Homilies on the First Epistle of John

Your Holiness remembers that we are accustomed to expound the Gospel according to John in the order of the readings. But since the festival of the holy days has now come in between, in which certain readings from the Gospel must be read in the Church, which are so fixed each year that there can be no others, the order we had undertaken has been interrupted for a little by necessity, not abandoned. And as I was considering what I should treat with you from the Scriptures during this week, in keeping with the joy of these present days, as far as the Lord deigns to grant, something that could be finished in these seven or eight days, the Epistle of blessed John came to mind: so that, by expounding the epistle of him whose Gospel we have briefly interrupted, we may not depart from him; especially since in that Epistle, which is sweet enough to all whose palate of the heart is healthy, so that the bread of God has savour for it, and memorable enough in the holy Church of God, love above all is commended. He has said many things, and almost all of them about love. Whoever has in himself the means of hearing must rejoice at what he hears. For to him this reading will be like oil on a flame: if there is something there to be fed, it is fed, and grows, and lasts. Again, for some it ought to be like a flame to kindling: if it was not burning, it may be kindled when the sermon comes to it. For in some what is there is fed, in others it is kindled if it is lacking; so that we may all rejoice in one love. And where there is love, there is peace; and where there is humility, there is love. Now let us hear him; and on his words let us speak to you what the Lord suggests, so that you too may understand them well.

"That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, and which we have seen with our eyes, and our hands have handled, concerning the Word of life." Who is it that handles the Word with his hands, unless because "the Word became flesh and dwelt among us"? Now this Word, which became flesh so as to be handled with hands, began to be flesh from the Virgin Mary; but the Word did not begin then, for he said, "that which was from the beginning". See whether his Epistle does not bear witness to his Gospel, where you have just heard, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God." Perhaps someone may take "concerning the Word of life" as a kind of speech about Christ, not the very body of Christ which was handled with hands. See what follows: "And the life itself was manifested." So Christ is the Word of life. And how was it manifested? For it was from the beginning, but it had not been manifested to men; it had been manifested to the angels, who saw it and fed on it as their bread. But what does Scripture say? "Man ate the bread of angels." So the life itself was manifested in the flesh; because it was set in manifestation, so that a thing which can be seen by the heart alone might be seen by the eyes too, in order to heal hearts. For the Word is seen by the heart alone, but flesh is seen by the bodily eyes too. We had the means to see the flesh, but we did not have the means to see the Word: the Word became flesh, which we could see, so that in us that might be healed by which we might see the Word.

"And we have seen, and are witnesses." Perhaps some of the brothers who do not know Greek do not know what "witnesses" is in Greek; yet it is a name familiar to all and held sacred: for those whom we call testes in Latin are martyres in Greek. And who has not heard of martyrs, or in which Christian's mouth does the name of martyrs not dwell every day? And would that it dwelt so in the heart too, that we might imitate the sufferings of the martyrs, not persecute them with our cups! So he said, "We have seen, and are witnesses", that is, "We have seen, and are martyrs." For by bearing witness to what they saw, and bearing witness to what they heard from those who saw, since that very witness displeased the men against whom it was given, they suffered all that the martyrs suffered. The martyrs are God's witnesses. God willed to have men as witnesses, so that men too might have God as witness. "We have seen," he says, "and are witnesses." Where did they see? In the manifestation. What does "in the manifestation" mean? In the sun, that is, in this light. And how could he who made the sun be seen in the sun, unless because "he set his tabernacle in the sun, and himself, like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, rejoiced as a giant to run his course"? He who was before the sun, who made the sun, he who was before the morning star, before all the stars, before all the angels, the true creator (for all things were made through him, and without him nothing was made), in order to be seen by fleshly eyes which see the sun, set his very tabernacle in the sun, that is, showed his flesh in the manifestation of this light. And the bridal chamber of that bridegroom was the Virgin's womb, because in that virginal womb two were joined, bridegroom and bride, the bridegroom the Word and the bride the flesh; for it is written, "And the two shall be in one flesh"; and the Lord says in the Gospel, "So they are no longer two, but one flesh." And Isaiah very well remembered that the two are one; for he speaks in the person of Christ and says, "He has put a crown on me as on a bridegroom, and adorned me with ornament as a bride." One seems to speak, and has made himself both bridegroom and bride; because they are not two but one flesh, because the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. To that flesh the Church is joined, and the whole Christ comes to be, head and body.

"And we are witnesses," he says, "and we announce to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was manifested in us": that is, was manifested among us; which would be said more plainly, "was manifested to us". "What, then, we have seen and heard, we announce to you." Let your Love attend: "What, then, we have seen and heard, we announce to you." They saw the Lord himself present in the flesh, and heard the words from the Lord's mouth, and announced them to us. So we too have heard, but we have not seen. Are we, then, less happy than those who saw and heard? And how does he add, "that you too may have fellowship with us"? They saw, we have not seen, and yet we are fellows, because we hold a common faith. For one even did not believe by seeing, and wanted to touch, and so to believe, and said, "I will not believe unless I put my fingers into the place of the nails and touch his scars." And he who always offers himself to be seen by the gaze of angels offered himself for a time to be handled by the hands of men; and that disciple handled him and cried out, "My Lord and my God." Because he touched the man, he confessed God. And the Lord, consoling us, who cannot handle him with the hand now that he sits in heaven, but can touch him by faith, said to him, "Because you have seen, you have believed; blessed are those who do not see and believe." It is we who were described, we who were designated. So let the blessedness which the Lord foretold come to be in us: let us hold firmly what we do not see, because those who saw announce it. "That you too," he says, "may have fellowship with us." And what great thing is it to have fellowship with men? Do not despise it; see what he adds: "And that our fellowship may be with God the Father and with Jesus Christ his Son. And these things," he says, "we write to you, that your joy may be full." He speaks of full joy in that fellowship, in that love, in that unity.

"And this is the message which we have heard from him and announce to you." What is this? They saw, they handled with their hands the Word of life; he was from the beginning; the only Son of God was made visible and touchable for a time. For what purpose did he come, or what new thing did he announce to us? What did he wish to teach? Why did he do what he did, that the Word should become flesh, that God above all should suffer unworthy things from men, that he should endure their blows from hands which he himself had formed? What did he wish to teach? What did he wish to show? What did he wish to announce? Let us hear: for without the fruit of a precept, hearing of something that was done (that Christ was born, and that Christ suffered) is a distraction of the mind, not a strengthening of it. What great thing do you hear? See with what fruit you hear it. What did he wish to teach? What to announce? Hear: "That God is light," he says, "and in him there is no darkness at all." He has named light, but the words are obscure: it is good for us that the very light he named should enlighten our hearts, and that we may see what he said. "This is what we announce, that God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all." For who would dare to say that there is darkness in God? Or what is that light? Or what is darkness? Lest perhaps he is saying such things as belong to these eyes of ours. "God is light": someone says, "The sun too is light, and the moon is light, and a lamp is light." It must be something far greater than these, far more excellent, far more surpassing. As far as God is from the creature, as far as the maker from the thing made, as far as wisdom from what was made through wisdom, so far beyond all things must this light be. And perhaps we shall be near it if we come to know what this light is and apply ourselves to it, so as to be enlightened by it; for in ourselves we are darkness, and enlightened by it we can be light, and not be put to shame by it, since we are put to shame by ourselves. Who is put to shame by himself? He who knows himself to be a sinner. Who is not put to shame by it? He who is enlightened by it. What is it to be enlightened by it? He who already sees that he is darkened by sins, and desires to be enlightened by it, approaches it; hence the Psalm says, "Approach him and be enlightened, and your faces will not be ashamed." But you will not be ashamed by it if, when it shows you to yourself as foul, your foulness displeases you, so that you may perceive its beauty. This is what he wishes to teach.

And perhaps we are saying this too hastily? Let him himself make it plain in what follows. Remember that at the beginning of our sermon I said that this Epistle commends love. "God is light," he says, "and in him there is no darkness at all." And what had he said above? "That you may have fellowship with us, and that our fellowship may be with God the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ." Now if God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all, and we ought to have fellowship with him, then darkness must be driven from us too, so that light may come to be in us; for darkness cannot have fellowship with light. So see what follows: "If we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie." You have the apostle Paul too saying, "Or what fellowship has light with darkness?" You say you have fellowship with God, and you walk in darkness; and God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all: how, then, is there fellowship of light and darkness? Now, then, let a man say to himself, "What shall I do? How shall I become light? I live in sins and iniquities." A kind of despair and sadness creeps in. There is no salvation except in fellowship with God. God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all. But sins are darkness, as the apostle says that the devil and his angels are the rulers of this darkness. He would not say rulers of darkness unless he meant rulers of sins, lords of the wicked. What, then, are we to do, my brothers? We must have fellowship with God; there is no other hope of eternal life. But God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all; and iniquities are darkness; we are weighed down by iniquities, so that we cannot have fellowship with God: what hope, then? Did I not promise to say something in these days that would bring joy? If I do not deliver it, this is sadness. God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all; sins are darkness: what will become of us? Let us hear whether perhaps he consoles, raises up, gives hope, lest we faint on the way. For we are running, and running to our homeland; and if we despair of arriving, we faint from that very despair. But he who wishes us to arrive, so as to keep us in the homeland, feeds us on the way. Let us hear, then: "If we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not do the truth." Let us not say that we have fellowship with him if we walk in darkness. "But if we walk in the light, as he too is in the light, we have fellowship with one another." Let us walk in the light, as he too is in the light, so that we may be able to have fellowship with him. And what are we to do about our sins? Hear what follows: "And the blood of Jesus Christ his Son will cleanse us from every sin." God has given great security. Rightly do we celebrate the Pasch, at which the Lord's blood was shed, by which we are cleansed from every sin. Let us be secure: the devil held a bond of slavery against us, but it has been blotted out by the blood of Christ. "The blood of his Son," he says, "will cleanse us from every sin." What does "from every sin" mean? Pay attention: see, now, in the name of Christ, through his blood, which those who are called infants have now confessed, all their sins have been cleansed. They went in old, they came out new. What does "they went in old, they came out new" mean? They went in as old men, they came out as infants. For old age is decrepit, the old life; but the infancy of regeneration is the new life. But what are we to do? Past sins have been forgiven, not only to them but to us too; and after the forgiveness and abolition of all sins, by living in this world amid temptations, some perhaps have been contracted. So let a man do what he can: let him confess what he is, that he may be healed by him who always is what he is; for he always was and is, while we were not, and are.

For see what he says: "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us." So if you have confessed yourself a sinner, the truth is in you; for the truth itself is light. Your life has not yet shone perfectly, because there are sins in it; but you have already begun to be enlightened, because there is confession of sins in it. For see what follows: "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all iniquity." Not only past ones, but any that we may perhaps have contracted from this life; because a man, as long as he bears the flesh, cannot but have at least light sins. But do not despise these that we call light. If you despise them when you weigh them, be terrified when you count them. Many light ones make one great one; many drops fill a river; many grains make a heap. And what hope is there? Above all, confession: let no one think himself righteous, and let not a man, who was not and now is, lift up his neck before the eyes of God, who sees what is. Above all, then, confession; then love. For what has been said of love? "Love covers a multitude of sins." Now let us see whether he commends love itself, because of the sins that creep in; for love alone extinguishes sins. Pride extinguishes love; so humility strengthens love; love extinguishes sins. Humility belongs to confession, by which we confess that we are sinners. That is humility; not to say it with the tongue, as though to avoid displeasing men by arrogance if we said we were righteous. The ungodly and senseless do this: "I know indeed that I am righteous, but what shall I say before men? If I call myself righteous, who will bear it, who will tolerate it? Let my righteousness be known to God; yet I will call myself a sinner, not because I am one, but lest I be found hateful for arrogance." Tell men what you are; tell God what you are. For if you do not tell God what you are, God condemns what he finds in you. Do you not want him to condemn? Condemn it yourself. Do you want him to forgive? Acknowledge it yourself, so that you can say to God, "Turn your face from my sins." Say to him also those words in the same Psalm: "For I acknowledge my iniquity." "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just, who will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all iniquity. If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us." If you say, "I have not sinned", you make him a liar while you want to make yourself truthful. How can it be that God is a liar and man truthful, when Scripture says the contrary: "Every man is a liar; God alone is truthful"? So God is truthful through himself; you are truthful through God, for through yourself you are a liar.

And lest he should seem to have granted impunity to sins, because he said, "He is faithful and just, who cleanses us from all iniquity", and men should now say to themselves, "Let us sin; let us do what we like without care; Christ cleanses us; he is faithful and just; he cleanses us from all iniquity", he takes away from you a bad security and puts in a useful fear. You wish to be secure in a bad way; be anxious. For "he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins", if you are always displeased with yourself and are changed until you are perfected. So what follows? "My little children, I write these things to you so that you may not sin." But perhaps sin creeps in from human life: what then will happen? What? Will there now be despair? Hear: "And if anyone sins," he says, "we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and he is the propitiation for our sins." He, then, is the advocate. Do your utmost not to sin; if sin creeps in from the weakness of life, at once see it, at once let it displease you, at once condemn it; and when you have condemned it, you will come secure to the judge. There you have an advocate; do not fear that you will lose the case of your confession. For if sometimes in this life a man entrusts himself to an eloquent tongue and does not perish, will you entrust yourself to the Word and perish? Cry out: "We have an advocate with the Father."

See John himself keeping humility. Certainly he was a righteous and great man, who drank the secrets of the mysteries from the Lord's breast; he, he who by drinking from the Lord's breast poured forth divinity: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God." Such a man did not say, "You have an advocate with the Father", but, "If anyone sins, we have," he says, "an advocate." He did not say "you have"; nor did he say "you have me"; nor did he say "you have Christ himself"; but he put forward Christ, not himself, and said "we have", not "you have". He preferred to put himself in the number of sinners, so as to have Christ as advocate, rather than to put himself forward as advocate in place of Christ and be found among the proud who are to be condemned. Brothers, Jesus Christ the righteous is the one we have as advocate with the Father; he is the propitiation for our sins. Whoever has held to this has made no heresy; whoever has held to this has made no schism. For where have schisms come from? When men say, "We are righteous"; when men say, "We sanctify the unclean, we justify the ungodly, we ask, we obtain." But what did John say? "And if anyone sins, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous." But someone will say, "Do the saints, then, not ask for us? Do the bishops and leaders, then, not ask for the people?" But attend to the Scriptures, and see that leaders too commend themselves to the people. For the apostle says to the people, "Praying at the same time for us too." The apostle prays for the people, the people prays for the apostle. We pray for you, brothers; but you too pray for us. Let all the members pray for one another; let the head intercede for all. Therefore it is no wonder that here there follows what shuts the mouths of those who divide the Church of God. For he who said, "We have Jesus Christ the righteous, and he is the propitiation for our sins", because of those who were going to divide themselves and say, "See, here is Christ; see, there", and who would wish to show him in a part, who bought the whole and possesses the whole, at once went on: "Not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world." What is this, brothers? Certainly "we have found it in the fields of the forest": we have found the Church in all nations. See, Christ is the propitiation for our sins; not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world. See, you have the Church throughout the whole world; do not follow false justifiers and true cutters-off. Be on that mountain which has filled the whole earth; because Christ is the propitiation for our sins, not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world, which he bought with his blood.

"And by this," he says, "we know him, if we keep his commandments." What commandments? "He who says that he knows him and does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him." But you still ask, What commandments? "But whoever keeps his word," he says, "in him truly the love of God is perfected." Let us see whether the commandment itself is called love. For we were asking what commandments, and he says, "But whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected." Look at the Gospel, whether this is not the commandment: "A new commandment," he says, "I give you, that you love one another." "By this we know that we are in him, if we are perfected in him." He calls them perfected in love. What is the perfection of love? To love even enemies, and to love them so that they may become brothers. For our love ought not to be carnal. To wish someone temporal well-being is good; but even if that is lacking, let the soul be safe. Do you wish a friend of yours life? You do well. Do you rejoice at the death of your enemy? You do ill. But perhaps the life you wish your friend is of no use to him, and the death of your enemy at which you rejoice was of use to him. It is uncertain whether this life is of use to anyone or of no use; but the life that is with God is without doubt of use. So love your enemies, in such a way that you wish them to be brothers; so love your enemies, that they may be called into your fellowship. For so he loved who, hanging on the cross, said, "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do." For he did not say, "Father, let these live a long time; they are killing me, but let them live." But what did he say? "Forgive them, for they do not know what they do." He was driving eternal death away from them by a most merciful prayer and a most surpassing power. Many of them believed, and the blood of Christ which they had shed was forgiven them. First they shed it in their rage; now they drank it in believing. "By this we know that we are in him, if we are perfected in him." Admonishing us about this very perfection of loving enemies, the Lord says, "Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect." "So whoever says that he abides in him ought himself to walk as he walked." How, brothers? What does he admonish us? "Whoever says that he abides in him", that is, in Christ, "ought himself to walk as he walked." Does he perhaps admonish us to walk on the sea? Far from it. This, then: that we walk in the way of righteousness. In what way? I have already mentioned it. He was fixed on the cross, and was walking in that very way: that is the way of love: "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do." So if you have learned to pray for your enemy, you are walking the way of the Lord.

"Beloved, I am not writing you a new commandment, but an old commandment which you had from the beginning." What commandment did he call old? "Which you had," he says, "from the beginning." It is old, then, because you have already heard it; otherwise he will be contrary to the Lord, where he says, "A new commandment I give you, that you love one another." But why old? Not because it belongs to the old man. Then why? "Which you had from the beginning. The old commandment is the word which you have heard." It is old, then, because you have already heard it. And he shows that the same is new, saying, "Again, I am writing you a new commandment." Not another, but the very same one which he called old is also new. Why? "Which is true in him and in you." Why it is old you have already heard: because you already knew it. But why new? "Because the darkness has passed, and the true light is now shining." See why it is new: because darkness belongs to the old man, but light to the new. What does the apostle Paul say? "Put off the old man and put on the new." And again what does he say? "You were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord."

"He who says that he is in the light": now he makes plain all that he said: "He who says that he is in the light, and hates his brother, is in darkness even until now." Come, my brothers, how long shall we keep saying to you, "Love your enemies"? See that you do not, what is worse, still hate your brothers. If you loved only your brothers, you would not yet be perfect; but if you hate your brothers, what are you? Where are you? Let each one look into his own heart: let him not hold hatred against a brother for some harsh word; through a dispute over earth, let him not become earth. For whoever hates his brother, let him not say that he walks in the light. What did I say? Let him not say that he walks in Christ. "He who says that he is in the light and hates his brother is in darkness even until now." Someone, say, has become a Christian from a pagan; attend: see, he was in darkness when he was a pagan; now he has become a Christian. Thanks be to God, all congratulate him; the apostle is read congratulating: "For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord." He used to worship idols; he worships God. He used to worship what he had made; he worships him who made him. He has been changed; thanks be to God, all Christians congratulate him. Why? Because he is now a worshipper of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, and one who detests demons and idols. Still John is anxious about this man; while many congratulate him, he is still suspect. Brothers, let us gladly embrace a mother's anxiety. Not without cause is the mother anxious about us when others rejoice: I mean love as our mother; for she dwelt in John's heart when he said these things. Why, unless because she fears something in us even when men already congratulate us? What is it she fears? "He who says that he is in the light." What is this? He who now says that he is a Christian. "And hates his brother is in darkness even until now." This needs no exposition: only rejoicing if it does not happen, or lamenting if it does.

"He who loves his brother abides in the light, and there is no stumbling block in him." I beseech you by Christ: God is feeding us; we are about to refresh our bodies in the name of Christ, and they have been somewhat refreshed, and must be refreshed again; let our mind be fed. I do not say this because I intend to speak long; for see, the reading is now ending; but lest perhaps from weariness we should listen less attentively to what is most necessary. "He who loves his brother abides in the light, and there is no stumbling block in him." Who are those who suffer a stumbling block, or cause one? Those who stumble at Christ and at the Church. Those who stumble at Christ are, as it were, burned by the sun; those who stumble at the Church, by the moon. For the Psalm says, "The sun shall not burn you by day, nor the moon by night"; that is, if you hold fast to love, you will suffer no stumbling block either in Christ or in the Church; you will forsake neither Christ nor the Church. For whoever forsakes the Church, how is he in Christ, when he is not in the members of Christ? How is he in Christ, when he is not in the body of Christ? Those, then, suffer a stumbling block who forsake either Christ or the Church. From this we understand why the Psalm said, "The sun shall not burn you by day, nor the moon by night": because it wants that burning to be understood as the stumbling block. First attend to the likeness itself: as one who is burned says, "I cannot stand it, I cannot bear it", and withdraws; so those who cannot bear certain things in the Church, and withdraw either from the name of Christ or from the Church, suffer a stumbling block. For see how those carnal men suffered a stumbling block as from the sun, to whom Christ preached his flesh and said, "Whoever does not eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood will not have life in himself." About seventy men said, "This saying is hard", and withdrew from him; and twelve remained. The sun burned all of them, and they withdrew, unable to bear the force of the word. So twelve remained. And lest men should think that they were doing Christ a favour by believing in Christ, and not receiving a benefit from him, when the twelve had remained the Lord said to them, "Do you too wish to go away?", that you may know that you need me, not I you. But those whom the sun had not burned answered by the voice of Peter, "Lord, you have the word of eternal life; to whom shall we go?" And whom does the Church burn, like the moon by night? Those who have made schisms. Hear the very word set down in the apostle: "Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is made to stumble, and I do not burn?" How, then, is there no stumbling block in one who loves his brother? Because one who loves his brother bears all things for the sake of unity; because brotherly love lies in the unity of love. Someone offends you, whether a bad man, or a man you think bad, or a man you pretend is bad; and do you desert so many good men? What brotherly love is this, what has appeared in these men? While they accuse the Africans, they have deserted the whole world. Were there no saints in the whole world? Or could they be condemned by you unheard? But oh, if you loved your brothers, there would be no stumbling block in you. Hear what the Psalm says: "Great peace for those who love your law, and there is no stumbling block for them." He said there is great peace for those who love the law of God, and therefore no stumbling block for them. Those, then, who suffer a stumbling block lose peace. And whom did he say neither suffer a stumbling block nor cause one? Those who love the law of God. So they are set in love. But someone says, "He said, those who love the law of God, not the brothers." Hear what the Lord says: "A new commandment I give you, that you love one another." What is the law but a commandment? And how do they avoid suffering a stumbling block, except by bearing with one another? As Paul says, "Bearing with one another in love, eager to keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace." And because this is the law of Christ, hear the same apostle commending this law: "Bear one another's burdens," he says, "and so you will fulfil the law of Christ."

"For he who hates his brother is in darkness and walks in darkness, and does not know where he is going." A great matter, brothers; attend, we beg you. "He who hates his brother walks in darkness, and does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded his eyes." What is so blind as those who hate their brothers? For that you may know that they are blind, they have stumbled against a mountain. I say the same things again, so that they may not slip from you. Is not that stone which was cut from the mountain without hands Christ, born from the kingdom of the Jews without the act of a husband? Did not that stone break all the kingdoms of the earth, that is, all the dominions of idols and demons? Did not that stone grow and become a great mountain and fill the whole world? Do we point out this mountain with the finger, as the moon on its third day is pointed out to people? For example, when people want to see the new moon, they say, "There is the moon! See where it is!"; and if there are some there who cannot focus their sight and say, "Where?", a finger is pointed for them so that they may see. Sometimes, ashamed lest they be thought blind, they say they have seen what they did not see. Is it so that we point out the Church, my brothers? Is it not open? Is it not plain? Has it not taken hold of all nations? Is not what was promised to Abraham so many years before being fulfilled, that in his seed all nations would be blessed? It was promised to one believer, and the world has been filled with thousands of believers. See the mountain filling the whole face of the earth; see the city of which it was said, "A city set on a mountain cannot be hidden." But they stumble against the mountain. And when it is said to them, "Go up", they say, "It is not a mountain", and they more readily dash their face against it than seek a dwelling there. Isaiah was read yesterday; whoever of you was paying attention, not with the eyes only but with the ear, and not the ear of the body but the ear of the heart, noticed: "In the last days the mountain of the house of the Lord will be manifest, prepared on the top of the mountains." What is so manifest as a mountain? But there are also unknown mountains, because they are situated in one part of the earth. Who of you knows Mount Olympus? Just as those who live there do not know our Giddaba. These mountains are in parts of the earth. But that mountain is not so, because it has filled the whole face of the earth; and of it is said, "prepared on the top of the mountains". It is a mountain above the tops of all mountains. "And all the nations," he says, "will be gathered to it." Who goes astray on this mountain? Who breaks his face by stumbling against it? Who does not know the city set on a mountain? But do not wonder that it is not known by these who hate their brothers; for they walk in darkness and do not know where they are going, because the darkness has blinded their eyes. They do not see the mountain: I do not want you to wonder; they have no eyes. Why do they have no eyes? Because the darkness has blinded them. How do we prove it? Because they hate their brothers; because when they take offence at the Africans, they separate themselves from the whole world; because they do not bear, for the peace of Christ, those whom they defame, and they do bear, for the party of Donatus, those whom they condemn.

