Sermons 98–101

[On the parable of the mustard seed.] You have heard today, brothers, how the whole greatness of the heavenly kingdom has been compared to a grain of mustard seed. And why does so small, so tiny a likeness, indeed the tiniest of the tiny, contain so great a power? For the Lord speaks thus: “What is the kingdom of God like, and to what shall I compare it?” (Luke 13:18). When he says, “What is it like?”, he displays and puts forward the feeling of one who is searching. Does he, the Word alone, the spring of knowledge, the river of speech, who waters the hearts of all, opens the senses and enlarges the mind, now labour to find a comparison? But let us hear what he found. “The kingdom of heaven,” he says, “is like a grain of mustard seed.” Searching in heaven and on earth, he found nothing but a grain of mustard seed in which to enclose the whole power of the heavenly lordship; and does he narrow and shut that kingdom, mighty in its uniqueness, happy in its eternity, shining with divinity, spread through all heaven and extended over all the earth, within the narrow limits of a grain of mustard seed? “The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed.” Is this the whole hope of believers? Is this the highest expectation of the faithful? Is this the happiness of virgins, won by long labours of continence? Is this the glory of martyrs, gained by the shedding of all their blood? Is this what “eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered the heart of man” (1 Cor 2:9)? Is this what the Apostle, by an ineffable mystery, promises has been prepared for those who love God? Brothers, let us not be easily troubled by the Lord's sayings; for if “the weakness of God is stronger than men, and the foolishness of God is wiser than men” (1 Cor 1:25), this least thing of God is found more magnificent than the whole greatness of the world; if only we so sow this grain of mustard seed in our minds that it grows for us into a great tree of understanding, and our perception is lifted with all its height to heaven and spreads into all the branches of knowledge; and so it kindles our burning mouths with the lively savour of its fruit, and so blazes in us with all the fire of its seed and flames in our breast, and by its taste takes from us all the distaste of our ignorance. “The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed, which a man took and put in his garden, and it grew and became a great tree, and the birds of the sky rested in its branches.” The kingdom of God, as he says, is like a grain of mustard seed: it is brought from above by the word, received by hearing, sown by faith, rooted by belief; it grows by hope, spreads by confession, extends by virtue, and is widened into branches, to which it calls the birds of the sky, that is, spiritual minds, and receives them in them in a quiet dwelling. Let the heretic come, let him come, because entry always lies open to those who return to the church; let him come, let him hear, and let him now stop barking against the Lord's loving condescension. If the whole majesty of the heavenly kingdom comes to the likeness of a grain of mustard seed, why is it questioned that God came down to man and the Lord to the form of a servant? For he came in this way, heretic, so that everything might grow for you through faith, for whom everything had already failed by nature. “The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed.” But let us return to the mustard seed; for in this way the whole sum of the kingdom remains and stands in the kingdom of heaven. Christ is the kingdom of heaven, who, like a grain of mustard seed, was put into the garden of a virgin's body, grew on the cross into a tree over the whole world, and, when crushed in his passion, gave such savour of his fruit that he seasoned and flavoured by his touch whatever has life. For as in a whole grain of mustard its strength lies hidden, but its strength appears most vehemently if it is crushed, so Christ, who did not want his power to be hidden, willed to be crushed in his body. And let us too, brothers, crush this grain of mustard, so that we may feel its force in this comparison. Christ is king, because he himself is the whole origin of reigning; Christ is the kingdom, because in him is the whole majesty of his kingdom; Christ is man, because the whole man is restored in Christ; Christ is the grain of mustard seed, in which the whole greatness of God is lessened to the whole smallness of man. And what more? He became all things in order to restore all in himself. Christ the man received the grain of mustard seed: that is, Christ the man received the kingdom of God which Christ as God always had; he put it into his garden, that is, into the church, his bride. He often mentions this garden in the Song of Songs, saying: “A garden enclosed” (Song 4:12). The church is a garden spread over the whole world by the ploughshare of the Gospel, enclosed by the goads of discipline, cleared of every evil weed by apostolic labour, pleasant with the young plants of the faithful, the lilies of virgins, the roses of martyrs, the greenery of confessors, fragrant with everlasting flowers. So Christ put this grain of mustard seed into his garden, that is, by the promise of his kingdom; it took root in the patriarchs, was born in the prophets, grew in the apostles, became a great tree in the church, and put forth manifold branches in gifts, which the Apostle enumerates, saying: “To one is given the word of wisdom, to another the word of knowledge, to another the care of healings, to another the working of mighty works, to another prophecy, to another the discernment of spirits, to another kinds of tongues” (1 Cor 12:8–10). You have heard, brothers, into what a tree this grain of mustard seed has burst forth; you have heard what roots it has laid down; you have heard into what kind of branches, and how great, it has now spread and sown itself, in which the birds of heaven, not of the air, rest in the security of faith, flying on the wings of wisdom and prudence. And you, listen, if you do not want to fear earthly beasts, if you want to avoid birds of prey and greedy vultures, that is, the birds of the air, which are all the spiritual forces of wickedness: rise from the earth, leave earthly things behind; take the silvered wings of the prophetic dove (Ps 68:13), take feathers radiant with the brightness of the divine Sun, fly out in the likeness of gold, so that you may rest always on such great branches, assailed by no snares, strong from such a flight and secure in such a dwelling. Of the next comparison we shall speak in the next sermon, the Lord teaching us.

