Tractates on the Gospel of John 49.15–49.28

“Whoever believes in me, even though he dies, will live; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die.” What is this? “Whoever believes in me, even though he dies,” as Lazarus died, “will live,” because he is not the God of the dead but of the living. Concerning the fathers long dead, that is, concerning Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, he gave the Jews this answer: “I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob; he is not the God of the dead but of the living, for all live to him.” Believe, then; and even if you die, you will live. But if you do not believe, even while you live you are dead. Let us prove this too, that if you do not believe, even though you live, you are dead. To a certain man who was putting off following him and said, “Let me first go and bury my father,” the Lord said, “Let the dead bury their own dead; you come, follow me.” There was a dead man there to be buried, and there were dead men there to bury the dead man: he was dead in the flesh, they in the soul. Where does death in the soul come from? From the absence of faith. Where does death in the body come from? From the absence of the soul there. So the soul of your soul is faith. “Whoever believes in me,” he says, “even though he dies” in the flesh, “will live” in the soul, until the flesh too rises, never to die again. That is, “Whoever believes in me, though he die, will live.” “And everyone who lives” in the flesh “and believes in me,” even though he dies for a time by the death of the flesh, “will never die,” because of the life of the spirit and the immortality of the resurrection. That is what he says: “And everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this? She said to him, Yes, Lord; I have believed that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who has come into the world.” When I believed this, I believed that you are the resurrection, I believed that you are the life; I believed that whoever believes in you, though he die, will live; and whoever lives and believes in you will never die.

“And when she had said this, she went away and called Mary her sister silently, saying, The Teacher is here and is calling you.” We should notice how he called a lowered voice “silence.” For how was she silent who said, “The Teacher is here and is calling you”? We should notice also how the evangelist did not say where or when or how the Lord called Mary, so that this might rather be understood from Martha’s words, and the narrative kept brief.

“As soon as she heard, she rose quickly and came to him. For Jesus had not yet come into the village, but was still in the place where Martha had met him. So the Jews who were with her in the house and were consoling her, when they saw that Mary rose quickly and went out, followed her, saying, She is going to the tomb to weep there.” Why did it concern the evangelist to tell this? So that we may see what occasion brought it about that many were there when Lazarus was raised. For the Jews, thinking that she was hurrying in order to seek in tears the solace of her grief, followed her, so that so great a miracle, a man four days dead rising again, might find very many witnesses.

“Then Mary, when she came where Jesus was and saw him, fell at his feet and said to him, Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. Jesus therefore, when he saw her weeping, and the Jews who were with her weeping, groaned in spirit and troubled himself, and said, Where have you laid him?” I do not know what he has suggested to us by groaning in spirit and troubling himself. For who could trouble him except himself? So, my brothers, first attend here to his power, and then look for the meaning. You are troubled against your will; Christ was troubled because he willed it. Jesus hungered, it is true, but because he willed it; Jesus slept, it is true, but because he willed it; Jesus was sorrowful, it is true, but because he willed it; Jesus died, it is true, but because he willed it: it was in his power to be affected this way or that, or not to be affected. For the Word took up a soul and flesh, fitting to himself the nature of the whole man in the unity of a person. For the soul of an apostle was also enlightened by the Word: the soul of Peter was enlightened by the Word, the soul of Paul; the souls of the other apostles and of the holy prophets were enlightened by the Word; but of none was it said, “The Word became flesh”; of none was it said, “I and the Father are one.” The soul and flesh of Christ together with the Word of God are one person, one Christ. And therefore, where the highest power is, weakness is handled at the bidding of the will: that is, “he troubled himself.”

