Sermons to the People 258.1–259.6

From what we sang to God, “This is the day which the Lord has made,” let us speak what he may give. In this the prophetic Scripture certainly wished us to understand something, some day not ordinary, not visible to the eyes of the flesh, not the day that rises and sets, but a day that could know a rising and not know a setting. Let us see what the same Psalm had said above: “The stone which the builders rejected has become the head of the corner. This was made by the Lord, and it is wonderful in our eyes.” And it follows: “This is the day which the Lord has made.” Let us take the beginning of this day from the cornerstone. Who is the cornerstone which the teachers of the Jews rejected? For the teachers of the Jews, skilled in the Law, rejected him, saying: “This man is not from God, who breaks the sabbath.” You have now said, “This man is not from God, who breaks the sabbath.” “The stone which the builders rejected has become the head of the corner.” How the head of the corner? Why was Christ called the cornerstone? Because every corner brings two walls from different directions into peace. The apostles came from the circumcision, they came from the nation of the Jews; from there too came those crowds which went before and followed his mount, saying what is in this very Psalm: “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.” From there came so many churches, of which the apostle Paul says: “I was unknown by face to the churches of Judea which are in Christ; they only heard that he who once persecuted us now preaches the faith he once ravaged; and they glorified God in me”: Jews, but clinging to Christ, like the apostles, coming and believing in Christ, and making one wall. The other wall remained, the Church coming from the Gentiles: they found each other. Peace in Christ, unity in Christ, “who has made both one.” He himself is the day which the Lord has made. Understand the whole day, head and body: the head Christ, the body the Church. This is the day which the Lord has made.

Recall the first making of the world. “Darkness was over the abyss, and the Spirit of God was borne over the water. And God said, Let there be light; and there was light. And God divided the light from the darkness; and he called the light day, and the darkness he called night.” Think of the darkness of these here, before they came to the forgiveness of sins. So darkness was over the abyss, before their sins had been forgiven. But the Spirit of God was borne over the waters: these went down into the water, the Spirit of God was borne over the waters, the darkness of sins was driven away. This is the day which the Lord has made. To this day the Apostle says: “For you were once darkness, but now light in the Lord.” Did he say, “You were darkness in the Lord”? Darkness in yourselves; light in the Lord. And God called the light day, because by his grace what is made is made. They could be darkness by themselves; they could not become light unless the Lord had made them. For “this is the day which the Lord has made”: not the day itself, but the Lord.

Was not Thomas a man, one of the disciples, as it were a man from the crowd? His fellow disciples said to him: “We have seen the Lord.” And he said: “Unless I touch, unless I put my finger into his side, I will not believe.” The evangelists announce it to you, and you do not believe. The world believed them, and a disciple does not believe. Of them it was said: “Their sound has gone out into all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world.” Their words go out, they reach to the ends of the earth; the whole world believes: all announce it to one, and he does not believe. Not yet was he the day which the Lord had made. Darkness was still over the abyss, in the depth of the human heart: darkness was there. Let him come, let the head of this day come, and say, patient, gentle, not angry, because a physician: “Come,” he says; “come, touch this, and believe. You said, Unless I touch, unless I put my finger in, I will not believe. Come, touch; put in your finger, and do not be unbelieving, but believing. Come, put in your finger. I knew your wounds; I kept my scar for you.” But indeed, putting in his hand, he completed his faith. For what is the fullness of faith? That Christ be believed not only man, nor Christ believed only God, but man and God. That is the fullness of faith: because “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” So this disciple, when the scars and members of his Savior were offered to him to touch, as soon as he touched, cried out: “My Lord and my God!” He touched the man, he recognized God; he touched the flesh, he looked to the Word; because “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” This Word suffered his flesh to be hung on the wood; this Word suffered nails to be fixed in his flesh; this Word suffered his flesh to be pierced by a lance; this Word suffered his flesh to be laid in the tomb; this Word raised his flesh, offered it to the disciples’ sight to be seen, presented it to their hands to be handled. They touch, they cry out: “My Lord and my God!” This is the day which the Lord has made.

