Sermons to the People 126.1–126.15

The hidden and secret things of the kingdom of God first look for believers, so as to make them people who understand. For faith is the step to understanding, and understanding is the reward of faith. The prophet says this openly to all who seek understanding too hastily and in the wrong order, and neglect faith. For he says: “Unless you believe, you will not understand.” So faith itself also has a light of its own in the Scriptures, in prophecy, in the Gospel, in the apostolic readings. For all these things that are read to us for the present time are lamps in a dark place, so that we may be nourished for the day. The apostle Peter says: “We have the more certain prophetic word, to which you do well to attend as to a lamp in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.”

You see, then, brothers, how perverse they are, and how faulty in their haste, who, like an unripe conception, look for a miscarriage before their birth; who say to us: “Why do you bid me believe what I do not see? Let me see something, so that I may believe. You bid me believe while I do not see: I want to see, and believe by seeing, not by hearing.” Let the prophet speak: “Unless you believe, you will not understand.” You want to climb, and you forget the steps. That is plainly perverse. O man, if I could already show you what you might see, I would not be urging you to believe.

Faith, then, as it is defined elsewhere, is “the substance of those who hope, the conviction of things that are not seen.” If they are not seen, how are they shown to exist? Why, where do these things that you see come from, if not from that which you do not see? Certainly you see something so that you may believe something, and from what you see you may believe what you do not see. Do not be ungrateful to him who made you see, so that from it you could believe what you cannot yet see. God gave you eyes in the body, reason in the heart; rouse the reason of the heart, stir up the inner dweller behind your eyes, let him take his place at his windows, let him look over God’s creation. For there is someone within who sees through the eyes. For when sometimes you are thinking of something and the inner dweller is turned away, you do not see what is before your eyes. The windows lie open in vain when the one who looks through them is absent. So it is not the eyes that see, but someone sees through the eyes: stir him up, rouse him. For this has not been denied you: God made you a rational animal, set you above the cattle, formed you in his image. Should you use them like this, as a beast does: only to see what to add to your belly, not to your mind? Lift up, then, your rational gaze, use your eyes like a man, consider heaven and earth, the ornaments of the sky, the fertility of the earth, the flight of birds, the swimming of fish, the power of seeds, the order of the seasons: consider the things made, and seek the maker; look at what you see, and seek him whom you do not see. Believe in him whom you do not see, because of the things you see. And lest you think it is my sermon that is exhorting you, hear the apostle saying: “For the invisible things of God, from the creation of the world, are clearly seen through the things that are made.”

You used to pass these things over, and did not attend to them as a man, but as an irrational animal. The prophet cried out to you, and cried in vain: “Do not be like the horse and the mule, which have no understanding.” So you saw these things and passed them over. God’s daily miracles had become cheap, not through being easy but through being constant. For what is harder to understand than that a man is born; that one who was departs by dying into what is hidden, and one who was not comes forth by being born into the open? What is so wonderful, what so hard to understand? But for God it is easy to do. Wonder at these things, wake up: do you know how to wonder only at the unusual? Are those things greater than the ones you are used to seeing? People wondered that our Lord God Jesus Christ fed so many thousands from five loaves; and they do not wonder that through a few grains the lands are filled with crops. People saw water made into wine, and were astonished: what else happens to the rain through the root of the vine? He made those things, he made these: those so that you may be fed, these so that you may wonder. But both are to be wondered at, because they are works of God. A man sees unusual things and wonders: where does the man himself who wonders come from? Where was he? Where did he come forth from? Where does the shape of his body come from, the distinction of his limbs, this fine appearance? From what beginnings? From what contemptible ones! And he wonders at other things, when he himself, the wonderer, is a great wonder. Where then do these things you see come from, if not from him whom you do not see? But, as I had begun to say, because these things had become cheap to you, he came himself to do unusual things, so that in the usual ones too you might recognize your maker. He came to whom it was said, “Renew your signs”; to whom it was said, “Make your mercies wonderful.” For he was lavishing them; he was lavishing them, and no one wondered. So he came, little to the little, a physician to the sick, he who could come when he would, return when he would, do whatever he would, judge as he would. And what he would is justice itself; what he wills, I say, is justice itself. For what he wills is not unjust, nor can what he does not will be just. He came to raise a dead man, to restore to the light, while people wondered, a man who had been in the light: he who every day brings forth to the light those who were not.