I have spoken of his power; now attend to the meaning. A great offender is signified by that four days’ death and that burial. What, then, is it that Christ troubles himself, except to show you how you ought to be troubled when you are weighed down and pressed by so great a mass of sin? You have looked at yourself, you have seen that you are guilty, you have reckoned with yourself: “I did that, and God spared me; I committed that, and he bore with me; I heard the gospel and despised it; I was baptized, and I went back again to the same things. What am I to do? Where am I to go? How do I escape?” When you say these things, Christ is already groaning, because faith is groaning. In the voice of one groaning appears the hope of one rising again. If faith itself is within, Christ is there groaning: if faith is in us, Christ is in us. For what else does the apostle say: “That Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith”? So your faith in Christ is Christ in your heart. That is why he was sleeping in the boat; and when the disciples were in danger and shipwreck was already at hand, they came to him and woke him: Christ rose, commanded the winds and the waves, and there was a great calm. So with you too: the winds enter your heart, that is, where you are sailing, where you are crossing this life as a stormy and dangerous sea; the winds enter, they stir up the waves, they toss the ship. What are the winds? You have heard an insult, you are angry; the insult is the wind, the anger is the wave. You are in danger: you are getting ready to answer, getting ready to return curse for curse; already the ship is nearing shipwreck. Wake Christ who is sleeping. For you are tossed about and preparing to return evil for evil because Christ is asleep in the boat. For the sleep of Christ in your heart is the forgetting of faith. But if you wake Christ, that is, if you call your faith to mind, what does Christ, awake in your heart, say to you? “I heard, ‘You have a demon,’ and I prayed for them. The Lord hears and suffers it; the servant hears and is indignant! But you want to be avenged. What then? Have I been avenged yet?” When your faith speaks these things to you, it is as if the winds and the waves are commanded, and there is a great calm. As, then, to wake Christ in the boat is to wake faith, so in the heart of a man whom a great mass and habit of sin presses down, in the heart of a man who transgresses even the holy gospel and despises the eternal punishments, let Christ groan, let the man rebuke himself. Hear more: Christ wept; let man weep over himself. For why did Christ weep, except that he taught man to weep? Why did he groan and trouble himself, except that the faith of a man who is rightly displeased with himself ought in some way to groan in accusing his evil works, so that the habit of sinning may give way to the force of repentance?

“And he said, Where have you laid him?” You knew that he was dead, and do you not know where he is buried? This too has a meaning: that God, as it were, does not know a man who is lost in this way. I did not dare to say “He does not know,” for what does he not know? But “as it were, he does not know.” How do we prove this? Hear the Lord, who will say at the judgment, “I do not know you; depart from me.” What is “I do not know you”? “I do not see you in my light, I do not see you in that righteousness which I know.” So here too, as if not knowing such a sinner, he said, “Where have you laid him?” Such is the voice of God in paradise after man sinned: “Adam, where are you?” “They say to him, Lord, come and see.” What is “see”? Have mercy. For the Lord sees when he has mercy. Hence it is said to him, “See my lowliness and my toil, and forgive all my sins.”

“Jesus wept. So the Jews said, See how he loved him.” What is “he loved him”? “I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.” “But some of them said, Could not this man, who opened the eyes of the blind man, have caused this man also not to die?” He who did not will to cause him not to die is about to do something greater: that the dead man be raised.

“Jesus therefore, groaning again in himself, came to the tomb.” Let him groan in you too, if you are getting ready to live again. To every man who is pressed down by a very bad habit it is said: “He came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone had been laid upon it.” The dead man under the stone, the guilty man under the law. For you know that the law which was given to the Jews was written on stone. All the guilty are under the law; those who live well are with the law. “The law is not laid down for the righteous.” What, then, is “Take away the stone”? Preach grace. For the apostle Paul calls himself a minister of the New Testament, “not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter,” he says, “kills, but the Spirit gives life.” The killing letter is like a stone pressing down. “Take away,” he says, “the stone.” Take away the weight of the law; preach grace. “For if a law had been given that could give life, righteousness would indeed be by the law. But Scripture has shut up all things under sin, so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe.” Therefore take away the stone.

“Martha, the sister of the dead man, says to him, Lord, by now he stinks, for he has been dead four days. Jesus says to her, Did I not tell you that if you believe you will see the glory of God?” What is “you will see the glory of God”? That he raises even one who stinks and is four days dead. “For all have sinned and lack the glory of God”; and “Where sin abounded, grace abounded all the more.”

