Sermons to the People 9.3–9.12

But who is this adversary? This adversary is not the devil: for Scripture would never urge you to come to agreement with the devil. So there is another adversary, whom a man makes his adversary for himself: for if the devil were the adversary, he would not be with you on the way. But this one is with you on the way, so as to come to agreement with you. For he knows that unless you come to agreement with him on the way, he will hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the officer, and the officer to prison. These words are from the Gospel; those who have read them, or who have heard them, recall them with us. So who is the adversary? The word of God. The word of God is your adversary. Why is it an adversary? Because it commands the opposite of what you do. It says to you, "Your God is one; worship one God." You, having abandoned the one God, as the soul's lawful husband, want to commit fornication with many demons; and what is worse, not as if openly deserting and repudiating him, as apostates do, but, as if remaining in your husband's house, you let in adulterers: that is, as a Christian you do not leave the Church, but you consult astrologers or soothsayers or augurs or sorcerers; as if not leaving her husband's house, the adulterous soul, remaining in his marriage, commits fornication. It is said to you, "Do not take the name of your God in vain." Do not think that Christ is a creature because he took up a creature for you: and you despise him who is equal to the Father, and one with the Father. It is said to you that you should keep the sabbath spiritually: not as the Jews keep the sabbath in carnal idleness; for they want to be free for their trifles and their excesses. For a Jew would do better to do something useful in his field than to be a rioter in the theatre; and their women would do better to make wool on the sabbath day than to dance shamelessly all day on their balconies. But it is said to you that you should keep the sabbath spiritually, in the hope of the future rest which the Lord promises you. For whoever does whatever he can for the sake of that future rest, however laborious what he does may seem, yet if he refers it to faith in the promised rest, does not yet have the sabbath in reality, but has it in hope. But you want to rest in order to labor, when you ought to labor in order to rest. It is said to you, "Honor your father and your mother." But you heap insults on your parents which you do not want to suffer from your children. It is said to you, "You shall not kill." But you want to kill your enemy; and perhaps you do not do it because you fear a human judge, not because you think of God. Do you not know that he is the witness of thoughts? While the man you want dead is alive, God holds you a murderer in your heart. It is said to you, "You shall not commit adultery": that is, you shall not go to any other woman besides your wife. But you demand this from your wife, and do not want to render it to your wife; and though you ought to go before your wife in virtue, since chastity is a virtue, you fall under one onset of lust, and you want your wife to be the victor while you lie conquered; and though you are your wife's head, she goes before you to God, she whose head you are. Do you want your house to hang head downward? For "the head of the woman is the man": but where the woman lives better than the man, the house hangs head downward. If the man is the head, the man ought to live better and go before his wife in all good deeds, so that she may imitate her husband and follow her head. As Christ is the head of the Church, and the Church is commanded to follow her head and walk in her head's footsteps, so every house has the husband as its head and the wife as its body, as it were. Where the head leads, the body ought to follow. Why, then, does the head want to go where it does not want the body to follow? Why does the husband want to go where he does not want his wife to follow? In commanding these things the word of God is an adversary. For people do not want to do what the word of God wants. And why do I say that the word of God is an adversary because it commands? I fear that I myself am an adversary to some, because I say these things. What is that to me? Let him who frightens me into speaking make me strong, so that I do not fear people's complaints. For those who will not keep chastity toward their wives (and there are plenty of them) do not want me to say these things. But whether they like it or not, I will say them. For if I do not urge you to come to agreement with the adversary, I shall remain in a lawsuit with him. He who commands you to act commands us to speak. If by not doing what he commands you to do you are his adversaries, by not saying what he commands us to say we shall remain his adversaries.

