Sermons to the People 30.1–32.5

Without doubt, brothers, the one who said to God, “Direct my steps according to your word, and let no iniquity rule over me,” wanted to escape a heavy burden and a heavy yoke of iniquity. Let us see, then, when iniquity rules over a man, so that we may understand what we heard him praying and what we ourselves prayed in our response. For all of us, I think, responded to the holy psalm with a devout and truthful heart, praying and saying to the Lord our God, “Direct my steps according to your word, and let no iniquity rule over me.” From the rule of this worst of mistresses we have been redeemed by precious blood. And what good was it to have received a Law that commands and threatens and does not help, so that under it we were guilty before the grace of God? The Law threatens in vain when iniquity rules. For the Law is not bodily, not carnal; but since God, who gave the Law, is spirit, without doubt the Law is spiritual. But what does the apostle say? “For we know that the Law is spiritual; but I am carnal, sold under sin.” Do not be surprised, then, you who are sold under sin, if the one to whom you are sold rules over you. Hear the apostle John: “Sin is iniquity.” Against such a mistress, then, we call on the Lord, to whom we say, “Direct my steps according to your word, and let no iniquity rule over me.”

The one who was sold cries out; let the Redeemer hear. Man sold himself through free choice under the rule of iniquity, and took as his price the slight pleasure of the forbidden tree. So he himself cries out: “Direct my ways, which I have twisted; direct my steps, which I myself have perverted by my own choice; direct them according to your word.” What does “direct them according to your word” mean? That my steps may be straight, because your word is straight. “I,” he says, “have been twisted under the weight of iniquity, but your word is the rule of truth: so correct me, twisted by myself, as by a ruler, that is, by the straight word.” So: “Direct my steps according to your word, and let no iniquity rule over me.” I sold myself: redeem me. I sold myself by my own choice: redeem me by your blood. Let pride blush in the seller; let grace glory in the Redeemer. “For God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.”

“For the Law is spiritual; but I am carnal, sold under sin. For what I do I do not know: for I do not do what I want.” “I do not do what I want,” says the carnal man: he accuses not the Law but himself. For the spiritual Law has no fault; the carnal man, sold, incurs fault. He does not do what he wants: when he wants, he cannot, because when he could, he did not want. By willing evil, he lost the power to do good; and now the captive speaks, and the captive says, “I do not do what I want. For I do not do the good that I want, but the evil that I hate, that I do.” “Not what I want.” And a man answers back, “Yes, you do.” “I do not do what I want.” “You do exactly what you want.” “I do not do what I want: believe me, brother, I do not do what I want.” “Oh, if you wanted to, you would do it: because you do not want to, you do not do good.” “I do not do what I want: believe me, I know what goes on in me; I do not do what I want.” Opponent of grace, you are not the judge of my conscience. I know that I do not do what I want, and you say, “You do what you want”? “No one knows what goes on in a man except the spirit of the man that is in him.”

You too are a man; if you will not believe me, look at yourself. Do you really live in this corruptible body, which weighs down the soul, in such a way that the flesh does not desire against your spirit, and the spirit against your flesh? Is this strife not in you? Is there no desire of the flesh resisting the law of the mind? If nothing in you resists the other, see where the whole of you is. If your spirit does not dissent from the flesh desiring against it, see whether perhaps your whole mind consents to the flesh; see whether perhaps there is no war because the peace is perverse. Perhaps you consent wholly to the flesh, and there is no strife. What hope have you of ever conquering, when you have not yet begun to fight? But if you delight in the law of God according to the inner man, but see another law in your members fighting against the law of your mind; if you delight in the one and are bound by the other, you are free in mind, a slave in the flesh. If that is already how it is, have compassion rather on the man who says, “I do not do what I want.” For do you not want that desire which resists your mind to be absent from you altogether? You are a man of bad wishes if you do not want to be rid of such an adversary. As for me, I confess to you: whatever in me rebels against my mind and quarrels with me with contrary delight, whatever of that kind is in me, I want to kill altogether. And even if, perhaps with the Lord’s help, I do not consent to it, I do not want to have anything to quarrel with. It is much more desirable for me not to have an enemy than to conquer one. For that very thing by which the flesh desires against the spirit is not something other than mine: or am I really put together from a contrary nature? Both that is mine, and my refusal to consent to it is mine. A part that is somewhat free resists the remnants of slavery. I want the whole to be healthy, because I am the whole. I do not want my flesh to be separated from me forever as something foreign, but to be healed wholly with me. If you do not want this, I do not know what you think of the flesh: I suppose you think it comes from somewhere or other, as from a contrary race. That is false, heretical, blasphemous: mind and flesh have one maker. When he created man, he made both and joined both: he subjected the flesh to the soul, and the soul to himself. If the soul had always stood under its Lord, the flesh too would always have obeyed its mistress. Do not wonder, then, if the soul, which deserted its superior, suffers punishment through its inferior. “For the flesh desires against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh. For these,” he says, “are opposed to each other, so that you do not do what you want.” Hence this man too says, “I do not do what I want.” For the flesh desires against the spirit, and I do not want it to desire; I count it a great thing if I do not consent, yet I wish to be rid of it. So: “I do not do what I want.” For I want the flesh not to desire against the spirit, and I cannot: that is what I said, “I do not do what I want.”