All that is read from the holy Scriptures for our instruction and salvation must be listened to attentively. Yet above all those things should be committed to memory which are most effective against heretics, whose snares never cease to surround all the weaker and more careless. Remember that our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ both died for us and rose again: died, that is, because of our sins, and rose again for our justification. As you have just heard, the eyes of the two disciples whom he met on the road were held so that they did not recognise him; and he found them despairing of the redemption that was in Christ, and supposing that he had now suffered and died as a man, not thinking that he lived for ever as the Son of God, and that he was so dead in the flesh that he would not come to life again, but as one of the prophets; as you heard their words a little while ago, you who were present. Then he opened the Scriptures to them, beginning from Moses through all the prophets, showing them that all that he had suffered had been foretold; lest they should be the more disturbed if the Lord had risen, and believe him the less, if these things had not been said beforehand of him. For the firmness of faith lies in this, that all that happened in Christ was foretold. So the disciples did not recognise him except in the breaking of bread. And truly, whoever does not eat and drink judgment to himself recognises Christ in the breaking of bread. Afterwards the eleven too thought they were seeing a spirit. He offered himself to be handled, who had offered himself to be crucified: to be crucified by enemies, to be handled by friends; yet the physician of all, of the ungodliness of the former and of the unbelief of the latter. For you heard, when the Acts of the Apostles were being read, how many thousands of those who killed Christ believed. If those who had killed him believed afterwards, were those not going to believe who doubted for a little while? And yet even for them (and this you ought above all to notice and commit to memory, that God willed to set a strong support against treacherous errors in the Scriptures, against which no one dares to speak who wishes in any way to be seen as a Christian), when he had offered himself to be handled, it was not enough for him unless he strengthened the heart of believers from the Scriptures; for he was looking ahead to us, who have nothing in him to handle but have something to read. For if they believed because they held and handled him, what shall we do? Christ has now ascended into heaven; he will not come except at the end, to judge the living and the dead. From what shall we believe, unless from that by which he willed even those who handled him to be strengthened? For he opened the Scriptures to them, and showed them that the Christ had to suffer, and that all things written about him in the law of Moses, and the Prophets, and the Psalms had to be fulfilled. He embraced the whole old text of the Scriptures. Whatever is in those Scriptures sounds of Christ; but only if it finds ears. "And he opened their mind, that they might understand the Scriptures." So we too must pray for this, that he may open our mind.

But what did the Lord show to be written about himself in the law of Moses, and the Prophets, and the Psalms? What did he show? Let him say it himself. The evangelist set it down briefly, so that we might know what we ought to believe and understand in so great a breadth of the Scriptures. Certainly there are many pages and many books; all of them contain what the Lord said briefly to his disciples. What is it? "That the Christ had to suffer and rise on the third day." You have now what concerns the bridegroom, that the Christ had to suffer and rise. The bridegroom has been commended to us. Let us see what he says of the bride, so that, when you know the bridegroom and the bride, you may not come to the wedding to no purpose. For every celebration is the celebration of a wedding: the wedding of the Church is being celebrated. The king's son is about to take a wife, and the king's son is himself a king; and those who attend are themselves the bride. Not as at fleshly weddings, where some attend the wedding and another is married: in the Church those who attend, if they attend well, become the bride. For the whole Church is the bride of Christ, whose beginning and first fruits is the flesh of Christ: there the bride was joined to the bridegroom in the flesh. Rightly, when he commended that flesh, he broke bread; and rightly in the breaking of bread the eyes of the disciples were opened, and they recognised him. What, then, did the Lord say was written about himself in the Law, and the Prophets, and the Psalms? "That the Christ had to suffer." If he had not added "and rise", those whose eyes were held would rightly have mourned; but his rising too was foretold. And why this? Why did the Christ have to suffer and rise? Because of that psalm which we commended to you especially on Wednesday, at the first station of the last week. Why did the Christ have to suffer and rise? For this reason: "All the ends of the earth will remember and turn to the Lord, and all the families of the nations will worship before him." For, that you may know that the Christ had to suffer and rise, what did he add here too, so as to commend the bride after commending the bridegroom? "And that repentance and the forgiveness of sins should be preached in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem." You have heard it, brothers; hold it fast. Let no one doubt about the Church, that it is throughout all nations; let no one doubt that it began from Jerusalem and has filled all nations. We recognise the field where the vine was planted; but when it has grown, we do not recognise it, because it has taken over the whole. Where did it begin? From Jerusalem. Where has it reached? To all nations. Few remain; it will hold them all. Meanwhile, until it holds all, some useless branches seemed to the husbandman to need cutting off; and they have made heresies and schisms. Do not let what has been cut off lead you to be cut off; rather urge what has been cut off to be grafted in again. It is plain that Christ suffered, rose, and ascended into heaven; the Church too has been made plain, because repentance and the forgiveness of sins are preached in his name to all nations. Where did it begin? "Beginning from Jerusalem." The foolish, the vain man hears this, and, what more shall I call him than blind, who does not see so great a mountain, who shuts his eyes against the lamp set on the lampstand?

When we say to them, "If you are Catholic Christians, be in communion with that Church from which the Gospel is spread through the whole world; be in communion with that Jerusalem", when we say this to them, they answer us, "We are not in communion with that city where our King was killed, where our Lord was killed": as though they hated the city where our Lord was killed. The Jews killed him whom they found on earth; these men blow out at him who sits in heaven. Who are worse, those who despised him because they thought him a man, or those who blow out at the sacraments of him whom they now confess as God? But of course they hate the city in which their Lord was killed! Godly and merciful men, they grieve much that Christ was killed, and they kill Christ in men! But he loved that city and had pity on it; he said that his preaching was to begin from there: "beginning from Jerusalem". He made there the beginning of the preaching of his name, and do you shudder at communion with that city? It is no wonder if, cut off, you hate the root. What did he say to his disciples? "Stay in the city, for I am sending my promise upon you." See what city they hate. Perhaps they would love it if the Jews, Christ's killers, lived in it. For it is plain that all Christ's killers, that is, the Jews, were driven out of that city. The city which held those who raged against Christ holds those who worship Christ. That is why these men hate it: because Christians are in it. There he willed his disciples to stay, and there to send them the Holy Spirit. Where did the Church begin, if not where the Holy Spirit came from heaven and filled a hundred and twenty sitting in one place? That number twelve had been multiplied by ten. A hundred and twenty men were sitting, and the Holy Spirit came and filled the whole place, and there was a sound as of a mighty wind rushing, and tongues were divided as of fire. You heard the Acts of the Apostles; that very lesson was read today: "They began to speak in tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance." And all who were there, Jews who had come from various nations, recognised each his own language; and they wondered that those unlearned and ignorant men had suddenly learned not one or two languages but those of all nations whatever. So where all languages were already sounding, it was being shown that all languages would believe. But these men, who love Christ so much and therefore will not be in communion with the city that killed Christ, honour Christ in such a way as to say that he has been left with two languages, Latin and Punic, that is, African. Does Christ hold only two languages? For these two languages alone are in the party of Donatus; they have no more. Let us wake up, brothers; let us rather see the gift of the Spirit of God, and believe what was said beforehand about him, and see fulfilled what was said beforehand in the Psalm: "There is no speech nor language in which their voices are not heard." And lest perhaps the languages themselves came to one place, rather than the gift of Christ coming to all languages, hear what follows: "Their sound has gone out into all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world." Why this? Because "he set his tabernacle in the sun", that is, in the open. His tabernacle is his flesh; his tabernacle is his Church: it has been set in the sun; it is not in the night but in the day. But why do they not recognise it? Go back to the reading at which yesterday's sermon ended, and see why they do not recognise it: "He who hates his brother walks in darkness, and does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded his eyes." Let us, then, look at what follows, and not be in darkness. How shall we not be in darkness? If we love the brothers. How is it proved that we love the brotherhood? Because we do not tear unity, because we hold to love.

"I write to you, little children, because your sins are forgiven you through his name." You are little children because you are born when your sins are forgiven. But through whose name are sins forgiven? Through Augustine's? Then not through Donatus's either. You can see who Augustine is, or who Donatus is: nor through the name of Paul, nor through the name of Peter. For when people were dividing the Church among themselves and trying to make parties out of unity, love, the mother who was in labour with little ones in the apostle, lays bare her womb, tears, as it were, her breasts with words, weeps for the children she sees being carried off, calls back to one name those who wanted to make many names for themselves, thrusts them away from love of herself so that Christ may be loved, and says, "Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?" What is he saying? "I do not want you to be mine, so that you may be with me: be with me; we all belong to him who died for us, who was crucified for us." Hence here too: "Your sins are forgiven you through his name", not through the name of any man.

"I write to you, fathers." Why little children first? "Because your sins are forgiven you through his name", and you are reborn into new life; that is why they are little children. Why fathers? "Because you have known him who is from the beginning": for the beginning belongs to fatherhood. Christ is new in the flesh, but ancient in divinity. How ancient do we think him? How many years old? Do we think him older than his mother? Plainly older than his mother: for all things were made through him. If all things, then the ancient one also made the very mother of whom he was to be born new. Do we think him before his mother alone? He is ancient before his mother's forefathers too. Abraham was his mother's forefather, and the Lord says, "Before Abraham, I am." Before Abraham, do we say? Heaven and earth were made before man existed. Before these the Lord was; indeed, he is. For he very well does not say, "Before Abraham I was", but "Before Abraham, I am." For what is said to have been, is not; and what is said to be going to be, is not yet: he knows nothing but to be. As God, he knows to be; to have been and to be going to be he does not know. There the day is one, but everlasting. Yesterday and tomorrow do not set that day in the middle; for when yesterday is finished, today begins and will be finished when tomorrow comes. That one day there is without darkness, without night, without intervals, without measure, without hours. Call it what you will: if you will, it is a day; if you will, it is a year; if you will, it is years. For it is said of him, "And your years will not fail." But when is it called a day? When it was said to the Lord, "Today I have begotten you." Begotten of the eternal Father, begotten from eternity, begotten in eternity: with no beginning, no end, no extent of space; because he is what is, because he is himself "He who is". This name of his he told Moses: "You shall say to them, He who is has sent me to you." What, then, before Abraham? What before Noah? What before Adam? Hear Scripture: "Before the morning star I begot you." Finally, before heaven and earth. Why? Because "all things were made through him, and without him nothing was made." So acknowledge the fathers: for they become fathers by knowing what is from the beginning.

"I write to you, young men." They are little children, they are fathers, they are young men: little children because they are born; fathers because they know the beginning. Why young men? "Because you have overcome the evil one." In the little children there is birth, in the fathers antiquity, in the young men strength. If the evil one is overcome by the young men, he fights with us. He fights, but he does not conquer. Why? Because we are strong, or because he is strong in us who was found weak in the hands of his persecutors? He has made us strong who did not resist his persecutors. For "he was crucified in weakness, but he lives by the power of God."

"I write to you, children." Why children? "Because you have known the Father." "I write to you, fathers": he commends this and repeats it, "because you have known him who is from the beginning." Remember that you are fathers: if you forget him who is from the beginning, you have lost your fatherhood. "I write to you, young men." Consider again and again that you are young men: fight, that you may conquer; conquer, that you may be crowned; be humble, that you may not fall in the fight. "I write to you, young men, because you are strong, and the word of God abides in you, and you have overcome the evil one."

All these things, brothers (that we have known what is from the beginning, that we are strong, that we have known the Father): do they all commend knowledge, as it were, and not commend love? If we have known, let us love; for knowledge without love does not save. "Knowledge puffs up, love builds up." If you are willing to confess and not to love, you begin to be like the demons. The demons confessed the Son of God and said, "What have we to do with you?", and they were driven away. Confess, and embrace. For they feared because of their iniquities; you, love him who forgives your iniquities. But how shall we be able to love God if we love the world? So he prepares us to be dwelt in by love. There are two loves, of the world and of God: if love of the world dwells within, there is no way for love of God to enter. Let love of the world withdraw, and love of God dwell within; let the better receive the place. You used to love the world; do not love the world. When you have emptied your heart of earthly love, you will draw in divine love; and love begins to dwell there, from which no evil can come. Hear, then, the words of one who is clearing the ground. He finds the hearts of men like a field; but how does he find it? If he finds a forest, he roots it out; if he finds a cleared field, he plants. He wants to plant a tree there, love. And what forest does he want to root out? Love of the world. Hear the uprooter of the forest: "Do not love the world" (for this follows), "nor the things that are in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him."

You have heard that "if anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him." Let no one say in his heart that this is false, brothers: God says it; the Holy Spirit has spoken through the apostle; nothing is truer: "If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him." Do you wish to have the love of the Father, so as to be a co-heir with the Son? Do not love the world. Shut out the bad love of the world, so that you may be filled with the love of God. You are a vessel, but you are still full: pour out what you have, so that you may receive what you do not have. Certainly our brothers have now been reborn of water and the Spirit; and we too were reborn of water and the Spirit some years ago. It is good for us not to love the world, lest the sacraments remain in us for condemnation, not as supports for salvation. The support of salvation is to have the root of love, to have the power of godliness, not the form only. The form is good, the form is holy: but what does the form avail if it does not hold to the root? Is not a branch that is cut off thrown into the fire? Have the form, but in the root. And how are you rooted, so as not to be uprooted? By holding to love, as the apostle Paul says, "Rooted and grounded in love." How will love be rooted there amid such thickets of the love of the world? Root out the forests. You are going to put in a great seed; let there be nothing in the field to choke the seed. These are the uprooting words that he said: "Do not love the world, nor the things that are in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him."

"For all that is in the world is the desire of the flesh, and the desire of the eyes, and the ambition of the world": he named three things, "which are not from the Father, but are from the world. And the world passes away, and its desires; but whoever does the will of God abides for ever, as he too abides for ever." Why should I not love what God made? What do you want? To love temporal things and pass away with time, or not to love the world and live for ever with God? The river of temporal things drags us along; but our Lord Jesus Christ has sprung up like a tree beside the river. He took flesh, died, rose again, ascended into heaven. He willed, in a way, to plant himself beside the river of temporal things. Are you being swept headlong? Hold on to the tree. Is love of the world rolling you along? Hold on to Christ. For your sake he became temporal, so that you might become eternal; for he became temporal in such a way as to remain eternal. Something was added to him from time; nothing was taken from his eternity. But you were born temporal, and through sin you were made temporal: you were made temporal through sin; he was made temporal through the mercy of forgiving sins. How great a difference is there, when two are in prison, between the accused and the one visiting him? For a man sometimes comes to his friend and goes in to visit him, and both seem to be in prison; but they are very far apart and are distinct. One is held by his case, the other has been brought there by kindness. So in this mortality, we were held by guilt; he came down in mercy. He entered to the captive as a redeemer, not an oppressor. The Lord shed his blood for us, redeemed us, changed our hope. We still bear the mortality of the flesh, and we take for granted the immortality to come; we are tossed on the sea, but we have already fixed the anchor of hope on land.

But let us not love the world, nor the things that are in the world. For the things that are in the world are the desire of the flesh, and the desire of the eyes, and the ambition of the world. These are three things; lest perhaps someone should say, "The things that are in the world God made, that is, heaven and earth, the sea, the sun, the moon, the stars, all the adornments of the heavens. What are the adornments of the sea? All creeping things. Of the earth? Animals, trees, birds. These are in the world; God made them. Why, then, should I not love what God made?" May the Spirit of God be in you, so that you see that all these things are good; but woe to you if you love the things made and forsake the maker. They are beautiful to you; but how much more beautiful is he who formed them? Let your Love attend. For you can be taught by comparisons, lest Satan steal upon you, saying what he usually says: "Enjoy yourselves in the creation of God; why did he make these things, except that you might enjoy yourselves?" And they get drunk and perish and forget their Creator: while they use created things not with moderation but with greed, the Creator is despised. Of such the apostle says, "They worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed for ever." God does not forbid you to love these things, but not to love them so as to find your happiness in them; rather to approve and praise them so that you may love the Creator. Just as, brothers, if a bridegroom made a ring for his bride, and she, having received the ring, loved it more than the bridegroom who made the ring for her: would not an adulterous soul be detected in that very gift of the bridegroom, even though she loved what the bridegroom gave? Certainly she would love what the bridegroom gave; yet if she said, "This ring is enough for me; I do not want to see his face any more", what would she be? Who would not detest this madness? Who would not convict her of an adulterous mind? You love the gold instead of the husband, you love the ring instead of the bridegroom. If this is in you, that you love the ring instead of your bridegroom and do not want to see your bridegroom, then he gave you the pledge not to bind you to himself but to turn you away. Surely the bridegroom gives the pledge so that he himself may be loved in his pledge. So God has given you all these things; love him who made them. There is more that he wishes to give you, that is, himself, who made these things. But if you love these things, though God made them, and neglect the Creator and love the world, will not your love be counted adulterous?

For not only is this fabric which God made called the world, heaven and earth, sea, things visible and invisible; but the inhabitants of the world are called the world, just as a house is the name both of the walls and of those who live in it. And sometimes we praise a house and find fault with those who live in it. For we say, "A good house", because it is faced with marble and finely panelled; and in another sense we say, "A good house: no one suffers injury there, no robberies, no oppressions take place there." Then we are praising not the walls but those who live within the walls; yet both are called a house. For all lovers of the world, because they dwell in the world by love, as those dwell in heaven whose heart is above though they walk on earth in the flesh, all lovers of the world, then, are called the world. They have only these three: the desire of the flesh, the desire of the eyes, and the ambition of the world. For they desire to eat, to drink, to lie together, to enjoy these pleasures. Is there no measure in these things? Or when it is said, "Do not love these things", is it said so that you may not eat, or not drink, or not beget children? That is not what is said. But let there be measure, for the Creator's sake, so that these things do not bind you with love of them, lest you love for enjoyment what you ought to have for use. And you are not tested except when two things are put before you, this or that: "Do you want justice, or gain?" "I have nothing to live on, nothing to eat, nothing to drink." But what if you cannot have these things except by iniquity? Is it not better to love what you do not lose than to commit iniquity? You see the gain of gold; you do not see the loss of faith. This, then, he tells us, is the desire of the flesh, that is, the desire of the things that belong to the flesh, such as food and intercourse and other things of this kind.

"And the desire of the eyes": by the desire of the eyes he means all curiosity. Now how widely does curiosity extend? It is in shows, in theatres, in the sacraments of the devil, in magic arts, in sorceries: all this is curiosity. Sometimes it tempts even the servants of God, so that they want to work a miracle, as it were, to test whether God hears them in miracles: that is curiosity; that is the desire of the eyes; it is not from the Father. If God has given it, do it; for he has offered it so that you may do it. For those who have not done such things will not on that account not belong to the kingdom of God. When the apostles rejoiced that the demons were subject to them, what did the Lord say to them? "Do not rejoice in this, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven." He wanted the apostles to rejoice in that in which you too rejoice. For woe to you if your name is not written in heaven. Is it woe to you if you have not raised the dead? Is it woe to you if you have not walked on the sea? Is it woe to you if you have not cast out demons? If you have received the power to do these things, use it humbly, not proudly. For the Lord said even of certain false prophets that they will do signs and wonders. So let there be no "ambition of the world". The ambition of the world is pride. A man wants to boast in honours; he seems great to himself, whether because of riches or because of some power.

These are the three, and you find nothing by which human desire is tempted except either by the desire of the flesh, or the desire of the eyes, or the ambition of the world. By these three the Lord was tempted by the devil. He was tempted by the desire of the flesh when it was said to him, "If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread", when he was hungry after his fast. But how did he repel the tempter, and teach his soldier to fight? Notice what he said to him: "Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word of God." He was tempted also by the desire of the eyes, with a miracle, when he said to him, "Throw yourself down, for it is written, He has given his angels charge concerning you, that they may bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone." He resisted the tempter; for if he had worked the miracle, he would have seemed either to have given in or to have done it from curiosity. For he worked miracles when he willed, as God, but as healing the sick. For if he had done it then, he would have been thought to have wanted only to work a miracle. But lest men should think this, notice what he answered; and when such a temptation comes to you, say it too: "Get behind me, Satan; for it is written, You shall not tempt the Lord your God"; that is, "If I do this, I shall be tempting God." He said what he wanted you to say. When the enemy suggests to you, "What kind of man, what kind of Christian are you? Have you worked even one miracle? Or have the dead risen through your prayers, or have you healed those sick with fever? If you were really of any importance, you would work some miracle", answer and say, "It is written, You shall not tempt the Lord your God. So I will not tempt God, as though I should belong to God if I work a miracle and not belong if I do not." And where are his words, "Rejoice that your names are written in heaven"? How was the Lord tempted by the ambition of the world? When he lifted him up on high and said to him, "All these I will give you, if you fall down and worship me." By the pride of an earthly kingdom he wished to tempt the King of the ages; but the Lord, who made heaven and earth, trampled the devil underfoot. What great thing is it for the devil to be conquered by the Lord? What, then, did he answer the devil, but what he taught you to answer? "It is written, You shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve." Holding to these things, you will not have the lust of the world; and not having the lust of the world, neither the desire of the flesh, nor the desire of the eyes, nor the ambition of the world will subdue you; and you will make room for love when it comes, so that you love God. For if the love of the world is there, the love of God will not be there. Hold rather to the love of God, so that, as God is eternal, you too may abide for ever; for each one is such as his love is. Do you love the earth? You will be earth. Do you love God? What shall I say? You will be a god? I do not dare to say it of myself; let us hear the Scriptures: "I said, You are gods, and all of you sons of the Most High." If, then, you wish to be gods and sons of the Most High, "do not love the world, nor the things that are in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world is the desire of the flesh, and the desire of the eyes, and the ambition of the world, which is not from the Father but from the world", that is, from men who love the world. "And the world passes away, and its desires; but whoever does the will of God abides for ever, as God too abides for ever."

"Children, it is the last hour." In this reading he addresses the children, that they may hasten to grow, because it is the last hour. The age of the body is not a matter of will. So no one grows according to the flesh when he wishes, just as no one is born when he wishes; but where birth is a matter of will, growth too is a matter of will. No one is born of water and the Spirit unless he is willing. So if he wills, he grows; if he wills, he dwindles. What is it to grow? To make progress. What is it to dwindle? To fall away. Whoever knows that he has been born, let him hear that he is a child and an infant; let him eagerly crave his mother's breasts, and he will quickly grow. Now the mother is the Church, and her breasts are the two Testaments of the divine Scriptures. From these let him suck the milk of all the sacraments wrought in time for our eternal salvation, so that, nourished and strengthened, he may come to eating solid food, which is: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." Our milk is Christ humble; our food is the same Christ, equal to the Father. He nourishes you with milk so as to feed you with bread; for to touch Jesus spiritually with the heart is to know that he is equal to the Father.

That is why he forbade Mary to touch him, and said to her, "Do not touch me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father." What is this? He offered himself to the disciples to be handled, and avoided Mary's touch? Is he not the one who said to the doubting disciple, "Put your fingers here, and handle the scars"? Had he already ascended to the Father then? Why, then, does he forbid Mary and say, "Do not touch me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father"? Or are we going to say that he did not fear to be touched by men and feared to be touched by women? His touch cleanses all flesh. Did he fear to be handled by those to whom he willed first to be made manifest? Was not his resurrection announced to men by women, so that the serpent might be conquered by the opposite device? For since he announced death to the first man through a woman, life too was announced to men through a woman. Why, then, did he not want to be touched, unless because he wanted that touch to be understood spiritually? Spiritual touch is from a pure heart. He touches Christ from a pure heart who understands him to be coequal with the Father. But whoever does not yet understand the divinity of Christ comes as far as the flesh, but does not come as far as the divinity. And what great thing is it to reach as far as the persecutors who crucified him reached? The great thing is to understand the Word, God with God in the beginning, through whom all things were made; as he wished to be known when he said to Philip, "Have I been with you so long, and you have not known me, Philip? Whoever sees me sees the Father too."

But lest anyone be slow to make progress, let him hear: "Children, it is the last hour." Make progress, run, grow: it is the last hour. This last hour is long; yet it is the last. For he put "hour" for the last time; because in the last times our Lord Jesus Christ will come. But some will say, "How is it the last time? How the last hour? Certainly the Antichrist will come first, and then the day of judgment will come." John saw these thoughts: lest they should become as it were secure, and therefore think it was not the last hour because the Antichrist was yet to come, he said to them, "And as you have heard that the Antichrist is coming, now many antichrists have come." Could it have many antichrists, if it were not the last hour?

