Sermons to the People 15.1–16.5

We love the beauty of God's house and the place of the tabernacle of his glory, if we ourselves are that too. What, then, is the beauty of God's house and the place of the tabernacle of his glory, if not his temple, of which the Apostle says, "For the temple of God is holy, which you are"? So, just as in buildings made by hand, when they are built elegantly and magnificently, our bodily sight is charmed, so when living stones, the hearts of the faithful, are held together by the bond of love, that is the beauty of God's house and the place of the tabernacle of his glory. Learn, then, what you ought to love, so that you may be able to love. For whoever loves the beauty of God's house undoubtedly loves the Church: not in skilfully made walls and roofs, not in the sheen of marbles and gilded ceilings, but in faithful, holy people, who love God with all their heart and with all their soul and with all their mind, and their neighbor as themselves.

But in the Christian congregation, as far as participation and communion in the sacraments are concerned, they have multiplied beyond number. So the number is one thing; those beyond the number are another. The number are those of whom the Apostle says, "The Lord knows those who are his." Beyond the number: "For in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and silver, but also of wood and earthenware; some for honor, some for dishonor." So the number are the vessels for honor; beyond the number, the vessels for dishonor. Since, then, there are these two kinds of vessels, do we doubt where the beauty of God's house is? If, then, you want to love, doing what you have sung, the beauty of God's house and the place of the tabernacle of his glory, seek the vessels for honor. And I do not want you to say, "I have sought, and not found." For you sought and did not find because you yourself were not what you sought. Like clings to like; the unlike shuns the unlike. If you are a vessel for dishonor, without doubt a vessel for honor will be burdensome to you even to look at. Do you not hear how some people say of someone, "He is burdensome to us even to look at"? What is burdensome for you to look at, when will it be open for you to find? For these vessels belong to the inner man. Certainly when a righteous man has been seen, he is not yet recognized as righteous. The righteous and the unrighteous have the same appearance: both are men, but not both the house of God. And if both are called Christians, both are vessels, but not both for honor; but one for honor, the other for dishonor.

Must the great house be deserted because of the bad vessels? God, that is, the Lord of the great house, knows how to use both vessels for honor and vessels for dishonor. Just as it belongs to the wicked to use even good things badly, so on the contrary it belongs to God to use even bad things well. How many good things the wicked use! For "every creature of God is good." How do the wicked use them badly? As Scripture rebukes them, saying, "You ask and do not receive, because you ask badly, to spend it on your desires." What name have these received who use God's good things badly? It goes on and says, "Adulterers." Why adulterers? "Do you not know that a friend of this world is made an enemy of God?" "Adulterers," it says. There are adulterous souls, there are fornicating souls: let us examine them. Fornicating souls are those prostituted, as it were, to many false gods: adulterous ones, those already joined in lawful marriage, and yet not keeping the chastity of the soul for that lawful marriage. To put it more expressly, the soul of a pagan is a fornicator, the soul of a bad Christian an adulteress. The pagan's soul, a fornicator, has no lawful husband, and is corrupted, prostituted through various demons: but why is the soul of a bad Christian an adulteress? Because she neither loves chastity nor leaves her husband. So do not say, "Why are these people in God's house?" The answer to you is: "They are vessels for dishonor." God knows how to use them: he who created does not err; for he who could create knows how to order: they have their place in the great house. But if you ask me how God uses them well, I confess that, as a man, I cannot explain God's counsel. For I know how to tremble with the apostle Paul, who also trembled when he considered it, and trembling cried out: "O the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments, and how inscrutable his ways! For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor? Or who has first given to him, and it shall be repaid him? For from him and through him and in him are all things: to him be glory for ever and ever." To us belong consideration, wonder, trembling, exclamation: for there is no penetrating it. And to him what? "Glory for ever and ever." Whether concerning the vessels for honor or the vessels for dishonor, "to him be glory for ever and ever." Some he crowns, others he condemns, nowhere does he err: some he approves, by others he tests, all he orders.