Today’s day is for us a great sacrament of perpetual happiness. For the life which this day signifies will not pass as this day will pass. And so, brothers, we exhort and beseech you in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom our sins have been forgiven, who willed his blood to be our price, who deigned to make us brothers though we were unworthy even to be called his servants, that your whole intention, the reason why you are Christians and carry his name on your forehead and in your heart, be directed only to that life which we shall have with the angels: where there is perpetual rest, everlasting gladness, unfailing happiness, no disturbance, no sadness, no death. That life none can know but those who experience it; but none will be able to experience it but those who believe. For if you demand that we show you what God promises you, we cannot. But you have heard how John’s Gospel ended: “Blessed are those who do not see, and believe.” You want to see, and so do I. Let us believe alike, and we shall see together. Let us not be hard against the word of God. For is it fitting, brothers, that Christ should come down from heaven now and show us his scars? He deigned to show them to that unbeliever in order to rebuke the doubtful and instruct those who would believe.

This eighth day, then, signifies the new life at the end of the world; the seventh signifies the future rest of the saints on this earth. For the Lord will reign on earth with his saints, as the Scriptures say, and will have here a Church which no bad person will enter, separated and cleansed from all contagion of wickedness; this the hundred and fifty-three fish signify, of which, as far as I remember, we once spoke. For the Church will first appear here in great brightness and dignity and righteousness. There it will not be possible to deceive, or to lie, or for a wolf to hide under a sheep’s skin. For the Lord will come, as it is written, “and will light up the hidden things of darkness and make manifest the thoughts of hearts; and then each will have praise from God.” So the unrighteous will not be there: for they will then be separated. Then the multitude of the saints will appear like a cleaned heap, as on a threshing floor, and so it will be put into the heavenly barn of immortality. For grain is first cleaned where it is threshed, and the place where the grain underwent threshing, so as to be cleansed of the chaff, is adorned with the dignity of the cleaned heap. For we see on the threshing floor after winnowing a pile of chaff on one side and a pile of wheat on the other. Where the chaff is destined, we know; and how the grain makes the farmers glad. As, then, the grain separated from the chaff first appears on the threshing floor, and when that heap, which lay hidden in the chaff and was not seen while it was being threshed, has given joy by being looked at after long labors, it is then put into the barn and kept in secret: so in this world you see how this threshing floor is threshed, but the chaff is so mixed with the grain that it is hard to distinguish, because it has not yet been winnowed. So after the winnowing of the day of judgment the heap of the saints will appear, shining in dignity, mighty in merits, and bearing before it the mercy of its deliverer. And that will be the seventh day. As if the first day in the whole age were the time from Adam to Noah; the second, from Noah to Abraham; and, as the Gospel of Matthew already divides it, the third from Abraham to David; the fourth from David to the deportation to Babylon; the fifth from the deportation to the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. From the Lord’s coming, then, the sixth is being passed: we are in the sixth day. And so, as man was formed in Genesis on the sixth day in the image of God, so in this time, as on the sixth day of the whole age, we are renewed in baptism, so that we may receive the image of our Maker. But when this sixth day has passed, rest will come after that winnowing, and the saints and righteous of God will keep sabbath. But after the seventh, when the dignity of the harvest, the brightness and merit of the saints, has appeared on the threshing floor, we shall go into that life and that rest of which it was said: “Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man, what God has prepared for those who love him.” Then there is, as it were, a return to the beginning. For as, when these seven days have been completed, the eighth is the same as the first, so after the seven ages of the passing world have been ended and completed, we shall return to that immortality and happiness from which man fell. And that is why the octave completes the sacraments of the infants. Hence also the number seven multiplied by seven makes forty-nine; and with one added, as it were a return to the beginning, they make fifty, a number we celebrate in mystery up to Pentecost. And by that other division of the number forty, to which ten is added as a wage, the same appears again by a different reckoning. For both reckonings return to the same number fifty. Multiplied three times because of the mystery of the Trinity, it makes a hundred and fifty. With that three added, as witness and sign of the tripling and of the Trinity, we understand the Church in those hundred and fifty-three fish.

