Tractates on the Gospel of John 10.1–11.1

In the psalm you have heard the groaning of the poor man, whose members suffer tribulations throughout the whole earth until the end of the world. Do your utmost, my brothers, to be among these members and of these members; for all tribulation will pass away. Woe to those who rejoice! The Truth says, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.” God became man: what is man to become, for whose sake God became man? Let this hope console us in every tribulation and temptation of this life. For the enemy does not cease to persecute; and if he does not rage openly, he works by snares. For what does he do? “And in their anger they acted deceitfully.” That is why he is called both lion and dragon. But what is said to Christ? “And you shall trample the lion and the dragon.” The lion for open anger, the dragon for hidden snares. The dragon cast Adam out of paradise; the same one, as a lion, persecuted the Church, as Peter says: “For your adversary the devil goes about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.” Let the devil not seem to you to have lost his savagery: when he flatters, then he is most to be guarded against. But amid all these snares and temptations of his, what shall we do, except what we heard there: “But as for me, when they were troublesome to me, I put on sackcloth, and humbled my soul with fasting”? There is one who hears; do not hesitate to pray. But he who hears dwells within. Do not direct your eyes to some mountain, do not lift your face to the stars or the sun or the moon. Do not think that you are heard when you pray over the sea; rather, detest such prayers. Only cleanse the chamber of your heart: wherever you are, wherever you pray, he who hears is within, within in secret, which he calls the bosom when he says, “And my prayer shall return into my bosom.” He who hears you is not outside you. Do not go far, do not lift yourself up as if to touch him with your hands. Rather, if you lift yourself up, you will fall; if you humble yourself, he will draw near. This is the Lord our God, the Word of God, the Word made flesh, the Son of the Father, the Son of God, the Son of Man: lofty, that he might make us; lowly, that he might remake us; walking among men, suffering human things, hiding divine things.

He went down, as the evangelist says, to Capernaum, he and his mother and his brothers and his disciples, and they stayed there not many days. See, he has a mother, he has brothers, he has disciples too: he has brothers from the same source as his mother. For our Scripture is accustomed to call brothers not only those born of the same man and woman, or of the same womb, or of the same father though of different mothers, or at least of the same degree, like the children of brothers or of sisters: not only these does our Scripture know how to call brothers. As it speaks, so it must be understood. It has its own language: whoever does not know this language is troubled and says, “How did the Lord have brothers? For did Mary give birth again?” Far from it. With her the dignity of virgins began. That woman could be a mother; she could not be a wife. She was called “woman” according to the female sex, not according to any loss of her integrity; and this too from the language of Scripture itself. For Eve also, as soon as she was made from her husband's side, not yet touched by her husband, was called “woman,” as you know: “And he formed her into a woman.” How then brothers? The kinsmen of Mary are the Lord's brothers, kinsmen of whatever degree. How do we prove it? From Scripture itself. Lot is called Abraham's brother; he was his brother's son. Read, and you will find that Abraham was Lot's paternal uncle, and they are called brothers. Why, except that they were kinsmen? Likewise Jacob had Laban the Syrian as his maternal uncle: for Laban was the brother of Jacob's mother, that is, of Rebecca, Isaac's wife. Read Scripture, and you will find that the maternal uncle and the sister's son are called brothers. Once you know this rule, you will find that all Mary's blood relations are brothers of Christ.

But those disciples were brothers more truly; for even those kinsmen would not be brothers if they were not disciples, and they would be brothers to no purpose if they did not acknowledge their master as their brother. For in one place, when it was announced to him that his mother and his brothers were standing outside, while he was speaking with his disciples, he said: “Who is my mother, or who are my brothers?” And stretching out his hand over his disciples he said, “These are my brothers”; and, “Whoever does the will of my Father, he is my mother and brother and sister.” So Mary is too, because she did the will of the Father. This is what the Lord magnified in her: that she did the will of the Father, not that flesh gave birth to flesh. Let your Charity attend. For this reason, when the Lord appeared wonderful to the crowd, doing signs and wonders and showing what lay hidden in the flesh, certain souls in admiration said, “Happy is the womb that bore you.” And he said, “Rather, happy are those who hear the word of God and keep it.” That is to say: even my mother, whom you have called happy, is happy in this, that she keeps the word of God; not because in her the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, but because she keeps the very Word of God by which she was made, and which was made flesh in her. Let people not rejoice in temporal offspring; let them exult if in spirit they are joined to God. We have said this because of what the evangelist says, that he lived with his mother and his brothers and his disciples in Capernaum for a few days.

