Sermons to the People 357.1–358.5

It is time to exhort your Charity, with the strength the Lord gives, to love peace and to pray to the Lord for peace. Let peace, then, be our beloved and our friend, with whom our heart may be a chaste couch; with whom there may be faithful rest and no bitter partnership; with whom there may be a sweet embrace and inseparable friendship. To praise peace is harder than to have it. For if we want to praise it, we wish for strength, we seek ideas, we weigh words; but if we want to have it, we have and possess it without any labour. Those who love peace are to be praised; but those who hate it are for the present better calmed by teaching and keeping silent than provoked by censure. The true lover of peace is a lover of its enemies. For as, if you loved this light, you would not be angry with the blind but grieve for them; for you would know what good you enjoy, and therefore, seeing of how great a good they were defrauded, they would seem to you worthy of pity; and if you had resources, skill, medicine, you would rather run to heal them than to condemn them: so if you are a lover of peace, whoever you are, have pity on one who does not love what you love, who does not have what you have. For what you love is such that you do not envy your co-possessor. He has peace with you, and does not narrow your possession. Whatever earthly thing you love, it is hard not to envy the one who has it. Then, if perhaps it comes into your mind to share the land you possess with a friend, so that your kindness may be praised, so that love may be proclaimed even in these temporal things: if, then, you want to share your earthly possession, such as an estate, a house, or anything of that kind, with a friend, you share with one, and admit him to partnership, and rejoice with him. You think perhaps of admitting a third, and a fourth: now you consider how many it holds, how many it supports, whether a house for dwelling or a field for feeding; and you say, “It does not hold a fifth now; a sixth cannot live with us; when does so small a property feed a seventh?” So the narrowness, not you, shuts out the rest. Love peace, have peace, possess peace, take to yourself as many as you can to possess peace: it will be the broader the more people possess it. An earthly house does not hold many inhabitants; the possession of peace grows with many inhabitants.

How good it is to love! For this is to have. And who does not want what he loves to grow? If you want few to be at peace with you, your peace will be small. If you want this possession to grow, add a possessor. For what I said, brothers, “It is good to love peace, and to love it is itself to have it”—how much does it cost? With what voice is it to be praised, with what heart thought on: “This is to have: to love”? Consider the other things with desire for which men burn. See another love lands, silver, gold, many children, costly and ornate houses, most pleasant and most costly estates. Does he love this? He loves it. Does he who loves already have? It may be that the lover of all these things is empty-handed. When he does not have, he loves; he burns with desire to have: but when he has begun to have, he is tormented by fear of losing. He loves honour, he loves power. How many private men sigh for receiving powers? And often their last day overtakes them before they reach what they love. How much, then, does it cost—when you have loved, you will have? You do not seek what you love with a price; you do not walk to a patron through whom you may get it. Look, where you stand, love peace, and what you love is with you. This thing belongs to the heart: and you do not share peace with friends as you share bread. For if you want to share bread, the more there are among whom it is broken, the less there is from which it is given. But peace is like that bread which grew by being broken and given in the hands of the Lord's disciples.