[On the parable of the leaven.] The course of today's reading has run well, so that the gospel woman, our mother, has received leaven from the Lord, by which this temple of such holiness has today been raised up for us and has risen into a mass. For the Lord began thus: “To what shall I compare the kingdom of God? It is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of flour, until the whole was leavened” (Luke 13:20–21). The good Lord, Christ the lover of his own, repeats likenesses of his kingdom and varies his comparisons, which he does not take from hidden things or seek from heavenly ones, but brings out of daily use and sets before us from common life, so that what is to profit all may reach every kind of person, according to the prophet's word: “Hear this, all nations; give ear, all who inhabit the world, both the earth-born and the sons of men, rich and poor together” (Ps 49:1–2). If he brought into the open anything from the hidden things of divinity, anything from royal secrets, anything from the inner rooms of the rich, the poor would not know it, ordinary people would not grasp it, the simple would not have it made known to them; but now he speaks of things known to the rich, familiar to the poor, homely to all by the very necessity of life, because in God's call it is the human being who is sought, and in his calling no distinction is made of persons. But let us go over the comparison that was read. “To what,” he says, “shall I compare the kingdom of God?” Speaking thus, he holds the minds of his hearers in suspense and makes them wholly astonished as to what could be compared to the kingdom of God, to the divine empire; and while their minds wander through many great things, the Lord of heaven finds and forms the example of his kingdom in a poor man's lodging, in the hand of a woman baking bread, saying: “It is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of flour, until the whole was leavened.” Before, he compared his kingdom to a grain of mustard seed; now he makes it like leaven. Before, he mentions that a man received the grain of mustard seed; now he declares that a woman received the leaven. Before, he says that a man sowed a tiny seed for the growth of a great tree; now he shows that a woman hid a little leaven for the rising of the whole mass. Truly, as the apostle Paul said: “In the Lord neither is man without woman, nor woman without man” (1 Cor 11:11). A varied comparison leads the different sexes to one kingdom, and the Christian calling does not separate man from woman, whom God joins, nature unites, makes alike in a wonderful likeness and fits together in condition and form; and God brings it about that in one human being there are two, in two there is one, and the other is the man himself in the bond of marriage, so that there is neither destitute singleness nor confused union. But why does the Lord set out these likenesses of his kingdom through a man and a woman? Why does he form so great a majesty from such lowly and unequal examples? Brothers, a precious mystery lies hidden in this lowliness, as the Apostle says: “This mystery is great; but I speak of Christ and the church” (Eph 5:32). By these comparisons the principal business of the human race is conducted; through man and woman the case of the world, argued through the ages, is concluded. Adam the first man and Eve the first woman are led from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Gen 3) to the heat of the gospel mustard, so that the eyes which the enticing tree closed by opening them, the mustard tree might open by closing them with the eye-salve and the very sharpness of its grain; that the mouths which the taste of the poisonous tree had infected, the saving tree might heal with the fiery savour of its taste; and that this tree with its fiery food might kindle with all the heat of a good life the conscience which that tree had made cold with complete numbness. Nakedness here no longer acts or feels shame, where pardon covers the whole man and the clothing of faith makes him warm: but this is conferred on the woman through the grain of mustard seed which the man received. What is conferred on the man through the leaven which the woman received, let us examine more carefully. “The kingdom of God,” he says, “is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of flour.” The matter is drawn from ordinary life: the man sows the mustard tree in the field; at home the woman sees to the leaven and prepares the loaves for food, because labour awaits the man outside, while domestic care binds the woman within. That is why Sarah, barren and old, from this preparation of leaven and from three measures, offers and sets three hearth-cakes before the Lord whom she hosted, in a mystical service (Gen 18:6), so that the barrenness of the world, shut up in complete old age, might place the leaven of faith in three measures, that is, in the equality of Father and Son and Holy Spirit, and set three loaves before her Lord in confession of the Trinity; and for this gift she was made fruitful for the whole offspring of the Christian stock. But let us return to our subject. The woman received from God the leaven of faith, she