Sermons to the People 40.1–41.7

Often, brothers, we have sung with the psalmist, “Wait for the Lord, act manfully; and let your heart be strengthened, and wait for the Lord.” What does “Wait for the Lord” mean? That you should receive when he gives, not demand when you want. The time of giving is not yet: he has waited for you; wait for him. What did I mean by “He has waited for you; wait for him”? If you are already living justly, if you have already turned to him, if your past deeds displease you, if it has already pleased you to choose a good new life, do not be in a hurry to demand. He waited for you to change your bad life; wait for him, so that he may crown your good life. For if he too had not waited, there would be no one for him to give to. Wait, then, because you have been waited for.

But you who do not want to be corrected, whoever you are here who still do not want to be corrected (as if there were only one: I should rather have said, “Whoever of you are here”); still, you who are here, who have not resolved to be corrected (I will speak as if to one), whoever you are who do not want to be corrected, what do you promise yourself? Are you perishing by despair, or by hope? Whoever perishes by despairing says in his mind, “My iniquity is upon me; I am wasting away in my sins; what hope of life have I?” Hear the prophet saying, “I do not want the death of the wicked; only let the wicked turn from his most evil way and live.” Whoever perishes by hoping says in his mind, “God is good, God is merciful, he forgives everything, he does not repay evil for evil.” Hear the apostle saying, “Do you not know that the patience of God leads you to repentance?”

What, then, remains? For if we have gained anything with you, if what I said has entered your heart, I see what you will answer me: “It is true; I neither despair, so as to perish by despairing, nor do I hope wrongly, so as to perish by hoping. I do not say to myself, ‘My iniquity is upon me; I have no hope now.’ Nor do I say to myself, ‘God is good; he repays evil to no one.’ I say neither this nor that: the prophet presses me, the apostle presses me.”

“And what do you say?” “Let me live a little while longer as I like.” These are the ones who wear us out: they are very many, they are troublesome. “Let me live a little while longer as I like; afterward, when I have corrected myself, what the prophet said is certainly true: ‘I do not want the death of the wicked; only let the wicked turn from his most evil way and live.’ When I have turned, he will blot out all my evils: why should I not add something to my pleasures, and live as long as I like and as I like, and turn to God afterward?”

Why do you say this, brother? Why? “Because God has promised pardon if I change.” I see, I know: God has promised pardon. He promises it through the holy prophet, and he promises it through me, his least servant; what he promises is true; he promised it through his only Son. But why do you want to add evil days to evil days? “Sufficient for the day is its own evil.” Yesterday was an evil day, today is evil, and tomorrow is evil. Or do you think the days good when you satisfy your pleasures, when you nourish your heart in luxuries, when you lay snares for another’s chastity, when you grieve your neighbor by fraud, when you deny what was entrusted to you, when you swear falsely for a coin? When you treat yourself to a good lunch, do you think you are spending a good day? How can a day be good when the man is bad? Do you want to add bad days to bad days?

“I beg you,” he says, “let me be left alone a little while.” Why? “Because God has promised me pardon.” But no one has promised you that you will live tomorrow. Or read me, as you read the prophet, the Gospel, the apostle, that when you turn God blots out all your iniquities: read me where tomorrow was promised you, and live badly tomorrow. And yet, my brother, I ought not to have said this to you. Perhaps your life will be long: if it is long, let it be good. Why do you want to have a long life and a bad one? Either it will not be long, and that long life ought to delight you which has no end; or it will be long, and what harm will there be in having lived well for a long time? You want to live badly for a long time; you do not want to live well? And yet no one has promised you tomorrow. Correct yourself; hear the Scripture: “Do not delay to turn to God.” These words are not mine; and yet they are mine too. If I love them, they are mine: love them, and they are yours. This word that I am now speaking belongs to holy Scripture: if you despise it, it is your adversary. But hear the Lord saying, “Make peace with your adversary quickly.” Let all hear: I am reciting the words of divine Scripture. O wicked delayer, O wicked craver of tomorrow, hear the Lord speaking, hear holy Scripture proclaiming. From this place I am a watchman. “Do not delay to turn to God, and do not put it off from day to day.” See whether it did not see them, whether it did not look into those who say, “Tomorrow I will live well; today I will live badly.” And when tomorrow comes, you will say the same. “Do not delay to turn to God, and do not put it off from day to day. For suddenly his wrath will come, and in the time of vengeance he will destroy you.” Did I write this? Can I blot it out? If I blot it out, I fear to be blotted out. Can I keep silent about it? I am afraid to keep silent. I am compelled to preach: terrified, I terrify. Fear with me, so that you may rejoice with me. “Do not delay to turn to God.” Lord, see that I am saying it; Lord, you know that you terrified me when your prophet was being read. Lord, you know my fear in that chair when your prophet was being read. See, I am saying, “Do not delay to turn to God, and do not put it off from day to day. For suddenly his wrath will come, and in the time of vengeance he will destroy you.” But I do not want him to destroy you.

