Sermons to the People 50.1–51.5

The Manichees slander the prophet Haggai, maliciously accusing him because he said, speaking in the person of God, “Mine is the gold, and mine is the silver.” And since they are eager to set the Gospel combatively against the old Law, so that the two Scriptures may seem hostile and contrary to each other, they pose the question in this way: “In the prophet Haggai,” they say, “it is written, Mine is the gold, and mine is the silver; but in the Gospel our Savior called this sort of thing mammon of iniquity. Of its use the blessed Apostle, writing to Timothy, says: But the root of all evils is avarice; some who desired it have turned away from the faith and pierced themselves with many sorrows.” This is how they pose the question; or rather, it is an accusation against the old Scriptures, through which the Gospel was foretold, drawn from the very Gospel that was foretold through them. For if they were posing a question, perhaps they would be seeking; and if they were seeking, perhaps they would find.

But why do the wretches not understand that the Lord, speaking through Haggai, said, “Mine is the gold, and mine is the silver,” so that the man who does not want to share what he has with the needy may understand, when he hears the commandments to do works of mercy, that God orders gifts to be made not from the property of the man he commands but from his own; and so that the man who gives something to a poor person may not think that he does it from his own, lest perhaps he be not so much strengthened by the name of mercy as puffed up by the vanity of pride? “Mine,” he says, “is the gold, and mine is the silver”; not yours, O rich of the earth. Why, then, do you hesitate to give to the poor from what is mine, or why are you lifted up when you give from what is mine?

And do you want to see how gold and silver are the property of a just judge? The greedy man is tormented by the very thing by which the merciful man is helped. As divine justice distributes what is its own, right deeds are made manifest by it, and sins are punished by it. For gold and silver and every earthly possession are both an exercise of humanity and a punishment of greed. When God gives such things to good men, he shows in them how much the soul despises whose riches are the Giver himself. For no one can be seen to despise anything except a thing of which he has been made the owner. Those who do not have these things can also despise them; but whether they pretend or truly despise them, God sees, who examines the heart; whereas for men, so that they may imitate it, the mind of one who despises riches is seen only in the hands of one who gives them away. When God grants these things to bad men, he shows in them how the soul to which the Giver of such great things has become cheap is tormented even in the very goods that God bestows. For to the good he supplies occasions for kindness; the bad he torments with the fear of losses. And so if both lose their gold and silver, the former will keep their heavenly riches with a glad heart; but the latter will be left with a house empty of temporal goods and a conscience emptier still of eternal ones.

So gold and silver belong to the one who knows how to use gold and silver. For even among men themselves, a person ought to be said to have something only when he uses it well. For what one does not handle justly, one does not hold by right. And if someone calls his own what he does not hold by right, it will not be the voice of a just owner but the effrontery of a shameless squatter. Therefore, if a man not improperly calls something his own, not what he has seized by unjust and foolish greed, but what he has handled with very prudent authority and very just moderation, how much more does God truly and properly call gold and silver his own, which he both created by his most generous goodness and administers by his most just rule; so that without his will and dominion neither the wicked can have gold and silver as a punishment for their greed, nor the good for the use of mercy? These men, however, cannot bring it into existence, nor distribute and arrange it so that one has it and another lacks it.