Whom did he call antichrists? He goes on and explains how we know that it is the last hour. How? Because many antichrists have come. "They went out from us": see the antichrists. "They went out from us": so we mourn the loss. Hear the consolation: "But they were not of us." All heretics, all schismatics went out from us, that is, they go out from the Church; but they would not go out if they were of us. Before they went out, then, they were not of us. If before they went out they were not of us, many are inside, have not gone out, and yet are antichrists. We dare to say this: to what end, but that each one, while he is inside, may not be an antichrist? For he is about to describe and mark out the antichrists, and we shall see them now. And each one ought to question his own conscience, whether he is an antichrist. For "Antichrist" in Latin is "one contrary to Christ". Not as some understand it, that he is called Antichrist because he is to come before Christ, that is, that Christ is to come after him: it is not said so, nor written so; but Antichrist, that is, contrary to Christ. Who is contrary to Christ you will now notice as he himself explains it, and you understand that none can go out but antichrists, while those who are not contrary to Christ can in no way go out. For whoever is not contrary to Christ cleaves to his body and is counted a member. Members are never contrary to one another. The soundness of the body consists in all its members. And what does the apostle say of the concord of the members? "If one member suffers, all the members suffer with it; and if one member is glorified, all the members rejoice with it." If, then, when one member is glorified the other members rejoice with it, and when one suffers all the members suffer, the concord of the members has no antichrist. And there are some who are inside in such a way as to be in the body of our Lord Jesus Christ (since his body is still being cured, and its health will not be perfect except in the resurrection of the dead) as bad humours are in the body. When they are vomited up, then the body is relieved; so too when the wicked go out, then the Church is relieved. And when the body vomits them out and casts them forth, it says, "These humours went out from me, but they were not of me." What does "they were not of me" mean? They were not cut out of my flesh, but they were oppressing my chest while they were inside.

"They went out from us; but" (do not be sad) "they were not of us." How do you prove it? "For if they had been of us, they would surely have remained with us." From this, then, let your Love see that many who are not of us receive the sacraments with us, receive baptism with us, receive with us what the faithful know they receive, the blessing, the Eucharist, and whatever is in the holy sacraments; they receive with us the communion of the altar itself, and they are not of us. Temptation proves that they are not of us. When temptation comes to them, as with the chance of a wind they fly out, because they were not grain. But all will fly out then (this must often be said) when the Lord's threshing floor begins to be winnowed on the day of judgment. "They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would surely have remained with us." For do you wish to know, beloved, how very certainly this is said, so that those who perhaps went out and come back are not antichrists, are not contrary to Christ? Those who are not antichrists cannot possibly remain outside. But each one is either an antichrist or in Christ by his own will. We are either among the members or among the bad humours. Whoever changes himself for the better is a member in the body; but whoever remains in malice is a bad humour, and when he has gone out, those who were oppressed will be relieved. "They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would surely have remained with us; but that they might be made manifest, that not all are of us." He added "that they might be made manifest" because even when they are inside they are not of us; yet they are not manifest, but are made manifest by going out. "And you have an anointing from the Holy One, that you may be manifest to yourselves." The spiritual anointing is the Holy Spirit himself, whose sacrament is in the visible anointing. He says that all who have this anointing of Christ know the wicked and the good; and that there is no need for them to be taught, because the anointing itself teaches them.

"I write to you, not because you do not know the truth, but because you know it, and because no lie is of the truth." See, we are taught how to recognise the Antichrist. What is Christ? The Truth. He himself said, "I am the truth." "But no lie is of the truth": so all who lie are not yet of Christ. He did not say that one lie is of the truth and another lie is not of the truth. Attend to the sentence; do not flatter yourselves, do not fawn on yourselves, do not deceive yourselves, do not mock yourselves: "No lie is of the truth." Let us see, then, how the antichrists lie, for there is not just one kind of lie. "Who is a liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ?" "Jesus" has one meaning, "Christ" another; though Jesus Christ our Saviour is one, yet Jesus is his proper name. As Moses was called by a proper name, as Elijah, as Abraham, so our Lord has Jesus as it were his proper name; but Christ is the name of a sacrament. As if one says "prophet", as if one says "priest", so "Christ" is commended as "the anointed", in whom would be the redemption of the whole people of Israel. This Christ was hoped for by the people of the Jews as one to come; and because he came humble he was not recognised; because the stone was small, they stumbled against it and were broken. But the stone grew and became a great mountain; and what does Scripture say? "Whoever stumbles against this stone will be shattered; and on whomever this stone falls, it will crush him." The words must be distinguished: he said that one who stumbles against it is shattered, but one on whom it falls is crushed. First, because he came humble, men stumbled against him; because he will come exalted to judgment, on whomever he falls he will crush him. But at his coming he will not crush the one whom he did not shatter when he came. Whoever does not stumble against him humble will not dread him exalted. You have heard it briefly, brothers: whoever does not stumble against him humble will not dread him exalted. For to all the wicked Christ is a stone of stumbling; whatever Christ says is bitter to them.

For hear and see. Certainly all who go out of the Church and are cut off from the unity of the Church are antichrists: let no one doubt it; for he himself has marked them out: "They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would surely have remained with us." Whoever, then, does not remain with us, but goes out from us, it is plain that they are antichrists. And how are they proved to be antichrists? By lying. "And who is a liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ?" Let us question the heretics: what heretic do you find who denies that Jesus is the Christ? Let your Love see a great mystery. Attend to what the Lord God has inspired in us, and what I want to convey to you. See, they went out from us and became Donatists: we ask them whether Jesus is the Christ; at once they confess that Jesus is the Christ. If, then, he is the antichrist who denies that Jesus is the Christ, neither can they call us antichrists, nor we them; for both we confess it and they do. If, then, neither do they call us so nor we them, then neither did they go out from us nor we from them. If, then, we did not go out from one another, we are in unity: if we are in unity, what are two altars doing in this city? What are divided houses doing, divided marriages? What is a common bed doing, and a divided Christ? He admonishes us; he wants us to confess what is true. Either they went out from us, or we from them. But far be it that we went out from them: for we have the testament of the Lord's inheritance; we read it out, and there we find ourselves: "I will give you the nations as your inheritance, and the ends of the earth as your possession." We hold the inheritance of Christ; they do not hold it; they are not in communion with the whole world, they are not in communion with the whole company redeemed by the blood of the Lord. We have the Lord himself, rising from the dead, who offered himself to be handled by the hands of his doubting disciples. And while they still doubted, he said to them, "The Christ had to suffer and rise on the third day, and repentance and forgiveness of sins had to be preached in his name." Where? How? To whom? "Throughout all nations, beginning from Jerusalem." We are secure about the unity of the inheritance. Whoever is not in communion with this inheritance has gone out.

But let us not be saddened: "They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would surely have remained with us." If, then, they went out from us, they are antichrists; if they are antichrists, they are liars; if they are liars, they deny that Jesus is the Christ. Again we come back to the difficulty of the question. Question them one by one: they confess that Jesus is the Christ. A narrow understanding hems us in on this Epistle. You certainly see the question: this question troubles both us and them, if it is not understood. Either we are antichrists, or they are antichrists: they call us antichrists and say that we went out from them; we say the same of them. But this Epistle has marked out the antichrists: whoever denies that Jesus is the Christ is the antichrist. Now, then, let us look for who denies it; and let us attend not to the tongue but to deeds. For if all are asked, all confess with one mouth that Jesus is the Christ. Let the tongue be quiet for a little; question the life. If we find this, if Scripture itself tells us that denial is made not only with the tongue but also with deeds, then certainly we find many antichrists who profess Christ with the mouth and differ from Christ in their conduct. Where do we find this in Scripture? Hear the apostle Paul: speaking of such men, he says, "For they confess that they know God, but they deny him by their deeds." We have found these antichrists too: whoever denies Christ by his deeds is an antichrist. I do not listen to what he says, but I see how he lives. Works speak, and do we look for words? For what bad man does not wish to speak well? But what does the Lord say to such men? "Hypocrites, how can you speak good things, when you are evil?" You bring your voices to my ears; I look into your thoughts: I see an evil will there, and you show false fruits. I know where to gather what; I do not gather figs from thistles, I do not gather grapes from thorns. "For each tree is known by its fruit." The antichrist who professes with the mouth that Jesus is the Christ and denies it by his deeds is the more a liar. He is a liar for this reason, that he says one thing and does another.

Now, then, brothers, if deeds are to be questioned, we find not only that many antichrists have gone outside, but that many not yet manifest have not gone outside at all. For all the perjurers, cheats, sorcerers, consulters of fortune-tellers, adulterers, drunkards, usurers, slave-dealers that the Church has, and all the rest that we cannot list, are contrary to the teaching of Christ, contrary to the word of God; and the Word of God is Christ: whatever is contrary to the Word of God is in the Antichrist. For the Antichrist is one contrary to Christ. And do you want to know how openly these men resist Christ? Sometimes it happens that they do something evil and begin to be rebuked; since they do not dare to blaspheme Christ, they blaspheme his ministers, by whom they are rebuked. But if you show them that you are speaking the words of Christ, not your own words, they try as hard as they can to prove that you are speaking your own words, not the words of Christ; and if it becomes plain that you are speaking the words of Christ, they go against Christ too and begin to find fault with Christ: "How," they say, "and why did he make us like this?" Do not men say this every day when convicted of their deeds? Perverted by an evil will, they accuse the maker. The maker cries to them from heaven (for he made us who also remade us): "What did I make you? I made man, not avarice; I made man, not robbery; I made man, not adultery. You have heard that my works praise me." From the mouth of the three young men came that very hymn which protected them from the fire. The works of the Lord praise the Lord; heaven, earth, and sea praise him; all that is in heaven praises him; the angels praise him, the stars praise him, the lights praise him; whatever swims, whatever flies, whatever walks, whatever creeps, all these praise the Lord. Have you heard that avarice praises the Lord? Have you heard that drunkenness praises the Lord, that luxury praises him, that frivolity praises him? Whatever you do not hear there giving praise to the Lord, the Lord did not make. Correct what you have made, so that what God made in you may be set free. But if you will not, and you love and embrace your sins, you are contrary to Christ. Whether you are inside or outside, you are an antichrist; whether you are inside or outside, you are chaff. But why are you not outside? Because you have not found the chance of a wind.

Now these things are plain, brothers. Let no one say, "I do not worship Christ, but I worship God his Father." "Everyone who denies the Son has neither the Son nor the Father; and he who confesses the Son has both the Son and the Father." He is addressing the grain; and let those who were chaff hear and become grain. Let each one, considering his own conscience, if he is a lover of the world, be changed; let him become a lover of Christ, so as not to be an antichrist. If anyone tells him that he is an antichrist, he gets angry, he thinks a wrong has been done to him; perhaps he threatens a lawsuit if he hears from someone quarrelling with him that he is an antichrist. Christ says to him: "Be patient; if you have heard what is false, rejoice with me, because I too hear false things from antichrists; but if you have heard what is true, meet your own conscience; and if you fear to hear it, fear more to be it."

"So let what you heard from the beginning abide in you. If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, you too will abide in the Son and the Father. And this is the promise which he himself has promised us." For perhaps you might ask about the reward, and say: "See, I keep in me what I heard from the beginning, I obey; I endure dangers, labours, temptations for the sake of this abiding: with what fruit? With what reward? What will he give me afterwards, since in this world I see myself labouring among temptations? I see no rest here; mortality itself weighs down the soul, and the corruptible body presses it down to lower things. But I bear all things, so that what I heard from the beginning may abide in me; and I will say to my God, Because of the words of your lips I have kept hard ways." To what reward, then? Hear, and do not faint. If you were fainting in your labours, be strong at the reward promised. Who is there who works in a vineyard and lets slip from his heart what he is to receive? Make him forget his wages, and his hands fail. The memory of the promised wages makes him persevere in the work; and it was a man who promised, who can deceive you. How much stronger ought you to be in God's field, when the Truth has promised, who can neither be succeeded nor die nor deceive the one to whom the promise is made? And what is promised? Let us see what he has promised. Is it gold, which men love so much here, or silver? Or possessions, for which men pour out gold, much as they love gold? Or pleasant estates, spacious houses, many slaves, numerous animals? This is not the kind of reward to which he urges us, so that we may endure in labour. What is this reward called? Eternal life. You have heard, and you cried out with joy: love what you have heard, and you are set free from your labours into the rest of eternal life. See what God promises: eternal life. See what God threatens: eternal fire. What does he say to those set at his right hand? "Come, blessed of my Father, receive the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world." To those on the left, what? "Go into the eternal fire, which was prepared for the devil and his angels." If you do not yet love the one, at least fear the other.

Remember, then, my brothers, that Christ has promised us eternal life: "This," he says, "is the promise which he himself has promised us, eternal life. I have written these things to you about those who are leading you astray." Let no one lead you astray to death; desire the promise of eternal life. What can the world promise? Let it promise what it likes; perhaps it is making a promise to one who will die tomorrow. And with what face will you go out to him who abides for ever? "But a powerful man threatens me, to make me do something evil." What does he threaten? Prisons, chains, fires, tortures, wild beasts: does he threaten eternal fire? Shudder at what the Almighty threatens, love what the Almighty promises; and the whole world becomes cheap, whether it promises or terrifies. "I have written these things to you about those who are leading you astray, so that you may know that you have an anointing, and let the anointing which we have received from him abide in us." The anointing has its sacrament, its visible sign; the power itself is invisible; the invisible anointing is the Holy Spirit; the invisible anointing is that love which, in whomever it is, will be like a root to him: however hot the sun burns, it cannot wither. Everything that is rooted is nourished by the heat of the sun, not withered.

"And you have no need that anyone should teach you, because his anointing teaches you about all things." What, then, are we doing, brothers, in teaching you? If his anointing teaches you about all things, it seems we labour without cause. And why do we shout so much? Let us leave you to his anointing, and let his anointing teach you. But now I put a question to myself, and I put it to the apostle himself; let him deign to hear a little one asking him; I say to John himself, "Did those to whom you were speaking have the anointing? You said, His anointing teaches you about all things. Why did you write such an Epistle? What were you teaching them? What were you instructing? What were you building up?" Here now see a great mystery, brothers: the sound of our words strikes the ears; the teacher is within. Do not think that anyone learns anything from a man. We can admonish by the noise of our voice; if there is not one within who teaches, our noise is empty. So true is this, brothers: do you want to know? Have you not all heard this sermon? How many will go out from here untaught? As far as I am concerned, I have spoken to all; but those to whom that anointing does not speak within, whom the Holy Spirit does not teach within, go back untaught. Outward teachings are a kind of help and admonition. He who teaches hearts has his chair in heaven. That is why he himself says in the Gospel: "Do not call anyone on earth your teacher; one is your teacher, Christ." So let him speak to you within, since no man is there; for even if someone is at your side, no one is in your heart. And let there not be no one in your heart: let Christ be in your heart; let his anointing be in your heart, lest the heart be thirsty in the wilderness and have no springs to water it. So it is the inner teacher who teaches; Christ teaches; his inspiration teaches. Where his inspiration and his anointing are not, words make a noise outside in vain. These words, brothers, which we speak outwardly, are like a farmer to a tree: he works outwardly, he applies water and the care of cultivation; whatever he applies outwardly, does he form the fruits? Does he clothe the bareness of the branches with the shade of leaves? Does he do any such thing within? But who does this? Hear the farmer, the apostle, and see what we are, and hear the inner teacher: "I planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the growth: so neither he who plants is anything, nor he who waters, but God who gives the growth." This, then, we say to you: whether we plant or water by speaking, we are nothing; but he who gives the growth is God, that is, his anointing, which teaches you about all things.

You remember, brothers, that yesterday's reading ended at this point: "You have no need that anyone should teach you, but the anointing itself teaches you about all things." And this, as I am sure you recall, we explained to you thus: that we who speak to your ears from outside are like workmen applying cultivation to a tree from outside, but we cannot give the growth or form the fruit; and unless he who created you, and redeemed you, and called you, dwelling in you through faith and his Spirit, speaks to you within, we make a noise in vain. How does this appear? Because, though many hear, what is said does not persuade all, but only those to whom God speaks within. And he speaks within to those who make room for him; and those make room for God who make no room for the devil. For the devil wants to dwell in men's hearts and to speak there all that serves to lead them astray. But what does the Lord Jesus say? "The prince of this world has been cast out." Cast out of where? Outside heaven and earth? Outside the fabric of the world? No, outside the hearts of believers. With the invader cast out, let the Redeemer dwell; for he who created is the one who redeemed. And the devil now attacks from outside; he does not conquer the one who possesses within. He attacks from outside by sending in various temptations; but the one to whom God speaks within does not consent, and the anointing of which you have heard.

"And the same anointing," he says, "is true": that is, the very Spirit of the Lord who teaches men cannot lie. "And it is not a lie. As it has taught you, abide in it. And now, little children, abide in him, so that when he appears we may have confidence before him and not be put to shame by him at his coming." You see, brothers: we believe in Jesus whom we have not seen. Those who saw him, who handled him, who heard the word from his mouth, announced him; and to persuade the human race of these things they were sent by him; they did not dare to go of themselves. And where were they sent? You heard when the Gospel was read: "Go, preach the Gospel to every creature that is under heaven." So the disciples were sent everywhere, with signs and wonders bearing witness, so that they might be believed, because they spoke what they had seen. And we believe in him whom we have not seen, and we await his coming. All who await him in faith will rejoice when he comes; those who are without faith will be ashamed when what they do not now see comes. And that shame will not be of one day and pass, as those who are found in some fault and are mocked by men are usually put to shame. That shame will carry the shamed off to the left, to hear, "Go into the eternal fire, which was prepared for the devil and his angels." Let us abide, then, in his words, so as not to be put to shame when he comes. For he himself says in the Gospel to those who had believed in him: "If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples." And as if they asked, "With what fruit?", he says, "And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free." For now our salvation is in hope, not yet in reality: we do not yet hold what has been promised, but hope for it to come. But he who promised is faithful; he does not deceive you: only do not faint, but wait for the promise. For the Truth does not know how to deceive. Do not be a liar, professing one thing and doing another: keep faith, and he keeps the promise. But if you do not keep faith, you have cheated yourself, not he who promised.

"If you know that he is righteous, know that everyone who does righteousness is born of him." Our righteousness now is from faith. Perfect righteousness is only in the angels, and hardly in the angels if they are compared with God; yet if there is any perfect righteousness among the souls and spirits which God created, it is in the holy angels, the righteous, the good, who were turned away by no fall, who did not fall through any pride, but abide always in the contemplation of the Word of God and find nothing else sweet but him by whom they were created: in them is perfect righteousness. But in us it has begun to be from faith, according to the Spirit. You heard when the Psalm was read: "Begin to the Lord in confession." "Begin," he says: the beginning of our righteousness is the confession of sins. You have begun not to defend your sin; you have already started on righteousness. But it will be perfected in you when nothing else will delight you to do, when death is swallowed up in victory, when no desire will tickle, when there will be no wrestling with flesh and blood, when there will be the crown of victory, the triumph over the enemy: then there will be perfect righteousness. Now we are still fighting: if we are fighting, we are in the arena; we strike and are struck; but who will win is awaited. And he wins who, even in the blows he strikes, does not rely on his own strength but on God who encourages him. The devil alone fights against us. If we are with God, we conquer the devil; for if you fight the devil alone, you will be conquered. He is an experienced enemy: how many palms of victory has he won? Consider where he cast us down: that we should be born mortal, he first cast our very origin out of paradise. What, then, is to be done, since he is so experienced? Let the Almighty be invoked against the experienced devil. Let him dwell in you who cannot be conquered, and you will securely conquer him who is used to conquering. But whom? Those in whom God does not dwell. For, that you may know, brothers: Adam, set in paradise, despised God's command and lifted up his neck, as though desiring to be in his own power and unwilling to be subject to God's will, and he fell from that immortality, from that blessedness. But a certain man, already experienced, born mortal, sitting on a dunghill and rotting with worms, conquered the devil. Adam himself conquered too, and that in Job; for Job was of his race. So Adam, conquered in paradise, conquered on the dunghill. When he was in paradise, he listened to the persuasion of the woman whom the devil had sent against him; but when he was on the dunghill, he said to Eve, "You have spoken like one of the foolish women." There he lent his ear; here he gave an answer. When he was happy, he listened; when he was scourged, he conquered. So see what follows, brothers, in this Epistle; for it commends this to us, that we conquer the devil indeed, but not of ourselves. "If you know that he is righteous," he says, "know that everyone who does righteousness is born of him": of God, of Christ. And because he said, "is born of him", he encourages us. So now, because we are born of him, we are perfect.

Hear: "See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God, and are." For those who are called so and are not, what good is the name to them when the reality is not there? How many are called doctors who do not know how to heal? How many are called watchmen who sleep all night? So many are called Christians and are not found to be so in reality, because they are not what they are called, that is, in life, in conduct, in faith, in hope, in love. But here what have you heard, brothers? "See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God, and are. Because of this the world does not know us, because it did not know him; and the world does not know us." The whole world is Christian, and the whole world is ungodly; for throughout the whole world there are ungodly, and throughout the whole world there are godly: the former do not know the latter. How do we think they do not know them? They mock those who live well. Attend and see, for perhaps there are such among you too. Each of you who now lives godly, who despises worldly things, who will not go to the shows, who will not get drunk as if by custom and, what is worse, become unclean under the patronage of holy days: whoever has refused to do these things, how is he mocked by those who do them? Would he be mocked if he were known? But why is he not known? The world does not know him. Who is the world? Those inhabitants of the world, as a house is said to be its inhabitants. These things have often been said, and we do not repeat them to weary you. Now when you hear "the world" in a bad sense, understand only the lovers of the world; because they dwell in it by love, and by dwelling in it they have earned the name. "Because of this the world did not know us, because it did not know him." The Lord Jesus Christ himself walked here; he was God in the flesh, hidden in weakness. And why was he not known? Because he rebuked all sins in men. They, loving the pleasures of sins, did not acknowledge God: loving what the fever urged, they did injury to the physician.

What, then, of us? We have already been born of him; but because we are in hope, "Beloved," he says, "now we are children of God." Already now? What, then, do we wait for, if we are already children of God? "And it has not yet appeared," he says, "what we shall be." But what else shall we be than children of God? Hear what follows: "We know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is." Let your Love understand. A great thing: "We know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is." Now attend to what is called "is". You know what is called so. That is called "is" which not only is called so but truly is, is unchangeable; it always abides, it cannot be changed, it is corrupted in no part; nor does it make progress, because it is perfect; nor does it fail, because it is eternal. And what is this? "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." And what is this? "Who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped." In this way the wicked cannot see Christ, in the form of God, the Word of God, the Only-begotten of the Father, equal to the Father. But according to that in which the Word became flesh, the wicked too will be able to see him; for on the day of judgment the wicked too will see him, because he will come to judge in the same way as he had come to be judged. In that same form, man, but God; for "cursed is everyone who puts his hope in man." He came as man to be judged; he will come as man to judge. And if he will not be seen, what is this that is written, "They shall look on him whom they pierced"? For it was said of the ungodly that they will see and be put to shame. How will the ungodly not see, when he places some at the right hand and others at the left? To those placed at the right he will say, "Come, blessed of my Father, receive the kingdom"; to those placed at the left he will say, "Go into the eternal fire." They will see, but the form of a servant; the form of God they will not see. Why? Because they are ungodly; and the Lord himself says, "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." So we are to see a certain sight, brothers, which "eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man": a certain sight, a sight surpassing all earthly beauties, of gold, of silver, of groves and fields, the beauty of sea and air, the beauty of sun and moon, the beauty of the stars, the beauty of the angels; surpassing all things, because from it all things are beautiful.

What, then, shall we be when we see this? What has been promised us? "We shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is." The tongue has sounded it as it could; let the rest be thought in the heart. For what has even John himself said, compared with him who is? Or what can be said by us men, far unequal to his merits? Let us return, then, to that anointing of his; let us return to that anointing which teaches within what we cannot speak; and since you cannot see now, let your task be in longing. The whole life of a good Christian is holy longing. What you long for you do not yet see; but by longing you are made capable, so that when what you are to see comes, you may be filled. For just as, if you want to fill some fold of cloth, and you know how large is what will be given, you stretch the fold of a sack or a wineskin or something else; you know how much you are going to put in, and you see that the fold is narrow; by stretching it you make it more capacious. So God, by deferring, stretches the longing; by longing, he stretches the soul; by stretching, he makes it capable. Let us long, then, brothers, because we are to be filled. See Paul stretching his fold, so as to be able to take in what is to come. For he says, "Not that I have already received, or am already perfect: brothers, I do not consider that I have laid hold of it." What, then, are you doing in this life, if you have not yet laid hold of it? "But one thing: forgetting what lies behind, stretched out to what lies ahead, I press on with intent toward the prize of the upward call." He said he was stretched out, and he said he pressed on with intent. He felt himself too small to take in what "eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man". This is our life, to be exercised by longing. And holy longing exercises us in so far as we have cut off our longings from love of the world. We have said already at times: empty what is to be filled. You are to be filled with good; pour out the bad. Suppose God wants to fill you with honey: if you are full of vinegar, where will you put the honey? What the vessel was carrying must be poured out; the vessel itself must be cleaned; it must be cleaned, though with labour, with scouring, so that it may become fit for something. Let us say honey, let us say gold, let us say wine; whatever we say of what cannot be said, whatever we want to say, it is called God. And when we say "God", what have we said? Are these two syllables all that we wait for? Whatever, then, we have been able to say is beneath it: let us stretch ourselves out toward him, so that when he comes he may fill us. "For we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is."