What follows next? “And the Passover of the Jews was near, and he went up to Jerusalem.” He narrates another matter, as the narrator's recollection presented it. “And he found in the temple those selling oxen and sheep and doves, and the money-changers sitting; and when he had made a kind of whip of cords, he drove them all out of the temple, the oxen too and the sheep, and he poured out the coins of the money-changers and overturned the tables; and to those who sold doves he said, ‘Take these things away from here, and do not make my Father's house a house of trade.’” What have we heard, brothers? Look, that temple was still a figure, and the Lord cast out of it all who were seeking their own interests, who had come to a market. And what were they selling there? What people needed for the sacrifices of that time. For your Charity knows that such sacrifices were given to that people because of their carnal mind and their still stony heart, to hold them back from falling away to idols; and they offered sacrifices there, oxen, sheep, and doves: you know it, because you have read it. So it was no great sin if they sold in the temple what was bought to be offered in the temple; and yet he cast them out of it. What would the Lord do if he found drunkards there, if he drove out those selling things that are lawful and not contrary to justice (for what is honestly bought is not unlawfully sold), and would not allow the house of prayer to become a house of trade? If the house of God must not become a house of trade, must it become a house of drinking? But when we say these things, they gnash their teeth against us; and the psalm you heard consoles us: “They gnashed their teeth upon me.” We too know how to hear what may heal us, even if scourges are redoubled upon Christ, because his word is scourged. “Scourges,” it says, “were gathered against me, and they did not know.” He was scourged with the scourges of the Jews; he is scourged with the blasphemies of false Christians: they multiply scourges for their Lord, and they do not know it. Let us, as far as he helps us, do this: “But as for me, when they were troublesome to me, I put on sackcloth, and humbled my soul with fasting.”

Yet we say, brothers (for he did not spare them either: he who was to be scourged by them scourged them first), that he showed us a certain sign in making a whip of cords and with it scourging the undisciplined who were making a business of God's temple. For each one weaves a rope for himself in his sins. The prophet says, “Woe to those who draw sins like a long rope.” Who makes a long rope? He who adds sin to sin. How are sins added to sins? When sins that have been committed are covered over with other sins. A man has committed theft; so that it may not be found out that he did it, he consults an astrologer. It would have been enough to have committed theft; why do you want to join sin to sin? Look, two sins. When you are forbidden to go to the astrologer, you blaspheme the bishop: look, three sins. When you hear, “Put him out of the Church,” you say, “I am taking myself over to the party of Donatus”: look, you add a fourth. The rope grows: fear the rope. It is good for you to be corrected here when you are scourged with it, so that at the end it may not be said, “Bind his feet and hands, and cast him into the outer darkness.” “For each one is bound fast with the cords of his own sins.” The Lord says the one thing, another Scripture says the other; but the Lord says both. Men are bound by their own sins and cast into the outer darkness.

