Tractates on the Gospel of John 27.1–27.12

We have heard the words of the Lord from the Gospel which follow the previous sermon. From them a sermon is owed to your ears and minds, and it is not out of season today; for it is about the body of the Lord, which he said he gives to be eaten for the sake of eternal life. And he explained the manner of this bestowal and gift of his, how he gives his flesh to eat, saying, “He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him.” The sign that one has eaten and drunk is this: if he abides and is abided in, if he dwells and is dwelt in, if he clings so as not to be forsaken. This, then, he has taught us and admonished us in mystical words: that we should be in his body, under him as head, in his members, eating his flesh, not abandoning his unity. But most of those present, by not understanding, were scandalized; for in hearing these things they thought only of flesh, which is what they themselves were. But the apostle says, and says truly, “To think according to the flesh is death.” The Lord gives us his flesh to eat, and to think according to the flesh is death; yet he says of his flesh that eternal life is there. So we ought not to think even of the flesh according to the flesh, as in these words:

“So many, hearing”—not of his enemies, but “of his disciples—said, This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?” If the disciples found this saying hard, what of the enemies? And yet it had to be said in such a way that it would not be understood by all. The secret of God ought to make people attentive, not hostile. But these quickly fell away when the Lord Jesus said such things: they did not believe him to be saying something great and covering some grace with those words; but they understood as they wished, and in the manner of men, that Jesus was able, or that Jesus was planning, to distribute the flesh with which the Word was clothed, cut up as it were, to those who believed in him. “This is a hard saying,” they say; “who can listen to it?”

“But Jesus, knowing in himself that his disciples were murmuring about it”—for they said these things among themselves so as not to be heard by him; but he who knew them in themselves, hearing in himself, answered and said, “Does this scandalize you?”—because I said, I give you my flesh to eat and my blood to drink, this, of course, scandalizes you. “What, then, if you see the Son of man ascending where he was before?” What is this? Did he by this resolve what had disturbed them? Did he by this lay open why they had been scandalized? Plainly by this, if they understood. For they thought he was going to dole out his body; but he said he would ascend into heaven, whole, of course. “When you see the Son of man ascending where he was before”: surely then at least you will see that he does not dole out his body in the way you think; surely then at least you will understand that his grace is not consumed by bites.

“And he said, It is the Spirit that gives life; the flesh profits nothing.” Before we explain this, as the Lord grants, we must not carelessly pass over what he said: “What, then, if you see the Son of man ascending where he was before?” For Christ is the Son of man, from the Virgin Mary. So the Son of man began to be here on earth, where he took flesh from the earth. Hence it had been said prophetically, “Truth has sprung from the earth.” What, then, does he mean by saying, “When you see the Son of man ascending where he was before”? For there would be no question if he had said, “If you see the Son of God ascending where he was before.” But since he said the Son of man was ascending where he was before, was the Son of man in heaven before, when he began to be on earth? Here indeed he said, “where he was before,” as if he were not there when he was saying these things. But in another place he says, “No one has ascended into heaven except him who came down from heaven, the Son of man, who is in heaven.” He did not say “was,” but, “the Son of man,” he says, “who is in heaven.” He was speaking on earth and saying that he was in heaven. And he did not say, “No one has ascended into heaven except him who came down from heaven, the Son of God, who is in heaven.” What is the point, except that we should understand what I also commended to your Charity in the previous sermon: that Christ, God and man, is one person, not two, lest our faith be not a trinity but a quaternity? So Christ is one: the Word, soul, and flesh, one Christ; the Son of God and son of man, one Christ. Son of God always, son of man from a point in time; yet one Christ in unity of person. He was in heaven when he was speaking on earth. The son of man was in heaven in the same way as the Son of God was on earth: the Son of God on earth in the flesh he had taken up, the son of man in heaven in the unity of person.