who had received from the devil the leaven of faithlessness; she hid it in three measures, that is, in the three periods of mankind, from Adam to Noah, from Noah to Moses, from Moses to Christ; so that the woman who had corrupted the whole mass of the human race with the leaven of death in Adam might restore the whole mass of our flesh with the leaven of resurrection in Christ; so that the woman who had made the bread of groaning and sweat might bake the bread of life and salvation; and that she who in Adam was the mother of all the dead might through Christ be the true mother of all the living. For this is why Christ willed to be born, so that as death came to all through Eve, so life might return to all through Mary. Mary fulfils the type of this leaven, bears its likeness and seals its figure, when she receives from above the leaven of the Word, and in the Virgin's womb, yes, in the Virgin's womb, she mixes human flesh into a wholly heavenly mass. But now let us set out what allegorical sense remains in this likeness. The woman who received the leaven is the church; the leaven she received is the mystery of heavenly teaching; the three measures in which she is said to have hidden the leaven are the Law, the Prophets and the Gospels, where the divine sense is hidden and concealed in a mystical word, so that it may not be hidden from the faithful but may be hidden from the unbelieving. And what he said, “until the whole was leavened,” is what the Apostle says: “We know in part and we prophesy in part; but when the perfect comes, what is in part will cease” (1 Cor 13:9–10). Divine knowledge is now in the mixing; it sprinkles the senses, raises hearts, enlarges minds, and in the manner of teaching it expands, rouses and spreads the growth of heavenly wisdom; the whole is leavened. When? When Christ comes.

[On the Syrophoenician, or Canaanite, woman.] Today blessed Mark, while he commends the prudence of the Syrophoenician woman, reports her faith and extols the ardour of her belief, raises no small question for attentive hearers, when he says: “And rising from there the Lord went away to the region of Tyre and Sidon; and entering a house, he wanted no one to know, and he could not be hidden” (Mark 7:24). He wanted, and he could not: to want and not to be able does not belong to divine majesty but to human weakness; for it is written: “Whatever the Lord willed he has done, in heaven and on earth, in the sea and in all the deeps” (Ps 135:6). And the Apostle: “Who resists his will?” (Rom 9:19). A will that is not free and unrestrained succumbs to necessity. The leper says to the Lord: “If you will, you can make me clean” (Matt 8:2); and the evangelist says: “He wanted, and he could not.” What does blessed Mark mean? Is the woman's faith to be so exalted that the Lord's power and will are made to bend? Or is the shrewdness of faith so great that it can search out the divine secret against God's will? This seems to me to be like the time when the Lord wished to bring to light the faith of the woman with the flow of blood as a proof of his power, and to prove it by asking: “Who touched me?” And the disciples say to him: “The crowds are pressing upon you, and you say, Who touched me?” (Mark 5:30–31). It seemed to the disciples that all were touching the Lord, pressing on him with the body alone, and that all were joined to him alike by such bodily jostling; but he, who had perceived otherwise and was asking otherwise, knew that this woman had reached his majesty and penetrated to his power by mind, not by body, not by common touch but by faith. That is why not man but God, not flesh but spirit, cries out: “Who touched me?”, so that the power of the deed might reveal him whom his humanity was then hiding. But let us inquire more clearly what “he wanted” and what “he could not” mean. Christ, mindful of his promise, had come first for the salvation of the people of Israel, so that he might faithfully pay in full what he had promised to Abraham (Gen 22) and to his offspring David (Ps 132) and to his descendants; but because they made themselves unworthy by their faithlessness, the faith of the Gentiles obtained, seized and carried off what the unbelief of the Jews despised and lost. Hear him saying: “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Matt 15:24). But sheep already rabid from contact with wolves, and fiercer in their savagery than the beasts themselves, always wanted to tear and violate their shepherd; and so Christ could not fulfil his will, not from any inability of his own, but because of the wickedness of the lost; and he was compelled to confer on some what he had brought for others, as he himself says: “The kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent seize it” (Matt 11:12). The faith of the Gentiles did violence, so as to seize the Father's inheritance and carry off the whole inheritance of the sons, as is shown more clearly in the present reading. “For the woman, as soon as she heard of him, whose daughter had an unclean spirit, came in and fell at his feet. The woman was a Gentile, a Syrophoenician by birth. And she begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter. He said