Tractates on the Gospel of John 18.1–19.2

John the evangelist, among his companions and partners the other evangelists, received from the Lord this special and peculiar gift (on whose breast he reclined at the supper, to signify by this that he was drinking deeper secrets from his inmost heart): that he should say such things of the Son of God as might rouse the minds of little ones, perhaps when attentive, but could not fill them while they are not yet capable; while to minds somewhat grown, and coming to a certain inward manly age, he gives something in these words by which they may be both exercised and fed. You heard it when it was read, and you remember where this discourse came from. For yesterday it was read that the Jews wanted to kill Jesus for this reason: “because he not only broke the Sabbath, but also called God his Father, making himself equal to God.” What displeased the Jews pleased the Father himself. This without doubt pleases also those who honor the Son as they honor the Father; for if it does not please them, they will displease. For God will not be greater because it pleases you; but you will be less if it displeases you. Against this slander of theirs, coming either from ignorance or from malice, the Lord speaks, not at all what they could grasp, but that by which they might be shaken and disturbed, and perhaps, once disturbed, might seek the physician. And he was saying things that would be written, so that they might afterward be read by us too. Let us leave aside, then, what happened in the hearts of the Jews when they heard these things; let us rather consider what happens in us when we hear them. For heresies and certain dogmas of perversity, which ensnare souls and throw them headlong into the depths, have arisen only when good Scriptures are not well understood, and what is not well understood in them is also asserted rashly and boldly. So, dearly beloved, we must hear very cautiously these things, for the grasping of which we are little ones, and with a godly heart and with trembling, as it is written, holding this rule of soundness: that what we are able to understand according to the faith in which we have been instructed, we may rejoice in as food; but what we have not yet been able to understand according to the sound rule of faith, we may put away doubt and put off understanding; that is, even if we do not know what something is, we should not doubt at all that it is good and true. And I, brothers, who have undertaken to speak to you, must be considered by you as to who I am that have undertaken it, and what I have undertaken: for I have undertaken, a man, to treat divine things; carnal, spiritual things; mortal, eternal things. From me too, dearly beloved, let vain presumption be far, if I want to live soundly in the house of God, which is “the Church of the living God, the pillar and foundation of the truth.” According to my small measure I grasp what I set before you; where it is opened, I am fed with you; where it is shut, I knock with you.

So the Jews were moved and indignant: rightly indeed, in that a man dared to make himself equal to God; but wrongly in this, that in the man they did not understand God. They saw the flesh, they did not know God; they perceived the dwelling, they did not know the dweller. That flesh was a temple; God dwelt within. So Jesus was not making the flesh equal to the Father, was not comparing the form of a servant with the Lord; not what was made for our sake, but what he was when he made us. For who Christ is (I speak to Catholics) you know, because you have believed rightly: not the Word only, nor the flesh only, but the Word was made flesh, to dwell among us. I go over again what you know about the Word: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God”: here is equality with the Father. But “the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us”: than this flesh the Father is greater. So the Father is both equal and greater: equal to the Word, greater than the flesh; equal to him through whom he made us, greater than him who was made for our sake. To this sound Catholic rule, which you ought above all to know, which you who know it must hold, from which your faith must not slip at all, which no arguments of men must wrest from your heart, let us direct what we understand; and what perhaps we do not understand, let us put off directing to this rule until we are fit. We know, then, that the Son of God is equal to the Father, because we know that in the beginning was God the Word. Why then did the Jews want to kill him? “Because he not only broke the Sabbath, but also called God his Father, making himself equal to God”: seeing the flesh, not seeing the Word. Let the Word, then, speak against them too through the flesh, and let the inner dweller sound through his dwelling, so that whoever can may know who dwells within.

What, then, does he say to them? “So Jesus answered and said to them,” disturbed as they were that he made himself equal to God, “Amen, amen, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of himself except what he sees the Father doing.” What the Jews answered to this is not written; and perhaps they were silent. Yet certain people who want to be considered Christians are not silent, and in a way conceive from these words certain things to say against us, which are not to be despised, both for their sake and for ours. For the Arian heretics, who say that the Son himself who took flesh is less than the Father, not by the flesh but before the flesh, and is not of the same substance as the Father, take from these words a handle for slander, and answer us: “You see that the Lord Jesus, when he noticed that the Jews were disturbed by his making himself equal to God the Father, added such words as to show that he was not equal. For it disturbed the Jews against Christ,” they say, “that he made himself equal to God; and Christ, wanting to correct them from this disturbance and to show them that the Son is not equal to the Father, that is, equal to God, said, as though saying: Why are you angry? Why are you indignant? I am not equal, because the Son can do nothing of himself except what he sees the Father doing. For he who cannot,” they say, “do anything of himself except what he sees the Father doing is surely less, not equal.”