If gold and silver were given into the power of the wicked alone, they would rightly be thought evil; if into the power of the good alone, they would rightly be thought some great good. Again, if they were lacking only to the wicked, poverty would seem a great punishment; but if they were lacking only to the good, poverty would seem the highest happiness. But as it is, if you want to know that gold can be possessed well, the good also have it; if you want to know that they are not good because of gold, the wicked also have it. Again, if you want to know that poverty is not misery, there are some poor people who are blessed; if you want to know that poverty is not blessedness, there are some poor people who are wretched. So God, the founder and administrator of things, distributes gold and silver to men in such a way that in itself, by its nature and kind, it is good, though not the highest and a great good, and in the rank of its order it shows the Founder of the universe to be worthy of praise; but its abundance does not lift up the good, nor does its lack crush them; whereas the wicked it blinds when it is offered and tortures when it is taken away. A thing, then, that was created both for the praise of the Creator and for the testing of the good and the punishment of the wicked can in no way rightly be blamed; and God most truly calls it his own, since he not only created it with overflowing goodness but also dispenses it with the most provident moderation. But when the Lord in the Gospel calls this kind of thing the mammon of iniquity, he indicates that there is another mammon, that is, other riches, which only the just and good can possess; so that it is called the mammon of iniquity because it is iniquity that calls these things riches. But justice knows that there are other riches, with which the inner man is adorned, as blessed Peter says, “which is rich before God.” Those are called just riches, because they are given to good and just merits. Those are called true riches, because whoever has them will not be in want. But these are unjust riches: not because gold and silver are unjust, but because it is unjust to think things riches that do not take away want. For the more someone loves them and the more of them he has, the more he will burn with want. How, then, are they riches, when as they increase, need increases; and the greater they are, the less they bring satisfaction to their lovers and the more they inflame their greed? Do you think a man rich who would be in less need if he had less? For we see some who, when they had a little money, were glad of small gains; but after it began to abound for them (the real substance of gold and silver, indeed, but still false riches), if you offer them small sums, they now refuse them. You believe they are now satisfied; but it is not so. For more money does not close the jaws of avarice but stretches them; it does not water it but sets it on fire. They spit out a cup because they thirst for a river. Is he, then, to be called richer or needier who, having wanted to have something so as not to be in need, now has more only so as to be in less need?

But this is not the fault of gold and silver. Suppose a merciful man has found a treasure: is not hospitality offered to strangers by the working of mercy, the hungry fed, the naked clothed, the needy helped, captives ransomed, churches built, the weary refreshed, the quarrelsome reconciled, the shipwrecked set on their feet again, the sick cared for; bodily wealth distributed on earth and spiritual wealth stored up in heaven? Who does these things? A merciful and good man. With what does he do them? With gold and silver. In whose service does he do them? In the service of him who said, “Mine is the gold, and mine is the silver.” You see now, I think, brothers, with what great error and what great madness the guilt of those who use things badly is transferred to the very things that people use badly. For if gold and silver are blamed because men depraved by avarice neglect the commandments of the almighty Creator and are swept away by detestable desire for the things he made, then let every creature of God be blamed too, because, as the Apostle says, certain perverse men worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Let this sun too be blamed, which these same Manichees, since they do not understand it to be a creature, never cease to worship and adore as the Creator himself or as some part of him. Why, then, do they not blame it, when people often stir up most unjust lawsuits over the use of the sun and light in their buildings; and, so that freer rays may pour somewhat more abundantly into their windows, often try to pull down other people’s houses; and pursue with the bitterest enmity those who oppose them, even if they oppose them by the most certain right? If, then, some more powerful man unjustly and wickedly oppresses one of the weak over the use of the sun, plunders him, and drives him into exile or even to death, is it the crime of the sun, which he wants to use more abundantly, or rather the wickedness of the one who uses it badly, who, while he longs to get more of the temporal light for the eyes of his body, does not open the chamber of his heart to the light of equity?

From this let them understand, if they can, either that they ought not to accuse gold and silver, even though very greedy men often fight over gold and silver; or that they ought to transfer their accusations from earth to heaven, from gleaming metals to the stars and to the sun itself, since wicked men often clash in implacable discord over possessing the light of the sun. At the same time let them also learn what difference there is between this visible light and the light of justice. For it can happen that the greater the eagerness with which someone wants to enjoy this light, the greater the blindness with which he falls away from the light of justice. For a man cannot be justified by any creature; but in order to be able to use all creatures justly, he must be justified by the Creator. So the Lord himself, though as a just judge he condemns avarice everywhere, yet as a true teacher shows the right use of earthly abundance in the very place that these people wanted to bring up as contrary to the Prophet. For he says, “Make friends for yourselves of the mammon of iniquity”; that is to say: what is the mammon of iniquity ought not to be your mammon. For then you will be able to use the abundance of earthly things justly, and to make from it friends who will receive you into the eternal dwellings, if this is not mammon to you, that is, if you do not think that it makes you rich. For your riches, which are true riches and will free you from all want, are not to be compared with earthly resources. But in order that you may deservedly enjoy those, you must first make good use of these, which are neither true riches nor yours; for they are unjustly called riches, since they do not take away want, and it is the wicked who think them riches. For they think that by these they are freed from want; but you ought to desire other riches, that is, the true riches and your own. “But if you have not been faithful in the unjust mammon, who will give you the true? And if you have not been faithful in what is another’s, who will give you what is your own?”

