share of the property that falls to me.” And what is this share? What is it? Bearing, speech, knowledge, reason, judgment, which fall to man above the other living creatures in his earthly dwelling: that is, according to the Apostle, the law of nature. And so he divided the property between them, giving the younger these five things we have named, the gifts of nature, and writing for the elder by divine power the five books of the law: so that the property would be unequal in worth but equal in number; the one would hold to the human order, the other would stand by divine institution; yet each law would lead both sons to knowledge of the father and keep them in reverence for their author. “And not many days after,” it says, “the younger, having gathered everything, set out abroad into a far country, and there squandered his property by living extravagantly.” We said that not years but character made him the younger, and so it said, “not many days after.” For with the very beginning of the world the Gentiles hurried to the homeland of idols; they went abroad in mind to the far country of the devil, wandered not in place but through the elements with empty thoughts, were tossed about the earth not by bodily movements; for he was before the father yet without the father, and though he was in himself he was not with himself. This is why the extravagant son, through desire for worldly eloquence, through the brothels of the schools, through the crossroads of the sects, squandered God the Father's property in mad disputation. And when by conjectures he had used up whatever there was of speech, knowledge, reason, and judgment, he most wretchedly endured utter poverty, a great famine of knowing the truth: for philosophy imposed the labor of seeking the Godhead but brought no fruit of finding the truth. This is why he attached himself to the chief man of that country, by whom he was sent into this world, that is, into one farm of many superstitions, to feed pigs, that is, demons, who say to the Lord: “If you cast us out, send us into the pigs” (Matt 8:31); to feed the demons with incense, victims, and blood, and to bring back as wages for such labor false oracles. A beast was slain so that what knew nothing alive might foretell when slain, and what had never spoken with its mouth might speak dead from its entrails. But when the Gentile found nothing divine, nothing saving, nothing of use in such things, despairing of God, of providence, of judgment, of things to come, he passed from the school to the gluttony of the belly, longing to be filled with the pods that the pigs were eating. The Epicureans know this: having run through the Platonic and Aristotelian schools and found there no teaching either of divinity or of knowledge, they hand themselves over to Epicurus, the last author of despair and pleasure. And they eat pods, that is, they gape after the evilly sweet pleasures of the body, and they feed the demons, who always grow fat on the vices and filth of bodies: for as “he who joins himself to the Lord is one spirit” (1 Cor 6:17), so he who joins himself to the devil is one demon. But this younger son, though he longed, did not fill his belly with those pods. Why? Because no one gave him any. The devil indeed wanted, through the famine of knowledge and the difficulty of pleasures, to make the Gentile greedier to seek out unlawful things and to commit crimes; but God the Father let the Gentile go hungry for this reason, that the occasion of error might become the ground of salvation: for he so left the Jew as not to destroy him, and allowed the Gentile to suffer famine so that he might return. And he returns to the father and cries: “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you.” That the younger son has returned to his father's house and calls God Father is attested by the daily voice of the Church, which says: “Our Father, who are in heaven” (Matt 6:9). “I have sinned against heaven and before you.” He sinned against heaven when he blasphemously said that the sun, moon, and stars in heaven were gods, and profaned these very things by worshiping them. “And I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired servants.” That is to say: since I no longer deserve the glory of a son, or of pardon, let me at least obtain wages for a hireling's labor; and let him who has lost the honor of offspring at least keep life's sustenance in daily bread. But the father runs to meet him, and runs to meet him from far off. “While we were still ungodly, Christ died for us” (Rom 5:8–9). The father runs to meet him, runs to meet him in the Son, when through him he comes down from heaven and reaches the earth. “The Father,” he says, “who sent me is with me” (John 8:29). “He fell on his neck.” He fell when through Christ the whole Godhead bent down to us and lay upon us in the flesh. “And he kissed him.” When? When “mercy and truth have met; justice and peace have kissed” (Ps 85:10). He gave the first robe: that which Adam lost, the everlasting