Sermons to the People 147.1–149.19

You remember that the apostle Peter, first of all the apostles, was thrown into confusion at the Lord’s passion: confused by himself, but renewed by Christ. For he was first a bold presumer, and afterwards became a fearful denier. He had promised that he would die for the Lord, when the Lord was first to die for him. So when he said, “I will be with you even to death,” and, “I will lay down my life for you,” the Lord answered him, “Will you lay down your life for me? Amen I say to you, before the cock crows, you will deny me three times.” The hour came; and because Christ was God, and Peter a man, the Scripture was fulfilled, “I said in my fear, Every man is a liar.” And the apostle says, “For God is true, but every man a liar.” Christ truthful, Peter a liar.

What now? The Lord questions him, as you heard when the Gospel was read, and says to him: “Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?” He answered and said: “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.” And the Lord asked this again, and asked it a third time. And to him who answered with love he entrusted the flock. For at each of Peter’s answers, “I love you,” the Lord Jesus said, “Feed my lambs, feed my little sheep.” In the one Peter was figured the unity of all shepherds, but of good ones, who know how to feed Christ’s sheep for Christ, not for themselves. Was Peter a liar now, or did he answer falsely that he loved the Lord? He answered this truly: for he answered what he saw in his heart. But when he had said, “I will lay down my life for you,” he wanted to presume on his strength in the future. Every man may perhaps know what he is at the time he speaks; what he will be tomorrow, who knows? So Peter turned his eyes back to his heart when he was questioned by the Lord, and confidently answered what he saw there: “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.” What I tell you, you know: what I see here in my heart, you see too. Yet he did not dare to say what the Lord had asked. For the Lord had not simply said, “Do you love me?” but had added, “Do you love me more than these?”, that is, “Do you love me more than these do?” He was speaking of the other disciples: Peter could say only, “I love you”; he did not dare to say, “more than these.” He did not want to be a liar again. It was enough for him to bear witness to his own heart: he ought not to be the judge of another’s heart.

Was Peter truthful, then, or was Christ truthful in Peter? When the Lord Jesus Christ willed, he left Peter, and Peter was found to be a man; when it pleased the Lord Jesus Christ, he filled Peter, and Peter was found truthful. The Rock had made Peter truthful: “for the rock was Christ.” And what did he announce to him, when for the third time Peter answered that he loved Christ, and for the third time the Lord entrusted his little sheep to Peter? He foretold his passion. “When you were younger,” he says, “you girded yourself and went where you wished; but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will gird you and carry you where you do not wish.” The evangelist has explained to us what Christ said. “He said this,” he says, “signifying by what death he would glorify God”: that is, that he would be crucified for Christ; for this is, “You will stretch out your hands.” Where is that denier now? Then, after this, the Lord Christ said: “Follow me.” Not as before, when he called the disciples. For then too he said, “Follow me”: but then to teaching, now to a crown. When he denied Christ, did he not fear to be killed? He feared to suffer what Christ suffered. But now he ought not to fear. For he saw living in the flesh him whom he had seen hanging on the tree. By rising again Christ took away the fear of death; and since he had taken away the fear of death, rightly did he ask about Peter’s love. Fear had denied three times; love confessed three times. The threefold denial was desertion of the truth; the threefold confession was testimony of love.

When the reading from the book entitled the Acts of the Apostles was read, you noticed what happened to those who, having sold a farm, kept back part of its price and laid the rest at the apostles’ feet as if it were the whole price. At once, rebuked, they both breathed their last, the husband and his wife. To some this punishment seems too severe, that people should die for money taken back from their own property. The Holy Spirit did not do this out of greed; the Holy Spirit punished the lie in this way. For you heard the words of the most blessed Peter, saying: “While it remained, did it not remain yours, and when it was sold, was it not in your power?” If you did not want to sell, who would force you? If you wanted to offer half, who would demand the whole? For if half was to be offered, half should have been declared. Half for the whole: this is the lie to be punished. Yet let not temporal death seem a severe punishment, brothers. And would that the punishment went no further! For what great thing has happened to mortals who were bound to die sometime? But through their temporal punishment God wanted discipline to be known. And it is to be believed that after this life God spared them, for great is his mercy. Now of deaths that come as punishment, the apostle Paul speaks in one place, rebuking those who treated the body and blood of Christ badly, and saying, “For this reason many among you are weak and sick, and enough of you are sleeping”: that is, as many as suffices to impose discipline. Many among you sleep, that is, die. For they were being corrected by the Lord’s scourge: they fell sick, and died. And after these words he added: “For if we judged ourselves, we would not be judged by the Lord. But when we are judged, we are corrected by the Lord, so that we may not be condemned with the world.” What, then, if something like this happened to this man and his wife? They were corrected by the scourge of death so as not to be punished with eternal torment.

