Sermons to the People 329.1–332.3

Through the so glorious deeds of the holy martyrs, with which the church flowers everywhere, we prove with our own eyes how true is what we have sung, that “precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints”: since it is precious both in our sight and in the sight of him for whose name it was undergone. But the price of these deaths is the death of one. How many deaths did one who died buy, who, if he had not died, the grain of wheat would not have been multiplied? You heard his words when he was approaching his passion, that is, when he was approaching our redemption: “Unless a grain of wheat falling into the ground dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” For on the cross he carried out a great exchange; there the purse of our price was opened: when his side was opened by the spear of the one who struck him, the price of the whole world flowed out from it. Believers and martyrs have been bought: but the martyrs' faith has been proved; their blood is witness. What was spent on them they paid back, and fulfilled what holy John says: “As Christ laid down his life for us, so we too ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.” And elsewhere it is said: “You have sat down at a great table; consider carefully what is set before you, for you must prepare such things.” That is a great table where the feast is the very Lord of the table. No one feeds his guests on himself: this the Lord Christ does; he himself is the host, he himself the food and drink. So the martyrs recognized what they ate and drank, so as to pay back the like.

But from where would they pay back the like, unless he who first spent gave them the means to pay? What then does the Psalm commend to us, where we sang the words, “Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints”? There a man considered how much he had received from God; he looked round at the great gifts of the grace of the Almighty, who created him, who sought him when lost, who gave pardon to him when found, who helped him as he fought with weak strength, who did not withdraw himself from him in danger, who crowned him as victor, who gave himself as the reward: he considered all these things, and cried out and said, “What shall I render to the Lord for all the things he has rendered to me?” He did not want to be ungrateful; he wanted to repay, and he did not have what to repay. Did he not say, not “What shall I render to the Lord for all the things he has given me,” but “for all the things he has rendered to me”? He did not give, he rendered in return. If he rendered in return, we had spent something. Clearly we had spent our evils; he rendered his goods: for he rendered goods for evils, while we had rendered evils for goods. So he asks what he may render; he is in straits; he does not find from where to pay the debt: “What shall I render to the Lord for all the things he has rendered to me?” And as if he had found what to render: “I will take,” he says, “the cup of salvation, and call on the name of the Lord.” What is this? Surely he was thinking of paying back. He still seeks to receive: “I will take the cup of salvation.” What is this cup? The cup of the passion, bitter and healthful: the cup which the sick man would fear to touch unless the physician drank it first. This is that cup: we recognize this cup in the mouth of Christ, saying, “Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me.” For the sons of Zebedee too, through their mother, sought high places, that one of them might sit on the right, the other on the left; to whom he said, “Can you drink the cup that I am going to drink?” You seek height? Through the valley one comes to the mountain. You seek the seat of glory? First drink the cup of humility. Of that cup the martyrs said, “I will take the cup of salvation, and call on the name of the Lord.” Do you not fear, then, that you will fail there? “No,” he says. Why? “Because I will call on the name of the Lord.” How would the martyrs conquer, unless he conquered in the martyrs who said, “Rejoice, for I have conquered the world”? The Emperor of the heavens was ruling their mind and tongue, and through them he overcame the devil on earth and crowned the martyrs in heaven. O blessed those who so drank this cup! They ended their pains and received honours. Attend, then, dearly beloved: what you cannot see with your eyes, think of with mind and spirit, and see that “precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints.”

The feast of the blessed martyrs and the expectation of your Holiness demand a sermon from us. For we understand that we ought to discuss what suits this day. You want this, we want this: may he do it in whose hand are both we and our words; may he who bestowed the will give the ability. For in this the martyrs burned: set on fire by love of things invisible, they despised things visible. What did he love in himself, who despised even himself so as not to lose himself? For they were temples of God, and they felt that the true God dwelt in them; therefore they did not worship false gods. They had heard, had drunk in thirstily, had handed over to the inmost marrow of the heart, and had in a way taken into their very bowels what the Lord said: “If anyone wishes to come after me, let him deny himself.” “Let him deny himself,” he says, “and take up his cross, and follow me.” On this I want to say something; your attention frightens me, your prayer commands me.