"And everyone who has this hope in him." You see that he has set us in hope. You see how the apostle Paul agrees with his fellow apostle: "We have been saved in hope. But hope that is seen is not hope; for who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience." Patience itself exercises longing. Abide, for he abides; and persevere in walking, so that you may arrive; for where you are going will not move away. See: "And everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself, as he too is pure." See how he did not take away free choice, so as to say, "purifies himself". Who purifies us but God? But God does not purify you against your will. So in that you join your will to God, you purify yourself. You purify yourself, not from yourself, but from him who comes to dwell in you. Yet because you do something there by your will, something is attributed to you too. And it is attributed to you so that you may say, as in the Psalm, "Be my helper; do not forsake me." If you say, "Be my helper", you are doing something; for if you do nothing, how does he help?

"Everyone who commits sin commits iniquity too." Let no one say, "Sin is one thing, iniquity another"; let no one say, "I am a sinful man, but I am not wicked." "For everyone who commits sin commits iniquity too. Sin is iniquity." What, then, are we to do about our sins and iniquities? Hear what he says: "And you know that he appeared to take away sin; and in him there is no sin." He in whom there is no sin came to take away sin. For if there were sin in him too, it would have to be taken away from him; he would not take it away. "Everyone who abides in him does not sin." In so far as he abides in him, in so far he does not sin. "Everyone who sins has not seen him, nor known him." This is a great question: "Everyone who sins has not seen him, nor known him." It is no wonder. We have not seen him, but we shall see him; we have not known him, but we shall know him: we believe in him whom we have not known. Or perhaps we have known him by faith, and not yet known him by sight? But in faith we have both seen and known. For if faith does not yet see, why are we called enlightened? There is enlightenment by faith, there is enlightenment by sight. Now, while we are on pilgrimage, we walk by faith, not by sight. So our righteousness too is by faith, not by sight. Our righteousness will be perfect when we see by sight. Meanwhile let us not abandon that righteousness which is from faith, since "the righteous lives by faith", as the apostle says. "Whoever abides in him does not sin. For everyone who sins has not seen him, nor known him." This man who sins does not believe; but if he believes, as far as his faith is concerned, he does not sin.

"Little children, let no one lead you astray. Whoever does righteousness is righteous, as he too is righteous." When we hear that we are righteous as he is, ought we to think ourselves equal to God? You ought to know what "as" means; for he said a while ago, "He purifies himself, as he too is pure." So is our purity now on a par with and equal to the purity of God, and our righteousness to the righteousness of God? Who would say this? But "as" is not always said of equality. For example, if someone who has seen this spacious basilica wants to make a smaller one, but in proportion to its measurements, so that, for example, if this one is one measure wide and twice as long, he too makes his one measure wide and twice as long: he seems to have made it as this one is. But this one has, say, a hundred cubits, that one thirty: it is "as" this one, and it is unequal. You see that "as" is not always referred to parity and equality. For example, see how great a difference there is between a man's face and its image in a mirror: a face in the image, a face in the body; an image by imitation, a body in truth. And what do we say? As there are eyes here, so there too; as there are ears here, so there are ears there too. The thing is unlike; but "as" is said of likeness. So we too have the image of God; but not that which the Son, equal to the Father, has. Yet if we too, in our small measure, were not "as" he is, we would be called like him in no respect. So he purifies us as he too is pure; but he is pure by eternity, we are pure by faith. We are righteous as he too is righteous; but he in his unchangeable everlastingness, we righteous by believing in him whom we do not see, so that one day we may see him. And when our righteousness is perfected, when we have been made equal to the angels, not even then will it be made equal to him. How far from him, then, is it now, when not even then will it be on a par?

"Whoever commits sin is of the devil, because the devil sins from the beginning." "Is of the devil": you know what he means: by imitating the devil. For the devil made no one, begot no one, created no one; but whoever has imitated the devil becomes, as though born of him, a child of the devil by imitating, not by being properly born. How are you a child of Abraham? Did Abraham beget you? In the way that the Jews, children of Abraham, by not imitating Abraham's faith, became children of the devil: they were born of Abraham's flesh, and did not imitate Abraham's faith. If, then, those who were born of him were disinherited because they did not imitate him, you who were not born of him are made his child, and you will be his child in this way, by imitating. And if you have imitated the devil, because he stood out proud and ungodly against God, you will be a child of the devil by imitating, not because he created you or begot you.

"For this purpose the Son of God appeared." Come, brothers: all sinners are born of the devil, in so far as they are sinners. Adam was made by God; but when he consented to the devil, he was born of the devil, and he begot all to be such as he was. We were born with that very concupiscence; and before we add our own debts, we are born from that condemnation. For if we are born with no sin, why do people run to baptism with infants, so that they may be released? Attend, brothers, to the two births, Adam and Christ: there are two men; but one of them is a man who is man, the other a man who is God. Through the man who is man we are sinners; through the man who is God we are justified. That birth cast us down to death; this birth raised us up to life. That birth draws sin with it; this birth sets us free from sin. For Christ came as man for this reason, to loose the sins of men. "For this purpose the Son of God appeared, that he might loose the works of the devil."

The rest I commend to your Love, so as not to burden you. For this is the very question we labour to solve: that we call ourselves sinners; for if anyone says he is without sin, he is a liar. And in this same Epistle of John we find: "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves." For you ought to remember the earlier words: "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us." And again in what follows you hear: "Whoever is born of God does not sin." "Whoever commits sin has not seen him, nor known him." "Everyone who commits sin is of the devil." Sin is not from God. Again he terrifies us. How are we born of God, and how do we confess ourselves sinners? Are we going to say that we are not born of God? And what are these sacraments doing in infants? What did John say? "Whoever is born of God does not sin." John himself also said, "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us." It is a great and difficult question; and I would have your Love intent on solving it. In the name of the Lord, tomorrow we shall discuss what he grants on it.

Listen attentively, I beg you, because no small matter is before us; and I do not doubt that you were attentive yesterday, since today you have gathered more attentively still. For it is no small question how he says in this Epistle, "Whoever is born of God does not sin", and how in the same Epistle he said earlier, "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us." What is a man to do who is hemmed in between both sayings of the same Epistle? If he confesses himself a sinner, he fears that it will be said to him, "Then you are not born of God; for it is written, Whoever is born of God does not sin." But if he says that he is righteous and has no sin, he receives a blow from the other side from the same Epistle: "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us." Set in the middle, then, a man does not find what to say, what to confess, or what to profess. To profess that he is without sin is dangerous; and not only dangerous but false: "We deceive ourselves," he says, "and the truth is not in us, if we say that we have no sin." Would that you had none, and said so! For you would be speaking the truth, and in uttering the truth you would not fear even a trace of iniquity. But you do wrong if you say it, because you are telling a lie: "The truth," he says, "is not in us if we say that we have no sin." He did not say, "We have not had"; lest perhaps it should seem to be said of the past life. For this man had sins; but from the time he was born of God he began not to have them. If it were so, no question would hem us in. For we would say, "We were sinners, but now we have been justified; we had sin, but now we do not have it." He does not say this; but what does he say? "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us." A little later he says again, "Whoever is born of God does not sin." Was not John himself born of God? If John was not born of God, he of whom you have heard that he reclined on the Lord's breast, does anyone dare to promise himself that regeneration has taken place in him, which he did not attain who was worthy to recline on the Lord's breast? Had the Lord not begotten of the Spirit the one man whom he loved more than the others?

Attend now to these words. I still commend our difficulties to you, so that through your attention, which is prayer both for us and for you, God may enlarge them and give a way out; lest anyone find in his word the occasion of his own ruin, a word which was preached and written only for healing and salvation. "Everyone," he says, "who commits sin commits iniquity too." Lest perhaps you draw a distinction: "Sin is iniquity." Do not say, "I am a sinner, but I am not wicked": "Sin is iniquity." "And you know that he appeared for this, to take away sins; and in him there is no sin." And what good is it to us that he came without sin? "Everyone who does not sin abides in him; and everyone who sins has not seen him, nor known him. Little children, let no one lead you astray. Whoever does righteousness is righteous, as he too is righteous." We have already said that "as" is usually said according to a certain likeness, not according to equality. "Whoever commits sin is of the devil, because the devil sins from the beginning." We have said this too, that the devil created no one and begot no one, but his imitators are born of him, as it were. "For this purpose the Son of God appeared, that he might loose the works of the devil." So he who has no sin came to loose sins. Then there follows: "Everyone who is born of God does not commit sin, because his seed abides in him; and he cannot sin, because he is born of God." He has bound it tightly. Perhaps he said "does not sin" with reference to a certain sin, not with reference to every sin: so that by "Whoever is born of God does not sin" you are to understand a certain particular sin, which a man who is born of God cannot commit; and that sin is such that, if anyone commits it, he confirms the others, but if anyone does not commit it, he looses the others. What is this sin? To act against the commandment. What is the commandment? "A new commandment I give you, that you love one another." Attend. This commandment of Christ is called love; through this love sins are loosed. If this is not held, it is both a grave sin and the root of all sins.

Attend, brothers: we have put forward something by which the question has been solved for those who understand well. But are we to walk the road only with the quicker ones? Those who walk more slowly are not to be left behind. Let us turn this over in whatever words we can, so that it may reach all. For I think, brothers, that every man is anxious about his soul who does not enter the church without cause, who does not seek temporal things in the church, who does not enter it in order to transact worldly business, but enters in order to hold fast something eternal promised to him, at which he may arrive: he must consider how to walk on the way, so as not to stay behind, not to go back, not to stray, not to fail to arrive by limping. Whoever is anxious, then, whether he is slow or swift, let him not leave the way. So I said this, that "whoever is born of God does not sin" was perhaps meant to be understood of a certain sin; for otherwise it will contradict that place: "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us." So the question can be solved in this way. There is a certain sin which one who is born of God cannot commit; and when it is not committed, the others are loosed; when it is committed, the others are confirmed. What is this sin? To act against the commandment of Christ, against the new testament. What is the new commandment? "A new commandment I give you, that you love one another." Whoever acts against love and against brotherly love, let him not dare to boast and say that he is born of God; but whoever is set in brotherly love, there are certain sins which he cannot commit, and above all this, that he should hate his brother. And what does he do about the other sins, of which it was said, "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us"? Let him hear security from another place in Scripture: "Love covers a multitude of sins."

So we commend love; this Epistle commends love. After the resurrection, what else did the Lord ask Peter but "Do you love me?" And it was not enough to ask once; and a second time nothing else, and a third time nothing else. Though by the third time Peter was grieved, as though the Lord did not believe him, as if he did not know what was going on in him, yet he asked this a first, a second, and a third time. Three times fear denied, three times love confessed. See, Peter loves the Lord. What will he render to the Lord? For he too was troubled, as in that psalm: "What shall I render to the Lord for all that he has rendered to me?" For the one who said this in the Psalm was considering how much had been granted him by God; and he was seeking what he might render to God, and he did not find it. For whatever you wish to render, you have received from him in order to give it back. And what did he find to render? What, as we said, brothers, he had received from him: this he found to render. "I will take the cup of salvation, and call upon the name of the Lord." For who had given him the cup of salvation, but he to whom he wanted to render? But to take the cup of salvation and to call upon the name of the Lord is to be filled with love; and so filled that you not only do not hate your brother, but are ready to die for your brother. This is perfect love, that you are ready to die for your brother. The Lord himself showed it in himself, dying for all, praying for those by whom he was being crucified, and saying, "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do." But if he alone had done this, he was not a teacher, if he had no disciples. The disciples who followed did this. Stephen was being stoned, and, kneeling, he said, "Lord, do not hold this sin against them." He loved those by whom he was being killed, because he was dying for them too. Hear the apostle Paul too: "And I myself," he says, "will be spent for your souls." For he was among those for whom Stephen was praying when he was dying at their hands. This, then, is perfect love. If anyone has so great a love that he is ready to die even for his brothers, love is perfect in him. But is it utterly perfect as soon as it is born? It is born in order to be perfected: when it has been born, it is nourished; when it has been nourished, it is strengthened; when it has been strengthened, it is perfected. When it has come to perfection, what does it say? "For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. I desired to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better; but to remain in the flesh is necessary for your sake." He wanted to live for those for whom he was ready to die.

And that you may know that this is the perfect love which one who is born of God does not violate and against which he does not sin, the Lord says this to Peter: "Peter, do you love me?" And he: "I love you." He does not say, "If you love me, wait on me." For when the Lord was in mortal flesh, he was hungry and thirsty; at that time, when he was hungry and thirsty, he was received as a guest; those who had means ministered to him from their substance, as we read in the Gospel. Zacchaeus received him as a guest: he was saved from his disease when he received the physician. From what disease? From avarice. For he was very rich and the chief of the tax collectors. Attend to the man healed of the disease of avarice: "Half of my goods," he says, "I give to the poor; and if I have taken anything from anyone, I will restore fourfold." So he kept the other half, not to enjoy it, but to pay his debts from it. So he then received the physician as a guest, because there was weakness of flesh in the Lord, for which men might offer him this service; and this because he wished to benefit those who served him; for it profited them, not him. For he whom angels served, did he need their service? Not even his servant Elijah ever needed this, to whom he sent bread and meat by a raven; and yet, that a devout widow might be blessed, the servant of God is sent, and he whom God was feeding in secret is fed by a widow. Nevertheless, although those who consider the needs of God's servants do good to themselves by it, because of that reward set down most plainly by the Lord in the Gospel, "Whoever receives a righteous man in the name of a righteous man will receive a righteous man's reward; and whoever receives a prophet in the name of a prophet will receive a prophet's reward; and whoever gives a cup of cold water to one of these least ones only in the name of a disciple, truly I tell you, he will not lose his reward"; although, then, those who do this do good to themselves, yet not even this could be offered to one who was about to ascend into heaven. What could Peter, who loved him, render to him? Hear what: "Feed my sheep"; that is, "Do for the brothers what I have done for you. I have redeemed all with my blood: do not hesitate to die for the confession of the truth, so that the rest may imitate you."

But this, as we have said, brothers, is perfect love; whoever is born of God has it. Let your Love attend; see what I am saying. See, a baptized man has received the sacrament of birth; he has the sacrament, and a great sacrament, divine, holy, ineffable. Consider what kind: that it makes a new man by the forgiveness of all sins. Yet let him look into his heart, whether what has been done in the body has been perfected there: let him see whether he has love, and then let him say, "I am born of God." But if he does not have it, he has indeed the mark set on him, but he wanders as a deserter. Let him have love; otherwise let him not say that he is born of God. "But I have the sacrament," he says. Hear the apostle: "If I know all mysteries, and have all faith, so as to move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing."

This, if you remember, we commended when we began to read this Epistle: that nothing is so commended to us in it as love. And if it seems to say one thing and another, it makes its way back there, and wants to refer to love itself whatever it has said. Let us see whether it does this here too. Attend: "Everyone who is born of God does not commit sin." We ask what sin; because if you understand every sin, it will contradict that place: "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us." So let him say what sin; let him teach us; lest perhaps I have rashly said that this sin is the violation of love, because above he said, "He who hates his brother is in darkness, and walks in darkness, and does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded his eyes." But perhaps he has said something in what follows, and named love. See that this winding of words has this end, this outcome. "Everyone who is born of God does not sin, because his seed abides in him." The seed of God, that is, the word of God; hence the apostle says, "Through the Gospel I begot you." "And he cannot sin, because he is born of God." Let him say this; let us see in what he cannot sin. "By this the children of God and the children of the devil are made manifest. Everyone who is not righteous is not of God, and he who does not love his brother." Certainly it is now plain of what he is speaking: "And he who does not love," he says, "his brother." So love alone distinguishes between the children of God and the children of the devil. Let all sign themselves with the sign of the cross of Christ; let all answer Amen; let all sing Alleluia; let all be baptized, enter churches, build the walls of basilicas: the children of God are not distinguished from the children of the devil except by love. Those who have love are born of God; those who do not have it are not born of God. A great sign, a great distinction. Have whatever you like; if you do not have this alone, it profits you nothing; if you do not have other things, have this, and you have fulfilled the law. "For whoever loves another has fulfilled the law," says the apostle; and, "Love is the fulfilment of the law." I think this is that pearl which the merchant in the Gospel is described as seeking, who found one pearl and sold all that he had and bought it. This is the precious pearl, love, without which whatever you have profits you nothing; and if you have it alone, it is enough for you. Now you see by faith; then you will see by sight. For if we love when we do not see, how shall we embrace when we have seen? But where ought we to exercise ourselves? In brotherly love. You can say to me, "I have not seen God"; can you say to me, "I have not seen man"? Love your brother. For if you love your brother whom you see, you will see God at the same time; because you will see love itself, and God dwells within.

"Whoever is not righteous is not of God, and he who does not love his brother. For this is the message": see how he confirms it: "For this is the message which we have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another." He has made it plain to us that he is speaking of this: whoever acts against this commandment is in that wicked sin into which those fall who are not born of God. "Not as Cain, who was of the evil one and killed his brother. And why did he kill him? Because his own works were evil, and his brother's righteous." So where there is envy, there can be no brotherly love. Let your Love attend. Whoever envies does not love. The sin of the devil is in him; because the devil too cast down by envying. For he fell, and envied the one who stood. He did not want to cast him down so that he himself might stand, but so as not to fall alone. Keep in mind from what he has added that envy cannot exist in love. You have it openly when love itself is being praised: "Love does not envy." There was no love in Cain; and if there had not been love in Abel, God would not have accepted his sacrifice. For when both had offered, the one of the fruits of the earth, the other of the young of the sheep, what do you think, brothers: that God disregarded the fruits of the earth and loved the young of the sheep? God did not look at the hands; he saw into the heart; and whom he saw offering with love, he regarded his sacrifice; whom he saw offering with envy, he turned his eyes away from his sacrifice. So by Abel's good works he means nothing but love; by Cain's evil works nothing but hatred of his brother. It is not enough that he hated his brother and envied his good works: because he would not imitate, he chose to kill. And from this it appeared that he was a child of the devil, and from this the other appeared as God's righteous one. From this, then, men are distinguished, my brothers. Let no one attend to tongues, but to deeds and the heart. If someone does not do good for his brothers, he shows what he has in himself. Men are proved by temptations.

"Do not wonder, brothers, if the world hates us." Must I often tell you what the world is? Not heaven, not earth, nor these works which God made, but the lovers of the world. By saying this often I am burdensome to some; but I say it so far from in vain that some are asked whether I have said it, and they do not answer. So at least by driving it in let something stick in the hearts of the hearers. What is the world? The world, when it is taken in a bad sense, is the lovers of the world; the world, when it is taken in praise, is heaven and earth and the works of God in them; hence it is said, "And the world was made through him." Again, the world is the fullness of the earth, as John himself said, "And he is the propitiation not only for our sins but also for those of the whole world." By "the world" he means all the faithful scattered throughout the earth. But the world in a bad sense is the lovers of the world. Those who love the world cannot love their brother.

"The world hates us"; "we know." What do we know? "That we have passed from death to life." How do we know? "Because we love the brothers." Let no one question another man; let each return to his own heart: if he finds brotherly love there, let him be secure, because he has passed from death to life. He is already on the right hand: let him not mind that his glory is hidden now; when the Lord comes, then he will appear in glory. For he is alive, but still in winter; the root is alive, but the branches seem dry; within is the pith that is alive, within are the leaves of the trees, within the fruits; but they wait for summer. So "we know that we have passed from death to life, because we love the brothers. He who does not love abides in death." Lest you think, brothers, that it is a light thing to hate or not to love, hear what follows: "Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer." Now, then, if anyone thought little of hating his brother, will he think little of murder in his heart too? He does not move his hands to kill a man, yet he is already held a murderer by the Lord; the other is alive, and this man is already judged a killer. "Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer. And you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him."

"By this we know love." He means the perfection of love, that perfection which we have commended. "By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers." See where "Peter, do you love me? Feed my sheep" came from. For, that you may know that he wanted his sheep to be fed by him in such a way that he would lay down his life for the sheep, he said this to him at once: "When you were young, you used to gird yourself and go where you wished; but when you are older, another will gird you and carry you where you do not wish." "And he said this," says the evangelist, "signifying by what death he was to glorify God": so that he might teach the one to whom he had said, "Feed my sheep", to lay down his life for his sheep.

Where does love begin, brothers? Attend a little. You have heard where it is perfected; the Lord too commended its very end and measure in the Gospel: "No one has greater love," he says, "than to lay down his life for his friends." So he showed its perfection in the Gospel, and here too its perfection has been commended. But you ask, and say to yourselves, "When can we have this love?" Do not despair of yourself too quickly: perhaps it has been born, but is not yet perfected; nourish it, lest it be choked. But you will say to me, "And how do I know?" We have heard where it is perfected; let us hear where it begins. He goes on and says: "But whoever has the goods of the world, and sees his brother hungry, and shuts up his heart against him, how can the love of God abide in him?" See where love begins. If you are not yet fit to die for your brother, be fit now to give to your brother from your goods. Let love now strike your heart, so that you do not do it out of boasting, but from the inmost marrow of mercy; so that you consider him set in need. For if you cannot give your superfluous goods to your brother, can you lay down your life for your brother? Money lies in your purse, which thieves can take from you; and if thieves do not take it, you will leave it by dying, even if it does not leave you while you live. What are you going to do with it? Your brother is hungry, he is in need; perhaps he is in suspense, pressed by a creditor; he does not have it, you have it: he is your brother; you were bought together; your price is one; you were both redeemed by the blood of Christ. See whether you have mercy, if you have the goods of the world. "What has it to do with me?" you perhaps say. "Am I to give my money so that he may not suffer trouble?" If your heart has answered you this, "the love of the Father does not abide in you." If the love of the Father does not abide in you, you are not born of God. How do you boast of being a Christian? You have the name, and you do not have the deeds. But if the work has followed the name, let anyone call you a pagan; show by your deeds that you are a Christian. For if you do not show by your deeds that you are a Christian, though all call you a Christian, what does the name profit you, where the reality is not found? "But whoever has the goods of the world, and sees his brother in need, and shuts up his heart against him, how can the love of God abide in him?" And there follows: "Little children, let us not love in word only and with the tongue, but in deed and in truth."

I think, my brothers, that a great and necessary secret and mystery has been made plain to you. All Scripture commends the value of love; but I do not know whether it is commended more fully anywhere than in this Epistle. We ask and beseech you in the Lord both to keep in memory what you have heard, and to come attentive and listen attentively to what is still to be said until the Epistle itself is finished. And open your heart to the good seeds: root out the thorns, lest what is sown in you be choked, but rather let the crop grow; and let the farmer rejoice, and prepare a barn for you as for grain, not fire as for chaff.

If you remember, brothers, we closed yesterday's sermon at this sentence, which beyond doubt ought to have remained, and ought to remain, in your hearts, because it was the last you heard: "Little children, let us not love in word only and with the tongue, but in deed and in truth." Then there follows: "And by this we know that we are of the truth, and we persuade our heart before him; for if our heart thinks ill of us, God is greater than our heart, and knows all things." He had said, "Let us not love in word only and with the tongue, but in deed and in truth": we are asked by what deed and in what truth one who loves God, or who loves his brother, is recognised. Earlier he had already said how far love is perfected, which the Lord too says in the Gospel, "No one has greater love than this, to lay down his life for his friends"; and he had said, "As he laid down his life for us, we too ought to lay down our lives for the brothers." This is the perfection of love, and nothing greater at all can be found. But since it is not perfect in all, the one in whom it is not perfect ought not to despair, if it has already been born, so as to be perfected; and certainly, if it has been given, it must be nourished and brought by certain nourishment of its own to its proper perfection. We looked for the beginning of love, where it starts, and we found it there at once: "If anyone has the goods of the world, and sees his brother in need, and shuts up his heart against him, how does the love of the Father abide in him?" So here this love begins, brothers: that a man should give from his superfluity to one in need, set in some distress; that from what he has in abundance for the time, he should free his brother from temporal trouble. This is the start of love. If you nourish it, thus begun, with the word of God and the hope of the life to come, you will come to that perfection of being ready to lay down your life for your brothers.

