Sermons to the People 385.1–387.3

Not only in the New but also in the Old Testament, dearest brothers, we are taught how we ought to hold fast to perfect love. For so the Lord himself said in the gospel: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." Let us speak, then, a little about the love of one human being for another; for there are perverse loves among human beings. He loves another perversely who also loves himself perversely; but whoever loves himself rightly also loves the other rightly. For example, there are shameful, detestable loves: the loves of adulterers, the loves of seducers, unclean loves. All human laws and divine laws detest bad loves. So set these unlawful loves aside, and let us look for the lawful ones.

Lawful love begins with marriage; but it is still carnal. You see that it is shared with animals: those sparrows chirping over there have their marriages; they build nests, warm the eggs together, feed the chicks together. This love is indeed lawful among human beings, but you see that it is carnal. The second love is that of children; but it too is still carnal. For one who loves his children is not to be praised, but one who does not love them is to be detested. Am I to praise as something great in a man what I see in a tigress? Serpents love their young; lions and wolves love their young. So do not think it something great that you love your children. In this love you are still on a level with serpents; if you do not love them, you are outdone by serpents. I am speaking now of honorable loves, for I have excluded the shameful ones. Another love, that of kinsmen, now seems proper to human beings, if it is not merely a matter of habit. For the love that reaches beyond kinsmen is greater than the love kept among kinsmen. Whoever loves his kinsmen still loves his own blood. Let him love others who are not kinsmen; let him take in the stranger: now this love has grown much wider. It grows so far that it reaches from spouse to children, from children to kinsmen, from kinsmen to strangers, from strangers to enemies. But to get there it has many steps.

Now see what I say about friendship. There are friends, leaving aside that friendship which ought not even to be called friendship, which a bad conscience creates. For there are people who commit evil together and therefore seem joined to one another, because they are bound by a bad conscience. Leaving aside, then, this criminal friendship, there is a certain friendship that is still carnal, arising from the habit of living together, talking together, spending time together; so that a man is saddened when he is left by a friend with whom he is used to talking and keeping company. Two men meet, walk together for three days, and already they do not want to part. This is a certain sweetness of friendship, honorable indeed; but let us examine it further, since we are looking for the steps of this love, and let us see how far we have come: as far as such a friendship as I have described. This friendship, then, is of habit, not of reason. Animals have it too. Two horses eat together and miss each other: if one day one goes ahead, the other hurries on, missing its friend, as it were; it can hardly be held in by its rider, and keeps pressing on with its own impulse until it catches up. When it has reached the one that went ahead, it calms down: a weight was carrying it, it was driven by the weight of love; it has come as if to its own place, and is at rest. This friendship of habit is found even in animals: let us rise higher still. There is another, higher friendship, not of habit but of reason, by which we love a person for faith and mutual goodwill in this mortal life. Whatever we find above this is already divine. Let a man begin to love God, and he will love nothing in a man but God.

Let your Love see, first of all, how the love of friendship ought to be freely given. For you ought not to have a friend, or love him, so that he may provide you with something. If you love him so that he may provide you with money or some temporal advantage, you do not love him but what he provides. A friend is to be loved freely, for his own sake, not for the sake of something else. If the rule of friendship urges you to love a human being freely, how freely is God to be loved, who commands you to love human beings? Nothing is more delightful than God. For in a human being there are things that offend; yet for friendship's sake you force yourself to put up even with the things in him that offend. If, then, you ought not to break off a friendship with a man because of certain things that have to be borne, what could ever compel you to break off your friendship with God? You find nothing more delightful than God. There is nothing in God that could offend you, if you do not offend him: nothing more beautiful than he, nothing sweeter. But you will say to me, "I do not see him; how am I to love one I do not see?" See how you learn to love one you do not see: I will now show you how you may try to see what you cannot see with these eyes. See, you love a friend: what do you love in him? You love him freely. But perhaps this friend of yours, to pass over other things, is an old man; for it can happen that you have an old friend. What do you love in an old man? A bent body, a white head, a wrinkled forehead, sunken jaws? If it is the body you see, nothing is uglier, because of old age; and yet you love something, and you do not love the body you see, because it is ugly. How, then, do you see what you love? For if I ask you, "Why do you love him?" you will answer, "He is a faithful man." So you love faithfulness. If you love faithfulness, the eyes by which faithfulness is seen are the eyes by which God is seen. Begin, then, to love God, and you will love man for God's sake.