to her: Let the children first be fed; for it is not good to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs.” He did not say, “It is not good to throw it to the dogs,” but, “It is not good to take it from the children and throw it to the dogs”: because giving bread to dogs, even if it is not an act of kindness, is still a matter of human good sense. A dog, at night while its masters sleep, as guard and ever watchful, exposes the stranger, disturbs the thief and confronts the robber, to relieve the care and anxiety of the servants. But how did he take the bread from the children, to whom he had offered, given and pressed it so often and in such ways? But they tried to trample what was offered to the point of crime, not to take it for life; and yet, when it had been broken and trampled by the children, the dog hastened to lick it up with all faith and all desire. That is why she answered thus: “Yes, Lord; for even the little dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs.” Rightly is she who confessed herself a dog changed into a human being, and rightly are those who did not want to be sons turned into dogs; rightly is she adopted as a daughter, raised up and honoured at the table, who cast herself down under the table in praiseworthy and provident humility; justly does she now feast wholly on the crumbs of the bread, who understood and confessed that by her own merits she scarcely deserved it. And what more? That is why, because of his justice, the Lord could neither give to the Jews nor deny to the Gentiles.

[On death, which the faithful should despise, and why God permitted it; on the saying of Luke: “Do not fear those who kill the body,” etc.] You have heard, brothers, how Christ addresses his soldiers with a royal exhortation, that they should not dread those who kill the body when they see death. Indeed, he enrolls among his friends those who, out of zeal for the triumph and love of freedom, shed their blood with joy and without trembling; for he says thus: “I tell you, my friends, do not be afraid of those who kill the body and after that have nothing more that they can do. But I will show you whom to fear: fear him who, after he has killed, has power to cast into Gehenna” (Luke 12:4–5). “I tell you, my friends, do not be afraid”: because courage proves freedom and fear shows servitude; the free man is born for glory, the slave for fear. Rightly, then, is he raised to God's friendship who for God's sake despises human deaths and knows no fear. If imitation of conduct makes friends and likeness of conduct joins them, Christ fittingly calls friends those whom he perceives and foresees will, by imitating him, trample on the darts of the world and the very dread of death. “But I tell you”: that is, not everyone, but my friends. “I tell you”: whom this death releases, not ends. “I tell you”: whom the dissolution of the body promotes to something better, not transfers to punishment. “I tell you”: for whom life begins with death, and does not end. “I tell you”: whose death becomes precious not by its manner but by its cause, since it finds the gains of life rather than losing the use of life. But let us hear what he says to his friends. “Do not be afraid of those who kill the body.” Let those hear who have worn out the old volumes of the ancients on the good of death and yet could take nothing of strength from them or find any consolation. For although with all the forces of eloquence they armed minds to endure death, dried tears, removed sighs, forbade groans and shut in griefs, they gained nothing for their readers concerning sure hope, everlasting life or true salvation. Who would say to a man, to a man, to a wise man: “Dying is natural; one must perish. The ancients lived for us, we live for those to come, no one for himself. To will what cannot be taken away is virtue; take up willingly what you are driven to unwillingly. Death does not exist before it comes; when it has come, it is not known to have come. So do not grieve at losing what you will not grieve for once you have lost it”? But when they have said such things, they say it all out of opinion, not out of life. For they did not know whence, when, how and through whom death came to you; but to us the author of life has disclosed the author of death; for God made life, and the devil plotted against life, as the divine word discloses: “God did not make death” (Wis 1:13), “but through the devil's envy death entered the world” (Wis 2:24). But you say: Why did God allow his own work to perish by the work of the devil? O man, if you wanted to know what you ask, you would give yourself a little leisure, give your mind, open your ears, so that you, so curious a judge, might recognize the principal matter. But you, always busy with other things and never with yourself, idle and lazy, make accusations because you do not know the causes of things, the whole business of the ages, the depth of the judgments and their impenetrable secret. Did you not, to learn the strokes of letters and the alphabet, bound to a teacher and fixed in school, wholly patient of labour and punishment, forget your home and your parents? How useful it is to you that a teacher