But since many such things are done by those who seek other things and who do not love the brothers, let us be called back to the witness of conscience. How do we prove that many such things are done by those who do not love the brothers? How many in heresies and schisms call themselves martyrs! They seem to themselves to be laying down their lives for the brothers. If they were laying down their lives for the brothers, they would not separate themselves from the whole brotherhood. Again, how many there are who give much and bestow much for the sake of boasting, and seek nothing there but human praise and popular glory, full of wind and made firm by no stability! Since, then, there are such men, where will brotherly love be proved? Because he wanted it to be proved, he said in admonition, "Little children, let us not love in word only and with the tongue, but in deed and in truth." We ask: in what deed, in what truth? Can there be a more manifest deed than giving to the poor? Many do this from boasting, not from love. Can there be a greater deed than dying for the brothers? This too many wish to be thought to do, from boasting, to win a name, not from the heart of love. It remains that he loves his brother who before God, where God alone sees, persuades his own heart, and asks his heart whether he truly does this for love of the brothers; and the eye which penetrates the heart, where man cannot look, bears him witness. That is why the apostle Paul, because he was ready to die for the brothers and said, "I myself will be spent for your souls", yet since God saw this in his heart, not the men to whom he spoke, said to them, "But to me it is a very small thing to be judged by you or by any human day." And he himself shows in a certain place that such things are often done from empty boasting, not on the firm ground of love; for, speaking in praise of love itself, he says, "If I distribute all I have to the poor, and give my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing." Can anyone do this without love? He can. For those who do not have love have divided unity. Look there, and you will see many giving much to the poor; you will see others ready to undergo death, so that, when the persecutor holds back, they throw themselves over cliffs: these without doubt do this without love. Let us be called back, then, to conscience, of which the apostle says, "For our glory is this, the testimony of our conscience." Let us be called back to conscience, of which the same apostle says, "But let each one test his own work, and then he will have glory in himself and not in another." So let each of us test his own work, whether it flows from the vein of love, whether the branches of good works sprout from the root of love. "But let each one test his own work," he says, "and then he will have glory in himself and not in another": not when another's tongue bears witness to him, but when his own conscience bears witness.

This, then, is what he commends here. "By this we know that we are of the truth", when we love in deed and in truth, not in words and with the tongue only; "and we persuade our heart before him." What does "before him" mean? Where he himself sees. Hence the Lord himself says in the Gospel: "Beware of doing your righteousness before men in order to be seen by them; otherwise you will have no reward with your Father who is in heaven." And what does "Let not your left hand know what your right hand is doing" mean, but that the right hand is a pure conscience, the left the desire of the world? Many do many wonderful things through desire of the world: the left hand is working, not the right. The right hand ought to work, and without the left hand knowing, so that the desire of the world does not mix itself in when we do something good from love. And where do we know this? You are before God: question your heart; see what you have done and what you sought there, your salvation or the windy praise of men. Look within; for man cannot judge what he cannot see. If "we persuade our heart", let us persuade it "before him". "For if our heart thinks ill of us", that is, accuses us within because we do not do what is to be done in the right spirit, "God is greater than our heart, and knows all things." You hide your heart from man; hide it from God if you can. How will you hide it from him, to whom a certain sinner, fearing and confessing, said, "Where shall I go from your Spirit, and where shall I flee from your face?" He was seeking where to flee, so as to escape the judgment of God, and he did not find it. For where is God not? "If I ascend into heaven," he says, "you are there; if I descend into hell, you are present." Where will you go? Where will you flee? Do you want to hear advice? If you want to flee from him, flee to him. Flee to him by confessing, not from him by hiding: for you cannot hide, but you can confess. Say to him, "You are my refuge"; and let love be nourished in you, which alone leads to life. Let your conscience bear you witness that it is from God. If it is from God, do not wish to boast of it before men; for neither do men's praises lift you up to heaven, nor do their reproaches put you down from there. Let him see who crowns; let him be the witness by whose judgment you are crowned. "God is greater than our heart, and knows all things."

"Beloved, if our heart does not think ill of us, we have confidence toward God." What does "if our heart does not think ill" mean? If it answers us truly that we love, and that there is genuine love in us: not feigned but sincere, seeking a brother's salvation, expecting no profit from a brother except his salvation. "We have confidence toward God; and whatever we ask we shall receive from him, because we keep his commandments." So not in the sight of men, but where God himself sees, in the heart. "So we have confidence toward God; and whatever we ask we shall receive from him", but "because we keep his commandments." What are his commandments? Must it always be repeated? "A new commandment I give you, that you love one another." He speaks of love itself; he commends love itself. Whoever, then, has brotherly love, and has it before God, where God sees, and whose heart, questioned under just examination, gives him no other answer than that the genuine root of love is there, from which good fruits come forth, has confidence with God, and whatever he asks he will receive from him, because he keeps his commandments.

A certain question arises; not about this or that man, or you or me: for if I ask something from the Lord our God and do not receive it, anyone can easily say of me, "He does not have love"; and it can easily be said of any man of this time; and let each think what he likes of another. The question becomes greater only because of those men who are known to have been holy when they wrote, and to be now with God. Who has love, if Paul did not have it, who said, "Our mouth is open to you, Corinthians, our heart is enlarged; you are not restricted in us"; who said, "I will be spent for your souls"; and in whom there was such grace that it was manifest that he had love? Yet we find that he asked and did not receive. What do we say, brothers? It is a question; be intent on God. This too is a great question. Just as in the case of sin, where it was said, "Whoever is born of God does not sin", we found that this sin is the violation of love, and that this was specially meant in that place: so now too we ask what he meant. For if you attend to the words, it seems plain; if to examples, it is obscure. Nothing is plainer than these words: "And whatever we ask we shall receive from him, because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him in his sight." "Whatever we ask," he says, "we shall receive from him." He has hemmed us in tightly. For there too he would have hemmed us in if he had said every sin; but we found room to explain it, because he spoke of a particular sin, not of every sin; of a certain sin which everyone who is born of God does not commit; and we found that this particular sin is the violation of love. And we have a plain example from the Gospel, when the Lord says, "If I had not come, they would not have sin." What then? Had he come to innocent Jews, since he speaks so? So if he had not come, they would have no sin? Did the presence of the physician, then, make the sick man ill, rather than take away the fever? Who, even a madman, would say this? He came only to cure and heal the sick. Why, then, did he say, "If I had not come, they would not have sin", unless because he wanted a particular sin to be understood? For the Jews would not have had a certain sin. What sin? That they did not believe in him, that they despised him when present. So, just as there he said "sin", and it does not follow that we should understand every sin, but a particular sin, so here too it is not every sin (lest it contradict that place where he says, "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us"), but a certain particular sin, that is, the violation of love. But here he has bound us more tightly: if we ask, he says, if our heart does not accuse us, and reports in the sight of God that there is true love in us, "whatever we ask we shall receive from him."

Now I have already said to your Love, brothers, let no one look to us. For what are we? Or what are you? What, but the Church of God, which is known to all? And if it pleases him, we are in it; and let us who abide in it by love persevere there, if we wish to show the love that we have. Yet what evil are we going to think of the apostle Paul? Did he not love the brothers? Was the testimony of his conscience not with him in the sight of God? Was that root of love not in Paul, from which all good fruits came forth? What madman would say this? Where, then, do we find that the apostle asked and did not receive? He says himself: "Lest I be lifted up by the greatness of the revelations, there was given me a thorn in my flesh, an angel of Satan, to buffet me; for this I asked the Lord three times that he would take it away from me; and he said to me, My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness." See, he was not heard, so that the angel of Satan might be taken away from him. But why? Because it was not good for him. So he was heard for his salvation, who was not heard according to his will. Let your Love know a great mystery, which we commend to you so that it may not slip from you in your temptations. The saints are heard in all things for their salvation; they are always heard for eternal salvation; that is what they desire, because according to this they are always heard.

But let us distinguish God's hearings. For we find some not heard according to their will, heard for their salvation; and again we find some heard according to their will and not heard for their salvation. Distinguish this; hold fast this example of one who was not heard according to his will but was heard for his salvation. Hear the apostle Paul; for God showed him that very hearing for his salvation: "My grace is sufficient for you," he says, "for power is made perfect in weakness." "You asked, you cried, you cried three times: the very first time you cried I heard you; I did not turn my ears from you; I know what I am doing. You want the remedy by which you are being cauterised taken away; I know the weakness by which you are weighed down." So this man was heard for his salvation, he was not heard according to his will. Whom do we find heard according to their will, not heard for their salvation? Do we find, do you think, some worthless man, some ungodly man, heard by God according to his will, not heard for his salvation? If I give the example of some man, perhaps you will say to me: "You call him wicked, but he was righteous; if he had not been righteous, he would not have been heard by God." I will give such an example that no one will doubt his wickedness and ungodliness. The devil himself asked for Job, and received him. Have you not heard of the devil too that "whoever commits sin is of the devil"? Not because he created him, but because the other imitates him. Was it not said of him, "He did not stand in the truth"? Is he not that ancient serpent, who through a woman held out poison to the first man? And he kept a woman for Job too, for that very reason, through whom the husband might not be consoled but tempted. The devil himself asked for a holy man to tempt, and received him; the apostle asked that the thorn in the flesh might be taken away from him, and did not receive it. But the apostle was heard more than the devil. For the apostle was heard for his salvation, though not according to his will; the devil was heard according to his will, but for his damnation. For Job was granted to be tempted so that, when he was proved, the devil might be tormented. But this, brothers, we find not only in the old books, but also in the Gospel. The demons asked the Lord, when he was driving them out of a man, to be allowed to go into the pigs. Could the Lord not have told them not to go there either? For if he had not wished it, they would not have rebelled against the King of heaven and earth. Yet for the sake of a certain mystery and by a certain dispensation he let the demons go into the pigs, to show that the devil rules in those who live the life of pigs. Were the demons, then, heard, and the apostle not heard? Or rather, as is truer, let us say: the apostle was heard, the demons were not heard. Their will was done; his health was perfected.

According to this we ought to understand that God, even if he does not give to our will, gives to our salvation. For what if you ask for what harms you, and the physician knows that it harms you? For the physician does not fail to hear you when perhaps you ask for cold water: if it helps, he gives it at once; if it does not help, he does not give it. Did he not hear you, or rather did he hear you for your health, because he went against your will? So let there be love in you, brothers; let it be in you, and be secure; and when what you ask is not given you, you are heard, but you do not know it. Many have been given into their own hands to their own harm, of whom the apostle says, "God gave them up to the desires of their heart." Someone asked for a great sum of money; he received it to his harm. When he did not have it, he had little to fear; he began to have it, and became the prey of someone more powerful. Was he not heard to his harm, who wanted to have something for which a robber might seek him out, whom, when he was poor, no one sought? Learn to ask God in such a way as to entrust yourselves to the physician, to do what he knows. You confess the disease, let him apply the remedy. You only hold fast to love. For he wants to cut, he wants to cauterise: if you cry out and are not heard in the cutting, in the burning and the trouble, he knows how far the rot goes. You already want him to draw back his hand, and he attends to the depth of the wound; he knows how far to go. He does not hear you according to your will, but he hears you for your health. So be sure, my brothers, that what the apostle says is true: "For we do not know what to pray for as we ought; but the Spirit himself intercedes with groanings that cannot be uttered, for he intercedes for the saints." What does "the Spirit himself intercedes for the saints" mean, but love itself, which has been produced in you by the Spirit? That is why the same apostle says, "The love of God has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us." Love itself groans, love itself prays; he who gave it does not know how to close his ears against it. Be secure; let love ask, and the ears of God are there. What you want does not happen, but what is expedient happens. "So whatever we ask," he says, "we shall receive from him." I have said already: if you understand it of salvation, there is no question; if not of salvation, there is a question, and a great one, which makes you a slanderer of the apostle Paul. "Whatever we ask we shall receive from him, because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him in his sight": in his sight, within, where he sees.

And what are those commandments? "This is his commandment," he says, "that we believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another." You see that this is the commandment; you see that whoever acts against this commandment commits the sin from which everyone who is born of God is free. "As he gave us the commandment, that we love one another." "And whoever keeps his commandment": you see that nothing else is commanded us but that we love one another. "And whoever keeps his commandment will abide in him, and he in him. And by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit whom he has given us." Is it not plain that the Holy Spirit does this in a man, that there should be love and charity in him? Is it not plain, as the apostle Paul says, "The love of God has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us"? For he was speaking of love, and saying that in the sight of God we ought to question our heart. "But if our heart does not think ill of us": that is, if it confesses that whatever is done in a good work is done from love of the brother. Moreover, when he spoke of the commandment, he said this: "This is his commandment, that we believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another. And whoever does his commandment abides in him, and he in him. By this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit whom he has given us." For if you find that you have love, you have the Spirit of God for understanding: for it is a very necessary thing.

In the first times the Holy Spirit fell on believers, and they spoke in tongues which they had not learned, as the Spirit gave them utterance. These were signs suited to the time. For it was fitting that the Holy Spirit should be signified thus in all tongues, because the Gospel of God was to run through all tongues in the whole world. That was signified, and it passed. Is it expected now of those on whom a hand is laid so that they may receive the Holy Spirit, that they should speak in tongues? Or when we laid our hand on these infants, did each of you watch whether they would speak in tongues; and when he saw that they did not speak in tongues, was anyone of you so perverse of heart as to say, "These have not received the Holy Spirit; for if they had received him, they would speak in tongues as happened then"? If, then, the testimony of the presence of the Holy Spirit is not now given through these miracles, by what is it given? How does each one know that he has received the Holy Spirit? Let him question his heart: if he loves his brother, the Spirit of God abides in him. Let him see, let him test himself before the eyes of God; let him see whether there is in him love of peace and unity, love of the Church spread through the whole world. Let him not attend only to loving the brother whom he sees before him; for there are many of our brothers whom we do not see, and yet we are joined to them in the unity of the Spirit. What wonder that they are not with us? We are in one body; we have one head in heaven. Brothers, our eyes do not see one another; as it were, they do not know one another. But in the love of the bodily structure do they not know one another? For, that you may know that they know one another in the bond of love: when both are open, the right cannot look at something at which the left does not look. Direct the right ray without the other, if you can. They meet together, they are directed together; the aim is one, the places are different. If, then, all who with you love God have one aim with you, do not mind that in body you are separated in place: you have fixed the gaze of the heart together on the light of truth. So if you want to know that you have received the Spirit, question your heart; lest perhaps you have the sacrament and do not have the power of the sacrament. Question your heart: if love of the brother is there, be secure. There can be no love without the Spirit of God, for Paul cries, "The love of God has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us."

"Beloved, do not believe every spirit." For he had said, "By this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit whom he has given us." But attend to how the Spirit himself is recognised: "Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits whether they are of God." And who is it that tests the spirits? He has set us a hard thing, my brothers; it is good for us that he himself should tell us how to discern. He will tell us; do not be afraid. But first see, attend; see that from this is drawn that over which vain heretics raise their slanders. Attend, see what he says: "Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits whether they are of God." The Holy Spirit is called by the name of water in the Gospel, when the Lord cried out and said, "If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink: whoever believes in me, rivers of living water will flow from his belly." But the evangelist explained of what he was speaking; for he went on to say, "Now he said this of the Spirit whom those who were to believe in him were to receive." Why did the Lord not baptize many? But what does he say? "For the Spirit had not yet been given, because Jesus had not yet been glorified." So since those men had baptism and had not yet received the Holy Spirit, whom the Lord sent from heaven on the day of Pentecost, the glorification of the Lord was being awaited so that the Spirit might be given. And before he was glorified, and before he sent him, he was nevertheless inviting men to prepare themselves to receive the water of which he said, "Whoever thirsts, let him come and drink"; and, "Whoever believes in me, rivers of living water will flow from his belly." What are rivers of living water? What is that water? Let no one ask me; ask the Gospel. "Now he said this," it says, "of the Spirit whom those who were to believe in him were to receive." So the water of the sacrament is one thing, the water which signifies the Spirit of God another. The water of the sacrament is visible; the water of the Spirit is invisible. The one washes the body and signifies what is done in the soul; by that Spirit the soul itself is cleansed and fed. That is the Spirit of God, whom heretics cannot have, and all who cut themselves off from the Church. And whoever do not openly cut themselves off, but are cut off by iniquity, and are tossed about inside like chaff and are not grain, do not have this Spirit. This Spirit was signified by the Lord under the name of water; and we have heard from this Epistle, "Do not believe every spirit"; and those words of Solomon testify, "Keep yourself from strange water." What is the water? The Spirit. Does water always signify the Spirit? Not always: but in some places it signifies the Spirit, in some places it signifies baptism, in some places it signifies peoples, in some places it signifies counsel. You have it said in a certain place, "Counsel is a fountain of life to those who possess it." So in different places of the Scriptures the word water signifies different things. But now you have heard the Holy Spirit called by the name of water, not from our interpretation but from the testimony of the Gospel, where it says, "Now he said this of the Spirit whom those who were to believe in him were to receive." If, then, the Holy Spirit is signified by the name of water, and this Epistle tells us, "Do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits whether they are of God", let us understand that it was said in this sense: "Keep yourself from strange water, and do not drink from a strange fountain." What does "do not drink from a strange fountain" mean? Do not believe a strange spirit.

There remains, then, the test by which it is proved that it is the Spirit of God. He has indeed set down a sign, and perhaps a difficult one; but let us see. We are going to return to that love; it is love that teaches us, because it is the anointing. Yet what does he say here? "Test the spirits whether they are of God, because many false prophets have gone out into this world." There are all the heretics and all the schismatics. How, then, do I test the spirit? There follows: "By this the Spirit of God is known." Lift up the ears of the heart. We were labouring and saying, "Who knows? Who can discern?" See, he is about to give a sign. "By this the Spirit of God is known: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God. And every spirit that does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is not of God; and this is the antichrist, of whom you have heard that he is coming; and now he is in this world." Our ears are lifted up, as it were, to discern the spirits; and we have heard something such that we still cannot discern. For what does he say? "Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God." Then is the spirit which is among the heretics of God, since they confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh? Here perhaps they rise up against us and say, "You do not have the spirit from God; but we confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh; and he denied that those have the Spirit of God who do not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh." Ask the Arians: they confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh. Ask the Eunomians: they confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh. Ask the Macedonians: they confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh. Question the Cataphrygians: they confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh. Question the Novatians: they confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh. Do all these heresies, then, have the Spirit of God? Are they not false prophets, then? Is there no deception there, then, no leading astray? Certainly they are antichrists, who went out from us, but were not of us.

What, then, are we to do? How do we discern? Attend: let us go together in heart and knock. Love itself is watchful, because it is love that will knock and love that will open: now you will understand, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. You have already heard above that it was said, "He who denies that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is the antichrist." And there we asked who denies it, since neither we deny it nor do they. And we found that some deny it by their deeds; and we brought forward the testimony of the apostle, who says, "For they confess that they know God, but deny him by their deeds." So now too let us look in deeds, not in the tongue. What spirit is not of God? One that denies that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh. And what spirit is of God? One that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh. Who is it that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh? Come, brothers, let us attend to works, not to the noise of the tongue. Let us ask why Christ came in the flesh, and we find those who deny that he came in the flesh. For if you attend to tongues, you will hear many heresies confessing that Christ came in the flesh; but the truth convicts them. Why did Christ come in the flesh? Was he not God? Is it not written of him, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God"? Did he not feed the angels, and does he not feed the angels? Did he not come here in such a way as not to withdraw from there? Did he not ascend in such a way as not to leave us? Why, then, did he come in the flesh? Because the hope of resurrection had to be shown to us. He was God, and he came in the flesh; for God could not die, the flesh could die; so he came in the flesh for this, to die for us. And how did he die for us? "No one has greater love than this, to lay down his life for his friends." So love brought him to the flesh. Whoever, then, does not have love denies that Christ has come in the flesh. Now here question all the heretics: "Has Christ come in the flesh?" "He has come; this I believe, this I confess." "No, this you deny." "How do I deny it? You hear that I say it." "No, I convict you of denying it. You say it with your voice, you deny it with your heart; you say it in words, you deny it in deeds." "How," you say, "do I deny it in deeds?" Because Christ came in the flesh for this, to die for us. He died for us because he taught great love: "No one has greater love than this, to lay down his life for his friends." You do not have love, because for the sake of your own honour you divide unity. So understand from this the spirit that is of God. Knock, tap the earthen vessels, to see whether they are cracked and sound badly; see whether they ring true, see whether there is love there. You take yourself away from the unity of the whole world, you divide the Church by schisms, you tear the body of Christ apart. He came in the flesh to gather together; you shout to scatter. So that is the Spirit of God which says that Jesus has come in the flesh: which says it not with the tongue but in deeds; which says it not by sounding but by loving. But that is not the spirit of God which denies that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh; and it too denies it not with the tongue but with its life, not in words but in deeds. It is plain, then, how we may know the brothers. Many inside are only as if inside; but no one is outside unless he is truly outside.

So that you may know that he referred it to deeds, "And every spirit," he says, "that dissolves Christ, as having come in the flesh, is not of God." To "dissolve" is understood of deeds. What does he show you? One who denies; for he said "dissolves". He came to gather, you come to dissolve. You want to tear apart the members of Christ. How do you not deny that Christ came in the flesh, you who break up the Church of God which he gathered? So you come against Christ; you are an antichrist. Whether you are inside or outside, you are an antichrist; but when you are inside, you are hidden; when you are outside, you are made manifest. You dissolve Jesus and deny that he came in the flesh; you are not of God. That is why he says in the Gospel, "Whoever dissolves one of the least of these commandments, and teaches men so, will be called least in the kingdom of heaven." What is "dissolved"? What is "taught"? It is dissolved by deeds and taught, as it were, by words. You who preach that one must not steal, steal. So the one who steals dissolves in deed, and as it were teaches so; he will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, that is, in the Church of this time. Of him it was said, "Do what they say, but do not do what they do." "But whoever does and teaches so will be called great in the kingdom of heaven." Because he said here "does", against this he said there "dissolves", that is, does not do, and teaches so. So the one who does not do, dissolves. What does he teach us but to question deeds, not to believe words? The obscurity of the matters compels us to say much, above all so that what the Lord deigns to reveal may reach the slower brothers too, since all have been bought by the blood of Christ. And I fear that the Epistle itself will not be finished in these days, as I had promised; but as it pleases the Lord, it is better to keep the remainder than to burden hearts with too much food.

This world is to all the faithful who seek their homeland what the desert was to the people of Israel. They were wandering still, and seeking their homeland; but with God as their guide they could not go astray. Their way was the command of God. For the journey on which they went round for forty years is completed in very few stages, and is known to all. They were delayed because they were being trained, not because they were abandoned. What God promises us, then, is an ineffable sweetness, and a good, as Scripture says and as you have often heard us recall, "which eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man." But we are trained by temporal labours and taught by the temptations of the present life. But if you do not want to die of thirst in this desert, drink love. It is the spring which the Lord willed to put here, so that we may not faint on the way; and we shall drink of it more abundantly when we have come to our homeland. The Gospel has just been read: to speak of the very words with which the reading ended, what else did you hear about but love? For we have made a pact with our God in prayer, that if we want him to forgive us our sins, we too should forgive the sins that have been committed against us. And only love forgives. Take love out of the heart: hatred holds it; it does not know how to pardon. Let love be there, and it pardons without care, for it is not hemmed in. And see whether this whole Epistle, which we have undertaken to expound to you, commends anything else than this one love. Nor is there any fear that by being spoken of often it will come to be hated. For what is loved, if love comes to be hated? How ought love itself to be loved, by which it comes about that other things are loved well? So let the thing that ought never to depart from the heart not depart from the mouth either.

"You are of God, little children," he says, "and you have overcome him": whom, but the Antichrist? For above he had said, "Every one who dissolves Jesus Christ and denies that he has come in the flesh is not of God." And we explained, if you remember, that all who violate love deny that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh. For there was no need for Jesus to come except for love. For that love is commended to us which he himself commends in the Gospel: "No one can have greater love than this, to lay down his life for his friends." How could the Son of God lay down his life for us unless he were clothed in flesh, in which he could die? Whoever, then, violates love, whatever he says with his tongue, his life denies that Christ has come in the flesh; and he is the antichrist, wherever he is, wherever he has entered. But what does he say to those who are citizens of that homeland for which we sigh? "You have overcome him." And how did they overcome? "Because he who is in you is greater than he who is in this world." Lest they should attribute the victory to their own strength and be overcome by the arrogance of pride (for whomever the devil has made proud, he overcomes), wishing to keep them humble, what does he say? "You have overcome him." Now every man who hears "You have overcome" lifts up his head, lifts up his neck, wants to be praised. Do not exalt yourself; see who overcame in you. Why did you overcome? "Because he who is in you is greater than he who is in this world." Be humble, carry your Lord; be the beast of burden of your rider. It is good for you that he should guide and lead. For if you do not have him as your rider, you can lift up your neck, you can kick; but woe to you without a guide, for that freedom sends you among the beasts to be devoured.

"They are of the world." Who? The antichrists. You have already heard who they are. And if you are not such, you recognise them; but whoever is such does not recognise them. "They are of the world; therefore they speak of the world, and the world hears them." Who are those who speak of the world? Attend: those who are against love. See, you have heard the Lord saying, "If you forgive men their sins, your heavenly Father will also forgive you your sins; but if you do not forgive, neither will your Father forgive you your sins." It is the sentence of the Truth; or, if it is not the Truth that speaks, contradict it. If you are a Christian and believe Christ, he said, "I am the truth." This sentence is true, it is firm. Now hear men who speak of the world: "And are you not going to avenge yourself? And is he going to say that he did this to you? No, let him feel that he is dealing with a man." These things are said every day. Those who say these things speak of the world; and the world hears them. Nor does anyone say these things except those who love the world, nor are these things listened to except by those who love the world. And whoever loves the world and neglects love, you have heard, denies that Jesus has come in the flesh. Or did the Lord himself strike back in the flesh? When he was struck with the palm of the hand, did he want to be avenged? When he hung on the cross, did he not say, "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do"? But if he who had power did not threaten, why do you threaten, why do you puff yourself up, you who are set under another's power? He died because he willed it, and did not threaten; you do not know when you will die, and do you threaten?