“So they took away the stone. And Jesus lifted up his eyes and said, Father, I thank you that you have heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I said this on account of the people standing around, that they may believe that you sent me. When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice.” He groaned, he wept, he cried with a loud voice. How hard it is for one to rise whom the weight of bad habit presses down! Yet he rises: he is given life within by hidden grace; he rises after the loud voice. What happened? “He cried with a loud voice, Lazarus, come out. And at once the man who had been dead came out, bound hand and foot with bandages, and his face was bound with a cloth.” Do you marvel that he came out with his feet bound, and do you not marvel that one four days dead rose? In both it was the power of the Lord, not the strength of the dead man. He came out and is still bound: still wrapped up, yet he has already come outside. What does it signify? When you show contempt, you lie dead; and if you show contempt for such great things as I have described, you lie buried. When you confess, you come out. For what is coming out, except being made manifest by going out, as it were, from hidden places? But that you may confess, God brings it about by crying with a loud voice, that is, by calling with great grace. Therefore, when the dead man had come out still bound, confessing and still guilty, so that his sins might be loosed, the Lord said this to his ministers: “Unbind him and let him go.” What is “Unbind and let him go”? “Whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”

“Many therefore of the Jews who had come to Mary and had seen what Jesus did believed in him; but some of them went away to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done.” Not all of the Jews who had gathered with Mary believed, but still many did. But some of them, whether of the Jews who had gathered or of those who had believed, went away to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done: either as a report, so that they too might believe, or rather as a betrayal, so that they might rage. But in whatever way and by whomever, these things were carried to the Pharisees.

“The chief priests and the Pharisees gathered a council and said, What are we doing?” Yet they did not say, “Let us believe.” For these lost men were thinking more about how to do harm so as to destroy than about how to take counsel for themselves so as not to perish; and yet they were afraid, and in a way took counsel. For they said, “What are we doing? For this man performs many signs. If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation.” They were afraid of losing temporal things, and they gave no thought to eternal life; and so they lost both. For after the Lord’s passion and glorification the Romans did take from them both their place and their nation, by conquest and deportation; and what is said elsewhere follows them too: “But the sons of this kingdom will go into the outer darkness.” What they feared was this: that if all believed in Christ, no one would remain to defend the city of God and the temple against the Romans, since they felt that the teaching of Christ was against the temple itself and against their ancestral laws.

“But one of them, Caiaphas, since he was high priest that year, said to them, You know nothing at all, nor do you consider that it is expedient for us that one man should die for the people, and not the whole nation perish. He did not say this of himself, but since he was high priest that year, he prophesied.” Here we are taught that the Spirit of prophecy foretells the future even through evil men; yet the evangelist attributes this to a divine mystery, because he was pontiff, that is, high priest. But it may puzzle someone how he is called high priest “of that year,” when God established one high priest, to be succeeded by one other when he died. It must be understood that afterwards, through ambition and rivalry among the Jews, it was arranged that there should be several, and that they should serve by turns each year. For it is said of Zechariah too: “Now it happened, while he was serving as priest in the order of his division before God, according to the custom of the priesthood, that it fell to him by lot to offer incense, when he went into the temple of the Lord.” From this it appears that there were several of them and that they had their turns; for no one was permitted to offer incense except the high priest. And perhaps several administered even in one year, and others succeeded them in another year, and from among them one was chosen by lot to offer incense. What, then, did Caiaphas prophesy? “That Jesus would die for the nation; and not only for the nation, but to gather into one the children of God who were scattered.” The evangelist added this; for Caiaphas prophesied of the Jewish nation alone, in which were the sheep of whom the Lord himself says, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” But the evangelist knew that there were other sheep, which were not of this fold, which had to be brought in, so that there might be one fold and one shepherd. These things were said according to predestination: for those who had not yet believed were not yet his sheep nor the children of God.

“So from that day they planned to kill him. Jesus therefore no longer walked openly among the Jews, but went away to the region near the desert, to a town called Ephraim, and stayed there with his disciples.” Not because his power had failed, by which, had he wished, he could certainly have lived openly among the Jews and they would have done nothing to him; but in the weakness of a man he was showing his disciples an example of how to live, in which it would be clear that it is no sin if his faithful, who are his members, withdraw themselves from the eyes of their persecutors and avoid the fury of the wicked by hiding rather than inflame it further by offering themselves.