Hear a great testimony. The devil is indeed the accuser of the saints; and because he does not plead before a judge he can deceive, he cannot bring false charges against us. He knows before whom he is speaking. Since, then, he cannot say false things against us, he looks for true things to say. That is why he tempts: so as to have something to say. This adversary of ours, then, who begrudges us the kingdom of heaven and does not want us to be where he himself was cast down from, says: "Does Job worship God for nothing?" Even now the adversary provokes us to worship God freely, since, looking for something to object, he thought he had found something great when he said, "Does Job worship God for nothing?" Not because he had seen Job's heart, but because he saw his riches. We must take care not to love God for a reward. What then? Will you love God for a reward? What kind of reward is God going to give you? Whatever else he gives you is less than himself. You do not worship freely if you worship to receive something from him. Worship freely, and you will receive him. For God keeps himself for you, for you to enjoy. And if you love what he has made, what must he be who made it? If the world is beautiful, what is the maker of the world like? Tear your heart away, then, from love of the creature, so that you may cling to the Creator, and say what is written in the psalm: "But for me it is good to cling to God."

But if you desert him who made you and love the things he made, having deserted him who made you, you are an adulterer. So the Epistle of James cries out, calling them adulterers: "Adulterers!" And why adulterers? You ask why? "Do you not know," it says, "that friendship with this world is enmity with God? Whoever, then, wants to be a friend of this world becomes an enemy of God." He has explained what he meant by "Adulterers." The soul that deserts the Creator and loves the creature is an adulteress. For nothing is more chaste than love of him, nothing more delightful. Desert him and embrace the world, and you become unclean. O soul, so that you may be worthy of his embraces, let these things go, and cling to him freely. That is why the psalm said, "But for me it is good to cling to God." In the previous verse it said, "You have destroyed all who go whoring away from you." And as if to show what that whoring is, it added, "But for me it is good to cling to God." I want nothing else but him. To cling to him: this is my good, this is my freely given good. That is also why it is called grace, because it is given gratis. When, then, you have begun to love God freely, there is security; for you also love your friend freely, and love him for this purpose, that he may love God with you. For consider that ordinary friendship from which we began, by which we have climbed the steps; consider it. A husband loves his wife and a wife her husband: without doubt he wants her, and she wants him, to be safe. She wants to have him unharmed; she wants to have him happy. She loves him in this way because she wants to be unharmed and happy herself: what she wants for herself, she wants for him. One loves one's children: who does not want to have his children safe? One loves a friend: who does not want to have him unharmed? So much so that if something happens to him, one trembles, is saddened, is troubled, runs to him, comes to him; and when one has come, one weeps. What, then, does one want? To have him safe. If, then, everyone who loves wants what he loves to be safe, then if he understands what true safety is, he begins to love it in himself, and is bound to love that true safety in his friend as well.

If you seek God with the eyes of the flesh, look at the three young men delivered from the fire. If you seek God by faith, look at the Maccabees crowned in the fire. That health, then, is to be loved; this one is to be used. For this one is needed for use, since it is going to pass away. For the health that physicians speak of is not true health, brothers. In a certain way we are sick, for sickness is perpetual in this frailty of the flesh. Do you think a man is sick only when he has a fever, and healthy when he is hungry? "He is healthy," they say. Do you want to see how great an evil hunger is? Leave him without its medicine for seven days, and he dies. But because you apply the medicine every day, he lives. The medicine for hunger is food; the medicine for thirst is drink; the medicine for weariness is sleep; the medicine for sitting is walking; the medicine for walking is sitting; the medicine for fatigue is sleeping; the medicine for sleeping is waking. And see how weak the human body is: whoever takes the very remedy I have mentioned and persists in it fails. Hungry, you sought the help of food: see, the help of food is here; you eat, you are refreshed; if you overdo it, you fail all the more. As help for thirst you sought drink: by drinking a great deal you are choked, you who were oppressed by thirst. You have tired yourself out walking and want to sit down: sit for ever, and see whether you do not grow tired. Whatever one takes to drive out something else, then, if he persists in it, he fails.

