Tractates on the Gospel of John 52.1–52.14

After the Lord Jesus Christ, in the words of yesterday's reading, had exhorted his servants to follow him, when he had thus foretold his passion, that unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone, but if it dies, it bears much fruit; where he stirred up those who wished to follow him to the kingdom of heaven to hate their soul in this world, if they intended to keep it unto eternal life: he again tempered his feeling to our weakness, and said, where today's reading began, "Now is my soul troubled." Why is your soul troubled, Lord? Surely you said a little before, "Whoever hates his soul in this world keeps it unto eternal life." Is your soul, then, loved in this world, and therefore troubled as the hour comes when it is to go out of this world? Who would dare to assert this of the Lord's soul? But he transferred us into himself; our head took us up into himself, he took up the feeling of his members: and so it was not troubled by anyone, but, as was said of him when he raised Lazarus, "he troubled himself." For it was fitting that the one mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus, as he roused us to the highest things, should also suffer the lowest things with us.

I hear him saying above, "The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified": if the grain has been put to death, it bears much fruit. I hear, "Whoever hates his soul in this world keeps it unto eternal life." And I am not merely permitted to admire, but commanded to imitate. Then by the following words, "If anyone serves me, let him follow me; and where I am, there also my servant will be," I am kindled to despise the world, and in my sight the whole of this life, however long it may be, is nothing but a vapour; for love of eternal things all temporal things grow cheap to me. And again I hear my Lord himself, who by those words snatched me from my weakness to his strength, saying, "Now is my soul troubled." What is this? How do you command my soul to follow, if I see your soul troubled? How shall I bear what such great strength feels to be heavy? What foundation shall I seek, if the rock gives way? But I seem to hear the Lord answering me in my thought, and saying as it were: "You will follow the more, because I put myself between in this way so that you may bear it. You have heard the voice of my strength addressed to you; hear in me the voice of your weakness. I supply strength so that you may run, and I do not hold back your haste; but I transfer to myself what you tremble at, and I lay down a path by which you may pass over." O Lord, mediator, God above us, man for our sake, I acknowledge your mercy! For that you, so great, are troubled by the will of your love, consoles many in your body who are troubled by the necessity of their weakness, so that they may not perish by despairing.

So let the man who wishes to follow hear how he should follow. Perhaps a terrible hour has come; the choice is set before you, either of doing wickedness or of undergoing suffering; the weak soul is troubled, for whose sake the unconquered soul was troubled of its own will: set the will of God before your own. For attend to what your creator and your teacher adds next, he who made you, and who, to teach you, himself became what he made: for he who made man was made man; but he remained God unchangeable, and changed man for the better. Hear, then, what he adds after he had said, "Now is my soul troubled." "And what shall I say?" he says. "Father, save me from this hour. But for this purpose I came to this hour. Father, glorify your name." He has taught you what to think, taught you what to say, whom to call on, in whom to hope, whose sure and divine will to set before your human and weak will. Let him not therefore seem to you to fall from on high because he wishes you to advance from below. For he also deigned to be tempted by the devil, by whom he would surely not have been tempted had he not willed it, just as he would not have suffered had he not willed it; and he answered the devil with what you ought to answer in temptations. And he indeed was tempted, but not endangered, so as to teach you, when endangered in temptation, to answer the tempter, and not to go after the tempter, but to come out of the danger of temptation. And as he said here, "Now is my soul troubled," so also where he says, "My soul is sorrowful even unto death," and "Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me," he took up the weakness of man, so as to teach one who is thus saddened and troubled to say what follows: "Yet not what I will, but what you will, Father." For thus man is directed from human things to divine, when the divine will is set before the human will. But what is "Glorify your name," if not in his passion and resurrection? What else, then, is it but that the Father should glorify the Son, who glorifies his name also in the like sufferings of his servants? Hence it is written of Peter that he said of him, "Another will gird you and carry you where you do not wish," because he wished to signify by what death he was to glorify God. So in him too God glorified his name, because in this way also he glorifies Christ in his members.

"So a voice came from heaven: I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again." "I have both glorified it" before I made the world; "and will glorify it again" when he rises from the dead and ascends into heaven. It can also be understood otherwise. "I have both glorified it" when he was born of the Virgin, when he worked mighty works, when, with heaven pointing him out by a star, he was worshipped by the Magi, when he was recognized by holy people full of the Holy Spirit, when he was declared by the Spirit descending in the form of a dove, when he was shown by the voice sounding from heaven, when he was transfigured on the mountain, when he did many miracles, when he healed and cleansed many, when he fed so great a multitude from very few loaves, when he commanded the winds and the waves, when he raised the dead; "and will glorify it again" when he rises from the dead, when death will no longer have dominion over him, when God will be exalted above the heavens, and his glory above all the earth.

