Sermons to the People 137.1–137.14

Your faith is not unaware, beloved (and we know that you have learned it so, taught by the Teacher from heaven, in whom you have placed your hope), that our Lord Jesus Christ, who has already suffered for us and risen again, is the head of the Church, and the Church is his body; and in his body the unity of the members and the bond of love are like health. But whoever has grown cold in love is sick in the body of Christ. But he who has already exalted our head is able to heal even the sick members, provided they are not cut off by excessive impiety but cling to the body until they are healed. For whatever still clings to the body is not past hope of health; but what has been cut off can be neither treated nor healed. Since, then, he is the head of the Church, and the Church is his body, the whole Christ is both head and body. He has already risen. So we have our head in heaven. Our head intercedes for us. Our head, without sin and without death, already propitiates God for our sins, so that we too, rising at the end and changed into heavenly glory, may follow our head. For where the head is, there the other members are too. But while we are here, we are members; let us not despair, for we shall follow our head.

See, brothers, the love of our head himself. He is already in heaven, and he labors here as long as the Church labors here. Here Christ is hungry, here he is thirsty, naked, a stranger, sick, in prison. For whatever his body suffers here, he has said that he suffers: and at the end, setting his body apart on the right, and setting apart on the left the rest, by whom it is now trampled, he will say to those on the right: “Come, blessed of my Father, receive the kingdom prepared for you from the beginning of the world.” For what merits? “For I was hungry, and you gave me to eat”; and he goes through the rest in the same way, as if he himself had received it: so much so that they, not understanding, answer and say, “Lord, when did we see you hungry, a stranger, and in prison?” And he says to them: “When you did it to one of the least of mine, you did it to me.” So too in our body the head is above and the feet are on the earth; yet in some crowd and crush of people, when someone treads on your foot, does not the head say, “You are treading on me”? No one has trodden on your head or your tongue: it is above, it is safe, nothing bad has happened to it; and yet, because through the bond of love there is unity from the head to the feet, the tongue did not separate itself from them, but said, “You are treading on me,” though no one touched it. As, then, the tongue, which no one touched, says, “You are treading on me,” so Christ the head, whom no one treads on, said, “I was hungry, and you gave me to eat.” And to those who did not do this, he said, “I was hungry, and you did not give me to eat.” And how did he conclude? Thus: “These will go into everlasting burning, but the righteous into eternal life.”

When the Lord was speaking just now, then, he said that he was the shepherd; he said that he was also the door. You have both there: “I am the door” and “I am the shepherd.” The door is in the head, the shepherd in the body. For he says to Peter, in whom alone he forms the Church: “Peter, do you love me?” He answered: “Lord, I love you.” “Feed my sheep.” And a third time: “Peter, do you love me?” Peter was saddened that he asked him a third time, as if he who saw the conscience of the denier did not see the faith of the confessor. He had always known him; he knew him even when Peter did not know himself. For he did not know himself when he said, “I will be with you even to death,” and he did not know how weak he was. As indeed often happens with the sick, the sick man does not know what is going on in him, but the physician knows, though the sick man suffers the illness and the physician does not. The physician says what is going on in another better than the sick man says what is going on in himself. Peter, then, was at that time sick, and the Lord the physician. The one said he had strength, and he did not; but the other, feeling the pulse of his heart, said that he would deny him three times. And it happened as the physician foretold, not as the sick man presumed. So after his resurrection the Lord questioned him, not as if he did not know with what mind Peter confessed his love of Christ, but so that by a threefold confession of love he might blot out the threefold denial of fear.

