Sermons to the People 299.1–299.12

For preaching the preachers, and such great preachers, of whom we have heard and sung that “their sound has gone out into all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world,” no words of ours are without doubt sufficient. We owe devotion; we do not fulfill your expectation. For you expect the apostles Peter and Paul to be preached by us today, whose solemn day this is. I recognize what you expect; and where I recognize it, I give way under it. For I see what is expected, and from whom. But since their God deigns to be praised by all of us, let his servants not disdain to be preached in whatever way by those who serve you.

As you know, all who know the holy Scriptures, the apostle Peter was chosen first among the disciples whom the Lord, present in the flesh, chose; but Paul not among them, not with them, but long afterward, not unequal to them. So Peter is the first of the apostles, Paul the last; but God, whose servants they are, whose heralds, whose preachers, is first and last. Peter first among the apostles, Paul last among the apostles; God both first and last, before whom there is nothing and after whom there is nothing. So God, who commended himself as first and last in eternity, joined the first and the last apostles in passion. The passion of both agrees in one solemnity; the life of both harmonizes in love. “Their sound has gone out into all the earth, and their words have sounded to the ends of the world.” Where they were chosen, where they preached, where they also suffered, we all know. But how do we know them themselves, except because their sound has gone out into all the earth?

We heard Paul, when his letter was read, foretelling his passion, already imminent and drawing near: “For I am already being sacrificed, and the time of my dissolution is at hand. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith: for the rest there is laid up for me the crown of justice, which the Lord, the just judge, will render to me on that day; and not only to me,” he says, “but to all who love his appearing.” Let us say something from this: for their words, which have gone out to the ends of the world, help us. First see his holy devotion. He said he was being sacrificed, not dying: not because one who is sacrificed does not die, but not everyone who dies is sacrificed. So to be sacrificed is to die to God. For the word is taken from sacrifice. Everything that is sacrificed is slain to God. For the apostle understood to whom his blood was owed in his passion: for he had become a debtor of his own blood, for whom the blood of his Lord was shed. That One shed his blood and put all in pledge. As many of us as receive that faith owe what we receive: and this because he deigned to make us both debtors and payers. For which of us, in such great want and poverty of weakness, is able to pay so great a creditor? But as it is written, “The Lord will give the word to those who preach the gospel with much power”: the word by which they are spread abroad; the power by which they suffer. He himself, then, made victims for himself; he himself dedicated sacrifices to himself; he himself filled the martyrs with the Spirit; he himself furnished the confessors with power. For he said to them, “For it is not you who speak.” So, although about to suffer, although about to shed his blood for the faith of Christ, he still rightly says, “What shall I render to the Lord for all that he has rendered to me?” And what occurs to him? “I will take the cup of salvation and call upon the name of the Lord.” You were thinking about repaying, you were asking what you would repay; and there occurred to you, as one about to repay, “I will take the cup of salvation and call upon the name of the Lord.” Surely you were going to pay back? See, you take. What you take, then—because you have taken what you owed—you take that from which to pay; a debtor when you have taken, a debtor when you have paid. “For what