"So the crowd that stood by and heard it said that it had thundered; others said, An angel has spoken to him. Jesus answered and said: This voice came not for my sake, but for yours." Here he shows that by that voice there was made known, not to himself what he already knew, but to those to whom it had to be made known. And as that voice was made by divine power, not for his sake but for the sake of others, so his soul was troubled by his will, not for his sake but for the sake of others.

Attend to the rest. "Now," he says, "is the judgment of the world." What, then, is to be awaited at the end of the age? But the judgment that is awaited at the end will be the judgment of the living and the dead who are to be judged, the judgment of eternal rewards and punishments. What kind of judgment, then, is it now? Already in earlier readings, as far as I could, I reminded your Love that there is also a judgment spoken of which is not of condemnation but of separation; hence it is written, "Judge me, O God, and distinguish my cause from an unholy nation." Now the judgments of God are many; hence it is said in the Psalm, "Your judgments are a great deep." The Apostle too says, "O the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments!" Of these judgments is this also, which the Lord says here, "Now is the judgment of the world," that judgment at the end being reserved, when finally the living and the dead are to be judged. The devil, then, possessed the human race, and held them liable to punishment by the bond of their sins; he ruled in the hearts of unbelievers, and dragged them, deceived and captive, to worship the creature, the Creator abandoned. But through faith in Christ, which was confirmed by his death and resurrection, through his blood, which was shed for the remission of sins, thousands of believers are set free from the dominion of the devil, are joined to the body of Christ, and under so great a head are quickened as faithful members by his one Spirit. This he called judgment, this separation, this expulsion of the devil from those whom he redeemed.

Finally, attend to what he says. As if we were asking what it was that he said, "Now is the judgment of the world," he went on to explain it; for he says, "Now the prince of this world will be cast out." We have heard what kind of judgment he said it is. Not, then, that which is to come at the end, when the living and the dead are to be judged, some separated to the right, others to the left; but the judgment by which "the prince of this world will be cast out." How, then, was he within, and where did he say he would be cast out? Was he in the world, and was he sent out of the world? For if he were speaking of that judgment which is to come at the end, someone might suppose that the eternal fire, into which the devil is to be sent with his angels and all who are on his side (not by nature but by fault, not because he created or begot them, but because he persuaded and held them), someone, I say, might suppose that that eternal fire is outside the world, and that this is what is said, "will be cast out." But since he says, "Now is the judgment of the world," and, explaining what he said, "Now," he says, "the prince of this world will be cast out," this is to be understood of what is happening now, not of what is to come so long after on the last day. The Lord, then, was foretelling what he knew: that after his passion and glorification many peoples throughout the whole world would believe, in whose hearts the devil was within; and when they renounce him by faith, he is cast out.

But someone says: "Was he not cast out of the hearts of the patriarchs and prophets and the righteous of old?" He was certainly cast out. How, then, was it said, "Now he will be cast out"? How do we think, if not that what was then done in very few people is foretold as soon to happen now in many and great peoples? So too that saying, "The Spirit had not yet been given, because Jesus had not yet been glorified," may have a like question and a like solution. For the prophets did not foretell things to come without the Holy Spirit; nor was it without him that the old man Simeon and the widow Anna recognized the infant Lord in the Holy Spirit; and Zacharias and Elizabeth, who through the Holy Spirit foretold such great things of him when he was not yet born but already conceived. But "the Spirit had not yet been given": that is, that abundance of spiritual grace by which those gathered together would speak in the tongues of all, and so the Church to come would be foretold in the tongues of all nations; that spiritual grace by which peoples would be gathered, by which sins would be forgiven far and wide, and thousands of thousands would be reconciled to God.

"What, then," says someone, "because the devil will be cast out of the hearts of believers, does he now tempt none of the faithful?" On the contrary, he does not cease to tempt. But it is one thing to reign within, another to attack from without; for an enemy sometimes attacks even a most strongly fortified city, and does not take it. And if some of his missiles reach us, the Apostle tells us how they may do no harm: he speaks of the breastplate and the shield of faith. And if he sometimes wounds, there is one at hand who heals. For as it was said to those who fight, "These things I write to you, that you may not sin," so those who are wounded hear what follows: "And if anyone sins, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; he is the propitiation for our sins." For what do we pray when we say, "Forgive us our debts," if not that our wounds may be healed? And what else do we ask when we say, "Lead us not into temptation," if not that he who lies in wait or fights from without may break in from no side, and may be able to overcome us by no fraud and no force? Yet however many engines he raises against us, since he does not hold the place of the heart where faith dwells, he has been cast out. "But unless the Lord guards the city, the watchman watches in vain." Do not, then, presume on yourselves, if you do not wish to call back in again the devil who has been cast out.

