Sermons to the People 242.1–243.8

During these holy days dedicated to the Lord’s resurrection, let us treat, as far as he grants it, of the resurrection of the flesh. For this is our faith; this gift has been promised to us in the flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ, and in him the example has gone before. For he willed not only to foretell to us what he promised for the end, but also to show it. Those indeed who were with him then saw; and when they were terrified and believed they were seeing a spirit, they took hold of the solidity of his body. For he spoke not only with words to their ears but also with his form to their eyes; and it was too little to offer himself to be seen unless he also offered himself to be handled and felt. For he says: “Why are you troubled, and why do thoughts rise up in your heart?” For they thought they were seeing a spirit. “Why are you troubled,” he says, “and why do thoughts rise up in your heart? See my hands and my feet; handle and see, for a spirit does not have bones and flesh, as you see that I have.” Against this plain evidence men argue. For what else would men do, who savor the things that are of men, than argue about God against God? For he is God, they are men. But “God knows the thoughts of men, that they are vain.” In the carnal man the whole rule of understanding is the habit of seeing. What they are used to seeing, they believe; what they are not used to, they do not believe. God works miracles beyond what is customary, because he is God. Indeed it is a greater miracle that so many men are born every day who did not exist than that a few rose who had existed; and yet these miracles are not grasped by reflection but have grown cheap by repetition. Christ has risen; the matter is settled. It was a body, it was flesh; it hung on the cross, it gave up the soul, it was laid in the tomb. He who lived in it showed it alive. Why do we marvel? Why do we not believe? It is God who did it: consider the author, and put away the doubt.

People ask, then, whether this corruption of the body, which they feel in their flesh, will exist in the resurrection of the dead. We say it will not. They answer us: “If there is to be no corruption, why will there be eating? Or if there is to be no eating, why did the Lord eat after the resurrection?” Just now, when the Gospel was read, we heard that when he showed himself alive to the eyes and hands of his disciples, it seemed too little to him for demonstrating the evidence of his body; but he added: “Have you anything here to eat?” “And they offered him a piece of broiled fish and a honeycomb; and he ate, and gave them what was left.” So it is said to us: “If the corruption of the body does not rise again, why did the Lord Christ eat?” You have read that he ate; have you read that he was hungry? That he ate belonged to power, not to need. If he desired to eat, he would be in need. Again, if he could not eat, he would have less power. Did not the angels too, when they were received as guests by our fathers, eat, and yet they were not corruptible?

Again they say: “Will the defects that were in the human body, with which a man dies, rise again?” We answer: “The defects will not rise again.” And it is said to us: “Why then did the Lord rise with the scars of his wounds?” What do we say to this, except that this too belonged to power, not to necessity? So he willed to rise, so he willed to show himself to some who were doubting. In that flesh the scar of a wound healed the wound of unbelief.

They argue further, and ask us: “Will infants who die rise as infants? Or will the age of those who come back to life be full, though the age of those who died was small?” This, indeed, we do not find settled in the Scriptures. It is promised that bodies will rise incorruptible and immortal. But if the small age is given back, if the tiny stature is called back, is weakness also called back for that reason? If they are small, will they lie down and be unable to walk? Yet it is more credibly, more probably, and more reasonably accepted that ages will rise full, so that what time would have added may be given back as a gift. For we are not going to believe that old age too will rise again, short of breath and bent. In short: take away corruption, and add what you like.

“But,” you say, “how will an earthly body be in heaven?” For the philosophers of the Gentiles, those very great men, whose opinions, either mad or at any rate merely human, I have already set before you (for they sought these things not by the Spirit of God but by the guesswork of the human heart), raise their question chiefly from this point. They treat subtly of the moments of weights and the order of the elements, and they say, as we also see, that the world is so arranged that earth is first, as it were at its bottom; water second, poured over the earth; air comes third; fourth, ether covers everything. That highest element, which they call ether, they say is fire, clear and pure; from it the stars were formed; there nothing earthly can be, because the order of weights does not allow it. If we were to tell them that our bodies will live on a new earth and will not be in heaven, we would speak boldly and rashly, indeed unfaithfully. For we ought to believe that we shall have such bodies that we shall be wherever we wish, whenever we wish. For if, to solve the question about the order of weights, we answer that we shall live on earth, the question comes back to us about the Lord’s own body, with which he ascended into heaven.

