Sermons to the People 127.1–127.15

Our hope, brothers, is not of this time, nor of this world, nor in that happiness by which people who forget God are blinded. This we ought first of all to know and to hold with a Christian heart: that we have not been made Christians for the good things of the present time, but for something else, I know not what, which God already promises and man does not yet grasp. For of this good it was said, “What eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man, what God has prepared for those who love him.” So because this good, so great, so glorious, so ineffable, has not found man able to grasp it, it has held to God as the one who promises it. For now man, blind in heart, does not grasp what has been promised him, nor can it be shown him in the present what he himself, to whom it is promised, will be. Suppose a newborn infant could understand the words of someone speaking, though he himself could not speak, nor walk, nor do anything; but as we see him weak, lying down, needing the help of others, suppose he could only understand the one who spoke to him and said, “Look, as you see me walking, working, speaking, in a few years you will be like this”: looking at himself and at the other, although he saw what was promised, yet considering his own weakness he would not believe it; and yet he would see what was promised. But for us, lying like infants in this flesh and weakness, what is promised is both great and not seen: and faith is raised up, by which we believe what we do not see, so that we may deserve to see what we believe. Whoever mocks this faith, so as to think that he need not believe because he does not see, will blush when what he did not believe has come; confounded, he is separated; separated, he is condemned. But whoever has believed is set apart on the right, and will stand with great confidence and joy among those to whom it will be said, “Come, blessed of my Father, receive the kingdom that has been prepared for you from the beginning of the world.” And the Lord, when he spoke these words, concluded thus: “These will go into everlasting burning, but the righteous into eternal life.” This is the eternal life that is promised us.

Those who love to live on this earth have been promised life; and because they greatly fear to die, they have been promised eternal life. What do you love? To live. This you will have. What do you fear? To die. You will not suffer it. This seemed enough for human weakness, that it should be said, “You will have eternal life.” The human mind grasps this; in some way, from what it is now living, it grasps what is to come. But how much does it grasp from this little that it lives? Because it lives and does not want to die, it loves eternal life: it wants to live always, never to die. But even those who will be tormented in punishments will want to die, and will not be able to. So it is not a great thing to live long, or to live always: what is great is to live blessedly. Let us love eternal life, and let us learn from this how much we ought to labor for eternal life, when we see people who love the present, temporal life that must end labor so much for it that, when the fear of death comes, they do whatever they can, not to remove death but to put it off. How a man labors when death threatens: fleeing, hiding, giving whatever he has and ransoming himself, toiling, enduring tortures and troubles, calling in physicians, and whatever else a man can do! See, when his labors and his means are spent, he can manage to live a little longer; he cannot manage to live always. If, then, with so much labor, so much effort, so much expense, so much urgency, so much watchfulness, so much care, people act so as to live a little longer, how should one act so as to live always? And if those are called prudent who act in every way to put off death and to live a few days, so as not to lose a few days, how foolish are those who live in such a way as to lose the eternal day!

So this alone can be promised us, so that God’s gift may in some way become sweet to us from what we now have: for it is by his gift that we live and are in health. Let us then set such a life before our eyes when eternal life is promised, removing from it whatever troubles we suffer here. For it is easier to find what is not there than what is there. See, here we live; we shall live there too. We are in health when here we are not sick and nothing in the body pains us: we shall be in health there too. And when it goes well with us in this life, we suffer no punishments: we shall suffer none there either. Picture here, then, a man living, healthy, suffering no punishments: if someone gave him that he should always be so, and that this good should not cease, how he would rejoice! How elated he would be! How he would be beside himself with joy, without pain, without torment, without end of life! If God promised us only what I have said, what I have just described and commended in what words I could, how much would it be worth buying, if it were for sale? How much would one have to give to buy it? Whatever you had would be enough, even if you possessed the whole world. And yet it is for sale: buy it, if you will. Do not be too agitated over the great thing because of the greatness of its price. It costs just what you have. To get something great and precious you would get ready gold, or silver, or money, or some produce of cattle or crops grown on your estate, to buy some great and splendid thing by which you might live happily on this earth. Buy this too, if you will. Do not ask what you have, but what you are. This thing costs you. It costs just as much as you are. Give yourself, and you will have it. Why are you troubled? Why agitated? Are you going to look for yourself, or buy yourself? See, you, as you are, such as you are, give yourself to that thing, and you will have it. “But I am bad,” you will say, “and perhaps it will not accept me.” By giving yourself to it, you will be good. To give yourself to this faith and promise, that is to be good. And when you are good, you will be the price of the thing itself, and you will have, not only what I have said, health, safety, life, and life without end; you will not have this only; I take away still other things. There will be no being tired and sleeping there; there will be no hungering and thirsting there; there will be no growing and growing old, for there will be no being born there, where the numbers remain complete. The number that is, remains itself; it does not need to be increased, because nothing happens there to diminish it. See how much I have taken away, and I have not yet said what will be there. See, now there is life, now there is safety, now no punishment, no hunger, no thirst, no failing, none of these things; and yet I have not yet said what “eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man.” For if I have said it, what is written is false: “What eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man.” For how could it have entered into my heart, so that I could say what has not entered into the heart of man? It is believed, and not seen: not only is it not seen, it is not even spoken. How then is it believed, if it is not spoken? Who believes what he does not hear? But if he hears so as to believe, it is spoken: if it is spoken, it is thought: if it is thought and spoken, it also enters the ears of men. And since it would not be spoken unless it were thought, it has also entered into the heart of man. See, now this question about so great a thing troubles us so much that we cannot unfold the question in words. Who can unfold the thing itself?

