Tractates on the Gospel of John 23.13–25.8

Then he returns to that resurrection of souls: “For as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so the Son also gives life to whom he will”—but according to the spirit. The Father gives life, the Son gives life; whom the Father wills, whom the Son wills; but the Father gives life to the same ones as the Son, because all things were made through him. “For as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so the Son also gives life to whom he will.” This was said of the resurrection of souls: what of the resurrection of bodies? He returns and says, “For the Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son.” The resurrection of souls takes place through the eternal and unchangeable substance of the Father and the Son; but the resurrection of bodies takes place through the temporal dispensation of the Son's humanity, which is not coeternal with the Father. Therefore, when he mentioned the judgment, where the resurrection of bodies would take place, he said, “For the Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son”; but of the resurrection of souls, “As the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so the Son also gives life to whom he will.” That, then, the Father and the Son do together; but this, of the resurrection of bodies: “The Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son.” “That all may honor the Son as they honor the Father”: this is referred to the resurrection of souls. “That all may honor the Son.” How? “As they honor the Father.” For the Son works the resurrection of souls just as the Father does; the Son gives life just as the Father does. So in the resurrection of souls let all honor the Son as they honor the Father. What of the honoring on account of the resurrection of the body? “He who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him.” He did not say “as,” but “honors” and “honors.” For the man Christ is honored, but not as God the Father. Why? Because in this respect he said, “The Father is greater than I.” But when is the Son honored as the Father is honored? When in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and all things were made through him. And therefore in this second honoring what does he say? “He who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him.” The Son was not sent except because he was made man.

“Amen, amen, I say to you.” Again he returns to the resurrection of souls, so that we may grasp him as he says it repeatedly; because we could not follow his discourse as it flew. See, the word of God lingers with us; see, it dwells, as it were, with our weaknesses; it returns again to commending the resurrection of souls. “Amen, amen, I say to you, that he who hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life”—but as from the Father. “For he who hears my word and believes him who sent me” has eternal life from the Father, by believing in him who sent the Son. “And will not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life”—but he is given life by the Father, whom he believes. What, do you not give life? See that the Son also gives life to whom he will. “Amen, amen, I say to you, that the hour is coming when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live.” Here he did not say, “They will believe him who sent me, and therefore will live,” but by hearing the voice of the Son of God, “those who hear,” that is, those who obey the Son of God, “will live.” So they will live from the Father, when they believe the Father; and they will live from the Son, when they hear the voice of the Son of God. Why will they live both from the Father and from the Son? “For as the Father has life in himself, so he has given to the Son to have life in himself.”

He has finished with the resurrection of souls; it remains to speak more plainly of the resurrection of bodies. “And he has given him power to execute judgment also”: not only to raise souls through faith and wisdom, but also to execute judgment. But why this? “Because he is the son of man.” So the Father does something through the son of man that he does not do from his own substance, to which the Son is equal: such as being nourished, being crucified, dying, rising again; for none of these befell the Father. So too the raising of bodies. For the raising of souls the Father brings about from his own substance through the substance of the Son, in which the Son is equal to him; for souls become partakers of that unchangeable light, not bodies; but the raising of bodies the Father brings about through the son of man. For “he has given him power to execute judgment also, because he is the son of man,” in accord with what he said above, “For the Father judges no one.” And to show that he said this of the resurrection of bodies: “Do not marvel at this, for the hour is coming”—not “now is,” but “the hour is coming, in which all who are in the tombs” (you heard this most fully yesterday too) “will hear his voice and come forth.” And where to? Into judgment: “Those who have done good, to the resurrection of life; those who have done evil, to the resurrection of judgment.” And do you do this alone, because the Father has given all judgment to the Son and judges no one? “I do it,” he says. But how do you do it? “I can do nothing of myself: as I hear, I judge; and my judgment is just.” When the resurrection of souls was being treated, he did not say “I hear,” but “I see.” For “I hear” refers, as it were, to the command of the Father who orders. Now, then, as man, as one than whom the Father is greater, now from the form of a servant, not from the form of God: “As I hear, I judge; and my judgment is just.” From where is the man's judgment just? My brothers, pay attention: “Because I do not seek my own will, but the will of him who sent me.”