Have peace, then, brothers. If you want to draw others to it, have it first yourselves, hold it first yourselves. Let what you have burn in you, so as to set others alight. The heretic hates peace, and the bleary-eyed man hates light. Is light bad because the bleary-eyed cannot bear it? The bleary-eyed man hates light: yet the eye was created for the sake of light. So those who love peace, and want what they love to be possessed with them, take pains that, a possessor being added, the possession may grow. Let them take pains, then, that the eyes of the bleary-eyed be treated, by whatever help, by whatever effort. Unwilling he is treated; he does not want it while he is being treated: but when he has seen the light, he will be delighted. Suppose he is angry: do not grow weary of insisting. Lover of peace, attend, and first delight yourself in the beauty of your beloved, and burn to draw another. Let him see what you see, love what you love, hold what you hold. Your beloved, whom you love, addresses you; she says to you: “Love me, and at once you have me. Bring with you whom you can to love me; I shall be chaste and remain whole. Bring whom you can; let them find, hold, enjoy. If many who see this light do not corrupt it, do many who love corrupt me?” But they do not want to come, because they have nothing with which they could see me. They do not want to come, because the brightness of peace dazzles the bleariness of dissension. See the pitiable voice of the bleary-eyed. It is announced to them, “It has been decided that the Christians should have peace.” On receiving such news, they say among themselves, “Woe to us.” Why? “Unity is coming.” What is this? What a cry: “Woe to us, unity is coming”? How much more justly would you say, “Woe to us, dissension is coming”? Far be it that dissension should come: that is darkness for those who see. For unity is coming: there is cause for joy, brothers. Why were you terrified? “Unity is coming,” it was said. Was it said, “A wild beast is coming, fire is coming”? Unity is coming, light is coming. If he wants to answer truthfully, he will say to you: “I was not terrified because a wild beast is coming, for I am not timid: but I was terrified because light is coming, for I am bleary-eyed.” So effort must be made to heal. We must share with them, as far as our strength goes, as far as we are able, as far as God grants, that which is not made narrow by sharing.

Therefore, dearly beloved, I exhort your Charity to show them Christian and Catholic gentleness. Now we are pressing on with those who are to be healed. Eyes in inflammation must be treated carefully and handled gently. Let no one take up a quarrel with anyone; let no one want now to defend even his own faith by wrangling, lest a spark arise from a quarrel, lest an occasion be offered to those seeking an occasion. In short: you hear an insult: bear it, overlook it, pass it by. Remember that he must be healed. See how gentle doctors are with those whom they treat even with stinging remedies. They hear an insult, they apply medicine, and they do not return insult for insult. Let word answer word: so that one is to be healed and the other heals, not two quarrelling. Bear it, I beg you, my brothers. “But I do not bear it,” he says, “because he blasphemes the Church.” The Church asks you this, to bear it, because the Church is blasphemed. “He disparages my bishop,” he says; “he utters a charge against my bishop, and I keep silent?” Let him utter the charge, and you keep silent; not by admitting it, but by bearing it. You do this service to your bishop if for the time being you do not get involved. Understand the time; have counsel. How many blaspheme your God? Do you hear and he does not hear? Do you know and he does not know? And yet he makes his sun rise on the good and the bad, and rains on the just and the unjust. He shows patience; he defers power. So you too recognize the time; do not provoke swollen eyes to disturb themselves. Are you a lover of peace? Let it be well with you in your heart with your beloved. “And what shall I do?” You have something to do. Take away wrangling; turn to prayers. Do not drive back the insulter with insults, but pray for him. You want to speak to him against him: speak to God for him. I do not tell you to be silent: but choose rather where to speak, with whom you speak silently, with lips closed and heart crying out. Where he does not see you, there be good for him. But to him who does not love peace and wants to quarrel, answer peaceably: “Say whatever you like, hate as much as you please, detest as you wish: you are my brother.” What are you doing to stop being my brother? Indeed, good, bad, willing, unwilling, you are my brother. And he: “How am I your brother, enemy, foe?” In the very way you say these things, you are my brother. It seems wonderful: he hates, he detests, and he is a brother? Do you want him to be believed who does not know what he is saying? whose health I desire, so that he may see the light and recognize his brother. Do you want me to believe him, that I am not his brother, because he detests, because he hates, and not rather the light itself? Let us hear what the light itself says. Read the prophet: “Hear, you who tremble, the word of the Lord.” The Holy Spirit speaks through the prophet Isaiah: “Hear, you who tremble, the word of the Lord. Say, You are our brothers, to those who hate you and who detest you.” What is this? The light has shone, it has shown brotherhood: and still the bleary-eyed says, “Close the window.” Draw your eyes away from the light: recognize your brother not set in darkness, you set in darkness: and say, say confidently: you speak the words of God, not mine. “Say,” says God, “You are our brothers”: to whom? “to those who hate you.” For what wonder is it if you say it to those who love you? “To those who hate you, and who detest you.” Why this? Hear, and see the fruit of the cause. As if you had asked the Lord your God and said, “Lord, how shall I say, You are my brother, to one who hates, who detests?” Say why. “That the name of the Lord may be honoured. Let it appear in gladness: but let them be ashamed.” See, I beg you, the fruit of patience, of such gentleness. “Say, You are our brothers.” Why? “That the name of the Lord may be honoured.” But why does he not recognize you as brother? Because men have honoured the name of a man. So say, “My brother: you may hate, you may detest, you are my brother. Recognize in yourself the sign of my Father. The word of our Father. Bad brother, quarrelsome brother, you are my brother.” For you say, as I do, “Our Father who are in heaven.” We say one thing: why are we not in one? I beg you, brother, recognize what you say with me, and condemn what you do against me. Notice the words coming out of your mouth. Hear not me but yourself. See to whom we say, “Our Father who are in heaven.” Not a friend, not a neighbour; but he to whom we say it commands us to agree. Together we have one voice before the Father: why do we not together have one peace?