In this distorted and crooked rule of his heart, let the heretic hear us, not yet rebuking but still, as it were, inquiring, and let him explain to us what he thinks. For I suppose, whoever you are (for let us imagine him present), you hold with us that “in the beginning was the Word.” “I hold it,” he says. And that “the Word was with God”? “That too,” he says, “I hold.” Follow on, then, and hold this more firmly: that “the Word was God.” “That too,” he says, “I hold; but that God is greater, this God is less.” Now something smells of paganism: I thought I was speaking with a Christian. If there is a greater God and a lesser God, we worship two gods, not one God. “Why?” he says. “Do you not also say two gods equal to each other?” I do not say this; for I understand this equality in such a way as to understand there also an undivided love; and if undivided love, perfect unity. For if the love that God sent to men makes of many human hearts one heart, and of many human souls one soul, as it is written in the Acts of the Apostles of those who believed and loved one another, “They had one soul and one heart toward God”: if, then, my soul and your soul, when we think alike and love each other, become one soul, how much more are God the Father and God the Son one God in the fountain of love?

But attend to these words by which your heart was disturbed, and recall with me what we were inquiring about the Word. We already hold that “the Word was God.” I add another thing: that when he had said, “He was in the beginning with God,” the evangelist at once added, “All things were made through him.” Now I press you with questions, now I move you against yourself, and appeal to you against yourself. Only hold firmly in memory these things about the Word: that “the Word was God,” and “all things were made through him.” Hear now the words by which you were disturbed so as to call the Son less: namely, because he said, “The Son can do nothing of himself except what he sees the Father doing.” “Yes,” he says. Explain this to me a little: you understand it thus, as far as I suppose, that the Father does certain things, and the Son watches how the Father does them, so that he too may be able to do the things he sees the Father doing. You have set up two craftsmen, as it were: the Father and the Son as master and pupil, just as craftsman fathers usually teach their sons their craft. See, I am coming down to your carnal sense; for the moment I think as you do. Let us see whether this thought of ours finds a way out according to what we have already said together about the Word and think together: that the Word is God, and all things were made through him. Suppose, then, the Father as a craftsman doing certain works, and the Son as a pupil who can do nothing except what he sees the Father doing: for he looks, as it were, at the Father's hands, so that as he sees him fashion, so he too may fashion something like it in his own works. But all those things that this Father does, and wants the Son to watch him and do the like himself, through whom does he do them? Now is the time for you to stand by your former statement, which you went over with me and held with me: that in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, and all things were made through him. So, since you held with me that all things were made through the Word, again with carnal savor and childish impulse you picture in your mind God making and the Word watching, so that when God has made, the Word may make too. For what does God make apart from the Word? For if he makes anything apart from the Word, not all things were made through the Word: you have lost what you held. But if all things were made through the Word, correct what you understood badly. The Father made, and he made only through the Word: how does the Word watch to see the Father making without the Word, so that the Word may make the like? Whatever the Father made, he made through the Word; or else it is false that “all things were made through him.” But it is true: “All things were made through him.” Did that perhaps seem too little to you? “And without him nothing was made.”

