Sermons to the People 161.1–161.12

We heard the Apostle, when he was read, rebuking and restraining human lusts and saying: “Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Far from it.” So he said that our bodies are members of Christ, since Christ is our head, because he became man for our sake: the head of whom it was said, “He himself is the Savior of our body.” And his body is the Church. If then our Lord Jesus Christ had taken only a human soul, his members would be only our souls; but because he also took a body, through which he is also head to us, who consist of soul and body, our bodies too are certainly his members. If then anyone wanting to commit sexual immorality held himself cheap and despised himself in himself, let him not despise Christ in himself; let him not say, “I will do it; I am nothing: all flesh is grass.” But your body is a member of Christ. Where were you going? Come back. Where were you wanting, as it were, to hurl yourself? Spare Christ in you; recognize Christ in you. “Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute?” For the woman who consents with you to adultery is a prostitute; and perhaps she herself, a Christian, takes the members of Christ and makes them members of an adulterer. You despise Christ in each other; you do not recognize your Lord, nor do you think of your price. What kind of Lord is he, who made his slaves his brothers? But it was too little to make them his brothers, unless he made them his members. Has such great dignity grown cheap? Because it was granted so kindly, is no honor paid it? If it were not granted, it would be longed for; because it has been granted, is it despised?

These bodies of ours, which the Apostle says are members of Christ because of the body of Christ, which he took from the kind of our body—these bodies of ours, then, the same apostle says are the temple in us of the Holy Spirit, whom we have from God. Because of the body of Christ, our bodies are members of Christ; because of the indwelling Spirit of Christ, our bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit. Which of these do you despise in yourself? Christ, whose member you are? Or the Holy Spirit, whose temple you are? The prostitute herself who consents with you to evil you perhaps do not dare to bring into your bedroom, where you have your marriage bed; but you look for some low and shameful place in your house in which to wallow shamefully. So you pay honor to your wife's bedroom, and do not pay honor to the temple of your God? You do not bring an unchaste woman where you sleep with your wife, and you yourself go to an unchaste woman, though you are the temple of God? I think the temple of God is better than your wife's bedroom. For wherever you go, Jesus sees you—he who made you, and redeemed you when you were lost, and died for you when you were dead. You do not recognize yourself; but he does not turn his eyes from you—not to help, but to punish. “For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous, and his ears on their prayers.” At once he added, and terrified those who gave themselves a bad security, who said to themselves, “I will do it; for God does not deign to notice me doing such shameful things.” Hear what follows; attend to whose you are; for wherever you go, Jesus sees: “But the face of the Lord is on those who do evil, to destroy their memory from the earth.” But from what earth? Where it is said, “You are my hope, my portion in the land of the living.” For perhaps a wicked, unjust man, an adulterer, unchaste, sexually immoral, rejoices that he does it, and grows old while his lust does not grow old, and says to himself: “Certainly it is true: ‘But the face of the Lord is on those who do evil, to destroy their memory from the earth.’ See, I have already grown old, I who from early youth to this day have committed so much; I have buried many chaste men before me; I myself have escorted the funerals of many chaste young men to the tomb, and, unchaste, I have outlived the chaste. What is it that is said, ‘The face of the Lord is on those who do evil, to destroy their memory from the earth’?” There is another earth where there is no unchaste man; there is another earth in the kingdom of God. “Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor the effeminate, nor men who lie with males, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers will possess the kingdom of God.” This is “he will destroy their memory from the earth.” For many who commit such things set hope for themselves: because of those who, living lost lives, set themselves hope in the kingdom of God, where they will not come, it was said, “He will destroy their memory from the earth.” For there will be a new heaven and a new earth, which the righteous will inhabit. There the ungodly, there the evil, there the most wicked are not allowed to dwell. Let the one who is such choose now where he wishes to dwell, while there is time for him to be able to change.

