Sermons to the People 51.6–51.22

Some people bring forward their slanders and say: “Matthew is certainly an evangelist?” We answer, yes, with reverent mouth and devoted heart, doubting nothing whatever; we answer plainly, Matthew is an evangelist. “Do you believe him?” they say. Who would not answer, “I believe”? How that rang out in your reverent murmur! So, brothers, if you believe without anxiety, there is nothing for you to blush at. I speak to you as one who was once deceived, when as a youth I first wanted to bring to the divine Scriptures the sharpness of debate rather than the reverence of seeking. I myself, by my perverse ways, was shutting the door of my Lord against myself: when I ought to have knocked so that it would be opened, I was pushing so that it would be shut. For in my pride I dared to seek what only the humble can find. How much more blessed you are now! How securely you learn, how safely, all of you who are still little ones in the nest of faith and receive spiritual food! But I, wretched as I was, thinking myself fit to fly, left the nest; and I fell before I could fly. But the merciful Lord lifted me up, so that I would not be trampled to death by passers-by, and put me back in the nest. For the very things that troubled me then are the ones that I now, securely, in the name of the Lord, both put forward and explain to you.

As I had begun to say, then, this is how they slander: “Matthew,” they say, “is an evangelist, and you believe him?” Of course, since we confess him to be an evangelist, we necessarily believe him. Look at the generations of Christ that Matthew set down: “The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.” How the son of David, how the son of Abraham? It cannot be shown except through the succession of the line. For it is certain that when the Lord was born of the Virgin Mary, neither Abraham nor David was among the living. And you call the same person son of David and son of Abraham? It is as if we said to Matthew: prove, then, what you say. For I am waiting for the succession of Christ’s line. “Abraham,” he says, “begot Isaac, and Isaac begot Jacob, and Jacob begot Judah and his brothers. And Judah begot Perez and Zerah by Tamar. And Perez begot Hezron, and Hezron begot Ram, and Ram begot Amminadab, and Amminadab begot Nahshon, and Nahshon begot Salmon, and Salmon begot Boaz by Rahab, and Boaz begot Obed by Ruth, and Obed begot Jesse, and Jesse begot David the king.” Now from here notice how the line comes from David to Christ, who has been called son of Abraham and son of David. “And David,” he says, “begot Solomon by her who had been the wife of Uriah. And Solomon begot Rehoboam, and Rehoboam begot Abijah, and Abijah begot Asa, and Asa begot Jehoshaphat, and Jehoshaphat begot Joram, and Joram begot Uzziah, and Uzziah begot Jotham, and Jotham begot Ahaz, and Ahaz begot Hezekiah, and Hezekiah begot Manasseh, and Manasseh begot Amon, and Amon begot Josiah, and Josiah begot Jechoniah and his brothers, at the time of the deportation to Babylon. And after the deportation to Babylon, Jechoniah begot Shealtiel, and Shealtiel begot Zerubbabel, and Zerubbabel begot Abiud, and Abiud begot Eliakim, and Eliakim begot Azor, and Azor begot Zadok, and Zadok begot Achim, and Achim begot Eliud, and Eliud begot Eleazar, and Eleazar begot Matthan, and Matthan begot Jacob, and Jacob begot Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ.” So, through the order and succession of parents and forebears, Christ is found to be the son of David, the son of Abraham.

To this matter, faithfully narrated, they raise their first slander, because the same Matthew goes on to say: “So all the generations from Abraham to David are fourteen generations; and from David to the deportation to Babylon, fourteen generations; and from the deportation to Babylon to Christ, fourteen generations.” Then, to tell how Christ was born of the Virgin Mary, he added: “Now the birth of Christ took place in this way.” For through the order of his ancestors he had set out why Christ is called son of David and son of Abraham. How he was born and appeared among men must now be told; and there follows the narrative itself, by which we believe that our Lord Jesus Christ was not only born of the eternal God, coeternal with him who begot him before all times, before every creature, he through whom all things were made, but also born at a point in time of the Holy Spirit from the Virgin Mary; and this we confess equally. For you remember and know (for I am speaking to my Catholic brothers) that this is our faith, this we profess and confess. For this faith thousands of martyrs have been killed throughout the whole world.

