On Catechizing the Uninstructed 9–15

There are also some who come from the most common schools of the grammarians and orators, whom you would not dare to count among the ignorant, nor yet among those most learned men whose minds have been trained by questions about great matters. To these, then, who seem to excel other people in the art of speaking, when they come to become Christians, we ought to impart this more than to the illiterate: they must be carefully warned to put on Christian humility and learn not to despise those whom they know to avoid faults of conduct more than faults of words; and not to dare even to compare a trained tongue with a chaste heart, which they had been accustomed even to rank above it. Above all, these must be taught to listen to the divine Scriptures, so that solid eloquence may not seem mean to them because it is not inflated; and so that they may not think that the words or deeds of men that are read in those books, wrapped and covered in fleshly coverings, are not to be unrolled and opened up so as to be understood, but are to be taken just as the letters sound; and concerning the very usefulness of what is secret, from which they are also called mysteries, how much the hiding places of riddles avail to sharpen the love of truth and to shake off the torpor of disdain, this must be proved to such people by experience itself, when something that did not move them much when it lay open to view is drawn out by the unravelling of some allegory. For it is most useful for these to know that thoughts are to be ranked above words as the soul is ranked above the body. From this it follows that they ought to prefer to hear truer rather than more eloquent discourses, as they ought to prefer to have wiser rather than handsomer friends. Let them know also that nothing is a voice to the ears of God but the affection of the mind; for then they will not mock if they happen to notice that some bishops and ministers of the Church either call on God with barbarisms and solecisms, or do not understand the very words they pronounce, and divide them up confusedly. Not that these things should not be corrected, so that the people may say Amen to what it plainly understands; but they should be tolerated devoutly by those who have learned that, as in the forum it is a matter of sound, so in the Church it is of desire that blessing is spoken. And so that forensic speech may sometimes perhaps be called good diction, but never benediction. As for the sacrament they are about to receive, it is enough for the more intelligent to hear what that thing signifies; but with the slower, one must deal with rather more words and with comparisons, so that they may not despise what they see.

Here perhaps you want some model discourse, so that I may show you in practice how the things I have advised are to be done. I will do this, as far as I can with the Lord's help; but first I must speak, as I promised, of gaining that cheerfulness. For I have now paid what I promised, as far as seemed sufficient, about the precepts for setting out a discourse in catechizing one who has come to become a Christian. It is not owed, indeed, that I should myself do in this volume what I teach ought to be done. If, then, I do it, it will count as an overflow; but how can I pour out an overflow before I have filled up the measure of what is owed? For I did not hear you complain chiefly of anything except that your discourse seemed to you cheap and poor when you were grounding someone in the Christian name. But I know that this comes not so much from a lack of the things to be said, for which I know you are well prepared and equipped, nor from a lack of the power of speech itself, but from weariness of mind: either for the reason I mentioned, because what we perceive in our mind in silence delights and holds us more, and we do not want to be called away from it to the far different noise of words; or because, even when speaking is pleasant, we prefer to hear or read things that have been said better and that are brought out without our trouble and anxiety, rather than to fit sudden words to another's understanding with uncertain outcome, both whether they will come to hand to express the thought and whether they will be received with profit; or because the things that are presented to the uninstructed, since they are very well known to us and no longer needed for our progress, are irksome to return to very often, and a mind that has grown up no longer walks with any pleasure among things so familiar and, as it were, childish. A listener also makes the speaker weary [who is unmoved, either because he is not stirred in feeling or because he gives no sign by any movement of his body that he understands or is pleased by what is said]: not that it becomes us to be greedy for human praise, but because the things we minister are God's; and the more we love those to whom we speak, the more we desire that the things offered for their salvation should please them; and if this does not succeed, we are saddened, and in the very course of our speaking we are weakened and broken, as though we were wearing out our effort in vain. Sometimes, too, when we are turned away from something we wish to do, whose doing either delighted us or seemed more necessary to us, and we are compelled, either by the order of someone we do not wish to offend or by the unavoidable insistence of some people, to catechize someone, we come already troubled to a task that needs great calm, grieving that we are not allowed to keep the order of actions we want and that we cannot be equal to everything; and so the discourse that proceeds from that very sadness is less pleasing, because it flows less abundantly out of the dryness of gloom. At times, again, grief over some scandal has beset the heart, and just then we are told: “Come, speak to this man; he wants to become a Christian.” For it is said by those who do not know what is burning us, shut up within; and if it is not fitting to open our feelings to them, we take on what they want with little pleasure; and surely that discourse will be languid and unpleasant, passed through the channel of a heart that is seething and smoking. Since there are so many causes, whichever of them clouds the calm of our mind, remedies are to be