Tractates on the Gospel of John 74.1–77.5

We heard, brothers, when the Gospel was read, the Lord saying: "If you love me, keep my commandments; and I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Paraclete, to remain with you for ever, the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you will know him, because he will remain with you and will be in you." There are many things to be inquired into in these few words of the Lord; but it is a great deal for us either to ask all that is to be asked here or to find all that we ask here. Nevertheless, attending to what the Lord deigns to grant us, according to our capacity and yours, as to what we ought to say and you ought to hear, take from us, beloved, what we can give, and ask from him what we cannot. Christ promised the Spirit, the Paraclete, to the apostles; but let us notice in what way he promised him. "If you love me," he says, "keep my commandments; and I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Paraclete, to remain with you for ever, the Spirit of truth." This is certainly the Holy Spirit in the Trinity, whom the catholic faith confesses to be consubstantial and coeternal with the Father and the Son; he it is of whom the Apostle says, "The love of God has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us." How then does the Lord say, "If you love me, keep my commandments; and I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Paraclete," when he says this of the Holy Spirit, without whom we can neither love God nor keep his commandments? How do we love so as to receive him, when unless we have him we are unable to love? Or how shall we keep the commandments so as to receive him, when unless we have him we cannot keep the commandments? Or does the love by which we love Christ perhaps come first in us, so that by loving Christ and doing his commandments we may merit to receive the Holy Spirit, so that the love not of Christ, which had already come first, but of God the Father may be poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us? That is a perverse opinion. For whoever believes he loves the Son and does not love the Father surely does not love the Son either, but something he has invented for himself. Then there is the apostolic saying, "No one says 'Lord Jesus' except in the Holy Spirit"; and who says "Lord Jesus," in the way the Apostle wished it to be understood, except one who loves him? For many say it with the voice but deny it with the heart and with deeds; as he says of such people, "For they profess to know God, but deny him by their deeds." If he is denied by deeds, beyond doubt he is also spoken of by deeds. So no one says "Lord Jesus" with mind, word, deed, heart, mouth, and work; no one says "Lord Jesus" except in the Holy Spirit; and no one says it so except one who loves. So the apostles were already saying "Lord Jesus"; and if they said it in such a way as not to say it falsely, confessing with the mouth while denying with heart and deeds; in short, if they said it truly, beyond doubt they loved. How then did they love, except in the Holy Spirit? And yet they are first commanded to love him and keep his commandments in order to receive the Holy Spirit, without having whom they surely could not love and keep the commandments.

It remains, then, that we understand that whoever loves has the Holy Spirit, and by having him merits to have him more, and by having him more loves more. So the disciples already had the Spirit whom the Lord was promising, without whom they would not have called him Lord; and yet they did not yet have him in the way the Lord was promising him. So they both had him and did not have him, since they did not yet have him as fully as he was to be had. They had him less, then; he was to be given to them more. They had him hiddenly; they were to receive him manifestly; for this too belonged to the greater gift of the Holy Spirit, that what they had should become known to them. Speaking of this gift the Apostle says: "But we have received not the spirit of this world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we may know the things that have been given us by God." For the Lord carried out that manifest bestowal of the Holy Spirit not once but twice. For as soon as he rose from the dead, he breathed on them and said: "Receive the Holy Spirit." Because he gave him then, did he therefore not send later the one he had promised? Or is it not the same Holy Spirit who was then breathed by him and afterward sent by him from heaven? Why that open bestowal of him was made twice is another question; for perhaps it was because of the two commandments of love, that is, of neighbor and of God, that this twofold bestowal of him was made openly, to commend that love belongs to the Holy Spirit. And if another reason is to be sought, this sermon must not now be stretched longer than it should by inquiring into it; so long as it is settled that without the Holy Spirit we cannot love Christ and keep his commandments, and that we can do and carry this out so much the less as we receive him less, and so much the more as we receive him more. Therefore he is promised, not in vain, not only to one who does not have him but also to one who has: to one who does not have him, that he may be had; to one who has, that he may be had more. For unless he were had less by one and more by another, holy Elisha would not have said to holy Elijah: "Let the Spirit that is in you be double in me."