For this is what follows, and those who want to discredit the Gospel books want to laugh at it, so as to show that we have, as it were, rashly believed what is said: “When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together, she was found to be with child of the Holy Spirit. But Joseph her husband, being a just man and unwilling to expose her, wanted to put her away secretly.” For since he knew that she was not pregnant by him, he consequently thought her an adulteress. “Being a just man,” as Scripture says, “and unwilling to expose her” (that is, to make it public; for many manuscripts have this reading too), “he wanted to put her away secretly.” The husband is troubled, but the just man does not act harshly. For such great justice is attributed to this man that he neither wanted to keep an adulteress nor dared to punish her by making it public. “He wanted,” it says, “to put her away secretly,” because he was unwilling not only to punish her but even to betray her. Note his sincere justice. For he did not want to spare her because he wished to keep her. For many spare adulterous wives out of carnal love, wanting to keep them even as adulteresses so as to enjoy them through carnal desire. But this just man does not want to keep her: so he does not love carnally. And yet he does not want to punish her: so he spares her out of mercy. What a just man this is! He does not keep the adulteress, so that he may not seem to spare her because he loved her lustfully; and yet he neither punishes her nor betrays her. Rightly indeed was he chosen as the witness of his wife’s virginity. So he who was troubled by human weakness was made firm by divine authority.

For the Evangelist goes on to say: “While he was thinking about these things, see, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying: Joseph, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife. For what is born in her is of the Holy Spirit. And she will bear a son, and you will call his name Jesus.” Why Jesus? “For he,” it says, “will save his people from their sins.” So it is understood that “Jesus” in the Hebrew language means “Savior” in Latin, as we gather from the explanation of the name itself. For as if someone asked, “Why Jesus?”, he immediately added, disclosing the reason for the word, “For he will save his people from their sins.” This we devoutly believe, this we hold most firmly: that Christ was born of the Holy Spirit from the Virgin Mary.

What, then, do they say? “If I find a lie,” he says, “surely you will not believe the whole. I have found one.” Let us see. I will count the generations. For by their slanders they invite us and lead us to this. If we live devoutly, if we believe in Christ, if we do not want to fly from the nest before the time, they lead us to this: to come to know mysteries. So let your Holiness consider the usefulness of heretics: their usefulness, that is, according to God, who makes good use even of the wicked. But to them is rendered what they themselves intended, not the good that God makes of them. Just as with Judas: how much good he did! By the Lord’s passion the nations were saved. But for the Lord to suffer, Judas handed him over. So God both sets the nations free by the passion of his Son and punishes Judas for his crime. For no one, content with a simpler faith, would examine the mysteries that lie hidden there; and so no one would find them, because no one would examine them, unless slanderers came knocking. For when heretics slander, the little ones are disturbed; when they are disturbed, they inquire; and their inquiry is like a butting of the head against their mother’s breasts, so that they may flow with as much as is enough for the little ones. They inquire because they are troubled; and those who know and have learned, because they searched and God opened to them when they knocked, open in their turn to the troubled. And so it happens that the heretics are useful for finding the truth, while they slander in order to lead people into error. For the truth would be sought more carelessly if it did not have lying adversaries. “For there must also be heresies,” he says; and as if we asked the reason, he immediately added, “so that those who are approved may be made manifest among you.”

