Sermons 9–12

[On the same. On the words of Matthew: “Take heed not to do your righteousness before men.”] God deals with us, deals with us in this world, so that nothing may be lost to us in the next, as shines out from the very beginning of the reading. “Take heed,” he says, “not to do your righteousness before men in order to be seen by them; otherwise you have no reward with your Father who is in heaven” (Matt 6:1). And how is what is done by men not done before men? How can the sense of open righteousness be hidden, what is secret in a public work? Whoever can hide the rays of the sun will be able to hide the brilliance of righteousness. Righteousness, the light of things, is not veiled by dark counsels. Righteousness, when it shines for itself in a deed, enlightens all by example. And why is it that the Lord does not want that righteousness to be done before men, through which human affairs gain their stability? And where is that saying: “Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven” (Matt 5:16)? How does he want righteousness hidden whose works he wants so to shine out? Brothers, here the heavenly precept wants to take away boasting, remove display, abolish vanity, set aside empty glory: in this way it wants righteousness hidden. Righteousness, which by itself abounds in glory, does not seek the spectacle of the people, the praises of the crowd, the favor of men, the glory of the world: born of God, it looks to heaven; it acts in the divine eyes; mingled with the powers above, it always waits to be glorified by God alone. But this is the righteousness that is from God; that righteousness which is hypocrisy is not righteousness: it lies to the eyes, deceives the sight, mocks those who see, cheats those who hear, seduces crowds, draws peoples, sells reputation, buys applause; it is done for the world, not for God; it seizes a present wage, does not seek a reward in the future; it blinds eyes, and, itself blind and not seeing, wants to be seen. Because of this blindness Christ begins his present precept thus: “Take heed.” That is, do not be eager to be noticed. “Not to do your righteousness before men.” Why? “In order to be seen by them.” And if you are seen, what then? “You have no reward with your Father who is in heaven.” Brothers, here the Lord does not judge but explains: he lays open the tricks of thoughts, lays bare the secrets of minds, and declares the measure of just repayment to those who handle righteousness unjustly. Righteousness that places itself before human eyes cannot expect the reward of the divine Father: it wanted to be seen, and was seen; it wanted to please men, and pleased them; it has the wage it wanted; the reward it did not want to have it will not have. Let us hear from what follows why these things were said first. “When you give alms, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do.” Rightly a trumpet, because such almsgiving is hostile, not civil, devoted not to mercy but to noise: the house-slave of sedition, not the nursling of kindness; a market of ostentation, not a commerce of charity. Whoever shows off his almsgiving insults. “When you give alms,” he says, “do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be glorified by men. Amen I say to you, they have received their reward.” You hear how he marks almsgiving in the assembly, in the squares, at the crossroads, not spent for the relief of the poor but set forth for the favor of men, so that they are shown to display mercy, not to give it. Hypocrisy must be fled, brothers, fled, because, captive to glory, it does not relieve the shame of the poor but wears it out; it seeks the display of its own boasting from the groaning of the needy, it spreads its own praise from the poor man's pain, it broadcasts the fame of its ostentation from the misery of the beggar. But someone says: Must mercy then be refused in the assembly, in the squares, at the crossroads? Must food not be given? Certainly, in every place and at every time mercy must be done, food given, nakedness covered; but in the way the author of mercy taught, so that mercy may be known not to earth but to heaven, not made known to men but to God. In the squares, at the crossroads, kindness has its own secret; on the other hand, it is a square, it is a crossroads, when the hypocrite in secret does nothing secret. Brothers, in warning, God blames motives, not places; the intention, not the works; the aim, not the giver: he rebukes the one who gives for his own fame, not for the poor man's hunger; he judges not where you do it, or when you do it, but how you do it: for God measures deeds by hearts, not by hands, and gathers the quality of works from the intention, not from the places. He wants mercy done before himself alone, who alone is both rewarder and witness of mercy, and who says: “I was hungry and you gave me to eat” (Matt 25:35). He wants it given to himself in the poor; and he who wants it given to himself wants to owe what is given; and he who wants to owe what is given wants nothing to be lost to those who give. God asks small things, about to repay the greatest. So, O man, if you lend to God in the poor, do not seek human witnesses: faith does not require arbiters. He who gives nothing without mediators questions the good faith of the recipient; whoever publishes his loans burns the debtor