shall I render,” he says? “I will take the cup of salvation.” So you take this too, the cup of passion, the cup of which the Lord says, “Can you drink the cup that I am going to drink?” But see, the cup is already in your hand; the passion is already imminent: what do you do so as not to tremble? What do you do so as not to totter? What do you do so that you are not unable to drink what you already carry? “What shall I do?” he says. There too I will take: I will be a debtor; because I will call upon the name of the Lord. “I,” he says, “am already being sacrificed.” He had been strengthened by revelation: for human weakness would not dare to promise this to itself. His confidence was not from himself, but from him who gave everything, whom he understood when he said above, “For what do you have that you did not receive?” “I, then,” he says, “am already being sacrificed, and the time of my dissolution is at hand. I have fought the good fight.” Question his conscience: it does not hesitate, because it glories in the Lord. “I have fought the good fight,” he says, “I have finished the course, I have kept the faith.” Rightly you finished the course, because you kept the faith. “For the rest,” he says, “there remains for me the crown of justice, which the Lord, the just judge, will render to me on that day.” And lest he seem to glory beyond measure as if alone, and to claim the Lord as his own, “And not only to me,” he says, “but to all who love his appearing.” He could not have conveyed better and more briefly what people ought to do to deserve that crown of justice. For we must not all expect to shed our blood: the martyrs are few, but the faithful many. You cannot be sacrificed like Paul? You can keep the faith: by keeping the faith you love his appearing. For if you fear that the Lord will come, you do not love his appearing. The Lord Christ is now hidden; he will be made manifest in his time, the judge who will judge justly, he who was a defendant under a judge unjustly. He is to come: and how is he to come? To judge. For he is not to be judged again, but surely now to judge, as we know, as we believe, the living and the dead. I ask any person attending to me, that he may hear me; I ask; let him answer not me but himself: Do you want this judge to come? “I want it,” he says. See what you are saying: if you are telling the truth, if you want him to come, see how he will find you. For the judge is to come: humility has already been shown you beforehand; power is to come. For he is not going to come so as to be clothed with a body, born of a mother, suck the breasts, be wrapped in a cradle, laid in a manger; finally, as a young man, mocked by man, held, scourged, hung, silent when he was judged. Do not perhaps await his coming because you still think he will come humble. He was silent when he was to be judged; he will not be silent when he is to judge. He was hidden here so as not to be recognized: “For if they had known, they would never have crucified the Lord of glory.” Since, then, he was hidden here in his own power and silent under another’s, what we await to come will be the contrary of that hiddenness and that silence. For “God will come manifestly.” He who first came hidden will come manifest. See, you have the contrary to that hiddenness: see the contrary to that silence. “Our God will come and will not keep silence.” He was silent when hidden, because “he was led as a sheep to the slaughter.” He was silent when hidden, because “as a lamb before its shearer is voiceless, so he did not open his mouth.” He was silent when hidden, because “in humility his judgment was taken away.” He was silent when hidden, because he was thought only a man: but “God will come manifestly, our God, and will not keep silence.” What then of you who were saying, “I want him to come”? “I want him,” he rushes on, “to come, to come”: do you not yet fear? “Fire will go before him.” If you do not fear the judge, do you not fear the fire?