He did these things, and was despised by many, who paid attention not so much to how great were the things he did as to how small he was: as if they said to themselves, “These things are divine, but he is a man.” So you see two things, divine works and a man. If divine works cannot be done except by God, see whether God is not hidden in the man. Pay attention, I say, to what you see; believe what you do not see. He who called you to believe has not deserted you: although he bade you believe what you cannot see, yet he did not leave you seeing nothing from which you could believe what you do not see. Are they small signs, small indications of the Creator, this creation itself? He came as well, he did miracles. You could not see God; you could see a man: God was made man, so that in one you might have both what you could see and what you could believe. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” You hear, and do not yet see. Look, he comes; look, he is born; look, he comes forth from a woman, he who made male and female. He who made male and female was not made through male and female. For perhaps you would have despised him who was to be born; do not despise the manner of his birth, for he always was before he was born. See, I say, he took a body; he put on flesh, he came forth from the womb. Do you see now? Now, I say, do you see? I am asking about flesh, and I am showing flesh: you see something, and you do not see something. See, in the very birth, see, there are already two things, both what you may see and what you may not see; but so that through what you see you may believe what you do not see. You had begun to despise, because you see one who was born: believe what you do not see, that he was born of a virgin. “How small,” someone says, “is he who was born!” But how great is he who was born of a virgin? And he who was born of a virgin brought you a temporal miracle: he was not born of a father, that is, of a human father, and he was born of flesh. But let it not seem impossible to you that he was born through a mother alone, he who made man before father and mother.

So he brought you a temporal miracle, so that you might seek and wonder at the eternal. For he who came forth like a bridegroom from his chamber, that is, from the virgin’s womb, where the holy marriage was made, the Word and the flesh, brought, I say, a temporal miracle: but he himself is eternal, he is coeternal with the Father, he is the one who “in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” He made for you the means of healing, so that you could see what you did not see. What you despise in Christ is not yet the contemplation of the healed, but the medicine of the sick. Do not hurry to the vision of the healthy. The angels see, the angels rejoice, the angels feed and live: what they feed on does not fail, nor is their food diminished. On lofty thrones, in the regions of the heavens, in the things that are above the heavens, the Word is seen by the angels and rejoiced in: he is eaten, and remains. But so that man might eat the bread of angels, the Lord of angels became man. This is our salvation: medicine for the sick, food for the healthy.

And he was speaking to men, and saying what you have heard: “The Son cannot do anything of himself, except what he has seen the Father doing.” Is there anyone now, do we think, who understands? Is there anyone now, do we think, in whom the eye-salve of the flesh has done its work, so that he can gaze in some measure on the splendor of the divinity? He has spoken; let us speak too: he, because he is the Word; we, because we are from the Word. Why then do we speak at all about the Word? Because we were made to the likeness of the Word, through the Word. As far, then, as we grasp, as far as we can share in that ineffable being, let us speak too, and let no one contradict us. For our faith has gone ahead, so that we say, “I believed, therefore I have spoken.” So I speak what I believe: whether I also in some measure see it, he sees better; this you cannot see. But when I have said it, whoever sees what I say, whether he believes that I too see what I have said or does not believe it, what is that to me? Let him see sincerely, and believe what he will about me.

“The Son cannot do anything of himself, except what he has seen the Father doing.” Here the error of the Arians rises up: but it rises up so as to fall, because it is not humbled so as to rise. What is it that has moved you? You want to call the Son lesser. For you heard, “The Son cannot do anything of himself, except what he has seen the Father doing.” From this you want the Son to be called lesser: I know it, I know it, this is what moved you. Believe that he is not lesser; you cannot yet see it: believe. This is what I was saying a little while ago. “But how,” you will say, “am I to believe against his own words? He himself says, The Son cannot do anything of himself, except what he has seen the Father doing.” Pay attention also to what follows: “For whatever the Father does, the Son also does the same”: he did not say, “such things.” Let your Charity attend a little, and do not make a noise among yourselves. A quiet heart is needed, a godly and devout faith, a religious attention: do not attend to me, the little vessel, but to him who puts bread in the vessel. Attend, then, a little. For in what we said above, urging you to faith, so that the mind steeped in faith may be capable of understanding, the things said sounded festive, joyful, easy; they cheered your minds; you followed, you understood what I said. What I am now going to say, I hope some will understand; yet I fear that not all will. And since God has set before us, through the reading of the Gospel, what we are to speak about, and we cannot avoid what the Master has set before us, I am afraid that those who do not understand, who will perhaps be the greater number, may think that I have spoken to them in vain: but for the sake of those who do understand, I do not speak in vain. Let him who understands rejoice; let him who does not understand bear it patiently: let him bear what he does not understand, and wait until he understands.