Do not say to me, “I want to perish”; because I do not want it. Better, then, my “I do not want” than your “I want.” If your father were lying sick with lethargy in your hands, and you, a young man, were attending your sick old father, and the doctor said, “Your father is in danger; this sleep is a deadly heaviness; watch him, do not let him sleep; if you see him sleeping, wake him; if waking is not enough, pinch him; if even that is not enough, prod him, so that your father does not die”: you, the young man, would be a burden to the old man. He, dissolved into a sweet sickness, would be drifting off, closing his eyes as that heaviness pressed on them; you, on the contrary, would shout to your father, “Do not sleep.” And he: “Leave me alone; I want to sleep.” And you: “But the doctor said, ‘If he wants to sleep, he must not sleep.’” And he: “I beg you, leave me alone; I want to die.” “But I do not want it,” says the son to his father. To whom? To one who wishes to die. And yet you want to put off your father’s death, and to live a little longer with your old father, who will die anyway. The Lord cries to you, “Do not sleep, lest you sleep forever; wake up, so that you may live with me and have a father whom you will never carry out to burial.” You hear, and you are deaf.

What have I done as a watchman? I am free; I do not burden you. I know that some will say, “What did he want to say to us? He frightened us, burdened us, made us guilty.” On the contrary, I wanted to free you from guilt. It is foul, it is shameful (I will not say evil, I will not say dangerous, I will not say ruinous), it is shameful that I should deceive you, if God does not deceive me. The Lord threatens death to the ungodly, the most wicked, cheats, criminals, adulterers, seekers of pleasures, those who despise him, those who grumble about the times and do not change their ways: the Lord threatens them with death, threatens hell, threatens eternal destruction. What do they want, that I should promise what he does not promise? See, a steward gives you a guarantee: what use is it to you if the master of the house does not accept it? I am a steward, I am a servant: do you want me to tell you, “Live as you like; the Lord will not destroy you”? A steward has given you a guarantee: a steward’s guarantee is worth nothing. Would that the Lord gave it, and I made you anxious! For the Lord’s guarantee is valid even if I do not want it; but mine is worth nothing if he does not want it. And what is our security, brothers, whether mine or yours, except that we listen attentively and carefully to the Lord’s commands and faithfully await his promises? In these we grow weary, because we are men: let us implore his help; let us groan to him. Let our prayers not be for worldly things that pass away, transitory and vanishing like vapor; but let our prayers be for the fulfilling of justice itself and for sanctification, for the name of God: not for defeating a neighbor, but for defeating lust; not for healing the flesh, but for taming avarice. Let our prayers be on this: may he help us as we struggle, so that he may crown us as we conquer.