But if you keep the faith, you truly love his appearing; you ought securely to await the crown of justice: for it is not given to such as a gift, but is owed. For the apostle Paul himself demands it as if owed: “Which the Lord, the just judge,” he says, “will render to me on that day.” He will render it, because he is just: he has made himself my debtor by promise. He commanded, I heard; he preached, I believed. “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course.” By these gifts of his he owes … mortal, that good … you keep, you have from him. What … have you received? But by these, I say, his own. Before he gave such gifts … owe?

See the apostle himself … “and worthy of all acceptance … into the world sinners, of whom I am the first.” “Christ Jesus,” he says, that is, Christ Savior. For this is Jesus in Latin. Let not the grammarians ask how Latin it is, but Christians how true. For salus (salvation) is a Latin noun. Salvare (to save) and salvator (savior) were not Latin before the Savior came: when he came to the Latins, he made these Latin too. So Christ Jesus, Christ the Savior, came into the world. And as if we were asking, Why? he says, “To save sinners.” This is why Jesus came. For so we read the name itself interpreted and in a way explained in the Gospel: “They shall call his name Jesus; for he will save his people from their sins.” The saying, then, is worthy of all acceptance, worthy of belief: that is, that “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the first.” Not because he sinned before others, but because he sinned more than the rest. As in the arts we say a physician is first who is younger in age than many but superior in skill; first smith, first architect: we are accustomed to speak so. So the apostle called himself the first sinner. For no one persecuted the Church more severely. So, if you ask what was owed to the sinners to whom Jesus came, you find nothing owed to sinners but punishment. If you ask what was owed, it is punishment; if you ask what was rendered, it is salvation: salvation instead of punishment. Punishment was owed, salvation was rendered; penalty was owed, a crown was rendered. Nothing was owed to Paul, formerly Saul, the first sinner, surpassing the rest in cruelty, nothing was owed to him but punishment, and great punishment; and he is called from heaven, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” He is restrained, so that he may spare, so that he may be spared. The wolf is changed into a sheep: it is too little, into a sheep; rather into a shepherd. By the voice from above he is slain and made alive, struck and healed. The persecutor is laid low, the preacher is raised up. What is this grace, if not grace? For what good merit went before? It is called grace because it is given gratis. “Jesus came,” he says, “into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the first. But for this reason I obtained mercy.” Could he then have said, “The Lord, the just judge, will render to me on that day”? If the Lord, the just judge, were to render to the first sinner on that day, what would he render but what is owed to the first sinner, great punishment, eternal penalty? This was owed before, and was not rendered. “For this reason,” he says, “I obtained mercy.” I did not receive what was owed: but I, the first sinner, obtained mercy, “so that in me Christ Jesus might show all his patience, for the instruction of those who are to believe in him for eternal life.” What is “for the instruction”? So that any criminal whatever, anyone entangled in crimes, may not despair of the pardon that Saul received. The great physician, that is, Jesus, the great physician, coming to a region of the sick, so that his medicine might be spread abroad, chose such a one to cure as was much despaired of. Such a one now, who was such before, says: “I am already being sacrificed, and the time of my dissolution is at hand. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith.” Were you that man who ran headlong, who dragged Christians to death, who, when Stephen was stoned, kept the garments of all so as to stone him in the hands of all? Were you that man? I was, he says, but I am not. Why were you, and are not? “Because I obtained mercy.” So you received, Paul, what was not owed to you. Say now securely what is owed to you; say it now. “For the rest there remains for me the crown of justice, which the Lord, the just judge, will render to me on that day.” How confidently he demands what is owed, he to whom it has been granted not to owe punishment! Say now to your Lord, say it securely, say it certainly, say it most full of confidence: I was … in my malice; I have enjoyed your mercy, not owed; crown, from what is owed, your gifts. Let this be enough. Let us come to Peter; and to him too let us render, not a worthy ability, but a solemn devotion: from the last to the first; because we too strive from the last things to the first.

To holy Peter, the first apostle, the Lord Jesus himself in the Gospel, which we heard just now when it was read, foretold his passion, saying: “When you were younger, you girded yourself and went where you wished; but when you have become old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will gird you and carry you where you do not wish.” And the evangelist himself then explained to us what had been said: “He said this,” he says, “signifying by what death he would glorify God.” The Lord Christ himself foretold his passion, his cross, to him; but now loving, not denying. For the physician kept both times in him: sick, he denied; healthy, he loved. The Lord showed him, showed Peter to the same Peter, when with a kind of rash confidence he had promised that he would die for Christ, when Christ had come to die for Peter. “Will you lay down your life for me?” he said. “Amen I say to you, before the cock crows, you will deny me three times.” I will heal you; but first you must recognize yourself as sick. So in that foretold denial the Lord showed Peter to Peter; but in that love the Lord showed Christ to Peter. “Do you love me?” he says. “I love you.” “Feed my sheep.” This once, this a second time, this a third time. Three times love confessed; three times fear was condemned. And because he loved, his passion is shown to him. For this was what it was to love: to come through love of Christ even to the passion.