The miracles that our Lord Jesus Christ did are indeed divine works, and they prompt the human mind to understand God from visible things. For since he is not the kind of substance that can be seen with the eyes, and his miracles by which he rules the whole world and governs all creation have grown cheap through constant repetition, so that almost no one deigns to notice the wonderful and astonishing works of God in any grain of seed, he has, according to his mercy, kept back for himself certain things to do at a fitting time beyond the usual course and order of nature, so that those to whom daily things had grown cheap might be astonished at seeing things not greater but unusual. For the governing of the whole world is a greater miracle than the feeding of five thousand men from five loaves; and yet no one marvels at the former; people marvel at the latter, not because it is greater, but because it is rare. For who even now feeds the whole world, if not he who creates harvests from a few grains? So he acted as God. For by the power by which he multiplies harvests from a few grains, by that power he multiplied five loaves in his hands. For the power was in the hands of Christ; and those five loaves were like seeds, not committed to the earth indeed, but multiplied by him who made the earth. This, then, was brought before the senses, so that the mind might be raised up; and displayed to the eyes, so that the understanding might be exercised; so that we might marvel at the invisible God through visible works, and, raised up to faith and cleansed by faith, might desire to see invisibly even him whom we came to know as invisible through visible things.

Yet it is not enough to look at these things in Christ's miracles. Let us question the miracles themselves about what they tell us of Christ; for, if they are understood, they have a language of their own. For since Christ himself is the Word of God, even a deed of the Word is a word to us. So, as we have heard how great this miracle is, let us also seek how deep it is: let us not merely take delight in its surface, but also search out its depth. For what we marvel at outside has something within. We have seen, we have gazed on something great, something splendid, and altogether divine, which could not be done except by God: we have praised the maker from the deed. But just as, if we were to look at beautiful letters somewhere, it would not be enough for us to praise the writer's hand because he made them even, equal, and handsome, unless we also read what he was telling us through them; so here, he who only looks at the deed delights in the beauty of the work so as to admire the craftsman; but he who understands, as it were, reads. For a picture is seen in one way, letters are seen in another. When you have seen a picture, that is the whole: to have seen it and praised it. When you have seen letters, that is not the whole, for you are prompted to read them as well. For when you see letters, if perhaps you do not know how to read them, you say, “What do we think is written here?” You ask what it is when you already see something. The one from whom you seek to recognize what you have seen is going to show you something else. He has other eyes than you. Do you not both see the characters alike? But you do not both recognize the signs alike. You, then, see and praise; he sees, praises, reads, and understands. Since, then, we have seen, since we have praised, let us read and understand.

The Lord on the mountain: much more let us understand that the Lord on the mountain is the Word on high. So what was done on the mountain does not lie low, as it were, nor is it to be passed over in passing, but to be looked up to. He saw the crowds, recognized that they were hungry, and fed them mercifully: not only out of goodness, but also out of power. For what use would goodness alone be where there was no bread with which to feed the hungry crowd? Unless power were present to goodness, that crowd would have remained fasting and hungry. Then the disciples too, who were with the Lord amid the hunger, also wanted to feed the crowds so that they should not remain empty, but did not have the means to feed them. The Lord asked where loaves could be bought to feed the crowds. And Scripture says, “But he said this to test him”—that is, the disciple Philip, whom he had asked. “For he himself knew what he was going to do.” What good, then, was there in testing him, except that he was showing up the disciple's ignorance? And perhaps in showing up the disciple's ignorance he signified something. It will appear, then, when the sacrament of the five loaves begins to speak to us and to indicate what it signifies; for there we shall see why the Lord in this deed wished to show the disciple's ignorance by asking what he knew. For sometimes we ask what we do not know, wishing to hear so that we may learn; sometimes we ask what we know, wishing to know whether the one we ask knows it too. The Lord knew both: he knew what he was asking, for he knew what he himself was going to do; and he likewise knew that Philip did not know it. Why, then, did he ask, except that he was showing up his ignorance? And why he did this, as I said, we shall understand later.

Andrew says, “There is a boy here who has five loaves and two fish; but what are these among so many?” When Philip, on being asked, had said that two hundred denarii worth of bread would not be enough to feed so great a crowd, there was a certain boy there carrying five barley loaves and two fish. “And Jesus said, Make the people sit down. Now there was much grass there, and about five thousand men sat down. And the Lord Jesus took the loaves, gave thanks,” gave the order; the loaves were broken and set before those reclining. No longer five loaves, but what he had added, he who had created that which was increased. “And of the fish, as much as was enough.” It was not enough that that crowd was filled: fragments too were left over; and these were ordered to be gathered, so that they would not be lost; “and they filled twelve baskets with fragments.”