While the divine Scriptures were being read (we cannot now speak about all their sentences), I noticed one sentence, very brief in number of words but very large in weight of meaning. From it I have chosen, with the Lord’s help, to serve this great expectation of your Charity according to the modest measure of our strength, and to minister to you from the Lord’s storeroom, from which I too live with you. This, then, is the sentence I am speaking of: “Hold faith with your neighbor in his poverty, so that you may also enjoy his good things.” Let us take it first as it seems to sound simply, as all can understand it, even those who search into none of the more hidden things of the divine Scriptures. “Hold faith,” it says, “with your neighbor in his poverty, so that you may also enjoy his good things.” It is true, says one who has heard it simply: when a friend is poor, faith with him must not be broken; one must stay with him and not change one’s friendship when his fortune changes; faith must be kept, with a steadfast will. For if my friend was my friend when he was rich and is not my friend now that he is poor, then it was not he who was my friend, but his gold. But if my friend was the man himself, then whether the gold remains or goes, he is the same man he was: why, then, should he not be my friend now, when, though he has lost his treasure, he has not lost his heart? If I were buying a horse, I might not despise it when stripped of its trappings and saddle-cloth; and did my friend please me when clothed and displease me when stripped? Well, then, does divine Scripture command, most wholesomely and most suitably to human conduct, “Hold faith with your neighbor in his poverty.”

“So that you may also enjoy his good things.” What then? Coming to the second part of this sentence, are we to think of our friend in such a way as to say to ourselves, “We must stay with him and keep faith with him in his poverty, so that we may enjoy his good things”? For the one who is poor now will be rich, and he will not admit you to his riches if before you proudly scorned his poverty. Hold faith with him, then, even when he is poor, so that you may also enjoy his good things when riches come to him, and rejoice with him in them. Hold faith with him: he is poor, but he has a great possession, faith. You who were ready, and wanted, to hold land with him if he had land that you might hold together, how much more securely do you hold faith with him? For perhaps your friend is someone from whom a wicked man could take his possession: will he be able to take his faith? What, then, does “so that you may also enjoy his good things” mean? Surely that he may become rich instead of poor, and you will enjoy his riches because you did not despise his poverty.

The first part of this sentence, on this popular understanding, pleases me; but the second, I confess, offends me. For if you stay with a friend in his poverty so that, when he is rich, you may enjoy his riches, you still love not the friend but something else in the friend. Faith and hope are two good friends, and greater than these is charity. “There remain,” says the apostle, “these three, faith, hope, and charity; but the greatest of these is charity: pursue charity.” So I question one friend about another. Tell me, I beg you, are you holding faith with this man in his poverty? “Certainly,” he says; “for I heard this in holy Scripture, and commended it to my heart and laid it up in my memory; I gladly recall it, and more gladly do it. For I heard the holy word, ‘Hold faith with your neighbor in his poverty.’” And I say: Why do you do this? For the sake of what follows, “so that you may also enjoy his good things”? What, then, are you expecting? “That when he is rich,” he says, “and good things have come to him, he may admit me to his good things, because I did not scorn his hardships.” Bear with me, then, while I question you a little more. What if this man, with whom you hold faith while he is poor, is never rich? What if he is going to be poor until he dies? Does faith perish because hope has been disappointed? Because you will not be able to hold gold with him as a rich man, will you regret having held faith with him as a poor one? If he has human sense, or rather if he has a sense of the truth, he will be troubled by this question and will say to me, “You are right. It is a good thing to hold faith with one’s neighbor; but if you say that faith is held with a poor neighbor in the hope of coming to his riches and sharing them with him, then without doubt, when this poor man has died and the hoped-for riches have not come, we shall regret that whole good deed, and what we milked well we shall pour out badly.” You see, then, that this sentence must be searched out more deeply: not as it can be understood popularly, but as it was set down by divine authority, to suggest, to teach, and to command something great to us, where our hope will not be deceived, so that we may not regret having held faith. You cannot reach the meaning of our sentence in that way.