And yet it is clear that the Manichees slander the sayings of the prophets after their own fashion. For anyone who looks even moderately at the context of that Scripture will find that the Prophet was not speaking of this silver or gold over which avarice foolishly goes mad, but rather of that which the Apostle also mentions when he says, “But if anyone builds on the foundation gold, silver, precious stones.” With this gold and silver that treasure is rich which the Lord himself testifies was found in a field and bought by a man who sold all that he had, a man wonderfully and praiseworthily avaricious. For the Prophet, foretelling the Lord himself and designating figuratively, as is his custom, the times of the new age, that is, of the Church, speaks thus: “Yet a little while, and I will shake heaven and earth, and the sea and the dry land, and I will move all nations; and the Desired of all nations will come, and I will fill this house with glory, says the Lord of hosts. Mine is the gold, and mine is the silver, says the Lord of hosts. Great will be the glory of this latter house, more than of the former, says the Lord of hosts; and in this place I will give peace, says the Lord of hosts.”

If these men did not wish to be dogs and swine, to whom we are forbidden to give what is holy and to throw pearls, but desired, by asking, to receive, by seeking, to find, and by knocking, to have it opened to them, how readily they might perhaps perceive, even without any interpreter, with the Holy Spirit himself as their guide, that what was said refers without any obscurity to the new people, that is, the Christian people, whose great priest is Jesus the Son of God: certainly at least in that place where it is said, “Yet a little while, and I will shake heaven and earth, and the sea and the dry land, and I will move all nations; and the Desired of all nations will come.” For this verse was spoken of the last, that is, the second coming of the Lord, in which he is to come in glory, when the Prophet says, “And the Desired of all nations will come.” For when he first came in mortal flesh through the Virgin Mary, he was not yet desired by all nations, because they had not yet believed. But as the Gospel is spread through all nations, desire for him is kindled in all nations. For through all nations there are, and will be, his elect, who say in prayer with their whole heart, “Your kingdom come.” But the first coming sowed mercy beforehand for the judgment; in that judgment the glory of the second coming will stand out. First, then, heaven had to be moved, when the angel announced him to the Virgin who was to conceive, when the star led the Magi to worship him, when again angels made known his birth to the shepherds; the earth had to be moved, when it was thrown into turmoil by his miracles; the sea had to be moved, when this world raged with persecutions; the dry land had to be moved, when those who believed in him hungered and thirsted for justice; finally all nations had to be moved, when his Gospel ran everywhere. Then, after that, the Desired of all nations would come, as he is to come according to the Prophet’s prediction. “And this house will be filled with glory,” that is, the Church. So he then added, “Mine is the gold, and mine is the silver.” For all wisdom, which is signified figuratively by the name of gold, and “the words of the Lord, pure words, silver tried by fire, refined from the earth, purified seven times”: all such silver and gold, then, belongs not to men but to the Lord; so that, since the house will be filled with glory, “he who glories may glory in the Lord.” For that great priest, the one who dwells in this house, our Lord Jesus Christ, deigned to offer himself as an example of humility for the return of man, who had gone out of paradise through pride; he testifies to this in the Gospel, crying out, “Learn from me, for I am gentle and humble of heart.” So lest anyone in his house, that is, in the Church, if he is able to perceive or say anything wisely, should be lifted up, wanting it to seem his own, see how great a medicine is spoken to him by the Lord God: “Mine is the gold, and mine is the silver.” For in this way what follows will come about, that the glory of this latter house will be great, more than that of the former. For the former house, that is, the citizens of the earthly Jerusalem, as the Apostle says, “being ignorant of the justice of God, and seeking to establish their own justice, were not subject to the justice of God.” See whether they, by saying that the gold and silver were their own, were not unable to come to the eternal glory of the latter house. Yet when the Prophet says, “Great will be the glory of this latter house, more than of the former,” he shows that the former was not without some glory either. For the Apostle too was speaking of it when he said, “For if what is being done away was with glory, much more will what remains be in glory.”