"We are of God." Let us see why: see whether for any other reason than love. "We are of God. Whoever knows God listens to us; whoever is not of God does not listen to us. By this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error." For whoever listens to us has the spirit of truth; whoever does not listen to us has the spirit of error. Let us see what he admonishes, and let us listen to him rather as one admonishing in the spirit of truth; not to the antichrists, not to the lovers of the world, not to the world. If we are born of God, "Beloved", it follows above (see what): "We are of God. Whoever knows God listens to us; whoever is not of God does not listen to us. By this the spirit of truth and the spirit of error is known." Now he has made us attentive: because whoever knows God listens; but whoever does not know him does not listen; and this is the distinction between the spirit of truth and the spirit of error. Let us see what he is going to admonish, in which we ought to listen to him. "Beloved, let us love one another." Why? Because a man admonishes? "Because love is of God." He has commended love greatly, because he said, "is of God"; he is going to say more; let us listen attentively. Now he said, "Love is of God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God." Why? "Because God is love." What more could be said, brothers? If nothing were said in praise of love through all these pages of this Epistle, if nothing at all through the other pages of the Scriptures, and we heard only this one thing from the voice of the Spirit of God, "Because God is love", we ought to seek nothing more.

Now see that to act against love is to act against God. Let no one say, "I sin against man when I do not love my brother (attend), and sin against man is a light thing; only let me not sin against God." How do you not sin against God when you sin against love? God is love. Is it we who say it? If we said, "God is love", perhaps one of you would take offence and say, "What did he say? What did he mean by saying that God is love? God gave love, God bestowed love. Love is from God; God is love." See, brothers, you have the Scriptures of God: this Epistle is canonical; it is read among all nations; it is held by the authority of the whole world; it has built up the whole world. Here you hear from the Spirit of God, "God is love." Now, if you dare, act against God, and do not love your brother.

How, then, did he say a little while ago, "Love is of God", and now, "Love is God"? For God is Father and Son and Holy Spirit: the Son, God from God; the Holy Spirit, God from God; and these three one God, not three gods. If the Son is God and the Holy Spirit is God, and he loves in whom the Holy Spirit dwells: then love is God, but God because from God. For you have both in the Epistle: both "Love is of God" and "Love is God." Of the Father alone Scripture does not know how to say that he is "from God". But when you hear "from God", either the Son or the Holy Spirit is understood. But since the apostle says, "The love of God has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us", let us understand that the Holy Spirit is in love. For he is the Holy Spirit, whom the wicked cannot receive; he is that spring of which Scripture says, "Let the spring of your water be your own, and let no stranger share it with you." For all who do not love God are strangers, are antichrists. And though they enter basilicas, they cannot be counted among the children of God; that spring of life does not belong to them. Even a bad man can have baptism; even a bad man can have prophecy. We find that King Saul had prophecy: he was persecuting holy David, and he was filled with the spirit of prophecy and began to prophesy. Even a bad man can receive the sacrament of the body and blood of the Lord; for of such it was said, "Whoever eats and drinks unworthily eats and drinks judgment to himself." Even a bad man can have the name of Christ, that is, even a bad man can be called a Christian; of whom it was said, "They polluted the name of their God." So even a bad man can have all these sacraments; but to have love and be bad is not possible. This, then, is the proper gift; this is the singular spring. The Spirit of God urges you to drink of this; the Spirit of God urges you to drink of himself.

"In this the love of God has been made manifest among us." See, we have an exhortation to love God. Could we love him unless he loved first? If we were slow to love, let us not be slow to love in return. He loved us first; not even so do we love him. He loved the wicked, but he dissolved their wickedness; he loved the wicked, but he did not gather them for wickedness. He loved the sick, but he visited them to heal them. So God is love. "In this the love of God has been made manifest among us, that he sent his only-begotten Son into this world, that we might live through him." As the Lord himself says, "No one can have greater love than this, to lay down his life for his friends"; and there Christ's love toward us was proved, because he died for us. How was the Father's love toward us proved? Because he sent his only Son to die for us; as the apostle Paul too says, "He who did not spare his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how has he not also given us all things with him?" See, the Father delivered up Christ, Judas delivered him up: does not the deed seem, as it were, alike? Judas is a betrayer: is God the Father, then, a betrayer too? "Far from it," you say. I do not say it, but the apostle says: "He who did not spare his own Son, but delivered him up for us all." Both the Father delivered him up, and he delivered himself up. The same apostle says: "Who loved me and delivered himself up for me." If the Father delivered up the Son, and the Son delivered up himself, what did Judas do? A delivering up was done by the Father, a delivering up was done by the Son, a delivering up was done by Judas; one thing was done. But what distinguishes the Father delivering up the Son, the Son delivering up himself, and the disciple Judas delivering up his master? That the Father and the Son did this in love, but Judas did it in betrayal. You see that what a man does is not what is to be considered, but with what mind and will he does it. In the same deed in which we find Judas, we find God the Father: we bless the Father, we detest Judas. Why do we bless the Father and detest Judas? We bless love, we detest iniquity. For how much has been granted to the human race through the delivering up of Christ? Did Judas have this in mind when he delivered him up? God had in mind our salvation, by which we have been redeemed; Judas had in mind the price for which he sold the Lord. The Son himself had in mind the price which he gave for us; Judas had in mind the price which he received for selling him. So a different intention made the deeds different. Though it is one thing, if we measure it by the different intentions, we find one to be loved, the other to be condemned; one to be glorified, the other to be detested. So great is the power of love. See that it alone discerns, see that it alone distinguishes the deeds of men.

We have said this of like deeds. In different deeds we find a man made fierce by love, and one made gentle by iniquity. A father beats his boy, and a slave-dealer caresses him. If you set out the two things, blows and caresses, who would not choose the caresses and flee the blows? If you look at the persons, love beats, iniquity caresses. See what we are urging: that the deeds of men are not distinguished except by the root of love. For many things can be done that have a good appearance and do not proceed from the root of love. For thorns too have flowers; but some things seem harsh, seem savage, yet are done for discipline at the bidding of love. So once for all a short precept is given you: Love, and do what you will. If you keep silent, keep silent out of love; if you cry out, cry out out of love; if you correct, correct out of love; if you spare, spare out of love. Let the root of love be within; from this root nothing but good can come forth.

"In this is love." "In this the love of God has been made manifest among us, that God sent his only-begotten Son into this world, that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we loved, but that he loved us." We did not love him first; for he loved us for this, that we might love him. "And he sent his Son as a propitiator for our sins": a propitiator, a sacrificer. He sacrificed for our sins. Where did he find an offering? Where did he find a victim that he wanted to offer pure? He found no other; he offered himself. "Beloved, if God so loved us, we too ought to love one another." "Peter," he says, "do you love me?" And he said, "I love you." "Feed my sheep."

"No one has ever seen God": he is an invisible thing; he is to be sought not with the eye but with the heart. But just as, if we wanted to see this sun, we would cleanse the eye of the body, by which light can be seen, so, wanting to see God, let us cleanse the eye by which God can be seen. Where is that eye? Hear the Gospel: "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." But let no one think of God according to the desire of the eyes. For such a one makes for himself either a huge form, or stretches out some immeasurable magnitude through places, enlarging this light which he sees with these eyes over the fields as far as he can; or he makes for himself an old man of venerable form, as it were. Think none of these things. There is something to think if you want to see God: God is love. What face has love? What form has it? What stature has it? What feet has it? What hands has it? No one can say. Yet it has feet, for they lead to the church; it has hands, for they reach out to the poor; it has eyes, for by them the one in need is noticed: "Blessed," he says, "is he who considers the needy and the poor." It has ears, of which the Lord says, "He who has ears to hear, let him hear." They are not members separated by places; but whoever has love sees the whole at once by understanding. Dwell, and you will be dwelt in; abide, and it will abide in you. For what, my brothers: does anyone love what he does not see? Why, then, when love is praised, do you rouse yourselves, cry out, applaud? What have I shown you? Have I brought out some colours? Have I set out gold and silver? Have I dug jewels out of treasuries? What of this kind have I shown to your eyes? Has my face changed while I speak? I bear flesh; I am in the same form in which I came out; you are in the same form in which you came; love is praised, and you cry out. Certainly you see nothing. But as it pleases you when you praise it, so let it please you to keep it in your heart. For attend to what I say, brothers: I am exhorting you, as far as the Lord grants, to a great treasure. If some little vessel were shown you, embossed, gilded, elaborately made, and it attracted your eyes and drew the attention of your heart to itself, and the craftsman's hand pleased you, and the weight of the silver and the gleam of the metal, would not each of you say, "Oh, if I had that vessel!"? And you would say it in vain, for it was not in your power. Or if anyone wanted to have it, he would think of stealing it from another's house. Love is praised to you: if it pleases you, have it, possess it; there is no need to steal from anyone, no need to think of buying it; it costs nothing. Hold it, embrace it; nothing is sweeter than it. If it is such when it is spoken of, what is it when it is possessed?

If any of you wish to keep love, brothers, above all do not think it abject and slothful; nor that love is kept by a kind of gentleness, or rather not gentleness but laxity and negligence. It is not kept so. Do not think that you love your servant when you do not beat him, or that you love your son when you do not discipline him, or that you love your neighbour when you do not rebuke him: that is not love but feebleness. Let love be fervent to correct, to amend; but if conduct is good, let it delight you; if bad, let it be amended, corrected. Do not love the error in the man, but the man; for God made the man, the man himself made the error. Love what God made; do not love what the man himself made. When you love the one, you take away the other; when you love the one, you amend the other. But even if you are sometimes fierce, let it be for love of correction. That is why the brightness that came upon the Lord was shown in the form of a dove: that form of a dove, in which the Holy Spirit came, by whom love was to be poured into us. Why this? The dove has no gall; yet it fights for its nest with beak and wings; it is fierce without bitterness. A father does this too: when he chastises his son, he chastises him for discipline. As I said, the seducer caresses with bitterness in order to sell; the father chastises without gall in order to correct. Be such toward all. See, brothers, a great lesson, a great rule. Each one has children, or wants to have them; or if he has altogether decided not to have children according to the flesh, he desires to have them spiritually: who is there who does not correct his son? Who is there to whom a father does not give discipline? And yet he seems to be fierce. Love is fierce, charity is fierce: fierce, in a way, without gall, in the manner of the dove, not of the raven. Hence it came to my mind, my brothers, to tell you that those violators of love have made a schism: just as they hate love itself, so they hate the dove too. But the dove convicts them: it comes from heaven, the heavens are opened, and it abides on the Lord's head. Why this? So that John may hear, "This is he who baptizes." Away, you robbers; away, you invaders of Christ's possession! On your possessions, where you wish to be lords, you have dared to fix the title-marks of the Mighty One. He recognises his marks; he claims his possession for himself: he does not erase the marks, but enters and possesses. So for one who comes to the Catholic Church, baptism is not erased, lest the emperor's title-mark be erased. But what happens in the Catholic Church? The mark is recognised; the owner enters under his own marks, where the robber was entering under marks not his own.

Love is a sweet word, but a sweeter deed. We cannot always speak of it. For we do many things, and various activities draw us in different directions, so that our tongue is not free always to speak of love; for our tongue could do nothing better. But what we may not always speak of we may always keep. Just as now, when we sing Alleluia, do we always do this? For hardly the whole space of one hour, but a small part of it, do we sing Alleluia; and then we turn to something else. Now Alleluia, as you already know, is "Praise God." Whoever praises God with the tongue cannot always do it; whoever praises God with his conduct can always do it. Works of mercy, the affection of love, the holiness of godliness, the incorruption of chastity, the modesty of sobriety: these must always be kept, whether we are in public or at home, whether before men or in our chamber, whether speaking or silent, whether doing something or at leisure: these must always be kept, because all these virtues that I have named are within. But who is able to name them all? They are like the army of an emperor who sits within in your mind. For just as an emperor does what he pleases through his army, so the Lord Jesus Christ, beginning to dwell in our inner man, that is, in the mind through faith, uses these virtues as his ministers. And through these virtues, which cannot be seen with the eyes and yet are praised when they are named (and they would not be praised unless they were loved, nor loved unless they were seen; and if they would certainly not be loved unless they were seen, they are seen with another eye, that is, with the inner sight of the heart): through these invisible virtues the members are moved visibly: the feet to walk; but where? Where the good will moves them, which serves as a soldier under a good emperor. The hands to work; but what? What love commands, which has been breathed in within by the Holy Spirit. So the members are seen when they move; he who commands within is not seen. And who it is that commands within, almost only he knows who commands, and he within who is commanded.

For, brothers, you have just heard when the Gospel was read; surely, if you had there the ear not only of the body but also of the heart. What does it say? "Beware of doing your righteousness before men in order to be seen by them." Did he mean by this that whatever good we do we should hide from men's eyes and be afraid of being seen? If you fear spectators, you will have no imitators: so you ought to be seen. But you ought not to act for this, to be seen. The end of your joy ought not to be there, the goal of your gladness not there, so that you think you have obtained the whole fruit of your good work when you have been seen and praised. This is nothing. Despise yourself when you are praised: let him be praised in you who works through you. So do not do the good you do for your own praise, but for the praise of him from whom you have the power to do good. From yourself you have it to do evil; from God you have it to do well. On the contrary, see how perverse men turn things upside down. What they do well, they want to attribute to themselves; if they do evil, they want to accuse God. Turn this twisted and topsy-turvy thing, making it in a way head downward: what is above, making it below; what is below, making it above. Do you want to make God below and yourself above? You are thrown headlong, not raised up; for he is always above. What then? You do well, and God does evil? Rather, say this, if you want to speak more truly: "I do evil, he does well; and what I do well, I do well from him; for from myself, whatever I do is evil." This confession strengthens the heart and lays the foundation of love. For if we ought to hide our good works so that they are not seen by men, where is that sentence of the Lord in the sermon he gave on the mountain? Where he said this, there a little before he also said, "Let your good works shine before men." And he did not stop there, did not make an end there, but added, "And let them glorify your Father who is in heaven." And what does the apostle say? "I was unknown by face to the churches of Judea which are in Christ; they only heard that he who once persecuted us now preaches the faith which he once ravaged; and they glorified God in me." See how he too, since he became known in this way, set the end not in his own praise but in the praise of God. And as far as he himself was concerned, ravager of the Church, envious persecutor, malicious: he confesses it himself; we do not insult him. Paul loves to have his sins told by us, so that he may be glorified who healed such a disease. For the physician's hand cut the greatness of the wound and healed it. That voice from heaven threw down the persecutor and raised up the preacher; it killed Saul and gave life to Paul. For Saul was the persecutor of a holy man; from him this man had his name when he was persecuting the Christians; afterwards from Saul he became Paul. What is Paul? Small. So when he was Saul, he was proud, lifted up; when Paul, humble, small. That is why we say, "I will see you paulo post", that is, after a little while. Hear that he was made small: "For I am the least of the apostles"; and, "To me, the least of all the saints", he says in another place. So he was among the apostles like the fringe of a garment: but the Church of the Gentiles touched it like the woman suffering from a flow of blood, and was healed.

So, brothers, I would say this, I do say this, and if I could I would not keep silent about it: let these works be in you now, those works now, according to the time, according to the hours, according to the days. Are we always to speak? Always to be silent? Always to refresh the body? Always to fast? Always to give bread to the needy? Always to clothe the naked? Always to visit the sick? Always to reconcile those at odds? Always to bury the dead? Now this, now that. These things begin and cease; but that emperor within neither begins nor ought to cease. Let love within not be interrupted; let the duties of love be shown according to the time. So, as it is written, let brotherly love continue.

But perhaps it has troubled some of you, since we have been expounding this Epistle of blessed John to you, why he commended above all only brotherly love. "He who loves his brother," he says; and, "The commandment has been given us that we love one another." He has named brotherly love continually; but the love of God, that is, the love with which we ought to love God, he has not named so continually; yet he has not been altogether silent about it. But about love of the enemy he has been silent almost throughout the whole Epistle. Though he preaches and commends love to us vehemently, he does not tell us to love our enemies, but tells us to love the brothers. But just now, when the Gospel was read, we heard, "For if you love those who love you, what reward will you have? Do not even the tax collectors do this?" Why is it, then, that the apostle John commends brotherly love to us as something great, for a kind of perfection, while the Lord says that it is not enough for us to love the brothers, but that we ought to extend that love so as to reach our enemies? Whoever reaches as far as his enemies does not skip over the brothers. It must, like fire, first take hold of what is nearest, and so spread itself to what is further off. Your brother is nearer to you than any man at all. Again, the man you did not know, but who is not against you, is closer to you than an enemy who is even against you. Extend your love to those near you, and do not call that extending. For you are almost loving yourself when you love those who are close to you. Extend it to strangers who have done you no harm. Go beyond them too; arrive at loving your enemies. This the Lord certainly commands. Why has this man been silent about love of the enemy?

All love, even what is called carnal, which is usually called not love (dilectio) but rather desire (amor), since the name dilectio is more usually used of better things and taken in a better sense: yet all love, dearest brothers, certainly has a certain goodwill toward those who are loved. For we ought not to love men in such a way, or cannot love them in such a way, or be fond of them (for the Lord too used this word when he said, "Peter, are you fond of me?"), as we hear gluttons say, "I am fond of thrushes." You ask why? To kill and eat them. He says he is fond of them, and he is fond of them so that they may not be; he is fond of them in order to destroy them. And whatever we are fond of for food, we are fond of it for this, that it may be consumed and we refreshed. Are men to be loved like this, as things to be consumed? But there is a certain friendship of goodwill, so that we sometimes do good to those we love. What if there is nothing we can do for them? Goodwill alone is enough for one who loves. For we ought not to wish men to be wretched so that we may exercise works of mercy. You give bread to the hungry; but it would be better that no one were hungry, and you gave to no one. You clothe the naked: would that all were clothed and there were no such need! You bury the dead: would that that life might come at last where no one dies! You reconcile those who quarrel: would that the eternal peace of Jerusalem might come at last, where no one is at odds! For all these are services of necessity. Take away the wretched, and works of mercy will cease. Works of mercy will cease: will the ardour of love be extinguished? You love more genuinely a happy man for whom you have nothing to do; that love will be purer and much more sincere. For if you have done good to a wretched man, perhaps you desire to exalt yourself over him and want him, who is the occasion of your kindness, to be subject to you. He was in need, you gave; you seem greater, as it were, because you gave, than he to whom it was given. Wish him your equal, so that you may both be under the one to whom nothing can be given.

For in this the proud soul went beyond measure, and in a way was greedy; for "the root of all evils is greed." And again it is said, "The beginning of all sin is pride." And we sometimes ask how these two sayings agree with each other: "The root of all evils is greed", and, "The beginning of all sin is pride." If the beginning of all sin is pride, the root of all evils is pride. Certainly the root of all evils is greed: we find that there is greed in pride too; for man went beyond measure. What is it to be greedy? To go further than is enough. Adam fell by pride: "The beginning of all sin is pride," it says. Was it not greed? Who was greedier than he, for whom God could not be enough? So, brothers, we read how man was made in the image and likeness of God; and what did God say of him? "And let him have power over the fish of the sea, and the birds of the sky, and all the cattle that creep on the earth." Did he say, "Let him have power over men"? "Let him have power," he said: he gave a natural power. Over what is he to have power? "Over the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, and all creeping things that creep on the earth." Why is this man's natural power over these things? Because man has power from that by which he was made in the image of God. And where was he made in the image of God? In the understanding, in the mind, in the inner man; in that he understands the truth, judges between justice and injustice, knows by whom he was made, can understand his creator, praise his creator. He has this understanding who has prudence. Therefore, when many by evil desires were wearing away the image of God in themselves, and, as it were, extinguishing the very flame of understanding by perversity of conduct, Scripture cried out to them: "Do not become like the horse and the mule, which have no understanding." That is to say: I set you above the horse and the mule; I made you in my image; I gave you power over these. Why? Because wild beasts do not have a rational mind; but you grasp the truth with a rational mind; you understand what is above you: submit to him who is above you, and those things over which you are set will be below you. But because by sin man deserted him under whom he ought to have been, he is made subject to those above which he ought to have been.

Attend to what I say: God, man, beasts. For example, above you is God; below you are the beasts. Acknowledge him who is above you, so that what is below you may acknowledge you. And so, when Daniel acknowledged God above himself, the lions acknowledged him above themselves. But if you do not acknowledge him who is above you, you despise the higher and are made subject to the lower. That is why the pride of the Egyptians: how was it tamed? By frogs and flies. God could have sent lions too, but a great man must be terrified by a lion. The prouder they were, the more their wicked neck was broken by contemptible and lowly things. But the lions acknowledged Daniel, because he was subject to God. What? The martyrs who fought with beasts and were torn by the bites of wild animals, were they not under God? Or were the three men servants of God, and the Maccabees not servants of God? Did the fire acknowledge the three men as servants of God, not burning them nor even harming their clothes, and not acknowledge the Maccabees? It acknowledged the Maccabees; it acknowledged them too, brothers. But there was need of a certain scourge, by permission of the Lord, who said in Scripture, "He scourges every son whom he receives." For do you think, brothers, that iron would have pierced the Lord's inward parts unless he himself permitted it, or that he would have hung on the wood unless he had willed it? Did his creation not acknowledge him? Or did he set an example of patience before his faithful? So God delivered some visibly, and did not deliver some visibly; yet he delivered all spiritually, and spiritually he forsook no one. Visibly he seemed to forsake some, and seemed to rescue some. He rescued some for this, lest you should think he could not rescue. He gave testimony that he can, so that where he does not do it you may understand a more hidden will, and not suspect a difficulty. But what, brothers? When we have escaped all these snares of mortality, when the times of temptation have passed, when the river of this age has run its course and we have received again that first robe, that immortality which we lost by sinning, when "this corruptible has put on incorruption", that is, when this flesh has put on incorruption, "and this mortal has put on immortality", then every creature will acknowledge the children of God made perfect, where there is no need to be tempted or scourged: all things will be subject to us, if here we are subject to God.

So a Christian ought to be such that he does not glory over other men. For God has granted you to be above the beasts, that is, to be better than the beasts. This you have by nature; you will always be better than a beast. If you want to be better than another man, you will envy him when you see him your equal. You ought to want all men to be equal to you; and if you have surpassed someone in prudence, you ought to wish that he too may be prudent. As long as he is slow, he learns from you; as long as he is untaught, he needs you; and you seem to be the teacher, he the learner: so you are superior, because you are the teacher; he inferior, because he is the learner. Unless you wish him to be your equal, you want always to have a learner. But if you want always to have a learner, you will be an envious teacher. If an envious teacher, how will you be a teacher? I beg you, do not teach him your envy. Hear the apostle speaking from the heart of love: "I would that all men were as I myself am." How did he want all to be equal? He was superior to all for this reason, that in love he wished all to be equal. So man went beyond measure; he wanted to be greedier, so as to be above men, he who was made above the beasts: and that is pride.

And see what great works pride does; take to heart how like, and almost equal, to love the things it does. Love feeds the hungry, pride feeds them too: love so that God may be praised, pride so that itself may be praised. Love clothes the naked, pride clothes them too; love fasts, pride fasts too; love buries the dead, pride buries them too. All the good works which love wants to do and does, pride drives on in opposition, and leads its horses, as it were. But love is more inward: it takes away the place of badly driven pride; not of pride driving badly, but of pride badly driven. Woe to the man whose charioteer is pride, for he must go headlong. But who knows that it is not pride that drives good deeds? Who sees it? Where is this? We see the works: mercy feeds, pride feeds too; mercy receives a guest, pride receives a guest too; mercy intercedes for a poor man, pride intercedes too. What is this? In the works we do not discern it. I dare to say something, but not I; Paul said it: love dies, that is, a man who has love confesses the name of Christ and undergoes martyrdom; pride confesses too, and undergoes martyrdom too. The one has love, the other does not have love. But let him who does not have love hear from the apostle: "If I distribute all I have to the poor, and if I give my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing." So divine Scripture calls us back within, away from the boasting of this outward face; and from this surface which is flaunted before men it calls us back within. Return to your conscience; question it. Do not attend to what blooms outside, but to what the root is in the ground. Is desire rooted there? There can be the appearance of good deeds; they cannot truly be good works. Is love rooted there? Be secure: nothing evil can come forth. The proud man caresses, love is fierce. The one clothes, the other beats. For the one clothes in order to please men; the other beats in order to correct by discipline. The blow of love is more acceptable than the alms of pride. Return within, then, brothers; and in all that you do, look to God as your witness. See, since he sees, with what mind you act. If your heart does not accuse you of doing it for the sake of boasting, good; be secure. But do not fear, when you do well, that another may see. Fear doing it for this, that you may be praised: for let another see, so that God may be praised. For if you hide it from the eyes of men, you hide it from men's imitation; you take praise away from God. There are two to whom you give alms; two are hungry, one for bread, the other for righteousness. Between these two hungry men (since it is said, "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied"), between these two hungry men you have been set as a good worker. If love works through you, it has pity on both, it wants to help both. For the one seeks something to eat, the other seeks something to imitate. You feed the one, offer yourself to the other; you have given alms to both: you have made the one give thanks for his hunger destroyed; you have made the other an imitator through the example set before him.