What, then, do they say? “See, Matthew counts the generations, and says that from Abraham to David there are fourteen, and from David to the deportation to Babylon fourteen, and from the deportation to Babylon to Christ fourteen. Multiply fourteen by three: it makes forty-two.” But they count them and find forty-one generations, and they raise a slander, and mock and insult us. What, then, does it mean that, although the Gospel says there are three times fourteen, yet when they are all counted they are found to be not forty-two but forty-one? Without doubt it is a great mystery. And we rejoice and give thanks to the Lord that, even on the occasion given by slanderers, we have found something which delights us the more when found, the more it was hidden when it was being sought. For, as we said at the beginning, we are putting on a spectacle for minds. From Abraham, then, to David there are fourteen. Then the count begins with Solomon, for David begot Solomon. The count begins with Solomon and reaches Jechoniah, during whose lifetime the deportation to Babylon took place; and there are another fourteen generations, counting Solomon at the head of the second interval and counting Jechoniah too, with whom that number closes, so that fourteen are completed. But the third interval begins with Jechoniah himself.

Let your Holiness give attention to something both mysterious and sweet: I confess to you how it tasted to my heart; and so I believe that when I have brought it out and you have tasted it, you will say the same. Attend, then. Beginning the count of the third interval from Jechoniah himself, there are fourteen down to the Lord Jesus Christ; because that Jechoniah is counted twice, as the last of the preceding interval and the first of the following one. But someone may say: why is Jechoniah counted twice? Nothing happened in former times among the people of Israel that was not a mystery of things to come. Jechoniah is indeed not counted twice without reason. For if there is a boundary between two fields, a stone or some dividing wall, the man on this side measures up to that wall, and the man on the other side begins his measuring again from it. But why was this not done at the first junction of intervals, where we count fourteen generations from Abraham to David, and begin to count the other fourteen not by repeating David but from Solomon? A reason must be given, and it contains a great mystery. Let your Holiness attend. The deportation to Babylon took place when Jechoniah had been made king in place of his dead father. The kingdom was taken from him, and another was made king in his place. Yet the deportation to the Gentiles took place while Jechoniah was alive. For no fault of Jechoniah is mentioned for which he was deprived of the kingdom; rather the sins of those who succeeded him are brought forward. Captivity follows, then; they go to Babylon. Not only the wicked go; the saints go with them too. In that captivity was the prophet Ezekiel; in it was Daniel; there were the three young men, made famous among the flames. And they went according to the prophecy of the prophet Jeremiah.

Remember that Jechoniah, rejected without any fault, ceased from then on to reign and made the passage to the Gentiles when the deportation to Babylon took place; and notice the image, shown beforehand, of things to come in the Lord Jesus Christ. For the Jews did not want our Lord Jesus Christ, in whom they found no fault, to reign over them. He was rejected in himself, rejected also in his servants; and the passage was made to the Gentiles, as into Babylon. For Jeremiah too prophesied this, that the Lord commanded them to go into Babylon. And whatever other prophets told the people not to go into Babylon, Jeremiah rebuked as false prophets. Let those who read the Scriptures remember this with us; let those who do not read them believe us. Jeremiah, then, in the person of the Lord, threatened those who refused to go into Babylon; but to those who went he promised rest there, and a kind of happiness in renewing vineyards and planting gardens and in abundance of fruits. How, then, does the people of Israel, now not in figure but in truth, pass into Babylon? Where did the apostles come from? Were they not of the nation of the Jews? Where did Paul himself come from? “For I too,” he says, “am an Israelite, of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin.” So many of the Jews believed in the Lord. From them the apostles were chosen; from them were the more than five hundred brothers who were found worthy to see the Lord after the resurrection; from them were the hundred and twenty in the house when the Holy Spirit came. But what does the Apostle say in the Acts of the Apostles, when the Jews rejected the word of truth? “We were sent to you,” he says, “but since you have rejected the word of God, see, we turn to the Gentiles.” So the deportation into Babylon took place according to the spiritual dispensation of the time of the Lord’s incarnation, which was foreshadowed then in the time of Jeremiah. But what does Jeremiah say to those who were being deported, about these Babylonians? “For in their peace,” he says, “will be your peace.” So when Israel too passed into Babylon through Christ and the apostles, that is, when the Gospel came to the Gentiles, what does the Apostle say, as if with the voice of Jeremiah of old? “I urge, then, first of all, that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all men, for kings and for those who are set in high positions, that we may lead a quiet and tranquil life in all godliness and chastity.” There were not yet Christian kings, and he prayed for them. So Israel, praying in Babylon, was heard. The voices of the Church were heard; the kings became Christians; and you see fulfilled what was said in figure, “In their peace will be your peace.” For they received the peace of Christ and ceased to persecute Christians, so that now, in the security of peace, churches might be built, and peoples planted in God’s husbandry, and all nations bear fruit in faith, hope, and love, which is in Christ.