What, I ask you, is “If anyone wishes to come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me”? We understand what “let him take up his cross” is: let him endure his tribulation; for “take up” is “carry, bear.” Let him patiently accept, he says, everything he suffers for my sake. “And follow me.” Where? Where we know he went after the resurrection. For he ascended into heaven and sits at the right hand of the Father. There he has placed us too. Meanwhile let hope go before, so that the reality may follow. How hope ought to go before, those know who hear “Lift up your heart.” But it remains to ask, as far as the Lord helps, and to examine, and, as he opens, to enter, and, as he grants, to find, and to bring out for you what we have been able to find: what it is that he says, “Let him deny himself.” How does one who loves himself deny himself? This is indeed reasoning, but human reasoning: a man says to me, “How does one who loves himself deny himself?” But God says to man, “Let him deny himself, if he loves himself.” For by loving himself he loses himself; by denying himself he finds himself. “He who loves his soul,” he says, “will lose it.” He commanded who knows what he commands, because he who knows how to instruct knows how to counsel, and he who deigned to create knows how to restore. He who loves, let him lose. It is a mournful thing to lose what you love. But sometimes the farmer too loses what he sows. He brings it out, scatters it, throws it away, covers it over. Why are you surprised? This despiser and loser is a greedy reaper. What was done, winter and summer have proved; the joy of the reaper has shown you the counsel of the sower. So “he who loves his soul will lose it.” He who seeks fruit in it, let him sow it. This, then, is “let him deny himself”: lest by loving it perversely he lose himself.

For there is no one who does not love himself; but right love must be sought, perverse love avoided. For whoever, having abandoned God, loves himself, and has abandoned God by loving himself, does not remain even in himself, but goes out even from himself. He goes out an exile from his own breast, despising inner things and loving outer things. What have I said? All who do evil, do they not despise their conscience? But whoever is ashamed before his conscience puts a limit to his iniquity. So because he despised God in order to love himself, by loving outside what he himself is not, he despised himself too. See, hear the apostle bearing witness to this meaning: “In the last times,” he says, “dangerous times will come.” What are the dangerous times? “Men will be lovers of themselves.” This is the head of evil. Let us see then whether they remain even in themselves by loving themselves; let us see, let us hear what follows: “Men will be,” he says, “lovers of themselves, lovers of money.” Where are you who loved yourself? Surely you are outside. I ask you: are you money? Surely you who, neglecting God, loved yourself, by loving money abandoned yourself too. First you abandoned, then you lost. For the love of money brought it about that you lost yourself. You lie for the sake of money: “The mouth that lies kills the soul.” See, when you seek money, you have lost your soul. Bring out the balance of truth, not of greed: bring out the scales, but of truth, not of greed; bring them out, I beg you, and put money in one pan, your soul in the other. Already you are weighing, and out of greed you apply fraudulent fingers; you want the side that holds the money to sink. Put it down, do not weigh it yourself: you want to commit fraud against yourself; I see what you are doing. You want to put money before your soul: to lie for the one, to lose the other. Put it down, let God weigh; let him weigh who cannot be deceived nor deceive. See, he weighs; see him weighing, hear him announcing: “What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world?” It is a divine voice, the voice of one weighing and not deceiving, announcing, warning. You were putting money in one pan and your soul in the other; see where you put the money. What does he who weighs answer? You put down money: “What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world, but suffers the loss of his soul?” You wanted to weigh your soul against gain: weigh it against the world. You wanted to lose it so that land might be acquired by you: it has more weight than heaven and earth. But you do this because, by abandoning God and loving yourself, you have gone out even from yourself; and now you value other things, which are outside, more than yourself. Return to yourself: but again, when you have returned to yourself, turn upwards; do not remain in yourself. First return from the things that are outside to yourself, and then give yourself back to him who made you, and sought you when lost, and found you a fugitive, and turned you, who had turned away, back to himself. Return then to yourself, and go to him who made you. Imitate that younger son, because perhaps you are he. I speak to a people, not to one man; even if all may hear me, I speak not to one, but to the human race. Return then; be that younger son, who, having lived on his own substance prodigally scattered and lost, was in want, fed pigs, worn out by hunger revived, and recalled his father to memory. And what does the gospel say of him? “And he returned to himself.” He who had abandoned even himself, having returned to himself, let us see whether he remained in himself. Having returned to himself, he said, “I will rise.” So he had fallen. “I will rise,” he says, “and go to my father.” See, now he denies himself, who has found himself. How does he deny himself? Hear: “And I will say to him,” he says, “I have sinned against heaven and before you.” He denies himself. “I am no longer worthy to be called your son.” See what the holy martyrs did. They despised the things that were outside; all the enticements of this world, all its errors and terrors, whatever pleased, whatever terrified, they despised it all, they trampled it all. They came both to themselves and attended to themselves; they found themselves in themselves, and were displeasing to themselves: they ran to him by whom they would be formed, in whom they would come to life again, in whom they would remain, in whom would perish what they themselves had begun to be through themselves, and that would remain which he himself had founded in them. This is to deny oneself.

