Sermons to the People 47.8–47.19

We must work, then, for a pure conscience; and if perhaps some scruple is there, let us come before his face in confession. Just now in the psalm, as it was sung, we heard, “Let us come before his face in confession.” Let us come before him, so that he does not come upon us first. After confession he will not seek vengeance, if after confession you do not return to your wickedness. Come before him before he comes upon you. For that he will come is certain; you are lost if you do not desire what is going to happen. For he will come even against your will. Will you delay him by refusing to let him come? As he knew the hour in which he was to be judged, so he also knows the hour in which he is to judge. He will come; see to it what you will be. Today there is a scruple: today let there be confession, today let the scruple be renounced; today it is forgiven, today it is released. There is no reason for you to say, “God puts off pardon”: do not put off your medicine. For you have something in your mind that distresses you; and if it distresses you, it also troubles you. Surely, if there were a stone in your house offending your eyes, you would order it removed from the way, especially if you were about to receive a rather important guest into your house. So when you invoke God, you call him into yourself: how will he come into you, when you have not cleaned the place in which you are to receive him? But are you unfit to remove from your heart what you yourself made there? Invoke him, that he may cleanse it; invite him, that he may enter; only do now what you are going to do, while he speaks by warning and is silent in judging.

Here he has named he-goats, he has named rams, and he judges between them. And what does he say to them? “Is it not enough for you that you fed on good pasture? And the rest of your pasture you trampled with your feet; and you drank the water that had settled” (that is, that was clear and still), “and the rest you muddied with your feet; and my sheep fed on what your feet had trampled, and drank the water muddied by your feet.” What is this? God’s pastures are good, and God’s springs are pure. We have these in the holy Scriptures. Who, then, are those who drink from them what is still, and feed from them on what is clean, and trample the rest and muddy the water, so that other sheep get trampled grass and drink muddied water? And you surely see that this displeases the shepherd, who says, while these things are being done, “I judge between sheep and sheep”: surely, so that they may not be done. There are many who learn calmly and teach turbulently, and though they have a patient teacher, they rage at the learner. For who does not know how calmly Scripture itself teaches us? Someone comes, then, and reads God’s commandments; he reads and takes them in; he takes them in calmly, drinking still water from a still source and feeding on what is green and clean. Someone else comes to hear something from him; he grows indignant, gets agitated, and by accusing the slowness of one who understands with difficulty, he makes the other, now troubled, understand less of what he could have heard calmly.

I would not say this, brothers, as if dullness should never be rebuked, since the great calm of the Truth itself rebukes it, saying, “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe!”, provided this is done with that love by which we wish to rouse people: to rouse the diligence of their attention, and perhaps to clear away the cloud from their mind that they have gathered from the cares of the world; for perhaps, by thinking of other useless things, they cannot hear what is useful. Then too, even if someone sees slowness in himself, he is not accused without reason, so that he may ask God to loose his slowness and grant him the truth. For either, if we understand too little of what we have heard through our own negligence, the negligence must certainly be rebuked; or, if it is slowness, once it has been accused there will be a reason to pray to God. So such teachers are not to be blamed; but those who do this with a bitter mind, an envious mind, they are the ones who trample the pastures and muddy the springs: whatever they may know, they want to know it in such a way that others do not know it. Men of malicious mind, full of hellish jealousy, livid not in body but in heart, they have read and understood; but when they are asked, they say, “That is too much for you; am I to entrust these things to you? Are you worthy to read or hear these things?” Why do you muddy the water? The spring flows for you both. Why do you trample the grass that is common? You did not send the rain to make it grow.

There is something else in these words that can reasonably be understood. There are people who think that their conscience is enough for them in living well, and they do not much care what anyone else thinks of them. They do not know that when a man sees a man of good conscience living rather carelessly, associating with anyone anywhere, knowing that an idol is nothing and yet reclining at table in an idol’s temple, his conscience, being weak, is built up, not toward what he examines, but toward what he suspects. For a man your equal, your brother, cannot enter into your conscience, which God knows. Your conscience is before God; your conduct is before your brother. If he, suspecting something bad of you, is disturbed and “built up” to doing something that he thinks you do, because you live in such a way, what good is it to you that the belly of your conscience has drunk pure water, while he drinks muddied water from your careless conduct?