Did I dwell long on the other things I mentioned above? For we take this for granted of your Charity, that you worship one God. We take this for granted of the Catholic faith that is in you, that you believe the Son of God equal to the Father, and do not take the name of the Lord your God in vain by thinking that the Son of God is a creature; since "every creature has been subjected to vanity." But you believe him to be equal to the Father, God from God, the Word with God, the Word God, through whom all things were made, light from light, coeternal with him who begot him, one with him who begot him; and you believe that this Word took a creature, took mortality from the virgin Mary, and suffered for us: these things we read, and we believe them, so that we may be saved. Nor did I dwell on this, that whatever you do, you should do it for the hope to come. For I know that the minds of all Christians think about the world to come. For whoever does not think about the world to come, and is not a Christian in order to receive what God promises at the end, is not yet a Christian. Nor did I dwell on what the word of God says, "Honor your father and your mother." For many honor their parents, and we rarely find parents complaining of their children's wickedness; though such are not lacking: but as rarely as it happens, so briefly did I have to warn about it. Nor did I want to dwell on what was said, "You shall not kill": for I do not believe there is a crowd of murderers here. But that other evil, creeping widely, has taken hold more, and on it that adversary is more vehemently provoked, who cries out for this reason, that he may one day be a friend. The complaints are daily, although the women themselves no longer dare to complain about their husbands. Custom, invading everything, is so observed as law, that perhaps women too have now been persuaded that this is allowed to men and not allowed to women. For they are used to hearing that women have been brought into court who were perhaps found with slaves; they have never heard of a man being brought into court because he was found with his slave woman, though the sin is equal. In an equal sin it is not divine truth but human perversity that makes the man seem more innocent. And if perhaps today someone finds his wife sharper, and grumbling more freely, a man to whom it seemed that this was allowed to a man, and he has heard in church that it is not allowed to a man: if, then, he finds his wife, as I said, now grumbling more freely and saying to him, "What you are doing is not allowed; we heard it together; we are Christians; what you demand of me, give back to me: I owe you fidelity, you owe me fidelity, we both owe fidelity to Christ; and if you deceive me, you do not deceive him to whom we belong, you do not deceive him who bought us": hearing these and similar things, which he is not used to hearing, while he does not want to be made sound in himself, he becomes unsound against me; he is angry, he curses; perhaps he even says, "How did it happen that that man came here, or that my wife went to church on that very day?" And this, I believe, he says in his thoughts: for he does not dare to break out freely into speech, except perhaps before his wife alone. For perhaps if he did break out and say this, she could answer and say: "Why do you curse the man you were acclaiming a little while ago? We are certainly husband and wife: when you are at odds with your own tongue, how will you be able to live in harmony with me?" We, brothers, look at your dangers; we do not pay attention to your wishes: for a doctor too, if he paid attention to the sick man's wishes, would never cure him. What ought not to be done, let it not be done; what God forbids, let it not be done. Whoever believes God hears from him what we say. Certainly, for some who do not want to be corrected, it would have been better either that we did not come here, if we were going to say these things, or, since we have come, that we did not say them.