Why do you slander me here? I say, “I do not do what I want,” and you say, “You do what you want.” Why do you slander me? Ungrateful to the physician, why do you slander the sick man? Let me ask the physician: “Redeem me from the slanders of men, and I will keep your law.” I will keep it through your redemption, not through my own power. That is why I do not claim for myself a health I do not yet have: because I ask the physician. But you, the defender of nature (and would that you were, not bringing a false defense of it as though it were healthy, but asking the physician on its behalf as not yet healthy): as it is, you defender of nature, or rather its assailant, while you praise the Creator as if for a healthy nature, you shut out the Savior from a sick one. He who created heals; when it falls by itself, he raises it by himself. This is the faith, this is the truth, this is the foundation of the Christian faith. One and one: one man through whom came ruin, another man through whom came rebuilding; through the one ruin, through the other rebuilding. He fell who did not stand firm; he raises up who did not fall. The one fell because he abandoned the one who abides; the one who abides came down to the one who lay fallen. If, then, the flesh desires against the spirit, so that in this very thing you do not do what you want, because you want it not to desire and you cannot, at least hold fast your will in the grace of the Lord, and persevere in his help. Say to him what you sang: “Direct my steps according to your word, and let no iniquity rule over me.” What does “let no iniquity rule over me” mean? Hear the apostle: “Let sin not reign in your mortal body.” What does “let it not reign” mean? “So that you obey its desires.” He did not say, “Do not have evil desires.” For how, in this mortal flesh, where the flesh desires against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh, am I not to have evil desires? Do this, then: “Let sin not reign in your mortal body so that you obey its desires.” Even if there are desires, let them not be obeyed, so that iniquity may not rule. “Nor present your members to sin as weapons of iniquity.” Let your members not become weapons of iniquity, and no iniquity will rule over you. But even this, that your members do not become weapons of iniquity: do you provide it for yourself by your own strength? This very thing, I say, this very thing, that your members do not become weapons of iniquity, do you provide it for yourself by your own strength? For when your members do not become weapons of iniquity, iniquity is indeed in your members, in unlawful desires, but it does not reign. How can one reign who has no weapons? A part of you, your flesh, the desire of your flesh, rebels against you through weakness. That weakness is a tyrant: if you want to be victor over the tyrant, call on Christ as emperor.

For I know what you are going to say to me tomorrow, or what you are saying now within yourself. Whoever of you here is like this and is listening to me, I know what iniquity says to you inwardly. For you are still under the yoke of iniquity, since you do not acknowledge the price paid by the Redeemer. I know what you say to yourself: “See, my flesh desires against my spirit, it desires adultery; but I do not consent, I do not nod assent, I do not decide on it. Not only do I not do it, I do not even consent to doing it; not only do I not commit it outwardly through the flesh, I do not even follow the rebel in my mind. Do I consent to what fights against me? Do I yield to what struggles with me? I do not. See, no iniquity rules over me.” So it is; it is true. If it is so, give thanks to him who granted you that it should be so. Do not claim this for yourself, lest you lose what you have received and begin to ask in vain. Do you not fear: “God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble”?