with shame. So, O man, when you are about to give to God, give in secret, so that what you give may be not a burden but an honor. For this reason the one who enriches you comes to you in the poor man, so that you may not doubt that he will repay what he received, who by grace gave you the means to give. How bashful poverty in the poor man is, seeking the secrecy of your generosity, he himself reveals when he says: “But when you give alms, let your left hand not know what your right hand is doing.” How much do you think he wants another not to know, when he wants you yourself who do it not to know it with some part of yourself? “Let your left hand not know what your right hand is doing.” As the virtues are on our right side, so the side of the vices is on our left. So what the silent giver does is the work of the right hand; what the chattering giver does is the hypocrisy of the left. Hypocrisy, guile, pretense, fraud, lying, pride, swelling, boasting press upon us and threaten from the left. So whenever we are dealing with goodness, kindness, mercy, let the left hand not know it. It is the left that always declares war on souls and labors so that the virtues may not come to fulfillment. Ungodliness acts so that there may be no godliness; greed fights so that almsgiving may not conquer; avarice rages so that mercy may not grow strong; so that innocence, purity, simplicity, holiness may not reign, hypocrisy alone does battle, which Christ shuts out from us by this teaching: “But when you give alms, let your left hand not know what your right hand is doing.” Brothers, in this world let us flee what is on the left, if in the future we long to stand on the right and to hear: “Come, blessed of my Father, receive the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world” (Matt 25:34). O man, give on earth to the poor what you want to remain for you in heaven. O man, serve here as a fellow soldier with the poor, if you want to reign there with our Lord Jesus Christ himself, who is blessed for ages of ages. Amen.

[On bringing unbelievers to baptism. On Psalm 29.] All who lighten hard tasks and relieve hardships prove that song was given to us by nature as a comfort in labor. So sailors overcome the dangers of the sea by singing; so they haul immense loads with the relief of songs; so a ringing voice makes travelers climb steep hills; so song going before them rouses soldiers themselves to face the bitterness of war. In short, sweet song overcomes and accomplishes everything that is hard work and labor. So let us, brothers, join divine songs to the Lenten fast, so that heavenly music may temper and lighten the weight of abstinence, as blessed David calls us to this. While he soothed and delighted his dear flock in the pastures with his pipe, he learned by song to overcome the hardships of war; by song he was able to call the nations, bring back the Jews, put the demon to flight, and summon the sons of God to the service of the Father above, as his melody sang, inviting well: “Bring to the Lord,” it says, “you sons of God” (Ps 29:1). Do you think he is calling the heavenly powers in this way? Or is he fitting men to be sons of God, and raising earthly flesh to a heavenly nature? “Bring to the Lord, you sons of God.” Men, brothers, it is men the prophet names here, whom elsewhere he so celebrates as sons of God: “I said, you are gods, and all sons of the Most High” (Ps 82:6). We have heard, brothers, to what the divine condescension has brought us, to what the fatherhood above has raised us: let us believe ourselves sons of God, let us answer to our birth; let us live for heaven; let us reflect our Father by likeness, so that we may not lose through vices what we have obtained by grace. “Bring to the Lord, you sons of God.” You see that the heavenly Father perceives love by gifts, affection by what is given, and tests charity by offerings. And truly, brothers, he does not know himself a son, he lacks natural feeling, he denies his nature, he is ungrateful to his father, who does not please the author of his life with obedience, does not win him with worship, does not honor him with gifts. “Bring to the Lord, you sons of God.” Let us see what it is that the prophet here reminds and urges us to bring to so great a Father. “Bring to the Lord, you sons of God; bring to the Lord the young of rams.” Is this all that he asks, all that he requires: that the divine offspring offer to the divine Father the young of sheep, the cheap offspring of earthly cattle, births strewn along the road, seeds poured out over the fields? Or does God, the Creator of all things, now require Jewish victims, bloody sacrifices, offerings bleating under the knife? And where is that which he says: “I will not take calves from your house, nor goats from your flocks; for all the wild beasts of the forest are mine, the cattle on the mountains, and the oxen. I know all the birds of the air, and the beauty of the field is with me. If I were hungry I would not tell you, for the world is mine and all its fullness” (Ps 50:9–12)? And if he rejected these, what young of rams does he demand to be brought to him? He speaks to Abraham: “Take your beloved son and offer him to me as a burnt offering” (Gen 22). Abraham the ram, ripe for innocence, aged in faith, perfect for the offering, ready for the burnt offering, brought