So withdraw from that prudence of the flesh, and let us inquire how it was said, “The Son can do nothing of himself except what he sees the Father doing.” Let us inquire, if we are worthy to grasp it. For I confess it is a great matter, altogether arduous, to see the Father working through the Son: not the Father and the Son each doing separate works, but the Father doing any work through the Son, so that no works are done either by the Father without the Son or by the Son without the Father; for “all things were made through him, and without him nothing was made.” With these things most firmly set in the foundation of faith, what now is it to see that “the Son can do nothing of himself except what he sees the Father doing”? You seek, I suppose, to know the Son doing; first seek to know the Son seeing. For certainly what does he say? “The Son can do nothing of himself except what he sees the Father doing.” Attend to what he said: “except what he sees the Father doing.” Seeing goes before, and doing follows: for he sees in order to do. Why do you seek now to know how he does, when you do not yet know how he sees? Why do you run to what comes after, leaving what comes before? He called himself seeing and doing, not doing and seeing: because “he can do nothing of himself except what he sees the Father doing.” Do you want me to explain to you how he does? You explain to me how he sees. If you cannot explain this, neither can I that; if you are not yet fit to perceive this, neither am I that. So let each of us seek, let each of us knock, so that each may deserve to receive. Why do you slander the unlearned as though you were learned? I for the doing, you for the seeing, both unlearned, let us inquire of the Master, and not quarrel childishly in his school. Yet we have already learned together that all things were made through him. So it is plain that the Father does not do other works which the Son sees, so that he may do the like himself; but the Father does the same works through the Son, because all things were made through the Word. Now who knows how God makes? I do not say how he made the world, but how he made your eye, clinging to which carnally you compare visible things with invisible. For you think of God such things as you are accustomed to see with these eyes. But if God could be seen with these eyes, he would not say, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” So you have the eye of the body to see a craftsman, but you do not yet have the eye of the heart to see God; therefore what you are accustomed to see in a craftsman you want to transfer to God. Put earthly things on the earth; lift up your heart.

What then, dearly beloved? Are we going to explain what we asked: how the Word sees, how the Father is seen by the Word, what the seeing of the Word is? I am not so bold, so rash, as to promise to explain this either to myself or to you: however I may guess your measure, I know my own. If you please, then, let us not linger longer; let us run through the reading and see carnal hearts troubled by the Lord's words: troubled for this, that they may not remain in what they hold. Let some toy or other be wrested away, as from children, with which they amuse themselves to their harm, so that more useful things may be put in place for the older, so that those who crawled on the earth may advance. Get up, seek, sigh, pant with desire, and knock at what is shut. But if we do not yet desire, do not yet long, do not yet sigh, we shall be throwing pearls to anyone at all, or we ourselves shall find pearls of no value. So, dearly beloved, may I have stirred up desire in your heart. Ways of life lead to understanding; a kind of life leads to a kind of life. Earthly life is one thing, heavenly life another; the life of beasts is one, the life of men another, the life of angels another. The life of beasts seethes with earthly pleasures, seeks only earthly things, is bent and thrown down toward them; the life of angels is heavenly only; the life of men is midway between angels and beasts. If a man lives according to the flesh, he is compared to beasts; if he lives according to the spirit, he is joined to the angels. When you live according to the spirit, ask, even within that angelic life, whether you are small or grown. For if you are still small, the angels say to you: Grow; we eat bread, you are nourished with milk, the milk of faith, so that you may come to the food of sight. But if there is still a gaping after filthy pleasures, if frauds are still planned, if lies are not avoided, if lies are piled up with perjuries, does so unclean a heart dare to say, “Explain to me how the Word sees,” even if I could, even if I already saw it myself? Moreover, if perhaps I am not in such ways of life and yet am far from this vision, how far is he who is not yet carried away by this heavenly desire, weighed down by earthly desires? There is a great difference between one who turns away and one who desires; and again a great difference between one who desires and one who enjoys. You live like beasts: you turn away. The angels enjoy fully. But you, if you do not live like beasts, no longer turn away: you desire something, and you do not grasp it; by that very desire you have begun the life of the angels. May it grow in you and be perfected in you; and may you grasp this not from me, but from him who made both me and you.

Yet the Lord did not leave us just anyhow either; he wanted it to be understood that in saying, “The Son can do nothing of himself except what he sees the Father doing,” it is not that the Father does some works which the Son sees, and the Son others when he has seen the Father doing them; but the same works are done by both the Father and the Son. For he goes on to say: “For whatever he does, these the Son also does likewise.” Not, when he has done something, the Son does other things likewise; but “whatever he does, these the Son also does likewise.” If the Son does these things that the Father does, the Father does them through the Son; if the Father does through the Son what he does, the Father does not do some things and the Son others, but the works of the Father and of the Son are the same. And how does the Son do the same? Both the same and likewise. Lest perhaps they be the same but done unlike: the same, he says, and likewise. And how could the same be done not likewise? Take an example which I think is not too great for you. When we write letters, our heart makes them first, and then our hand. Certainly why did you all exclaim, unless because you recognized it? What I said is certain and plain to all of us. Letters are made first by our heart, then by our body; the hand serves the heart that commands; both heart and hand make the same letters. Does the heart make some, the hand others? The hand makes the same ones indeed, but not likewise: for our heart makes them intelligibly, the hand visibly. See how the same things are made unlike. Hence it was too little for the Lord to say, “Whatever the Father does, these the Son also does,” unless he added, “likewise.” For what if you understood it in the way in which whatever the heart does, the hand also does, but not likewise? But here he added, “these the Son also does likewise.” If he both does these things and does them likewise, wake up: let the Jew be held fast, let the Christian believe, let the heretic be convicted: the Son is equal to the Father.