glory of immortality. He put a ring on his hand: the ring of honor, the title of freedom, the outstanding pledge of the Spirit, the seal of faith, the earnest of the heavenly wedding. Hear the Apostle: “I betrothed you to one husband, to present you as a chaste virgin to Christ” (2 Cor 11:2). “And shoes on his feet”: so that the feet might be shod for the preaching of the Gospel, so that the feet of those who bring good news of peace might be blessed (Rom 10:15). “And he killed for him the fatted calf”: the one of which David sang: “And it will please God more than a young calf putting forth horns and hoofs” (Ps 69:31). The calf is killed at the father's command, because Christ, God the Son of God, could not be killed without the Father's will. Hear the Apostle: “He who did not spare his own Son but handed him over for us all” (Rom 8:32). This is the calf who is sacrificed daily and continually for our banquet. But the elder brother, the elder son coming from the field, is the people of the law, “the harvest is great, but the laborers few” (Luke 10:2): he hears music in his father's house, hears dancing, and will not go in. This we see daily with our own eyes. For the Jew comes to the father's house, that is, to the Church; he stands outside through envy; he hears David's harp resounding, hears the harmony of the prophets' concord, hears the dances from the varied gathering of the peoples, and will not go in, standing outside through envy. While he judges his Gentile brother by his former life and shrinks from him for his morals, he removes himself from his father's goods, he shuts himself out of his father's joys. As for his saying, “See, these many years I serve you, and I never transgressed your command, and you never gave me a kid,” we have already said that it is better passed over in silence than spoken of, because it is the Jew who speaks, and these are the words not of one who does but of one who swells with pride. The father comes out and says to his son: “Son, you are always with me.” How? Through Abel, through Enoch, through Shem, through Noah, through Abraham, through Isaac, through Jacob, through Moses, through all the saints through whom the Jewish lineage read in the Gospel descends, when it says: “Abraham begot Isaac, Isaac begot Jacob” (Matt 1:2). “And all that is mine is yours.” In what way? Because for you is the law, for you prophecy, for you the temple, for you the priesthood, for you the sacrifices, for you the kingdom, for you the gifts, for you (what is above all) Christ was born. But because through envy you wish to destroy your brother, you deserve not to have your father's feast and your father's joys. In a narrow sermon we have not been able to open very wide matters as we wished; but for your knowledge and understanding what seems narrow in our sermon is broad. Let this plain and hidden discourse not be unwelcome, which compelled us not to narrate or declaim, but to open and explain mystical and lofty things.

[On rejoicing at the bringing of the Gentiles to faith and grace. On Psalm 100.] Since at the younger son's return the whole household danced and sang a heavenly music, it is fitting that we too today should take up a psalm, strike the drum, set up the organ, touch the harp, and sound David's melody for so great a joy of God the Father. “Shout with joy to God,” it says, “all the earth” (Ps 100:1). What is it that the understanding of this exultation seeks? Why is it that after such great, such terrible, such wonderful commands of the Godhead the earth is now called and invited to shouts of joy? “Shout with joy to God,” it says, “all the earth.” What else, except that after the terrible God chose the office of a most gentle shepherd and put on the person of a shepherd, so that as a merciful shepherd he might gather into one the wandering peoples, the straying multitudes, the nations scattered far and wide, like wandering sheep; indeed, so that he might lead the wild nations, the prey of death, thirsting for the food of flesh, the drink of blood, the fury of beasts, to the use of milk, to the food of grass, and restore them to the whole gentleness of sheep? He commands and enjoins on all the earth a shepherd's discipline, saying: “All the earth, shout with joy to God.” As a terrible trumpet leads the soldier out to war, so the sweetness of joyful shouting invites the sheep to pasture. So it was fitting to soften the roar of warfare with a shepherd's gentleness, so that so gentle a grace might save the nations that natural savagery had long destroyed. That the return of the shepherd would be good when he came to earth, Christ himself has cried out today: “I am the good shepherd; the good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep” (John 10:11). This is why the master himself seeks helpers, seeks partners for the care of the whole world, saying: “Shout with joy to God, all the earth.” This is why, about to return to heaven, he entrusts his sheep to Peter in his place, to feed them. “Peter,” he