This the apostle Peter could not yet grasp when, to our Lord Jesus Christ foretelling his passion, he said, “Far be it from you, Lord; this shall not happen.” He feared that Life would die. Just now, when the holy gospel was read, you heard what blessed Peter answered the Saviour as he foretold, and in a way promised, his passion for us. The captive was contradicting the Redeemer. What are you doing, Apostle? How can you contradict? How can you say, “This shall not happen”? Is the Lord, then, not to suffer? The word of the cross is a stumbling block to you: to those who are perishing it is foolishness. You are to be redeemed, and you contradict the merchant? Let him suffer: he knows what he is doing, he knows why he came, he knows how to seek you, he knows how to find you. Do not teach your teacher; seek your price from his side. Rather listen to him correcting you: do not you want to correct him; that is perverse, that is preposterous. Hear what he says: “Get behind me.” And because he said it, I say it; I will not keep silent the Lord's word, nor am I insulting the apostle. The Lord Christ says, “Get behind me, Satan.” Why Satan? Because you want to go before me. You do not want to be Satan? Get behind me. For if you go behind me, you will follow me; if you follow me, you will take up your cross, and you will be not my counsellor but my disciple. For why were you terrified when the Lord foretold his death? Why were you terrified, except that you too were afraid to die? By fearing to die you did not deny yourself; by loving yourself badly you denied him. But afterwards the blessed apostle Peter, after he had denied the Lord three times, wiped out that fault by weeping: strengthened when the Lord rose, built up, he died for the one whom, by fearing to die, he had denied; by confessing he found death, but by finding death he laid hold of life. And see, Peter no longer dies; all fear has passed, no more tears for him, everything has gone away; he remains blessed with Christ. For he trampled all the enticements, threats and terrors outside: he denied himself, took up his cross, and followed the Lord. Hear the apostle Paul too denying himself: “Far be it from me,” he says, “to boast, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.” Hear him further denying himself: “I live,” he says, “not I.” An open denial of himself: but now follows a glorious confession of Christ: “but Christ lives in me.” What then is “Deny yourself”? Do not live in yourself yourself. What is “Do not live in yourself yourself”? Do not do your own will, but the will of him who dwells in you.