So do you provide for yourself that no iniquity rules over you? If this presumption of yours is true, our prayer is vain when we say to God, “Let no iniquity rule over me.” Did you sing these words today, or not? Were you here when we were all saying, “Direct my steps according to your word, and let no iniquity rule over me”? You were here; you sang these words; I do not think you will deny it. So you sang among the people of God and asked God, saying, “Direct my steps according to your word, and let no iniquity rule over me.” If you provided this for yourself, why were you asking for it with me? I have you praying, I have you calling on him, I convict you of laboring: so let us listen together to him who says, “Come to me, all you who labor.” Let us listen, and let us come. What does “let us come” mean? Let us advance by believing, approach by giving thanks, arrive by persevering. Let us come to him who says, “Come to me, all you who labor.” You labor, and I labor: let us listen to him, let us come to him; why do we quarrel among ourselves? Let us both listen, because we both labor; why do we quarrel among ourselves? So as not to hear the physician calling? O unhappy sickness! The physician calls to himself, and the sick man is busy with quarrels. See what he says as he calls: “Come to me, all you who labor.” Where do you labor, if not under the burdens of sins, under the yoke of that evil mistress, iniquity? “Come to me, then, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will refresh you.” I who made you will remake you. “I,” he says, “will refresh you”: because “without me you can do nothing.”

How will I refresh you? “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me.” What do we learn from you? We know you, Lord: the Word in the beginning, the Word God, the Word with God. We know that all things were made through you, those we see and those we do not see. What do we learn from you? For we, your disciples, are not going to found another world, as the disciples of a craftsman and builder might. You founded one world; you made heaven and earth; you adorned both with their creatures and ornaments. What do we learn from you? “Learn from me,” he says. “When I was in the beginning God with God, I created you; this I do not want you to learn from me. But I became what I made, so that what I made might not perish.” How did he become what he made? “He emptied himself, taking the form of a servant; made in the likeness of men, and found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself.” Learn this from me. “For he humbled himself,” it says. “Learn from me, for I am gentle and humble of heart.” “For I do not teach you this,” he says, “as though you had ever been in the form of God, not thinking it robbery to be equal with God.” To him alone this belonged; to him it was not robbery, for it was his by nature. In equality with the Father he was born of the Father. Yet what did he do for your sake? “He emptied himself, taking the form of a servant; made in the likeness of men, and found in appearance as a man.” See, for your sake God became man, and you will not acknowledge that you are a man? See, for your sake he became man without sin, and you will not acknowledge yourself with sin, so that you may come to him who says, “Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will refresh you”?

“Take my yoke upon you.” Have you taken this yoke? Have you taken it? Do you feel that you have a rider? Have you taken this yoke? You say, “I have.” Do you feel that you have a rider? Do you feel that you have a guide? “I feel it,” you say. Say to him, then, “Direct my steps according to your word.” He guides you under his yoke and under his burden. For so that his burden may be light for you and his yoke easy, he has breathed love into you. To one who loves, it is easy; to one who does not love, it is hard. To one who loves, it is easy: “The Lord has given sweetness.” Or perhaps, because you came on hearing “Come to me,” you mean to claim even this for yourself, that you came? “See,” you say, “I came to him by my own choice, by my own will. Because I came, he refreshes me; because I came, he lays his easy yoke on me; he who gives love lays his light burden on me as one who loves and cherishes him. He has done all these things in me; but because I came to him.” So this is your view, that because you came, you provided this for yourself? “For what do you have that you have not received?” How did you come? You came by believing; but you have not yet arrived. We are still on the way: we have come, but we have not yet arrived. “Serve the Lord in fear, and rejoice in him with trembling, lest at some time the Lord be angry, and you perish from the right way.” Fear that, while you claim for yourself that the right way was found by you, you may perish from the right way by that very arrogance. “I,” he says, “came; I came by my own choice, I came by my own will.” Why do you swell? Why are you puffed up? Do you want to know that even this was granted you? Hear the one who calls: “No one comes to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.” Turning to the Lord, and so on.

The psalm that is being sung to the Lord seems to suit the holy martyrs; but if we are members of Christ, as we ought to be, let us understand that it pertains to all of us. “Those who sow in tears will reap in joy. Going, they went and wept, casting their seeds; but coming, they will come with exultation, carrying their sheaves.” Going where, and coming from where? Sowing what in tears? What are the seeds? What are the sheaves? Going into death, coming from death; going by being born, coming by rising again; sowing good works, reaping an eternal reward. Our seeds, then, are whatever good we do; our sheaves, what we shall receive at the end. If, then, the seeds are good, good works, why are they sown with tears, since God loves a cheerful giver?