And when such people are rebuked so that they will not do these things, you hear them answer us and say: “The Apostle said, If I wished to please men, I would not be a servant of Christ.” Here too you muddy the water and trample the pasture. Pay closer attention, so that you do not muddy the water for yourself too. What the Apostle says, “If I wished to please men, I would not be a servant of Christ,” I accept very well; I gladly acknowledge the apostolic saying. But have you not read something else in the Apostle: “Please all in all things, as I also please all in all things, not seeking what is profitable to me but to many, that they may be saved”? Again, have you not heard the same apostle: “Give no offense to Jews or to Greeks or to the church of God”? Third, have you not heard the same apostle: “For we provide what is good, not only before God but also before men”? So he says: “Explain to me, then, how I am to understand sayings so different and contrary: the Apostle saying here, If I wished to please men, I would not be a servant of Christ; and here, Please all in all things, as I also please all in all things; here, This is our glory, the testimony of our conscience; and here, We provide what is good, not only before God but also before men.” If you listen calmly, if you do not muddy the water of your own mind for yourself, I will perhaps explain, as far as I can. There are people who are rash judges, slanderers, whisperers, grumblers, who seek to suspect what they do not see, and who seek even to spread abroad what they do not even suspect: against such people what remains but the testimony of our conscience? For, brothers, even with those whom we wish to please, we do not seek our own glory, nor ought we to seek it, but their salvation: so that if we walk well, they may not go astray in following us; let them be our imitators if we are Christ’s; but if we are not Christ’s, let them be imitators of Christ. For he himself feeds his flock, and he alone is with all who feed well, because they are all in him. So we do not seek our own advantage when we wish to please people; but we rejoice that what is good pleases them, for their benefit, not for our honor. It is clear against whom the Apostle said, “If I wished to please men, I would not be a servant of Christ”; and it is clear for whose sake he said, “Please all in all things, as I also please all in all things.” Both are lucid, both calm, both pure, both undisturbed. Only, feed and drink; do not trample and muddy.

For you have surely heard the Lord Jesus Christ himself, the teacher of the apostles: “Let your works shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father who is in heaven”; that is, who made you such. For we are the people of his pasture and the sheep of his hands. So let him be praised who made you good, if you are good; not you, who by yourself could only be bad. Why do you want to turn the truth upside down, so that when you do something good you want yourself to be praised, and when you do something bad you want the Lord to be blamed? For surely he who said, “Let your works shine before men,” also said in the same sermon, “Do not do your righteousness before men.” But just as these things seemed contrary to you in the Apostle, so also in the Gospel. But if you do not muddy the water of your heart, here too you will recognize the peace of the Scriptures, and you too will have peace with them. But if you refuse to have peace with them, you stir up a quarrel within yourself; they will not lose their peace. It is because of those who commend themselves to people by boasting, and so fan their good works abroad that they set the end of their good works in human praise, and count that same human praise as the reward of their good works: of these it is said, “Truly I say to you, they have received their reward.” Against them it is said, “Beware of doing your righteousness before men.” Then follows: “in order to be seen by them.” He did not stretch the aim any further; he made it end there. Do not do whatever good you do before men in such a way as to be seen by them, so that being seen by them is itself the end of your work. Do not act, then, so as to be seen by them. But in the other place he does not set the end in our being seen by the people before whom he wants our good deeds to be; he says, “Let your works shine before men, that they may see your good works.” He did not stop, nor remain there; but he led you upward from there, and took you away from yourself (for you would fall if you rested in yourself), and placed you where you would be safe: “That they may see,” he says, “your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven.” Do not be angry that he is glorified: be with him, and you will be glorified in him. “So that no flesh,” says the Apostle, “may glory before him.” Shall we, then, remain without glory? No; for he himself says, “Let him who glories glory in the Lord.” For even the testimony of our conscience is a glory to us in this way, because it is in him. For if our glory is such that we please ourselves and become self-pleasing, then he who pleases himself pleases a very foolish man.