What is it, then, that he adds: “It is the Spirit that gives life; the flesh profits nothing”? Let us say to him (for he bears with us, not contradicting but wanting to know): O Lord, good teacher, how does the flesh profit nothing, when you have said, “Unless one eats my flesh and drinks my blood, he will not have life in him”? Or does life profit nothing? And why are we what we are, except that we may have eternal life, which you promise through your flesh? What, then, is “the flesh profits nothing”? It profits nothing—but in the way they understood it. For they understood flesh as it is torn apart in a corpse or sold in the market, not as it is quickened by the spirit. So it was said, “The flesh profits nothing,” in the way it was said, “Knowledge puffs up.” Must we, then, now hate knowledge? Far from it. And what is “Knowledge puffs up”? Alone, without love; therefore he added, “But love builds up.” So add love to knowledge, and knowledge will be useful, not through itself but through love. So too now: the flesh profits nothing, but flesh alone; let the spirit come to the flesh, as love comes to knowledge, and it profits very much. For if the flesh profited nothing, the Word would not have become flesh to dwell among us. If Christ has profited us much through the flesh, how does the flesh profit nothing? But through the flesh the Spirit did something for our salvation. The flesh was a vessel: consider what it held, not what it was. The apostles were sent; did their flesh profit us nothing? If the apostles' flesh profited us, could the Lord's flesh profit nothing? For how does the sound of the word come to us, except through the voice of the flesh? How the pen, how the writing? All these are works of the flesh, but with the spirit moving it as its instrument. “So it is the Spirit that gives life, but the flesh profits nothing”: I do not give my flesh to eat in the way they understood flesh.

Accordingly, “the words,” he says, “that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.” For we have said, brothers, that the Lord commended this in the eating of his flesh and the drinking of his blood: that we should abide in him and he in us. And we abide in him when we are his members; he abides in us when we are his temple. But for us to be his members, unity joins us together. What makes unity join us, except love? And the love of God, from where? Ask the apostle: “The love of God,” he says, “has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” So “it is the Spirit that gives life”: for the spirit makes living members. Nor does the spirit make living members except those it finds in the body that the spirit itself quickens. For does the spirit that is in you, O man, by which you are constituted a man, give life to a member that it finds cut off from your flesh? By your spirit I mean your soul: your soul gives life only to the members that are in your flesh; if you take one away, it is no longer given life by your soul, because it is not joined to the unity of your body. These things are said so that we may love unity and fear separation. For a Christian ought to dread nothing so much as being separated from the body of Christ. For if he is separated from the body of Christ, he is not his member; if he is not his member, he is not quickened by his Spirit. “But whoever,” says the apostle, “does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him.” “So it is the Spirit that gives life, but the flesh profits nothing. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.” What is “are spirit and life”? They are to be understood spiritually. Have you understood spiritually? They are spirit and life. Have you understood carnally? Even so they are spirit and life, but not for you.

“But there are some among you,” he says, “who do not believe.” He did not say, “There are some among you who do not understand,” but he told the cause why they do not understand. “For there are some among you who do not believe”; and therefore they do not understand, because they do not believe. For the prophet said, “Unless you believe, you will not understand.” Through faith we are joined; through understanding we are given life. Let us first cling through faith, so that there may be something to be given life through understanding. For he who does not cling resists; he who resists does not believe. And how is he who resists given life? He is an adversary to the ray of light by which he ought to be penetrated: he does not turn his eye away, but shuts his mind. “So there are some who do not believe.” Let them believe and open; let them open and they will be enlightened. “For Jesus knew from the beginning who were the believers, and who was to betray him.” For Judas too was there. Some, indeed, were scandalized; but he remained to lie in wait, not to understand. And because he had remained for this reason, the Lord did not keep silent about him. He did not name him, but neither did he keep silent, so that all might fear, though only one would perish. But after he had spoken and distinguished believers from unbelievers, he stated the cause why they do not believe: “Therefore I said to you,” he says, “that no one can come to me unless it has been given him by my Father.” So believing too is given to us; for believing is not nothing. And if it is something great, rejoice that you have believed, but do not be lifted up: “For what do you have that you did not receive?”