Let your Charity attend to this only: if God was displeased that they took back some of the money they had vowed to God, money that was certainly needed for human uses, how angry is God when chastity is vowed and not kept, when virginity is vowed and not kept? For it is vowed for God’s uses, not for human uses. What do I mean by “for God’s uses”? That God makes of the saints a house for himself, makes a temple for himself, in which he deigns to dwell: and he certainly wants his temple to remain holy. So to a consecrated virgin who marries, what Peter said of the money can be said: “Your virginity, while it remained, did it not remain yours, and before you vowed it, was it not in your power?” But whatever women have done this, have vowed such things and not fulfilled them, let them not think that they are corrected by temporal deaths, but that they are condemned to eternal fire.

Before last Sunday, I remember, I became your Holiness’s debtor for certain questions set out from the Scriptures. Now, as far as the Lord deigns to grant, it is time to pay, so that we may not owe any longer, except love alone, which is always paid and always owed. About Peter’s vision we had said that we must ask what that vessel means, like a linen sheet let down from heaven by four cords, in which were all the four-footed animals of the earth, and creeping things, and birds of the sky; and what was said to Peter by the divine voice, “Kill and eat”; and that this was done three times, and it was taken up again.

Against those who think that gluttony was commanded to Peter by the Lord God, it is easy to argue. First, because even if we take literally what was said, “Kill and eat,” it is not killing and eating that is sin, but using immoderately the gifts of God which he has granted for human use.

For the Jews had received certain animals to eat and certain to abstain from: and that they received this as a sign of things to come, the apostle Paul makes plain, saying: “Let no one judge you, then, in food or in drink, or in respect of a feast day, or a new moon, or Sabbaths, which are a shadow of things to come.” And so, now in the times of the Church, he says in another place: “All things are clean to the clean; but it is evil for the man who eats with offense.” For at the time when the apostle wrote this there were some who ate meat to the offense of certain weak people. For the sacrificial meat of the animals which the soothsayers sacrificed was then sold in the market, and many brothers abstained from eating meat, lest even unknowingly they should come upon meat from which sacrifice had been made to idols. Hence in another place the same apostle, so that conscience might not tremble with fear, says: “Eat whatever is sold in the market, asking no questions for conscience’ sake. For the earth is the Lord’s, and its fullness.” And again: “If one of the unbelievers invites you, and you want to go, eat whatever is set before you, asking no questions for conscience’ sake. But if anyone says to you, This has been offered in sacrifice, do not eat it, for the sake of the one who pointed it out, and for conscience’ sake.” So in these matters everything, clean or unclean, lies not in the touch of the flesh but in the purity or the stain of the conscience.

Hence Christians have been given a freedom that was not given to the Jews. For all the animals the Jews were forbidden to eat are signs of things and, as was said, shadows of things to come. As that circumcision which they bore in the flesh, while they rejected it in the heart, signifies the circumcision of the heart, so those foods too are precepts of mysteries and signs of things to come. For example, it was written for them that they should eat the animals that chew the cud and have a divided hoof, but not eat those that lack both or one of these: certain men are signified who do not belong to the fellowship of the saints. For the divided hoof belongs to conduct, chewing the cud to wisdom. Why does the divided hoof belong to conduct? Because it does not slip easily. For slipping is a sign of sin. And how does chewing the cud belong to the teaching of wisdom? Because Scripture says, “A desirable treasure rests in the mouth of the wise, but the foolish man gulps it down.” So he who hears and through negligence becomes forgetful as it were gulps down what he heard, so that it no longer has any taste in his mouth, as he buries what he heard in forgetfulness. But he who meditates on the law of the Lord day and night as it were chews the cud, and delights in the savor of the word on a kind of palate of the heart. So this command given to the Jews signifies that those who are careless hearers, or have bad conduct, or are blamed for both faults, do not belong to the Church, that is, to the body of Christ, to the grace and fellowship of the saints.

So the other precepts of this kind given to the Jews are shadowy signs of things to come. After the light of the world, our Lord Jesus Christ, came, they are read only to be understood, not also to be observed. So Christians have been given the freedom not to act according to this custom, now empty, but to eat what they want, with moderation, with blessing, with thanksgiving. Perhaps, then, it was said to Peter, “Kill and eat,” so that he should no longer keep the observances of the Jews; yet a whirlpool of the belly and foul gluttony was not commanded to him.