You have heard what sounded in our ears just now from the Gospel: “Lifting up his hands, he blessed them. And it came to pass, while he was blessing them, he withdrew from them and was carried into heaven.” Who was carried into heaven? The Lord Christ. Which Lord Christ? The Lord Jesus. What then, are you going to separate the man from God and make one person of God and another of the man, so that there is no longer a Trinity but a quaternity? Just as you, a man, are soul and body, so the Lord Christ is Word, soul, and body. But the Word did not withdraw from the Father: he both came to us and did not abandon the Father; he both took flesh in the womb and ruled the world. What then was lifted into heaven, except what was taken from the earth? That is, that flesh, that body of which he says, speaking to his disciples: “Handle and see, for a spirit does not have bones and flesh, as you see that I have.” Let us believe this, brothers; and if we find it hard to answer the arguments of the philosophers, let us hold without difficulty of faith what was shown in the Lord. Let them chatter; let us believe. [7] “But,” they say, “an earthly body cannot be in heaven.” What if God wills it? Answer God back and say, “God cannot.” Do you not too, whoever you are, pagan, call God almighty? Is it not read in the book of Plato, as I showed yesterday, that the God who was not made said to the gods made by him: “Since you have come into being, you cannot indeed be immortal and indissoluble; yet you will not be dissolved, nor will any fates of death destroy you, nor will they be stronger than my purpose, which is a greater bond for your perpetuity than those by which you are bound together”? God brought everything back to his will, who can do even what is impossible. For what else does it mean, “You cannot be immortal, but I make it so that you do not die,” except, “I do even what cannot be done”?

I want, however, to argue something also about the difference of weights. Tell me, I ask you: earth is earth, water is water, air is air, ether, that is, heaven, and that clear fire, is heaven. These four, so to speak, have built and constructed the world in steps; that is, from these four the world was built. Ask what is at the bottom: it is earth. What is above it: it is water. What is above the water: it is air. What is above the air: it is heaven, it is ether. What about solid bodies, which are held and handled? I do not mean moist ones, which slip and flow; I mean bodies that can be handled: where are they from? Are they to be assigned to earth, or to water, or to air, or to ether? You will answer, to earth. Is wood, then, an earthly body? Plainly earthly. It is born in the earth, nourished in the earth, grows in the earth. It can be handled; it does not flow. Come back with me to that order of weights. Earth is at the foundation; follow the order. What is above the earth? Water. Why does wood float on water? It is an earthly body: if you call it back to that order of weights, it ought to be under the water, not on top. We find water in the middle between earth and wood: earth below, the water above, and above the water earth again, since wood is earth. You have lost that order; hold on to faith. So earthly bodies are found above the element that is second in the order of the elements, when wood floats and does not sink.

Consider something else, at which you may marvel more. The very heaviest bodies, and yet earthly ones, which as soon as they are let go on the water at once sink and reach the lowest depths, such as iron, and finally lead: for what is heavier than lead? Yet the craftsman’s hand comes to the lead, makes some hollow vessel from it, and the lead floats on the water. Will God not then give to my body what a craftsman gives to lead? Next, where do you put water itself? Go back to the order of the elements. Surely you will answer that water is above the earth. Why then, before they run on the earth, do rivers hang in the clouds?

