Sermons to the People 339.1–340.2

This day, brothers, reminds me to think more attentively about my burden. Even if I must think about its weight day and night, yet somehow this anniversary day presses it upon my senses so that I cannot at all avoid thinking about it. And the more the years go by, or rather go away, and bring us nearer to the last day, which will certainly come some time without doubt, the sharper is my thought and the fuller the goad, as to how I can render an account for you to the Lord our God. For this is the difference between each one of you and us: that you will render an account almost of yourselves alone, but we both of ourselves and of all of you. That is why the burden is greater: but carried well it wins greater glory; managed unfaithfully, it hurls one into most terrible punishment. What then must I chiefly do today, except commend my danger to you, so that you may be my joy? And my danger is if I attend to how you praise and ignore how you live. But he knows, under whose eyes I speak, or rather under whose eyes I think, that I am not so much delighted by popular praise as goaded and troubled about how those who praise me live. To be praised by those who live badly I do not want; I abhor it, I detest it: it is a grief to me, not a pleasure. But to be praised by those who live well: if I say I do not want it, I lie; if I say I want it, I fear I may be more eager for emptiness than for solidity. So what shall I say? I neither fully want it nor fully do not want it. I do not fully want it, lest I be endangered in human praise; I do not fully refuse it, lest those to whom I preach be ungrateful.

My burden is the one you heard just now, when the prophet Ezekiel was read. For it is not enough that the day itself reminds us to think about that same burden: on top of that such a reading was recited as to strike great fear into us, so that we think what we are carrying; because unless the one who laid it on us carries it with us, we fail. See, you heard: “The land,” he says, “on which I bring the sword, and it sets a watchman for itself, to see the sword coming and announce it; but if, when the sword comes, that watchman keeps silent, and the sword comes upon the sinner and kills him, the sinner indeed will die for his iniquity, but his blood I will require from the hand of the watchman. But if he sees the sword coming, and sounds the trumpet, and announces it, and the one to whom he announces it does not take heed, that man indeed dies in his iniquity, but the watchman has freed his soul. And you, son of man, I have set you as watchman for the sons of Israel.” He explained what he called the sword, he explained what he called the watchman, he explained what death he meant. He did not allow us to excuse our negligence by the obscurity of the reading. “I have set you,” then, he says, “as watchman. If I say to the sinner, You shall surely die, and you keep silent, and he dies in his sin, he indeed will die in his sin deservedly and justly, but his blood I will require from your hand. But if you say to the sinner, You shall surely die, and he does not take heed, he will die in his iniquity, but you have freed your soul.”

Lighten, then, brothers, lighten my burden and carry it with me. Live well. The Lord's birthday is at hand; we have our fellow poor to feed, and kindness must be shared with them. But to you these words of mine are my dishes: I am not able to feed all with bread that can be handled and seen. I feed you from what I am fed. I am a servant, I am not the householder. I set before you from what I too live on: from the Lord's treasury, from the banquet of that householder who for our sake became poor, though he was rich, that by his poverty we might be made rich. If I set bread before you, when the bread was broken you would each carry off single pieces: even if I set out much, very little would come to each. But now, what I say, all have the whole, and each single one has the whole. Have you divided the syllables of my word among you? Have you each carried off single words of this long sermon? Each of you has heard the whole: but let him see how he has heard; because I am a dispenser, not a collector.

If I do not dispense, and keep the money, the gospel terrifies me. For I could say: “What need have I to be a nuisance to people, to say to the wicked, Do not act wickedly; act thus; stop acting thus? What need have I to be a burden to people? I have received how I am to live, as I was commanded, as I was instructed; let me hand back as I received: why should I render an account for others?” The gospel terrifies me. For in that most leisured security no one would outdo me. There is nothing better, nothing sweeter, than to search the divine treasure with no one making a noise: it is sweet, it is good. To preach, to reprove, to rebuke, to build up, to be busy for each one: a great load, a great weight, a great labour. Who would not flee this labour? But the gospel terrifies me. A certain servant came forward and said to his master: “I knew you were a hard man, reaping where you did not sow; I kept your money, I did not want to pay it out; take what is yours. If anything is missing, point it out; if it is complete, do not be hard on me.” But he said: “Wicked servant, out of your own mouth I will condemn you.” Why this? Because you called me greedy; why did you neglect my gains? “But I was afraid to give, lest I lose”: this is what you say. For it is often said: “Why do you rebuke? What you say is lost on him; he does not listen to you.” “And I,” says that servant, “did not want to give, lest I lose your money.” “I, coming, would have demanded it with interest. I had made you,” he says, “a dispenser, not a collector. You should have carried out the dispensing and left the collecting to me.” Fearing this, then, let each one see how he receives. If I who dispense am afraid, ought the one who receives to be secure?