sought according to God, by which that tightness may be loosened, and we may exult in fervour of spirit and be joyful in the calm of a good work. For God loves a cheerful giver. For if the reason we are saddened is that the hearer does not grasp our understanding, from whose summit we are forced in a way to come down and linger in the slowness of syllables far below it, and we are anxious how something that is drunk in by the mind in one swift draught may come out of the mouth of flesh by long and tangled windings, and because it comes out very unlike, we are weary of speaking and would rather be silent: let us think what was granted to us beforehand by him who showed us an example, that we should follow in his steps. For however much our articulate voice differs from the liveliness of our understanding, much more different is the mortality of the flesh from equality with God. And yet, though he was in the same form, he emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, and so on down to the death of the cross. For what reason, if not that he became weak to the weak, that he might gain the weak? Hear his imitator also saying elsewhere: For if we are beside ourselves, it is for God; if we are of sound mind, it is for you. For the love of Christ compels us, judging this, that one died for all. For how would he be ready to be spent for their souls, if it were irksome to him to bend down to their ears? This is why he became a little one in our midst, like a nurse cherishing her children. For is it a delight to murmur clipped and mutilated words, unless love invites it? And yet people long to have infants to whom they may do this; and it is sweeter to a mother to put small chewed morsels into the mouth of her little son than to chew and swallow larger ones herself. So let not the thought of that hen leave our hearts either, which covers her tender brood with drooping feathers and calls her chirping chicks with a broken voice; and those who proudly flee her gentle wings become prey to birds. For if understanding delights in the purest inner places, it is also a delight to understand how love, the more dutifully it comes down to the lowest things, the more strongly it returns to the inmost things, through a good conscience that seeks nothing from those to whom it comes down except their everlasting salvation.

But if we would rather read or hear things that are already prepared and better said, and so are reluctant to fit what we say to the occasion with uncertain outcome: provided only that the mind does not stray from the truth of the matters, it is easy, if anything in the words offends the hearer, for him to learn from that very occasion how little it matters, once the thing is understood, if what sounded so that the thing might be understood could not sound quite correctly or properly. But if the effort of human weakness has strayed even from the truth of the matters themselves (although in catechizing the uninstructed, where the most beaten path is to be kept, this can hardly happen), still, lest the hearer perhaps be offended by this too, it ought to seem to us to have happened for no other reason than that God wished to test us, whether we would be corrected with calmness of mind, so as not to rush headlong into a greater error in defence of our error. And if no one has told us, and it has escaped both us and those who heard altogether, there is no grief, provided it does not happen again. Often, however, we ourselves, going back over what we have said, find something to blame, and do not know how it was received when it was said; and when love burns in us, we grieve the more if, though it was false, it was gladly received. And so, when an opportunity is found, just as we have blamed ourselves in silence, so care must be taken that those too may be gradually corrected who have slipped into some falsehood, not through God's words but plainly through ours. But if some, blinded by mad envy, rejoice that we have erred, whisperers, slanderers, hateful to God, let them give us material for exercising patience with mercy, because the patience of God too leads them to repentance. For what is more detestable, and what more stores up wrath on the day of wrath and of the revelation of the just judgment of God, than to rejoice in another's harm in the likeness and imitation of the devil? Sometimes, too, though everything is said rightly and truly, something either not understood, or harsh by its very novelty, being against the opinion and custom of an old error, offends and disturbs the hearer. If this becomes apparent and he shows himself curable, he must be healed without any delay by an abundance of authorities and reasons. But if the offence is silent and hidden, God's medicine can help. And if he recoils and refuses to be cured, let us be consoled by that example of the Lord, who, when people were offended by his word and drew back from it as hard, said even to those who had stayed, Do you also wish to go away? For it must be held fixed and immovable in the heart that captive Jerusalem will be set free from the Babylon of this world when the times have run their course, and that none of her will perish; because whoever perishes was not of her. For the firm foundation of God stands, having this seal: The Lord knows those who are his; and, Let everyone who names the name of the Lord depart from iniquity. Thinking on these things, and calling the Lord into our heart, we shall fear less the uncertain outcome of our discourse because of the uncertain movements of the hearers; and even the enduring of troubles for a work of mercy will delight us, if we do not seek our own glory in it. For a work is truly good when the intention of the one who acts is launched from love and, as if returning to its own place, rests again in love. And the reading that delights us, or the hearing of some better eloquence, which we would like to set above our own discourse and so speak with sluggishness or weariness, will receive us more eagerly afterward and will be granted us more pleasantly after the labour; and we shall pray with greater confidence that God may speak to us as we wish, if we cheerfully undertake that he may speak through us as we can: thus it comes about that for those who love God all things work together for good.