At that gospel trumpet, when the Lord says, “He who loves his soul will lose it; and he who loses it for my sake will find it,” the martyrs were fired for battle; and they conquered, because they relied not on themselves but on the Lord. “He who loves his soul will lose it.” What was said, “He who loves his soul will lose it,” can be understood in two ways. If you love it, lose it. And in another way: do not love it, lest you lose it. The first way has this sense: if you love it, lose it. If then you love it, if you love it, lose it. Sow it here, and you will reap it in heaven. If a farmer does not lose his wheat in the seed, he does not love it in the harvest. The other way runs thus: do not love it, lest you lose it. Those who fear to die seem to themselves to love their souls. If the martyrs had loved their souls in this way, without doubt they would have lost them. For what would it profit to hold on to the soul in this life and lose it in the life to come? What would it profit to hold the soul on earth and lose it in heaven? And what is holding it? Holding it how long? What you hold perishes from you; if you lose it, you find it in yourself. See, the martyrs held their souls. And how would they be martyrs if they had always held them? But see, if they had held them, would they have lived until today? If by denying Christ they had held on to their souls in this life, would they not long ago have passed from this life, and certainly lost their souls? But because they did not deny Christ, they passed from this world to the Father. They sought Christ by confessing; they held him by dying. So with great gain they lost their souls: losing hay, earning a crown; earning a crown, I say, and holding life without end.

In the end there happens, or rather has happened in them, what the Lord added next: “And he who loses his soul for my sake will find it.” “He who loses it,” he says, “for my sake.” The whole cause is there. “He who loses it”: not in any way whatever, not for any cause whatever, but “for my sake.” For in prophecy the martyrs had already said, “For your sake we are being put to death all day long.” Therefore the punishment does not make a martyr, but the cause. When the Lord suffered, the cause distinguished three crosses. He was crucified between two robbers: criminals fastened on this side and that, himself in the middle. And as though that wood were a tribunal, he condemned the one who mocked and crowned the one who confessed. What will he do when he comes to judge, if he could do this when being judged? So already he was distinguishing the crosses. For if one asked about the punishment, Christ was like the robbers. But if anyone asks the cross why Christ was crucified, it answers us, “For your sake.” So let the martyrs say to him, “We too have died for your sake.” He for our sake, but we for his sake. But he for our sake, to confer a benefit on us; we for his sake, not to bestow a benefit on him. Accordingly in both we are the ones benefited: both what flows from him comes to us, and what is done for his sake returns to us. For he is the one of whom the soul that rejoices in the Lord says: “I said to the Lord, You are my God, because you do not need my goods.” For what are “my goods,” except those given by you? And how does he need any good, from whom every good is given?

He gave us nature, that we might exist; he gave a soul, that we might live; he gave a mind, that we might understand; he gave food, that we might sustain mortal life; he gave light from heaven, springs from the earth. But all these are gifts common to the good and the bad. If he gave these to the bad too, does he then keep nothing as the special possession of the good? Clearly he does. And what is it that he keeps for the good? “What eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it gone up into the heart of man.” For what goes up into the heart of man was below the heart of man: it goes up into the heart because the heart into which it goes up is above it. What he keeps for the good, the heart goes up to it. Not what goes up into your heart, but where your heart goes up: this God keeps for you. Do not hear deaf “Lift up your heart.” So, “what eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it gone up into the heart of man”: eye has not seen, because it is not colour; ear has not heard, because it is not sound; nor has it gone up into the heart, because it is not an earthly thought. Understand it thus: “What eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it gone up into the heart of man, what God has prepared for those who love him.”