But what is that, brothers, which would not move anyone? “Another,” he says, “will gird you and carry you where you do not wish.” So Peter did not come willingly to so great a grace of passion? See Paul: “For I am already being sacrificed, and the time of my dissolution is at hand”; he seems in these words to be hastening to the passion, exulting: but to Peter, “Another will gird you and carry you where you do not wish.” Paul willing and Peter unwilling? Rather, if we understand, Paul willing and Peter willing, and Paul unwilling and Peter unwilling. While I explain this as I can, I need your attention. Death cannot be loved; it can be endured. For if it is loved, those who underwent it for the faith did nothing great. If we saw them rejoicing at banquets, would we call them great men, would we call them brave men? If we saw them overflowing with pleasures, would we praise fortitude or patience in them? Why? Because they would be doing something contrary to pains, contrary to troubles; they would be in joys, in pleasures, in delights; would they, being such, be praised as great, as brave, as most patient? But we do not praise the martyrs so. Great men, brave men, patient men. Do you want to know that it is to be endured, not loved? Ask the name: it is called passion (suffering). So by nature not only human beings but absolutely all living things refuse and dread death. Therefore the martyrs are great, because what is very hard they bravely underwent for the kingdom of heaven, and, thinking of the promises, they endured the troubles. See the Lord saying, “Greater love than this no one has, that one lay down his life for his friends.” If this is not hard, what great thing does love do, as though it loves delights for my sake? No. But because it endures death. “Because of the words of your lips”—it is the voice of the martyrs—“because of the words of your lips,” that is, because of your warnings and promises, “I have kept hard ways.” So as far as the measure of nature and the force of habit go, death is refused: but while what will be after death is loved, what we do not want is undergone so that we may come where we want. See where this comes from: “He will carry you where you do not wish.” He expressed nature, not devotion. The Lord himself transferred this nature of our weakness into himself when, about to suffer, he said to the Father, “Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me.” “For I am already being sacrificed”: these are the words of one suffering, not of one delighting. Our death, then, comes from punishment, given to us to drink. From the root we received it, spreading out into the branches of the human race. Adam first deserved it by sinning. “From a woman was the beginning of sin,” as Scripture says, “and through her we all die.” And, “Through one man sin entered into the world, and through sin death; and so it passed through to all men, in whom all sinned.” So in our nature there are both fault and punishment. God made nature without fault; and if it had persisted without fault, punishment surely would not have followed. From there we come, from there we drew both, and from here we have contracted many things. In our nature, then, both fault and punishment; in the flesh of Jesus punishment without fault, so that both fault and punishment might be healed. “Another,” he says, “will gird you and carry you where you do not wish.” This is punishment; but through punishment one makes for the crown. Paul despised the punishment: so, looking to the crown, he despised the punishment and said, “I am already being sacrificed; the crown of justice is owed me.” Hard is the way one passes, but great is where one passes to. And Peter knew where he was heading: therefore he too underwent the passion with full devotion; but he endured the passion, he did not love it. He endured the passion; what followed he loved; and because he loved where he was going, he endured the way he was going.

We have said that both were unwilling and both willing: both, if it could be, unwilling for the punishment, both nevertheless equally in love with the crown. But let us show that Paul too was unwilling for the punishment. For Peter the Lord himself became the witness, because he transferred you too into himself when he said, “Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me.” For Peter, then, the Lord bore witness; but Paul bore witness for himself. For he says in a certain place of this mortal body, “We groan, being burdened”; according to that in another place of Scripture, “The body that is corrupted weighs down the soul, and the earthly dwelling presses down the mind that thinks many things.” So he says, “We groan, being burdened”: under the load, namely, of the corruptible body. “We groan, being burdened.” If you groan, gladly lay down this load. Certainly he said that he groaned under this burden, that he was weighed down under this load of the corruptible body: see whether he wants to be stripped of this burden under which he is weighed down, under which he groans. This does not follow; but what does he say? “In which we do not want to be stripped.” O voice of nature, confession of punishment! The body is heavy, the body is burdensome, the body is corruptible: one groans under it, and it is not gladly abandoned, not gladly laid down. “We do not want,” he says, “to be stripped.” Will you remain so, groaning? And if you groan being burdened, why do you not want to be stripped? No, he says. See what follows: “We do not want to be stripped, but to be clothed over.” Under the earthly tunic I groan; to the heavenly one I hasten: that one I want to receive, this one I do not want to lay down. “In which we do not want to be stripped, but to be clothed over.” So, Paul, shall I understand you, what do you say? Shall that heavenly garment be wronged by coming upon you over these rags of mortality and corruption, so that this is lower, that higher; this inner, that outer? Far from it, he says: I do not say this. I do not want to be stripped, but clothed over; yet not so that corruption lies hidden under incorruption, but “so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life.” You cried out well, you who know the Scriptures. But lest someone ignorant of the Scriptures think that my words followed: they are Paul’s words; all these are apostolic words: “We groan, being burdened, in which we do not want to be stripped, but to be clothed over, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life.” You hold well what you say elsewhere when speaking of the resurrection of the body: “This corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. But when this corruptible has put on incorruption, then will come to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory.” What he says in that place, “so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life,” this in this place is “Death is swallowed up in victory.” Death nowhere: not below, not above; not within, not on this side. “For death is swallowed up in victory.” “Where, O death, is your contention?” it will be said to death in the future resurrection of the body, and in such a change that death is swallowed up in victory. When this corruptible has put on incorruption, it will be said to death, “Where, O death, is your contention?” That very contention makes you be carried where you do not wish. “Where, O death, is your contention? Where, O death, is your sting?” But “the sting of death is sin.”