But meanwhile now, until we come to that rest, in this time when we labor and are in the night, as long as we do not see what we hope for and are making our journey in the desert until we come to the heavenly Jerusalem, as to a land of promise flowing with milk and honey: now, then, since temptations do not cease, let us do good works. Let the medicine always be at hand, ready to be applied as it were to daily wounds. And the medicine lies in good works of mercy. For if you want to obtain God’s mercy, be merciful. If you, though you are a man, deny humanity to a man, God too will deny you divinity, that is, the incorruption of immortality, by which he makes us gods. For God needs nothing from you; but you need from God. He asks nothing from you in order to be happy; but you, unless you receive from him, will not be able to be happy. What do you receive from him? I do not know whether you would dare to complain if you received from him who created all things something which he created most excellent. But he gives you not something from among the things he created, but himself to enjoy, himself the maker of all things. For what among the things made by him can be more beautiful and better than he who made them? And how will he give himself to you? As if for your merits? If you ask what you have deserved, look at your sins; hear the sentence of God passed on transgressing man: “You are earth, and to earth you shall go.” For the threat had gone before, when the command was given: “On the day you touch it, you shall die by death.” If you ask what sins deserve, what comes to mind but punishment? Forget, then, your merits, lest they cause terror in your heart; or rather do not forget them, lest through pride you thrust mercy away. Let us commend ourselves, brothers, to God by works of mercy. “Confess to the Lord, for he is good, for his mercy is forever.” Confess that God has mercy and wills to forgive sins to those who confess. But offer him a sacrifice. Have mercy on a man, O man, and God will have mercy on you. You are a man, and another is a man: two wretched beings. But God is not wretched but merciful. If, then, a wretched man does not pity a wretched man, how does he demand mercy from him who will never be wretched? See what I am saying, brothers. Whoever is cruel to a shipwrecked man, for example, is cruel just so long until shipwreck happens to him. But if it has happened, recalling his former life, when he sees a shipwrecked man, a like misery once suffered strikes him; and him whom fellowship in humanity could not bend to mercy, partnership in calamity bends. How quickly one who was once a slave pities a slave! How quickly one who was a hired man grieves for a hired man cheated of his wage! He who once mourned something similar suffers along with a man mourning his son most bitterly. So likeness of misery dissolves any hardness of the human heart, however great. If, then, you who either have been wretched or fear to be wretched (for as long as you live here you ought both to fear what you have not been, and remember what you have been, and consider what you are), placed, then, in memory of past miseries, in fear of future ones, and in the affliction of present ones, do not pity a man in calamity and in need of your help, do you expect that he will pity you whom misery never touches? And you do not give from what you have received from God, and you want God to give you from what he has not received from you? [4] Mercy, my brothers: all of you who are going to your homes, and after this we shall scarcely see one another except at some feast, practice mercy, because sins abound. There is no other rest, no other way by which we may come to God, by which we may be restored, by which we may be reconciled to him whom we have most dangerously offended. We are going to come into his sight: let our works speak for us there, and speak so as to outweigh our offenses. For whatever is greater will prevail, either for punishment, if sins deserve it, or for rest, if good works. Now mercy in the Church is twofold: one of a kind on which no one spends money, or even labor; the other which demands of us either the service of work or the expense of money. The one that demands of us no outlay or labor is set in the mind: that you forgive one who has sinned against you. For spending this alms your treasury is in your heart: there you unfold yourself before God. It is not said to you, “Bring out your purse, open your chest, unseal your barn”; nor is this said to you, “Come, walk, run, hurry, intercede, speak, visit, labor.” Standing in one place you have thrown out of your breast what you held against your brother; you have done mercy, at no cost, with no labor, by goodness alone, by the thought of mercy alone. For if we say, “Give your goods to the poor,” we shall seem harsh. Surely now at least we are gentle and easy, when we say: “Spend from what will not make you less; forgive, that you may be forgiven.” Yet let us say this too: “Give, and it will be given to you.” The Lord joined these in a command, and expressed these two kinds of mercy. “Forgive, and you will be forgiven”: it is the mercy of one who pardons. “Give, and it will be given to you”: it is the mercy of one who pays out. See whether God does not give us more. You pardon a man for what a man did to you, a man hurting a man; God pardons you for what you, a man, did to offend God. For is hurting a man the same as offending God? So he has given you more: for you have forgiven that in which a man was hurt; he forgives that in which God was offended. Look at the other mercy, of dispensing. You give bread, he gives salvation; you give a thirsty man a cup of some drink, he gives you the cup of his wisdom. Are these things to be compared, what you give and what you receive? See how one should lend at interest. If anyone wants to be a lender at interest, we do not forbid it at all; but let him lend to him who is not poor, who repays more and greater things, and to whom belongs even this very thing, whatever it is, that you give him, so that you may receive more and better.