“From this time many of his disciples went back, and no longer walked with him.” They went back, but after Satan, not after Christ. For once the Lord Christ called Peter Satan, because he wanted to go ahead of his Lord and to give advice that he should not die—he who had come to die, so that we should not die for ever; and he said to him, “Get behind me, Satan; for you do not think the things of God, but the things of man.” He did not drive him back to go after Satan, and call him Satan; but he made him go behind himself, so that by walking behind the Lord he would not be Satan. But these went back in the way the apostle says of certain women: “For some have already turned back after Satan.” They no longer walked with him. See, cut off from the body, they lost life, because perhaps they were not even in the body. They too are to be counted among unbelievers, although they were called disciples. They went back—not a few, but many. This happened perhaps for our consolation, since it sometimes happens that a man says what is true and what he says is not grasped, and those who hear are scandalized and depart. And the man regrets having said what is true; for he says to himself, “I should not have spoken so; I should not have said this.” See, it happened to the Lord: he spoke and lost many; he was left with few. But he himself was not troubled, because he knew from the beginning who were believers and who were not believers; if it happens to us, we are troubled. Let us find comfort in the Lord, and yet let us speak our words with care.

And he said to the few who had remained: “So Jesus said to the twelve,” that is, to those twelve who remained, “Do you also want to go away?” Not even Judas departed. But why he was staying was already apparent to the Lord; to us it was made manifest afterward. Peter answered for all, one for many, unity for the whole: “So Simon Peter answered him, Lord, to whom shall we go?” If you drive us away from you, give us another you. “To whom shall we go?” If we withdraw from you, to whom shall we go? “You have the words of eternal life.” See how Peter, by God's gift and the renewing of the Holy Spirit, understood. How, except because he believed? “You have the words of eternal life.” For you have eternal life in the ministering of your body and blood. “And we have believed and have known.” Not “we have known and believed,” but “we have believed and known.” For we believed in order to know; for if we wanted first to know and then to believe, we would be able neither to know nor to believe. What have we believed and what have we known? “That you are the Christ, the Son of God”; that is, that you are eternal life itself, and you give in your flesh and blood nothing but what you are.

“So the Lord Jesus said, Did I not choose you twelve, and one of you is a devil?” Should he, then, have said “I chose eleven”? Or is a devil also chosen, and is a devil among the chosen? People are usually called “chosen” in praise: or was he too chosen, so that through him, unwilling and unaware, some great good might be done? This is proper to God; the opposite is proper to the wicked. For as the wicked make bad use of God's good works, so on the contrary God makes good use of the evil works of wicked men. How good it is that the members of the body are so made as they could be arranged only by God the craftsman! Yet what bad use does wantonness make of the eyes! What bad use does deceit make of the tongue! Does not a false witness first slay his own soul with his tongue, and then, having destroyed himself, try to harm another? He makes bad use of the tongue, yet the tongue is not therefore evil: the tongue is God's work, but wickedness makes bad use of that good work of God. How do those use their feet who run to crimes? How do murderers use their hands? And what bad use do the wicked make of those good creatures of God that lie outside them? With gold they corrupt judgments and oppress the innocent. The wicked make bad use of this light: for by living badly they press into the service of their crimes even the light by which they see. For the wicked man, going to do something evil, wants light for himself so as not to stumble—he who has already stumbled and fallen within: what he fears in the body he has already run into in the heart. So, not to take long running through them one by one, the wicked man makes bad use of all God's good things; on the contrary, the good man makes good use of the evils of wicked men. And what is so good as the one God? Since the Lord himself said, “No one is good but the one God.” The better he is, then, the better use he makes even of our evils. What is worse than Judas? Among all who clung to the Master, among the twelve, the purse was entrusted to him, and the stewardship for the poor assigned to him: ungrateful for so great a kindness, so great an honor, he took money and lost righteousness; dead himself, he betrayed life; him whom he followed as a disciple he persecuted as an enemy. All this was Judas's evil; but the Lord made good use of his evil. He allowed himself to be betrayed, in order to redeem us. See, Judas's evil was turned to good. How many martyrs has Satan persecuted? If Satan ceased persecuting, we would not today be celebrating the so glorious crown of Saint Laurence. If, then, God makes good use even of the devil's evil works, what the wicked one does, by using badly, harms himself; it does not oppose the goodness of God. The craftsman uses him; and the great craftsman, if he did not know how to use him, would not even allow him to exist. So “one of you is a devil,” he says, “though I have chosen you twelve.” What he said, “I chose twelve,” can also be understood as referring to the fact that it is a sacred number. For the honor of that number was not taken away because one of them perished: for another was put in the place of the one who perished. The consecrated number remained, the number twelve, because they were to proclaim the Trinity throughout the whole world, that is, through the four quarters of the world: that is why three times four. So Judas cut himself off; he did not violate the number twelve: he deserted his teacher, but God appointed a successor in his place.