Let us take care, then, brothers, not only to live well but also to conduct ourselves well before people; and not only to have a good conscience, but, as far as our weakness is able, as far as the vigilance of human frailty is able, let us take care also to do nothing that might fall under evil suspicion with a weak brother; lest perhaps, while we eat clean grass and drink clean water, we trample God’s pastures, and the weak sheep eat what is trampled and drink what is muddied. And woe to us, because of him who says, “I judge between sheep and sheep.”

“For this reason thus says the Lord God to them: Behold, I judge between the strong sheep and the weak sheep.” Let him say something else. We have already heard about those who trample the grass and muddy the waters; let us hear of another kind of evil, and a great kind of evil. After this he makes no more mention of the he-goats: he named them once, so that we should know they are there. For he knows them well. After this he speaks as though all were sheep. First he spoke as he himself sees; afterwards as we see. For since the he-goats are among them and will be separated at the end, let the sheep know it; for now I distinguish as between sheep and sheep. No one knows the sheep and the he-goats by predestination and foreknowledge except him alone who could predestine because he could foreknow. Now, since all are under the sign of Christ and all come to the grace of God, you think yourself a sheep; God perhaps knows you as a he-goat. But hear as a sheep what you hear: “Behold, I judge between the strong sheep and the weak sheep.”

“Because you pushed with your sides and shoulders, and struck with your horns, and crushed all that was failing, until you scattered them outside.” Who would not understand this? Who would not shudder at it? If no sheep are outside, it has not happened. But if we lament that many sheep wander outside, woe to those by whose shoulders and sides and horns it was done. For only strong sheep would do these things. Who are the strong? Those who presume on their own strength. Who are the strong? Those who boast of their own righteousness. None divided the sheep, none sent them outside, except those who said that they were righteous: shoulders bold to push, because they do not carry God’s burden; evil sides, conspiring friends, a fellowship of obstinacy; horns raised high, lifted up in pride. Push with sides and shoulders, toss with horns, send outside what you did not buy! Certainly the whole case is this: that you are righteous and others unrighteous, and that it was unworthy for a righteous man to be with the unrighteous; unworthy, of course, that the grain should be among the weeds; unworthy that the sheep should feed among the he-goats until the shepherd should come who does not err in separating. Are you, then, the angel uprooting the weeds? I would not recognize you as an angel uprooting the weeds even if the harvest had already come. Before the harvest it is not you; and whoever it may be, he is not genuine. He who appointed the reapers also appointed the time. Men too could call themselves angels. Perhaps we find in the Scriptures that men too are called angels; but still I look to the time of harvest. You can give yourself the name of angel; you cannot shorten the time of harvest. So you speak falsely in saying that you are one, because the time when you might be one has not yet come. Accordingly, when it comes, and the true reapers have been sent, I do not know where they will find you, whether as one to be cleansed and stored in the barn, or as one to be bound and thrown into the fire. I say “perhaps” because I do not dare to judge. For now I grieve that you are outside; whether you will be inside, I do not know.