But when John the Baptist says, "For God does not give the Spirit by measure," he was speaking of the Son of God himself, to whom the Spirit was not given by measure, because in him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead. For neither is the man Christ Jesus, mediator between God and men, without the grace of the Holy Spirit; for he himself says that that prophecy was fulfilled in him: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me; he has sent me to preach good news to the poor." For that the Only-begotten is equal to the Father is not of grace but of nature; but that a man was taken into the unity of the person of the Only-begotten is of grace, not of nature, as the Gospel confesses, saying: "And the child grew and became strong, full of wisdom, and the grace of God was upon him." But to the others the Spirit is given by measure, and, once given, is added to, until in each one his own measure is filled up according to the degree of his perfection. Hence the Apostle also admonishes: "Not to think more highly than one ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, according as God has assigned to each the measure of faith." For the Spirit himself is not divided, but the gifts through the Spirit: for "there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit."

But when he says, "I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Paraclete," he shows that he himself too is a paraclete. For paracletus is in Latin advocatus; and it was said of Christ, "We have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous." But he said that the world cannot receive the Holy Spirit in the same sense in which it was also said, "The prudence of the flesh is hostile to God; for it is not subject to God's law, nor can it be"; as if we were to say, "Injustice cannot be just." For in this place he says "the world" meaning the lovers of the world, a love which is not from the Father. And therefore the love of God, which is poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us, is contrary to the love of this world, which we labor hard to have diminished and consumed in us. So "the world cannot receive him, because it neither sees him nor knows him." For worldly love does not have invisible eyes, through which the Holy Spirit can be seen; for he cannot be seen except invisibly.

"But you," he says, "will know him, because he will remain with you and will be in you." He will be in them in order to remain; he will not remain in order to be: for to be somewhere comes before remaining there. But lest they think that "he will remain with you" was said in the way a guest usually remains visibly with someone, he explained what he meant by "he will remain with you" when he added and said, "he will be in you." So he is seen invisibly; nor, if he is not in us, can there be knowledge of him in us. For in this way our conscience too is seen by us within us: for we see another's face but cannot see our own; but we see our own conscience and do not see another's. But conscience is never anywhere but in us; whereas the Holy Spirit can be even without us; for he is given in order to be in us too. But he cannot be seen and known by us as he is to be seen and known if he is not in us.

After the promise of the Holy Spirit, lest anyone think that the Lord was going to give him as a substitute for himself, so that he himself would not also be with them, he added and said: "I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you." Orphans are wards. For the one is the Greek name for the same thing, the other the Latin. For in the psalm too, where we read, "You will be the helper of the ward," the Greek has "of the orphan." So although the Son of God has adopted sons for his Father, and has willed that we should have by grace the same Father who is his Father by nature, yet he too in a certain way shows a fatherly affection toward us when he says, "I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you." Hence it is that he also calls us sons of the bridegroom, where he says: "The hour will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them, and then the sons of the bridegroom will fast." And who is the bridegroom, if not the Lord Christ?

Then follows, and he says: "Yet a little while, and the world no longer sees me." What then? Did the world see him then? For by the name "world" he wishes to be understood those of whom he spoke above, saying of the Holy Spirit, "whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him." The world clearly saw him with fleshly eyes, visible in the flesh, but did not see the Word that lay hidden in the flesh: it saw a man, it did not see God; it saw the garment, it did not see the one clothed in it. But since after the resurrection he showed his own even his very flesh, not only to be seen but also to be handled, and was unwilling to show it to those not his own, perhaps it is in this sense that we are to understand the words: "Yet a little while, and the world no longer sees me; but you will see me; because I live, you also will live."

What is "because I live, you also will live"? Why did he say of himself in the present that he lives, but of them in the future that they would live, except that he promised them that the life of the flesh too, flesh that would rise, such as went before in him, would follow for them as well? And because his resurrection was soon to come, he used a verb of the present tense to signify its speed; but theirs, since it is put off to the end of the age, he did not say "you live" but "you will live." So two resurrections, his own, soon to come, and ours, coming at the end of the age, he promised elegantly and briefly by two verbs, one present and one future. "Because I live," he says, "you also will live": because he lives, therefore we too shall live. For "by a man came death, and by a man the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive." For no one comes to death except through Adam, no one to life except through Christ. Because we did not live, we died; because he lives, we shall live. We died to him when we lived to ourselves; but because he died for us, he lives both to himself and to us. For because he lives, we too shall live. For though we could have death through ourselves, we cannot in the same way have life through ourselves.