The deportation to Babylon took place, then, through Jechoniah, who was not permitted to reign among the Jewish nation, as a type of Christ, whom the Jews did not want to reign over them. Israel made the passage to the Gentiles, that is, the preachers of the Gospel passed over to the peoples of the Gentiles. Why, then, are you surprised that Jechoniah is counted twice? For if he bore the figure of Christ passing over from the Jews to the Gentiles, consider what Christ is between Jews and Gentiles. Is he not that cornerstone? Look at the corner: the end of one wall and the beginning of another. You measure one wall up to that stone, and the other from it. So the cornerstone that joins both walls is counted twice. Jechoniah, then, bearing the figure of the Lord, displayed the type of a cornerstone. And as Jechoniah was not permitted to reign over the Jews, but they went into Babylon, so Christ, “the stone that the builders rejected, has become the head of the corner,” so that the Gospel might reach the Gentiles. So do not hesitate to count the head of the corner twice, and you arrive at the number that is written: so there are fourteen, and fourteen, and fourteen; and yet there are not forty-two generations but forty-one. For as with a row of stones: when it runs in a straight line, the stones are all counted one by one; but when the row is turned to make a corner, the stone at which it turns must be counted twice, because it belongs both to the row that ends at it and to the row that begins from it; so the line of generations, as long as it remained within that people, made no corner in its twice seven, that is, its interval of fourteen; but when the line was turned so that the people were deported to Babylon, a kind of corner was made at Jechoniah, so that he had to be counted twice, as a type of that venerable cornerstone.

They have another slander. “Christ’s generations,” they say, “are counted through Joseph and not through Mary.” Let your Holiness attend for a little while. “It ought not,” they say, “to be through Joseph.” Why ought it not to be through Joseph? Was not Joseph Mary’s husband? “No,” they say. Who says this? For Scripture says, on the authority of an angel, that he was her husband: “Do not be afraid,” it says, “to take Mary as your wife. For what is born in her is of the Holy Spirit.” He is also commanded to give the child a name, although the child was not born of his seed: “She will bear a son,” it says, “and you will call his name Jesus.” Scripture is intent on making clear that he was not born of Joseph’s seed, when it is said to Joseph, anxious about how she came to be with child, “It is of the Holy Spirit.” And yet paternal authority is not taken from him, since he is commanded to give the child a name. Finally, the Virgin Mary herself, though well aware that she had not conceived Christ from his embrace and intercourse, still calls him Christ’s father.

Notice how. When the Lord Jesus Christ was twelve years old according to his humanity (he who according to his divinity is before all times and without time), he stayed behind them in the temple and disputed with the elders, and they were amazed at his teaching. But they, on their way back from Jerusalem, looked for him in their company, that is, among those who were travelling with them; and not finding him, they went back to Jerusalem troubled, and found him disputing in the temple with the elders, when he was, as I said, twelve years old. But what wonder? The Word of God is never silent, but he is not always heard. He is found, then, in the temple, and his mother says to him: “Why have you done this to us? Your father and I have been looking for you in sorrow.” And he said: “Did you not know that I must be in the things that are my Father’s?” He said this because the Son of God was in the temple of God. For that temple was not Joseph’s but God’s. “See,” someone says, “he did not admit that he was Joseph’s son.” Attend a little more patiently, brothers, because of the shortness of the time, so that it may suffice for the sermon. When Mary had said, “Your father and I have been looking for you in sorrow,” he answered, “Did you not know that I must be in the things that are my Father’s?” For he did not want to be their son in such a way that he would not be understood to be the Son of God. For as Son of God he is always the Son of God, the Creator of those very parents. But as Son of Man, from a point in time, born of a virgin without a husband’s seed, he still had both as his parents. How do we prove this? Mary has already said, “Your father and I have been looking for you in sorrow.”