Meanwhile, hear that by another testimony of Scripture it is written about you while you are alive; and do not want to uproot the weeds when it is not the time, but come back inside yourself while it is the time. Another Scripture of God says: “A bad son calls himself righteous.” These are your shoulders and sides and horns. Wrongly strong, how much better it would be for you to be weak! Wrongly strong, but not healthy. The madman, wrongly strong, strikes even his doctor. You call yourself perfect so as to make a defection. How much better, how much more useful it would be for you to be weak, so that he who knows your imperfection might perfect you! The apostle Paul, a chosen vessel, so that he should not be lifted up by his revelations (which we would not dare to say if we did not believe him when he says it): “Lest I be lifted up,” he says, “by the greatness of the revelations, there was given me a goad in my flesh, an angel of Satan, to buffet me.” So that he would not raise his horns, he said that he was buffeted. “For this,” he says, “I asked the Lord three times to take it away from me; and he said to me: My grace is enough for you; for strength is made perfect in weakness.” How much more useful, then, is the weakness that is made perfect than that strength which pushes the sheep and tosses them in order to shut them out! So you yourself are the bad son: you call yourself righteous. “A bad son calls himself righteous, but does not wash away his going out.” Pay attention, my brothers, to a saying brief in number of words but immense in weight of truth. He calls himself righteous so as to go out and to shut others out. He calls himself righteous, but he is bad; therefore he does not wash away his going out. What does “does not wash away” mean? He does not clear it, does not defend it, does not excuse it. For why did you separate yourself? Why did you go out? Why does your heart tremble when you hear from the divine books, “They went out from us, but they were not of us”, if indeed that evil strength with which you push and drive and toss God’s sheep allows any trembling into your heart? For surely, when you hear, “They went out from us, but they were not of us,” the one speaking was in the Church. The Church is spread through the whole world; what are you doing outside? For it is not I who proclaim the Church spread through the whole world: the prophets proclaimed it, the apostles proclaimed it, the Lord himself proclaimed the Church spread through the whole world. Just now, when the psalm was read, we heard, “The Lord does not reject his people.” As if it were asked, “Which people?”, it says, “For in his hand are the ends of the earth.” He does not reject them, and you push them away. You push, you toss, you shut out, you throw out the charge of “betrayers”, and you do not prove it. These are the horns of one who tosses, not the gentleness of one who feeds. See God’s people at the ends of the earth; see God’s people groaning and weeping before God who made it, saying in the psalm to the very Lord before whom it weeps, “From the ends of the earth I have cried to you, when my heart was in anguish.” See how it humbles itself in the anguish of its heart. And what does it say was granted to it? “You have lifted me up on the rock.” On the rock, Christ, you have lifted me up; you have not hurled me down from the mountain of Donatus. Go now, toss your horns, stretch out your sides, puff up your shoulders, and push the sheep; and say, “I am righteous.” Scripture will answer you: “Bad, not righteous. A bad son calls himself righteous.” If you are righteous, why do you go outside? Why do you cast out? What are you doing outside with those whom you cast out? As a sheep you fled from the he-goats. Better that you be separated from them by the shepherd to the right than be put to shame with them on the left. They were he-goats, you a sheep: you should have fed with the he-goats. How had the pastures, how had the springs offended you? Finally, how had the shepherd himself offended you, who mixed both flocks for a time, who, though he could do this well whenever he pleased, yet kept the separation for the end? For even if he separated them now, he would not err. He puts it off to the end; you separate before the time. You do not wait for the end, not knowing when your own end will be. Why this, unless because you accused falsely even those whom you accused as he-goats? For if you had accused them truly, you would not have separated yourself. Your separation is their vindication. If they were weeds, why did you want to separate them before the time? You would have been wheat mixed with them, rooted in the same field, watered by the same rain. Why, then, did you go out? Do you find a reason? Those whom you accuse you do not convict; but by going out before the time and separating yourself, you yourself are convicted. See that you are a bad son: you call yourself righteous, but you do not wash away your going out. I do not say to you, “It is rather you who are the betrayer.” If I said it, I could easily prove it; but I do not wish to say it, because it was your people who did it, not you. I do not impute others’ deeds to you, even those of your own people: I look at your own deed; I reproach you for being outside. I reproach your going out. I set aside entirely everything that can be said against you. I pass over your drunkenness, your interest and usury upon usury; I pass over the gangs and the frenzies of the Circumcellions; I pass over all these things and whatever others I cannot list. Perhaps not all among you do these things. Let the one there who does not do them, the one who is displeased by what is done there, let him come forward, let him speak: I do not charge him with another’s crime; let him wash away his going out. You see that it is rightly said to him, “A bad son calls himself righteous.” For the Lord says it, who speaks the truth: “A bad son calls himself righteous.” Not I, but he. If he wants me to call him righteous, let him come, let him bear good fruit in Catholic peace and keep it in Catholic peace; for there is no fruit where there is no endurance. “And they bear fruit,” it says, “with endurance.” Do you want to tell how you came to be struck by hail? Hear from another place: “Woe to those who have lost endurance.”