"In that day," he says, "you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you." In what day, if not the one of which he said, "and you will live"? For then it will be possible for us to see what we believe. For even now he is in us and we in him; but this we now believe, then we shall also know it; although even now we know it by believing, but then we shall know it by contemplating. For as long as we are in the body such as it now is, that is, corruptible and weighing down the soul, we are away from the Lord; for we walk by faith, not by sight. Then, therefore, it will be by sight, since we shall see him as he is. For if Christ were not in us even now, the Apostle would not say: "But if Christ is in you, the body indeed is dead because of sin, but the spirit is life because of righteousness." And that we too are even now in him, he shows clearly enough where he says: "I am the vine, you are the branches." In that day, then, when we shall live that life in which death will be swallowed up, we shall know that he is in the Father, and we in him, and he in us; because then this very thing will be perfected which has even now been begun by him, that he be in us and we in him.

"Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me." Whoever has them in memory and keeps them in life; whoever has them in words and keeps them in conduct; whoever has them by hearing and keeps them by doing; or whoever has them by doing and keeps them by persevering: "he it is," he says, "who loves me." Love must be shown by work, lest the naming of it be fruitless. "And whoever loves me," he says, "will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and will manifest myself to him." What is "I will love"? As if he would love then and does not love now? Far from it. For how could the Father love us without the Son, or the Son without the Father? Since they work inseparably, how could they love separably? But he said "I will love him" with a view to what follows, "and I will manifest myself to him." "I will love, and I will manifest"; that is, I will love to this end, that I may manifest. For now he has loved to this end, that we may believe and hold fast the commandment of faith; then he will love to this end, that we may see, and receive that very vision as the reward of faith; for we too now love by believing what we shall see, but then we shall love by seeing what we believe.

When the disciples ask and Jesus their master answers, we too learn as though with them, whenever we read or hear the holy Gospel. Since the Lord had said, "Yet a little while, and the world no longer sees me, but you will see me," Judas asked him about this very thing; not his betrayer, who was surnamed Iscariot, but the one whose Epistle is read among the canonical Scriptures: "Lord, what has happened, that you are going to manifest yourself to us, and not to the world?" Let us be with them as disciples asking, and let us too hear our common master. For Judas, the holy one, not the unclean one, not the persecutor of the Lord but his follower, asked the reason why Jesus would manifest himself not to the world but to his own; why, yet a little while, and the world would not see him, but they would.

"Jesus answered and said to him: If anyone loves me, he will keep my word; and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him. Whoever does not love me does not keep my words." See, the reason has been set out why he would manifest himself to his own and not to strangers, whom he calls by the name of the world; and the reason is that these love and those do not. This is the cause of which the holy Psalm sounds: "Judge me, O God, and distinguish my cause from an unholy nation." For those who love are chosen because they love; but those who do not love, if they speak with the tongues of men and of angels, become sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal; and if they have prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge, and have all faith so as to move mountains, they are nothing; and if they distribute all their goods, and hand over their body to be burned, it profits them nothing. Love distinguishes the saints from the world, the love that makes those of one mind dwell in a house. In this house the Father and the Son make their dwelling; they give that very love to those to whom they will at the end give also their very manifestation. It was about this that the disciple asked the master, so that not only those who then heard from his mouth, but we too through his Gospel, might know it. For he had asked about Christ's manifestation, and he heard about love and dwelling. There is, then, a certain inward manifestation of God which the ungodly do not know at all; for them there is no manifestation of God the Father and of the Holy Spirit. Of the Son there could be one, but in the flesh; and that is neither of the same kind as the other, nor can it be present to them always, whatever kind it is, but only for a little time; and that for judgment, not for joy; for punishment, not for reward.