Let us therefore attend to the Gospel; the Lord was speaking just now; and let us do what he said: “He who believes in me,” he says, “passes from death into life, and does not come into judgment. Amen I say to you, the hour is coming, and now is, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God; and those who hear will live. For as the Father has life in himself, so he has given the Son to have life in himself.” He gave by begetting: because he begot, he gave. For the Son is from the Father; the Father is not from the Son: but the Father is the Father of the Son, and the Son is the Son of the Father. Yet the Son is begotten of the Father, not the Father of the Son; and he is always Son, therefore always begotten. Who can grasp this, “always begotten”? For whenever someone hears “begotten,” the thought occurs to him: so there was a time when this one who was begotten did not exist. What then do we say? Not so: there was no time before the Son, because all things were made through him. If all things were made through him, times too were made through him; how could there be times before the Son, through whom times were made? Take away, then, all times: the Son is always with the Father. If the Son is always with the Father, and yet is Son, he is always begotten; if always begotten, he who was begotten was always with the one who begot him.

“I have never seen this,” you will say, “someone begetting and always together with the one he begot: the one who begot came first, and the one who was begotten followed in time.” You are right to say, “I have never seen this”: because this belongs to what “eye has not seen.” You ask how it may be spoken? It cannot be spoken: because “nor has ear heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man.” Let it be believed, and worshiped. When it is believed, it is worshiped; when it is worshiped, we grow; when we grow, it is grasped. For still in this flesh, as long as we are away from the Lord, we are infants compared with the holy angels who see these things: to be suckled by faith, to be fed by sight. For so the apostle says: “As long as we are in the body, we are away from the Lord. For we walk by faith, not by sight.” We shall come to sight, which is promised us thus through John in his Epistle: “Beloved, we are children of God, and it has not yet appeared what we shall be.” We are children of God already, through grace, through faith, through the sacrament, through the blood of Christ, through the redemption of the Savior: “we are children of God, and it has not yet appeared what we shall be. We know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.”

See for what we are being nourished, to take it in; see for what we are being nourished, to receive it, to eat it: yet in such a way that what is eaten is not diminished, and the one who eats is invigorated. For now food invigorates by being eaten, but the food that is eaten is diminished. But when we begin to eat righteousness, to eat wisdom, to eat that immortal food, we shall be invigorated, and that food will not be diminished. For if the eye knows how to feed on light, and yet does not diminish the light (for the light will not be less because it is seen by many; it feeds the eyes of many, and yet is as great as it was; they are fed, and it is not diminished): if God gave this to the light which he made for the eyes of the flesh, what is he himself, the light, to the eyes of the heart? If, then, some great meal you were going to dine on were praised to you, you would get your stomach ready: God is praised to you; get your mind ready.

See what your Lord says to you: “The hour is coming,” he says, “and now is.” The hour is coming, and that very hour is now, when — what? “When the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God; and those who hear will live.” So those who do not hear will not live. What is “those who hear”? Those who obey. What is “those who hear”? Those who believe and comply: they will live. So before they believed and obeyed, they lay dead: they walked about, and they were dead. What did it profit them that they walked about, being dead? And yet if anyone among them died in the body, they would run, prepare a tomb, wrap him, carry him, bury him: the dead burying the dead, of whom it was said, “Let the dead bury their dead.” Such dead are raised by the word of God so as to live in faith. Those who were dead in unbelief are roused by the word. Of that hour the Lord said, “The hour is coming, and now is.” For by his word he was raising the unbelieving dead, of whom the apostle says, “Rise, you who sleep, and arise from the dead, and Christ will give you light.” This is the resurrection of minds, this is the resurrection of the inner man, this is the resurrection of the soul.