Turn your attention and thought from there to what I am about to say, if with the Lord’s help I can. Which is moved more easily, which is driven more swiftly, a heavier body or a lighter one? Who would not answer, the lighter? For lighter bodies are moved more easily and driven more swiftly; heavier ones with more difficulty and more slowly. You have certainly fixed the rule, certainly considered it, and after looking around at everything you have answered that lighter bodies are moved more easily and driven more swiftly than heavier ones. “It is so,” you say. Then answer me: why does the very light spider move slowly, and the heavy horse run swiftly? Let me speak of men themselves. A bigger human body is heavier; a shorter body, which has less weight, is lighter. That is so, but only if someone else carries it. But if the man carries his own body, the strong man runs, the one wasted by sickness can barely walk. Weigh a thin man and a robust man: the one, from sickness, weighing barely a few pounds, the other, from health of body, bearing many pounds in his flesh. Try lifting both yourself: the strong man is heavy, the thin man is light. Let the carrier withdraw, let the walker appear; leave them to themselves, let them move their own bodies: I see the thin man barely taking a step, I see the strong and robust man running. If health can do this, what will immortality be able to do?

God will therefore give a wonderful ease, a wonderful lightness. Not without reason have those bodies been called spiritual. They are not called spiritual because they will be spirits, not bodies. For these bodies we now have are called animal bodies, and yet they are not souls but bodies. Just as these are now called animal and are not souls, so those are called spiritual, but they are not spirits, for they will be bodies. Why is a body called spiritual, dearly beloved, except because it will serve at the nod of the spirit? Nothing in you will contradict you, nothing in you will rebel against you. There will not be there what the Apostle groans over: “The flesh lusts against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh.” There will not be there: “I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind.” These wars will not be there: there will be peace there, perfect peace there. Wherever you wish, you will be; but you will not withdraw from God. Wherever you wish, you will be; but wherever you go, you will have your God. You will be happy in him; you will always be with him.

Let no one, then, deceive, let no one argue, let no one rave with his own suspicion: let us hold most certainly that what God has promised us will come. When Christ was seen, my brothers, when he was thought to be a spirit, in order to convince them that he was a body he offered himself not only to their eyes to be seen but also to their hands to be handled. To them, to show the truth of faith in his body, he even deigned to take food, not by necessity but by power; yet as they were still trembling for joy, he applied the firm support of the holy Scriptures to their hearts, and said to them: “These are the words that I spoke to you while I was still with you: that all things must be fulfilled which are written in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms concerning me.” Then he opened their understanding, as the Gospel says, which was just read, that they might understand the Scriptures; and he said to them: “For thus it is written, and thus it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and the forgiveness of sins be preached in his name among all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.” That we did not see, but this we do see. When these things were promised, they were not yet seen. The apostles saw Christ present, but they did not see the Church spread through the whole world: they saw the head and believed about the body. We have our turn; we have the grace of our own dispensation and allotment. For believing on the surest evidence, the times have been distributed to us in one faith. They saw the head and believed about the body; we see the body; let us believe about the head.

The account of the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ according to the evangelist John began to be read today. For you know, and it has been commended to you, that in these days the resurrection of the Lord is recited according to all four evangelists. In what we have heard, then, the one thing that usually troubles people is why the Lord Jesus said to the woman who was seeking his body, and who now recognized him alive: “Do not touch me; for I have not yet ascended to my Father.” I have told you, and you ought to remember, that not all say everything, but that some tell what others have passed over; yet not in such a way that they should be believed to contradict one another, if contentiousness is absent and the reverence of one who understands is present. For as we read in the evangelist Matthew, after he rose he met two women, among whom she too was, and said to them, “Hail.” And they came up and took hold of his feet and worshiped him; and certainly he had not yet ascended to the Father. How then is it now said to her, “Do not touch me; for I have not yet ascended to my Father”? For these words seem to sound as though Mary could touch him then, when he had ascended into heaven. If she does not touch him when he is on earth, which mortal can touch him when he is seated in heaven?