I remember that the day before yesterday I said to your Holiness that if we were lyre-players, or offering something of that kind publicly for the pursuits of your frivolity (which we now beg you to give up), you would have held us to give you a day, and each of you would contribute a fee to us according to his means. Why should we go about delighted by empty songs that profit nothing, sweet for a time, bitter afterwards? For human minds, enticed by such shameful songs, are made effeminate and fall away from virtue, flowing down into shamefulness; and because of those very shameful things they afterwards feel pain, and with great bitterness digest what they drank with temporal sweetness. Better, then, that we sing to you bitter things for a time, which afterwards grow sweet in you. Nor do we demand any fee, except that you do what we say: or rather, do not do it if it is only we who say it; but if he says it to all, he who fears no one, and through whom it comes about, in his name and in the glory of his mercy, that we too fear no one, let us all listen, let us all do it, let us all come to agreement with our adversary. Suppose me to be a lyre-player: what more can I sing to you? See, I bring a psaltery; it has ten strings: you sang this a little while ago, before I began to speak; you were my choir. Did you not sing a little while ago, "O God, I will sing a new song to you; on a psaltery of ten strings I will play to you"? I am now striking those very ten strings. Why is the voice of God's psaltery bitter? "I will play to you on a psaltery of ten strings." I am not singing to you something that you should not do. For the Decalogue of the Law has ten commandments; and these ten commandments have been so distributed that three belong to God and seven belong to human beings. Three belong to God, which I have already mentioned: our God is one, we ought to make no likeness of him, and not to commit fornication after other gods, departing from God, who is one: because God, and Christ the Son of God, is one with the Father. And so he ought not to be taken by us in vain, so that we think that he through whom all things were made was made, that is, is some creature: because the one God himself is Father and Son and Holy Spirit. In the Holy Spirit, that is, in the gift of God, everlasting rest is promised us. Of it we have now received a pledge. For so the Apostle says: "Who has given us the pledge of the Spirit." If we have received a pledge, so that we may begin to be at peace in the Lord our God, so that we may be gentle in our God, patient in our God, we shall also be at rest for ever in him from whom we have received the pledge; which will be the sabbath of sabbaths, on account of that rest which belongs to the gift of the Holy Spirit. So let us recognize spiritually the third commandment, about the sabbath, which we have mentioned, which the Jews celebrate carnally. For because he is called the Holy Spirit, therefore God sanctified the seventh day, when he had made all his works, as we read written in Genesis. You do not find sanctification named there except on that day where it is said, "God rested from his works." For God was not tired, that it should be said, "God rested from his works": but by that word he promised rest to you who labor; so that, because he made all things very good, and so it is said, "God rested," you may understand that you too will rest after good works, and rest without end. For all the earlier days that were spoken of have an evening: this seventh day has no evening, where God sanctified rest. It is said there, "There was morning," so that the day itself might begin. It was not said, "There was evening," so that the day might end; but it was said, "There was morning," so that there might be a day without end. So our rest begins as it were in the morning, but it does not end, because we shall live for ever. If whatever we do we do in this hope, we keep the sabbath. This is the third string of this decalogue, that is, of the ten-stringed psaltery: for in three strings the commandments belong to God.

If it were said to us, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind," and nothing were said about our neighbor, it would not be a ten-stringed but a three-stringed instrument. But because the Lord added, "And you shall love your neighbor as yourself," and joined it together, saying, "On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets": the whole Law is in two commandments, in the love of God and the love of neighbor; and so the Decalogue belongs to two commandments, that is, to the love of God and of neighbor. Three strings belong to the first commandment, because God is a Trinity. To the other commandment, that is, to the love of neighbor, belong seven strings: how one is to live among human beings. For the number seven itself, like seven strings, begins with honor of parents: "Honor your father and your mother." For it is to his parents that a man first opened his eyes, and this life takes its beginning from their friendship. And whoever does not pay honor to his parents, whom will he spare? "Honor your father and your mother." And the Apostle says: "Honor your father and your mother, which is the first commandment." How the first, when it is the fourth commandment, unless because it is the first in the number seven? In the love of neighbor it is the first, on the second table. For that is why two tables of the Law were given. For God gave his servant Moses on the mountain two tables, on which two stone tables were written the ten commandments of the Law (which is the psaltery of ten strings): three on one table belonging to God, seven on the other table to the neighbor. On the other table, then, the first is, "Honor your father and your mother." The second, "You shall not commit adultery." The third, "You shall not kill." The fourth, "You shall not steal." The fifth, "You shall not bear false witness." The sixth, "You shall not covet your neighbor's wife." The seventh, "You shall not covet your neighbor's goods." Let us join these to those three belonging to the love of God, if we want to sing a new song on the ten-stringed psaltery.