To run through it briefly: the five loaves are understood as the five books of Moses—rightly not of wheat but of barley, because they belong to the Old Testament. You know that barley is so made that one barely gets to its kernel; for the kernel is clothed with a covering of husk, and the husk itself clings tightly, so that it is removed with labor. Such is the letter of the Old Testament, clothed with the coverings of carnal sacraments; but if one gets to its kernel, it feeds and satisfies. So a certain boy was carrying five loaves and two fish. If we ask who this boy was, perhaps he was the people of Israel: with a childish mind it carried and did not eat. For the things it carried were a burden while closed and fed when opened. And the two fish seem to us to signify those two exalted persons in the Old Testament who were anointed to sanctify and rule the people: the priest and the king. And at length he came, in mystery, who was signified by them; at length he came who was shown by the kernel of the barley but hidden by its husk. He came, one, bearing both persons in himself, priest and king: priest through the victim, offering himself for us to God; king, because we are ruled by him; and the things that were carried closed are opened. Thanks be to him; he fulfilled through himself what was promised through the Old Testament. And he ordered the loaves to be broken: by being broken they were multiplied. Nothing truer. For those five books of Moses—how many books have they produced when they are expounded, as by breaking, that is, by discussing them? But because in that barley the ignorance of the first people was covered, of which first people it is said, “Whenever Moses is read, a veil is laid over their hearts”—for the veil had not yet been taken away, because Christ had not yet come; the veil of the temple had not yet been torn while he hung on the cross—because, then, the ignorance of the people was in the Law, therefore that testing by the Lord showed up the disciple's ignorance.

Nothing, then, is empty; everything hints at something, but needs someone to understand it. For this number of the people fed signified the people placed under the Law. For why were there five thousand, except that they were under the Law, which Law is set out in the five books of Moses? That is why the sick were laid out in those five porches but were not healed. But he who healed the sick man there also fed the crowds here from five loaves. And they reclined on the grass: so they understood carnally and rested in carnal things. “For all flesh is grass.” And what are those fragments, except what the people could not eat? They are understood, then, as certain more hidden matters of understanding, which the multitude cannot grasp. What remains, then, except that the more hidden matters of understanding, which the multitude cannot grasp, be entrusted to those who are fit to teach others too, as the apostles were? That is why twelve baskets were filled. This was done both wonderfully, because a great thing was done, and usefully, because a spiritual thing was done. Those who saw it then marveled; but do we not marvel when we hear it? For it was done so that they might see it, and written so that we might hear it. What their eyes could do in them, faith does in us. For we perceive with the mind what we could not with the eyes; and we are preferred to them, because of us it is said, “Blessed are those who do not see, and believe.” I add, moreover, that perhaps we have also understood what that crowd did not understand. And we have truly been fed, who have been able to get to the kernel of the barley.

Then what did those men who saw this think? “Those men,” it says, “when they had seen the sign that he had done, said, This is truly the prophet.” Perhaps they still thought Christ a prophet because they had reclined on the grass. But he was the Lord of the prophets, the fulfiller of the prophets, the sanctifier of the prophets; yet also a prophet. For it was said to Moses too, “I will raise up for them a prophet like you”—like him according to the flesh, not according to majesty. And that this promise of the Lord is to be understood of Christ himself is openly set out and read in the Acts of the Apostles. And the Lord himself says of himself, “A prophet is not without honor, except in his own country.” The Lord is a prophet, and the Lord is the Word of God, and no prophet prophesies without the Word of God: the Word of God is with the prophets, and the Word of God is a prophet. Earlier times were granted prophets inspired and filled with the Word of God; we have been granted as prophet the very Word of God. Christ is a prophet, then, as the Lord of the prophets, just as Christ is an angel as the Lord of the angels. For he too was called “the Angel of great counsel.” Yet what does the prophet say elsewhere? “Neither an envoy nor an angel, but he himself will come and save them”: that is, to save them he will not send an envoy, he will not send an angel, but he will come himself. Who will come? The angel himself. Certainly not through an angel—except that he is an angel in such a way as to be also the Lord of the angels. For angels in Latin are messengers. If Christ announced nothing, he would not be called an angel; if Christ prophesied nothing, he would not be called a prophet. He has exhorted us to faith and to the laying hold of eternal life: he announced something present, he foretold something future. In that he announced something present, he was an angel; in that he foretold something future, he was a prophet; in that the Word of God was made flesh, he was the Lord of both angels and prophets.

