Homilies and Sermons 20.1–21.0

[1] Man ought to have remained in the glory he had with God, and he would have had a height not counterfeit but true, magnified by the power of God, made bright by divine wisdom, rejoicing in eternal life and its good things. But since he exchanged the desire for divine glory, and, expecting greater things and hastening after what he could not obtain, lost what he was able to keep, his greatest salvation, the cure of his disease, and the way back to what he was in the beginning, is humility: not imagining that he can wrap himself in any glory by himself, but seeking it from God. So he will correct his fall, so he will heal his disease; so he will run back to the holy commandment he abandoned. But the devil, who threw man down by the hope of false glory, does not cease … him with the same incitements, devising countless contrivances to this end. He displays to him as something great an abundance of money, so that he may be magnified by it and be zealous for it; which contributes nothing to glory, but much to danger. For the getting of money is an occasion for greed, and its possession contributes nothing to good repute; it blinds in vain, puffs up to no purpose, and produces in the soul a condition like an inflammation. For the swelling of inflamed bodies is not healthy or useful, but diseased, harmful, a beginning of danger and an occasion of ruin. Such too is arrogance in the soul. For it is not only over money that men are lifted up, nor only by the boastful ways of life and the trappings that money brings, setting before themselves clothing more costly than need requires, building houses of great size and adorning them with every beauty, attaching to themselves crowds of servants in attendance and countless bands of flatterers; they are also raised beyond their nature by elected dignities. If the people give someone a dignity, if they count him worthy of some presiding office and vote him the dignity of pre-eminence, then, as if surpassing human nature, all but thinking themselves seated on the clouds … they are lifted up even against those who gave them the dignity, and boast against the very people through whom they seem to be somebody: suffering a thing full of folly, having a glory more rotten than a dream, and wrapped in a splendor more vain than the phantoms of the night, which comes into being at a nod of the people and is dissolved at a nod. Such was that senseless son of Solomon, young in age and younger still in mind, who, when the people asked for a milder rule, threatened a harsher one, and by the threat lost the kingdom; by the very thing by which he expected to appear more kingly he was deposed from the dignity he had. A man is made bold also by strength of hands, speed of feet, and beauty of body, which are the waste of diseases and the spending of time; and he does not perceive that “all flesh is grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass; the grass withers, and the flower falls.” Such were the boasts of the giants over their strength, the God-fighting pride of the foolish Goliath, Adonijah thinking great things of his beauty, and Absalom exalted by the abundance of his hair.

[2] And what seems the greatest and most secure of all the other goods men have, wisdom and prudence, this too has a vain exaltation and produces a height that is not true, when the wisdom from God is absent; [for without it] none of these is reckoned as anything. For the devil's very sophism against man fell back on himself, and he contrived against himself, without knowing it, what he devised against man. He did not harm man, whom he hoped to estrange from God and from eternal life, so much as he betrayed himself, becoming an apostate from God and condemned to eternal death. And setting the trap against the Lord, he was caught by it, crucified by the very means by which he expected to crucify, and dying by that by which he hoped to put the Lord to death. But if the ruler of the world, the first, greatest, and invisible sophist of worldly wisdom, is caught by his own sophisms and brought round to the utmost folly, much more his disciples and zealots, even if they … countless sophisms. Pharaoh deals craftily for the destruction of Israel; but his crafty plan was undone, without his knowing, from where he did not expect. The infant exposed to death by his command is secretly nourished in the royal house, and overthrows his power and that of his whole nation, and leads Israel out to salvation. Abimelech the murderer, the bastard son of Gideon, who killed the seventy legitimate sons and thought he had found in this a wise way of holding the kingdom securely, crushes those who had become his accomplices in the murder, and is crushed by them; and in the end he perishes by a woman's hand and the cast of a stone. And all the Jews devised a deadly plan against the Lord, saying to themselves, “If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and take away our place and our nation.” Proceeding from this plan to the killing of Christ, as if they would save the nation and the land, they perished through the very things they planned, driven out of their land and become strangers to their laws and their worship. In short, one may learn from countless examples that the advantage of human wisdom is rotten, small and low rather than great and lofty.