Let your Charity pay attention, so that I may say what the Lord suggests. The Jewish people received this Law in the Decalogue: they did not keep it. And whoever obeyed obeyed out of fear of punishment, not out of love of justice: they carried the psaltery; they did not sing. For to one who sings it is a pleasure; to one who fears it is a burden. So the old man either does not act, or acts out of fear; not out of love of holiness, not out of delight in chastity, temperance, love, but out of fear. For he is the old man; and the old man can sing an old song, not a new one. But to sing a new song, let him be a new man. And how he can be a new man, hear, not me, but the Apostle saying, "Put off the old man, and put on the new." And so that no one might think, when he said, "Put off the old man, and put on the new," that something had to be laid down and something taken up, since he was commanding a change in the man, he added and said, "Therefore, putting away falsehood, speak the truth." This is what he meant by "Put off the old man, and put on the new": he said this: Change your ways. You loved the world: love God. You loved the trifles of iniquity, temporal pleasures: love your neighbor. If you act out of love, you sing the new song; if you act out of fear, you still act; you carry the psaltery, but do not yet sing; but if you do not even do this, you throw the psaltery away. It is better at least to carry it than to throw it away: but again, it is better to sing with pleasure than to carry with a burden. And no one reaches the new song unless he is already singing with pleasure. For he who carries with fear is still in oldness. And pay attention, brothers, to what I mean. He who still acts out of fear has not come to agreement with his adversary: for he fears that God may come and condemn him. For chastity does not yet delight him, justice does not yet delight him; but dreading God's judgment, he holds back from deeds, without condemning the desire itself, which rages in him. What is good does not yet delight him; he does not yet have sweetness there, so as to sing a new song; but from his oldness he fears punishment: he has not yet come to agreement with the adversary.

For such people are often tripped up by a thought like this, saying to themselves: "If it could be, God would not threaten us, he would not say such things through his prophets to frighten people; but before he came he would give indulgence to all, forgive all, then come, and send no one into hell." Because he is unjust, he wants God unjust. God wants to make you like himself, and you try to make God like yourself. Let God please you, then, as he is, not as you want him to be. For you are perverse, and you want God to be such as you are, not such as he is. But if he pleases you as he is, you will be corrected, and you will direct your heart to that rule from which you are now estranged and twisted. Let God please you as he is; love him as he is: he does not love you as you are, but hates you as you are. That is why he has mercy on you, because he hates you as you are, so as to make you what you are not yet. To make you, I said, what you are not yet. For he does not promise you that he will make you what he is. For you will be what he is, but in a certain measure; that is, an imitator of God as an image, but not such an image as the Son is. For even among human beings images differ. A man's son has the image of his father, and is what his father is, because he is a human being as his father is. But your image in a mirror is not what you are. Your image is one way in your son, another way in a mirror: in your son your image is according to equality of substance; in a mirror it is far from the substance, and yet it is a kind of image of you, though not such as is in your son according to substance. So in a creature the image of God is not what it is in the Son, who is what the Father is, that is, the Word of God, through whom all things were made. Take back, then, the likeness of God, which you lost by evil deeds. For just as the emperor's image is one way on a coin and another way in his son (for an image is an image, but it is impressed one way on a coin, another way in a son, another way on a gold piece): so you too are God's coin, better in this, that you are God's coin with understanding and with a kind of life, so that you may know whose image you bear and in whose image you were made: for a coin does not know that it has the emperor's image. So, as I had begun to say, God hates you as you are, but loves you as he wants you to be: and that is why he urges you to change. Come to agreement with him, and begin first to will well, and to hate yourself as you are: let this be the beginning of your agreement with the word of God, that you first begin to hate yourself as you are. When you too have begun to hate yourself as you are, as God hates you as you are, you are already beginning to love God himself as he is.

Consider the sick man. A sick man, being ill, hates himself as he is: from there he begins to agree with the doctor. For the doctor too hates him as he is: for he wants him well precisely because he hates him feverish; and the doctor is the persecutor of the fever so as to be the liberator of the man. So avarice, so lust, so hatred, desire, luxury, so the frivolity of the shows are the fevers of your soul; you ought to hate them with the doctor: so you agree with the doctor, you strive with the doctor, and you gladly hear what the doctor orders, gladly do what the doctor orders, and as health advances, the prescriptions even begin to delight. How burdensome food is to the sick when they are being restored! The sick reckon the hour of their meal worse than the hour of their fever fit; and yet, agreeing with the doctor, they force themselves, and though unwilling and struggling, they overcome themselves so as to take something. With what eagerness will the healthy take larger portions of what the sick barely take in small amounts? But how did this come about? Because they hated their fever and agreed with the doctor, and doctor and patient pursued the fever together. So when we too say such things, we hate nothing but your fevers: or rather, in us the word of God itself, with which you ought to agree, hates your fevers. For what are we but people to be set free with you, to be healed with you?