Now, then, let us understand, as far as he deigns to open it, how it was said, "Yet a little while, and the world no longer sees me, but you will see me." It is true indeed that a little later he was going to withdraw from their eyes even his body, in which even the ungodly could see him; since after the resurrection none of them saw him. But since it was said, with angels bearing witness, "He will come in the same way as you saw him going into heaven," and we believe nothing else than that he will come in the same body to judge the living and the dead, beyond doubt the world will then see him; by which name are meant those who are strangers to his kingdom. And so it is far better understood that he meant to signify that time, when he said, "Yet a little while, and the world no longer sees me," when at the end of the age he will be taken away from the eyes of the condemned, so that from then on only those may see him with whom the Father and he himself make their dwelling, those who love him. But he said "a little while," because even what seems long to men is very short before the eyes of God; for of this little while the evangelist John himself says, "Little children, it is the last hour."

Further, lest anyone think that the Father and the Son only, without the Holy Spirit, make their dwelling with those who love them, let him recall what was said above about the Holy Spirit: "Whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him; but you will know him, because he will remain with you and will be in you." See, the Holy Spirit too, with the Father and the Son, makes his dwelling in the saints; within, certainly, as God in his temple. God the Trinity, Father and Son and Holy Spirit, come to us when we come to them: they come by helping, we come by obeying; they come by enlightening, we come by beholding; they come by filling, we come by receiving; so that our vision of them may be not external but internal, and their dwelling in us not passing but eternal. The Son does not manifest himself thus to the world; for in this place "world" means those of whom he at once added, "Whoever does not love me does not keep my words." These are the ones who never see the Father and the Holy Spirit; the Son they see for a little while, not to be made blessed but to be judged; and not him in the form of God, in which with the Father and the Holy Spirit he is equally invisible, but in the form of a man, in which he willed to be despised by the world in suffering and to be terrible to it in judging.

As for what he added, "And the word which you have heard is not mine, but the Father's who sent me," let us not wonder, let us not be afraid: he is not less than the Father, but he is only from the Father; he is not unequal to him, but he is not from himself. For he did not lie in saying, "Whoever does not love me does not keep my words." See, he said they were his words; does he contradict himself where he says again, "And the word which you have heard is not mine"? And perhaps it is for a distinction that where he said "his" he spoke in the plural, that is, "words"; but where he said that "the word," that is, the Word, was not his but the Father's, he wished himself to be understood. "For in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." The Word, certainly, is not his own but the Father's; just as he is not his own image but the Father's, nor is he his own Son but the Father's. Rightly, then, does the equal attribute to the author whatever he does, since from him he has this very thing, that he is equal to him without difference.

In the preceding reading of the holy Gospel, which the one just read follows, the Lord Jesus had said that he and the Father would come to those who love him and make their dwelling with them. And earlier he had said of the Holy Spirit, "But you will know him, because he will remain with you and will be in you"; from which we understood that God the Trinity dwells together in the saints as in his temple. But now he says: "These things I have spoken to you while remaining with you." So that dwelling, which he promised for the future, is one thing; this one, which he testifies to be present, is another. That one is spiritual and is rendered inwardly to minds; this one is bodily and is displayed outwardly to eyes and ears. That one makes the freed blessed for eternity; this one visits in time those who are to be freed. According to that one the Lord does not withdraw from those who love him; according to this one he goes and withdraws. "These things," he says, "I have spoken to you while remaining with you": by bodily presence, certainly, in which he spoke with them visibly.