But that touch signifies faith. He touches Christ who believes in Christ. For that woman too who suffered from a flow of blood said within herself: “If I touch the fringe of his garment, I shall be made well.” She touched by faith, and the healing she had presumed on followed. Finally, so that we might know what it is truly to touch, the Lord at once said to his disciples: “Who touched me?” And the disciples said: “The crowds are pressing you, and do you say, Who touched me?” And he said: “Someone touched me”; as if saying, The crowd presses, faith touches. This Mary, then, to whom the Lord said, “Do not touch me; for I have not yet ascended to my Father,” seems to bear the person of the Church, which believed in Christ when he had ascended to the Father. See, I ask you when you believed; I ask the Church spread through the whole world, whose person was in one woman; and with one voice she answers me: “I believed when Jesus had ascended to the Father.” What is “I believed then,” except “I touched then”? Many carnal people thought Christ only a man; they did not understand the divinity hidden in him. They did not touch well, because they did not believe well. Do you want to touch well? Understand Christ where he is coeternal with the Father, and you have touched. But if you think him a man and think nothing more, for you he has not yet ascended to the Father.

So the Lord Jesus offered the appearance of his body to human senses to confirm the resurrection of the flesh. By showing himself alive in the body after his resurrection he willed to teach us nothing else than that we should believe in the resurrection of the dead. Since, then, all things are to be restored whole, a difficult question about the use of the members is usually asked by those who desire to know, and again put forward by those who desire to quarrel. For they say that our body has all its members, and that it is plain which members are needed for which works. For who does not know, who does not see, that we have eyes for seeing, ears for hearing, a tongue for speaking, nostrils for smelling, teeth for chewing, hands for working, feet for walking, and also those members which are called shameful, for begetting? Further, there are also the inner organs, which God willed to be covered so that they would not horrify the eyes: our interior parts and what are called the intestines; for what uses they serve, many people know, and physicians know better. So they argue and say to us: “If we are to have ears to hear, eyes to see, a tongue to speak, why shall we have teeth if we do not eat, a throat, lungs, a stomach, intestines through which food passes and is changed to suit the balance of our health? Finally, those very members which are called shameful, why,” they say, “shall we have them where there will be no begetting and no digestion?”

What shall we answer them? Are we going to say that we shall rise without intestines, like statues? About teeth, indeed, the answer is easy. For teeth help us not only to chew but also to speak, striking our tongue as a plectrum strikes strings, so that it sounds syllables. Our other members, then, will be for beauty, not for use; for the setting off of loveliness, not for the want of necessity. Will they be unsightly because they will be idle? And indeed now, because we are unskilled and ignorant of the causes of things, if our interior parts were seen they would be shuddered at rather than loved. For who knows how the members are joined to one another, and in what proportions they are fitted together? Hence it is also called harmony, a word taken from music, where we certainly see strings stretched on the lyre. If all the strings sounded alike, there would be no tune. Different tension gives out different sounds; but different sounds joined by proportion produce not beauty for those who see but sweetness for those who hear. Whoever has learned this proportion in the human members marvels so much, delights so much, that this proportion is preferred by those who understand to all visible beauty. Now we do not know it; but then we shall know it, not because the parts will be laid bare, but because even when covered they will not be able to stay hidden.

Someone will answer me and say: “How, if they are covered, will they not be able to stay hidden?” Will our hearts not be hidden, and our organs be hidden? Thoughts, my brothers, thoughts which now no one sees but God, all will see in one another in that fellowship of the saints. No one there wants what he thinks to be covered, because no one there thinks evil. Hence the Apostle says: “Do not judge anything before the time”; that is, do not judge rashly, since you do not see with what heart someone acts. If something is done which can be done with a good heart, do not find fault; do not claim for yourself more than humanity requires. To see the heart belongs to God; it belongs to men only to judge of what is manifest. “Do not, then,” he says, “judge anything before the time.” What is “before the time”? He goes on and says: “Until the Lord comes and lights up the hidden things of darkness.” What darkness he meant he shows plainly in the following words: “He will light up,” he says, “the hidden things of darkness.” What is this? Hear what follows: “And he will make manifest the thoughts of the heart.” This is to light up the hidden things of darkness: to make manifest the thoughts of the heart. Now, then, our thoughts are in the light to ourselves, each one, because we know them; but to our neighbors they are in darkness, because they do not see them. There, what you know you are thinking, another too will know. What do you fear? Now you want to hide, now you fear your thoughts being made public; for perhaps you sometimes think something evil, perhaps something shameful, perhaps something vain. When you are there, you will think nothing but what is good, nothing but what is honorable, nothing but what is true, nothing but what is pure, nothing but what is sincere. As you now want your face to be seen, so then you will want your conscience to be seen. For knowledge itself, dearly beloved, will not knowledge itself be shared by all of us? Do you think that you will know me because you know me, and will not know my father, whom you do not know, or some bishop or other who was in this church many years ago? You will know everyone. Those who are there will not recognize one another because they see faces; the recognition there will be by a greater knowledge. All will see in this way, and much more excellently, as the prophets are accustomed to see here. They will see divinely, when they are full of God. There will be nothing to offend, nothing to be hidden from the one who knows.