says, “do you love me? Feed my sheep.” And so that he would not drive the tender beginnings of the return by power but carry them by love, he repeats: “Peter, do you love me? Feed my sheep.” He entrusts the sheep, he entrusts the offspring of the sheep, because the shepherd in his foreknowledge already knew the fruitfulness of his flock to come. “Peter, do you love me? Feed my sheep” (John 21:16–17). To these sheep Paul, Peter's fellow shepherd, offered in loving pasture udders full of milk, saying: “I gave you milk to drink, not solid food” (1 Cor 3:2). The blessed king perceived this, and so instead of bleating he cries: “The Lord feeds me, and I shall lack nothing; in a green place he has set me; beside the water of refreshment he has brought me up” (Ps 23:1–2). After the continual groans of wars, then, after the sad life of blood, the next verse announces to one now returning to the pastures of the Gospel's peace a joyful service. Man was the slave of sin, the captive of death, the chattel of demons, the house-slave of idols, the whipping-boy of vices, the chained prisoner of crimes. So man rendered an evil and wretched service to such great and evil masters. When was man under sin not sad? When under death not mourning? When under demons not pale? When under idols not trembling? When under vices not suspect? When under crimes not despairing? And so man breathed his last sighs while he continually endured such cruel masters. The prophet, then, seeing us freed from such masters and called back to the obedience of the Creator, to the Father's grace, to the free service of one good Lord, rightly cries out: “Serve the Lord with gladness; enter,” he says, “into his presence with exultation.” Enter not by place but by heart. “Enter into his presence with exultation.” For those whom guilt had cast out, whom conscience had expelled, grace brings back and innocence lets in. “Enter into his presence with exultation.” Whoever enters into his presence with exultation is free from guilt and fully secure of his reward. Yet what is it that this prophet urges, that he strives to persuade? “Enter into his presence with exultation.” Who is free in the sight of God? Who lies before the divine eyes? Who exults before the terror of the supreme majesty? Archangels tremble, angels are afraid, powers fear, the elders fall on their faces before heaven; the elements flee, the rocks are dissolved, the mountains flow down, the earth trembles; and how fearlessly will a man of earth enter? And will he still stand exulting? From where does the prophet so presume that we ought to do this? From where? From what follows: “Know,” he says, “that the Lord himself is God.” Because that Lord is God who was little in our flesh; this is why that Lord is God who was contained in our cradle, sweet in the lap, gentle in his bearing, kind in sharing our life. And so: “Enter into his presence with exultation.” For he hid all the dread of the Godhead, all the fear of the judge, in our condition, and set it in a provident aspect, so that one who enters may not fear the penalties of a judge but may count on the embrace of a parent. And how should he not exult who finds as parent the one whom he had feared as examiner? “Enter into his presence with exultation; know that the Lord himself is God; he made us, and not we ourselves.” The labor of father and mother is empty unless the work and authority of the Creator is present in the offspring. “Your hands,” it says, “made me and formed me” (Ps 119:73). And elsewhere: “You formed me and laid your hand upon me” (Ps 139:5). So that we are born, that we exist, we do not owe to ourselves, because we owe it all to the Author. “But we are his people and the sheep of his pasture.” It has been proved very often in figures that the shepherd came from heaven to call back with heavenly shouts of joy to life-giving pastures the sheep that wandered and were wounded by deadly grass. “Enter,” it says, “his gates with confession.” Confession alone makes us enter by the door of faith. “His courts with hymns: confess to him, praise his name.” We said that, now placed within the Father's house, we must take up the spiritual music of heavenly songs, so that we may have confession at the entrance, hymns in the courts, praise in the inner rooms, where the whole fullness of the Godhead dwells. “Confess to him, praise his name.” Confess to him, because he is God; praise his name, through which we have been saved, at which things in heaven, on earth, and under the earth bend the knee, and the creature loves the Lord God. “For the Lord is sweet.” Why? “Because his mercy is forever.” Truly he is sweet through mercy, through which alone he deigned to remove the most bitter sentence on the whole world. “Behold the Lamb of God, behold him who takes away the sins of the world.” “And his truth to the age of ages.” For God shows mercy without harm to truth, who so gives pardon to sins as to keep justice and reason in his very mercy, who is blessed for ages of ages. Amen.