So the Lord demands this of Peter: “Peter, do you love me?”, as if to say, “What will you give me, what will you render me, because you love me?” What was Peter going to render to the risen Lord, going into heaven and sitting at the Father’s right hand? As if he said, “This you will give me, this you will render me, if you love me: that you feed my sheep, that you enter by the door, that you do not climb up some other way.” You heard, when the Gospel was read: “He who enters by the door is the shepherd; but he who climbs up another way is a thief and a robber”; and he seeks to scatter and disperse and carry off. Who is he that enters by the door? He who enters through Christ. Who is that? He who imitates the passion of Christ, who knows the humility of Christ: so that, since God became man for us, man may know himself to be not God but man. For he who wants to seem God, when he is man, does not imitate him who, though he was God, became man. You are not told, “Be something less than you are,” but, “Know what you are.” Know yourself weak, know yourself a man, know yourself a sinner; know that he justifies, know that you are stained. Let the stain of your heart appear in your confession, and you will belong to the flock of Christ. For confession of sins invites the physician who will heal: as in sickness he who says, “I am well,” does not seek a physician. Had not that Pharisee and the tax collector gone up to the temple? The one boasted of his health; the other showed his wounds to the physician. For the one said: “God, I thank you that I am not like this tax collector.” He boasted over another. So if that tax collector had been healthy, the Pharisee would have envied him, because he would have had no one to exalt himself over. In what state, then, had he come, who envied so? He was certainly not healthy: and since he called himself healthy, he did not go down healed. But the other, casting his eyes to the ground and not daring to lift them to heaven, beat his breast, saying: “God, be merciful to me a sinner.” And what does the Lord say? “Amen I say to you, the tax collector went down from the temple justified rather than the Pharisee: for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.” So those who exalt themselves want to climb into the sheepfold another way; but those who humble themselves enter the sheepfold by the door. Therefore of the one he said, “enters”; of the other, “climbs up.” He who climbs, you see, who seeks high things, does not enter but falls. But he who lowers himself so as to enter by the door does not fall, but is the shepherd.

But the Lord named three persons, and we ought to look for them in the Gospel: the shepherd, the hireling, and the thief. When it was read, I think you noticed, he described the shepherd, he described the hireling, he described the thief. The shepherd, he said, lays down his life for the sheep and enters by the door. The thief and robber, he said, climbs up another way. The hireling, he said, flees if he sees the wolf or even the thief, because he does not care for the sheep: for he is a hireling, not a shepherd. The one enters by the door, because he is the shepherd; the other climbs up another way, because he is a thief; the third, seeing those who want to carry off the sheep, is afraid and flees, because he is a hireling, because he does not care for the sheep; for he is a hireling. If we find these three persons, your Holiness has found whom to love, whom to tolerate, and whom to beware of. The shepherd is to be loved, the hireling tolerated, the robber guarded against. There are men in the Church of whom the apostle speaks, who preach the Gospel as a pretext, seeking their own advantage from men, whether money or honors or human praise. They preach because they want to receive gifts in whatever way they can, and they seek not so much the salvation of the one to whom they preach as their own advantage. But if he who hears of salvation from one who does not have salvation believes in him whom the preacher announces, and does not put his hope in the one through whom salvation is announced to him, then the preacher will suffer loss, and the hearer will have gain.

You have the Lord saying of the Pharisees, “They sit on Moses’ seat.” The Lord did not mean them alone: as if, indeed, he would send those who believed in Christ to the school of the Jews, to learn there the way to the kingdom of heaven. Did not the Lord come for this: to found the Church, and to separate from the Jews themselves those who believed well, hoped well, and loved well, like grain from chaff, and to make one wall of the circumcision, to which another wall from the uncircumcision of the Gentiles should be joined, and of these two walls, coming from different directions, he himself would be the cornerstone? Did not the same Lord say of these two peoples who would become one: “I have other sheep too, which are not of this fold”? He was speaking to the Jews: “I must,” he says, “bring them too, so that there may be one flock and one shepherd.” That is why there were two boats from which he had called the disciples. They signified the two peoples when they let down the nets and drew up such a mass and such a number of fish that the nets almost broke: “And they loaded,” it says, “two boats.” The two boats signified one Church, but made of two peoples, joined in Christ, though coming from different directions. The two wives also signify this, who had one husband, Jacob: Leah and Rachel. These two the two blind men also signify, who sat by the road, whom the Lord gave sight. And if you pay attention to the Scriptures, you will find two churches signified in many places, which are not two but one. For this is what the cornerstone is for: to make one out of two. This is what that shepherd is for: to make one flock out of two. So would the Lord, who was going to teach the Church and to have his own school apart from the Jews, as we now see, send those who believed in him to the Jews to learn? But under the name of the Pharisees and scribes he signified some who would be in his Church who would say and not do; and he had figured himself in the person of Moses. For Moses bore his person, and therefore put a veil before himself when he spoke to the people: because as long as they were devoted in the Law to carnal joys and pleasures and sought an earthly kingdom, a veil was set before their face, so that they should not see Christ in the Scriptures. For when the veil was taken away, after the Lord suffered, the secrets of the temple were seen. That is why, when he hung on the cross, the veil of the temple was torn from top to bottom; and the apostle Paul says plainly, “But when you pass over to Christ, the veil will be taken away.” But whoever has not passed over to Christ, although he reads Moses, has a veil lying over his heart, as the apostle says. So, since the Lord was foreshowing that there would be some such people in his Church, what does he say? “The scribes and Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat: what they say, do; but what they do, do not do.”

