Tractates on the Gospel of John 45.1–45.15

The Lord's discourse to the Jews arose from that man who was born blind and was given light. So your Charity ought to know and be reminded that today's reading is joined to that one. For when the Lord had said, “For judgment I came into this world, that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become blind”—which we expounded as best we could when it was read—some of the Pharisees said, “Are we blind too?” He answered them, “If you were blind, you would have no sin; but now you say, We see: your sin remains.” To these words he added what we heard today when it was read.

“Amen, amen, I say to you, he who does not enter by the door into the sheepfold, but climbs up some other way, is a thief and a robber.” For they said they were not blind; but they could see only if they were Christ's sheep. How could they lay claim to the light, who were raging against the day? So because of their vain, proud, and incurable arrogance, the Lord Jesus wove in these words, in which he has warned us too for our health, if we pay attention. For there are many who, by a certain standard of this life's conduct, are called good people—good men, good women—innocent, and as it were observing what is commanded in the law: giving honor to their parents, not committing adultery, not committing murder, not stealing, not bearing false witness against anyone, and as it were observing the other things commanded in the law; yet they are not Christians. And for the most part they boast as these did: “Are we blind too?” But because they do all these things without knowing to what end to refer them, they do them in vain; so in today's reading the Lord set forth a likeness of his flock and of the door by which one enters the fold. Let the pagans, then, say, “We live good lives.” If they do not enter by the door, what does that in which they glory profit them? For to live well ought to profit each person to this end, that he may be granted to live forever; for to one who is not granted to live forever, what does it profit to live well? Indeed, those are not even to be said to live well who either through blindness do not know the end of living well, or through pride despise it. And no one has a true and certain hope of living forever unless he acknowledges the life, which is Christ, and enters the fold by the door.

Such people often seek even to persuade others that they can live well and not be Christians. They wish to climb up another way, to plunder and to kill—not, as a shepherd does, to keep and to save. So there have been certain philosophers who treated many subtle questions about virtues and vices, dividing, defining, drawing out the sharpest chains of reasoning, filling books, airing their wisdom with puffed-out cheeks, who would even dare to say to people, “Follow us, hold to our school, if you wish to live happily.” But they had not entered by the door: they wanted to destroy, to slaughter and to kill.

What shall I say of these? Look: the Pharisees themselves read, and in what they read they sounded forth Christ, they hoped for him to come, and they did not recognize him when present. They too boasted of being among those who see, that is, among the wise, and they denied Christ and did not enter by the door. So they too, if they happened to lead any astray, would lead them astray to be slaughtered and killed, not to be set free. Let us leave these too: let us see whether those perhaps enter by the door who glory in the very name of Christ.

For there are countless people who not only boast that they see, but want to seem enlightened by Christ: yet they are heretics. Have they perhaps entered by the door? Far from it. Sabellius says, “He who is the Son is himself the Father.” But if he is the Son, he is not the Father. He does not enter by the door who calls the Son the Father. Arius says, “The Father is one thing, the Son another thing.” He would speak rightly if he said “another one,” not “another thing.” For when he says “another thing,” he contradicts him from whom he hears, “I and the Father are one.” So he too does not enter by the door; for he preaches a Christ such as he fashions for himself, not such as the truth declares. You have the name; you do not have the thing. Christ is the name of a reality: hold on to the reality itself, if you want the name to profit you. Another, from who knows where, like Photinus, says, “Christ is a man; he is not God.” He too does not enter by the door, for Christ is both man and God. And what need is there to run through many things and to list the many vanities of the heresies? Hold to this: the fold of Christ is the Catholic Church. Whoever wishes to enter the fold, let him enter by the door, let him preach the true Christ. And not only let him preach the true Christ, but let him seek Christ's glory, not his own; for many, by seeking their own glory, have scattered Christ's sheep rather than gathered them. For Christ the Lord is a low door: whoever enters by this door must humble himself, so that he may enter with his head unhurt. But he who does not humble himself but exalts himself wants to climb over the wall; and he who climbs over the wall is lifted up only to fall.