[On hypocrisy and almsgiving. On Matthew 6: “When you fast, do not be gloomy like the hypocrites.”] When God changed from Lord into Father, he wished to reign by love rather than by power, and preferred to be loved rather than feared; so with a father's affection he warned us, so that nothing of our most just labor might be lost to us. The evangelist says this: “When you fast, do not be gloomy like the hypocrites; for they disfigure their faces so as to be seen by men as fasting. Amen I say to you, they have received their reward” (Matt 6:16). Hypocrisy is a subtle evil, a secret poison, a hidden venom, the varnish of virtues, the moth of holiness. All other adversaries strive with their own strength, fight with their own arms, attack openly; so they are guarded against as easily as they are seen. Hypocrisy feigns security, deceives with prosperity, lies with curiosity, and with cruel art cuts down virtues with the sword of virtues: it kills fasting by fasting, empties prayer by prayer, lays mercy low by compassion. Hypocrisy, kin to fever, offers burning heat in a cold cup. What dropsy is to bodies, hypocrisy is to souls: dropsy thirsts by drinking, hypocrisy thirsts when drunk. “For they disfigure their faces so as to be seen by men as fasting.” Hypocrisy, while it longs to capture eyes, is itself made captive to eyes. “For they disfigure their faces.” And if they disfigure their faces, what adornment of the body will remain? Truly, as the Lord said: “If the light that is in you is darkness, how great will the darkness itself be?” (Matt 6:23). Hypocrite, though your face is unkempt, your skin neglected, your look gloomy, your appearance disfigured, you have not found praise from men, and you have lost the fruit of fasting with God. Hypocrite, you have labored at fasting so that the labor of fasting would profit you nothing. Hypocrite, you entered the waves of abstinence, climbed the billows of continence, swam the sea of fasting, and in the very harbor of fasting you suffered shipwreck: for you did not acquire gain but bought vanity, you who out of God's loan carried on a human business. This is why you will render an account to God, you who received from men the interest of wretched praise. Brothers, we must flee the poison, beware the plague, which creates diseases out of remedies, produces sickness from medicine, turns holiness into crime, makes guilt out of acts of appeasement, breeds danger out of propitiation. Whoever flees hypocrisy conquers; whoever runs into it falls. Let us flee hypocrisy, brothers, let us flee it: let our fasting be from simplicity, holy from innocence, pure from purity, sincere from sincerity; let it be hidden from men, unknown to the devil, known to God. Whoever does not hide a treasure betrays it; virtues betrayed will not remain. As virtues desert those who betray them, so they strive to guard their guardians. So let fasting, which is our first virtue against vices, be placed in the citadel of the breast: for while it presides within, the vices will not be able to shake us from without. Christ urges this, so that a Christian may have it, when he says: “But you, when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, so that you may not appear to men to be fasting, but to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will repay you.” When he says, “Anoint your head and wash your face,” the serious master does not enjoin that the hair of the head overflow with seductive ointment, nor does he want the face to shine with its usual washing; but he wants the Christian's fasting to be hidden under the appearance of one who has dined, because he does not want fasting to claim the Christian by an artificial gloom. But let us return to what we began. “Anoint your head and wash your face, so that you may not appear to men to be fasting, but to your Father who is in secret.” So he does not indulge voluptuous looks, but he excludes faces that pretend: a face cast down with gloom courts reputation; it does not profess a voluntary fast. If he is willing, why gloomy? If he is unwilling, why fasting? Rightly does he live under such a penalty, who makes for himself a vice out of virtue, a lie out of truth, a loss out of reward, sin out of remission. If a farmer does not drive in the plowshare, does not dig the furrow, does not cut out the thorns, does not pull up the weeds, does not lay the seeds in safety, he lies to himself, not to the earth; he does no harm to the earth, but produces no fruit for himself; and so he empties himself, so he deceives himself, so he fights against himself, who lies to the earth with a deceitful hand. What will he do, what will he have, what will he find, who lies to