"But the Paraclete," he says, "the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things, and will bring to your remembrance all things whatever I have said to you." Does the Son speak and the Holy Spirit teach, so that we take in the words when the Son speaks, but understand the same words when the Holy Spirit teaches? As if the Son speaks without the Holy Spirit, or the Holy Spirit teaches without the Son! Or rather, does not the Son also teach and the Holy Spirit speak, and when God says and teaches anything, does not the Trinity itself say and teach it? But since it is a Trinity, it was fitting that its several persons be made known, and that we hear it distinctly and understand it inseparably. Hear the Father speaking where you read, "The Lord said to me, You are my Son"; hear him also teaching where you read, "Everyone who has heard from the Father and learned comes to me." The Son you have just heard speaking; for he says of himself, "whatever I have said to you"; and if you want to know him also teaching, recall the master: "One is your master," he says, "Christ." The Holy Spirit, whom you just heard teaching where it was said, "He will teach you all things," hear also speaking, where you read in the Acts of the Apostles that the Holy Spirit said to blessed Peter, "Go with them, for I have sent them." So the whole Trinity both speaks and teaches; but unless it were also commended to us one person at a time, human weakness could in no way grasp it. For since it is wholly inseparable, it would never be known to be a Trinity if it were always spoken of inseparably: for even when we say "the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit," we certainly do not say them at the same moment, though they themselves cannot but be together. And as to his adding "will bring to your remembrance," we must also understand that the most salutary admonitions which we are commanded not to forget belong to the grace of which the Spirit reminds us.

"Peace I leave you," he says, "my peace I give you." This is what we read in the prophet: "Peace upon peace." He leaves us peace as he goes; he will give us his peace when he comes at the end. He leaves us peace in this world; he will give us his peace in the world to come. He leaves us his peace, abiding in which we overcome the enemy; he will give us his peace when we shall reign without an enemy. He leaves us peace, so that here too we may love one another; he will give us his peace where we can never disagree. He leaves us peace, so that we do not judge one another about our hidden things while we are in this world; he will give us his peace when he will make manifest the thoughts of the heart, and then each one will have praise from God. Yet in him and from him is our peace, whether the peace he leaves us as he goes to the Father, or that which he will give us when he leads us to the Father. And what does he leave us as he ascends from us, if not himself, since he does not withdraw from us? For he himself is our peace, who has made both one. So he himself is peace to us, both when we believe that he is and when we see him as he is. For if, as long as we are in the corruptible body which weighs down the soul, while we walk by faith, not by sight, he does not desert us who are away from him, how much more, when we come to the sight itself, will he fill us from himself?

But why is it that where he says, "Peace I leave you," he did not add "my," but where he says, "I give you," there he said "my"? Is "my" to be understood also where it is not said, since what is said once can refer to both? Or perhaps here too something lies hidden which is to be asked and sought, and which is to be opened to those who knock? For what if he wished his peace to be understood as the kind he himself has? But this peace which he leaves us in this world is to be called ours rather than his. For in him nothing resists itself, since he has no sin at all; but we now have a peace such that in it we still say, "Forgive us our debts." So we have some peace, since we delight in the law of God according to the inner man; but it is not full, because we see another law in our members, warring against the law of our mind. Likewise we have peace among ourselves, because we believe of one another that we love one another; but neither is this full, because we do not see the thoughts of one another's hearts; and we think of one another certain things, better or worse, that are not in us. So this peace, even though left to us by him, is our peace; for unless it were from him, we would not have even such a peace; but he himself does not have such a peace. If we hold fast to the end the kind we have received, we shall have the kind he has, where nothing in us will resist us and nothing in our hearts will be hidden from one another. Nor am I unaware that these words of the Lord can also be taken as a repetition of the same thought, "Peace I leave you, my peace I give you": so that what he had said as "peace" he repeated by saying "my peace," and what he had said as "I leave you" he repeated by saying "I give you." Let each take it as he will; but it delights me, and I believe you too, my beloved brothers, so to hold this peace, in which we overcome the adversary with one heart, that we long for the peace where we shall have no adversary.

And what the Lord added and said, "Not as the world gives do I give to you": what else is it but, not as men give who love the world, so do I give to you? For they give themselves peace so that, without the trouble of lawsuits and wars, they may enjoy not God but their friend, the world; and when they give peace to the righteous so as not to persecute them, the peace cannot be true where there is no true concord, because the hearts are disjoined. For just as one who joins his lot (sors) with another is called a consort, so he is to be called concordant who joins hearts (corda). Let us, then, beloved, to whom Christ leaves peace and gives his own peace, not as the world gives but as he through whom the world was made gives, so that we may be of one heart: let us join our hearts to one another, and let us have one heart lifted up, lest it be corrupted on earth.