For there are two dwellings: one in eternal fire, the other in the eternal kingdom. Suppose that in eternal fire one will be tormented in one way, another in another: yet they will be there; there all will be tormented—one less, another more. For “it will be more tolerable for Sodom on the day of judgment than for” another city; and some “go round sea and land to make one proselyte, and when they have made him, they make him a son of hell twice as much as themselves.” Suppose that some are twice, others once; suppose that some more, others less: there is no region where you may choose a place for yourself. Whatever milder torments there are there are worse than those you dread in this world. Think how you tremble, if someone brings a false charge against you, lest you be sent to prison: and do you yourself live badly against yourself so as to be sent into fire? You tremble, you are disturbed, you turn pale, you run to the church, you want to see the bishop, rolling at his feet. He asks why. “Free me,” you say. What is the matter? “See, this man is bringing a false charge against me.” And what is he going to do to you? “Lord, I am being shaken down; Lord, I am being sent to prison; have mercy on me, free me.” See how prison is feared, how confinement is feared; and the burning of hell is not feared! Finally, when the calamity increases and the pressure rages more fiercely, even to the point of death, when it seems good to a man not to die, lest he be killed, all cry that help ought to be given; all aids are implored: “Help, run, for a soul!” The whole exaggeration of the calamity lies in saying “for a soul.” Help must indeed be given, and aid must not be denied to this fear: let what can be done be done by whoever can do it.

But I want to question the one in danger, who moves my heart with that word, since he says, “Run for a soul.” I answer him easily: “I am indeed running for your flesh; would that you would run for your soul! And know that I am running for your body, not for your soul.” I would rather hear Christ speaking the truth than you murmuring in false fear. For the Lord himself says: “Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul.” Certainly you want me to run for your soul: see, the one you fear, at whose threats you turn pale, cannot kill your soul: he rages as far as the body; do not you rage against your own soul. He cannot kill it; you can—not with a spear, but with your tongue. The enemy who strikes you ends this life: “But the mouth that lies kills the soul.” So from the things men fear in this time, let them infer what they ought to fear. For does one fear prison and not fear hell? Fear the interrogators and torturers, and not fear the angels of hell? Fear temporal torment, and not fear the punishments of eternal fire? Finally, fear to die for a short while, and not fear to die for ever?

That man who is going to kill you, whom you fear, whom you shudder at, whom you flee, from fear of whom you are not allowed to sleep, and whom, if you see him in dreams when you have fallen asleep, you are terrified—what is he going to do to you? He is going to drive your soul out of your flesh: see where your soul, driven out, may go. For he cannot kill your flesh in any other way than by driving out from it your soul, by which your flesh lives. For the flesh lives by the presence of your soul; and as long as your soul is present in your flesh, your flesh must live. But the one who seeks your death wants to cast out of your flesh your life, by which your flesh lives. Do you think there is no life by which your soul itself lives? For the soul is a kind of life, by which your flesh lives. Do you think there is no other life by which your soul itself lives? Or—just as your flesh has a life, the soul by which your flesh lives—is your soul itself not such as to have some life of its own? And as the flesh, when it dies, breathes out the soul, its life, so the soul too, when it dies, breathes out some life of its own? If we find what this life is—not the life of your body, which is your soul, but the life of the life of your body, that is, the life of your soul—if we find it, then, compared with this death by which you fear that your soul may be cast out of your flesh, I think you ought to fear more that death in which the life of your soul is cast out of your soul. Let me say it briefly, then; why am I detained by many words? The life of the body is the soul; the life of the soul is God. The Spirit of God dwells in the soul, and through the soul in the body, so that our bodies too are the temple of the Holy Spirit, whom we have from God. For the Spirit comes to our soul, because “the love of God has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us”; and he who holds the principal part possesses the whole. For in you that rules which is better. God, holding what is better—that is, your heart, your mind, your soul—certainly through the better possesses also the lower, which is your body. So let the enemy rage; let him threaten death; let him do it, if he is allowed; let him drive your soul out of your flesh: let your soul not drive its life out from itself. If you lament rightly, and think you speak piteously when you say to your powerful enemy, “Do not strike; spare my blood,” does not God say to you, “Have mercy on your own soul, pleasing God”? Your soul perhaps says: “Ask him not to strike; for otherwise I leave you. For if he strikes, I cannot stay with you. Ask him not to strike, if you want me not to leave you.” Who says to you, “if you want me not to leave you”? You yourself; for you who speak are the soul. So if he strikes the flesh, you flee, you go out, you move away; earth lies on earth. Where will that be which animated the earth? That which was given you by the breath of God, where will it be? If it has not breathed out its life, that is, its God, it will be in him whom it has not lost; it will be in him whom it has not shut out from itself. But if you obey the weakness of your soul when it says to you, “He strikes, and I leave you,” do you not fear God when he says to you, “You sin, and I leave you”?