his son, the son of a ram; indeed he sacrificed himself in his son, sanctified his mind, gladdened his faith, so that he was at once victim and high priest, priest and sacrifice. The whole passion was the father's there where the son was being sacrificed; the son was set there unaware, the son was fitted to the bonds unknowing, so that he might carry off the reward of the martyrs from the passion, from the father's suffering, and snatch the crown from the father's struggle. At last the father's right hand was held back, the father's sword removed, because the son's death was not sought, but the father's love was tested; nor was the son's blood required, where the whole victim consisted in the father's love, as Scripture says: “Now I know that you love God, since you did not spare your only son for my sake” (Gen 22:12). We have called Abraham a ram so that we might prove Isaac the son of a ram, and so that it might be clear what young of rams the prophet wants us to offer to the Lord. “Bring to the Lord the young of rams”: the children of fathers, of patriarchs, prophets, apostles, martyrs, confessors, the Christian is now urged to bring, when the Lord's flock of faith is let out to pasture, when the heavenly shepherd wants his lambs brought to the Lord's fold, so that, scattered through the wild places of the nations, they may not be devoured by the attacks of wolves. But let us now say more plainly what the divine voice urges. “Bring to the Lord the young of rams.” Bring to the Lord those to be baptized; bring those whom faith conceives, not flesh; bring those whom God's grace begets, not worldly nature; bring those whom innocence makes lambs, not those who have the dullness of beasts; bring, bring those whom necessity forbids, or age hinders, or ignorance delays from coming of their own accord, or whom vices hold, or offences detain, or expectation deceives, or poverty misleads through shame; bring the willing, draw the unwilling, make for yourselves a reward out of another's need. If a master has a slave who is a catechumen, let him bring him, so that he may now have him as one of the faithful. Let a father offer his son and not delay him, so that he may confer the future life on the one to whom he gave the present life. Let a husband lead his wife to the faith, so that what is one in the flesh may not be divided in spirit. Let a friend draw his friend to salvation, so that he may prove human charity by divine grace. Let a citizen lead the stranger, a householder his guest, to God's table, so that he may be generous from the divine stores at no cost to himself. Draw the unwilling: let no one say, “He does not want to,” because Abraham too bound his son so as to offer him (Gen 22:9); and the angels, to snatch Lot from the flames, took hold of him and dragged him out by the hands (Gen 19:16); and the Lord, so that Peter might go to martyrdom where he did not wish, girded him with the power of his help, saying: “Another will gird you and lead you where you do not wish” (John 21:18). And the heavenly Father not only receives the willing but also draws the unwilling, as the Son says: “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him” (John 6:44). How does he believe himself a Christian who does not lead the old and aged to Christ? Or how does he judge his house to be God's fold where God's flock gives no bleating of young? I beg and entreat you, dearest brothers, by our Lord, that you all be watchful in this, so that in these days no one may be left an exile from God's grace, no one from divine rebirth, so that what God is going to confer on others by his grace may increase your joy and overflow into it. We are human beings living amid uncertainty, “and we do not know what the coming day may bring forth” (Prov 27:1). Let us act, then, dearly beloved, so that our slaves, children, spouses, and parents may not be overtaken by death and lose the present life without reaching the future one.

[On fasting and the temptations of Christ.] What human curiosity, the labor of the ancients, and worldly wisdom, seeking and long seeking, could not find, the divine law has made easy to know and to be ignorant of. Whence evil, whence guilt, whence the force of vices, whence the frenzy of crimes, whence the wars of bodies, whence the conflicts of the soul, whence so great a storm of life, whence so cruel a shipwreck of death: man would not know, had not God's law betrayed the devil. The devil is the author of evil, the origin of wickedness, the enemy of the world, always the enemy of man; he spreads snares, prepares falls, digs pits, arranges ruins, goads bodies, pricks souls, suggests thoughts, sends in angers, gives virtues over to hatred and vices to love, sows errors, nourishes discords, disturbs peace, scatters affections, tears unity apart; he knows enough of evil, nothing of good; he violates divine things, tempts human ones. Hence the reckless tempter is reported to have reached even to Christ, in this way: “And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, afterward he was hungry; and the tempter came and said to him: ‘If you are the Son of God, command that these stones become loaves’” (Matt 4:2–3). Let those who hear this not go against God, not accuse nature, not insult the Creator, not blame the flesh, not complain of the soul, not attack the