So he does not say, “Whatever the Father does, the Son does such things,” as if the Father did some things and the Son others. For he seemed to have said something of the kind when he said above, “The Son does nothing of himself, except what he has seen the Father doing.” Pay attention: neither did he say there, “except what he has heard the Father commanding”; but “has seen,” he says, “the Father doing.” If, then, we consult a carnal understanding, or rather a carnal sense, it is as if he set before himself two craftsmen, the Father and the Son: the Father making without seeing anyone, the Son making after seeing the Father. This is still a carnal view. Yet, so that we may understand the higher things, let us not turn away from these lower and humble ones. First let us set something before our eyes in this way: let us imagine two carpenters, a father and a son. The father made a chest, which the son could not make unless he saw the father making it: he looked at the chest the father made, and made another chest like it, not the same one. I put off the following words for a little, and now I ask the Arian: Is this how you understand it, as I have set it out? Did the Father make something, and the Son, seeing the Father making it, also make something of the same kind? For this is what the words that moved you seem to say. For he does not say, “The Son cannot do anything of himself, except what he has heard the Father commanding”; but he says, “The Son cannot do anything of himself, except what he has seen the Father doing.” See, if you understand it in this way, the Father made something, and the Son watched, so that he too might see what to make; and he would make something else such as the Father had made. This thing that the Father made, through whom did he make it? If not through the Son, if not through the Word, you have run into blasphemy against the Gospel. For “all things were made through him.” So what the Father had made, he had made through the Word: if he had made it through the Word, he had made it through the Son. Who is this other one, then, who watches so as to make something else that he has seen the Father making? You are not accustomed to say that the Father has two sons: there is one Only-begotten, begotten of him. But by his mercy he is alone as to divinity, and not alone as to the inheritance. The Father has made fellow heirs with his Only One: not ones whom he begot of his own substance, as he begot him, but ones whom he adopts from his household through him. For we have been called to the adoption of sons, as holy Scripture testifies.

What then do you say? The Only One himself speaks: the only-begotten Son himself speaks in the Gospel: the Word himself has spoken words to us, and we have heard him saying, “The Son cannot do anything of himself, except what he has seen the Father doing.” So the Father has already made something, so that the Son may see what to make: and yet the Father makes nothing except through the Son. Surely you are troubled, heretic, surely you are troubled: but you are troubled as one who has taken hellebore, so as to be healed. Now you do not find yourself; your own opinion and your carnal view, I think, you yourself condemn. Put the eyes of the flesh behind you; lift up whatever you have in your heart, gaze on divine things. You hear human words through a man, through an evangelist; through the Gospel you hear human words, as a man: but you hear them about the Word of God, so that you may hear human things and know divine ones. The Master stirred you up so as to teach you; he sowed a question so as to arouse your attention. “The Son cannot do anything of himself, except what he has seen the Father doing.” It would have followed for him to say, “For whatever the Father does, the Son does such things.” He did not say this, but: “Whatever the Father does, the Son also does the same.” The Father does not do some things and the Son others: for all that the Father does, he does through the Son. The Son raised Lazarus: did the Father not raise him? The Son gave light to the blind man: did the Father not give him light? The Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit. It is a Trinity: but one operation, one majesty, one eternity, one coeternity, and the works of the Trinity are the same. The Father does not create some men, the Son others, the Holy Spirit others: the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit create one and the same man; the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, one God, create.

You attend to the plurality of persons; recognize also the unity of the divinity. For because of the plurality of persons it was said, “Let us make man in our image and likeness.” He does not say, “I will make man, and watch me while I make him, so that you too can make another.” “Let us make,” he says: I hear plurality; “in our image”: again I hear plurality. Where then is the oneness of the divinity? Read what follows: “And God made man.” It is said, “Let us make man”; it is not said, “The gods made man.” The unity is understood in the words, “God made man.”