But far be it from us to think that the devil is called the prince of the world in such a way that we should believe he can rule heaven and earth. But "the world" is the name given to the wicked who are spread through the whole world, as "house" is the name given to those who live in it, in the sense in which we say, "It is a good house," or "It is a bad house," not when we blame or praise the building of walls and roofs, but the conduct of good or bad people. So, then, it was said, "the prince of this world": that is, the prince of all the wicked who live in the world. "The world" is also the name given to the good, who likewise are spread through the whole world; hence the Apostle says, "God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself." These are they from whose hearts the prince of this world is cast out.

So when he had said, "Now the prince of this world will be cast out," he says, "And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all things after me." What all things, if not those from which that one is cast out? But he did not say "all men," but "all things"; for not all have faith. So he did not refer this to the whole of mankind, but to the wholeness of the creature, that is, spirit, soul and body: that by which we understand, that by which we live, and that by which we are visible and tangible. For he who said, "Not a hair of your head shall perish," draws all things after him. Or, if "all things" are to be understood as men themselves, we can say all things predestined to salvation, of all of which he said that none will perish, when he was speaking above of his sheep. Or certainly all kinds of men, whether in all languages, or in all ages, or in all ranks of honour, or in all varieties of talents, or in all callings of lawful and useful arts, and whatever else can be named according to the innumerable differences by which men differ from one another, sins alone excepted, from the highest to the lowest, from the king to the beggar: "all things," he says, "I will draw after me," that he may be their head, and they his members. "But if I am lifted up from the earth," he says, that is, when I am lifted up; for he does not doubt that what he came to fulfil will come to pass. This refers to what he said above, "But if the grain dies, it bears much fruit." For what else did he call his lifting up but his passion on the cross? The evangelist himself did not keep silent about this; for he added, "Now he said this, signifying by what death he was to die."

"The crowd answered him: We have heard from the Law that the Christ remains for ever; and how do you say, The Son of Man must be lifted up? Who is this Son of Man?" They held in memory that the Lord constantly said he was the Son of Man. For in this place he does not say, "If the Son of Man is lifted up from the earth"; but he had said above, in what was read and treated yesterday, when those Gentiles who desired to see him were announced, "The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified." Retaining this, then, and understanding what he now says, "When I am lifted up from the earth," as the death of the cross, they asked him and said: "We have heard from the Law that the Christ remains for ever; and how do you say, The Son of Man must be lifted up? For who is this Son of Man?" "For if he is the Christ," they say, "he remains for ever; if he remains for ever, how will he be lifted up from the earth, that is, how does he die by the suffering of the cross?" For they understood him to have said what they were planning to do. So it was not infused wisdom that opened to them the obscurity of these words, but a goaded conscience.

"So Jesus said to them: Yet a little while the light is in you." It is from this that you understand that the Christ remains for ever. "Walk, then, while you have the light, that darkness may not overtake you." Walk, draw near, understand the whole: both that the Christ will die and that he will live for ever, both that he will shed the blood by which he redeems and that he will ascend on high, where he leads us. But darkness will overtake you if you so believe in Christ's eternity as to deny in him the humility of death. "And he who walks in darkness does not know where he goes." So he may stumble on the stone of stumbling and the rock of offence, which the Lord was to the blind Jews; as for believers the stone which the builders rejected has become the head of the corner. Hence they disdained to believe in Christ, because their impiety despised him dead and mocked him slain: and that very thing was the death of the grain that was to be multiplied, and the lifting up of him who draws all things after him. "While you have the light," he says, "believe in the light, that you may be sons of light." When you have heard something of the truth, believe in the truth, that you may be born again in the truth.

"These things Jesus spoke, and went away, and hid himself from them." Not from those who had begun to believe and to love, not from those who had come to meet him with palm branches and praises, but from those who saw and envied; for they did not even see, but in their blindness stumbled on that stone. But when Jesus hid himself from those who wished to kill him (of which you must often be reminded, because of forgetfulness), he took thought for our weakness; he did not detract from his own power.