The Lord's Sermon on the Mount 2.9–2.14

The sixth petition is, “And do not bring us into temptation.” Some manuscripts have “lead,” which I think means just as much: for both were translated from the one Greek word that was used, εἰσενέγκῃς. But many, in praying, say, “Do not allow us to be led into temptation,” explaining, that is, in what sense “lead” was said. For God does not lead by himself, but allows to be led one whom he has deprived of his help, by a most hidden order and according to his deserts. Often, too, for manifest causes, he judges him worthy to be deserted and allowed to be led into temptation. But it is one thing to be led into temptation, another to be tempted. For without temptation no one can be proved, whether to himself, as is written, “He who has not been tempted, what does he know?”, or to another, as the Apostle says, “And you did not despise my temptation in my flesh”: for from this he came to know them as steadfast, that they were not turned aside from love by those tribulations which had befallen the Apostle according to the flesh. For we are known to God even before all temptations, since he knows all things before they happen. So what is written, “The Lord your God tests you, to know whether you love him,” has been set down by that figure of speech in which “to know” stands for “to make you know”; as we call a day glad because it makes people glad, and cold sluggish because it makes people sluggish, and countless things of this kind, which are found in ordinary speech, in the language of the learned, or in the holy Scriptures. Not understanding this, the heretics who oppose the Old Testament think that he of whom it is said, “The Lord your God tests you,” is to be branded with the fault of ignorance: as if it were not written in the Gospel of the Lord, “But this he said testing him; for he himself knew what he would do.” For if he knew the heart of the one he was testing, what is it that he wished to see by testing? But surely this was done so that he who was tested might become known to himself and condemn his own despair, when the crowds had been filled with the Lord’s bread, though he had thought they had nothing to eat.

Here, then, it is not prayed that we not be tempted, but that we not be brought into temptation: as if someone who must be tested by fire prayed not that he not be touched by fire, but that he not be burned up. “For the furnace proves the potter’s vessels, and the trial of tribulation righteous men.” Joseph, then, was tempted by the enticement of illicit intercourse, but was not brought into temptation; Susanna was tempted, nor was she led or brought into temptation; and many others of both sexes; but Job above all, whose admirable steadfastness in the Lord his God those heretics, the enemies of the Old Testament, wish to ridicule with sacrilegious mouth, and they toss about this above all, that Satan asked for him to be tempted. For they ask unskilled men, who are quite unable to understand such things, how Satan could have spoken with God: not seeing (for they cannot, blinded as they are by superstition and contention) that God does not occupy an extent of place with the mass of a body, and so is not in one place and not in another, or at least has one part here and another part elsewhere; but that by his majesty he is present everywhere, not divided by parts, but everywhere whole. But if they look carnally at what was said, “Heaven is my throne and earth the footstool of my feet,” a passage to which the Lord too bears witness, saying, “Do not swear, neither by heaven, for it is God’s throne; nor by the earth, for it is the footstool of his feet,” what wonder if the devil, being placed on the earth, stood before God’s feet and said something in his presence? For when will they be able to understand that there is no soul, however perverse, that can still reason in any way, in whose conscience God does not speak? For who wrote the natural law in the hearts of men but God? Of which law the Apostle says: “For when the Gentiles, who do not have the Law, do by nature the things of the law, these, not having the Law, are a law to themselves; who show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness, and their thoughts among themselves accusing or even excusing one another, on the day when the Lord will judge the secrets of men.” Wherefore, if in every rational soul, even blinded by desire, when it thinks and reasons, whatever in that reasoning is true is not to be attributed to it but to the very light of truth, by which it is illumined, even faintly according to its capacity, so that it perceives something true in reasoning, what wonder if the soul of the devil, perverted by wicked desire, is reported to have heard by the voice of God himself, that is, by the voice of truth itself, whatever true thing it thought about the righteous man when it wished to tempt him? But whatever is false is attributed to that desire from which he received the name of devil. Although God has also often spoken through bodily and visible creation to both good and evil, as Lord and ruler of all and orderer according to the deserts of each thing: as through angels, who appeared even to men’s sight, and through prophets saying, “Thus says the Lord.” What wonder, then, if, although not in thought itself, yet certainly through some creature suited to such a work, God is said to have spoken with the devil?