seasons, not impute it to the stars; let them stop defaming the innocence of creation; let them perceive that evil is an accident, not created, and that God is the creator of good, the devil the inventor of evil; and so let them ascribe evils to the devil, goods to God; let them turn from evil and do good, having God as their helper in good, who gives the power to do what he commands and himself does what he enjoins: for as the devil drives to evil, so God leads to good. Let no one, then, obey the vices as if they were created together with him, and think that what belongs to crime belongs to nature; but let him take up with Christ the arms of fasting, drive back the onslaughts of crimes, cast down the camps of vices, and with Christ fighting win the victory over the very author of evil. Once the devil is conquered, the vices will have no power, because when the tyrant is destroyed the tyrant's battle lines are broken up. Hear the Apostle saying: “Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places” (Eph 6:12). “Then,” it says, “Jesus was led into the desert by the Spirit.” Not by the devil, so that it might be a divine course, not a human assault; so that it might be the Spirit of foreknowledge and not human ignorance, the power of God and not the power of the enemy. The devil always assails the beginnings of good, tempts the first lessons of the virtues, hurries to extinguish holy things at their very birth, knowing that he cannot overturn them once they are founded. Christ, not ignorant of this, patiently gave himself over to the devil who was seeking him, so that the enemy might himself be held by his own snare and be caught where he thought he was catching, and so, conquered by Christ, he might give way to Christians. “And when he had fasted,” it says, “forty days and forty nights.” You see, brothers, that our fasting of Lent is not a human invention but a divine authority; it is mystical, not presumptuous; it does not come from earthly custom but from heavenly secrets. The forty contains in four tens the four-square discipline of faith, because perfection is always four-square. What mysteries the number four and the number ten hold in heaven and on earth there is no time to open now; let us explain the fast that the Lord began. “And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights.” O man, God fasts in you, hungers in you; rather, he fasts for you, hungers for you, he who, as he does not know how to eat for himself, so cannot hunger for himself. So when Christ fasts on your account, he hungers for you. “And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, afterward he was hungry.” This is not a sign of weakness but a mark of power; for when it says “afterward he was hungry,” it proves that for forty days and forty nights there was no hunger in him. To feel hunger and conquer it belongs to human labor; to have no hunger belongs to divine power. So Christ does not grow weary with fasting nor hunger with famine; but Christ hungered so that the devil might find material for tempting, because he did not dare approach one who was fasting, since fasting so, he perceived him as God, not man. Then he perceived a man, then he believed him mortal, then he thought he could be tempted, when the crafty spy saw him hungry. “And the tempter came and said.” He came with the guile of a tempter, not with the affection of one who would serve. He came, more shameless in his coming than in his going. But let us hear what he offered the hungry one: “Command that these stones become loaves.” He offers stones to the hungry: such is always the enemy's kindness; so the author of death feeds; so the one who envies life. “Command that these stones become loaves.” Devil, your foresight deceives you. He who can change stones into bread can turn hunger into fullness. What use is your counsel to one whose own power suffices? “Command that these stones become loaves.” Devil, you have both betrayed yourself and not fed your Lord. “Command that these stones become loaves.” Wretch, you want to be evil but cannot; you long to tempt but do not know how; to the hungry you should have offered soft things, not hard; you should have coaxed hunger with flattering things, not rough ones, pressed starvation with dainties, not with horrors. With these you could not ensnare even a son of man, let alone the Son of God. Understand, tempter, that your arts perish in the presence of Christ. “Command that these stones become loaves.” He who turned water into wine can make loaves from stones. But signs are to be given to faith, not to guile; they are to be given to one who believes, not to one who tempts; they are to be done for the salvation of the one who asks, not to the injury of the one who does them. Devil, what are signs to you, whom nothing helps toward salvation, for whom everything remains for punishment, for whom even signs serve only for ruin? But take the answer, so that you may understand yourself and submit to your author: “Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.” Hear the Word of the Father hungering for the words of our salvation, not for bread, and acting so that man may always live by the heavenly word, not always by earthly bread; and so live for God as to know nothing of his own toil; for truly that is the life which knows no sweat, has no pains, has no end.