But so that you may understand that this was shown as a figure, there were creeping things in that vessel. Could he possibly eat serpents? What, then, does this sign mean? That vessel signifies the Church: the four cords by which it hung, the four parts of the world, through which the Catholic Church extends, spread everywhere. So whoever wants to go off into a part and be cut off from the whole does not belong to the mystery of the four cords. And if he does not belong to Peter’s vision, neither does he belong to the keys that were given to Peter. For God says that at the end he will gather his saints from the four winds, because now the faith of the Gospel is spread through all these four quarters. So those animals are the Gentiles. For all the Gentiles who were unclean in their errors and superstitions and lusts before Christ came were made clean when he came and their sins were forgiven. Why, then, now that their sins are forgiven, should they not be received into the body of Christ, which is the Church of God, whose person Peter bore?

For Peter appears in many places of the Scriptures as bearing the person of the Church; especially in that place where it was said, “To you I give the keys of the kingdom of heaven. Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven too; and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven too.” Did Peter receive these keys, and Paul not receive them? Did Peter receive them, and John and James and the other apostles not receive them? Or are these keys not in the Church, where sins are forgiven daily? But since Peter, as a sign, bore the person of the Church, what was given to him alone was given to the Church. So Peter bore the figure of the Church; the Church is the body of Christ. Let it receive, then, the Gentiles now cleansed, whose sins have been forgiven; that is why Cornelius, a Gentile, had sent to him, and those with him who were Gentiles. His alms, which had been accepted, had cleansed him in some measure: it remained for him to be incorporated into the Church like clean food, that is, into the Lord’s body. But Peter was afraid to deliver the Gospel to the Gentiles, because those who had believed from the circumcision were forbidding the apostles to deliver the Christian faith to the uncircumcised, and saying that they ought not to come to share in the Gospel unless they had received circumcision, which had been handed down to their fathers.

That vessel, then, removed this hesitation; and therefore after that vision he was admonished by the Holy Spirit to go down and go with those who had come from Cornelius; and he went. For Cornelius and those with him were regarded as being among those animals shown in the vessel; yet God had already cleansed them, because he had accepted their alms. So they were to be killed and eaten: that is, the past life in which they had not known Christ was to be killed in them, and they were to pass into his body, as into the new life of the Church’s fellowship. For Peter himself, when he had come to them, briefly recounted what had been shown to him in that vision. For he said: “You yourselves know how unlawful it is for a Jew to associate with or visit a foreigner; but God has shown me that I should call no man common or unclean.” This God showed him, of course, when that voice sounded: “What God has cleansed, do not call unclean.” And afterwards, coming to the brothers in Jerusalem, when some were in an uproar because the Gospel was being delivered to the Gentiles, he recounted the vision itself in restraining their agitation; and he would not have had to recount it unless it bore the same meaning.

Perhaps this too may be asked: why was it a linen sheet in which those animals were? Certainly not without reason. For we know that the moth, which spoils other garments, does not consume linen. Let each one shut out from his heart the corruptions of evil desires, and be made so incorruptibly firm in faith that he is not penetrated by wicked thoughts as by moths, if he wants to belong to the mystery of that linen sheet by which the Church is figured.

Why was it let down from heaven three times? Because all the Gentiles who belong to the four parts of the earth, through which the Church is sown, which the four cords holding that vessel signified, are baptized in the name of the Trinity. Believing in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, they are renewed so as to belong to the fellowship and communion of the saints. So the four cords and the threefold letting down also show the number of the twelve apostles, as if three were assigned to each of the four. For four times three make twelve. Enough, I think, has been said about this vision.

Another question we had put off: why the Lord, in the sermon he gave on the mountain, said to his disciples: “Let your works shine before men, so that they may see your good deeds, and glorify your Father who is in heaven.” And a little later in that same sermon he says, “Beware of practicing your righteousness before men, in order to be seen by them”; and, “Let your alms be in secret, and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.” The doer often wavers between these two commands, and does not know which to obey, since he certainly wants to obey the Lord, who commanded both. How will our works shine before men, so that they may see our good deeds; and how, again, will our alms be in secret? If I want to keep this one, I stumble against that one; if I keep that one, I sin against this one. So each place of Scripture must be so balanced as to show that divine commands cannot be contrary to one another. For this apparent conflict in the words looks for the peace of one who understands. Let each one have harmony with the word of God in his heart, and there is no discord in Scripture.