Yet who are those who sell oxen? Let us seek in the figure the mystery of the deed. Who are those who sell sheep and doves? They are those who seek their own interests in the Church, not those of Jesus Christ. Those who do not want to be redeemed hold everything for sale: they do not want to be bought, and they want to sell. Yet it is good for them to be redeemed by the blood of Christ, so as to come to the peace of Christ. For what does it profit to acquire in this world anything temporal and passing, whether money, or the pleasure of belly and throat, or honor in human praise? Are not all these smoke and wind? Do they not all pass away and run on? And woe to those who cling to passing things, for they pass away along with them. Are they not all a headlong river running into the sea? And woe to him who falls in, for he will be dragged into the sea. Therefore we ought to hold back all our affections from such desires. My brothers, those who seek such things are selling. For that Simon too wanted to buy the Holy Spirit because he wanted to sell the Holy Spirit; and he thought the apostles were merchants such as the Lord cast out of the temple with a whip. For such was he himself: he wanted to buy what he might sell. He was one of those who sell doves. For the Holy Spirit appeared in a dove. Who then, brothers, are those who sell doves, if not those who say, “We give the Holy Spirit”? For why do they say this, and at what price do they sell? At the price of their own honor. They receive as their price temporal chairs of office, so that they may seem to be the ones who sell doves. Let them beware of the whip of cords. The dove is not for sale: it is given freely, for it is called grace. Therefore, my brothers, just as you see those who sell, the stall-keepers, each praising what he sells: how many stalls have they set up? Primianus has one stall at Carthage, Maximianus another, Rogatus another in Mauretania, these and those in Numidia another, whom we are no longer able even to name. So someone goes around to buy a dove; each at his own stall praises what he sells. Let that man's heart turn away from every seller; let him come where it is received freely. Nor do they blush at this, brothers: that through their own bitter and malicious dissensions, when they claim for themselves what they are not, when they exalt themselves thinking themselves to be something when they are nothing, they have made so many parties out of themselves. But since they do not want to be corrected, what has been fulfilled in them except what you heard in the psalm: “They were torn apart, and were not pierced with remorse”?

Who then sell oxen? By oxen are understood those who have dispensed the holy Scriptures to us. The apostles were oxen, the prophets were oxen. Hence the apostle says: “You shall not muzzle the ox that treads out the grain. Is it for oxen that God cares? Or does he say it for our sake? For he says it for our sake; because he who plows ought to plow in hope, and he who threshes in hope of a share.” So those oxen left us the record of the Scriptures. For they did not dispense it from their own, because they sought the glory of the Lord. For what did you hear in that same psalm? “And let them say always, ‘The Lord be magnified,’ those who desire the peace of his servant.” The servant of God, the people of God, the Church of God. Let those who desire the peace of his Church magnify the Lord, not the servant; and let them say always, “The Lord be magnified.” Who are to say it? “Those who desire the peace of his servant.” That clear voice which you heard in lamentation in the psalm is the voice of that people, of that servant, and you were moved when you heard it, because you are from it. What was sung by one resounded from every heart. Happy those who recognized themselves in those words as in a mirror. Who then desire the peace of his servant, the peace of his people, the peace of the one whom he calls the only one and wants rescued from the lion: “Rescue my only one from the hand of the dog”? Those who say always, “The Lord be magnified.” So those oxen magnified the Lord, not themselves. See the ox magnifying his Lord, for “the ox knows its owner.” Look at the ox fearing lest the owner of the ox be forsaken and trust be placed in the ox: how he dreads those who want to put their hope in him: “Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?” What I gave, I did not give: you received freely; the dove came down from heaven. “I planted,” he says, “Apollos watered, but God gave the increase: so neither he who plants is anything, nor he who waters, but God who gives the increase. And let them say always, ‘The Lord be magnified,’ those who desire the peace of his servant.”

But these men deceive the peoples by means of the Scriptures themselves, in order to receive honors and praises from them, and so that people may not be converted to the truth. Since by the Scriptures themselves they deceive the peoples, from whom they seek honors, they sell oxen, and they sell sheep too, that is, the congregations themselves. And to whom do they sell, if not to the devil? For, my brothers, if the Church of Christ is the only one, and is one, whatever is cut off from it, who carries it off, if not that lion roaring and going about, seeking whom he may devour? Woe to those who are cut off! For she will remain whole. “For the Lord knows those who are his.” Yet, as far as lies in them, they sell oxen and sheep, and they sell doves too: let them look to the scourge of their sins. Certainly, when they suffer anything of the kind because of these iniquities of theirs, let them recognize that the Lord has made a whip of cords, and that by it he warns them to change, so as not to be traders; for if they do not change, they will hear at the end, “Bind their hands and feet, and cast them into the outer darkness.”