Yet the Lord Jesus is still speaking covertly; he is not yet understood. He names the door, names the fold, names the sheep; he commends all these, but does not yet explain them. Let us read on, then, for he will come to words in which he will deign to explain to us some of what he has said; and from their explanation he will perhaps grant us to understand even what he has not explained. For he feeds us with what is plain and exercises us with what is obscure. “He who does not enter by the door into the sheepfold, but climbs up some other way.” Woe to the wretch, for he is going to fall! Let him be humble, then, let him enter by the door: let him come on level ground, and he will not stumble. “That one,” he says, “is a thief and a robber.” He wants to call other men's sheep his own sheep: his own for this purpose, that is, carried off by theft, not to save them but to kill them. So he is a thief, because he calls what belongs to another his own; a robber, because he also kills what he has stolen. “But he who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep: to him the doorkeeper opens.” Let us inquire about this doorkeeper when we have heard from the Lord himself what the door is and who the shepherd is. “And the sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name.” For he has their names written in the book of life. “He calls his own sheep by name.” Hence the apostle says, “The Lord knows those who are his.” “And he leads them out. And when he has put forth his own sheep, he goes before them, and the sheep follow him, because they know his voice. But a stranger they do not follow, but flee from him, because they do not know the voice of strangers.” These things are veiled, full of questions, pregnant with mysteries. Let us follow, then, and hear the master opening something of these obscure sayings, and through what he opens perhaps making us enter.

“This proverb Jesus spoke to them; but they did not understand what he was saying to them.” Perhaps we do not either. What difference is there, then, between them and us, before we too understand these words? This: we knock, that it may be opened to us; but they, by denying Christ, did not want to enter to be saved, but to remain outside to be lost. So because we hear these things devoutly, because before we understand them we believe them to be true and divine, we are separated from those men by a great difference. For when two people hear the words of the Gospel, one ungodly, the other godly, and they are such that perhaps neither understands them, one says, “He has said nothing”; the other says, “He has said what is true, and what he said is good, but we do not understand it.” This one, because he believes, is already knocking, and he is worthy to have it opened to him, if he persists in knocking; but that one still hears, “Unless you believe, you will not understand.” Why do I commend these things to you? Because even when I have explained these obscure words as best I can—whether because they are deeply hidden I do not grasp their meaning, or I am unable to set out what I understand, or someone is so slow that he does not follow even the one explaining—let him not despair of himself. Let him remain in faith, let him walk in the way, let him hear the apostle saying, “And if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal this also to you; nevertheless, to what we have attained, let us walk in that.”

Let us begin, then, to hear him explaining whom we heard proposing. “So Jesus said to them again, Amen, amen, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep.” See, the very door that he had set before us closed he has opened. He himself is the door. We have recognized it; let us enter, or rejoice that we have entered. “All who came are thieves and robbers.” What is this, Lord: “All who came”? Why? Did you not come? But understand: “All who came,” I said, meaning of course apart from me. Let us recall, then. Before his coming the prophets came: were they thieves and robbers? Far from it. They did not come apart from him, because they came with him. When he was about to come he sent heralds, but he possessed the hearts of those whom he had sent. Do you want to know that they came with him who always is? He took flesh, indeed, in time. What is “always”? “In the beginning was the Word.” So those came with him who came with the Word of God. “I am,” he says, “the way, the truth, and the life.” If he is the truth, those came with him who were truthful. So all who came apart from him were thieves and robbers, that is, they came to steal and to kill.