So consider that poor man Lazarus, lying at the rich man’s gate. This poor man was wretchedly sick: he did not even have bodily health, which is the poor man’s patrimony. He was also covered with sores; dogs licked his sores. And in that house there was a rich man, who was clothed in purple and fine linen and feasted splendidly every day, and who would not hold faith with the poor man. Rightly the Lord Jesus, the lover and giver of faith, paid more attention to faith itself in the poor man than to gold and luxury in the rich man; he paid more attention to the poor man’s possession than to the rich man’s pride. That is why he named the poor man, but judged that the other’s name should be passed over in silence. “There was,” he says, “a certain rich man, who was clothed in purple and fine linen and feasted splendidly every day; and a certain poor man named Lazarus.” Does it not seem to you that he read it out of a book in which he found the poor man’s name written and did not find the rich man’s? For that book was the book of the living and the just, not of the proud and the wicked. The rich man was named by men and the poor man passed over in silence; the Lord, on the contrary, named the poor man and kept silent about the rich man. That rich man, then, would not hold faith with the poor man. Both died. The beggar died and was carried by the angels into Abraham’s bosom. The rich man died and was buried (for perhaps the other was not even buried); and when he was in torment in hell, as we read, he lifted up his eyes from afar and saw in Abraham’s bosom the poor man whom he had despised at his gate. He could not have a common rest with the man with whom he had refused to have a common faith. “Father Abraham,” he says, “send Lazarus to dip his finger in water and let it drip on my tongue, for I am tormented in this flame.” The answer was: “Remember, son, that you received your good things in your life, and Lazarus evil things; so now he is at rest here, and you are in torment. And besides all this, there is a great chasm between us and you, so that no one can pass from us to you, nor cross from you to us.” He saw that mercy was denied him because he had denied it. He saw that it was true: “Judgment without mercy for one who has not shown mercy.” And he who in his own time would not take pity on the poor man took pity on his brothers too late. “Send Lazarus, then,” he says: “I have five brothers there; let him tell them what happens here, so that they too may not come to this place of torment.” And to this the answer was given: “If they do not want to come to this place of torment, they have Moses and the Prophets; let them hear them.” He used to mock the prophets, surely together with his brothers. For I believe, indeed I do not doubt, that when he talked with those brothers of his about the prophets, who urge what is good, forbid what is evil, threaten torments to come, and promise rewards to come, he mocked all this, saying with his brothers, “What life is there after death? What memory is there in decay? What feeling in ashes? Everyone is carried there and buried; who has ever been heard to come back from there?” Recalling these words of his, he wanted Lazarus to go back to his brothers, so that they would no longer say, “Who has come back from there?” And to this a fitting and worthy answer was given. For he seems to have been a Jew, and therefore to have said, “Father Abraham.” So the answer was excellent and fitting: “If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be persuaded if someone rises from the dead.” This was fulfilled in the Jews, because they did not listen to Moses and the Prophets, nor did they believe Christ when he rose. Had he not foretold this to them: “If you believed Moses, you would believe me also”?

So that rich man remained without help, his temporal delights ended, in eternal punishment. He had not done what was just; he heard what he deserved: “Remember that you received your good things in your life.” This life, then, that you see is not yours. “You received your good things.” These things that you sigh for, longing from afar, are not yours, then. Where now are the words of the rich and of those who flatter the rich, when they see someone abounding in temporal delights, wealthy in land, seizing land and piling it up, and drawing to himself the lead with which he will sink? For a great weight brought that rich man down to hell, and a heavy burden pressed him to the depths. For he had not heard: “Come to me, you who labor and are burdened. My yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” Christ’s burden is wings. On these wings that poor man flew into Abraham’s bosom. The rich man would not hear this; for he listened to the tongues of flatterers. By these tongues he was deafened to the prophets: the tongues of those who praised him wrongly and said, “You alone are somebody; you alone really live.” So: “You received your good things in your life.” For these you thought were your goods; you did not believe in others or hope for them: you received them in your life. For you thought that this alone was your life, since you hoped for nothing after death and feared nothing sad. “You received your good things in your life, and Lazarus evil things.” He did not say “his,” but “evil things”: the things that people think evil, that people fear, that people avoid as a great matter. Lazarus received evil things here. His good things he did not receive then; yet he did not lose them. And as “his” was not added, so neither was “in his life” added. For his life was another, which he hoped for in Abraham’s bosom. Here he was dead; here he was not living: he was dead with the death of which the apostle speaks: “For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.” The poor man bore temporal evils; God was deferring his good things, not taking them away. Why, then, rich man, do you desire in hell what you did not hope for while you were enjoying your riches? Are you not the one who, despising the poor man, mocked Moses the prophet? You would not, then, hold faith with your neighbor in his poverty; do you now want to enjoy his good things? You mocked when you heard, “Hold faith with your neighbor in his poverty, so that you may also enjoy his good things.” Now you see his good things from afar, and do not hold them with him. For those good things were to come, and to come invisibly. When they were not seen, they had to be believed, so that when they are seen you might not be left with the grief of seeing them and being unable to hold them.