Nor let them think it a matter of dignity, as if a merit of righteousness, that God spoke with him: since he spoke with an angelic soul, though foolish and covetous, as if he were speaking with a human soul foolish and covetous. Or let them themselves say how he spoke with that rich man whose most foolish covetousness he wished to rebuke, saying, “Fool, this night your soul is required of you; whose will these things be which you have prepared?” Certainly the Lord himself says this in the Gospel, to which these heretics, willing or unwilling, bow their necks. But if they are disturbed by this, that Satan asks God for the righteous man to be tempted, I do not explain why it was done, but I compel them to explain why it was said in the Gospel by the Lord himself to the disciples, “Behold, Satan has asked to sift you like wheat”; and he says to Peter, “But I have prayed that your faith may not fail.” And when they explain this to me, they at the same time explain to themselves what they ask of me. But if they cannot explain this, let them not dare to find fault rashly in some other book with what they read without offence in the Gospel.

Temptations, then, come about through Satan not by his power but by the Lord’s permission, either to punish men for their sins or, by the Lord’s mercy, to prove and exercise them. And it matters very much into what kind of temptation each falls. For Judas, who sold the Lord, did not fall into the same kind as Peter fell into when, terrified, he denied the Lord. There are also human temptations, I believe, when someone with a good mind, but according to human frailty, slips in some plan, or is provoked against a brother by zeal to correct him, yet a little more than Christian tranquillity demands: of which the Apostle says, “Let no temptation take hold of you but what is human,” while the same says, “God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you can bear, but with the temptation will also make a way out, so that you may be able to endure.” In this saying he shows clearly enough that we are not to pray that we not be tempted, but that we not be led into temptation. For we are led in, if such temptations befall us as we cannot bear. But since the dangerous temptations, into which it is ruinous to be brought and led, arise either from prosperous temporal things or from adverse ones, no one is broken by the trouble of adverse things who is not captured by the delight of prosperous ones.

The last and seventh petition is, “But deliver us from evil.” For we must pray not only that we not be led into the evil which we are without, which is asked in the sixth place, but also that we be delivered from that into which we have already been led. When this has been done, nothing fearful will remain, nor will any temptation at all be dreaded. Yet in this life, as long as we carry about this mortality into which we were led by the serpent’s persuasion, it is not to be hoped that this can come about; but it is to be hoped that it will come someday, and this is the hope which is not seen, of which the Apostle, speaking, says, “But hope that is seen is not hope.” Yet wisdom, which is granted in this life too, is not to be despaired of by the faithful servants of God. And it is this: that what, by the Lord’s revealing, we have understood is to be fled, we flee with most careful vigilance; and what, by the Lord’s revealing, we have understood is to be sought, we seek with most ardent love. For thus, when the remaining burden of this mortality has been laid down in death itself, the blessedness which has been begun in this life, and to grasp and obtain which all our effort is now spent, will be perfected at the proper time in every part of man.

But the distinction of these seven petitions must be considered and commended. For since our life is now carried on in time, and an eternal one is hoped for, and since eternal things are prior in dignity, although we pass over to them after temporal things have first been done, the obtaining of the first three petitions, although it takes its beginning in this life which is carried on in this world (for the hallowing of God’s name began to be carried out from the very coming of the Lord in humility; and the coming of his kingdom, in which he will come in glory, will be manifested not after the world has ended, but at the end of the world; and the perfection of his will, as in heaven so on earth, whether you understand heaven and earth as the righteous and sinners, or spirit and flesh, or the Lord and the church, or all together, will be completed by the very perfection of our blessedness, and therefore by the ending of the world), yet all three will remain forever. For the hallowing of God’s name will be everlasting, and of his kingdom there is no end, and eternal life is promised to our perfect blessedness. These three, then, will remain, consummated and heaped up, in that life which is promised to us.