This too I admonish Your Holiness: know that he does a double mercy who gives something to the poor in such a way that he himself pays it out. For there ought to be not only the kindness of the giver but also the humility of the one serving. I do not know how, my brothers, the soul of one who holds something out to a poor man suffers with, as it were, our common humanity and weakness, when the hand of the one who has is placed in the hand of the one in need. Though the one gives and the other receives, the server and the one served are joined. For it is not calamity that joins us, but humility. Your abundance will be yours, if the Lord pleases, and your children’s. But of this earthly abundance, which you see exposed to so many mishaps, there is no mention. A treasure lies quiet in the house; it does not let its owner be quiet. The robber is feared, the housebreaker is feared, the unfaithful slave is feared, the bad and powerful neighbor is feared. The more is held, the more is feared. But if you pay it out to God among the poor, you do not lose it, and you will become secure, because God himself keeps it for you in heaven, who also gives you what is necessary on earth. Or perhaps you fear that Christ may lose what you have entrusted to him? Does not each one choose from his household a faithful steward to whom he entrusts his money? Even if that steward has it in his power not to take it away, he does not have it in his power not to lose it. What is more generous than the faithfulness of Christ? What more divine than his almightiness? He can neither take anything from you, since he himself gave you, in hope, what you would give him; nor lose anything, because the Almighty holds all things. You refresh the hungry when you hold love feasts. For we are seen to serve, and our things are given, and they are given through us; and yet what is given is what God gave us. It is good, brothers, that you also dispense with your own hand: it is very pleasing to God. He himself receives, and he will give to you, who gave you what you might give before he owed you anything. The service of serving ought to be joined to the service of paying out. When you may have two rewards, why lose one? But whoever is not able to give to all, let him give to the poor according to his strength, with cheerfulness. “For God loves a cheerful giver.” The kingdom of heaven has been set out to be bought at any price. No one having two pennies should say he is not able to buy it. For that much the widow in the Gospel bought it.

The holidays are over; now succeed those of court sessions, collections, lawsuits: see how you live in them, my brothers. From the leisure of these days you ought to have conceived gentleness, not to be planning quarrels. For there are men who took holiday these days precisely in order to think up wickednesses to carry out after these days. We ask you to live as those who know they will render account to God for their whole life, not for these fifteen days alone. Next, the questions of the Scriptures which I raised yesterday and did not solve, because the shortness of time hindered me, I confess I owe. But certainly, since the following days now permit even the collection of money by forensic and public law, demand this from me rather by Christian law. For now all come because of the feast; after these days let love of the law bring you to demand from me what I promised. For he who gives, gives to you through me; he indeed gives to all of us. For I know the Apostle saying: “Pay to all what is due: tribute to whom tribute, tax to whom tax, honor to whom honor, fear to whom fear. Owe no one anything except to love one another.” Love alone is always to be paid; no one is a stranger to such a debt. What I owe, brothers, I shall pay in the name of the Lord. But I confess to you, I pay it not to those slack in their duty but to those who demand it.