Picture, then, a man giving alms in such a way that absolutely no one knows, if possible not even the one to whom it is given; so that, avoiding even his eyes, he puts down something for him to find rather than holds out something for him to take. What more can he do to hide his almsgiving? This man certainly falls foul of the other saying, and does not do what the Lord says, “Let your works shine before men, so that they may see your good deeds.” No one sees his good deeds; he invites no one to imitate them. The others will be barren, as far as he is concerned, while they think that no one does what God has commanded, if people act so that their good works are not seen; whereas greater mercy is shown to one who is set an example of good conduct to imitate than to one who is handed food to refresh his body. Picture another airing and flaunting his alms before the people, wanting nothing from them but to be praised: his works shine before men. You see that he does not stumble against that command; but he stumbles against the other saying of the Lord, “Let your alms be in secret.” Such a man even grows slack if some ungodly people happen to criticize what he does. He hangs on the tongues of those who praise him: he is like the virgins who do not carry oil with them. For you know the five foolish virgins who did not carry oil with them, and the others, the wise ones, who did carry oil with them. All their lamps were shining: but some did not have with them the means to feed that light, and they were distinguished from those who had it in such a way that some were called foolish and the others wise. What, then, is it to carry oil with you, but to have the consciousness of pleasing God by good works, and not to make the goal of one’s joy the praise of men, who cannot see the conscience? For what one does, a man can see; but with what intention one does it, God sees.

Let us picture, then, someone keeping both commands, obeying both. He holds out bread to the hungry, and holds it out before those whom he wants to make his imitators; imitating also the apostle who says, “Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ.” So he holds out bread to the poor man, open in the deed, devout in the heart. Whether he seeks his own praise there or God’s glory, no man sees, no man judges; but those who are ready, with kindly zeal, to imitate him believe that what they see done well is also done with a godly mind, and they praise God, by whose command and gift they see such things done. So his work appears, so that men may see and glorify the Father who is in heaven: but its purpose is in his heart, so that his alms may be in secret, and the Father who sees in secret may reward him. This man has kept the measure he ought, despising neither command, fulfilling both. For he took care that his righteousness should not be done before men, that is, that its goal should not be to be praised by men, since he wanted not himself but God to be praised in his good work. And because that will is inside, in the conscience itself, that alms was done in secret, so that he from whom nothing is hidden may reward it. For who can show his heart to men when he acts, so as to show with what intention of mind he acts?

For the words themselves, brothers, were spoken by the Lord with careful weighing. Notice how he says: “Beware of practicing your righteousness before men, in order,” he says, “to be seen by them.” If he set the goal where he said, “in order to be seen by them,” this goal is reprehensible and blameworthy: to want to do good only as far as human praise, seeking nothing more from it. So whoever acts only in order to be seen by men is rebuked by the Lord in this saying. But there, where he bids that our good deeds be seen, he did not set the goal that men should only see a man and praise a man: he passes on to the glory of God, so that the doer’s intention may be carried on to that. “Let your works shine,” he says, “before men, so that they may see your good deeds”: but you ought not to seek this. What then? He adds and says: “and glorify,” he says, “your Father who is in heaven.” If you seek this, that God may be glorified, do not fear being seen by men. Even so your alms is within, in secret, where he alone whose glory you seek sees you seeking this. Hence the apostle Paul, after the persecutor of the Gospel was thrown down and raised up a preacher, says: “I was unknown by face to the churches of Judea which were in Christ. They only heard that he who once persecuted us now preaches the faith he once ravaged; and they glorified God in me,” he says. He did not rejoice because the man who had received was recognized, but because God who had given was praised. For he himself said: “If I were still pleasing men, I would not be a servant of Christ.” And yet in another place he says: “As I too please all men in all things.” This too is a similar question. But what does he add? “Not seeking,” he says, “what profits me, but what profits the many, that they may be saved.” This is what he says in that place, “And they glorified God in me,” which the Lord too says: “that they may glorify your Father who is in heaven.” For they are saved then, when in the works they see done by men they glorify him from whom men received these things.