But the remaining four which we ask seem to me to pertain to this temporal life. The first of them is, “Give us today our daily bread.” For by the very fact that it was called daily bread, whether spiritual bread is signified, or the visible bread in the sacrament or in this food, it pertains to this time, which he called “today”: not because spiritual food is not everlasting, but because that which is called daily in the Scriptures is presented to the soul either in the sound of speech or by some temporal signs; none of which will exist then, when all will be taught by God, and will drink in the ineffable light of truth itself, not signifying it by the motion of bodies but by purity of mind. For perhaps it was also for this reason called bread and not drink, because bread is turned into nourishment by breaking and chewing, just as the Scriptures feed the soul by being opened and discussed; but drink, prepared as it is, passes into the body: so that in this time truth is bread, when it is called daily bread; but then it will be drink, when there will be no need of the labour of disputing and discoursing, as if of breaking and chewing, but only of drinking in sincere and clear truth. And sins are now forgiven us, and now we forgive, which is the second of these remaining four petitions; but then there will be no pardon of sins, because there will be no sins. And temptations infest this temporal life; but they will not exist when what was said is perfected, “You will hide them in the hiding place of your face.” And the evil from which we desire to be delivered, and deliverance itself from evil, certainly pertain to this life, which by the justice of God we deserved to have mortal, and from which we are delivered by his mercy.

It seems to me also that this sevenfold number of petitions corresponds to that sevenfold number from which this whole sermon has flowed. For if it is the fear of God by which the poor in spirit are blessed, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven, let us ask that the name of God be hallowed among men, “the chaste fear enduring forever and ever.” If it is piety by which the meek are blessed, for they shall inherit the earth, let us ask that his kingdom may come, whether into ourselves, so that we may become meek and not resist him, or from heaven to earth in the glory of the Lord’s coming, in which we shall rejoice and be praised, when he says, “Come, blessed of my Father, receive the kingdom which has been prepared for you from the beginning of the world.” “For in the Lord,” says the prophet, “shall my soul be praised; let the meek hear and be glad.” If it is knowledge by which those who mourn are blessed, for they shall be comforted, let us pray that his will be done, as in heaven, so on earth; because when the body, as earth, agrees with the spirit, as heaven, in highest and complete peace, we shall not mourn; for there is no other mourning in this time except when these fight against each other and compel us to say, “I see another law in my members, fighting against the law of my mind,” and to testify to our mourning with tearful voice, “Wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from the body of this death?” If it is fortitude by which those who hunger and thirst for righteousness are blessed, for they shall be filled, let us pray that our daily bread be given us today, so that, supported and sustained by it, we may come to that fullest satiety. If it is counsel by which the merciful are blessed, for they shall obtain mercy, let us forgive debts to our debtors, and pray that ours be forgiven us. If it is understanding by which the pure in heart are blessed, for they shall see God, let us pray not to be led into temptation, lest we have a double heart, not seeking the single good to which we may refer all that we do, but pursuing temporal and earthly things at the same time. For temptations from things which seem grievous and calamitous to men have no power over us if those have no power which come through the allurements of things men think good and to be rejoiced in. If it is wisdom by which the peacemakers are blessed, for they shall be called sons of God, let us pray to be delivered from evil; for deliverance itself will make us free, that is, sons of God, so that by the spirit of adoption we cry, “Abba, Father.”

Certainly it must not be passed over carelessly that of all these sayings by which the Lord commanded us to pray, he judged that one most of all to be commended which pertains to the forgiveness of sins; in which he wished us to be merciful, which is the one counsel for escaping miseries. For in no other saying do we pray in such a way as if we made a pact with God: for we say, “Forgive us as we also forgive.” If we lie in this pact, there is no fruit of the whole prayer. For he says thus: “For if you forgive men their trespasses, your Father who is in heaven will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men, neither will your Father forgive you your sins.”

There follows the precept about fasting, pertaining to the same cleansing of the heart which is now being treated. For in this work too one must beware lest some ostentation and desire for human praise creep in, which would double the heart and not allow it to be pure and single for understanding God. “And when you fast,” he says, “do not become gloomy like the hypocrites; for they disfigure their faces, so that they may be seen by men to be fasting. Truly I say to you, they have received their reward. But you, when you fast, anoint your heads and wash your faces, so that you may not be seen by men to be fasting, but by your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will repay you.” It is manifest from these precepts that all our intention is directed to inner joys, lest, seeking a reward outside, we be conformed to this world and lose the promise of a blessedness as much more solid and firm as it is more inward, by which God has chosen us to be conformed to the image of his Son.