"What," someone says, "are wicked people doing in this world?" Answer me: in a goldsmith's furnace, what is the chaff doing? I think the chaff is not there without reason, where gold is purified. Let us see what is all there: there is the furnace, the chaff, the gold, the fire, the craftsman: but those three, gold, chaff, fire, are in the furnace; the craftsman is at the furnace. Look at this world too: the world is the furnace; the chaff, wicked people; the gold, good people; the fire, tribulation; the craftsman, God. Look and see: the gold is not purified unless the chaff is burned. See the gold in this very Psalm, where we love the beauty of God's house and the place of the tabernacle of his glory. See the gold there, see the voice of the gold; it longs to be purified: "Prove me, Lord, and try me; burn my reins and my heart." "Prove me," he says, "Lord, and try me." He who ought to have dreaded temptation asks for temptation. "Prove me," he says, "Lord, and try me." And see whether he does not seek fire: "Prove me, and try me; burn my reins and my heart." Are you not afraid of failing in the fire? "No," he says. Why? "Because your mercy is before my eyes." See, he says, why I say securely, "Prove me, Lord, and try me; burn my reins and my heart": not because I am able by my own strength to bear the fire of temptation, but because your mercy is before my eyes. You who have granted me, he says, to be proven gold, will you let me perish in the furnace? Surely you put me in to be purified, and take me out purified. "May the Lord guard your going in and your going out." See the going out itself, see the entering into the furnace. "Count it all joy, my brothers, when you fall into various temptations." See, you have heard the entering; look for the going out. For it is easy to go in: to go out is a great thing. But do not fear: "God is faithful." Clearly, because you had gone in, you were thinking about the way out. "God is faithful, who will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear; but with the temptation will also make a way out." What is the way out? "That you may be able to bear it." You have gone in, you have fallen into it; you have borne it, you have come out.

The abundance of the wicked is great material for the purification of the good. For although the good lie hidden, mixed in the multitude of the wicked, the Lord knows those who are his. Under the hand of so great a craftsman, a speck of gold cannot perish in a great deal of chaff. How much chaff there is, and how little gold! But do not fear: the craftsman is so great that he can purify and cannot lose. See how the gold, the blessed Apostle, is proved by dangers in this furnace of the world: so that we may come to the dishonored vessels that are within, which the Lord of the great house knows how to use well. So when the Apostle was being proved by dangers, what did he say? "In dangers at sea, in dangers in the desert, in dangers from my own race, in dangers from the Gentiles." All these are outside. Look within: "In dangers among false brothers." So I address the gold of God, I address the vessels made for honor, I address the grains laboring among the chaff in the threshing of the floor. I say to you, whoever hears, not me but through me: Be good, bear with the bad. I do not want you to say, "Who is good?" Or rather, I do want you to say this: since however good you are, you will not be without some bad. Hence it is most rightly said, "No one is good but God alone." But that good one who does good things is God. If, then, God is good who does good things, and he alone is good, the maker of good things, how is he the maker of good things if no human being is good? So, according to his measure, a good man too is near. If there were none, the Lord himself would not say, "A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good things."

So be good, and bear with the bad. Be good in one way, and bear with the bad in two ways. Good only within: for if not within, good nowhere. So be good within; bear with the bad both outside and within. Outside, bear with the heretic, bear with the pagan, bear with the Jew; bear also within with the bad Christian. For "a man's enemies are those of his own household." Putting up with many troublesome bad people within, you are irritated and indignant, as if the time of winnowing had already come. You are placed on the threshing floor; you are still on the threshing floor; the floor is still being threshed; grains and sheaves are still being gathered to the floor as the nations believe. Do you think you can have only wheat on the floor? You are mistaken. Groan on the floor, so that you may rejoice in the barn. Many evils are done by bad Christians: those who are outside, and do not want to be Christians, find occasions for excuses. To someone urging him to believe, a man answers: "Do you want me to be what that man and that man is?" And he names this one and that one: and sometimes he tells the truth. And when the truth cannot be found, what great thing is it to slander? Since he does not hesitate to slander, he makes another suspect what he did not see. And you, when you hear a man saying these things, perhaps because you know your bad brothers, say to yourself, "He is telling the truth": "Dangers among false brothers." But do not lose heart; what he is looking for, be that. Be a good Christian, so that you may refute the slandering pagan. But he slanders, and says false things even about the good, and he is often believed. What does the gold do? Chaff is all around, and fire. Put away your dross, not your faith: be cleaner, be cleaner by this very exercise; let him avail for you who takes away what makes you dirtier, not who crushes the gold that you are. For if you fail, you perish in the chaff: and if you perish in the chaff, you were not gold, but were pretending to be gold. "The Lord knows those who are his." As for those who are bad, on whose account you blush when you are among the bad who are outside, remember that they are in the great house where you are, not vessels for honor, but for dishonor. The Apostle has instructed you; God rules you. If there were no bad people for us to pray for, when would it be said to us, "Pray for your enemies"? Or would we perhaps want to have good enemies? How can that happen? You will not have a good enemy unless you are bad: but if you are good, your enemy will be none but a bad one. "Pray for your enemies." So, good people, pray for the bad. Return to your heart. O you who are being purified in this furnace, if your voice could be, "Prove me, Lord, and try me; burn my reins and my heart: for your mercy is before my eyes": see, return to your heart. You are under God, you are about to pour out a prayer; there comes to your mind the one who hurt you, the one who oppressed you, the one who robbed you, the one who put you in prison: come now, attend to your heart, look to your Lord. See, your enemy is bad, see, your Lord is good: your bad enemy harms you; "Pray for your enemy," says your good Lord to you. Between your bad enemy and your good Lord, what are you going to do? Pray against the one, or obey the other?