Two questions remain: but I fear I may be a burden to you who are already tired; again, I fear I may cheat you who are still hungry. Still, I remember what I have paid and what I owe. For it remains to see what is meant by, “Do not let your left hand know what your right hand does”; and, about love of one’s enemy, why the ancients seemed to be given leave to hate enemies, whom we are commanded to love. But what am I to do? If I discuss these briefly, perhaps I will not be understood as I should; if at greater length, I fear I may weigh you down more with the burden of the sermon than relieve you with the fruit of the explanation. But certainly, if you understand less than enough, hold me still your debtor, so that these things may be discussed more fully at another time. Still, they must not be left now with nothing said about them at all. The left hand is the soul’s carnal desire; the right hand is the soul’s spiritual love. If, then, when someone gives alms, he mixes in a desire for temporal advantages, so as to gain some such thing by that work, he mixes the awareness of the left hand with the works of the right. But if he helps a man with simple love and a pure conscience before God, looking to nothing else but to please him who commands these things, the left hand does not know what the right hand is doing.

The question about love of an enemy is more difficult, and cannot be solved with such brevity. But when you hear it, pray for us; and perhaps the Lord God will quickly give what we think is difficult. For we live from one storehouse, because we are in one household. What we think lies far inside, hidden, perhaps he who promises puts at the threshold, so that it can very easily be given to those who ask. The Lord Christ himself loved his enemies: for hanging on the cross he said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do.” Stephen followed his example when stones were being thrown at him, and said: “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” The servant imitated the Lord, so that none of the servants may be lazy and think that what was done could be done by the Lord alone. If, then, it is too much for us to imitate the Lord, let us imitate our fellow servant. For we have all been called to the same grace. Why then was it said to the ancients, “You shall love your neighbor, and hate your enemy”? Because perhaps this too was said truly to them; but to us more openly, in accordance with the arrangement of the times, through the presence of him who saw what was to be veiled from whom and opened to whom. For if we have an enemy whom we are never commanded to love, it is the devil: “You shall love your neighbor,” man, “and hate your enemy,” the devil. But since enmities often arise among men themselves, in the minds of those who by unbelief give place to the devil and become his vessels, so that he works in the children of unbelief; and yet it can happen that a man abandons his malice and turns to the Lord: so while he still rages, while he still persecutes, he is to be loved, and prayed for, and done good to. Thus you will fulfil both the first command, to love your neighbor, man, and hate your enemy, the devil; and the second, to love your enemies, men, and pray for those who persecute you.

Unless perhaps you think that Christians did not pray at that time for Saul, the persecutor of Christians. Perhaps it was for his conversion that the voice of the martyr Stephen was heard. For he was among the number of his persecutors, and kept the garments of those who stoned him. The same man, writing to Timothy, says: “I urge first of all that supplications, prayers, intercessions, thanksgivings be made for all men, for kings and all who are in high position, so that we may lead a quiet and peaceful life.” So he bade prayer be made for kings: and at that time kings were persecuting the churches. But the churches which they then persecuted while the churches prayed for them, they now defend, since those prayers for them have been heard.

Do you want, then, to keep that command of the ancients too? Love your neighbor, that is, every man. For since all were born of the two first parents, we are all certainly neighbors. For indeed the Lord Jesus Christ himself, who commands us to love enemies, testified that the whole Law and the Prophets hang on those two commands: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind”; and, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” He commanded nothing there about love of an enemy. Do these two commands, then, not contain everything? Far from it! For when he says, “You shall love your neighbor,” all men are included, even if they are enemies: because even in terms of spiritual kinship you do not know what the man who for the present seems your enemy is to you in God’s foreknowledge. For since the patience of God is leading him to repentance, perhaps he will recognize his leader and follow him. For if God himself, who knows who will persevere in their sins, who will abandon righteousness and slip irrevocably into iniquity, yet makes his sun rise on the good and the bad, and rains on the just and the unjust, inviting to repentance through patience, so that those who neglect his goodness may experience his severity at the end: with how much care ought a man to be ready to be reconciled, lest perhaps, not knowing what the other will become, when he looks at his present enmity he should hate one with whom he will reign in eternal happiness? So fulfil the first command: love your neighbor, every man; and hate your enemy, the devil. Fulfil the second too: love your enemies, but men; pray for those who persecute you, but for men; do good to those who hate you, but to men.

“If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him drink: for in doing this you will heap coals of fire on his head.” Here too there is a question. For how does anyone love one whom he wants to burn with coals? But if it is understood, there is no conflict. For it speaks of those devastating coals which are given to a man against a deceitful tongue. For when someone has done good to his enemy, and, not overcome by his evil, has overcome evil with good, the other will often repent of his enmity and be angry with himself for having hurt so good a man. And that burning itself is repentance, which like coals of fire consumes his enmities and malice.