Surely death is not from sin? For of what other death was he speaking when he spoke of the resurrection of the body? “This corruptible will put on incorruption: death will be swallowed up in victory.” This is the resurrection of the body. There it will be said, “Where, O death, is your contention?” To whom, if not to the death of the body? For the discourse is about the resurrection of the body. “Where, O death, is your contention? Where, O death, is your sting? But the sting of death is sin.” Sin is the sting of death, the sting by which death was made, not the sting that death made: as poison is the cup of death because it causes death, not because it comes from death. So the Lord at the resurrection ends this punishment; but death he leaves even to the faithful and the saints for the struggle. Death has been left to you for the contest. For God could have taken death away from you when you were justified, but he left it for the struggle, so that there might be something for you to despise for the faith. For with those he wished, he did so. Enoch was taken up, and Elijah was taken up, and they live. Did their justice merit this? Or the grace of God, and God’s benefit, and a special concession? So that the Creator might show his power in all things, he has commended to us what he can do.

In vain, then, do those who say that we die not from sin, as far as the death of the body is concerned, but that it is of nature that we die, and that Adam would have died even if he had not sinned—in vain do they set Enoch and Elijah against us. They speak very inconsiderately; and if they attend, they speak against themselves. For what do they say? “If death is from sin, why did Enoch and Elijah not die?” Do you not see, you who say this, that you are saying death is from nature, you who deny it is from sin? You say, of nature; I say, of sin: it is indeed of nature, but of a nature now faulty, now condemned by this punishment. So you say the death of the body is of nature; I say it is of sin. And you ask me: If it is of sin, why have Enoch and Elijah not died? And I answer: On the contrary, if it is of nature, why have Enoch and Elijah not died? Enoch and Elijah live; they have been taken up; wherever they are, they live. And if a certain conjecture of faith from the Scripture of God is not mistaken, they are going to die. For the Apocalypse mentions two wonderful prophets, who are to die and to rise again in the sight of men and to ascend to the Lord; and they are understood to be Enoch and Elijah, though their names are not given there. And if perhaps you who think these things have not accepted this Scripture, or if you accept it, despise it and say, “They are not named expressly”: let them live, as you think, never to die. Still tell me: If death is of sin, why have they not died? I reply to you: If death is of nature, why have they not died? I say that, so that they might live, the fault was ended: you say, if you can, that the nature was ended.

We have said one thing out of another and as occasion arose; but something that nevertheless bears so much on the stability of our faith, against certain disputers who are now growing numerous. But let them not overcome our patience, nor yet overturn our faith. Let us be cautious and circumspect against novelties of disputation, human ones surely, not divine. We are celebrating today the solemnity of the apostles; let us hear the apostle warning: “Avoid profane novelties of words; for they advance greatly toward impiety.” “But we want you to be wise as to what is good, and innocent as to what is evil.” Adam is dead, but that serpent is not yet dead. He whispers, and he does not cease to hiss. The final punishment is reserved for him; but he seeks companions in his condemnation. Let us hear the friend of the bridegroom, jealous for the bridegroom, not for himself: “For I am jealous for you with the jealousy of God; for I have betrothed you to one husband, to present you as a chaste virgin to Christ. And I fear,” he says, “lest, as the serpent seduced Eve by his cunning, so your minds too be corrupted from the chastity that is in Christ.” We have all heard the apostolic words; let us all observe them; let us all beware of the serpent’s poisons. For we cannot say, “We have not heard, we do not know,” when we have just sung, “Their sound has gone out into all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world.” Running words have come to us at the ends of the earth: we have received them, written them down, appointed readers. The reader is not silent; the disputer is in labor: why does the lurker not cease?