is bound to you and a school pressed on you, and that the teacher, with his own labour, begs you under penalty to be willing to know these things and to deign to hear such great things. The apostles prove this, and above all Paul, who taught by being beaten, not by beating, so that, as an outstanding teacher, he bore and endured as many sufferings as there are characters among men. And we learn in a moment of time the beginnings of things and the causes of the world, because we are commanded to teach them; and how are we commanded? And you do not listen as you ought; such servitude, such necessity excuses us; such great freedom, such a will accuses you beyond doubt: what we say belongs to our office; what we leave unsaid belongs to your distaste. You ask, O man, why God did not at once extinguish death together with its author, and did not then by his providence forestall the deadly poison, so that it might not bring destruction on the whole world, and especially on his own image? The sky which you see, O man, made firm by the whole air, carries many waters and is itself carried by nothing, because a command alone suspends it, the force of a precept alone sustains it, as the divine word discloses: “Who stretches out the sky like a skin, who covers its upper parts with waters” (Ps 104:2–3). The earth, trodden by so great a weight and made firm by the burden and mass of the mountains, floats on liquid from its foundation, as the prophet says: “Who founded the earth on the waters” (Ps 136:6), so that its standing may be from command, not from nature. “He spoke,” it says, “and they were made; he commanded, and they were created” (Ps 148:5), so that their standing may be from divine work, not human reason. The sea, which is borne along with such a whirl of commotion and raised to the clouds, is bridled by thin sands, so that we may see that so great a power yields not to dust but to a command. All things in them move and live, made by command alone; the prophet confirms that they are to be dissolved again by command alone, when he says: “In the beginning, Lord, you founded the earth, and the heavens are the works of your hands; they will perish, but you will remain; they will all grow old like a garment, and like a covering you will change them, and they will be changed” (Ps 102:25–26). How? So that the creature may perish to time through age, not to the Creator. But now you, whoever you are who ask, say that we have wandered off: because, when you ask why God allowed death to remain for the destruction of his handiwork, we have described at length heaven, earth and sea, made from nothing and to be dissolved again into nothing, and have procured for you more and more matter for inquiry. You say: I asked why man perishes; you have confirmed that the very elements will perish, so as to provide mortal minds with consolation from the universality of perishing, not with rest from reason; as though it were not a grief that heaven perishes, the earth is dissolved, and the whole face of things is abolished by the law of mortality. You say: I ask, what is more beautiful than the sky? What more splendid than the sun? What more pleasing than the moon? What more adorned than the stars? What more wholesome than the earth? What more useful than the sea? Or what old age is there in these, which persevere as they were born and made? Surely it would be more pleasing for these to stand than to perish. O man, perhaps it would be more pleasant, but not more useful: for while they stood, you wavered; while they shone, you were blinded so that you did not see; the brightness of the sky stupefied your senses, the sun blinded your eyes with its splendour; for, deceived by their beauty, you denied their maker; these you confessed to be the rulers of the world, these to be gods, which the true God had made subject to your service. So it is necessary that all things be dissolved and all renewed, so that you may at least then believe them made, when you see them restored. Do not think that we have wandered off, when you see that we have run through the whole creation as an argument for your understanding. O man, when your author made you from dust, you did not see it; for if you had seen yourself made, you would never have lamented in this way that you would die. You saw yourself completed, you saw yourself living, you saw yourself comely, you already saw yourself like your author; you who had seen neither your birth nor your death did not know from what you came or what you were. That is why you gave everything to nature, yourself to yourself, and nothing to God; therefore God brought you back through nature and allowed you to be recalled from what you were into dust, so that you might see in this way what you had been, and, about to rise again, might give thanks, you who, when made and created, proved most ungrateful. So let us not fear, brothers, as the Lord said, those who kill the body, because they do not destroy this life but dismantle it, while they make it everlasting from temporal. What more, brothers? He who could raise allowed death then; he who is able to give life allowed killing; to whom be honour and glory for ages of ages. Amen.