Vain is the fear of all men who fear to lose temporal things—men who will move on some day, who tremble at moving on, who want always to put off what they cannot take away. This fear of men is vain; and yet it exists, and it is vehement, and it cannot be resisted. Hence men are to be rebuked, hence scolded, hence lamented, hence mourned: they fear to die, and do nothing else but die later. Why do they not act so as not to die? Because whatever they do, they do not bring it about that they do not die. But can they do something by which to bring it about that they never die? In no way. Certainly, whatever you do, however watchful you are, wherever you flee, whatever fortifications you seek, whatever riches you ransom yourself with, whatever cunning you use to deceive the enemy, you do not deceive fever. For all you do in order not to die soon at the enemy's hand is to die at some later time of a fever. You have something to do so that you never die. If you fear death, love life. Your life is God; your life is Christ; your life is the Holy Spirit. You do not please him by doing evil. He does not dwell in a ruined temple; he does not enter a filthy temple. But groan to him, that he may cleanse a place for himself; groan to him, that he may build a temple for himself: what you destroyed, let him build; what you ruined, let him reform; what you threw down, let him raise up. Cry to God; cry within; cry where he hears: for you also sin where he sees; cry there, where he hears.

And when you have corrected your fear, and have begun to fear usefully—not temporal torments, but the punishments of eternal fire—and for that reason are not an adulterer (for this is where we were speaking from, because of the Apostle who said, “Your bodies are members of Christ”): when, then, you have stopped being an adulterer for this reason, that you fear to burn in everlasting fire, you are not yet to be praised. You are not, indeed, to be grieved over as before; but still you are not yet to be praised. For what great thing is it to fear punishment? What is great is to love righteousness. I question you, and I find you out. Look at my sounding question, and put to yourself a silent question about yourself. I say to you, then: “Overcome by lust, you have a woman consenting: why do you not commit adultery?” And you will answer: “Because I fear hell, I fear the punishment of eternal fire, I fear the judgment of Christ, I fear the company of the devil, lest I be punished by him and burn with him.” What? Am I going to say, “You fear wrongly,” as I said to you about the adversary who sought to kill your body? There I rightly said, “You fear wrongly”; your Lord made you secure, saying, “Do not fear those who kill the body.” Now when you say to me, “I fear hell, I fear to burn, I fear to be punished for ever,” what am I to say? “You fear wrongly? You fear vainly?” I do not dare, since the Lord himself, having taken away one fear, put another in its place; and where he said, “Do not fear those who kill the body, and afterward have nothing more they can do,” he said: “But fear him who has power to kill both body and soul in the hell of fire: yes, I tell you, fear him.” When, then, the Lord has struck fear, and struck it vehemently, and has doubled the threat by repeating the word, am I going to say, “You fear wrongly”? I will not say it. Fear by all means; you fear nothing better; there is nothing you ought to fear more. But I ask you: if God did not see you when you did it, and no one would convict you at his judgment, would you do it? Look at yourself. For you cannot answer all my words aloud; look into yourself. Would you do it? If you would do it, then you fear punishment, you do not yet love chastity, you do not yet have love: you fear like a slave; it is dread of evil, not yet love of good. But fear nonetheless, so that this dread may guard you, so that it may lead you to love. For this fear, by which you fear hell and so do not do evil, holds you in; and so it does not allow the inner mind that wants to sin to do it. For fear is a kind of guard, like the tutor of the Law; it is the letter threatening, not yet grace helping. Yet let this fear guard you while you do not do it from fear, and love will come; it enters your heart, and as much as it enters, so much fear goes out. For fear brought it about that you did not do it; love brings it about that you do not want to do it, even if you could commit it with impunity.