And now, if we are weary of often repeating things that are familiar and suited to little ones, let us suit ourselves to them by a brotherly, fatherly, and motherly love, and once we are joined to their hearts, even these things will seem new to us. For the feeling of a mind that shares in suffering has such power that, when they are touched by us as we speak and we by them as they learn, we dwell in one another; and so they, as it were, speak in us what they hear, and we in a way learn in them what we teach. Does it not usually happen, when we show certain spacious and beautiful places, whether in cities or in the countryside, which we used to pass by without any pleasure because we had often seen them, to people who had never seen them before, that our delight is renewed in the delight of their novelty? And the more so the closer friends they are; because through the bond of love, so far as we are in them, so far what was old becomes new to us too. But if we have made some progress in contemplating things, we do not want those we love to rejoice and be amazed when they look at the works of men's hands; we want to lift them up to the art itself or the plan of the maker, and from there to rise to the admiration and praise of God, the creator of all, where love has its most fruitful end: how much more, then, ought we to be delighted when people now come to learn of God himself, for whose sake whatever is to be learned is to be learned; and to be renewed in their newness, so that if our customary preaching is rather cold, it may grow warm through their unaccustomed hearing? Add to this, for gaining joy, that we think and consider from what death of error a person is passing into the life of faith. And if we walk through the most familiar streets with kindly cheerfulness when we happen to show the way to someone who had been struggling because he was lost, how much more eagerly and with greater joy ought we to walk, in saving teaching, even those ways that we have no need to go over again for our own sake, when we are leading a pitiable soul, wearied by the errors of the world, along the paths of peace, at the command of him who granted it to us?

But indeed it is a great thing to persevere in speaking up to the set end when we do not see the hearer being moved; whether, constrained by religious fear, he does not dare to indicate his approval by voice or by some movement of the body, or is held back by human shyness, or does not understand what is said, or despises it. Since, as we cannot see his mind, it is uncertain, everything must be tried in our discourse that can serve to rouse him and, as it were, draw him out of hiding. For excessive fear, which hinders him from declaring his judgment, must be driven out by gentle encouragement; shyness must be tempered by suggesting brotherly fellowship; we must ask him whether he understands; and he must be given confidence, so that if anything seems to him to call for objection, he may freely say so. We should also ask him whether he has ever heard these things before, and whether perhaps they do not move him because they are known and commonplace; and we should act according to his answer, so as either to speak more plainly and clearly, or to refute a contrary opinion, or not to unfold at greater length what he knows but to fold it up briefly, and to choose some of the things said in a mystical sense in the holy Books, and especially in the narration itself, in opening and revealing which our discourse may grow sweet. But if he is very slow, and deaf and averse to all such sweetness, he must be borne with mercifully; and after briefly running through the other matters, the things most necessary, about the unity of the Catholic Church, about temptations, about the Christian way of life in view of the future judgment, must be driven home in a way that inspires awe; and more must be said to God for him than to him about God. It often happens, too, that one who at first listened gladly, tired either by listening or by standing, opens his lips no longer to praise but to yawn, and shows even against his will that he wants to go away. When we notice this, we ought either to refresh his mind by saying something seasoned with honest cheerfulness and suited to the matter in hand, or something very wonderful and astonishing, or even something grievous and lamentable, and preferably about himself, so that, stung by concern for himself, he may wake up; yet in a way that does not offend his modesty by any harshness but rather wins him by friendliness; or else we ought to help him by offering him a seat; although without doubt it is better, where it can be done fittingly, that he should listen seated from the beginning; and far more wisely, in some churches overseas, not only do the bishops speak to the people sitting, but seats are also provided for the people themselves, so that no weaker person, wearied by standing, may be turned away from a most wholesome attention, or even be forced to leave. And yet it makes a great difference whether someone withdraws from a great crowd to restore his strength who is already bound by sharing in the sacraments, or whether one leaves who is to be initiated into the first