“For the Father loves the Son, and shows him all that he himself does.” See, there it is: “shows.” Shows as to whom? Surely as to one who sees. We come back to what we cannot explain, how the Word sees. See, man was made through the Word; but man has eyes, has ears, has hands, different members in the body: through the eyes he can see, through the ears he can hear, through the hands work; different members, different functions of the members. One member cannot do what another can; yet because of the unity of the body, the eye sees both for itself and for the ear, and the ear hears both for itself and for the eye. Is anything of the kind to be thought to be in the Word, since all things were made through him? And Scripture said in the psalm: “Understand, you senseless among the people; and you fools, be wise at last. He who planted the ear, will he not hear? Or he who formed the eye, does he not observe?” If, then, the Word formed the eye, because all things were made through the Word; if the Word planted the ear, because all things were made through the Word: we cannot say, “The Word does not hear, the Word does not see,” lest the psalm rebuke us and say, “Fools, be wise at last.” So if the Word hears and the Word sees, the Son hears and the Son sees: but are we to look for eyes and ears in different places in him too? Does he hear with one part, see with another; and can his ear not do what his eye can, and his eye not do what his ear can? Or is he wholly sight and wholly hearing? Perhaps so; rather, not perhaps, but truly so; provided, however, that his very seeing and his very hearing are in a manner far other than ours. In the Word, seeing and hearing are together; and hearing is not one thing there and seeing another, but hearing is sight and sight is hearing.

And we, who hear in one way and see in another, how do we know this? Perhaps we come back to ourselves, if we are not transgressors, to whom it was said, “Return, you transgressors, to the heart.” Return to the heart: why do you go away from yourselves and perish out of yourselves? Why do you go the ways of solitude? You wander and go astray: return. Where? To the Lord. It is quick: first return to your heart; an exile from yourself, you wander outside; you do not know yourself, and you seek him by whom you were made! Return, return to the heart, withdraw yourself from the body: your body is your dwelling; your heart perceives even through your body; but your body is not what your heart is; leave even your body, return to your heart. In your body you found the eye in one place, the ears in another: do you find this in your heart? Or do you not have ears in your heart? Of which then did the Lord say, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear”? Or do you not have eyes in the heart? Why then does the apostle say, “The eyes of your heart enlightened”? Return to the heart; see there what you perhaps perceive of God, because the image of God is there. In the inner man Christ dwells; in the inner man you are renewed to the image of God; in his image recognize its author. See how all the senses of the body report inward to the heart what they have perceived outside; see how many servants the one inner ruler has, and what he does within himself even without these servants. The eyes report to the heart white and black; the ears report to the same heart melodious and discordant; the nostrils report to the same heart fragrant and foul; taste reports to the same heart bitter and sweet; touch reports to the same heart smooth and rough; and the heart reports to itself just and unjust. Your heart both sees and hears, and judges the other objects of sense; and where the senses of the body do not reach, it distinguishes just and unjust, bad and good. Show me the eyes, ears, nostrils of your heart. Different things are referred to your heart, and different members are not found there. In your flesh you hear in one place, see in another; in your heart you hear where you see. If the image is like this, how much more powerful is he whose image it is? So the Son both hears and sees, and the Son is himself sight and hearing; and for him to hear is the same as to be, and for him to see is the same as to be. For you, to see is not the same as to be: for if you lose your sight you can still be, and if you lose your hearing you can still be.