What kind of health is this, then, brothers: passing, fragile, perishable, vain? Truly, as it has been said, "For what is your life? It is a vapor that appears for a little while." Whoever, then, loves his soul in this life will lose it; but whoever hates his soul in this world keeps it for eternal life. What is eternal life? True salvation. And if you look at your friend, whom you used to love in this world so that he might be in good health, now that you desire the salvation that is eternal, you love your friend for the sake of that salvation; and whatever you want to provide for your friend, you want to provide so that he may hold fast that salvation with you. For you love justice: you want him to be just; you love being under God: you want him too to be under God; you love eternal life: you want him to reign there with you for ever. As for your enemy: you see him persecuting you; it is iniquity that persecutes you. In him you ought to be angry, with mercy, at the fever in his soul. As, then, a friend of this world, loving his soul in the world's way, wants to drive the fever out of his friend, whom he loves like himself, for the sake of present health, so you, whomever you love, love for the sake of eternal life; and when you find anger, indignation, hatred, iniquity, try to drive out the disease of the soul as the worldly friend drives out the disease of the body. For you love for this purpose, to make him what you yourself are; and there will be perfect love in you. If you find this, love your spouse for this, love your son for this, love your kinsman, neighbor, stranger, and enemy for this, and there will be perfect love in you. And if it is in you, you conquer the world, and the prince of the world is cast out. For you have heard what the Lord said: "The prince of this world has been cast out"; because he was about to suffer, and by his passion to produce love in human beings. "Greater love than this no one has, that he lay down his life for his friends." So that he might be loved, he loved first; so that no one should fear to die in his name, he first died for all. To build love in human hearts, then, he cast the devil out. Out from where? From human hearts. Greed brought him in; love casts him out.

Let us, then, brothers, considering with great diligence the steps of love described above, not repay the Lord evil for good. And since he came and bound the strong man, that is, the devil, and took out of his power all of us who were his vessels, and by his grace emptied us of all evils, let us strive to be filled with abundant goods, fearing what the Lord himself said: "When the unclean spirit has gone out of a man, it walks through dry places seeking rest and finds none; afterwards, returning and finding the house from which it went out empty, it brought with it seven spirits more wicked than itself; and the last state of that man became worse than the first." So that we may not suffer anything of the kind, let us labor as much as we can to bring virtues into the places of vices, so that we may come to the mercy of God.

Attend, my brothers, to love, which divine Scripture praises in such a way that it sets nothing equal to it. When God admonishes us to love one another, does he admonish only this, that you love the one who loves you? That is mutual love; it is not enough for God: he wanted it to reach as far as loving enemies, saying: "Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven, who makes his sun rise on the good and the bad, who sends rain on the just and the unjust." What do you say? Do you love your enemy? Perhaps you will answer, "Through weakness I cannot." But make progress, and act so that you can; above all because you are going to pray to a judge whom no one can deceive, who will try your case. Appeal, then, to this judge, where no court messenger harasses you, no official shoves you aside, no advocate is hired who could pour out petitions for you or speak words you have not learned: the only Son of God himself, equal to the Father, sitting at the Father's right hand, his assessor and your judge, has taught you a few words that any unlettered person can keep and say, and in them he has drawn up your case for you; he has taught you the law of heaven, how you are to petition. But perhaps you will answer, "Through whom do I petition? Through myself or through another?" He who taught you to pray himself presents your petition for you, since you were the guilty party. Rejoice, because he who is now your advocate will then be your judge. Since, then, you are going to pray, you are going to plead your case in a few words, when you come to these words: "Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors." For God says to you, "What do you give me, so that I may forgive you your debts? What gift do you offer, what sacrifice of your conscience do you lay on my altars?" At once he taught you what to ask and what to offer. You ask, "Forgive us our debts"; and what do you offer? "As we also forgive our debtors." You are in debt to one who cannot be deceived; you too have a debtor. God says to you: "You are my debtor; he is your debtor; I will do to you, my debtor, what you have done to your debtor. You offer me a gift out of what you have spared your debtor. You ask me for mercy; do not be slow to show mercy yourself." Attend to what Scripture says: "I desire mercy rather than sacrifice." Do not offer sacrifice without mercy, for your sins are not forgiven you unless you offer with mercy. But perhaps you say, "I have no sins." However careful you may be, brother, still, living in the flesh in this world, you live amid pressures and distresses and move among innumerable temptations; you cannot be without sin. God surely says to you: "Rest easy about sin, then: do not forgive, if you have nothing for me to forgive you; rather exact payment, if you owe nothing. But if you are a debtor, rather congratulate yourself on having a debtor, in whom you can do what you want done in you." Hear me, and examine yourself, for there are few upright people who can truly pray the Lord's Prayer and truly say, "Lord, forgive me, as I also forgive." Not falsely, not in pretense: do it from a true heart, so that it may come true in you as well. For if one who has hurt you, who has sinned against you, asks your pardon and you forgive him, you can then say securely, "Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors." For if you resist one who asks, you too will be despised when you ask. You have shut the door against one who knocks; you will find it shut when you knock. But if you open the depths of forgiveness to one who asks you, God will open to you too when you ask him. Now I am speaking to those who ask pardon of their Christian brothers and do not receive it. See, if you have granted pardon, you will pray securely. But as for him: if he has asked you and you have not granted it, how will you be secure? And whoever you are who have sinned and have not obtained pardon, do not be afraid: appeal to his God and yours; for these are debts: can the servant exact debts that the master has forgiven? But if the one who sinned against you has not asked you, if he does not beg pardon; if he has sinned and is even angry besides, what will you do? Will you forgive or not? Suppose you have not forgiven. Why? Because he did not ask. If you did not forgive because he did not ask, do not stumble in the Lord's Prayer; say it securely; you need not beat your breast because you did not forgive one who did not ask. So he who did not ask remains liable: it is exacted of him, it is certainly exacted of him. Yet let perfect love be in you: pray for the one who does not ask; for you are praying for one who is in great danger.