This, then, is my dispensing. Whoever was bad yesterday, let him be good today. He was bad yesterday, and he did not die. If he had died while bad, he would have gone where he would not have come back from. He was bad yesterday; he is alive today: let the fact that he lives profit him; let him not live badly. Why then does he want to add today's evil to yesterday's? You want to have a long life; do you not want a good one? Who would put up with even a long bad meal? Has the blindness of the mind grown so callous, is the inner man so deaf, that he wants to have all things good except himself? You want to have an estate? I deny that you want to have a bad estate. You want to have a wife? You want only a good one; a house, only a good one. Why should I run through them one by one? You do not want to have a bad boot, and you want to have a bad life? As if a bad boot harmed you more than a bad life. When a bad, tight boot has hurt you, you sit down, take it off, throw it away, or repair it, or change it, so as not to hurt your toe; and you put a shoe on. A bad life is the one by which you lose your soul. But I see plainly where you are deceived. A harmful boot causes pain, a harmful life pleasure: the one hurts, the other pleases. But what pleases for a time afterwards hurts worse. But what hurts for a time to our health afterwards gladdens with endless pleasure and abundant joy; according to what is written, “Those who sow in tears will reap in joy”; and that, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.”

Attending to these things more carefully, then, let us think on what is written about luxury and pleasure: “For a time,” it says, “it sweetens the throat, but afterwards it is found more bitter than gall.” And since our life in this world is known to be like a road, we ought rather to come from toil to rest than from rest to toil: and it is better for us to toil for a short time on the road, so that afterwards in the homeland we may happily come to eternal joy; by the gift of our Lord Jesus Christ, who with the Father, etc.

Always, indeed, since this burden, of which a difficult account must be given, was laid on my shoulders, concern for my office has troubled me: yet I am moved much more deeply by such reflection when its anniversary day, renewing the memory of the beginning, sets it before my eyes so that I hold what I took up long ago as though I were coming to take it up today. And what is feared in this office except that what is dangerous in our office may delight us more than what is fruitful in your salvation? So may I be helped by your prayers, that he may deign to carry his burden with me. When you pray, you pray also for yourselves. For this burden of mine, of which I am now speaking, what else is it but you? Pray for me truly, as I pray, that you may not be heavy. For the Lord Jesus would not call his burden light unless he carried it with the one who carries it. But you too support me, so that, according to the apostolic command, we may bear one another's burdens and so fulfil the law of Christ. If he does not carry with us, we sink; if he does not carry us, we fall. Where it frightens me that I am for you, there it consoles me that I am with you. For for you I am a bishop; with you I am a Christian. The one is the name of an office undertaken, the other of grace; the one is of danger, the other of salvation. In short, we are tossed by the storm of that activity as on a great sea; but recalling by whose blood we have been redeemed, we enter as it were the harbour of security in the calm of this thought; and toiling in this office of our own, we rest in the common benefit. If, then, it delights me more that I have been bought with you than that I have been set over you, then, as the Lord commands, I will be more abundantly your servant, so as not to be ungrateful for the price by which I have deserved to be your fellow servant. For I ought to love the Redeemer; and I know what he said to Peter: “Peter, do you love me? Feed my sheep.” This once, this again, this a third time. Love was asked about, and labour was laid on: because where love is greater, labour is less. “What shall I render to the Lord for all that he has rendered to me?” If I say that I render this, that I feed his sheep, even this I do, “not I, but the grace of God with me.” Where then shall I be found one who renders, when I am everywhere gone before? And yet, because we love freely, because we feed sheep, we seek a reward. How will this be? How can these fit together: “I love freely so as to feed,” and “I demand a reward because I feed”? This could in no way be, in no way would a reward be sought from him who is loved freely, unless the reward were the very one who is loved. For if we render this for his having redeemed us, that we feed his sheep, what shall we render for his having made us shepherds? For bad shepherds, which God forbid, we are by our own wickedness; but good ones, may he grant it to us, we cannot be except by his grace. Therefore we also, my brothers, commanding, ask you not to receive the grace of God in vain. Make our ministry fruitful. You are God's farm. Receive from outside the planter and the waterer; but from inside the giver of growth. The restless are to be rebuked, the faint-hearted consoled, the weak supported, opponents refuted, the treacherous guarded against, the unskilled taught, the lazy roused, the contentious restrained, the proud checked, the quarrelsome pacified, the needy helped, the oppressed freed, the good approved, the bad tolerated, all loved. In such great, and so manifold and varied a range of different activities, help us both by praying and by obeying; so that it may delight us not so much to be over you as to be of use to you.

For just as it is good for you that we should be eager to pray for God's mercy for your salvation, so you too ought to pour out prayers to the Lord for us. Let us not judge this unfitting, since we know that the apostle did it. For he so desired to be commended to God by prayers that he himself begged the whole people, saying, “Praying together for us as well,” etc. And so we ought to say this, which can both exhort ourselves and instruct you. For just as we must consider with great fear and anxiety how we can fulfil the office of bishop without reproach, so you must take care to have humble obedience in all that is commanded you. Let us pray together, then, dearly beloved, that my episcopate may profit me and you. It will profit me if I say what is to be done; you, if you do what you hear. For if both we for you and you for us pray without ceasing with the perfect affection of love, we shall happily come, with the Lord's help, to eternal blessedness.