But this is not the only resurrection: there remains also that of the body. He who rises in the soul rises in the body to his own good. For not all rise in the soul; all will rise in the body. In the soul, I say, not all rise, but those who believe and obey, because “those who hear will live.” And as the apostle says, “Not all have faith.” If, then, not all have faith, not all rise in the soul. When the hour of the resurrection of the body comes, all will rise: good or bad, all will rise. But he who first rises in the soul rises in the body to his good; he who does not first rise in the soul rises in the body to his harm. He who rises in the soul rises in the body to life; he who does not rise in the soul rises in the body to punishment. Since, then, the Lord commended to us this resurrection of souls, to which we must all hasten, in which we must labor so that we may live, and, living, persevere to the end, it remained for him to commend to us also the resurrection of bodies, which will be at the end of the world. But hear how he commended this too.

When he had said, “Amen I say to you, the hour is coming, and now is, when the dead” (that is, unbelievers) “will hear the voice of the Son of God” (that is, the Gospel), “and those who hear” (that is, who obey) “will live” (that is, will be justified and will no longer be unbelievers): when, then, he had said this, since he saw that we must be taught about the resurrection of the flesh too, and not left so, he went on and said, “For as the Father has life in himself, so he has given the Son to have life in himself.” This is for raising up minds, this is for giving life to minds. Then he added, “And he has given him authority to execute judgment too, because he is the Son of Man.” This Son of God is the son of man. For if the Son of God had remained Son of God and had not become son of man, he would not have set the sons of men free. He who had made man became what he had made, so that what he made should not perish. But he became man in such a way as to remain Son of God. For he became man by taking up what he was not, not by losing what he was: remaining God, he became man. He took you up; he was not consumed in you. Such, then, he came to us: Son of God, son of man; maker and made; creator and created; creator of his mother, created from his mother: such he came to us. According to what he is as Son of God, he says, “The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God.” He did not say, “of the son of man”: for he was commending the truth in which he is equal to the Father. “And those who hear will live. For as the Father has life in himself, so he has given the Son to have life in himself”: not by sharing, but in himself. For we do not have life in ourselves, but in our God. But the Father has life in himself: and he begot such a Son as would have life in himself; not to be a sharer in life, but to be life itself, whose life we should share; so that he should have life in himself, and be life itself. But to become son of man, he took from us. The Son of God in himself; to be son of man he took from us. From his own he is Son of God, from ours son of man. What is less he took from us; what is more he gave us. For he died by that which is son of man, not according to that which is Son of God. Yet the Son of God died: but he died according to the flesh, not according to the Word, which was made flesh and dwelt among us. So in that he died, he died of what is ours; in that we live, we live of what is his. He could not die of his own, nor could we live of our own. This, then, the Lord Jesus commended to us as God, as only-begotten, as equal to him who begot him: if we hear it, we shall live.

“But he has also given him authority,” he says, “to execute judgment, because he is the Son of Man.” So that form will come to judgment. The form of man will come to judgment; therefore he says, “He has given him authority to execute judgment too, because he is the Son of Man.” The judge here will be the Son of Man: that form will judge which was judged. Hear and understand: the prophet had already said this: “They will look on him whom they pierced.” They will look on that very form which they struck with the lance. He will sit as judge who stood under a judge. He will condemn the truly guilty, he who was made falsely guilty. He himself will come; that form will come. You have this in the Gospel too: when he was going into heaven before the eyes of his disciples, they stood watching, and the angelic voice sounded: “Men of Galilee, why do you stand there?” and so on. “This Jesus will come in the same way as you see him going into heaven.” What is “will come in the same way”? He will come in that very form. For “he has given him authority to execute judgment, because he is the Son of Man.” But see why this was necessary, and why it was right: that those to be judged should see the judge. For both good and bad were to be judged. “But blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” It remained, then, that in the judgment the form of a servant should be shown both to the good and to the bad, and the form of God kept for the good alone.

What then will the good receive? See, I now say what I did not say a little while ago; and yet in saying it I do not say it. For I said that we shall be there in health, we shall be safe, we shall be living, we shall be without punishments, without hunger and thirst, without failing, without the loss of our eyesight. All this I said safely: and what more we shall have, I did not say. We shall see God. And this will be so much, so great a thing, that compared with it all the rest is nothing. I said that we shall be living, that we shall be healthy and safe, that we shall not suffer hunger and thirst, that we shall not fall into weariness, that sleep will not weigh us down. What is all this compared with that happiness in which we shall see God? Since, then, God himself, as he is, cannot now be shown, yet we shall see him; therefore what eye has not seen, nor ear heard, this the good will see, this the godly will see, this the merciful will see, this the faithful will see, this those will see who will have a good portion in the resurrection of the body, because they had good obedience in the resurrection of the heart.