So the members will be there whole, even those that are shameful here; but there they will not be shameful. There will be no anxious care for the honor of chastity where there is no dishonor of lust. See, even here, where necessity is in a way the mother of all our works (a necessity that will not exist then), we still find some things that God placed in bodies for no use but for ornament alone. A while ago I was running through the members; now let us go over them again a little more carefully. We have eyes for seeing, ears for hearing, nostrils for smelling, mouth and tongue for speaking, teeth for chewing, throat for swallowing, stomach for receiving and digesting, intestines for passing food down, and those parts called shameful either for evacuation or for begetting; hands for working, feet for walking. What use is a beard, except that it is only beauty? Why did God create the beard in man? I see the beauty; I do not look for a use. It is plain why women have breasts: of course, to suckle infants. Why do men have nipples? Ask for the use: there is none. Ask for the beauty: a chest with nipples becomes men too. Take the nipples off a man’s chest, and see how much beauty you have taken away, how much ugliness you have brought in.

So then, dearly beloved, believe this, hold this: that the use of many members will not be there, but the beauty of none will be lacking. Nothing will be unseemly there; there will be supreme peace, nothing discordant, nothing monstrous, nothing to offend the sight; in all things God will be praised. For if now, in this weakness of the flesh and the fragile working of the members, so great a beauty of the body appears, which entices the lustful and stirs up to inquiry both the studious and the curious; and if a rational order of proportions is found in the body, so that the maker of these is found to be no other than the maker of the heavens, but the same creator of the lowest and the highest things: how much more there, where there will be no lust, no corruption, no misshapen depravity, no wretched necessity, but endless eternity, beautiful truth, supreme happiness?

But you say to me: “What shall I do? There will be no use of the members there: what shall I do?” Does it seem no activity to you to stand, to see, to love, to praise? See, these holy days, which are celebrated after the Lord’s resurrection, signify the life to come after our resurrection. For as the days of Lent before Easter signified the toilsome life in this mortal hardship, so these joyful days signify the life to come, where we shall reign with the Lord. The life signified by Lent before Easter is had now; the life signified by the fifty days after the Lord’s resurrection is not had, but hoped for, and by hoping it is loved; and in that love God, who promised these things, is praised, and these praises are Alleluia. For what is Alleluia? It is a Hebrew word, Alleluia: “Praise God.” Allelu, “Praise”; ia, “God.” So in Alleluia we sound “Praise God,” and stir one another up to praise God; with hearts in concord, better than a lyre with its strings, we speak praises to God, we sing Alleluia. And when we have sung, we withdraw on account of our weakness to refresh our bodies. Why do we refresh ourselves, except because we fail? Then so great is the weakness of the flesh, so great the trouble of this life, that any great thing at all comes to be tedious. How we longed for these days to come round with the year, though just now they were departing; and with what eagerness we come to them across the interval of time! If we were told, “Say Alleluia without ceasing,” we would excuse ourselves. Why would we excuse ourselves? Because, tired, we could not; because we would be worn out by weariness even of the good itself. There, no failing, no weariness. Stand, praise, you who stand in the house of the Lord, in the courts of the house of our God. Why do you ask what you will do there? “Blessed,” it says, “are those who dwell in your house, O Lord; they will praise you for ages of ages.”