First, brothers, especially for the instruction of the women, our sisters, the holy modesty of the Virgin Mary must not be passed over. She had given birth to Christ; the angel had come to her and said to her, “See, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will call his name Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High.” She had been found worthy to bear the Son of the Most High, and she was most humble: she did not put herself before her husband, not even in the order of naming, so as to say, “I and your father”; but “Your father,” she says, “and I.” She did not consider the dignity of her womb; she considered the order of marriage. For the humble Christ would not have taught his mother to be proud. “Your father and I have been looking for you in sorrow.” “Your father,” she says, “and I”; because “the man is the head of the woman.” How much less ought other women to be proud! For Mary herself too was called a woman, not because her virginity was lost, but by an expression proper to her nation. For the Apostle too said of the Lord Jesus Christ, “made of a woman”; and yet he did not break the order and wording of our faith, in which we confess that he was born of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary. For she conceived as a virgin, gave birth as a virgin, and remained a virgin. But they called all females “women,” by a property of the Hebrew language. Hear a very clear example. The first female, whom God made, taken from the man’s side, before she lay with the man (which is written to have happened after they went out of paradise), was nevertheless already called a woman, as Scripture says: “He formed her into a woman.”

So when the Lord Jesus Christ answers, “I must be in the things that are my Father’s,” he does not point to God as Father in such a way as to deny that Joseph is his father. How do we prove this? From the Scripture, which says: “And he said to them: Did you not know that I must be in the things that are my Father’s? But they did not understand what he said to them. And when he had gone down with them, he came to Nazareth, and was subject to them.” It did not say, “He was subject to his mother,” or, “He was subject to her,” but, “He was subject,” it says, “to them.” To whom was he subject? Was it not to his parents? Both were his parents, and he was subject to both, by that condescension by which he was the son of man. A little earlier the women were receiving instruction; now let the children receive it, to obey their parents and be subject to them. The world is subject to Christ, and Christ was subject to his parents.

You see, then, brothers, that he did not say, “I must be in the things that are my Father’s,” in such a way that we should understand him to have said, “You are not my parents.” They were his parents in time; he is his Father eternally. They were the parents of the son of man; he is the Father of his Word and Wisdom, the Father of his Power, through which he formed all things. If all things are formed through that Wisdom which “reaches mightily from end to end and orders all things sweetly,” then those also to whom that same one was afterwards, as son of man, to be subject were formed through the Son of God. And the Apostle calls him the son of David: “who was made,” he says, “of the seed of David according to the flesh.” But the Lord himself puts a question to the Jews which the Apostle resolves in these very words. For when he said, “who was made of the seed of David,” he added “according to the flesh,” so that it might be understood that according to his divinity he is not the son of David but the Son of God, the Lord of David. For in another place too the Apostle speaks thus, when he was setting forth the privileges of the Jewish stock: “Whose are the fathers,” he says, “from whom is Christ according to the flesh, who is above all, God blessed for ever.” According to the flesh, therefore, he is the son of David; but as God above all, blessed for ever, he is the Lord of David. The Lord, then, says this to the Jews: “Whose son do you say the Christ is?” They answered: “David’s.” For they knew this, as they easily gathered it from the preaching of the prophets. And truly he was of the seed of David, but according to the flesh, through the Virgin Mary, betrothed to Joseph. So when they answered that the Christ is the son of David, Jesus said to them: “How, then, does David in the Spirit call him Lord, saying, The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand, until I put your enemies under your feet? If, then, David in the Spirit calls him Lord, how is he his son?” And the Jews could not answer. So we have it in the Gospel. He did not deny that he was the son of David, though they did not know that he was the Lord of David. For in the Christ they held to what he was made in time; they did not understand in him what he is in eternity. Therefore, wanting to teach them his divinity, he raised a question about his humanity, as if to say: “You know that the Christ is the son of David; answer me how he is also the Lord of David.” And so that they would not say, “He is not the Lord of David,” he brought in David himself as witness. And what does he say? He certainly speaks the truth. For you also have it in the Psalms, said to David: “Of the fruit of your body I will set upon your throne.” See, the son of David. How is he who is David’s son also David’s Lord? “The Lord said,” it says, “to my Lord, Sit at my right hand.” Do you wonder that David has his son as his Lord, when you see that Mary gave birth to her Lord? He is David’s Lord, because he is God; David’s Lord, because he is Lord of all; but he is David’s son, because he is the son of man. The same is Lord, the same is son: David’s Lord, who “though he was in the form of God, did not think it robbery to be equal with God”; but David’s son, because “he emptied himself, taking the form of a servant.”