So will the wicked man too see God? Of him Isaiah says, “Let the wicked be taken away, so that he does not see the glory of God.” So both the wicked and the godly will see that form: and when the sentence has been pronounced, “Let the wicked be taken away, so that he does not see the glory of God,” it remains that in the godly and good there be fulfilled what the Lord himself promised when he was here in the flesh and was seen not only by the good but also by the bad. He spoke among good and bad, and was visible to all: God hidden, man manifest; God ruling men, man appearing among men. So he spoke among them and said, “He who loves me keeps my commandments; and he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him.” And as if someone said to him, “And what will you give him?”, “And I will show myself to him,” he says. When did he say this? When he was seen by men. When did he say this? When he was seen even by those by whom he was not loved. How then was he to show himself to those who loved him, unless as one whom those who loved him did not yet see? So because the form of God was kept, the form of man was shown: speaking to men through the form of man, conspicuous and visible, he showed himself to all, good and bad; he kept himself for those who loved him.

When will he show himself to those who love him? After the resurrection of the body, when the wicked will be taken away so as not to see the glory of God. For then, “when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.” This is eternal life. For all that we were saying is nothing compared with that life. That we live, what is it? That we are healthy, what is it? That we shall see God: that is great. This is eternal life; he himself said it: “And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the one true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” This is eternal life: that they may know, see, grasp, become acquainted with what they had believed, perceive what they could not yet grasp. Now let the mind see what eye had not seen, nor ear heard, nor had entered into the heart of man: this will be said to them at the end: “Come, blessed of my Father, receive the kingdom that has been prepared for you from the beginning of the world.” So those wicked ones will go into everlasting burning. But the righteous, where? Into eternal life. What is eternal life? “This is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.”

Speaking, then, of the future resurrection of the body, and not leaving us without it, he says: “He has given him authority to execute judgment too, because he is the Son of Man. Do not marvel at this, because the hour is coming.” There he did not add, “and now is,” because this hour will come later, because this hour will be at the end of the world, because this hour will be the last, at the last trumpet. “Do not marvel” that I said this: “He has given him authority to execute judgment too, because he is the Son of Man.” Do not marvel. I said it for this reason, because man must be judged by man. Which men are to be judged? Those he finds alive? Not only those. Who then? “The hour is coming, when all who are in the tombs.” How did he express the dead? “Those who are in the tombs”: whose corpses lie buried, whose ashes are covered, whose bones are scattered, whose flesh no longer exists, and yet is whole to God. “The hour is coming, when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice, and will come forth.” Good or bad, they will hear the voice and come out. All the bonds of the underworld will be broken: all that perished, or rather is thought to have perished, will be restored. For if God made man who did not exist, can he not repair what existed?

I think that when it is said, “God will raise the dead,” nothing incredible is said, because it is said of God, not of man. It is a great thing that will be done, and an incredible thing that will be done. But let it not be incredible: see who does it. He who created you is said to raise you. You did not exist, and you exist; and once made, will you not exist? Far from it: do not believe that. God did something more wonderful when he made what did not exist: and yet he made what did not exist; and is he not believed to be going to repair what existed, by the very people whom he made when they did not exist? Is this how we repay God, we who did not exist and were made? Do we repay him by believing that he cannot raise again what he made? Is this the reward his creature gives him? “Did I make you, then,” God says to you, “O man, before you existed, so that you would not believe me that you will be what you were, you who could be what you were not?” “But look,” someone says, “what I see in the tomb is dust, it is ashes, it is bones: and will this receive life again, skin, muscles, flesh, and rise? What, this dust, these bones that I see in the tomb?” In the tomb you at least see dust, you see bones: in your mother’s womb there was nothing. What you see is at least dust, or bones: you, before you existed, were neither dust nor bones; and yet you were made, when you did not exist at all: and do you not believe that these bones (however they are, of whatever kind they are, still they exist) will receive the form they had, when you received what you did not have? Believe: for if you believe this, then your soul will be raised. And if your soul is raised now (“the hour is coming, and now is”), then your flesh will rise to your good, when the hour comes that all who are in the tombs hear his voice and come forth. For you ought not to rejoice just because you hear and come forth: hear what follows: “Those who have done good, to the resurrection of life; but those who have done evil, to the resurrection of judgment.” Turning to the Lord, and so on.