When bad clerics hear what is said against them, they want to twist it. For I have heard some wanting to twist this saying. If they were allowed, would they not delete it from the Gospel? But since they cannot delete it, they seek to twist it. But the grace and mercy of the Lord are at hand and do not let them do it; for he has fenced all his sayings round with his truth and balanced them, so that if anyone wants to cut something off from there, or to bring something in by bad reading or interpretation, whoever has a heart may join to Scripture what has been cut off from Scripture, and read what goes before or after, and he will find the sense that the other wanted to interpret badly. What, then, do you think is said of those of whom it is said, “What they say, do”? That this is said to the laity indeed. For a layman who wants to live well, when he notices a bad cleric, what does he say to himself? “The Lord said, What they say, do; what they do, do not do. Let me walk the Lord’s way, not follow this man’s conduct. Let me hear from him not his words, but God’s. Let me follow God; let him follow his greed. For if I wanted to defend myself before God by saying, Lord, I saw that cleric of yours living badly, and so I lived badly, will he not say to me, Wicked servant, had you not heard from me, What they say, do; but what they do, do not do?” But a bad layman, unbelieving, not belonging to Christ’s flock, not belonging to Christ’s grain, who is tolerated like chaff on the threshing floor, what does he say to himself when the word of God begins to rebuke him? “Go away: what are you telling me? The bishops themselves, the clergy themselves do not do it, and you compel me to do it?” He looks for himself not for a patron in a bad cause, but for a companion in punishment. For whatever bad man he chose to imitate will never defend him on the day of judgment. For as the devil seduces all whom he seduces, not to reign with them but to be condemned with them, so all who follow the bad seek companions for themselves on the way to hell, not patrons for the kingdom of heaven.

How, then, do these men twist this saying, when it is said to them, as they live badly, “The Lord rightly said, What they say, do; what they do, do not do”? “It was rightly said,” they say. “For it was said to you, that what we say you should do, but what we do you should not do. For we offer the sacrifice; you are not allowed to.” See the cunning of men, of what shall I call them? Hirelings. For if they were shepherds, they would not say this. That is why the Lord, to shut their mouths, went on and said: “They sit on Moses’ seat: what they say, do; but what they do, do not do: for they say, and do not do.” What does this mean, brothers? If he were speaking of offering sacrifice, would he say, “For they say, and do not do”? For they do offer sacrifice; they offer it to God. What is it that they say and do not do? Hear what follows: “For they bind heavy and unbearable burdens and lay them on men’s necks, which they themselves will not touch with one finger.” He rebuked them openly, described them, and pointed them out. But when they want to twist the saying in this way, they show that they seek nothing in the Church but their own advantage, and that they have not read the Gospel: for if they knew that very page and had read it all, they would never dare to say this.

But hear more plainly that the Church has such people. Lest anyone say to us: “He spoke entirely of the Pharisees, he spoke of the scribes, he spoke of the Jews: for the Church has no such people.” Who then are those of whom the Lord says, “Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven”? And he added: “Many will say to me on that day, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name do many mighty works, and in your name eat and drink?” Do Jews do these things in the name of Christ? It is surely plain that he speaks of those who bear the name of Christ. But what follows? “Then I will say to them: I never knew you. Depart from me, all you who work iniquity.” Hear the apostle groaning over such people. He says that some proclaim the Gospel out of love, others as a pretext: of these he says, “They proclaim the Gospel not rightly.” The thing is right, but they themselves are not right. What they proclaim is right; but those who proclaim are not right. Why is such a one not right? Because he seeks something else in the Church; he does not seek God. If he sought God, he would be chaste; for the soul has God as its lawful husband. Whoever seeks from God anything besides God does not seek God chastely. See, brothers: if a wife loves her husband because he is rich, she is not chaste. For she does not love her husband, but her husband’s gold. But if she loves her husband, she loves him naked, and loves him poor. For if she loves him because he is rich, what if (as human misfortunes go) he is proscribed and suddenly left in want? Perhaps she will renounce him, because what she loved was not her husband but his property. But if she truly loves her husband, she loves him even more when he is poor, because she loves him with compassion.