Now imagine someone considering (as often happens) where he should be a Christian. He is moved to become a Christian; he observes the human race running together to the name of Christ; he wants to be a Christian with no temporal advantage in view, not to win a more powerful friend, not to obtain a woman he desires as his wife, not to escape some pressure of this world (although many who enter even in this way are corrected once they have come in). But let us suppose someone who is thinking about his soul and wants to be a Christian. He looks around and sees two parties; he asks the reasons why the one separated itself from the other. They answer: “We separated ourselves, as the righteous from sinners.” As if they were speaking to a blind man, who hears what they say but does not see what they do. So if, looking at their morals and at the things I mentioned a little earlier, he says to them, “Please tell me: you call yourselves righteous, and so you maintain that you rightly separated yourselves; why are there such people and such things among you?”, they perhaps, because they do not dare to deny it, since what is said is set before the eyes, reply, “There are indeed such people among us, but surely we are not all like that?” Very well. Then I see you outside with sinners: why not inside? For the reward of your separation ought to have been not to live with a sinner. If you were outside in such a way that you did not have among you the kind of people you pretend to have fled, I would put up with your separation somehow. So let this man who wants to be a Christian consider where he should be a Christian. He sees those who separated themselves supposedly from sinners full of sinners. Then let him look at the Church of Christ by the standard of conduct generally approved among mankind, by which even he, coming from the world, can judge in some fashion: he sees here too some sober and some drunk, some feeding the poor and some craving to plunder other people’s goods, and other such things: he sees them here, and he sees them there. Let him now look to God, and what he says about his Church: he finds God speaking of his Church through all nations; he finds God saying also, in that likeness of the weeds, “The field is this world.” The field is not Africa, but this world. Through the whole world, wheat; through the whole world, weeds (yet the field is the world, the sower the Son of Man, the reapers the angels, not the chiefs of the Circumcellions); both growing until the harvest: not the weeds growing and the wheat diminishing, but both growing until the harvest. What harvest? Hear him: “The harvest is the end of the age.” He hears these things plainly, and, judging rightly, what does he say? “I will not be in that cutting-off; I will be here, and I will be good in the name of him whose I shall be; and I will be good, not making myself good but waiting to be made good by him; not calling myself good and righteous, but longing to be called so by him.” He enters; he becomes a Catholic. See, he washes clean his coming in; you too, wash away your going out. You cannot: for “a bad son calls himself righteous, but does not wash away his going out.”

“You pushed with your sides and shoulders, and struck with your horns, and crushed all that was failing, until you scattered them outside. And I will save my sheep.” As their wickedness and cruelty is to be abhorred, so the mercy of our shepherd, truly our God, is to be praised: he will save his sheep. Perhaps, my brothers, he does this even through his least servants, perhaps through unworthy ones, when we say these things. May he save his sheep: let them hear the voice of their shepherd and follow him. Let them not seek the Church from the mouth of men: let them seek it from the mouth of God, from the mouth of Christ. Whom he calls wicked is wicked; whom he calls righteous is righteous; whom he calls a sheep is a sheep; whom he calls a he-goat is a he-goat. He is the truth; let him speak; let the Church be sought from him. Tell us, Lord, where is your Church? And he says to all: “Do you know where I am?” Let all answer: “In heaven, at the right hand of the Father.” That is the whole faith: “This I taught, this I sowed; but I sowed it through the world. When you confess me in heaven,” he says, “surely that psalm comes to your mind, Be exalted above the heavens, O God. Are you seeking the Church? Read what follows: And your glory above all the earth.” There, brothers, where it is said of Christ rising and ascending, “Be exalted above the heavens, O God,” there it immediately follows, “And your glory above all the earth.” The bridegroom is in heaven, the bride is on earth: he above all the heavens, she over all the earth. O heretic, you believe what you do not see in heaven, and you deny what you see on earth. So let him say these things; let him say them and be heard: may he save his sheep. “And I will save my sheep,” he says, “and they will no longer be plundered; and I will judge between sheep and sheep.”