Have pity, then, as merciful men; because even in loving your enemies you love brothers. Do not think that John gave no command about love of the enemy, since he was not silent about brotherly love: you love brothers. "How," you say, "do we love brothers?" I ask why you love your enemy: why do you love him? That he may be healthy in this life? What if it is not good for him? That he may be rich? What if he will be blinded by those very riches? That he may marry? What if he will suffer a bitter life from it? That he may have children? What if they will be wicked? So these things are uncertain which you seem to wish your enemy because you love him; they are uncertain. Wish him to have eternal life with you; wish him to be your brother. If, then, in loving your enemy you wish this, that he may be your brother, when you love him you love a brother. For you do not love in him what he is, but what you want him to be. I once said to your Love, unless I am mistaken: a block of timber is set before the eyes; a very good craftsman sees the wood, not yet shaped, cut from the forest; he has taken a liking to it: he wants to make something from it. For he has not taken a liking to it so that it may always remain as it is. In his art he has seen what is to be, not in his liking what it is; and he has loved what he is going to make from it, not what it is. So God too has loved us sinners. We say that God has loved sinners; for he says, "Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick." Did he love sinners so that we might remain sinners? He saw us, as a craftsman sees wood from the forest, and he thought of the building he was going to make from it, not the forest it was. So you too look at your enemy opposing you, raging, biting with words, provoking with insults, pursuing with hatred: you attend there to the fact that he is a man. You see all these hostile things done by a man; and you see in him that he was made by God. That he was made a man, he was made by God; that he hates you, he himself did; that he envies, he himself did. And what do you say in your mind? "Lord, be merciful to him, forgive him his sins; strike terror into him, change him." You do not love in him what he is, but what you want him to be. So when you love your enemy, you love a brother. Therefore perfect love is love of the enemy: and this perfect love is in brotherly love. And let no one say that the apostle John admonished us to something less and the Lord Christ admonished us to more: John admonished us to love the brothers; Christ admonished us to love even our enemies. Attend to why Christ admonished you to love your enemies. Was it that they should always remain enemies? If he admonished you to this, that they should remain enemies, you hate, you do not love. Attend to how he himself loved, that is, because he did not want them to remain persecutors: he said, "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do." Those whom he wanted forgiven, he wanted changed; those whom he wanted changed, he deigned to make brothers out of enemies, and truly he did so. He was killed, buried, rose again, ascended into heaven, sent the Holy Spirit to the disciples; they began to preach his name with confidence, they did miracles in the name of the crucified and slain one: those killers of the Lord saw them; and those who shed his blood in their rage drank it in believing.

I have said these things, brothers, and at some length; yet since love itself had to be commended to your Love more forcefully, it had to be commended in this way. For if there is no love in you, we have said nothing. But if it is in you, we have, as it were, added oil to the flames; and in one in whom it was not, perhaps it has been kindled by words. In one, what was there has grown; in another, what was not there has begun to be. We have said these things, then, for this purpose, that you may not be slow to love your enemies. Does a man rage against you? He rages; you pray. He hates; you have pity. It is the fever of his soul that hates you: he will be healed, and will thank you. How do doctors love the sick? Do they love them as sick? If they love the sick as sick, they want them always to be sick. They love the sick for this, not that they may remain sick, but that from sick they may become healthy. And how much do they often suffer from the delirious? What insults in words? They are often even struck. The doctor pursues the fever and pardons the man. And what shall I say, brothers? Does he love his enemy? Rather he hates his enemy, the disease; for he hates it, and loves the man by whom he is struck: he hates the fever. For by what is he struck? By the disease, by the sickness, by the fever. He takes away what is against him, so that what he may rejoice over may remain. So you too: if your enemy hates you, and hates you unjustly, know that the desire of the world reigns in him; that is why he hates you. If you too hate him, you return evil for evil. What does returning evil for evil do? I was weeping for one sick man, who hated you; now I mourn two, if you hate too. But he attacks your property; he takes from you some things or other that you have on earth: that is why you hate him, because he causes you straits on earth. Do not suffer straits; move up to heaven: there you will have your heart where there is breadth, so that you may suffer no straits in the hope of eternal life. Consider what he takes from you: he would not take even these from you, unless he permitted it who "scourges every son whom he receives." In a way, your enemy himself is God's instrument by which you are healed. If God knows that it is good for you to be stripped, he permits him; if he knows that it is good for you to be beaten, he permits him, so that you may be beaten. He cures you by him; wish that he may be healed.

"No one has ever seen God." See, dearly beloved: "If we love one another, God will abide in us, and his love will be perfected in us." Begin to love, and you will be perfected. Have you begun to love? God has begun to dwell in you; love him who has begun to dwell in you, so that by dwelling in you more perfectly he may make you perfect. "By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit." Good; thanks be to God. We know that he dwells in us. And how do we know this very thing, that we know that he dwells in us? Because John himself said it: "Because he has given us of his Spirit." How do we know that he has given us of his Spirit? This very thing, that he has given you of his Spirit, how do you know it? Question your heart: if it is full of love, you have the Spirit of God. How do we know that it is from this that you know that the Spirit of God dwells in you? Question the apostle Paul: "Because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us."

"And we have seen and bear witness that the Father has sent his Son as the Saviour of the world." Be secure, you who are sick: such a physician has come, and do you despair? The diseases were great, the wounds incurable, the sickness desperate. Do you attend to the greatness of your ill, and not attend to the almightiness of the physician? You are desperate; but he is almighty: his witnesses are these who were healed first and announce the physician; and yet even they were healed more in hope than in reality. For so the apostle says: "For we have been saved in hope." So we have begun to be healed in faith; but our salvation will be perfected when "this corruptible has put on incorruption, and this mortal has put on immortality." This is hope, not yet reality. But whoever rejoices in hope will hold the reality; whoever has no hope will not be able to come to the reality.

"Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God." Let us not now say it at length: whoever confesses, not in word but in deed, not with the tongue but with his life. For many confess in words but deny in deeds. "And we have known and believed the love which God has for us." And again, how did you know it? "God is love." He said it above; see, he says it again. Love could not be commended to you more than by being called God. Perhaps you were going to despise the gift of God. Do you despise God too? "God is love. And whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him." They dwell in each other, the one who contains and the one who is contained. You dwell in God, but so as to be contained; God dwells in you, but so as to contain you, lest you fall. Do not think that you become God's house in the way that your house holds up your flesh: if the house in which you are withdraws itself, you fall; but if you withdraw yourself, God does not fall. He is whole when you desert him; whole when you return to him. You are healed; you will give him nothing. You are cleansed, you are refreshed, you are corrected. He is medicine to the unhealthy, a rule to the crooked, light to the darkened, a dwelling to the deserted. So everything is conferred on you. See that you do not think that anything is conferred on God when you come to him, not even a slave. Will God, then, have no servants if you are unwilling, and if all are unwilling? God does not need servants, but servants need God; therefore the Psalm says, "I said to the Lord, You are my God." He is the true Lord. And what does it say? "For you have no need of my goods." You need the good of your servant. Your servant needs your good, that you may feed him; you too need the good of your servant, that he may help you. You cannot draw water for yourself, you cannot cook for yourself, you cannot run before your horse, you cannot look after your beast. You see that you need the good of your servant; you need his service. So you are not a true lord, when you need an inferior. He is the true Lord who seeks nothing from us; and woe to us if we do not seek him. He seeks nothing from us; and he sought us when we were not seeking him. One sheep had strayed; he found it, and, rejoicing, carried it back on his shoulders. And was the sheep necessary to the shepherd, and not rather the shepherd necessary to the sheep? The more gladly I speak of love, the less I want this Epistle to end. None is more ardent in commending love. Nothing sweeter is preached to you, nothing more wholesome is drunk; but only if by living well you strengthen in yourselves the gift of God. Do not be ungrateful for so great a grace of him who, though he had an only Son, did not want him to be alone; but so that he might have brothers, adopted for him those who would possess eternal life with him.

Your Love remembers that the last part of the Epistle of the apostle John remains for us to treat and expound to you, as far as the Lord grants. We are mindful, then, of this debt; and you ought to be mindful of exacting it. For the same love which is commended above all, and almost alone, in this Epistle makes us most faithful debtors and you most sweet exactors. I said "most sweet exactors" because where there is no love the exactor is bitter; but where there is love, both the one who exacts is sweet, and the one from whom it is exacted, even if he undertakes some labour, finds that love itself makes that labour almost nothing and light. Do we not see even in dumb and irrational animals, where there is no spiritual love but a carnal and natural one, that the little ones demand milk from their mother's teats with great eagerness? And though the suckling makes a rush at the teats, it is better for the mother than if it did not suck and did not demand what is owed by love. We often see the udders of cows struck with the head even by fairly big calves, and the mothers' bodies almost lifted by the very force, and yet they are not driven off with a kick; and if the young one that sucks is missing, it is called to the udder by lowing. If, then, there is in us that spiritual love of which the apostle says, "I became a little one among you, as a nurse cherishes her children", then we love you when you exact. We do not love the slothful, because we fear for the sluggish. Now certain solemn readings for the feast days came in between, so that we interrupted the text of this Epistle; they could only be read, and themselves expounded. Now, then, let us return to the order we left off, and let your Holiness receive attentively what remains. I do not know whether love could be commended to us more magnificently than by saying, "God is love." Short praise, and great praise: short in speech, and great in understanding. How quickly it is said, "God is love"! And this is short: if you count, it is one; if you weigh, how much it is! "God is love. And whoever abides," he says, "in love abides in God, and God abides in him." Let God be your house, and be you God's house; abide in God, and let God abide in you. God abides in you to contain you; you abide in God lest you fall; for so the apostle says of love itself, "Love never falls." How does he fall whom God contains?

"In this is love perfected in us, that we may have confidence on the day of judgment: because as he is, so are we too in this world." He tells how each may test himself, how far love has advanced in him, or rather how far he has advanced in love. For if love is God, God neither advances nor declines: love is said to advance in you because you advance in it. So ask how far you have advanced in love, and what your heart answers you, so that you may know the measure of your advance. For he promised to show us by what we may know it, and said, "In this is love perfected in us." Ask: in what? "That we may have confidence on the day of judgment." Whoever has confidence on the day of judgment, love is perfect in him. What is it to have confidence on the day of judgment? Not to fear that the day of judgment may come. There are men who do not believe in the day of judgment; these cannot have confidence in a day which they do not believe will come. Let us pass them by: may God rouse them, that they may live; why speak of the dead? They do not believe that the day of judgment will come; they neither fear nor desire what they do not believe. Someone has begun to believe in the day of judgment: if he has begun to believe, he has begun to fear too. But because he still fears, he does not yet have confidence on the day of judgment; love is not yet perfect in him. Yet is he to despair? In one in whom you see the beginning, why do you despair of the end? "What beginning do I see?" you say. Fear itself. Hear Scripture: "The beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord." So he has begun to fear the day of judgment: by fearing let him correct himself; let him keep watch against his enemies, that is, against his sins; let him begin to come to life inwardly, and to put to death his members which are on the earth, as the apostle says, "Put to death your members which are on the earth." He calls spiritual wickedness members on the earth; for he goes on and explains: "greed, impurity", and the rest that he lists there. And as much as this man, who has begun to fear the day of judgment, puts to death his members on the earth, so much do the heavenly members rise and grow strong. And the heavenly members are all good works. As the heavenly members rise, he begins to desire what he used to fear. For he used to fear that Christ might come and find him ungodly and condemn him; he desires that he may come, because he will find him godly and crown him. Now when the chaste soul has begun to desire the coming of Christ, desiring the embraces of the bridegroom, she renounces the adulterer; she becomes a virgin inwardly by faith, hope, and love. Now she has confidence on the day of judgment; she does not fight against herself when she prays and says, "Your kingdom come." For whoever fears that the kingdom of God may come fears that he may be heard. How does he pray who fears that he may be heard? But whoever prays with the confidence of love already wishes it to come. Of this very desire someone said in the Psalm, "And you, Lord, how long? Turn, Lord, and rescue my soul." He was groaning at being put off. For there are men who die with patience; but there are some perfect men who live with patience. What did I say? One who still desires this life, when the day of death comes to him, bears death patiently; he struggles against himself so as to follow God's will, and sets his mind rather on what God chooses, not on what human will chooses; and from the desire for the present life there comes a struggle with death; and he applies patience and fortitude so as to die with an even mind: this man dies patiently. But one who desires, as the apostle says, "to depart and be with Christ", does not die patiently, but lives patiently and dies with delight. See the apostle living patiently, that is, with patience not loving this life here but enduring it: "To depart," he says, "and be with Christ is far better; but to remain in the flesh is necessary for your sake." So, brothers, take pains, work within yourselves, that you may desire the day of judgment. Perfect love is proved in no other way than when that day has begun to be desired. And he desires it who has confidence in it; and he has confidence in it whose conscience does not tremble, being in perfect and sincere love.

"In this is his love perfected in us, that we may have confidence on the day of judgment." Why shall we have confidence? "Because as he is, so are we too in this world." You have heard the reason for your confidence: "Because as he is," he says, "so are we too in this world." Does he not seem to have said something impossible? For can a man be as God is? I have already explained to you that "as" is not always said of equality, but is said of a certain likeness. For how do you say, "As I have ears, so the image has them too"? Is it altogether so? Yet you say "as". If, then, we have been made in the image of God, why are we not as God is? Not to equality, but in our own measure. How, then, is confidence given us on the day of judgment? "Because as he is, so are we too in this world." We ought to refer this to love itself and understand what has been said. The Lord says in the Gospel, "If you love those who love you, what reward will you have? Do not even the tax collectors do this?" What, then, does he want of us? "But I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you." If, then, he commands us to love our enemies, from where does he give us an example? From God himself; for he says, "So that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven." How does God do it? He loves his enemies, he "who makes his sun rise on the good and the evil, and sends rain on the just and the unjust." If, then, God invites us to this perfection, that we love our enemies as he too has loved his, this is our confidence on the day of judgment, "because as he is, so are we too in this world": because, as he loves his enemies by making his sun rise on the good and the evil and sending rain on the just and the unjust, so we, since we cannot give our enemies sun and rain, give them tears when we pray for them.

Now see what he says of this confidence. How is perfect love understood? "There is no fear in love." What, then, do we say of him who has begun to fear the day of judgment? If love were perfect in him, he would not fear. For perfect love would produce perfect righteousness, and he would have no reason to fear; rather he would have reason to desire that iniquity may pass away and the kingdom of God come. So "there is no fear in love." But in what love? Not in love that has only begun. In what, then? "But perfect love," he says, "casts out fear." So let fear begin; for "the beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord." Fear prepares a place, as it were, for love. But when love has begun to dwell there, the fear which prepared the place for it is driven out. For as much as love grows, fear declines; and as much as love comes further in, fear is driven out. Greater love, less fear; less love, greater fear. But if there is no fear at all, there is no way for love to enter. As we see thread drawn in by a bristle when something is sewn: the bristle goes in first, but unless it goes out, the thread does not follow; so fear first takes hold of the mind, but fear does not remain there, because it entered in order to bring in love. Now, when security has been established in the mind, what joy we have, whether in this age or in the age to come! And in this age, who will harm us when we are full of love? See how the apostle exults over this very love: "Who," he says, "will separate us from the love of Christ? Tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or the sword?" And Peter says, "And who can harm you, if you are zealous for what is good?" "There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear has torment." The conscience of sins torments the heart; justification has not yet taken place. There is something there that tickles, that pricks. That is why in the Psalm, of this very perfection of righteousness, what does it say? "You have turned my mourning into joy for me; you have torn off my sackcloth and girded me with gladness, that my glory may sing to you and I may not be pricked." What does "that I may not be pricked" mean? That there may be nothing to goad my conscience. Fear goads: but do not fear; love enters, which heals what fear wounds. The fear of God wounds as a physician's knife does: it removes the rot and seems, as it were, to enlarge the wound. See, when the rot was in the body, the wound was smaller, but dangerous; the physician's knife comes: that wound hurt less than it hurts now when it is being cut. It hurts more when it is being cured than if it were not cured; but it hurts more when the medicine is applied, so that it may never hurt when health follows. So let fear take hold of your heart, to bring in love; let the scar follow the physician's knife. Such is the physician that not even the scars show: only submit yourself to his right hand. For if you are without fear, you cannot be justified. The sentence has been spoken from the Scriptures: "For he who is without fear cannot be justified." So fear must enter first, through which love may come. Fear is the medicine, love is health. "But whoever fears is not perfected in love." Why? "Because fear has torment", as the physician's cutting has torment.

But there is another sentence which seems contrary to this, if it does not find one who understands it; for it is said in a certain place in the Psalm, "The fear of the Lord is chaste, enduring for ever and ever." It shows us a kind of eternal fear, but chaste. But if that shows us an eternal fear, does this Epistle perhaps contradict it, which says, "There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear"? Let us question both utterances of God. The Spirit is one, though the books are two, though the mouths are two, though the tongues are two. For this was said through John, that through David; but do not think the Spirit is different. If one breath fills two pipes, can one Spirit not fill two hearts and move two tongues? But if two pipes filled with one breath, that is, one blowing, sound in harmony, can two tongues filled with the Spirit of God be out of tune? So there is a certain harmony there, a certain concord; but it wants a listener. See, the Spirit of God has breathed into and filled two hearts, two mouths, moved two tongues; and we have heard from one tongue, "There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear"; we have heard from the other, "The fear of the Lord is chaste, enduring for ever and ever." What is this? Are they, as it were, out of tune? No: shake out your ears, attend to the melody. Not without reason did he add "chaste" there and not add it here; unless because there is one fear which is called chaste and another which is not called chaste. Let us distinguish these two fears, and understand the harmony of the pipes. How do we understand, or how do we distinguish them? Let your Love attend. There are men who fear God for this reason, lest they be sent into Gehenna, lest perhaps they burn with the devil in the eternal fire. This is the fear that brings in love; but it comes in so as to go out. For if you still fear God because of punishments, you do not yet love him whom you so fear. You do not desire good things, but avoid evil ones. But from avoiding evil things you correct yourself and begin to desire good things. When you have begun to desire good things, there will be chaste fear in you. What is chaste fear? Fear of losing those very goods. Attend. It is one thing to fear God lest he send you into Gehenna with the devil; it is another to fear God lest he depart from you. The fear by which you fear lest you be sent into Gehenna with the devil is not yet chaste; for it comes not from the love of God but from fear of punishment. But when you fear God lest his presence desert you, you embrace him; you desire to enjoy him himself.

The difference between these two fears, the one which love casts out and the other, chaste, which endures for ever and ever, cannot be better explained than if you set before you two married women, one of whom you picture as wanting to commit adultery, delighting in wickedness, but fearing to be condemned by her husband. She fears her husband, but she fears him because she still loves wickedness: to her the husband's presence is not welcome but burdensome; and if perhaps she lives wickedly, she fears that her husband may come. Such are those who fear that the day of judgment may come. Picture the other as loving her husband, owing him chaste embraces, staining herself with no impurity of adultery; she longs for her husband's presence. And how are these two fears distinguished? The one fears, the other fears too. Ask them; they answer you, as it were, the same: ask the one, "Do you fear your husband?" she answers, "I fear him." Ask the other too whether she fears her husband; she answers, "I fear him." The word is one, but the mind is different. Now let them be asked, "Why?" The one says, "I fear my husband lest he come"; the other says, "I fear my husband lest he go away." The one says, "I fear lest I be condemned"; the other says, "I fear lest I be deserted." Put this into the mind of Christians, and you find the fear which love casts out, and the other, chaste fear, enduring for ever and ever.

Let us speak first, then, to those who fear God as that woman fears whom wickedness delights; for she fears her husband lest he condemn her: let us speak first to such. O soul that fears God in this way, lest God condemn you, as the woman fears whom wickedness delights, who fears her husband lest she be condemned by her husband: as that woman displeases you, so displease yourself too. If perhaps you have a wife, do you want your wife to fear you in this way, lest she be condemned by you; that wickedness should delight her, but that she be held back by the weight of fear of you, not by the condemnation of iniquity? You want her chaste, so as to love you, not to fear you. Show yourself to God such as you want to have a wife. And if you do not yet have one and want to have one, you want to have such a one. And what do we say, brothers? That woman who fears her husband lest she be condemned by him perhaps does not commit adultery for fear that it may somehow reach her husband and he take from her this temporal light. But that husband can be deceived too; for he is a man, as she too is, who can deceive. She fears him, out of whose sight she can be: do you not fear the face of your husband who is always above you? "The face of the Lord is against those who do evil." She watches for her husband's absence, and is perhaps spurred on by the delight of adultery; and yet she says to herself, "I will not do it: he is absent, but it is hard for it not to reach him somehow." She restrains herself lest it reach a man who may not know, who may be deceived, who may think good even a bad woman, who may think chaste one who is an adulteress: do you not fear the eyes of him whom no one can deceive? Do you not fear the presence of him who cannot be turned away from you? Ask God to look upon you and turn his face away from your sins: "Turn your face away from my sins." But how do you deserve that he should turn his face away from your sins? If you do not turn your face away from your sins. For the same voice says in the Psalm, "For I acknowledge my iniquity, and my sin is always before me." Do you acknowledge it, and he forgives it.

We have spoken to her who still has the fear which does not endure for ever and ever, but which love excludes and casts out; let us speak also to her who already has chaste fear, enduring for ever and ever. Do we think we will find her, so as to speak to her? Do you think she is among this people? Do you think she is in this apse? Do you think she is in this land? She cannot but be, but she is hidden. It is winter; the greenness is within, in the root. Perhaps we have found her ears. But wherever that soul is, would that I might find her, and that she would not lend her ears to me, but I mine to her! She would rather teach me something than learn from me. A certain holy soul, fiery, and longing for the kingdom of God: it is not I who speak to her, but God himself, and he consoles her, living patiently on this earth, thus: "Now you want me to come, and I know that you want me to come; I know what you are, so that you await my coming without care; I know that it is wearisome to you: but wait yet, endure; I am coming, and coming quickly." But to one who loves it is slow. Hear her singing like a lily among thorns; hear her sighing and saying, "I will sing and understand in the blameless way: when will you come to me?" But in the blameless way she rightly does not fear, because "perfect love casts out fear." And when she has come to his embrace, she fears, but securely. What does she fear? She will be on her guard and keep herself from her iniquity, lest she sin again: not lest she be sent into the fire, but lest she be deserted by him. And what will be in her? "Chaste fear, enduring for ever and ever." We have heard the two pipes in harmony. The one speaks of fear and the other of fear: but the one of the fear by which the soul fears lest it be condemned, the other of the fear by which the soul fears lest it be deserted. The one is the fear which love excludes; the other is the fear enduring for ever and ever.

"Let us love, because he first loved us." For how could we love, unless he had first loved us? By loving we have become friends; but he loved enemies, so that we might be made friends. He loved us first, and gave us the gift of loving him. We did not yet love him; by loving we are made beautiful. What does a man ugly and with a distorted face do if he loves a beautiful woman? Or what does a woman do, ugly and distorted and dark, if she loves a handsome man? Can she become beautiful by loving? Can he too become handsome by loving? He loves a beautiful woman; and when he sees himself in a mirror, he is ashamed to lift his face toward that beauty of his whom he loves. What will he do to become beautiful? Does he wait for beauty to come? Rather, by waiting, old age is added and makes him uglier. So there is nothing to be done, no advice to give him, except that he restrain himself and not dare to love, unequal, one unequal to him; or, if perhaps he loves and wishes to marry, let him love chastity in her, not the face of the flesh. But our soul, my brothers, is foul through iniquity: by loving God it is made beautiful. What kind of love is it that makes the one who loves beautiful? But God is always beautiful, never ugly, never changeable. He who is always beautiful loved us first; and what kind of people did he love, but foul and ugly? Yet not so as to leave them foul, but to change them and make them beautiful from ugly. How shall we be beautiful? By loving him who is always beautiful. As love grows in you, so beauty grows; for love itself is the beauty of the soul. "Let us love, because he first loved us." Hear the apostle Paul: "But God shows his love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us": the righteous for the unrighteous, the beautiful for the foul. How do we find Jesus beautiful? "Fair in form beyond the sons of men; grace is poured upon your lips." From where? See again from where he is beautiful: "Fair in form beyond the sons of men", because "in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." But because he took flesh, he took, as it were, your foulness, that is, your mortality, so as to fit himself to you and match himself to you, and rouse you to love the beauty within. From where, then, do we find that Jesus is foul and ugly, as we find that he is beautiful and "fair in form beyond the sons of men"? From where do we find that he is also ugly? Ask Isaiah: "And we saw him, and he had no form nor comeliness." These are the two pipes, sounding, as it were, differently; but one Spirit breathes into both. By the one it is said, "Fair in form beyond the sons of men"; by the other it is said in Isaiah, "We saw him, and he had no form nor comeliness." Both pipes are filled by one Spirit; they are not out of tune. Do not turn your ears away; apply your understanding. Let us ask the apostle Paul, and let him explain to us the harmony of the two pipes. Let "Fair in form beyond the sons of men" sound for us: "Who, being in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped." See, fair in form beyond the sons of men. Let "We saw him, and he had no form nor comeliness" sound for us too: "He emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men, and found in appearance as a man." He had no form nor comeliness, so as to give you form and comeliness. What form? What comeliness? The love of charity; so that loving you may run, and running you may love. You are beautiful now; but do not look at yourself, lest you lose what you have received; look at him by whom you were made beautiful. Be beautiful for this, that he may love you. But direct your whole attention to him, run to him, seek his embraces, fear to depart from him; so that there may be in you chaste fear, enduring for ever and ever. "Let us love, because he first loved us."