Now do not look at me, but at the word of God. Do not be angry with your medicine; for I found no other way to pass by. I, a man who plays the ten-stringed psaltery, have come to the fifth string; was I going to pass over the fifth? No, I am going to strike it again and again. For on it I see almost the whole human race lying, on it I see more of them struggling. In striking it, what do I say? Do not commit adultery against your wives, since you do not want your wives to commit adultery against you. Do not yourselves go where you do not want them to follow. It is pointless to try to excuse yourselves when you say, "Am I going to someone else's wife? I am going to my own slave woman." Do you want your wife to say to you, "Am I going to someone else's husband? I am going to my own slave"? You say, "It is not someone else's wife I go to." Do you want it said to you, "It is not someone else's husband I go to"? Far be it from her to say this. For it is better that she grieves over you than that she imitates you. For she is a chaste and holy woman and truly Christian who grieves over a husband committing fornication, and grieves not on account of the flesh but on account of love; she does not want you to do it, not because she herself does not do it, but because it is not good for you. For if she does not do it so that you will not do it, if you do it, she will do it. But if she owes it to God, if she owes to Christ what you demand, and renders it because he commands it, then even if her husband commits fornication, that woman offers chastity to God. For Christ speaks in the hearts of good women; he speaks within, where the husband does not hear, for he is not worthy, if he is such a man: so he speaks within, and says, and consoles his daughter with words like these: "You are tormented by your husband's wrongs; for what has he done to you? Grieve; but do not imitate him so as to do wrong, but let him imitate you in good. For in what he does wrong, do not think him your head, but me, your God. For if he is the head even in what he does wrong, and the body is to follow its head, both go over the precipice." But so that she does not follow her evil head, let her hold fast to the head of the Church, Christ: owing her chastity to him, paying her honor to him, whether her husband is absent or present, she does not sin; because he to whom she owes it not to sin is never absent.

Do these things, then, my brothers, so that you can come to agreement with the adversary. See, what I say is not bitter; or if it is bitter, it heals. If this draught is bitter, let it be taken: because the inner organs are in danger; it is bitter, let it be drunk. Better a little bitterness in the throat than eternal torment in the inner parts. Change yourselves, then. Whoever of you did not practise this good of chastity, practise it now. Do not say, "It cannot be done." It is disgraceful, my brothers, it is shameful, that a man should say that what a woman does cannot be done. It is a crime for a man to say, "I cannot." What a woman can do, a man cannot? What then, does she not carry flesh? She was deceived first by the serpent. Your chaste wives show you that what you do not want to do can be done, and you say it cannot be done! But perhaps you will say that she can do it more easily because she has many guards: the precept of the law, her husband's watchfulness, the fear of the public laws too; there is also the great protection of her modesty and shame. Many guards make a woman more chaste; let manliness itself make a man chaste. For the woman has a greater guard because she has a greater weakness. She is ashamed before her husband; are you not ashamed before Christ? You are freer because you are stronger: because you conquer easily, you have been entrusted to yourself. Over her are her husband's watchfulness, the fear of the laws, the custom of morals, and a greater modesty: and over you is God, God alone. For you easily find men like yourself before whom you need not fear to blush, because many do it. And so great is the perversity of the human race that sometimes one must fear that the chaste man will be ashamed among the unchaste. That is why I do not stop striking this fifth string, because of that perverse custom and stain, as I said, of the whole human race. If one of you commits murder, which God forbid, you want to drive him from the country and, if possible, shut him out at once. If someone commits theft, you hate him and do not want to see him. If someone bears false witness, you abhor him, and he does not seem to you a man. If someone covets the goods of others, he is reckoned a robber and unjust. If someone wallows with his slave women, he is liked and received with smiles; the wounds are turned into jokes. But if someone appears who says he is chaste, and does not admit adultery, and it is known that he does not commit it, he is ashamed to go near those who are not like him, lest they jeer at him, laugh at him, say he is not a man. Human perversity has sunk so low that a man is held to be a man when he is conquered by lust, and a man is not held to be a man when he is the conqueror of lust. Do those who triumph exult and are not men, and are those who lie prostrate men? If you were watching a show, would the man who lay under the beast seem stronger to you than the one who killed the beast?