Here first see, dearly beloved, how these words pertain above all to the blessed martyrs. For no one spent so much as those who spent themselves, as the apostle Paul says, “And I myself will be spent for your souls.” For they spent themselves by confessing Christ, and by fulfilling with his help what was said: “You have sat at a great table; know that you must prepare the same.” What is the great table, if not the one from which we receive the body and blood of Christ? What does “know that you must prepare the same” mean, if not what blessed John explains: “As Christ laid down his life for us, so we too ought to lay down our lives for the brothers”? See how much they spent. But did they perish, when they had received an assurance from the Lord even about a hair? Does a hand perish where a hair does not perish? Does a head perish where a hair of the head does not perish? Where an eyelash does not perish, does an eye perish? Having received this great assurance, then, they spent themselves. So let us sow with good works while there is time, as the apostle says, “He who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly.” “Untiring,” he says, “while we have time, let us do good to all, but especially to those of the household of faith.” And again: “Doing good,” he says, “let us not lose heart; for in due season we shall reap.” He who fails in the sowing will not rejoice in the harvest.

Why then in tears, when all our good works ought to be cheerful? And indeed it can be said of the martyrs that they sowed with tears. For they fought bravely and were in great tribulations. Indeed, so that Christ might console their tears, he took them over and transfigured them into himself, and said, “My soul is sorrowful even to death.” Yet, my brothers, it seems to me that our Head had compassion on his weaker members, lest the weak members should perhaps despair of themselves, and, human frailty being what it is, be troubled as death drew near, and say that they did not belong to God, since if they belonged to him they would rejoice. That is why Christ first said, “My soul is sorrowful even to death. Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me.” Who says this? What power is this, what weakness? Hear what he says: “I have power to lay down my life, and I have power to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down, and I take it up again.” This power was sorrowful when it was doing what it would not have done unless it had willed. For he did it by power, not by the condition of his nature; because he himself willed it, not because a Jew was able to do it. So he transfigured into himself the weak members of his body. And perhaps it was of them, that is, of the weaker ones, that it was said, “Those who sow in tears will reap in joy.” For that great herald of Christ was not sowing in tears when he said, “For I am being offered, and the time of my release is at hand. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith; for the rest, there remains for me the crown of righteousness”: a crown made of sheaves. “There remains for me,” he says, “the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the just judge, will render to me on that day”: as if he said, “He will render me the harvest, for whom I spend myself as seed.” These words, as far as we understand them, brothers, are those of one exulting, not weeping. When he said these things, was he in tears? Was he not like the cheerful giver whom God loves? Let us refer these words, then, to the weak, so that even those who sowed in tears may not despair: for even if they sowed in tears, sorrow and groaning will pass away; sadness passes with an end, and joy comes without end.

Yet, dearly beloved, see how it seems to me that what was said pertains to all: “Those who sow in tears will reap in joy. Going, they went and wept, casting their seeds; but coming, they will come with exultation, bearing their sheaves.” Listen, and see whether with the Lord’s help I can explain how “Going, they went and wept” pertains to all. From the moment we are born, we go. For who stands still? Who, once he has entered the road, is not forced to walk? An infant is born; by growing he walks: death is the end. From there we must come back, but with exultation. For who does not weep here on this evil road, when the infant himself begins with it? Certainly the infant, when he is born, is poured out from the narrowness of the womb into the breadth of this world; he comes forth from darkness into light; and yet, coming from darkness into light, he can weep; he cannot see. [For this life is such that when there is rejoicing here, fear that it may deceive; when there is weeping here, pray that you may escape; and tribulation passes, and tribulation comes.] And people laugh, and people weep; and what people laugh at is to be wept over. But one weeps for his loss, another weeps for his distress because he has been put in prison, another weeps because he has lost by death one of his dearest: one for this, another for that. The just man, for what? First, for all of these: for the just man truly weeps for those who weep fruitlessly. He weeps for those who weep, he weeps for those who laugh: because those who weep over vain things weep emptily, and those who laugh over vain things laugh to their own harm. He weeps everywhere; so he weeps more.

“But they will come with exultation, carrying their sheaves.” Do you see, then, that the just man is cheerful when he does a good work? He certainly is cheerful: “For God loves a cheerful giver.” When, then, does he weep? When by praying he commends his good works to God. The psalm wished to commend the prayers of the saints: the prayers of pilgrims, the prayers of those who labor on this road, the prayers of those who love, the prayers of those who groan, the prayers of those who sigh for the eternal homeland, until they are filled with the sight of it, who are now set in grief. For indeed, my brothers, “as long as we are in the body, we are away from the Lord.” A pilgrimage that longs for the homeland is not without tears. If you desire what you do not have, pour out tears. Otherwise how will you say to God, “You have set my tears in your sight”? How will you say to God, “My tears have become my bread day and night”? They have become bread to me: they consoled me as I groaned, they fed me as I hungered. “My tears have become my bread day and night.” Why? “While it is said to me daily, Where is your God?” What just man has not had these tears? Whoever has not had them has not grieved at being a pilgrim. With what face will he come to the homeland who did not sigh for it while away? Is it not said to us daily, “Where is your God?” Learn, my brothers, learn to be among the few. Live well, walk in the way of God, and see that you hear, “Where is your God?” You will be happy when you hear this; unhappy if you say it. For when we defend the Christian faith and the answer comes back to us, “See, the name of Christ is preached everywhere; why do evils abound?”, what else is said but “Where is your God?” He who hears it groans, because he who says it is attacking.