But the last verse, with which this discourse of the Prophet concludes: “And in this place,” he says, “I will give peace, says the Lord of hosts.” What does “in this place” mean, unless he is pointing, as it were with his finger, to something earthly? For what can be contained in a place, except a body? It is not absurd, then, for us to understand it of the final resurrection of the body, with which the most perfect blessedness is completed, when the flesh no longer lusts against the spirit, nor the spirit against the flesh. “For this corruptible body will put on incorruption, and this mortal body will put on immortality.” There will be no other law in the members fighting against the law of the mind, because “in this place I will give peace, says the Lord of hosts.”

For who is so deaf against the divine voices as not to know what the prophets say about despising earthly gold and silver? For they bring forward, in order to deceive people, what the Apostle says, “For the root of all evils is avarice; some who pursued it have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many sorrows,” as though you could easily find any book of the old Scriptures in which avarice is not blamed and condemned with the execration it deserves. But since the question now concerns gold and silver, why do they not hear the prophet saying, “But their silver and their gold will not be able to deliver them on the day of the Lord’s wrath”? If anyone who thirsts hears this alone and pours it into the marrow of his soul, will he not withdraw himself wholly from the allurements of false happiness and call himself into God’s embrace, having put off the old man so as to clothe himself with immortality? But why should we treat this question any longer? I believe it is clear to your Charity that the sect of the Manichees deals with the unskilled not by truth but by fraud: they prefer the new Scriptures to the old, not by comparing the whole with the whole, but by excerpting sentences which they try to show are opposed to one another, so as to deceive the unskilled. But there is no Epistle of the Apostle, nor even any book of the Gospel, in the New Testament itself, with which this could not be done, so that by certain sentences one and the same book would seem to contradict itself, unless its whole context were handled with the most careful attention by the reader.

May he who has aroused your Charity’s expectation fulfil it. For although we presume that what is to be said to you is not ours but God’s, still with much more reason do we say what the Apostle humbly says: “We have this treasure in earthen vessels, so that the excellence of the power may be of God and not from us.” We do not doubt, then, that you remember our promise. We made the promise in him through whom we now pay it. For when we promised, we were asking it of him; and when we pay, we receive it from him. Your Charity remembers that on the morning of the Lord’s Nativity we put off the question that we had proposed to resolve, because many were with us celebrating the solemnity due to that day, even those to whom the word of God is usually burdensome. But now I think that no one has come together here except those who want to hear. So we are not speaking to deaf hearts or to bored minds. And this expectation of yours is a prayer for me. Something more has been added: the day of the games has winnowed many away from here. For their salvation, as anxious as we are, so anxious we urge you, brothers, to be; and pray to God with earnest minds for those who are not yet intent on the spectacles of truth but are given over to the spectacles of the flesh. For I know, I know for certain, that there are now among your number those who today have despised those shows; they are breaking with what they were used to. For people change, both for the better and for the worse. By daily experiences of this kind we are now glad, now sad: glad over those who are corrected, sad over those who are corrupted. That is why the Lord did not say that he who has begun will be saved, but, “He who perseveres to the end,” he says, “he will be saved.”