I have said what you should fear; I have said what you should seek. Pursue love; let love enter; admit it—fearing to sin, admit the love that does not sin, admit the love that lives well. When it enters, as I had begun to say, fear begins to go out. The more it enters, the less fear there will be. When it has entered wholly, there will be no fear: because “perfect love casts out fear.” So love enters and drives out fear. But it does not enter unaccompanied. It has with it its own fear, which it brings in itself; but that fear is chaste, “enduring for ever and ever.” Slavish fear is that by which you fear to burn with the devil; chaste fear is that by which you fear to displease God. Consider, dearly beloved, and question human affections themselves. A slave fears to offend his master, lest he order him to be beaten, order him to be put in fetters, order him to be shut in prison, order him to be ground down at the mill. Fearing these things, the slave does not sin; but when he perceives that his master's eyes are absent, and has no witness by whom he can be convicted, he does it. Why does he do it? Because he feared punishment; he did not love righteousness. But a good man, a righteous man, a free man (for only the righteous man is free; for “everyone who commits sin is a slave of sin”) delights in righteousness itself; and if he could sin without a witness, he dreads God as witness; and if he could hear God saying to him, “I see you when you sin; I will not condemn you, but you displease me,” he, not wanting to displease the eyes of a father, not of a fearsome judge, fears—not lest he be condemned, not lest he be punished, not lest he be tormented, but lest he offend his father's joy, lest he displease the eyes of one who loves him. For if he himself loves, and perceives that his Lord loves him, he does not do what displeases the one who loves him.

Look at slippery and dishonorable lovers. If someone, lewd and worthless in his love for a woman, dresses otherwise than pleases her, dresses otherwise than pleases his beloved, or adorns himself otherwise than pleases her—if she says, “I don't want you to have such a cloak,” he does not have it; if in winter she says to him, “I love you in a light mantle,” he chooses to shiver rather than displease. Is the woman he displeases going to condemn him? Is she going to send him to prison? Is she going to bring in torturers? This alone is feared there: “I will not see you”; this alone is trembled at there: “You will not see my face.” If an unchaste woman says this and terrifies, does God say it and not terrify? Very much indeed—but if we love. But if we do not love, we are not terrified by that; but are we terrified like slaves of fire, of hell, of the most dreadful threats of Tartarus, of the devil's most fearsome angels and his torments? Let us at least be terrified by these. If we love that less, let us at least fear these.

So let there be no sexual immorality. “You are the temple of God, and the Spirit of God dwells in you. If anyone corrupts the temple of God, God will destroy him.” Marriages are lawful; seek nothing more. For no great burden has been imposed. On virgins a greater love has imposed a greater burden. Virgins refused what was lawful, so as to please more the one to whom they vowed themselves. They sought that greater beauty of their heart. “What do you command?” As if they said, “What do you command? That we not be adulteresses—is that what you prescribe? Loving you, we do more than you command.” “Concerning virgins,” says the Apostle, “I have no command of the Lord.” Why then do they do this? “But I give counsel.” And they, loving, for whom earthly marriage had grown cheap, who did not desire earthly embraces, so accepted the command that they did not refuse the counsel: to please more, they adorned themselves more. For the more the adornments of this body, that is, of the outer man, are sought, the greater are the losses of the inner man; but the less the adornments of the outer man are sought, the more the inner man is adorned with beautiful character. Hence Peter too says: “Adorning themselves not with braided hair.” For when he had said, “adorning themselves,” what else would we, carnal as we are, have thought but these visible adornments? At once he removed from the mind what desire was looking for: “Not,” he says, “with braided hair, nor with gold, or pearls, or costly clothing, but the hidden man of the heart, who is rich before God.” For God would not give riches to the outer man and leave the inner man poor: he gave invisible riches to the invisible man, and adorned the invisible man invisibly.

Devoting themselves to these adornments, God's maidens, the holy virgins, neither sought what was lawful nor consented to what they were being pressed to. For many have overcome even the opposing efforts of their parents by the fire of heavenly love. The father was angry, the mother wept: she did not care, before whose eyes moved the one “beautiful in form above the sons of men.” For him she desired to be adorned, so as to be wholly devoted to him. Because “the married woman thinks of the things of the world, how she may please her husband; but the unmarried woman thinks of the things of God, how she may please God.” See what it is to love. He did not say, “She thinks how not to be condemned by God.” For that fear is still slavish, a guard indeed against evils, so that they abstain from evils and by abstaining become worthy to admit love into themselves. But those virgins do not think how they may not be punished by God, but how they may please God—by inner beauty, by the comeliness of the hidden person, by the comeliness of the heart, where they are naked to his eyes: naked within, not without; whole both within and without. Let virgins at least teach married men and married women not to go into adultery. They do more than is lawful; let those not do what is not lawful.