God, the flesh hungering while hypocrisy feasts? Since we have mentioned the farmer, let him know that he undergoes labor in vain and will have nothing, who presses the plow of fasting, cuts out the weeds of gluttony and roots out the thorns of extravagance, but sows no seeds of mercy. The Lord wished to make this plain, who in teaching about fasting at once added this: “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where rust and moth destroy and where thieves dig through and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither rust nor moth destroys, and where thieves do not dig through or steal.” What is so fatherly? What comes so from love? What counsel so provident from charity? He wants nothing of yours to perish, who wants your things to be stored in the heavenly treasuries. How securely he sleeps who has deserved to have God as the guardian of his goods! How he knows no cares, how he lays aside anxieties, how free he is from worry, how he lacks the arrogance of servants, who entrusts his goods to the Father to be kept! How a father's affection keeps what servile fear cannot keep so: a father, when he gives his own to his sons, does not diminish what the sons have entrusted to him. He does not know what a father is, he does not know that he is a son, who does not trust his father. Bolts do not shut out the moth but shut it in; they breed it, they do not repel it; stored things nourish rust, they do not avoid it, because what is born of a thing is not avoided. Where there is need, thieves cannot be lacking. So whoever puts his goods among moths, rust, and thieves, does not store them up. As the moth is born of clothing, rust of metal, thieves of need, so greed is acquired from riches, covetousness from gain, the passion for having from having. So whoever wants to conquer greed, let him spread his riches abroad, not store them up. Let us send our treasures ahead into heaven, brothers; let the poor be the carriers, who can carry what is ours in their bosom to the heights. Let no one doubt the honesty of the porters: this transport is safe, by which our goods are carried to God with God as guarantor, to whom is all honor and glory, power and dominion, and thanksgiving for all ages of ages. Amen.

[On fasting and almsgiving.] When a prudent helmsman casts off from the shore, when, about to cross the sea, he enters the waves, he lays aside his cares for house, homeland, wife, and children, and is so wholly taken up in mind, body, and sense with the labors of sailing that he can overcome the dangers of the waves and, victor over peril, enter the anchorage of a profitable harbor. So let us, brothers, having entered on the journey of abstinence, the sea of fasting, the way of Lent, cast off the ship of our body from the shore of the world; let us renounce the cares of our worldly homeland; on the tree of the cross let us spread all the sails of the mind; with the ropes of the virtues, the oars of wisdom, the rudders of discipline, let us secure the course of our vessel. And, drawn away from the earth, let us watch the sky, so that under the guidance of the heavenly signs we may keep an unerring track along the watery paths of the hidden way; and so, with Christ at the helm and the Holy Spirit blowing, the foam of pleasures overcome, the waves of vices surmounted, the storms of crimes run through, the rocks of sins passed by, and the shipwrecks of all offences avoided, we may enter the harbor of Easter, the gain of life, the joys of the resurrection. But since we are to make our way across bare plains, through deceptive whirlpools, through uncertain wastes, where all our food and drink must be carried, let us load on abundant mercy to stock our provisions. Brothers, fasting hungers, fasting thirsts, when it is not fed with the food of kindness, when it is not watered with the drink of mercy. Fasting is cold, fasting fails, when the fleece of almsgiving does not cover it, when the garment of compassion does not clothe it. Brothers, what spring is to the earth, mercy, we know, is to fasting. As the breezes of spring make all the buds of the fields flower, so mercy brings all the seeds of fasting into flower, makes the whole power of fasting bear fruit for the heavenly harvest. What oil is to a lamp, kindness is to fasting: as the richness of oil kindles the lamp's light and with moderate feeding makes it shine for the comfort of the whole night, so kindness makes fasting shine and radiate the full brightness of continence. What the sun is to the day, almsgiving is known to be to fasting: as the sun's splendor makes the day brighter and scatters all the darkness of clouds, so almsgiving sanctifies the holiness of