[3] So no one of sound mind will think great things of his own wisdom, or of the other things mentioned before, but will obey the most beautiful exhortation of the blessed Hannah and of the prophet Jeremiah: “Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, nor the strong man boast in his strength, nor the rich man boast in his riches.” But what is the true boast? And in what is man great? “In this,” it says, “let him who boasts boast: in understanding and knowing that I am the Lord.” This is man's height, this his glory and greatness: truly to know what is great, to cleave to it, and to seek glory from the Lord of glory. And the Apostle says, “Let him who boasts, boast in the Lord,” saying that “Christ became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that, as it is written, ‘Let him who boasts, boast in the Lord.’” For this is the perfect and complete boasting in God, when one is not lifted up even over one's own righteousness, but knows oneself to be lacking in true righteousness and justified by faith alone, faith in Christ. And Paul boasts of despising his own righteousness and seeking the righteousness through Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith, to know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings, being conformed to his death, if somehow he may attain to the resurrection … arrogance. Nothing is left you for boasting, O man, whose boast and hope lie in putting to death all that is your own and seeking the future life in Christ; having its firstfruits, we are already in these things, living wholly in the grace and gift of God. And it is God “who works in us both to will and to work, for his good pleasure”; it is God who through his own Spirit reveals his wisdom, foreordained for our glory. It is God who gives power in labors: “I labored more than all of them,” says Paul, “yet not I, but the grace of God that is with me.” It is God who rescues from dangers beyond all human hope: “We ourselves,” he says, “had the sentence of death within ourselves, so that we might not trust in ourselves but in God who raises the dead; who rescued us from so great a death and rescues us, on whom we have set our hope that he will rescue us yet again.”

[4] Why then, tell me, do you exalt yourself over good things as if they were your own, instead of confessing your thanks to the Giver for his gifts? “For what do you have that you did not receive? And if you received it, why do you boast as if you had not received it?” It was not you who knew God through righteousness, but God who knew you through his goodness. “Having come to know God,” it says, “or rather to be known by God.” It was not you who laid hold of Christ through virtue, but Christ who laid hold of you through his coming. “I press on,” it says, “if I may also lay hold of that for which I was laid hold of by Christ.” “You did not choose me,” says the Lord, “but I chose you.” … do you take [the mercy] as a pretext for arrogance? Then you will know yourself, who you are: like Adam cast out of paradise, like Saul forsaken by the Spirit of God, like Israel cut off from the holy root. “By faith,” it says, “you stand; do not be high-minded, but fear.” Judgment follows grace, and the Judge will examine how you have used what was given you. But if you do not understand even this, that you have obtained grace, but by excess of insensibility make the grace your own achievement, you are not more honored than the blessed apostle Peter. For you will not be able to surpass in love for the Lord one who loved so vehemently that he was willing even to die for him. But because he spoke too proudly, saying, “Even if all are scandalized because of you, I will never be scandalized,” he was handed over to human cowardice and fell into denial, being brought by his fall to a sound mind and to caution, and taught to spare the weak by learning his own weakness, and to know clearly that, as when he was sinking in the sea he was lifted up by Christ's right hand, so, when he was in danger of perishing through unbelief in the surge of scandal, he was kept by the power of Christ, who had also foretold to him what would happen, saying, “Simon, Simon, behold, Satan has demanded to sift you like wheat; but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail; and you, when you have turned again, strengthen your brothers.” And Peter, reproved in this way, was justly helped, being trained to put away boasting and to spare the weak; but that Pharisee, the heavy and exceedingly arrogant man, who was not only bold about himself but also disparaged the tax collector before God, lost the boast of his righteousness through the charge of arrogance. And the tax collector went down justified rather than he, because he gave glory to the holy God and did not even dare to look up, but sought propitiation only, accusing himself by his posture, by striking his breast, and by seeking nothing but propitiation. See, then, and beware of the example of the grievous loss caused by arrogance. The [arrogant] man lost his righteousness …; he became less than the humble sinner, by exalting himself above him and not waiting for God's judgment but pronouncing his own. But you must never exalt yourself above anyone, not even above great sinners. Humility often saves one who has sinned much and greatly. Do not justify yourself above another, lest, justified by your own vote, you be condemned by God's. “I do not judge myself,” says Paul; “for I am aware of nothing against myself, yet I am not justified by this; he who judges me is the Lord.”