Following yesterday's reading from the Gospel is today's, from which today's sermon is owed. After that miracle in which Jesus fed five thousand men from five loaves, when the crowds had marveled and were calling him the great Prophet who has come into the world, there follows this: “So Jesus, when he knew that they had come to seize him and make him king, fled again to the mountain himself alone.” We are given to understand, then, that when the Lord was sitting on the mountain with his disciples and saw the crowds coming to him, he had come down from the mountain and fed the crowds around the lower places. For how could it be that he fled there again, unless he had first come down from the mountain? It signifies something, then, that the Lord came down from on high to feed the crowds. He fed them, and he went up.

But why did he go up, when he knew that they wanted to seize him and make him king? What then? Was he not a king, that he feared being made king? He certainly was; not the kind of king who would be made by men, but the kind who would give men a kingdom. Is it perhaps that here too Jesus, whose deeds are words, signifies something to us? So, in that they wanted to seize him and make him king, and for this reason he fled to the mountain himself alone—is this, done in him, silent? Does it say nothing, signify nothing? Or perhaps was this what it meant to seize him: to want to anticipate the time of his kingdom? For he had now come, not yet to reign as he will reign in that for which we say, “Your kingdom come.” He indeed always reigns with the Father, in that he is the Son of God, the Word of God, the Word through whom all things were made. But the prophets foretold his kingdom also in that Christ was made man and has made his faithful Christians. So there will be a kingdom of Christians, which is now being gathered, now being acquired, now being bought with the blood of Christ: his kingdom will at some time be manifest, when the glory of his saints is revealed after the judgment carried out by him; which judgment he himself said above that the Son of man would carry out. Of this kingdom the apostle also said, “When he hands over the kingdom to God the Father.” Hence he himself also says, “Come, blessed of my Father, receive the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.” But the disciples and the crowds who believed in him thought he had come so as to reign at once: this is what it is to want to seize him and make him king—to want to anticipate his time, which he kept hidden with himself, to reveal at the fitting time, and declare at the fitting time at the end of the world.

For that you may know that they wanted to make him king, that is, to anticipate and already have the manifest kingdom of Christ, who first had to be judged and then to judge: when he was crucified, and those who hoped in him had lost hope of his resurrection, rising from the dead he found two of them talking with each other in despair and discussing with groans what had happened; and appearing to them as a stranger, while their eyes were held so that they should not recognize him, he joined in their conversation. And they, telling him what they were talking about, said that that great prophet, mighty in deed and word, had been killed by the chief priests: “And we,” they say, “were hoping that he was the one to redeem Israel.” You were hoping rightly, you were hoping for the truth: in him is the redemption of Israel. But why are you in a hurry? You want to seize. This meaning is also indicated to us by the fact that when the disciples asked him about the end, they said to him, “Will you be present at this time, and when will the kingdom of Israel be?” For they longed for it to be now, they wanted it now: this is to want to seize him and make him king. But he says to the disciples, since he was still to ascend alone: “It is not for you,” he says, “to know the times or moments which the Father has set in his own power; but you will receive power from on high, the Holy Spirit coming upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” You want me to display the kingdom now; first I will gather what I am to display. You love height, and you will attain height; but follow me by way of humility. So it was also foretold of him: “And the congregation of peoples will surround you, and for its sake return on high”; that is, that the congregation of peoples may surround you, that you may gather many, return on high. So he did: he fed them, and went up.

But why is it said, “he fled”? For truly he would not be held if he did not will it, he would not be seized if he did not will it, he who, if he did not will it, would not even be recognized. For that you may know that this was done mystically, not out of necessity but by a disposition meant to signify, you will see presently in what follows: for he appeared to the same crowds who were seeking him, and speaking with them he told them much and discoursed much about the heavenly bread. Was he not discoursing about bread with the very people from whom he had fled so as not to be held? Could he not, then, have acted then too so as not to be seized by them, as afterward when he was speaking with them? So by fleeing he signified something. What is “he fled”? His height could not be understood. For whatever you do not understand, you say, “It escapes me.” So “he fled again to the mountain himself alone”: the Firstborn from the dead, ascending above all the heavens and interceding for us.