You undertake, at your Lord's command, to pray for that malicious enemy of yours: what are you going to do? The Lord has commanded: he has commanded hard things, but he has promised great things. What hard things has he commanded? "Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who persecute you." They are hard: but "because of the words of your lips I have kept hard ways." How could you keep hard ways by your own strength, unless "your mercy is before my eyes"? See, he has commanded hard things, bitter things; see what he has promised. "Pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven." If he said to you, "Pray for your enemy, so that you may be your father's son, so that your carnal father may not disinherit you," who is going to leave you what he will not take away from here, you would be afraid, and you would do it: for these hard things you are promised that you will be a son of the Most High; think of the Father, and recognize the inheritance. Say, then: begin to pray for that great enemy of yours, who has done you many wrongs, who has heaped many hard things on you: begin to pray for him, and see your heart quarrelling with you. So that you want it, that it pleases you, that you delight in it according to the inner man, that you obey your Lord and pray for your enemy: that is gold. But that, when you begin to pray, the weakness of the flesh begins to quarrel with you: that is the dross from which God wants to purify you in the furnace.

So exercise yourself in the midst of the wicked, O good man, if you are good: not good of your own, since you were bad, but of his who is never bad: exercise yourself in the midst of the wicked. And I do not want you to say to me: "At least, if it was necessary for our exercise that there should be bad people, there should be few bad and many good." Do you not notice that if they were few, they would not harm many? Surely consider, prudent man, that if the good were many and the bad few, the few bad would not dare to harm the many good. If they did not dare, they would not exercise them. But now, because the bad are many, the few good labor among the many bad: and when there is labor, there is sweat; and when there is sweat, the gold is purified. So be part of the beauty of God's house. Your weakness has already quarrelled with you in your heart; call on God, so that you may win: may God be with you; may he who commands help you. You have already become the victor over your weakness, you have already taken up the spirit and the fruit of praying for your enemy: see what a good thing it is; compare him with yourself. He plots temptations, you pour out prayers: if he harms, he harms openly; that you pray for him, God knows: he does not believe it, because he has not examined your heart. So while he harms openly, you pray secretly: in this press (for the Church too has been compared to a press), see whether he who harms openly is not the dregs running through the public street. The dregs run through the street, but the oil has hidden passages to its own vat. And though it passes secretly, it appears in its abundance. For how many, my brothers, how many in this conflict of affairs, in the malice of this world, in this abundance of the wicked, have withdrawn and been converted to God, and said farewell to the world, and suddenly begun to give their goods to the poor, who shortly before were seizing other people's! But many robbers, invaders, plunderers appear in public; that is the dregs running through the streets: but these, one here, one there, joined in heart, ashamed to remain bad and doing bad things, asking for God's counsels, laughing at the hope of the world, waiting for the heavenly hope, changing their loves and their ways: they are the oil of holiness in the press, the vessel for honor in the great house, the gold in the furnace, the grain in the barn. There is the beauty of God's house.

The Spirit of God, calling the human race, commanding what we ought to do and promising what we ought to hope for, first inflames our mind toward the reward, so that we may do what is commanded more by loving the good than by fearing the bad. "Who is the man," he says, "who wants life and loves to see good days?" The question is asked who he is, as if one could be found who was not such. For who does not want life? Who does not love to see good days? Hear, then, what follows, you man, whoever you are who want and love this; hear what follows, every man: "Keep your tongue from evil, and let your lips not speak deceit. Turn from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it." Of all these, the rest, which come before, are in the command; the last is in the reward. For that we should keep our tongue from evil, and our lips not speak deceit, that we should turn from evil and do good, that we should seek peace, is commanded us; but that we should pursue it is promised us. What is this peace, if not that which the world does not have? What is this peace, if not that which this life does not have, which in comparison with that life is not life? For he would not say of this life, "Who is the man who wants life?" and urge us by the following commands either to keep this life or to prolong it, as if anyone did not want even this life. For even this life is desired, at least to be long, since it cannot be eternal: and through this life a man can come to that one, if as he wants this life long, so he wants it good too. And how long is anything in this life, which will one day be ended? And what was long will be nothing: because even when it was, it did not stand; when it was being prolonged, it was not being increased; nor did it grow by adding, because by coming it was going away.