What more wonderful could the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who is also son of man (for he deigned to be this too), grant us, what more magnificent, than to gather into his fold not only the spectators of frivolous games but even some of those who are usually watched there? For he hunted for salvation not only the lovers of the beast-fighters but even the beast-fighters themselves; because he too was made a spectacle. Hear how. He said it himself; before he was watched he foretold it, and in prophetic speech announced what was to come as if it had already happened, saying in the psalm: “They dug my hands and my feet; they numbered all my bones.” See how he was made a spectacle, so that his bones were numbered. And he speaks of the spectacle itself more plainly: “But they themselves considered and gazed upon me.” He was watched to be mocked; he was watched by those who, far from favoring him in that spectacle, raged at him: just as he first caused his martyrs to be watched, as the Apostle says, “We have been made a spectacle to the world, to angels and to men.” But two kinds of people watch such spectacles: one kind is carnal, the other spiritual. The carnal watch, thinking those martyrs wretched who were thrown to the beasts, who were beheaded, who were burned in the fire, and they detest and shudder at them. But others watch as the holy angels also watch, not attending to the mangling of the bodies but marvelling at the soundness of the faith. A soul kept whole while the body is torn apart offers a great spectacle to the eyes of the heart. When these things are read in church, you gladly watch them with the eyes of the heart. For if you watched nothing, you would hear nothing. You see, then, that today you have not despised spectacles but chosen them. So may God be with you, and grant that you may describe your spectacles sweetly to your friends whom you are grieved to have seen running to the amphitheatre today and refusing to come to the church; so that those things may begin to grow cheap for them too, by loving which they themselves have grown cheap; and so that they may love God with you, of whom no lover can be ashamed, because he loves one who cannot be conquered. Let them love Christ with you, who, by the very fact that he seemed conquered, conquered the whole world. For he has conquered the whole world, as we see, brothers: he has subjected all powers, he has subjugated kings, not with proud soldiery but with a mocked cross; not raging with the sword but hanging on the wood; suffering in the body, acting in the spirit. His body was raised on the cross; he subjected minds to the cross. Indeed, what gem in a diadem is more precious than the cross of Christ on the foreheads of rulers? In loving him you are never ashamed. For how many come back from the amphitheatre defeated, because those for whom they rave have been defeated? They would be still more defeated if their favorites won. For they would be made subject to empty joy, subject to the exultation of perverse desire; they are defeated by the very fact that they run there. How many, brothers, do you think hesitated today whether to come here or go there? And those who, in that very hesitation, considered Christ and ran to the church, conquered not just any man but the devil himself, the worst hunter of the whole world. But those who in that hesitation chose rather to run to the amphitheatre were surely defeated by him whom the others defeated. And they conquered in him who said, “Take heart, for I have conquered the world.” For the Commander allowed himself to be tempted for this very purpose, to teach his soldier how to fight.

To do this, then, our Lord Jesus Christ became son of man, certainly by being born of a woman. But if he had not been born of the Virgin Mary, what would have been lacking? Someone says: “He willed to be man; he could have been man and yet not been born of a woman; for the first man, whom he made, he did not make from a woman.” See what is answered to this. You say, why did he choose a woman to be born from? You are answered: why, rather, should he have avoided a woman to be born from? Suppose I cannot show why he chose to be born of a woman: you show what he ought to have avoided in a woman. But it has already been said at some time that, if he had avoided a woman’s womb, he would surely have seemed to signify that he could be defiled by her. But the more incapable of defilement he was by his own substance, the less he needed to fear a womb of flesh, as if he could be stained by it; rather, by being born of a woman he was to show us something of a great mystery. For truly, brothers, we too admit that, if the Lord had willed to become man without being born of a woman, it would certainly have been easy for his Majesty. For as he could be born of a woman without a man, so he could have been born without a woman. But he showed us this: that human creatures of neither sex should despair of themselves. For the human race is of males and of females. If, then, being a man, as he had to be, he had not been born of a woman, women would despair of themselves, mindful of their first sin, because the first man was deceived through a woman; and they would think they had no hope at all in Christ. So he came as a man, choosing the male sex, and, born of a woman, he consoled the female sex, as if addressing them and saying: “So that you may know that God’s creature is not evil, but that perverse pleasure perverts it: in the beginning, when I made man, I made them male and female. I do not condemn the creature that I made. See, I am born a man; see, I am born of a woman. So I do not condemn the creature that I made, but the sins, which I did not make.” Let each sex see its own honor, and let each confess its own iniquity, and let each hope for salvation. Poison was offered to man through a woman to deceive him; let salvation be offered to man through a woman to restore him. Let the woman make up for the sin of the man deceived through her by giving birth to Christ. Hence, too, it was women who first announced to the apostles that God had risen. In paradise a woman announced death to her husband; in the Church women announced salvation to men. The apostles were to announce the resurrection of Christ to the nations; women announced it to the apostles. Let no one, then, slander Christ for being born of a woman: the Liberator could not be stained by that sex, and the Creator was to honor it.