And yet, brothers, our God can never be poor. He is rich: he made all things, heaven and earth, the sea and the angels. Whatever we see, whatever we do not see in heaven, he made. Yet we ought not to love the riches, but him who made them. For he has promised you nothing but himself. Find anything more precious, and he will give you that. The earth is beautiful, heaven and the angels are beautiful; but he who made them is more beautiful. So those who proclaim God because they love God, who proclaim God for God’s sake, feed the sheep and are not hirelings. Our Lord Jesus Christ was demanding this very chastity of the soul when he said to Peter, “Peter, do you love me?” What is “Do you love me?” Are you chaste? Is your heart not adulterous? Do you seek in the Church not your own things but mine? If, then, you are such, and love me, feed my sheep. For you will not be a hireling, but you will be a shepherd.

But those over whom the apostle groans did not preach chastely. Yet what does he say? “What then? Provided that in every way, whether as a pretext or in truth, Christ is proclaimed.” So he allowed hirelings to exist. The shepherd proclaims Christ in truth; the hireling proclaims Christ as a pretext, seeking something else. Yet both the one and the other proclaim Christ. Hear the voice of Paul the shepherd: “Whether as a pretext or in truth, let Christ be proclaimed.” The shepherd himself was willing to have a hireling. For they do good where they can; they are useful as far as they can be. But when the apostle was looking for someone for other uses, whose ways the weak might imitate: “I have sent you Timothy,” he says, “to remind you of my ways.” And what does he say? “I have sent a shepherd to remind you of my ways”: that is, one who walks as I walk. And sending a shepherd, what does he say? “For I have no one so like-minded, who is anxious for you with sincere affection.” Were there not many with him? But what follows? “For all seek their own, not the things of Jesus Christ”: that is, “I wanted to send you a shepherd; for there are many hirelings, but a hireling ought not to be sent.” A hireling is sent for other matters and to carry out business; but for the things Paul then wanted, a shepherd was needed. And he scarcely found one shepherd among many hirelings, because shepherds are few and hirelings many. But what is said of the hirelings? “Amen I say to you, they have received their reward.” But what does the apostle say of the shepherd? “But whoever cleanses himself from such things will be a vessel for honor, sanctified and useful to the Lord, always ready for every good work.” Not ready for some things and not ready for others, but ready for every good work. This I have said of shepherds.

Now we will speak of the hirelings. The hireling, when he sees the wolf lying in wait for the sheep, flees. The Lord said this. Why? Because he does not care for the sheep. So the hireling is useful as long as he does not see the wolf, as long as he does not see the thief and robber: but when he sees them, he flees. And which of the hirelings does not flee from the Church when he sees the wolf and the robber? Wolves abound, robbers abound. They are the ones who climb up another way. Who are these who climb up? Those of the party of Donatus who want to plunder Christ’s sheep: they climb up another way. They do not enter through Christ, because they are not humble. Because they are proud, they climb up. What is “they climb up”? They exalt themselves. By what way do they climb? By another way: hence they want to be called a party. Those who are not in unity are of another party, and by that way they climb, that is, they exalt themselves, and they want to carry off the sheep. See how they climb. “We,” they say, “sanctify; we justify; we make people righteous.” See how high they have climbed. But “he who exalts himself will be humbled.” The Lord our God is able to humble them. But the wolf is the devil: he lies in wait to deceive, and so do those who follow him; for it is said that they are clothed in sheep’s skins, but inwardly are ravening wolves. If the hireling sees someone speaking perverse things, or thinking things that ruin his soul, or doing something criminal and obscene, and yet does nothing, because the man seems to have a person of some weight in the Church from whom he hopes for advantages, he is a hireling: and when he sees the man perishing in sin, sees him following the wolf, sees him dragged by the throat in its jaws to punishment, he does not say to him, “You are sinning”; he does not rebuke him, lest he lose his advantages. This, then, is “when he sees the wolf, he flees”: he does not say to him, “You are acting wickedly.” This flight is not of the body but of the soul. He whom you see standing in body flees in spirit when he sees the sinner and does not say to him, “You are sinning”; when he even takes counsel with him.