“But the sheep did not hear them.” This is a greater question: “the sheep did not hear them.” Before the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which he came humble in the flesh, the righteous went before, believing in him as one to come, just as we believe in him who has come. The times have changed, not the faith. For the very words change with the time when they are inflected differently: “He is to come” has one sound; “He has come” has another. The sound has changed, “is to come” and “has come”; yet the same faith joins both, both those who believed that he would come and those who believed that he had come. At different times indeed, but we see both entering through the one door of faith, that is, through Christ. We believe that the Lord Jesus Christ was born of a virgin, came in the flesh, suffered, rose again, ascended into heaven: all this, as you hear in the words of past tense, we believe already fulfilled. In the fellowship of that same faith with us are those fathers who believed that he would be born of a virgin, would suffer, would rise again, would ascend into heaven. For the apostle points to them where he says, “Having the same spirit of faith, as it is written, I believed, therefore I spoke; we too believe, and therefore we also speak.” The prophet said, “I believed, therefore I spoke”; the apostle says, “We too believe, and therefore we also speak.” And that you may know that the faith is one, hear him saying, “Having the same spirit of faith, we too believe.” So also in another place: “For I do not want you to be ignorant, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink.” The Red Sea signifies baptism; Moses, the leader through the Red Sea, signifies Christ; the people passing through signify the faithful; the death of the Egyptians signifies the abolition of sins. In different signs, the same faith: as in different signs, so in different words; for words change their sounds with the times, and words are surely nothing but signs. For they are words by signifying: take away the signification from a word, and it is an empty noise. So all things were signified. Did not those believe the same things through whom these signs were administered, through whom the same things that we believe were foretold in prophecy? Certainly they believed: but they, that these things would be; we, that they have come. So he says this too: “They drank the same spiritual drink.” The same spiritual drink, for the bodily drink was not the same. For what did they drink? “For they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them; and the rock was Christ.” See, then: the faith remains, the signs have changed. There the rock was Christ; for us Christ is what is placed on the altar of God. And they, as a great sacrament of the same Christ, drank water flowing from the rock; what we drink, the faithful know. If you look at the visible appearance, it is another thing; if at the meaning grasped by the mind, they drank the same spiritual drink. So all who in that time believed Abraham, or Isaac, or Jacob, or Moses, or the other patriarchs and the other prophets who foretold Christ, were sheep, and they heard Christ: they heard not a stranger's voice but his. The judge was in the herald. For even when a judge speaks through a herald, the clerk does not write, “The herald said,” but “The judge said.” So there are others whom the sheep did not hear, in whom the voice of Christ was not: wanderers, speakers of falsehood, babblers of nonsense, inventors of vanities, seducers of the wretched.

What, then, is it that I said, “This is a greater question”? What does it have that is obscure and difficult to understand? Listen, I beg you. See, the Lord Jesus Christ himself came and preached: surely much more was this the shepherd's voice, uttered by the shepherd's own mouth. For if the shepherd's voice was in the prophets, how much more did the shepherd's own tongue utter the shepherd's voice? Not all heard him. But what are we to think? Were those who heard him sheep? See, Judas heard, and he was a wolf: he followed, but, covered with a sheepskin, he lay in wait for the shepherd. But some of those who crucified Christ did not hear him, and they were sheep; for he saw them in the crowd when he said, “When you have lifted up the Son of man, then you will know that I am he.” How, then, is this question solved? Those who are not sheep hear, and sheep do not hear; certain wolves follow the shepherd's voice, and certain sheep speak against it; in the end sheep kill the shepherd. The question is solved: for someone answers and says, “But when they did not hear, they were not yet sheep; then they were wolves. The voice, once heard, changed them and made sheep of wolves; so when they were made sheep, they heard, and found the shepherd, and followed the shepherd; they hoped for the shepherd's promises, because they did his commands.”