Say such things ardently, say them gently. Say them burning with the fervour of love, not with the swelling of dissension, and pray to the Lord with us with solemn fasts. What we now render to God, let us render also for this cause. For we are now fasting solemnly after Pentecost; and certainly we would fast even if this cause did not exist. What, then, do we owe our brothers, whom in the name of the Lord our God, our physician, we take up to be cared for and healed, offering them to him to be healed, not presuming the hands of a physician for ourselves? But what do we do? Let us pray to the physician himself, fasting with humble heart, devout confession, brotherly fear. Let us show piety to the Lord, love to the brothers. For let our almsgiving increase, by which our prayers may be heard more easily. Pursue hospitality. It is the time: the servants of God are coming. It is the time, it is the occasion; why is it lost? Consider what you have in the upper room of your house. Consider also what you store above, what you keep for yourself, of what treasure alone you are secure. Put it above; entrust it not to your slave but to your Lord. Do you fear there that a thief may creep in, that a burglar may break in, that a turbulent enemy may snatch it away? See to it that you have something to be paid back to you. Nor is only what you deposited paid back to you. The Lord wants you to be a lender at interest, but his lender, not your neighbour's.

May the prayers of your Holiness help our care for you, and for our enemies and yours, and for the salvation of all, for quiet, for common peace, for the unity that the Lord commanded, the Lord loves, so that we may speak to you about it again and again and rejoice with you. For if we always love peace and love, we ought always to speak of them. Much more, then, at this time, when peace is so loved that those to whom we do not return evil for evil, and with whom, as it is written, we are peaceable with those who hate peace, and because we speak peace to them they want to war us down without cause—they are placed in danger of loving and holding it. Those, then, who are such are in peril between love of peace and the confusion of shame: and they do not achieve, when they are unwilling to be conquered, being unconquered. For those who are unwilling to be conquered by the truth are conquered by error. O, if love rather than animosity overcame them! They would become victors precisely by being conquered. But we love, hold and defend the Catholic Church, to whose peace and concord and reconciliation we invite its enemies, not by human opinions but by divine testimonies. What shall I do with one who shouts for a part and quarrels against the whole? Is it not good for him to be conquered, who, if he is conquered, will hold the whole; if he conquers, will remain in a part? Or rather, if he seems to himself to conquer. For only the truth conquers: the victory of truth is love.