Where then is that carnal intention? Let it be confounded, hidden, destroyed: let the Word of God speak to us. Now, being godly, now believing, now steeped in faith and having gained some merit of understanding, let us turn to the Word himself, to the fountain of light, and say together: Lord, the Father does the same things as you, for whatever the Father does, he does through you. We have heard of you as the Word in the beginning: we have not seen, but we believe. There, next, we heard that all things were made through you. So all that the Father does, he does through you. So you do the same things as the Father. Why is it that you chose to say, “The Son cannot do anything of himself”? For I see a certain equality of yours with the Father in what I hear: “Whatever the Father does, the Son does the same”: I recognize equality; here I understand, here I grasp as far as I can: “I and the Father are one.” What is it, then, that you cannot do anything except what you have seen the Father doing? What is this?

Perhaps he says to me, or rather says to us all: “As for what I said, The Son cannot do anything except what he has seen the Father doing: how do you understand my seeing? What is my seeing?” Set aside for a little the form of a servant, which he took up for your sake. For in that form of a servant our Lord had eyes and ears in the flesh, and that human form was such as we too bear: the same shape of body, the same features of the limbs. That flesh had come from Adam; but he was not Adam. So the Lord, walking on land or on sea as it pleased him, as he willed, since whatever he willed he could, looked at what he willed: he turned his eyes there and saw; he turned his eyes away and did not see; whoever followed him was behind, whatever was to be seen was in front; with the eyes of his body he saw what was in front. But nothing was hidden from his divinity. Set aside, set aside, I say, the form of a servant for a little: look at the form of God, in which he was before the world was made, in which he was equal to the Father: through him take this, and understand what he is saying to you: “Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God.” See him there, if you can, so that you can see what his seeing is. “In the beginning was the Word.” How does the Word see? Does the Word have eyes, or do our eyes find themselves in him, and not fleshly eyes, but the eyes of godly hearts? For “blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”

You look at Christ, man and God: he shows you the man, he keeps God for you. And see that he keeps God for you, he who shows himself to you as man. “He who loves me,” he says, “keeps my commandments; he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him.” And as if someone asked, “What will you give him whom you love?”, “And I will show myself to him,” he says. What is this, brothers? He was promising to show himself to those who already saw him. To whom? To those by whom he was seen, or to those by whom he was also not seen? So, speaking to a certain apostle who sought to see the Father, that it might suffice him, and who said, “Show us the Father, and it is enough for us,” he, standing before the servant’s eyes in the form of a servant, keeping the form of God for eyes made godlike, said to him: “Have I been with you so long, and you have not known me? He who sees me sees the Father also.” You seek to see the Father: see me. You see me, and you do not see me. You see what I took up for you; you do not see what I kept for you. Hear the commandments, cleanse your eyes. For “he who loves me keeps my commandments, and I will love him,” as one who keeps my commandments, as one healed through my commandments, “and I will show myself to him.”

If, then, brothers, we cannot see what the seeing of the Word is, where are we going? What vision are we perhaps demanding too hastily? What do we want shown to us that we cannot see? These things were said so that we should desire to see, not because we can already grasp it. For if you see the seeing of the Word, perhaps in what you see as the seeing of the Word you will see the Word himself; so that the Word is not one thing and the seeing of the Word another, lest there be something added together and coupled and double and compacted there. For it is something simple, with an ineffable simplicity. It is not as with a man, where the man is one thing and the man’s seeing another. For sometimes what is the man’s seeing is extinguished, and the man remains. This is what I said, that I was going to say something that not all could understand: yet may the Lord grant that some have understood. My brothers, he urges us to see that the seeing of the Word is beyond our strength; because our powers are small, let them be nourished, let them be perfected. By what? By the commandments. By which commandments? “He who loves me keeps my commandments.” Which commandments? For we want now to grow, now to be strengthened, now to be perfected, so as to see the seeing of the Word. Tell us now, Lord: which commandments? “A new commandment I give you, that you love one another.” Let us then, brothers, draw this love from the abundance of the fountain, let us take it in, let us be nourished in it. Take in that by which you may become able to take in. Let love beget you, love nourish you, love perfect you, love strengthen you; so that you may see that the seeing of the Word is not one thing and the Word another, but that what is the seeing of the Word, this is the Word: and perhaps you will quickly understand that the saying, “The Son cannot do anything of himself, except what he has seen the Father doing,” is as if he said, “He would not be the Son, unless he were born of the Father.” Enough, brothers; I know I have said something which, when thought over, may perhaps become clear to many, and which, when spoken in many words, may perhaps be obscured.