sacraments (for he is mostly forced to do so unavoidably, lest, overcome by inner weakness, he should even fall): for out of shame he does not say why he is going, and out of weakness he is not allowed to stand. I speak from experience: for a certain man, a countryman, did this when I was catechizing him, and from that I learned that this must be carefully guarded against. For who could bear our arrogance, when we do not have men who are our brothers, or, what is to be cared for with greater concern, who are to become our brothers, sit in our presence, when a woman sat and listened to our Lord himself, before whom the angels stand? Certainly, if the discourse is to be short, or the place is not suitable for sitting, let them listen standing; but that is when many are listening, and they are not then to be initiated. For when there are one, or two, or a few who have come in order to become Christians, it is risky to speak to them standing. Yet if we have already begun in this way, at least when we notice the hearer's weariness, a seat should be offered, or rather he should be positively urged to sit, and something should be said to refresh him, and also to chase from his mind any cares that may perhaps have rushed in and begun to call him away. For since the reasons why he now silently declines to listen are uncertain, once he is seated let something be said against the intruding thoughts of worldly business, either in a cheerful or, as I said, a sad manner: so that, if these are what have taken hold of his mind, they may give way as though accused by name; but if it is not these, and he is tired from listening, then when we speak of them as if it were they (since we do not know), saying something unexpected and out of the ordinary in the way I have described, his attention is refreshed from weariness. But let this be brief, especially since it is inserted out of order, lest the medicine itself increase the illness of weariness that we wish to relieve; and the rest should be hurried along, and a nearer end promised and delivered.

But if your mind has been broken by having to leave another task, on which you were already intent as more necessary, and you are catechizing unpleasantly because you are sad, you ought to reflect that, apart from the fact that we know that whatever we do with people is to be done mercifully and out of the duty of the most sincere love, apart from this, then, it is uncertain what we are doing more usefully, and what we are more fittingly either interrupting or leaving undone altogether. For since we do not know what the merits of the people for whom we act are before God, what is good for them at the time we rather suspect, by no conjecture or a very slight or very uncertain one, than grasp. Therefore we ought to arrange the things to be done according to our understanding; and if we are able to carry them out in the way we determined, let us rejoice, not because it pleased us, but because it pleased God that they should be done so; but if some necessity arises by which that order of ours is disturbed, let us bend easily, so as not to break, so that the order which God has preferred to ours may itself be ours. For it is fairer that we should follow his will than that he should follow ours. Because that order of doing things which we wish to keep by our own choice is surely to be approved only where the better things come first. Why then do we grieve that men are preceded by the Lord God, who is so much better, so that by the very fact of loving our own order we desire to be disordered? For no one orders what he does better than one who is readier not to do what is forbidden by the divine power than eager to do what he plans by human thinking. For there are many thoughts in a man's heart, but the counsel of the Lord abides for ever. But if the mind, disturbed by some scandal, cannot produce a calm and pleasant discourse, there ought to be such love toward those for whom Christ died, wishing to redeem them by the price of his blood from the death of worldly errors, that this very news, brought to us in our sadness, that someone is here who wishes to become a Christian, ought to serve to console and dispel that sadness, as the joys of gains usually soften the pain of losses. For the scandal of someone does not sadden us unless we believe or see either that he is perishing or that a weak person is perishing through him. Let the one, then, who comes to be initiated, while he is hoped to make progress, wipe away the grief over the one who is falling away. For even if the fear is suggested that he may become a proselyte, a son of hell, since many such people are before our eyes, from whom arise those scandals with which we are burned, this ought not to serve to hold us back, but rather to rouse and sharpen us: so that we warn the one we are instructing to beware of imitating those who are Christians not in truth itself but in name only; and not, moved by their crowd, either to wish to follow them or to refuse to follow Christ because of them; and either to refuse to be in the Church of God where they are, or to wish to be there such as they are. And somehow in warnings of this kind the discourse is more ardent, when