But in this passage it must especially be noticed that there can be boasting not only in the splendour and pomp of bodily things, but even in mournful squalor itself; and it is the more dangerous because it deceives under the name of the service of God. He, then, who shines with immoderate adornment of body and clothing or splendour of other things is easily convicted by the things themselves of being a follower of the pomps of the world, and deceives no one by a false image of holiness; but as for him who, in the profession of Christianity, draws men’s eyes to himself by unusual squalor and filth, when he does it by choice and does not suffer it from necessity, it can be inferred from his other works whether he does this from contempt of superfluous adornment or from some ambition; because the Lord commanded us to beware of wolves even under sheep’s clothing, “but by their fruits,” he says, “you will know them.” For when, through some trials, the very things begin to be withdrawn or denied them which they have either obtained or desire to obtain under this covering, then it must appear whether it is a wolf in sheep’s skin or a sheep in its own. Yet a Christian ought not to charm men’s sight with superfluous adornment because pretenders often adopt that sparing and necessary dress in order to deceive the unwary; for neither ought those sheep to lay aside their skins if wolves sometimes cover themselves with them.

It is often asked, then, what he means by saying, “But you, when you fast, anoint your heads and wash your faces, so that you may not be seen by men to be fasting.” For no one would rightly command that, although we wash our faces by daily habit, we ought also to have our heads anointed when we fast. And if all admit that this would be most shameful, it must be understood that this precept of anointing the head and washing the face pertains to the inner man. To anoint the head, then, pertains to gladness; to wash the face, to purity. And therefore he anoints the head who rejoices inwardly in mind and reason. For we rightly take as the head that which is preeminent in the soul, and by which it is manifest that the rest of man is ruled and governed. And he does this who does not seek gladness outside, so as to rejoice carnally in men’s praises. For the flesh, which ought to be subject, is in no way the head of the whole human nature. “No one indeed ever hated his own flesh,” as the Apostle says when he gives precepts about loving one’s wife; but the head of the woman is the man, and the head of the man is Christ. Let him, then, rejoice inwardly in his fasting, by the very fact that by fasting he so turns himself away from the pleasure of the world as to be subject to Christ, who according to this precept desires to have his head anointed. Thus too he will wash his face, that is, cleanse his heart, with which he is to see God, with no veil interposed because of weakness contracted from filth, but firm and stable, because pure and single. “Wash,” he says, “be clean, take away the wickedness from your souls and from the sight of my eyes.” From these filthy things, then, by which the sight of God is offended, our face is to be washed. “For we, beholding the glory of the Lord with unveiled face, shall be transformed into the same image.”

Often, too, the thought of necessary things pertaining to this life wounds and soils our inner eye, and very often doubles the heart, so that the things which we seem to do rightly with men we do not do with that heart with which the Lord commands, that is, not because we love them, but because we wish to obtain some advantage from them for the needs of the present life. But we ought to do good to them for the sake of their eternal salvation, not for our temporal advantage. May God, then, incline our heart to his testimonies and not to gain. “For the end of the commandment is love from a pure heart and a good conscience and faith unfeigned.” But he who looks after a brother for the sake of his own need in this life certainly does not look after him with love; for he looks after not him, whom he ought to love as himself, but himself; or rather not even himself, since by this he makes for himself a double heart, by which he is hindered from seeing God, in which vision alone blessedness is certain and everlasting.

Rightly, then, he who presses on with cleansing our heart follows and commands, saying: “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and corrosion destroy, and where thieves break in and steal; but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor corrosion destroys, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” So if the heart is on earth, that is, if anyone does something with this in his heart, to obtain an earthly advantage, how will it be pure, wallowing on the earth? But if it is in heaven, it will be pure, because whatever things are heavenly are pure. For a thing is soiled when it is mixed with a lower nature, even one not soiled in its own kind; since gold too is soiled even by pure silver if it is mixed with it; so our mind too is soiled by desire for earthly things, although the earth itself is pure in its own kind and order. But we should not take heaven in this place as bodily, because every body is to be reckoned as earth. For he who stores up treasure for himself in heaven ought to despise the whole world. In that heaven, then, of which it is said, “The heaven of heaven is the Lord’s,” that is, in the spiritual firmament, we ought to establish and place our treasure and our heart: not in that which will pass away, but in that which always remains; for heaven and earth will pass away.