This question is solved after a fashion, and perhaps it is enough for someone. But it still troubles me, and I share with you what troubles me, so that, seeking in a way with you, I may deserve to find with you as he reveals it. Hear, then, what troubles me. Through the prophet Ezekiel the Lord rebukes the shepherds and says among other things about the sheep, “The straying sheep you have not called back.” He both calls it straying and names it a sheep. If it was a sheep when it was straying, whose voice was it hearing so as to stray? Without doubt it would not stray if it heard the shepherd's voice; but it strayed because it heard the voice of a stranger; it heard the voice of a thief and a robber. Surely the sheep do not hear the voice of robbers: “Those who came,” he says—and we understand, “apart from me”—that is, “Those who came apart from me are thieves and robbers, and the sheep did not hear them.” Lord, if the sheep did not hear them, how do sheep stray? If sheep hear only you, and you are the truth, whoever hears the truth certainly does not stray. But these do stray, and they are called sheep. For if in their very straying they were not called sheep, it would not be said through Ezekiel, “The straying sheep you have not called back.” How does it both stray and remain a sheep? Did it hear a stranger's voice? Surely “the sheep did not hear them.” Again, many are now being gathered to the fold of Christ and from heretics are becoming Catholics; they are taken from the thieves and restored to the shepherd. And sometimes they murmur, they are annoyed with the one calling them back and do not recognize the one who was cutting their throats; yet when those who are sheep have come, even resisting, they recognize the shepherd's voice, and rejoice that they have come, and blush that they strayed. When, then, they were glorying in that error as if in the truth, and certainly were not hearing the shepherd's voice, and were therefore following a stranger, were they sheep or not? If they were sheep, how is it that sheep do not hear strangers? If they were not sheep, why are those rebuked to whom it is said, “The straying sheep you have not called back”? Even among those who have already become Catholic Christians, believers of good hope, evils sometimes happen: they are led astray into error, and after their error they are called back. When they were led astray into error and were rebaptized, or after the fellowship of the Lord's fold fell back again into their former error, were they sheep or not? Certainly they were Catholics. If they were Catholic believers, they were sheep. If they were sheep, how could they hear a stranger's voice, when the Lord says, “The sheep did not hear them”?

You have heard, brothers, the depth of the question. So I say: “The Lord knows those who are his.” He knows the foreknown, he knows the predestined; for of him it is said, “For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined he also called; and those whom he called he also justified; and those whom he justified he also glorified. If God is for us, who is against us?” Add further: “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how has he not with him also given us all things?” But to which “us”? To the foreknown, the predestined, the justified, the glorified; of whom it follows, “Who will bring a charge against God's elect?” So “the Lord knows those who are his”: they are the sheep. Sometimes they themselves do not know it, but the shepherd knows them, according to this predestination, according to this foreknowledge of God, according to the election of the sheep before the foundation of the world; for the apostle says this too: “As he chose us in him before the foundation of the world.” According to this foreknowledge and predestination of God, then, how many sheep are outside, how many wolves inside; and how many sheep inside, and how many wolves outside! What do I mean by “how many sheep outside”? How many now live in debauchery who will be chaste; how many blaspheme Christ who will believe in Christ; how many get drunk who will be sober; how many seize the goods of others who will give away their own! Nevertheless, for now they hear a stranger's voice, they follow strangers. Again, how many inside praise who will blaspheme; are chaste, who will commit fornication; are sober, who will later bury themselves in wine; stand, who will fall! They are not sheep. (For we are speaking of the predestined; we are speaking of those whom “the Lord knows, who are his.”) And yet these, as long as they think rightly, hear the voice of Christ. See, these hear, those do not hear; and yet, according to predestination, these are not sheep, those are sheep.

The question still remains, which for the present seems to me to be solvable thus. There is a certain voice, there is, I say, a certain voice of the shepherd in which the sheep do not hear strangers, in which those who are not sheep do not hear Christ. What is that voice? “He who perseveres to the end will be saved.” This voice his own does not neglect, the stranger does not hear. For he preaches this to him too, that he should persevere with him to the end; but by not persevering with him he does not hear this voice. He came to Christ, he heard these words and those, this and that, all true, all sound; among all of them is also that voice, “He who perseveres to the end will be saved.” Whoever has heard this is a sheep. But someone or other heard it, and lost his sense, grew cold, heard a stranger's voice: if he is predestined, he strayed for a time, he did not perish forever; he returns to hear what he neglected, to do what he heard. For if he is among those who are predestined, God foreknew both his error and his future conversion; if he has strayed, he returns to hear that voice of the shepherd and to follow him who says, “He who perseveres to the end will be saved.” A good voice, brothers, true, a shepherd's voice: it is “the voice of salvation in the tents of the righteous.” For it is easy to hear Christ, easy to praise the gospel, easy to applaud the preacher; to persevere to the end—this belongs to the sheep who hear the shepherd's voice. Temptation comes: persevere to the end, for temptation does not persevere to the end. To what end will you persevere? Until you finish the way. For as long as you do not hear Christ, he is your adversary on this way, that is, in this mortal life. But what does he say? “Agree with your adversary quickly, while you are with him on the way.” You have heard, you have believed, you have agreed. If you were opposing, agree. If it has been granted you to agree, quarrel no more. For you do not know when the way will end, but he knows. If you are a sheep and if you persevere to the end, you will be saved; and so his own do not despise this voice, strangers do not hear it. As I could, as he himself granted, I have either explained to you or discussed with you a very deep question. If some have understood less, let devotion remain, and the truth will be revealed; but let those who have understood not exalt themselves as quicker over the slower, lest by exalting themselves they go off the track, and the slower arrive more easily. And may he bring us all there, to whom we say, “Lead me, O Lord, in your way, and I will walk in your truth.”