present grief supplies the kindling: so that we are not only not more sluggish, but by that very fact say more fervently and vehemently what, if we were more at ease, we would say more coldly and slowly; and let us rejoice that an occasion is given us where the movement of our mind does not pass away without bearing fruit. But if sorrow seizes us over some error or sin of our own, let us remember not only that a sacrifice to God is a troubled spirit, but also this: As water quenches fire, so almsgiving quenches sin; and, I desire mercy, he says, rather than sacrifice. Just as, then, if we were in danger from fire, we would of course run to water by which it could be put out, and would be grateful if someone offered it from nearby; so if some flame of sin has sprung up from our own hay, and we are troubled because of it, when the occasion of a most merciful work is given, let us rejoice as at a spring offered to us, so that what had flared up may be smothered by it. Unless perhaps we are so foolish as to think that we should run more eagerly with bread to fill the belly of a hungry man than with the word of God to instruct the mind of one who eats it. Add to this that, if it were only profitable to do this, and not doing it did no harm, it would still be a wretched thing for us to spurn the remedy offered when the salvation, not now of our neighbour but our own, is in danger. But since there sounds so threateningly from the mouth of the Lord, Wicked and slothful servant, you should have given my money to the bankers, what madness is it, because our sin distresses us, to wish to sin again by not giving the Lord's money to one who wishes it and asks for it? When the fog of weariness has been driven off by these and similar thoughts and considerations, the attention is fitted for catechizing, so that what bursts forth eagerly and cheerfully from the abundance of love may be drunk in with pleasure. For it is not so much I who say these things to you as love itself says them to all of us, love which has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.

But now perhaps you demand as already owed what I did not owe before I promised it: that I should not be reluctant to set out some model discourse, as if I were catechizing someone, and to put it before you to look at. Before I do this, I want you to reflect that the intention of one who dictates, when a future reader is in mind, is one thing, and that of one who speaks, when a present hearer is in view, is another; and within that, the intention of one who admonishes in private, when no one else is present to judge us, is one thing, and that of one who teaches something publicly, when the ears of people of differing opinions surround him, is another; and within this kind, it is one thing when one person is being taught and the rest listen as though judging or confirming things known to them, and another when all alike are waiting for what we will bring before them; and again within this, it is one thing when people sit together as if in private, so that conversation may be exchanged, and another when the people, silent and intent, gaze at one man about to speak from a raised place; and it makes a great difference, even when we speak in this way, whether few or many are present; learned or unlearned, or a mixture of both; city people or country people, or both together; or a congregation made up of every kind of person. For it cannot be but that they affect the one who is to speak and discourse in one way and another, and that the discourse which is uttered bears, as it were, a kind of expression of the feeling of the mind from which it is uttered, and by that same variety affects the hearers variously, since they too affect one another variously by their presence. But since we are now dealing with instructing the uninstructed, I can testify to you about myself that I am moved in one way and another when I see before me to be catechized a learned man, a dull man, a citizen, a foreigner, a rich man, a poor man, a private person, a man of rank, one set in some position of power, a man of this or that nation, of this or that age or sex, coming from this or that sect, from this or that popular error: and according to the variety of my feeling, the discourse itself both begins, goes on, and ends. And since the same love is owed to all, but the same medicine is not to be applied to all, that same love is in labour with some, is weak with others; takes care to build up some, trembles to offend others; bends down to some, lifts itself up to others; gentle to some, severe to others, an enemy to none, a mother to all. And one who has not experienced, with the same love, what I am saying, when he sees us, because some gift granted to us delights in becoming known with praise on the lips of the multitude, thinks us happy for that reason; but may God, into whose sight comes the groaning of the prisoners, see our humility and our toil, and forgive all our sins. Therefore, if anything in us has pleased you so much that you sought to hear from us some guidance for your discourse, you would learn it better by seeing and hearing us when we are doing these things than by reading when we are dictating them.