So Joseph was not therefore not a father because he did not lie with the mother of the Lord; as if it were lust that makes a wife, and not married love. Let your Holiness attend. Some time later the Apostle of Christ was to say in the Church, “It remains that those who have wives be as though they had none.” And we know many of our brothers, bearing fruit in grace, who in the name of Christ, by mutual consent, restrain from each other the desire of the flesh, but do not restrain from each other married love. The more the former is held in check, the more strongly the latter is confirmed. Are those not spouses who live in this way, not seeking from each other the fruit of the flesh, not demanding from each other the debt of bodily desire? And yet she is subject to her husband, because this is fitting; and the more chaste she is, the more subject she is. And he truly loves his wife, as it is written, “in honor and sanctification,” as a co-heir of grace, “as Christ,” it says, “loved the Church.” So if it is a union, if it is a marriage, if it is not therefore not a marriage because that does not take place which can take place even with one who is not a spouse, though unlawfully (would that all could do this; but many cannot), let them not, then, separate those who can, and deny that he is a husband or she a wife because they are not joined in the flesh but are bound together in heart.

From this understand, my brothers, what Scripture meant about those fathers of ours who were so married that they sought only offspring from their wives. For those who, according to the times and the custom of their nation, even had several wives, held them so chastely that they did not come to carnal union except for the sake of procreation, truly holding them in honor. But whoever desires his wife’s flesh beyond what that limit prescribes, namely, for the procreation of children, acts against the very marriage contract by which he took her as his wife. The contract is read, and read in the sight of all the witnesses, and it is read out: “for the procreation of children”; and it is called the marriage contract. Unless wives were given and received for this, who with an unashamed face would give his daughter to another’s lust? But so that the parents may not blush when they give her, the contract is read out, so that they may be fathers-in-law, not procurers. What, then, is read out from the contract? “For the procreation of children.” The father’s brow is wiped and clears when he hears the words of the contract. Let us look at the brow of the husband who takes a wife. Let the husband too blush to receive her otherwise, if the father blushes to give her otherwise. But if they cannot (we have said this before at times), let them demand what is due; let them not go beyond those who owe it to them. Let both the woman and the man console their weakness within themselves. Let him not go to another woman, nor her to another man: that is where the name “adultery” comes from, as if “to another.” And if they go beyond the bounds of the marriage contract, let them not go beyond the bounds of the marriage bed. Is it not a sin to demand the debt from one’s spouse more than the need of procreating children requires? It is indeed a sin, but a pardonable one. The Apostle says, “But this I say by way of concession,” when he had been speaking of this: “Do not defraud one another,” he says, “except by consent for a time, so that you may be free for prayer; and come together again, so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.” What does this mean? Do not lay anything on yourselves beyond your strength, lest by abstaining from one another you fall into adulteries. “So that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.” And lest he should seem to command what he was permitting (for it is one thing to command virtue, another to make allowance for weakness), he immediately added, “But this I say by way of concession, not of command. For I would that all men were as I myself am.” As if he said: I do not command you to do it, but I pardon you if you do.