Then the disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house consumes me”: because it was out of zeal for the house of God that the Lord cast these men out of the temple. Brothers, let every Christian among the members of Christ be consumed with zeal for the house of God. Who is consumed with zeal for the house of God? He who strives to have corrected whatever perverse things he may happen to see there, desires them amended, does not rest; if he cannot amend them, he bears with them and groans. The grain is not shaken off the threshing floor; it bears with the chaff, so that it may enter the granary when the chaff has been separated. You, if you are grain, do not be shaken off the threshing floor before the granary, lest you be picked up by the birds before you are gathered into the granary. For the birds of the air, the powers of the air, are waiting to snatch something from the threshing floor, and they snatch only what has been shaken off it. So let zeal for the house of God consume you: let zeal for the house of God consume every Christian, the house of God of which he is a member. For your own house is not more yours than the house where you have everlasting salvation. You enter your own house for temporal rest; you enter the house of God for everlasting rest. If then you take pains that nothing perverse be done in your own house, ought you, in the house of God, where salvation and rest without end are set before you, to put up with it, as far as lies in you, if you happen to see anything perverse? For example, do you see a brother running to the theater? Stop him, warn him, be grieved, if zeal for the house of God consumes you. Do you see others running and wanting to get drunk, and wanting to do it in holy places, which is fitting nowhere? Stop those you can, restrain those you can, frighten those you can, coax those you can; but do not rest. Is it a friend? Let him be admonished gently. Is it a wife? Let her be restrained most severely. Is it a maidservant? Let her be checked even with blows. Do whatever you can, according to the position you hold; and you fulfill, “Zeal for your house consumes me.” But if you are cold, listless, looking to yourself alone and as though sufficient to yourself, and saying in your heart, “What business is it of mine to care about other people's sins? My own soul is enough for me; let me keep it whole for God”: come now, does that servant not come to your mind who hid his talent and would not lay it out? For was he accused because he lost it, and not because he kept it without profit? So listen in this way, my brothers, that you may not rest. I am about to give you counsel: may he who is within give it; for even if he gives it through me, it is he who gives. You know what each of you is to do in his own house, with a friend, with a tenant, with his client, with a superior, with an inferior: as God grants an opening, as he opens a door for his word, do not rest from gaining people for Christ; for you were gained by Christ.

“The Jews said to him, ‘What sign do you show us, seeing that you do these things?’” And the Lord: “‘Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.’ So the Jews said, ‘This temple was forty-six years in building, and you say, “In three days I will raise it up”?’” They were flesh, they savored fleshly things; but he was speaking spiritually. Yet who could understand of which temple he spoke? But we need not search much: through the evangelist he has disclosed it to us; he has told of which temple he spoke. “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” “The temple was forty-six years in building, and will you raise it in three days?” “But he spoke,” says the evangelist, “of the temple of his body.” And it is plain that the Lord, after being put to death, rose again after three days. This is now known to all of us; and if it is closed to the Jews, because they stand outside, it is nevertheless open to us, because we know in whom we have believed. We are about to celebrate, in the yearly solemnity, the destruction and the rebuilding of this temple; and for it we exhort you to prepare yourselves, any of you who are catechumens, so that you may receive grace. Now is the time; now let that be in labor which is to be born then. That much, then, we know.