Why, then, brothers, should I commend to you with many words, and my own, the Catholic Church bearing fruit and growing throughout the whole world? We have the Lord's words for it, and for us. “The Lord,” it says, “said to me: You are my Son; today I have begotten you. Ask of me, and I will give you the nations as your inheritance, and the ends of the earth as your possession.” Why, then, brothers, do we quarrel about the possession, and not rather read out the holy deeds? Let us suppose we have come to a judge. The dispute is about a possession: and this dispute is not one of strife but of love. For a litigant over earthly property litigates to exclude his adversary: we, to bring him in. A litigant over earthly property, when he hears his adversary say, “I want to possess,” answers, “I do not allow it.” But I say to my brother, “I want you to possess with me”; he says in litigating, “I do not want to.” So I do not fear that the Lord may despise me and rebuke me, as he did those brothers, or that brother, who appealed to him among the people and said: “Lord, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.” At once the Lord, bringing out a rebuke, because he hated division, said: “Say, man, who made me a judge or divider of the inheritance between you? But I say to you, beware of all greed.” This rebuke I do not fear. For I appeal to my Lord, I confess, I appeal. Yet I do not say, “Lord, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me”; but I say, “Lord, tell my brother to hold unity with me.” Look, I read out the deeds of this possession, not so that I may possess alone, but to convince my brother, who does not want to possess with me. Look, the deeds, brother: “Ask of me,” he says, “and I will give you the nations as your inheritance, and the ends of the earth as your possession.” It was said to Christ. So it was said to us, because we are members of Christ. Why do you run about in a part? Or why do you stay in a part? Look, hold the whole that is in the deeds. You ask between whom and whom you possess, as possessors are usually asked in title deeds who their neighbours are. He who gave you all the ends has left you no neighbours.

Hear another testimony of the holy deeds. It is said of the Lord Christ in the figure of Solomon: “He will rule from sea to sea, and from the river to the ends of the world. Before him the Ethiopians will fall down, and his enemies will lick the earth. The kings of Tarshish and the islands will offer gifts; the kings of the Arabs and of Sheba will bring presents. And all the kings of the earth will worship him; all nations will serve him.” When it was said, it was believed; now that it is fulfilled, it is denied. Hold, then, with me the inheritance from sea to sea, and from the river—that is, the Jordan, where Christ's teaching began—to the ends of the world. Why do you not want to? Why are you an enemy of this promise and inheritance, your own riches? Why do you not want to? Because of Donatus? Because of Caecilian? Who was Donatus? Who was Caecilian? Men, certainly. If good, for their own good, not mine; so if bad, for their own harm, not mine. You, receive Christ, and attend to his apostle, zealous for Christ: “Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?” To say this, see what he shuddered at: “Each of you says, I am of Paul, I of Apollos, I of Cephas, I of Christ. Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?” If not in the name of Paul, much less in the name of Caecilian; much more, and much less, in the name of Donatus. And yet, still, after the apostolic words, after the Church's declaration and spread throughout the whole world, it is said to me: “I do not let go of Donatus; I do not let go of some Gaius or other, Lucius, Parmenian”; a thousand names, a thousand splits. Will you deprive yourself, by following a man, of so great an inheritance, of which you have just heard, “From sea to sea, from the river to the ends of the world”? Why do you not hold it? Because you love a man. What is man but a rational animal made from earth? So you are an enemy because you lick the earth. Rather despise this. Do not lick the earth, so that you may put your hope in him who made heaven and earth. This is our hope; these are the testimonies. “The God of gods, the Lord, has spoken, and called the earth from the rising of the sun to its setting.” Do not remain in the earth, but go where the earth has been called.