So, brothers, as far as I can see, this sentence has been made clear. It must, of course, be understood in a Christian way by Christians. Let us not hold faith with a poor neighbor in such a way as to hope that temporal riches will come to him, keeping our faith with a view to possessing them with him. Not that way at all, not that way. But how, except according to the command of our Lord: “Make friends for yourselves by means of the mammon of iniquity, so that they may receive you into the eternal tabernacles”? For there are poor people here who have no tabernacles in which to receive us. Make them your friends by means of the mammon of iniquity, that is, by means of the gains that iniquity calls gains. For there are gains that justice calls gains: these are in God’s treasuries. Do not despise the poor, who have nowhere to return to, nowhere to enter. They do have somewhere to enter; they have tabernacles, and eternal ones too. They have places into which you will wish in vain to be received, like that rich man, if you do not receive them into yours now; because “whoever receives a just man in the name of a just man will receive a just man’s reward; whoever receives a prophet in the name of a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward; and whoever gives one of the least of mine a cup of cold water only in the name of a disciple, amen, I say to you, he will not lose his reward.” Such a one, too, holds faith with his neighbor in his poverty; therefore he enjoys his good things.

Your Lord too says it to you, he who, though he was rich, became poor: he explains this sentence to you better and more solidly. For perhaps, about the poor man whom you have taken into your house, your mind somewhat doubts and hesitates whether he is honest or perhaps a deceitful pretender, a hypocrite: your mind wavers in showing mercy, because you cannot see into his heart. Do it even with a bad one, so that you may reach a good one too. The man who feared that his good seed would fall on the road, among thorns, on stones, too lazy to sow in winter, went hungry in summer. Yet your Lord, about whom you certainly have no doubt if you are a Christian, says to you: “For your sake I became poor, though I was rich.” “Who, being in the form of God” (what is richer than that form?) “did not think it robbery to be equal with God, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant” (what is richer than the form of God? What is poorer than the form of a servant?), “made in the likeness of men, and found in appearance as a man; he humbled himself, becoming obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.” Add this too: he was thirsty on the cross; he received a drink, not from one who pitied him but from one who mocked him; and the fountain of life drank vinegar in his death. Do not scorn this, do not despise it, do not say, “So my God became man? So my God was killed, was crucified?” Yes, certainly, so: he was crucified. His poverty is commended to you. He was far from you; he came near to you by poverty. “Hold faith with your neighbor in his poverty.” Here, certainly, this sentence nowhere wavers, nowhere is dark. For the name “neighbor” take the name “Christ,” and take it humbly. For if you are humble, you are suited to the humble one; if you are humble, you long for the high one. Take it humbly, and understand “neighbor”: “For the Lord is near to those who have crushed their heart,” so that you may say in prayer, “As a neighbor, as our brother, so I was pleasing.” This one word, then, the prophet added when he named “neighbor”; for prophetic speech had to be covered a little by the veil of a sacrament, so that it might be sought with greater desire and found with greater sweetness. Where he named “neighbor,” then, you name Christ; for he too named Christ in this way, prophetically. Name Christ, and see the sentence run clear, watering your thirst as from the fountain of truth: “Hold faith with Christ in his poverty, so that you may also enjoy his good things.” What does “Hold faith with Christ” mean? In that he became man for your sake, in that he was born of a virgin, in that he received insults, was scourged, was hung on the wood, was wounded by the lance, was buried: do not despise these things; let them not seem incredible to you; and so hold faith with your neighbor. For this is his poverty. And what does “so that you may also enjoy his good things” mean? Hear, for this is what he willed; hear, for this is why he came to you in poverty; hear the voice of the Lord your God, poor for your sake, making you rich; see how you will enjoy his good things if you keep faith with him in his poverty: “Father,” he says, “I will that where I am, they too may be with me.”