Do we think we have knocked? Has something been raised up in us by which we may even faintly guess whence light comes to us? I think, brothers, that when we speak of these things and meditate on them, we exercise ourselves. And when we exercise ourselves in them, and then fall back again, as it were, by our own weight to our usual things, we are like people with sore eyes when they are brought out to see the light: if perhaps they had previously had no sight at all, and begin to recover that sight somehow through the care of physicians. And when the physician wants to test how much health has come back to them, he tries to show them what they longed to see and could not while they were blind; and with the sharpness of their eyes now somehow returning, they are brought out to the light; and when they have seen, they are in a way beaten back by the very brightness, and they answer the physician who shows it, “I saw it just now, but I cannot look at it.” What then does the physician do? He takes them back to their usual condition and adds eye salve, so that he may nourish their desire for what was seen and could not be looked at, and from that very desire they may be cured more fully; and if any stinging remedies are applied to restore health, let the patient bear them bravely, so that, kindled by love of that light, he may say to himself, “When will it be that I see with sound eyes what I could not with sore and weak ones?” He urges the physician and asks him to cure him. So, brothers, if perhaps something of the kind has happened in your hearts, if you have somehow lifted up your heart to see the Word, and, beaten back by its light, have fallen back to your usual things, ask the physician to apply stinging eye salves, the precepts of righteousness. There is something for you to see, but you do not have the means to see it. Formerly you did not believe me that there is something for you to see: led by a certain reasoning, you have been brought to it; you drew near, you strained toward it, you trembled, you shrank back. You know for certain that there is something for you to see, but that you are not fit to see it. So be cured. What are the eye salves? Do not lie, do not perjure yourself, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not defraud. But you have been used to it, and you are called away from the habit with some pain: this is what stings, but it heals. For I tell you more frankly, out of fear both for myself and for you: if you stop being cured and neglect to become fit to enjoy this light, through the sickness of your eyes you will love darkness; and by loving darkness you will remain in darkness; and by remaining in darkness you will also be cast into the outer darkness: there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. If love of the light did nothing in you, let fear of pain do it.

I think I have spoken sufficiently, and yet I have not finished the Gospel reading: if I say the rest I shall burden you, and I fear that even what has been drawn may be spilled; so let this suffice your Charity. We are debtors, not now only, but always as long as we live; for we live for your sake. But console this weak, laborious, perilous life of ours in this world by living well; do not sadden us and wear us down by your bad ways. For when we are offended by your bad life, if we flee from you and separate ourselves from you and do not come near you, will you not complain and say, “Even if we were sick, you should have cured us; and if we were weak, you should have visited us”? See, we cure, see, we visit; but let it not happen to us as you heard from the apostle: “I fear that I may have labored over you in vain.”

In the previous sermon, as far as our feeling was moved and our poverty of understanding allowed, we spoke, taking occasion from the words of the Gospel where it is written, “The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he sees the Father doing,” about what it is for the Son to see, that is, for the Word to see, since the Son is the Word; and, since all things were made through the Word, how it can be understood that the Son first sees the Father doing, and only then does himself the things he has seen done, when the Father has done nothing except through the Son. For “all things were made through him, and without him nothing was made.” Yet we did not say anything fully unfolded; but that is because we did not understand anything fully unfolded either. For sometimes speech fails even where understanding advances; how much more does speech suffer failure when understanding has not reached perfection? Now, therefore, as far as the Lord grants, let us run through the reading briefly, and at least today complete the assigned task. If any time or strength happens to remain, we will go back, if we can (as far as can be done both by us and with you), to what it is for the Word to see, and for something to be shown to the Word. For all the things said here, if they are understood carnally, according to human sense, lead the soul full of phantasms to produce for us nothing but certain images as of two men, Father and Son, one showing, the other seeing; one speaking, the other hearing: all of which are idols of the heart. And if these have already been cast down from their temples, how much more must they be cast down from Christian breasts?

“The Son,” he says, “can do nothing of himself, but what he sees the Father doing.” This is true; hold it fast; provided only that you do not let go of what you held at the very opening of this Gospel, that “in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God,” and especially that “all things were made through him.” Join what you have just heard to that earlier hearing, and let the two agree in your hearts. So, then, the Son can do nothing of himself but what he sees the Father doing, in such a way that the Father nevertheless does not do what he does except through the Son, because the Son is his Word; and “in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God,” and “all things were made through him.” “For whatever he does, these the Son also does likewise”: not other things, but these; and not unlike, but likewise.