Whoever you are, then, who love a long life, love rather a good life. For if you choose to live badly, a long life will not be a true good, but a long evil. And see how absurd and perverse you are: though you admit that you love life more than your estate, you would rather have a good estate than a good life. For in order to get a good estate by gaping after it and coveting wrongly, you make your life bad by fraud. Yet if it were said to you, if you were asked, whether you would rather lose a good estate or a bad life by dying, you would answer that, if you could not keep both, you were readier to have the estate taken from you. Why, then, is life not so loved that it is also good, when you prefer it, even bad, to all your goods? You certainly want it to be long, even though it is bad: rather, make it good, and do not fear that it will be short. For if, with you careful, it goes well, with you careless it will soon end. For eternal life will succeed it, happy without fear, long without end. It is about that life that he asks who says, "Who is the man who wants life and loves to see good days?" But in this life the Apostle commands us to redeem the time, because the days are evil. And what is redeeming the time, if not, when necessary, buying stretches of time for seeking and seizing eternal things even at the cost of temporal advantages? Hence the Lord too commands, saying, "If anyone wants to go to law with you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak too": so that, losing some temporal thing, you may spend on peace what you were going to spend on a lawsuit.

That the Spirit of God is not speaking of the life and days of this time when he says, "Who is the man who wants life and desires to see good days?", what follows shows. For he adds commands by obeying which we may have life and good days, such that this life which we now lead, and these days, must often be given up for the sake of fulfilling those same commands. So if we understand this life in which we now are in the words, "Who is the man who wants life?", and do the commands joined to it for the sake of having this life, what shall we do when someone powerful in malice threatens us with death unless we bear false witness? For certainly, if we do what is commanded here, "Keep your tongue from evil," so that for the sake of this command we refuse false testimony, we shall seem to have been deceived: because we undertook to keep the command out of desire to have life, and by keeping the command we have rather lost it. But if we understand the life that is happy for ever, which God will give after this one to those who obey him, of which the Lord said to someone, "If you want to come to life, keep the commandments": then indeed, when we are asked, "Who is the man who wants life?", we answer that we want life; and if, even under the blow of the executioner, we keep to the truth in testimony, we despise death in the world, we obtain life in heaven.

Let us understand this of the good days. For if, for the sake of the days of the present age, which are called good and are not, buried in the heart under heaps of feasts, in whirlpools of luxury and drunkenness, in the most shameful pleasures of gluttony: if, then, for the sake of these days, as though for good days, we undertake the command that our lips should not speak deceit; often such days force their lovers to speak deceit, and such days are denied to those who do not speak deceit. For what else is speaking deceit but putting forth one thing with the lips while another is shut up in the breast? This is why the business of flatterers has flourished most; because almost always, so as not to be shut out from rich tables and elaborate banquets, they do not keep silent about what is false in their flattery: and they are shut out from them if, loving God, they speak the truth. So for these days, which they think good, they speak deceit so that the days may be provided for them; and the days are denied them if they do not speak deceit. There are, then, other good days, about which we are admonished that, if we love to see them, we should keep our tongue from evil and not speak deceit. Those days are not of this world: the heaven that will pass away does not have them, but the heaven that will remain; the land of the dying does not know them, but the land of the living. Whoever has understood and loved them keeps his tongue from evil: and if the terror of death drives him to evil, his lips do not speak deceit; and if he is invited to deceit by deceptively good days, he turns from evil even among good things, he does good even among evil things; he seeks peace, which is not on earth, and pursues it in him who made heaven and earth.

So, brothers, desire life, and love to see good days where there will be no night: a life in which no bad day is feared; good days in which life will never end. But if you love this reward, beware of refusing the work of which it is the reward. For seek that peace and pursue it: and seek it with your hands, at night, before God, and you will not be deceived. For what is "with your hands" but by your works? What is "at night" but in tribulation? What is "before God" but in purity of conscience? Living thus and loving this, you will have God in contemplation, and in him life without failing, good days without darkening, peace without dissension.