Here now look at your Master and Lord, not sitting in a teacher's chair but hanging on the wood, looking around at the crowds of enemies on every side and saying, "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing." See the master; hear the imitator. Did the Lord Christ then pray for those who asked, and not rather for those who mocked and killed him? Did the physician abandon his office because the madman was raging? For he says, "Forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing." They kill the Saviour because they do not seek salvation. You perhaps will reply, "And when can I do what the Lord could?" Why do you say this? See where he does it: see that he did it on the cross, not in heaven. For as God he is always in heaven with the Father; but on the cross he was man for your sake, and there he offered himself to be imitated by all. For your sake he uttered that very cry, so that it might be heard by all. For he could have prayed for them in silence, but then you would not have had an example. But if the Lord is too much for you, let the servant not be too much for you. You cannot imitate your Lord as he hung on the cross? Look at Stephen his servant as he was being stoned. First he says, as a servant to his Lord, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit"; and after this, kneeling down, he says, "Lord, do not hold this sin against them"; and when he had said this he fell asleep in the rest of love. He found the richest peace, because he wished peace for his enemies. Did he too then pray for those who asked, and not for those who raged, stoned, and killed him? You have an example: learn; see how he prayed for himself standing, and for them knelt down. Do we think, brothers, that he loved them more than himself? For himself, standing as a righteous man, he was easily heard; but for the wicked he had to bend the knee. He showed, then, a love that reached even to his enemies. So, brothers, for the security of the Lord's Prayer, forgive from the heart those who ask, so that the Lord may forgive you your sins in this mortal body and in the future for ever, etc.