There are tears of the godly, there are tears of the saints, which their prayers reveal. The just man works well and is cheerful; and he weeps so that he may work well; he weeps because he has worked well. By weeping he carries out a good work; by weeping he commends the good work he has done. The tears of the just, then, are frequent, but on this road: are they in the homeland? Why not in the homeland? Because “coming, they will come with exultation, carrying their sheaves.” When happiness has come, does a tear return? But those who here weep vainly and laugh vainly, scattered by their desires, who groan when they are cheated and exult when they cheat: they too weep on this road, they too weep, but not in exultation. “But coming, they will come with exultation, carrying their sheaves.” What do they gather who sowed nothing? Rather, they do gather, but what they sowed: because they sowed thorns, they gather fire. And they go, not from weeping to laughter, like the saints (“Going, they went and wept, casting their seeds; but coming, they will come with exultation”), but from weeping to weeping, from weeping mixed with laughter to weeping without laughter. For what will happen to them? Where do they go when they have risen? Where, if not where the Lord said, “Bind his hands and feet, and cast him into the outer darkness”? Come, what then? Will there be darkness, and no pain? Will they perhaps grope, but not suffer? Will they not see, but not be tormented? Far from it! There will not be darkness only; not only is the sight in which they rejoiced taken from them, but something is also given them to groan over forever. So that you may not despise darkness, whoever you are, you … who because of your evil deeds and wanton adulteries are accustomed not only not to dread darkness but to seek it, who usually rejoice more when the lamp is put out: you will not have the kind of darkness there in which you can rejoice and be glad and delight yourself in the pleasures of the flesh; the darkness there will not be like that. But what will it be like? “There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” A torturer who never fails, one tortured who never ends. Neither does the one who tortures grow tired, nor does the one who is tortured die. Eternal tears, then, will belong to those who have lived like this; eternal joys to the saints, when “coming, they will come with exultation, carrying their sheaves.” For at harvest time they will say to their Lord, “Lord, with your help we have done what you commanded; render what you have promised.”

Our God and Lord, who cares for and heals every sickness of the soul, has brought out many medicines from the holy Scriptures, as from his own cupboards, while the divine readings were being read; and these are to be applied to our wounds through our ministry. For we do not claim to be the physician’s servants, through whom he deigns to heal others, in such a way that we ourselves no longer need treatment. If we attend to him, if we offer ourselves to him with our whole heart to be cured, we shall all be healed. Many things were read, great and necessary (though all of them are so); but some are hidden more secretly in the Scriptures, to exercise those who seek, while others are set out openly and plainly, to cure those who desire. This psalm contains great secrets indeed; and if we wished to treat them all one by one, I fear that our common weakness would not bear it, whether because of the heat of the season, or our bodily strength, or slowness of understanding, or even our own less than adequate capacity. So we shall take a few things from it, as much as we judge sufficient for our duty and for the attention of your Charity.

First, its title is, “Against Goliath.” Those who are not unacquainted with the divine Scriptures, who love to frequent this school, who do not hate the teacher like hopeless schoolboys, but lend an attentive ear in church to the readers and open the receptacle of their heart to the streams of divine Scripture; who do not, within these walls, attend to the business of their homes and delight in household gossip, so that they come together only to find people with whom to chatter about trifles, not people with whom to hear useful things; who do not love to talk about other people’s affairs when they have failed in their own: those, then, who do not assemble like that, and who assemble often, are not unacquainted with this title of the psalm, “Against Goliath”; they know who Goliath was. Yet for the sake of others, who are attentive now but less attentive at other times, or who perhaps have been accustomed to choke the word in their heart, like useful seed, with the thorns of the world, that is, with the cares of worldly business, let us tell even these very old stories, familiar to the learned and to those devoted to the divine writings.