[On the same.] Since we see that the springtime of fasting, the season of spiritual wars, has arrived, let us, as soldiers of Christ, lay aside the sluggishness of body and soul and go out to the field of the virtues, so that limbs softened by winter idleness may be strengthened by exercise with heavenly arms. We have given the body a year; let us give the soul days. We have spent our times on ourselves; let us set apart a time for the Author. Let us live a little for God, we who have lived wholly for the world. Let us put aside household cares and remain in the camp of the Church; let us keep watch in Christ's battle line; let us not seek the sleep of our beds; let us join the brave; let us be separated from soft embraces; let the love of triumphs hold us, and let the coaxing of little children not call us away; let the divine voice sound in our ears, and let the noise of the household not confuse our hearing; let a sparing meal be taken from the heavenly ration, and let no abundance of earthly luxury be sought; in drinking let sobriety be kept, so that it may last; let drunkenness not unnerve our strength. Whatever is left over from our pay, let the poor fellow soldier take, so that no harmful waste may lose anything: in the battle you will have as your help the hungry comrade whom you feed. So fortified, brothers, so equipped, let us declare war on sins, set a battle against crimes, announce a conflict with vices, secure of victory: for earthly enemies will not be able to overcome heavenly arms, nor worldly adversaries oppose the divine King; no hostile overthrow will be able to surprise those set in the battle-readiness of faith; nor will the devil prevail to throw into confusion with his sudden attacks the cautious, the watchful, the sober; certainly he will not dare to challenge us, so armed, to an open fight, nor presume to attack us with tricks. Let the mind keep to its heavenly watchtower; let it beat down and turn aside the devil's deceitful and hidden snares. The devil is wicked of himself, but he becomes more wicked when provoked. Hear the Apostle saying: “The devil, like a roaring lion, goes about seeking whom he may devour” (1 Pet 5:8). When we fast, the devil goes hungry, he who always feeds on our faults. He turns our food into gluttony and spreads our drink into drunkenness, to make the mind mindless, to turn the flesh into mud, and to reduce the body, the dwelling of the mind, the vessel of the soul, the wall of the spirit, the school of the virtues, the temple of God, into a stage for crimes, a parade of vices, a theater of pleasure. He takes his fill, receives pleasure, is sated with feasts, when luxury dissolves us, lust goads us, display carries us off, ambition drives us, anger presses us, fury fills us, envy kindles us, greed inflames us, cares disturb us, lawsuits vex us, profits capture us, interest binds us, bonds tie us, purses weigh us down, gold crushes us. When the virtues die, the vices live, pleasure flows out, honor perishes, mercy fails, avarice abounds, confusion reigns, order collapses, discipline is laid low. These fight against the soldier of Christ; these are Satan's cohorts, these the devil's legions; these are what have besieged the world with tombs, conquered peoples, laid waste nations, led the whole world captive. These are what no mortal could withstand by himself; and so to conquer them God himself came, the King of heaven himself came down, the one victor himself arrived, setting the forty days' fast in battle array, so that by the four tens of fasting he might fortify the whole square of the world with an impregnable wall. Fasting, brothers, we know to be God's citadel, Christ's camp, the wall of the spirit, the banner of faith, the sign of chastity, the trophy of holiness. Adam would have kept it in paradise, from which gluttony dragged him (Gen 3). Noah guarded it in the ark when drunkenness drowned the world (Gen 7). Through it Lot put out the fire of Sodom, he who through drunkenness was burned by the fire of incest (Gen 19). It made Moses shine with the light of divine fervor when feasting and drunkenness darkened the people of Israel with the errors of idols (Exod 32). It carried Elijah up to heaven when drunkenness cast the impious Ahab down to the lower world (2 Kgs 2). It made John greater among those born of women when drunkenness made King Herod a murderer at the command of women (Mark 6). The fast of Lent, brothers, has betrayed and exposed the devil's old snares. For the devil, who had despised Christ when he ate and had reckoned him a mere man when he drank, when he saw him fasting suspected that he was God and confessed him Son of God. “If you are the Son of God,” he says, “command that these stones become loaves” (Matt 4:3). In speaking so, the devil wants to show a man, not God: he does not want to prepare food but to cut off the fast. “If you are the Son of God, command that these stones become loaves.” After a fast it is not divine power but human weakness that seeks bread; nor, if God grows weary from hunger, does he give up providing food for himself, which is within his power. From what follows, the devil reveals what he is attempting: “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down.” He wants very much to prove him a man, providing for him not an ascent but a fall: the human condition is found hard to rise, easy to fall. “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down.” You are wrong, devil, you do not even know how to tempt: God cannot fall. “Then he showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory, and said to him: ‘All these I will give you, if you fall down and worship me.’” O the devil's daring! He says to God, “Worship me”; but soon he felt the one he was seeking to be God in his powers, judge in his punishments, and suppliant in his rewards. For at the name of Christ, the name of the one who fasted, he began to be driven out of possessed bodies and, trembling, to give glory to the one whom in his pride he had cunningly insulted. He conquered by fasting so that he might in this way grant us the strength and the pattern for conquering. “This kind,” he says, “is not cast out except by fasting and prayer.” Let us fast, then, brothers, if we wish to imitate Christ, if we wish to overcome the devil's deceitful cunning.