Perhaps you will still ask me what this is. Ask him who has begun to dwell in you. Yet I too say what I perceive about it. For you are asking this: what God keeps as the special possession of the good, if he lavishes so much on both bad and good. And when I said, “What eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it gone up into the heart of man,” there are some who say, “What do you think it is?” See what it is that God keeps for the good alone, whom he himself has nevertheless made good: see what it is. Our reward has been briefly defined through the prophet: “I will be their God, and they shall be my people.” “I will be their God”: he has promised us himself as reward. Look for something else, if you find something better. If I said, “He has promised gold,” you would rejoice: he has promised himself, and you are sad? If a rich man does not have God, what does he have? Do not seek anything from God except God. Love freely; desire himself alone from him. Do not fear want: he gives himself to us, and it is enough for us. Let him give himself to us, and let it be enough for us. Hear the apostle Philip in the gospel: “Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us.” Why then do you wonder, brothers, if the martyrs, lovers of God, endured so much to gain God? See how much lovers of gold suffer. They entrust themselves to the sea in the harshness of winter: they so burn with greed that they fear no cold; they are tossed by the winds, lifted up and pressed down by the waves; they are shaken by unspeakable dangers even to death. Let them too say to gold, “For your sake we are being put to death all day long.” Let the martyrs say to Christ, “For your sake we are being put to death all day long.” The voice indeed is similar, but the cause is very dissimilar. See, both have said, these to Christ, those to gold, “For your sake we are being put to death all day long.” Let Christ answer his martyrs: “If you die for me, you will find both yourselves and me.” But let gold answer the greedy: “If you suffer shipwreck for me, you will lose both yourselves and me.” So loving and imitating, not loving emptily, but loving and imitating, let us celebrate the days of the martyrs, and let us soften this heat of ours with the refreshment of joys. For we shall reign with them without end, if we love them faithfully and not emptily.

Do you ask what cause made them friends of Christ? Christ himself shows it: for he says, “This is my commandment, that you love one another.” Those who watch actors together love one another; those who get drunk together in taverns love one another; those joined by a bad conscience love one another. So when Christ had said, “This is my commandment, that you love one another,” he had to distinguish the love. He certainly did: listen. For when he had said, “This is my commandment, that you love one another,” he at once added, “as I have loved you.” Love one another in this way: for the sake of the kingdom of God, for the sake of eternal life. Love together, but love me. You would love one another if you loved an actor together: love one another more, by loving together him who cannot displease, the Saviour.

The Lord went further, and taught further: as if we said to him, “And how did you love us, so that we too may know how we ought to love one another?” Listen: “Greater love than this no one has, that he lay down his life for his friends.” Love one another in such a way that each lays down his life for the others. For this the martyrs did, as John the evangelist himself also says in his letter: “As Christ laid down his life for us, so we too ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.” You come to the table of the mighty: you believers know to what table you come; recall the Scripture that says, “When you come to the table of the mighty, know that you must prepare such things.” To what table of the mighty do you come? To him who offers you himself, not a table prepared by the cooks' art: Christ offers you his table, that is, himself. Come to this table and be filled. Be poor, and you will be filled. “The poor will eat and be filled.” “Know that you must prepare such things.” To understand it, attend to John as its expositor. Perhaps you did not know what “When you come to the table of the mighty, know that you must prepare such things” means. Hear the expositor: “As Christ laid down his life for us, so we too ought” to prepare such things. What is “to prepare such things”? To lay down our lives for the brothers.

You came poor to be filled: from where will you prepare such things? Ask him who invited you, so that you may have the means to feed him. Unless he gives it to you, you will have nothing. But do you already have some love? Do not credit this to yourself either: “For what do you have that you did not receive?” Do you already have some love? Ask that he increase it, ask that he perfect it, until you come to that table than which there is none greater in this life. “Greater love than this no one has, that he lay down his life for his friends.” You came poor; you go away rich: or rather you do not go away, but by remaining you will be rich. The martyrs received from him what they suffered for him: believe it; they received it from him. The householder gave them the means to feed him. We have him; let us ask of him. And if we are less worthy to receive, let us ask through his friends, who fed him from his own gift. May they pray for us, that he may give to us too. And that we may have more, we receive from heaven. Hear John his forerunner: “A man cannot receive anything unless it has been given him from heaven.” So both what we have we have received from heaven, and that we may have more, we receive from heaven.