Your Love has often heard in the holy Scriptures, dearest brothers, in what danger priests are placed if they will not fulfill what the apostle solemnly charges: "Preach the word, be urgent in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all patience and teaching." And since so heavy a weight hangs over our necks, to whom it is said, "If you do not declare to the wicked man his wickedness, I will require his blood at your hand," we must rebuke all who are negligent, whether privately or publicly. But when we rebuke someone, if he is bad, he looks at who is rebuking him; and he more readily and gladly finds in his rebuker than in himself something to correct. And if he finds true things that he too can say against the one who rebukes him, he is glad. When would he do better to rejoice: in his own health, once corrected, or in another's sickness, when he is rebuked? Suppose what you say is true; you have found something in the man who reproved you: yet the truth was speaking to you through him; through a bad man, through a wicked man, the truth was speaking to you. You look for something to find fault with in the man; find rather something to find fault with in the truth. Whether you like it or not, she is your adversary, in whom you find nothing to accuse. Make her your friend, if you can. Your adversary is the word of God: whether a sinner brings it forward or a righteous man brings it forward, it is the word of God; it is blameless. It is your adversary: agree with it while you are with it on the way. The way is this life. The adversary of all the wicked is the word of God. Is it a small thing to you that, while abiding in its most blessed and most secret seat, it came to you to be with you on the way, and chose to keep you company, so that while you are walking and it is in your power you may settle your case? And you say, "When are you going to finish the way?" When you have finished the way, there will be no one with whom you can settle your case; and the adversary will hand you over to the judge, the judge to the officer, the officer to prison. "You will not come out from there until you have paid the last penny." The word of God is with you like an adversary on the way: it is in your power; settle. What does this adversary want from you, that you should agree with him? What but your salvation? He walks with his adversaries and tells them to agree with him. Let it be done: the way is not yet finished. What was not done yesterday, let it be done today. The way is not yet finished: why are you waiting until it is? When it is finished, there will be no other place where you can come to terms with the adversary. The judge remains, the officer, and the prison. For many this way, on which they promised themselves many years, came suddenly to an end. But suppose your way will be long, and your adversary always walks with you: are you not ashamed to be at odds for so long with such an adversary? The word of God, for its part, is your friend: you make it your adversary. For it wishes you well, while you, on the contrary, wish yourself ill. It commands, "Do not steal"; you steal. It commands, "Do not commit adultery"; you commit adultery. It commands, "Do not defraud"; you defraud. It forbids you to swear; you swear falsely. You do the opposite of everything it says; you make the word of God your enemy. No wonder, since you are your own enemy. "For whoever loves iniquity hates his own soul." If, then, by loving iniquity you hate your soul, do you wonder that you hate the word of God, which wishes your soul well?

Shall we, then, keep silent and rebuke no one at all? Let us certainly rebuke, but ourselves first. You want to rebuke your neighbor: nothing is nearer to you than yourself. Why look far away? You have yourself in front of you. For what does the Lord say through Scripture? "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." If, then, you do not love yourself, how do you love your neighbor? You have taken the rule of love for your neighbor from yourself. "I love him," you say. That is why I say: love yourself first, and speak to yourself. If you speak truly out of love, it is plain that the word that comes out has first done something within. But it is to be feared that you do not love yourself, and want to rebuke another, and do it with hatred. If you hate your brother, the faults you charge him with are lighter than what you do. "Whoever hates his brother is a murderer." You heard it: the Epistle of John was read today. Scripture said this so that people would not disregard what they have within in the heart and accuse only what is done through the body: "whoever hates his brother," it said, "is a murderer." His hand is not yet armed; he has not yet laid hold of the throat, not yet prepared an ambush, not yet sought poisons; and in God's eyes he is already held guilty for the hatred he has conceived. The man he wants to kill is still alive, and he is already judged to have killed. If, then, you rebuke with hatred, do you, a murderer, dare to rebuke anyone? Or, because men do not arrest you and bring you before a judge, do you not acknowledge your crime in the eyes of God, the supreme judge? If you will not acknowledge your crime, you will acknowledge your punishment; for he does not spare murderers. "But I am correcting myself," you say, "while I am on the way." Correct yourself, then, and then you will be able to rebuke your brother. You charge him with lighter faults while you commit graver ones. "You see the speck in your brother's eye, but do not see the beam in your own." For the Lord said this because of people who rebuke with hatred. Do you rebuke an angry man while you are wasting away with hatred? Weigh anger and hatred on the scales of reflection. What is anger? A certain heat of the mind. It displeases you for the moment. But in you that anger has grown old, and so it has produced hatred. Anger is a speck that will become a beam as it grows. For as a speck grows into a beam, so anger grown old becomes hatred. You already hate, and you rebuke an angry man: the speck displeases you in him, while the beam still pleases you in yourself. Do you want to know how great the difference is? We often find fathers angry with their sons; you will rarely find a father who hates his son. A father can be angry with a son he loves: one can say, "He is angry and he loves"; one cannot say, "He hates and he loves." I have said this because of people who punish lesser faults in others and do not punish greater ones in themselves.

Considering these things, then, dearest brothers, for our salvation, let us make friends with our adversary while we are on the way with him; that is, let us agree with the word of God while we are still in this life: for afterwards, when we have passed from this world, no settlement or satisfaction of any kind will remain. The judge remains, and the officer, and the prison. So that, with the Lord's help, we may fulfill all these things, let us love with all our heart not only friends but also enemies, so that in us may be fulfilled what is written: "The whole law is fulfilled in one word: You shall love your neighbor as yourself"; and "Love covers a multitude of sins." May he who is true love deign to grant us this, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, God, for ever, etc.