[5] Do you think you are doing something good? Give thanks to God; do not exalt yourself over your neighbor. “Let each test his own work,” it says, “and then he will have his boast in himself alone, and not in another.” For what benefit have you brought your neighbor because you confessed the faith, or endured exile for the name of Christ, or persevered in the toils of fasting? The gain is not another's, but yours. Fear to resemble the fall of the devil: he, exalted against man, has fallen under man, and has been handed over to be trampled by the one he trampled. Such too was the fall of the Israelites. Exalting themselves against the Gentiles as unclean, they have become truly unclean, while the Gentiles have been cleansed; and their righteousness has become like a menstruous rag, while the lawlessness and impiety of the Gentiles has been wiped out through faith. In general, remember the true proverb: “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” Keep the Lord's word at hand: “Everyone who humbles himself will be exalted, and he who exalts himself will be humbled.” Do not be an unfair judge of yourself, nor examine yourself with favor, counting whatever good you think you have, while willingly forgetting your faults, and being magnified over what you do well today, while granting yourself pardon for what you did badly lately and long ago. But when the present lifts you up, let it bring the past to remembrance, and you will stop the senseless inflammation. And if you see your neighbor sinning, do not consider this alone in him; think also of how much good he has done or does, and you will often find him better than yourself, when you examine him in everything and do not judge by parts. For neither does God examine man by parts: “For I come,” he says, “to gather their works and their thoughts.” And when he once rebuked Jehoshaphat for his sin at that time, he also remembered “the good things achieved in you.”

[6] These and similar things let us sing to ourselves against arrogance at every moment, humbling ourselves that we may be exalted, imitating the Lord who came down from heaven to the utmost lowliness and, conversely, was raised up from lowliness to the height that befits him. For we find everything about the Lord training us in humility. As an infant, at once in a cave, and not on a bed but in a manger; in the house of a carpenter and a poor mother, subject to his mother and to her betrothed; being taught and listening to what he did not need, yet asking questions, and admired for his wisdom through his questions; submitting to John, the Master receiving baptism from the servant; resisting none of those who rose up against him, nor brandishing the unspeakable authority he had, but yielding as to the stronger and allowing temporary authority the power proper to it; standing before the high priests in the posture of one on trial, brought to the governor and undergoing judgment, and though able to refute the false accusers, bearing their false accusations in silence; spat upon by slaves and the most worthless servants, handed over to death, and to the death most shameful among men. Thus he passed through all human things from birth to the end; and after such humility he then displays his glory, glorifying with himself those who had shared his dishonor. Of these the blessed disciples are first, who ran through the inhabited world poor and naked, not in wisdom of speech, not with a crowd of followers, alone, wanderers, desolate, crossing land and sea, scourged, stoned, persecuted, and at last killed. These are our ancestral and divine lessons. Let us come to the imitation of them, that from lowliness eternal glory may rise for us, the perfect and true gift of Christ.

[7] How then shall we come down to saving humility, leaving behind the deadly swelling of arrogance? If we practice it in everything, and overlook nothing as though we would not be harmed by it. For the soul becomes like its pursuits, and is stamped and shaped according to what it does. Let your bearing, your clothing, your walk, your sitting, the arrangement of your meals, the preparation of your bed, your house and all the furnishings in your house be cultivated toward simplicity; and let your speech, and your singing, and your dealings with your neighbor, look toward moderation rather than display. No sophistic bombast in speech, I pray, nor in songs … heavy; in everything take away from greatness. Be kind to your friend, gentle to your servant, forbearing toward the insolent, humane toward the lowly, … those in pain, despising no one at all; sweet in address, cheerful in answering, gracious, approachable to all; neither recounting your own praises nor contriving that others speak them, nor [making] account of your own advantages; but accusing yourself for your sins and not waiting for the reproofs of others, so that you may be, like the righteous man, your own accuser in your first speech; so that you may be like Job, who was not deterred by the crowd of the city from confessing his own fault before them. Do not be harsh in rebukes, nor quick or passionate in reproving (for that is overbearing), nor … over small things; but receive those caught in a fault and restore them spiritually, as the Apostle advises, “looking to yourself, lest you too be tempted”; taking as much care not to be glorified by men as others take to be glorified, if indeed … [the loss] of the reward with God [is] the voluntary distinction among men, and doing good in order to be seen by men: “For they have their reward,” he says. Do not, then, injure yourself by wishing to be seen before men. Since God is the great spectator, seek glory before God; for he pays a splendid reward. But have you been counted worthy of a presiding office, and do men attend on you and glorify you? Be equal to those under you: “Not as lording it over those in your charge,” it says, “nor like worldly rulers.” For the Lord commanded that whoever wishes to be first be the servant of all. In short, pursue humility as its lover. Love her, and she will glorify you. So you will travel well to the true glory, the glory among the angels, the glory with God. Christ will acknowledge you before the angels as his own disciple, and will glorify you, if you become an imitator of his humility, who says, “Learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls”; to whom be the glory and the power to the ages of ages. Amen.

On not being attached to the things of this life, and on the fire that broke out outside the church.