Meanwhile, with him placed on high, the sole great high priest (who entered within the veil while the people stood outside; for that priest in the old Law, who did this once a year, signified him)—with him, then, placed on high, what were the disciples suffering in the boat? For while he was established on the heights, that boat prefigured the church. If we do not first understand in the church what that boat was suffering, those things were not significant but simply passing events; but if we see the truth of those significations expressed in the church, it is plain that the deeds of Christ are kinds of speech. “When evening came,” it says, “his disciples went down to the sea; and when they had got into a boat, they came across the sea to Capernaum.” He quickly spoke of as finished what was done afterward: “They came across the sea to Capernaum.” And he goes back to explain how they came, for they crossed sailing over the lake. And while they were sailing to that place at which he has already said they arrived, he explains by recapitulation what happened: “It had already become dark, and Jesus had not come to them.” Rightly darkness, because the light had not come: “It had already become dark, and Jesus had not come to them.” The nearer the end of the world approaches, the more errors grow, terrors multiply, iniquity grows, unbelief grows; and the light, which in John the evangelist himself is shown clearly and openly to be love, so that he said, “He who hates his brother is in darkness,” is very often put out. These darknesses of hatred between brothers grow; they grow daily; and Jesus has not yet come. From what does it appear that they grow? “Because iniquity will abound, the love of many will grow cold.” Darkness grows, and Jesus has not yet come. With darkness growing, love growing cold, iniquity abounding, these are the waves that trouble the ship: the storms and winds are the shouts of slanderers. From this love grows cold, from this the waves increase, and the ship is troubled.

“And the sea was rising because a strong wind was blowing.” The darkness was growing, understanding was lessening, iniquity was increasing. “When they had rowed about twenty-five or thirty stadia.” Meanwhile they were going on, they were making progress; nor were those winds and storms and waves and darkness bringing it about either that the ship made no progress or that it broke up and sank; but amid all those evils it went on. For because iniquity has abounded and the love of many grows cold, the waves grow, the darkness increases, the wind rages; but still the ship goes on. “For he who perseveres to the end will be saved.” Nor is the very number of stadia to be despised. For it really could not signify nothing, that it was said, “When they had rowed twenty-five or thirty stadia, then Jesus came to them.” Twenty-five would have sufficed, thirty would have sufficed, especially since this was the language of one estimating, not affirming. Would truth be endangered in one estimating if he said about thirty stadia, or about twenty-five stadia? But he made thirty out of twenty-five. Let us examine the number twenty-five. What does it consist of, what is it made from? From five. That number five belongs to the Law. These are the five books of Moses; these are those five porches holding the sick; these are the five loaves feeding five thousand men. So the number twenty-five signifies the Law: since five by five, that is, five times five, make twenty-five, the square of five. But before the gospel came, this Law lacked perfection. And perfection is contained in the number six. That is why God completed the world in six days; and that five is multiplied by six, so that the Law may be fulfilled by the gospel, so that six times five make thirty. To those, then, who fulfill the Law Jesus comes. And how does he come? Treading the waves; having all the swellings of the world under his feet, pressing down all the heights of the age. This goes on as time is added and the age of the world advances. Tribulations increase in this world, evils increase, afflictions increase, all these things are heaped up: Jesus passes by, treading the waves.

And yet so great are the tribulations that even those who have believed in Jesus and are striving to persevere to the end are terrified lest they fail: while Christ treads the waves and presses down the ambitions and heights of the world, the Christian is terrified. Were not these things foretold to him? Rightly, then, when Jesus was walking on the waves, they were afraid: just as Christians, though they have hope in the age to come, are often troubled about the crushing of human affairs when they see the height of this world pressed down. They open the Gospel, they open the Scriptures, and they find all these things foretold there; because the Lord is doing this. He presses down the heights of the world, that he may be glorified by the humble. Of whose height it was foretold, “You will destroy the strongest cities,” and, “The swords of the enemy have failed at the end, and you have destroyed their cities.” Why, then, are you afraid, Christians? Christ speaks: “It is I; do not be afraid.” Why are you terrified at these things? Why are you afraid? I foretold these things, I am doing them; they must take place. “It is I; do not be afraid.” “So they were willing to take him into the ship”—recognizing him and rejoicing, made secure. “And immediately the ship was at the land to which they were going.” An end was made at the land: from the wet to the solid, from the troubled to the firm, from the journey to its end.

“On the next day the crowd that stood across the sea, from where they had come, saw that there had been only one boat there, and that he had not entered the ship with his disciples, but his disciples had gone away alone. But other ships came from Tiberias, near the place where they had eaten the bread, giving thanks to the Lord. So when the crowds saw that Jesus was not there, nor his disciples, they got into the boats and came to Capernaum seeking Jesus.” Yet so great a miracle was made known to them. For they saw that the disciples alone had gone up into the ship, and that no other ship was there. And from there ships also came, near that lake where they had eaten the bread, in which the crowds followed him. So he had not gone up with the disciples, and no other ship was there: how did Jesus suddenly come to be across the sea, except that he walked on the sea, so as to show a miracle?