And here he makes manifest that he commands all these things about cleansing the heart, when he says: “The lamp of your body is your eye. If, then, your eye is single, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is evil, your whole body will be dark. If, then, the light that is in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!” This passage is to be understood so that we know that all our works are pure and pleasing in God’s sight if they are done with a single heart, that is, with an intention directed above, with that end of love; for love is the fulfilment of the law. By the eye here, then, we ought to take the very intention with which we do whatever we do; and if this is pure and right, and looking to that which ought to be looked to, all our works which we do according to it must be good. All these works he called the whole body; for the Apostle too calls certain works, which he condemns, our members, and commands them to be put to death, saying, “Put to death, therefore, your members which are on earth: sexual immorality, uncleanness, greed,” and other such things. So what is to be considered is not what anyone does, but with what mind he does it. For this is the light in us, because this is manifest to us, that we do what we do with a good mind: “for everything that is made manifest is light.” For the deeds themselves which go forth from us into human society have an uncertain outcome; and therefore he called them darkness. For I do not know, when I hand money to one who is needy and asks, what he is going to do with it or suffer from it; and it can happen that he either does some evil with it or suffers some evil because of it, which I did not wish to happen when I gave it, nor did I give it with that mind. So if I did it with a good mind, which was known to me when I did it and is therefore called light, my deed too is illuminated, whatever outcome it has had; and that outcome, since it is uncertain and unknown, has been called darkness. But if I did it with a bad mind, even the light itself is darkness. For it is called light because each one knows with what mind he acts, even when he acts with a bad mind; but the light itself is darkness, because the single intention is not directed to things above, but is bent down to lower things, and with a double heart makes as it were a shadow. “If, then, the light that is in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!”: that is, if the very intention of the heart with which you do what you do, which is known to you, is soiled and blinded by the desire for earthly and temporal things, how much more is the deed itself, whose outcome is uncertain, filthy and dark? For even if what you do with an intention that is not right and pure turns out well for someone, how you did it is charged to you, not how it turned out for him.

And what follows, where he says, “No one can serve two masters,” is to be referred to this same intention, as he explains in what follows, saying, “For either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will bear with the one and despise the other.” These words are to be considered carefully; for who the two masters are he next shows, when he says, “You cannot serve God and mammon.” Among the Hebrews, riches are said to be called mammon. The Punic word agrees too: for gain is called mammon in Punic. But he who serves mammon certainly serves him who, set over these earthly things in desert of his perversity, is called by the Lord the ruler of this world. So either a man will hate this one and love the other, that is, God; or he will bear with the one and despise the other. For whoever serves mammon bears with a hard and ruinous master; for, entangled in his own desire, he is made subject to the devil; and he does not love him (for who is there who loves the devil?), but yet he bears with him: as in some great household, one who is joined to another man’s maidservant endures a hard servitude because of his desire, even if he does not love him whose maidservant he loves. “But the other he will despise,” he said; not “he will hate.” For hardly anyone’s conscience can hate God; but he despises him, that is, does not fear him, as being secure about his goodness. From this negligence and ruinous security the Holy Spirit calls us back when he says through the prophet, “Son, do not add sin upon sin, and say, The compassion of God is great”; and, “Do you not know that the patience of God invites you to repentance?” For whose mercy so great can be mentioned as his who forgives all sins to those who turn, and makes the wild olive a partaker of the richness of the olive? And whose severity so great as his who did not spare the natural branches, but broke them off because of unbelief? But whoever wishes to love God and to beware of offending him, let him not think that he can serve two masters, and let him free the right intention of his heart from all doubleness: for thus he will think of the Lord in goodness, and will seek him in simplicity of heart.