And who could recite there all the testimonies from the holy deeds of this possession? Why, then, are they not converted to the Church, except because this is the voice of the Church: “Let those who fear you turn to me, and know your testimonies”? The Church saw this, which it said in the psalm: you have just heard it; the words are fresh in your ears and hearts. “Of all consummation I have seen the end.” What is “Of all consummation I have seen the end”? Of consummation as perfection, not as consumption: I have seen the end of perfection, not of abolition. “Of all consummation I have seen the end.” What is this end? “Your commandment is exceedingly broad.” For the end of the commandment is—now you say it with me (the people cried it out)—love from a pure heart. You have all said it, because you have always heard it not without fruit. “The end of the commandment is love from a pure heart.” An end by which we are perfected, not by which we are consumed. This end is broad, because it is God's commandment, of which it is said, “Your commandment is exceedingly broad.” “A new commandment I give you, that you love one another.” See the breadth of this commandment. Where is it broad? In the flesh? Rather in the heart. For if it were broad in the flesh too, you eager listeners, you would not suffer this crush. It is broad in the heart. See where it is broad, if you have the means to see, and from this hear the apostle on how broad is the commandment of love: “The love of God has been poured out in your hearts.” He did not say “shut in,” but “poured out.” For the word “shut in” sounds like narrowness; “poured out” suggests breadth. “Your commandment, then, is exceedingly broad.” O Lord our God, approve that it is because of this very breadth that we invite our brothers to the possession of peace. Do you want to be bishops? Be so with us. The people do not want two bishops. Be brothers with us in the inheritance. Let us not hinder the peace of Christ for the sake of our honours. What honour shall we receive in the heavenly peace if we now defend our honour in an earthly lawsuit? Let the wall of error be taken away, and let us be together. Recognize me as brother; I recognize you as brother: but setting aside the schism, setting aside the error, setting aside the dissension. Let this be corrected, and you are mine. Or do you not want to be mine? I, if you correct yourself, want to be yours. So, with error removed from the middle, like the dividing wall of contradiction and division, be my brother, and let me be your brother, so that we may both belong to him who is Lord both mine and yours.

We say this out of love of peace, not out of distrust of the truth. For this is what we wrote back; you have read this proposal: that we do not flee from debating the case; rather we press for it to be debated; so that when I have shown the possession, I may thus share the inheritance with him. Let him come fearless, let him come secure, let him come learned: I do not want to prejudge by authority. Let us open our eyes to him who cannot err: let him teach us what the Church is. You have heard his testimonies. Human faults do not contaminate her whom human justice did not redeem. And yet, though the cause of the Church is one thing and the cause of men another, and wholly distinct, we do not fear even the cause of the men whom they accused and could not convict. We know they were cleared; we read that they were cleared. If they had not been cleared, I would not set up the Church in their cause, nor build it on sand and throw it down from the rock. For “on this rock,” he says, “I will build my Church, and the gates of hell will not overcome it.” “And the rock was Christ.” “Was Paul crucified for you?” Hold this, love this, say this in a brotherly and peaceable way. Let none of you rush to the place of the conference, my brothers. Indeed, if possible, avoid even passing by that place, lest perhaps some entry for contention and strife be found, or some occasion be offered, and those who seek an occasion find that very occasion. Especially since those who fear God little, or think little of our admonition, or because they love present things, ought at least to respect the severity of the earthly power. You have read the edict of the illustrious man publicly posted: which indeed was posted not because of you who fear God and do not despise the admonition of your bishops; but lest anyone not heed these things, lest anyone despise them. Let them see, then, what sort they are, lest perhaps there befall them what the apostle says: “For whoever resists authority resists the ordinance of God. For rulers are not to be feared for good work but for evil.” Let us avoid all riots, all causes of riot. Perhaps you say: “We are eager to know what we shall do.” And what should we enjoin on you? Perhaps the rich parts of piety. Let us debate for you: you pray for us. Help your prayers too, as we have already advised beforehand, with fasting and almsgiving. Add wings to them, with which they fly to God. Doing the business this way, you will perhaps be more useful to us than we to you. For none of us presumes on himself in this debate: all hope is in God. For we are not better than the apostle, who says, “Pray for us.” “Pray,” he says, “for me, that speech may be given me.” Ask him for us, then, in whom we have placed our hope, so that you may rejoice over our debate. Hold these things, brothers, we beseech you: by the name of the Lord himself, by the author of peace, the planter of peace, the lover of peace, we beg you, pray to him peaceably, beseech peaceably; and remember that you are children of him by whom it was said, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God.”