“But,” they say, “how are we to believe that Christ was born of a woman?” I would answer: from the Gospel, which has been preached and is being preached to the whole world. But the blind try to thrust a question upon a matter already believed through all the earth; they want to blind others, and they do not see what is to be seen while they try to tear up what is to be believed. For they answer and say: “Do not press us with the authority of the whole world; let us examine the Scripture itself. Do not play to the crowd: a deceived multitude supports you.” First I answer here: a deceived multitude supports me? This multitude was once a small number. From what did this multitude grow, which was foretold so long ago in these very increases? For it has not been seen to grow without having first been foreseen. I should not even say it was a small number: there was one man, Abraham. Consider, brothers: there was one man, Abraham, in the whole world at that time, in the whole earth, among all men, among all nations; and to that man it was said, “In your seed all nations will be blessed.” What one man believed in his solitude has been displayed to many in the multitude of his seed. Then it was not seen, and it was believed; now it is seen, and it is attacked; and what was then said to one man and believed by one man is now assailed by a few, when it is displayed in many. He who made his disciples fishers of men enclosed every kind of authority within his nets. If a multitude is to be believed, what is more numerous than the Church spread through the whole world? If the rich are to be believed, let them consider how many rich it has caught; if the poor, let them consider the thousands of poor; if nobles, almost the whole nobility is now inside; if kings, let them see them all subject to Christ; if the more eloquent, the more learned, the wiser, let them look at how many orators, how many experts, how many philosophers of this world have been netted by those fishermen, so as to be drawn up from the deep to salvation. Let them think of him who, coming down to heal by the example of his humility the great evil of the human soul, that is, pride, “chose the weak things of the world to confound the strong; and chose the foolish things of this world to confound the wise”, not those who were wise, but those who seemed to be, “and chose the ignoble things of this world, and the things that are not, to bring to nothing the things that are.”

“Say what you like,” they say, “we have caught you out at the place where you read that Christ was born: the Gospels disagree with each other, and two things that disagree cannot both be true. For when I have shown the disagreement,” he says, “I am right to reject the faith; or else you who accept the faith, show the agreement.” What disagreement, I ask, will you demonstrate? “An open one,” he says, “which no one can deny.” You hear this without anxiety, because you are believers. Pay attention, dearly beloved, and see how wholesomely the Apostle warns us, saying: “As, then, you have received Christ Jesus our Lord, walk in him, rooted and built up in him, and confirmed in the faith.” For in that simple and certain faith we ought to remain firmly in him, so that he himself may open to the faithful what is hidden in him; because, as the same apostle says, “In him are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” He has not hidden them in order to refuse them, but in order to arouse desire by hiding them. This is the usefulness of what is secret. Honor him in what you do not yet understand; and honor him the more, the more veils you see. For the more honored a person is, the more veils hang in his house. The veils give honor to what is secret; but for those who honor it, the veils are lifted. Those who mock the veils are driven away even from coming near the veils. So, because we pass over to Christ, the veil is taken away.