All this that the Lord said about his flesh and his blood; and that in the grace of its distribution he promised us eternal life; and that he wanted those who eat and drink his flesh and blood to be understood as those who abide in him and he in them; and that those who did not believe did not understand; and that they were scandalized by thinking carnally of spiritual things; and that, while they were scandalized and perishing, the Lord was at hand to console the disciples who had remained, whom he asked, to test them, “Do you also want to go away?”—so that the answer of their remaining might be made known to us, for he knew that they were staying: let all this, then, be of value to us, dearly beloved, to this end: that we eat the flesh of Christ and the blood of Christ not only in the sacrament, as many wicked people also do, but that we eat and drink to the point of sharing in the spirit, that we may abide as members in the Lord's body, that we may be quickened by his spirit, and that we may not be scandalized even if many now eat and drink the sacraments with us in time who will have eternal torments at the end. For now the body of Christ is mixed, as on the threshing floor: but “the Lord knows those who are his.” If you know what you are threshing—that the grain lies hidden there, and that the threshing does not consume what the winnowing is to clean—we are certain, brothers, that all of us who are in the Lord's body and abide in him, that he too may abide in us, must of necessity live among the wicked in this world until the end. I do not mean among those wicked who blaspheme Christ: for few are now found who blaspheme with the tongue, but many who do so by their life. It is necessary, then, that we live among them until the end.

But what is it that he says, “He who abides in me, and I in him”? What, except what the martyrs heard: “He who perseveres to the end will be saved”? How did Saint Laurence, whose feast we celebrate today, abide in him? He abode through temptation, abode through tyrannical interrogation, abode through the fiercest threats, abode through to death; that is too little: he abode through savage torture. For he was not killed quickly, but tortured in the fire; he was permitted to live long—or rather not permitted to live long, but compelled to die slowly. In that long death, then, in those torments, because he had eaten well and drunk well, as one fattened on that food and drunk with that cup, he did not feel the torments. For he was there who said, “It is the Spirit that gives life.” For the flesh was burning, but the spirit was quickening the soul. He did not yield, and he went on into the kingdom. And the holy martyr Xystus, whose day we celebrated five days ago, had said to him, “Do not grieve, my son.” For he was a bishop, the other a deacon. “Do not grieve,” he said; “you will follow me after three days.” He said “three days” for the interval between the day of the passion of Saint Xystus and the day of today's passion of Saint Laurence. Three days is the interval. O consolation! He did not say, “Do not grieve, my son; the persecution will cease and you will be safe,” but, “Do not grieve: where I go before, you will follow; nor is your following delayed: three days will be between, and you will be with me.” He received the prophecy, conquered the devil, and reached the triumph.