Through what the Lord has explained, then—that he himself is the door—let us enter into the things he set forth but did not explain. As for who the shepherd is, though he did not say it in the reading recited today, yet in the one that follows he says it most plainly: “I am the good shepherd.” Even if he did not say it, whom else but him should we understand in the words where he says, “He who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep. To him the doorkeeper opens, and the sheep hear his voice; and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. And when he has put forth his own sheep, he goes before them, and the sheep follow him, because they know his voice”? For who else calls his own sheep by name and leads them out from here to eternal life, but he who knows the names of the predestined? Hence he says to his disciples, “Rejoice that your names are written in heaven”; for it is from there that he calls them by name. And who else puts them forth but he who forgives their sins, so that, freed from hard chains, they can follow him? And who has gone before them to where they may follow him, but he who, rising from the dead, dies no more, and death will no longer have dominion over him; and who, when he was visible here in the flesh, said, “Father, I will that those whom you have given me may be with me where I am”? Hence what he says: “I am the door: if anyone enters through me, he will be saved, and will go in and go out, and will find pasture.” In this he plainly shows that not only the shepherd but also the sheep enter by the door.

But what is “will go in and go out, and will find pasture”? To go into the Church through Christ the door is very good; but to go out of the Church, as this same John the evangelist says in his epistle, “They went out from us, but they were not of us,” is certainly not good. Such a going out, then, could not be praised by the good shepherd, so that he would say, “and will go in and go out, and will find pasture.” There is, then, not only a good going in but also a good going out through the good door, which is Christ. But what is that praiseworthy and blessed going out? I could indeed say that we go in when we think something within, and go out when we do something outwardly; and since, as the apostle says, Christ dwells in our hearts through faith, to go in through Christ is to think in accordance with that faith, and to go out through Christ is to act in accordance with that same faith outwardly too, that is, before men. Hence we read in the psalm, “Man shall go out to his work”; and the Lord himself says, “Let your works shine before men.” But I am more delighted that the Truth himself, as the good shepherd and therefore the good teacher, has in a way shown us how we ought to understand his saying, “will go in and go out, and will find pasture,” when he went on to add, “The thief comes only to steal and to slaughter and to destroy; I came that they may have life, and have it more abundantly.” For he seems to me to have said, “that they may have life” as they go in, “and have it more abundantly” as they go out. But no one can go out through the door, that is, through Christ, to eternal life, which will be in sight, unless through that same door, that is, through the same Christ, he has entered his Church, which is his fold, to the temporal life which is in faith. Therefore he says, “I came that they may have life,” that is, faith, which works through love; by this faith they enter the fold that they may live, for “the righteous lives by faith”; “and have it more abundantly”: those who, persevering to the end, go out by that door, that is, by faith in Christ, since they die as true believers; and they will have life more abundantly by coming where that shepherd has gone before, where they will never die again. So although even here in the fold itself pasture is not lacking—since we can understand “and will find pasture” of both, that is, of the going in and of the going out—yet then they will find true pasture, where those who hunger and thirst for righteousness are filled; such pasture as he found to whom it was said, “Today you will be with me in paradise.” But how he is himself the door and himself the shepherd, so that he may be understood in a way to go in and go out through himself, and who the doorkeeper is, would take long to inquire today and to explain in discourse, as he himself may grant.