But perhaps we are asked whether the temple forty-six years in building holds some mystery. There are indeed many things that could be said on this; but we will say for now what can be said briefly and easily understood. Brothers, we said yesterday, unless I am mistaken, that Adam was one man and that he is the whole human race. For so we said, if you remember. He has been, as it were, broken, and being scattered he is gathered, and is, as it were, fused into one by spiritual fellowship and concord. And this one poor man, Adam himself, now groans, but he is renewed in Christ; for an Adam without sin came, to undo the sin of Adam in his own flesh, and to restore to himself the image of God in Adam. From Adam, then, is the flesh of Christ; from Adam, then, is the temple that the Jews destroyed and the Lord raised in three days. For he raised his own flesh: see that he was God, equal to the Father. My brothers, the apostle says, “Who raised him from the dead.” Of whom does he say it? Of the Father. “He became obedient,” he says, “to death, even death on a cross; therefore God also raised him from the dead and gave him the name that is above every name.” The Lord was raised and exalted. Who raised him? The Father, to whom he said in the Psalms, “Raise me up, and I will repay them.” So the Father raised him. Did he not raise himself? But what does the Father do without the Word? What does the Father do without his only Son? For hear that he too was God: “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” Did he say, “Destroy the temple, which the Father will raise in three days”? But just as when the Father raises, the Son also raises, so when the Son raises, the Father also raises; for the Son said, “I and the Father are one.”

What then does the number forty-six mean? Meanwhile, since Adam himself is spread through the whole world, you have already heard yesterday about the four Greek letters of four Greek words. For if you write these four words one under another, that is, the names of the four parts of the world, East, West, North, and South, which is the whole world (which is why the Lord says that he will gather his elect from the four winds when he comes to judgment): if you set out these four Greek names, anatolē, which is East; dysis, which is West; arktos, which is North; mesēmbria, which is South: Anatole, dysis, arctos, mesembria, their initials make ADAM. How then do we find there the number forty-six as well? Because the flesh of Christ was from Adam. The Greeks reckon numbers by letters. What we write as the letter a, they in their language write as alpha, α, and alpha is called one. Where in numbers they write beta, β, which is their b, it is called two in numbers. Where they write gamma, γ, it is called three in their numbers. Where they write delta, δ, it is called four in their numbers; and so they have numbers through all the letters. M, as we call it, they call mu, μ, and it signifies forty: for they say mu, μ, tessarakonta. Now see what number these letters have, and there you will find the temple forty-six years in building. For Adam has alpha, α, which is one; it has delta, δ, which is four: you have five. It has alpha, α, again, which is one: you have six. And it has mu, μ, which is forty: you have forty-six. This, my brothers, was said also by our forebears before us, and this number forty-six was found in the letters. And because our Lord Jesus Christ received his body from Adam, and did not draw sin from Adam, he took from there a bodily temple, not the iniquity that must be driven out of the temple. But that very flesh which he drew from Adam (for Mary was from Adam, and the Lord's flesh from Mary) the Jews crucified; and he was to raise again in three days that very flesh which they were to kill on the cross: they destroyed the temple forty-six years in building, and he raised it up in three days.

We bless the Lord our God, who has gathered us for spiritual joy. Let us be always in humility of heart, and let our joy be with him. Let us not be puffed up by any prosperity of this world, but let us know that our happiness will not be until these things have passed away. Now, my brothers, let our joy be in hope: let no one rejoice as if in a present possession, lest he stick fast on the way. Let all our joy be from the hope to come, all our desire be for eternal life. Let all our sighs pant for Christ: let him be desired, the one most beautiful, who loved even the ugly to make them beautiful; let us run to him alone, groan to him; and let those who desire the peace of his servant say always, “The Lord be magnified.”

The Lord has arranged the order of today's reading opportunely for us: for since we have undertaken to examine and expound the Gospel according to John in order, I believe your Charity has noticed it. It has come about opportunely, then, that today you should hear from the Gospel: “Unless a man is born again of water and the Spirit, he will not see the kingdom of God.” For it is time for us to exhort you who are still catechumens, who have so believed in Christ that you still carry your sins. But no one weighed down with sins will see the kingdom of heaven; for unless his sins have been forgiven, he will not reign with Christ; and they cannot be forgiven except to one who has been born again of water and the Holy Spirit. But let us note how all the words stand, so that the sluggish may find here with what concern they must hasten to lay down their burden. For if they were carrying some heavy load, of stone or of wood, or even of some gain, if they were carrying grain, or wine, or money, they would run to lay down their loads: they carry the load of sins, and are slow to run. We must run to lay this load down; it presses, and it sinks us.