My brothers, does not a presbyter or a bishop sometimes go up and say nothing else from the higher place than that others’ property should not be seized, that frauds should not be done, that crimes should not be committed? Those who sit on Moses’ seat cannot say otherwise; and it is the seat that speaks through them, not they themselves. What, then, is “Do they gather grapes from thorns, or figs from thistles?” and “Every tree is known by its fruit”? Can a Pharisee speak good things? The Pharisee is a thorn: how do I gather a grape from a thorn? “Because you, Lord, said, What they say, do; but what they do, do not do. You bid me pluck a grape from thorns, though you said, Do they gather grapes from thorns?” The Lord answers you: “I did not bid you gather grapes from thorns; but see, look carefully, whether perhaps, as often happens, the vine, as it rambles over the ground, has become entangled in thorns.” For sometimes, my brothers, we find this: a vine planted over a trench, because there is a thorn hedge there, stretches out its branches and pushes them into the thorn hedge, and the cluster hangs among the thorns; and whoever sees the cluster plucks it, yet not from the thorns but from the vine that has wrapped itself round the thorns. So those men are thorny; but because they sit on Moses’ seat the vine has wrapped round them, and clusters hang on them, that is, good words, good precepts. You gather the grape; the thorn does not prick you when you gather, “What they say, do; but what they do, do not do.” But the thorn pricks you if you do what they do. So that you may gather the grape and not be caught in the thorns: “What they say, do; but what they do, do not do.” Their deeds are thorns; their words are the grape, but from the vine, that is, from Moses’ seat.

These men, then, flee when they see the wolf, when they see the robber. But I had begun to say that from the higher place these men cannot say anything but, “Do good, do not perjure yourselves, do not defraud, do not cheat anyone.” But sometimes people live in such a way that they take counsel with the bishop about seizing another man’s estate, and ask such counsel of him. It has sometimes happened to us; we speak from experience, for otherwise we would not believe it. Many ask bad counsel of us, counsel to lie, to cheat, thinking that they please us. But in the name of Christ (if what we say pleases the Lord), no such man has tempted us and found in us what he wanted. For if he who called us wills it, we are shepherds, not hirelings. But what does the apostle say? “To me it is a very small thing to be judged by you, or by any human day; indeed I do not judge myself. For I am conscious of nothing against myself; yet I am not justified by this. But he who judges me is the Lord.” My conscience is not good because you praise it. For why do you praise what you do not see? Let him praise who sees; let him also correct, if he sees anything there that offends his eyes. For we too do not say that we are perfectly healthy; but we beat our breast and say to God, “Be merciful, that I may not sin.” Yet I think (for I speak before him) that I seek nothing else from you but your salvation; and we often groan over the sins of our brothers, and suffer distress, and are tormented in mind, and sometimes rebuke them; or rather, we never fail to rebuke them. All who remember what I say are witnesses how often sinning brothers have been rebuked by us, and vehemently rebuked.

Now I consult with your Holiness about our own position. In the name of Christ you are the people of God, you are the Catholic people, you are members of Christ: you are not divided from unity. You are in communion with the members of the apostles, you are in communion with the shrines of the holy martyrs spread throughout the whole world, and you belong to our charge, so that we may give a good account of you. But what our whole account is, you know. “Lord, you know that I spoke; you know that I was not silent; you know with what mind I spoke; you know that I wept before you when I spoke and was not heard.” This, I think, is our full account. For the Holy Spirit has made us secure through the prophet Ezekiel. You know the reading about the watchman: “Son of man,” it says, “I have set you as a watchman for the house of Israel: if, when I say to the wicked, Wicked man, you shall surely die, you do not speak” (that is, for I tell you so that you may tell him), “if you do not proclaim it, and the sword comes and takes him away” (that is, what I have threatened the sinner with), “that wicked man shall die in his wickedness, but his blood I will require at the watchman’s hand.” Why? Because he did not speak. “But if the watchman sees the sword coming and blows the trumpet so that he may flee, and he does not take heed” (that is, does not correct himself, so that God may not find him in the punishment God threatens), “and the sword comes and takes someone away, that wicked man has died in his iniquity; but you,” he says, “have delivered your soul.” And in that place in the Gospel, what else does he say to the servant? When the servant said, “Lord, I knew that you are a troublesome or hard man, because you reap where you did not sow, and gather where you did not scatter; and being afraid I went and hid your talent in the ground: see, you have what is yours,” he says: “Wicked and lazy servant, all the more, since you knew me to be troublesome and hard, reaping where I did not sow and gathering where I did not scatter, my very greed should have taught you that I seek profit from my money. So you ought to have given my money to the bankers, and I on coming would have exacted what is mine with interest.” Did he say, “You should have given and exacted”? So we, brothers, give; he will come who will exact. Pray that he may find us ready.