fasting and shuts out the whole night of greed by the light of kindness. And not to linger over many examples: what the soul is to the body, generosity is to fasting. For as the body dies when the soul leaves the body, so the departure of generosity is the death of fasting. Fasting indeed is the death of vices, the life of virtues. Fasting is peace for the body, the grace of the limbs, the ornament of life. Fasting is the strength of minds, the vigor of souls. Fasting is the wall of chastity, the bulwark of modesty, the city of holiness. Fasting is the school of merits, the mastery of masteries, the discipline of disciplines. Fasting is the saving provision for the Church's journey. Fasting is the unconquered leadership of the Christian army. But among these virtues fasting flourishes, conquers, triumphs only when it fights with mercy as its leader. Mercy and kindness are the wings of fasting, by which it is lifted and carried to heaven; without them it lies and rolls on the ground. Fasting without mercy is a likeness of famine, not an image of holiness; without kindness, fasting is an occasion of avarice, not a resolve of thrift, because such thrift swells in the purse as much as it dries up in the body. Fasting without mercy is not truth but a figure; but where mercy is, there truth is too, as the prophet proves when he says: “Mercy and truth have met” (Ps 85:10). Fasting without mercy is not virtue but hypocrisy, as the Lord says: “But when you fast, do not be gloomy like the hypocrites; for they disfigure their faces so as to be seen by men as fasting” (Matt 6:16). Whoever does not fast for the poor is pretending to God; whoever fasts and does not give away his meal but stores it up is shown to fast for greed, not for Christ. So, brothers, when we fast let us store our meal in the hand of the poor, so that the hand of the poor may keep for us what the belly would have lost for us. The hand of the poor is Abraham's bosom, where the poor man at once stores whatever he has received. The hand of the poor is the treasury of heaven: what it receives, it stores in heaven so that it may not perish on earth. “Store up for yourselves,” he says, “treasures in heaven” (Matt 6:20). The hand of the poor is Christ's treasure chest, because whatever the poor man receives, Christ accepts. So give earth to the poor, O man, that you may receive heaven. Give a coin, that you may receive a kingdom. Give a crumb, that you may receive the whole. Give to the poor, that you may give to yourself; for whatever you give the poor you will have; what you do not give the poor, another will have. God cries: “I desire mercy” (Hos 6:6). Whoever denies God what God wants wants God to deny him what he desires. “I desire mercy.” God asks, O man, but for you, not for himself: “I desire mercy.” He asks for human mercy so as to bestow divine mercy. There is mercy in heaven, which is reached through earthly acts of mercy. “Lord,” it says, “your mercy is in heaven” (Ps 36:5). When you are to plead your case at God's judgment, take mercy as your advocate, through whom you can be set free. Whoever is sure of mercy's advocacy may be secure of pardon and need not doubt his acquittal. Mercy not only goes ahead of the case and anticipates the judge, but even recalls the sentence and acquits the condemned. The Ninevites prove it (Jonah 3): they were already under sentence, handed over to punishment, standing ready for the sacrifice, given over to death, when mercy so snatched them, so held them, so went ahead of them that God preferred to have the sentence withdrawn rather than deny mercy anything. Fasting indeed stood then also to plead the case, sprinkled ashes, spread sackcloth, uttered groans, shed tears; and what it could not excuse by words it softened by mourning; but it could not change the sentence unless mercy had come to its aid and pleaded to the end. Mercy both frees sinners and restores the saints: for had mercy not been present, even David, when he committed adultery, would have lost his prophecy (2 Sam 11); and Peter, when he denied, would have lost the leadership of the apostolic order (Matt 26); and Paul, when he blasphemed, would have remained a persecutor. Paul admits this when he says: “I who was formerly a blasphemer and a persecutor and insolent; but I obtained mercy” (1 Tim 1:13). Brothers, let us acquire mercy through acts of mercy to the poor, so that we may be free from punishment and secure of salvation. “Blessed,” he says, “are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy” (Matt 5:7). He hopes in vain for mercy there who has not done mercy here. Whoever does mercy runs to his reward; whoever does not do mercy runs down to punishment.