"If anyone says, I love God." What God? Why do we love? "Because he first loved us" and gave us the gift of loving. He loved the ungodly to make them godly; he loved the unrighteous to make them righteous; he loved the sick to make them whole. So let us too love, "because he first loved us." Ask anyone, let him tell you whether he loves God. He cries out, he professes, "I love him"; he knows it himself. There is another thing by which he may be questioned. "If anyone says," he says, "I love God, and hates his brother, he is a liar." How do you prove that he is a liar? Hear: "For whoever does not love his brother whom he sees, how can he love God whom he does not see?" What then? Does whoever loves his brother love God too? He must love God; he must love love itself. Can he love his brother and not love love? He must love love. What then? Does whoever loves love therefore love God? Certainly, therefore. By loving love he loves God. Or have you forgotten what you said a little earlier, "God is love"? If God is love, whoever loves love loves God. So love your brother, and be secure. You cannot say, "I love my brother, but I do not love God." Just as you lie if you say, "I love God", when you do not love your brother, so you deceive yourself when you say, "I love my brother", if you think you do not love God. You who love your brother must love love itself; but love is God: so whoever loves his brother must love God. "But if you do not love your brother whom you see, how can you love God whom you do not see?" Why does he not see God? Because he does not have love itself. He does not see God because he does not have love; he does not have love because he does not love his brother: so he does not see God because he does not have love. For if he has love, he sees God, because God is love; and that eye is cleansed more and more by love, so that it may see that unchangeable substance, in whose presence it may always rejoice, which it may enjoy for ever, joined to the angels. But let it run now, so that it may one day rejoice in the homeland. Let it not love the pilgrimage, not love the road: let everything be bitter except him who calls, until we cleave to him and say what was said in the Psalm: "You have destroyed all who commit fornication away from you." And who are those who commit fornication? Those who depart and love the world. But you, what? It goes on and says: "But for me it is good to cleave to God." My whole good is to cleave to God freely. For if you ask and say, "Why do you cleave to God?", and he says, "So that he may give to me", what will he give you? He made heaven, he made earth: what is he going to give you? You already cleave to him: find something better, and he gives it to you.

"For whoever does not love his brother whom he sees, how can he love God whom he does not see? And this commandment we have from him, that whoever loves God should love his brother too." You were saying grandly, "I love God", and you hate your brother! O murderer, how do you love God? Did you not hear earlier in this very Epistle, "Whoever hates his brother is a murderer"? "But I really do love God, though I hate my brother." You really do not love God if you hate your brother. And now I prove it by another proof. He himself said, "He has given us a command, that we love one another": how do you love him whose command you hate? Who would say, "I love the emperor, but I hate his laws"? The emperor understands from this whether you love him, whether his laws are kept in the provinces. What is the emperor's law? "A new commandment I give you, that you love one another." You say, then, that you love Christ: keep his commandment and love your brother. But if you do not love your brother, how do you love him whose commandment you despise? Brothers, I am not sated with speaking of love in the name of Christ. As much as you too have a greed for this thing, so much we hope that it grows in you and casts out fear, so that there may remain that chaste fear enduring for ever and ever. Let us endure the world, endure tribulations, endure the stumbling blocks of temptations. Let us not leave the way; let us hold the unity of the Church, hold Christ, hold love. Let us not be torn from the members of his bride, not be torn from faith, so that we may glory in his presence; and we shall abide securely in him, now by faith, then by sight, of which we have so great a pledge, the gift of the Holy Spirit.

I believe you remember, you who were present yesterday, the point in the course of this Epistle at which our exposition arrived: that is, "For whoever does not love his brother whom he sees, how can he love God whom he does not see? And this commandment we have from him, that whoever loves God should love his brother too." So far it had been discussed. Let us see, then, what follows in order. "Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God." Who is it that does not believe that Jesus is the Christ? He who does not live as Christ commanded. For many say, "I believe"; but faith without works does not save. And the work of faith is love itself, as the apostle Paul says, "And faith which works through love." Your past works, before you believed, were either none, or, if they seemed good, they were empty. For if they were none, you were like a man without feet, or unable to walk on injured feet; but if they seemed good, before you believed, you were running indeed, but by running off the road you were straying rather than arriving. So we must both run and run on the road. Whoever runs off the road runs in vain; rather, he runs to toil. The more he runs off the road, the more he strays. What is the road on which we run? Christ said, "I am the way." What is the homeland to which we run? Christ said, "I am the truth." You run through him, you run to him, you rest in him. But that we might run through him, he stretched himself out to us; for we were far away, and on a far pilgrimage. It is not enough that we were on a far pilgrimage: we were sick and could not move ourselves. The physician came to the sick; the road was stretched out to the pilgrims. Let us be saved by him, let us walk through him. This is believing that Jesus is the Christ, as Christians believe who are Christians not in name only but in deeds and life: not as the demons believe. "For the demons also believe and tremble", as Scripture says. What more could the demons believe than to say, "We know who you are, the Son of God"? What the demons said, Peter too said. When the Lord asked who he was, and whom men said he was, his disciples answered him, "Some say you are John the Baptist, others Elijah, others Jeremiah or one of the prophets." And he said, "But who do you say that I am?" Peter answered and said, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God." And he heard from the Lord, "Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed it to you, but my Father who is in heaven." See what praises follow this faith: "You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church." What does "on this rock I will build my Church" mean? On this faith, on what was said: "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God." "On this rock," he says, "I will found my Church." Great praise! So Peter says, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God"; and the demons say too, "We know who you are, the Son of God, the Holy One of God." Peter said this, and the demons said it too: the same words, not the same mind. And how is it clear that Peter said this with love? Because the faith of a Christian is with love, but the demon's is without love. How without love? Peter said this in order to embrace Christ; the demons said it so that Christ might depart from them. For before they said, "We know who you are; you are the Son of God", they said, "What have we to do with you? Why have you come before the time to destroy us?" So it is one thing to confess Christ in order to hold Christ, another to confess Christ in order to drive Christ away from you. So you see that when he says here, "whoever believes", it is a particular kind of faith, not as with many. So, brothers, let none of the heretics say to you, "We too believe." That is why I have set before you the example of the demons, so that you may not rejoice at the words of those who believe, but examine the deeds of those who live.

Let us see, then, what it is to believe in Christ; what it is to believe that Jesus is the Christ. There follows: "Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God." But what is it to believe this? "And everyone who loves him who begot loves him who is begotten of him." At once he has joined love to faith, because without love faith is empty. With love, it is the faith of a Christian; without love, the faith of a demon. But those who do not believe are worse than the demons and slower than the demons. Someone will not believe in Christ: he does not yet imitate even the demons. Someone now believes in Christ, but hates Christ: he has the confession of faith in fear of punishment, not in love of the crown; for they too were afraid of being punished. Add love to this faith, so that it becomes such faith as the apostle Paul speaks of, "faith which works through love": you have found a Christian, you have found a citizen of Jerusalem, you have found a fellow citizen of the angels, you have found a pilgrim sighing on the way. Join yourself to him; he is your companion; run with him, if you too are this. "Everyone who loves him who begot loves him who is begotten of him." Who begot? The Father. Who is begotten? The Son. What, then, does he say? Everyone who loves the Father loves the Son.

"By this we know that we love the children of God." What is this, brothers? A little before, he was speaking of the Son of God, not of the children of God: see, one Christ was set before us to contemplate, and it was said to us, "Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God; and everyone who loves him who begot", that is, the Father, "loves him who is begotten of him", that is, the Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. And there follows, "By this we know that we love the children of God"; as though he were about to say, "By this we know that we love the Son of God", he said "the children of God", who a little before was speaking of the Son of God; because the children of God are the body of the only Son of God; and since he is the head and we the members, there is one Son of God. So whoever loves the children of God loves the Son of God; and whoever loves the Son of God loves the Father; nor can anyone love the Father unless he loves the Son; and whoever loves the Son loves the children of God too. What children of God? The members of the Son of God. And by loving he himself becomes a member, and comes through love to be in the structure of the body of Christ; and there will be one Christ loving himself. For when the members love one another, the body loves itself. "And if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it; and if one member is glorified, all the members rejoice with it." And what does he go on to say? "Now you are the body of Christ and members." He was speaking a little before of brotherly love, and said, "Whoever does not love his brother whom he sees, how can he love God whom he does not see?" But if you love your brother, do you perhaps love your brother and not love Christ? How, when you love the members of Christ? So when you love the members of Christ, you love Christ; when you love Christ, you love the Son of God; when you love the Son of God, you love the Father too. So love cannot be separated. Choose what you will love; the rest follows you. You say, "I love God alone, God the Father." You lie: if you love, you do not love him alone; but if you love the Father, you love the Son too. "See," you say, "I love the Father, and I love the Son; but only this: God the Father and God the Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, who ascended into heaven and sits at the right hand of the Father, that Word through whom all things were made, and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us; this alone I love." You lie: for if you love the head, you love the members too; but if you do not love the members, neither do you love the head. Do you not tremble at the voice of the head crying from heaven on behalf of the members, "Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?" He called the persecutor of his members his own persecutor; he calls the lover of his members his own lover. Now you know, brothers, what his members are: the Church of God itself. "By this we know that we love the children of God, because we love God." And how? Are the children of God not one thing, and God another? But whoever loves God loves his commandments. And what are the commandments of God? "A new commandment I give you, that you love one another." Let no one excuse himself by one love for another love; this love holds altogether together: as it is itself joined into one, so it makes all who depend on it one, and, like fire, as it were, fuses them together. It is gold: the mass is fused and becomes one thing; but unless the heat of love kindles it, it cannot be fused from many into one. "Because we love God, by this we know that we love the children of God."

And how do we know that we love the children of God? "Because we love God and do his commandments." We sigh here because of the difficulty of doing God's commandment. Hear what follows. O man, why do you toil in loving? In loving avarice! What you love is loved with toil; God is loved without toil. Avarice will command labours, dangers, grindings, tribulations; and you will obey. To what end? So that you may have something to fill your chest with, and lose your security. Perhaps you were more secure before you had it than when you began to have it. See what avarice commanded you: you have filled your house, robbers are feared; you have acquired gold, you have lost sleep. See what avarice commanded you: "Do it", and you did it. What does God command you? "Love me." You love gold: you will seek gold, and perhaps not find it; whoever seeks me, I am with him. You will love honour, and perhaps not attain it: who has loved me and not come to me? God says to you: You want to make a patron for yourself, or a powerful friend; you canvass for it through someone of lower rank. "Love me," God says to you: no one canvasses through anyone to reach me; love itself makes me present to you. What is sweeter than this love, brothers? Not without reason did you just now hear in the Psalm, brothers, "The unjust have told me of delights, but not as your law, O Lord." What is God's law? God's commandment. What is God's commandment? That new commandment, which is called new because it makes new: "A new commandment I give you, that you love one another." Hear that it is God's law: the apostle says, "Bear one another's burdens, and so you will fulfil the law of Christ." Love itself is the consummation of all our works. There is the end: for this we run; to it we run; when we have come to it, we shall rest.

You have heard in the Psalm, "I have seen the end of all consummation." He said, "I have seen the end of all consummation": what had he seen? Do we think that he had climbed to the summit of some very high and very sharp mountain and looked out and seen the circuit of the earth and the circles of the whole world, and therefore said, "I have seen the end of all consummation"? If this is praiseworthy, let us ask the Lord for eyes of the flesh so sharp, that we may look for some very lofty mountain on the earth, from whose summit we may see the end of all consummation. Do not go far: see, I tell you, climb the mountain and see the end. Christ is the mountain: come to Christ; from there you see the end of all consummation. What is this end? Ask Paul: "But the end of the commandment is love from a pure heart and a good conscience and faith unfeigned"; and in another place, "But love is the fulfilment of the law." What is so finished and complete as fulfilment? For indeed, brothers, he puts "end" in a praiseworthy sense. Do not think of consumption, but of consummation. For it is said in one sense, "I have finished the bread", in another, "I have finished the tunic." I have finished the bread by eating it; I have finished the tunic by weaving it. Both here and there "finish" sounds; but yet the bread is finished so as to be consumed, the tunic is finished so as to be completed; the bread is finished so as not to be, the tunic is finished so as to be perfect. So understand "end" in this way, also when the Psalm is read and you hear, "To the end, a Psalm of David." You hear this continually in the Psalms, and you ought to know what you hear. What is "to the end"? "For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes." And what does "Christ is the end" mean? Because Christ is God, and the end of the commandment is love, and God is love: because Father and Son and Holy Spirit are one. There is your end; elsewhere is the way. Do not stick on the way and fail to arrive at the end. Whatever else you come to, pass on until you arrive at the end. What is the end? "But for me it is good to cleave to God." You have cleaved to God, you have finished the way; you will abide in the homeland. Attend. Someone seeks money: let it not be your end; pass by as a pilgrim. Seek where to pass by, not where to remain. But if you love it, you are entangled by avarice; avarice will be a chain on your feet; you cannot go further. So pass by this too; seek the end. You seek the health of the body: do not remain there either. For what is this health of the body, which is destroyed by death, weakened by sickness, trivial, mortal, fleeting? Seek it lest sickly health should perhaps hinder your good works. So the end is not there, because it is sought for the sake of something else. Whatever is sought for the sake of something else, the end is not there; whatever is sought for its own sake and freely, there is the end. You seek honours: perhaps you seek them in order to do something, to accomplish something, to please God: do not love honour itself, lest you remain there. Do you seek praise? If you seek God's, you do well; if you seek your own, you do ill; you remain on the way. But see, you are loved, you are praised: do not rejoice when you are praised in yourself; be praised in the Lord, so that you may sing, "In the Lord my soul shall be praised." You speak some good discourse, and your discourse is praised? Let it not be praised as yours; the end is not there. If you put the end there, you are finished; but you are not finished as being perfected, but finished as being consumed. So let your discourse not be praised as from you, as yours. But how is it to be praised? As the Psalm says, "In God I will praise the discourse, in God I will praise the word." From this it comes about that what follows is done in you: "In God I have hoped; I will not fear what man may do to me." For when all that is yours is praised in God, there is no fear that your praise may perish, because God does not fail. So pass by this too.

See, brothers, how many things we pass by in which there is no end. We use these as on the way; we refresh ourselves, as it were, at the stopping-places of inns, and pass on. Where, then, is the end? "Beloved, we are children of God, and it has not yet appeared what we shall be": this was said here, in this Epistle. So we are still on the way; still, wherever we come, we must pass on until we arrive at some end. "We know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is." This is the end; there is everlasting praise, there Alleluia always without failing. So he spoke of this end in the Psalm: "I have seen the end of all consummation." And as if it were said to him, "What is the end that you have seen?": "Your commandment is exceedingly broad." This is the end: the breadth of the commandment. The breadth of the commandment is love, because where there is love there are no straits. The apostle was in this breadth when he said, "Our mouth is open to you, Corinthians; our heart is enlarged; you are not restricted in us." So, "Your commandment is exceedingly broad." What is the broad commandment? "A new commandment I give you, that you love one another." So love is not in straits. Do you want not to be in straits on earth? Dwell in a broad place. For whatever a man does to you does not put you in straits, because you love what man does not harm: you love God, you love the brotherhood, you love the law of God, you love the Church of God; it will be everlasting. You labour on earth, but you will come to the promised fruit. Who takes from you what you love? If no one takes from you what you love, you sleep securely; rather, you keep watch securely, lest by sleeping you lose what you love. For not in vain was it said, "Enlighten my eyes, lest I ever sleep in death." Those who shut their eyes against love fall asleep in the desires of carnal delights. So wake up. For there are delights: eating, drinking, wantonness, gaming, hunting; all evils follow these vain pomps. Do we not know that they are delights? Who denies that they delight? But the law of God is loved more. Cry out against such persuaders: "The unjust have told me of delights, but not as your law, O Lord." This delight abides. Not only does it abide for you to come to, but it also calls back one who flees.

"For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments." You have already heard, "On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets." How he did not want to scatter you through many pages! "On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets." On which two commandments? "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind"; and, "You shall love your neighbour as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets." See, these are the commandments of which this whole Epistle speaks. Hold fast to love, then, and be secure. Why do you fear that you may do harm to someone? Who does harm to one whom he loves? Love: it cannot be done without your doing good. But perhaps you rebuke? Love does this, not cruelty. But perhaps you beat? You do it for discipline; because the love that belongs to love itself does not let you neglect one who is undisciplined. And sometimes there is, as it were, a different and contrary fruit, so that sometimes hatred flatters and love is fierce. Someone hates his enemy and feigns friendship toward him: he sees him do something evil, and he praises him; he wants him to be headlong, wants him to go blind over the precipices of his desires, from which perhaps he may not return; he praises him, "For the sinner is praised in the desires of his soul"; he applies to him the ointment of his flattery: see, he hates, and he praises. Another sees his friend doing some such thing; he calls him back; if he does not listen to him, he even uses words of reproof, scolds him, quarrels with him: sometimes it comes to this necessity, that he quarrels. See, hatred flatters, and love quarrels. Do not attend to the words of the flatterer and the seeming harshness of the one who scolds; look at the vein, seek the root from which they come. The one flatters in order to deceive, the other quarrels in order to correct. So there is no need, brothers, for your heart to be stretched out by us: ask of God that you may love one another. Love all men, even your enemies; not because they are brothers, but that they may be brothers; so that you may always burn with brotherly love, whether toward one who has become a brother or toward an enemy, so that by being loved he may become a brother. Wherever you love a brother, you love a friend. He is already with you; he is already joined to you even in catholic unity. If you live well, you love a brother made from an enemy. But you love someone who has not yet believed in Christ, or, if he has believed in Christ, believes as the demons do: you rebuke his vanity. Do you love, and love with brotherly love: he is not yet a brother, but you love him so that he may be a brother. So all our love is brotherly toward Christians, toward all his members. The discipline of love, my brothers, its strength, its flowers, its fruit, its beauty, its pleasantness, its pasture, its drink, its food, its embrace, is without surfeit. If it so delights us as pilgrims, how shall we rejoice in the homeland?

Let us run, then, my brothers, let us run, and love Christ. What Christ? Jesus Christ. Who is he? The Word of God. And how did he come to the sick? "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us." So what Scripture foretold has been fulfilled: "The Christ had to suffer and rise from the dead on the third day." Where does his body lie? Where are his members labouring? Where ought you to be, so as to be under the head? "And that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be preached in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem." There let your love be spread out. Christ says, and the Psalm says (that is, the Spirit of God), "Your commandment is exceedingly broad"; and someone or other sets the boundaries of love in Africa! Extend your love through the whole world, if you want to love Christ; for the members of Christ lie throughout the world. If you love a part, you are divided; if you are divided, you are not in the body; if you are not in the body, you are not under the head. What does it profit you that you believe and blaspheme? You worship him in the head, you blaspheme him in the body. He loves his body. If you have cut yourself off from his body, the head has not cut itself off from its body. "In vain do you honour me," the head cries to you from above; "in vain do you honour me." It is as if someone wanted to kiss your head and trample on your feet: perhaps with hobnailed boots he would crush your feet while wanting to hold your head and kiss it; would you not, amid the words of the one honouring you, cry out and say, "What are you doing, man? You are trampling on me." You would not say, "You are trampling on my head", because he was honouring the head; but the head would cry out more for the members trampled on than for itself because it was honoured. Does not the head itself cry out, "I do not want your honour; do not trample on me"? Now say, if you can, "How have I trampled on you?" Say it to the head: "I wanted to kiss you, I wanted to embrace you." But do you not see, you fool, that what you want to embrace reaches, by a certain structure of unity, to what you trample on? You honour me above, you trample on me below. What you trample on hurts more than what you honour rejoices; because what you honour grieves for those whom you trample on. How does the tongue cry out? "It hurts me." It does not say, "It hurts my foot", but, "It hurts me." O tongue, who has touched you? Who has struck you? Who has pricked you? Who has stung you? "No one; but I am joined to those that are being trampled on. How do you want me not to hurt, when I am not separated?"

So our Lord Jesus Christ, when he ascended into heaven on the fortieth day, commended his body, where it was to lie, because he saw that many would honour him because he ascended into heaven; he saw that their honour is useless if they trample on his members on earth. And lest anyone should go astray, and while adoring the head in heaven trample on the feet on earth, he told where his members would be. For as he was about to ascend he said his last words; after those words he did not speak on earth. As he was about to ascend into heaven he commended his members on earth, and departed. Now you do not find Christ speaking on earth: you find him speaking, but from heaven. And why from heaven itself? Because his members were being trampled on earth. For to the persecutor Saul he said from above, "Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?" "I have ascended into heaven, but I still lie on earth: here I sit at the right hand of the Father; there I am still hungry, thirsty, and a stranger." How, then, did he commend his body on earth when about to ascend? When the disciples asked him, "Lord, will you show yourself at this time, and when will the kingdom of Israel be?", he answered as he was going, "It is not for you to know the time which the Father has fixed by his own authority; but you will receive the power of the Holy Spirit coming upon you, and you will be my witnesses." See where he spreads out his body; see where he does not want to be trampled on: "You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the whole earth." "See where I lie, I who ascend. For I ascend because I am the head; my body still lies. Where does it lie? Throughout the whole earth." Beware of striking it, beware of violating it, beware of trampling on it: these are the last words of Christ as he was going into heaven. Think of a man lying sick in bed, lying in his house and wasted by illness, near death, gasping, already holding his soul, as it were, between his teeth; who, anxious perhaps about some thing dear to him, which he loves much, has it come to mind, and calls his heirs and says, "I beg you, do this." He holds on to his soul, as it were, by force, lest it go out before those words are made firm. When he has dictated those last words, he breathes out his soul; the corpse is carried to the tomb. How do his heirs remember the last words of the dying man? How, if someone stood up to say to them, "Do not do it"? What would they say? "Am I then not to do what my father last enjoined on me as he breathed out his soul, what last sounded in my ears as my father was departing from here? His other words I may hold otherwise; his last words hold me more: I did not see him again, I did not hear him speaking." Brothers, think with Christian hearts: if the words of one going to the tomb are so sweet, so pleasing, of such great weight to his heirs, what ought the last words of Christ to be to the heirs of Christ, not of one returning to the tomb but of one ascending into heaven! For the man who lived and died: his soul is carried off to other places, his body is laid in the earth; whether those words are carried out or not does not concern him; he is now doing something else or suffering something else: either he rejoices in Abraham's bosom, or in the eternal fire he longs for a little water; his corpse lies senseless in the tomb, and yet the last words of the dying man are kept. What do those hope for who do not keep the last words of him who sits in heaven, who sees from above whether they are despised or not despised? Of him who said, "Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?", who reserves for judgment whatever he sees his members suffer?

"And what have we done?" they say. "We have suffered persecution, we have not done it." You have done it, wretched men: first, because you have divided the Church. The sword of the tongue is greater than that of iron. Hagar, Sarah's slave, was proud, and she was afflicted by her mistress because of her pride. That was discipline, not punishment. So when she had gone away from her mistress, what did the angel say to her? "Return to your mistress." So, carnal soul, like a proud slave-woman, if perhaps you have suffered some troubles for discipline, why do you rage? Return to your mistress; hold to the Lord's peace. See, the Gospels are brought out; we read where the Church is spread: we are argued against, and it is said to us, "Traitors." Traitors of what? Christ commends his Church, and you do not believe; am I to believe you when you curse my fathers? Do you want me to believe you about traitors? You believe Christ first. What is fitting? Christ is God, you are a man: who ought to be believed first? Christ has spread his Church through the whole world: I say, despise me; the Gospel speaks, beware. What does the Gospel say? "The Christ had to suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be preached in his name." Where there is forgiveness of sins, there is the Church. How the Church? For to it was said, "To you I will give the keys of the kingdom of heaven; and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven too, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven too." Where is this forgiveness of sins spread? "Throughout all nations, beginning from Jerusalem." See, believe Christ. But because you understand that, if you believe Christ, you have nothing to say about traitors, you want me to believe you when you curse my fathers, rather than that you should believe Christ when he foretells.