Commentary on Matthew 15–17

“Then scribes and Pharisees from Jerusalem came to him, saying,” and so on. The reason of both the words and the deeds in what follows is plain: for he himself answered what had been put to him, saying that every planting which is not from the Father must be rooted up, that is, that the tradition of men, in whose favor they have transgressed the precepts of the law, must be torn out; and that therefore they are blind guides, promising the road of eternal life which they do not see, and that a fall into the pit is common to the blind and the guides of the blind. “And Jesus went out from there and withdrew into the districts of Tyre and Sidon. And behold, a Canaanite woman came out from those borders and cried out,” and the rest. The different kinds of healings embrace different effects of causes; but the matter and the speech take their order from what precedes. For he convicted the unbelief of the Pharisees both by the reproach of blind guides and by the superstitions of human traditions. And after this he came to the regions of Tyre and Sidon; and a Canaanite woman, coming out from those borders, cries out and prays, confesses the Lord as Son of David, and asks help for her daughter. The Lord is silent; the disciples ask for her; he answers them that he was sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. But she, worshiping, asks to be helped: to her the Lord says that it is not lawful to give the children’s bread to dogs. And she in turn answers that little dogs are usually fed by the crumbs falling from their masters’ table. After this the Lord praises her faith, and at that very time health was given back to the girl. So that the inner reason may attain to the things that were done, we must look, from the very force of the words, at whom the person of the Canaanite woman represents. It is certain that there was, and still is, among Israel a people of proselytes: which passed over from the nations into the works of the law, and, having left the region of its former life, was held in the law, a foreign and ruling law, as in a house. The Canaanites were those who inhabited the lands in which Judea now is: who, either destroyed in war, or scattered into neighboring places, or subjected to slavery on the terms of the conquered, carry about only a name without a homeland. This people, then, mixed with the Jews, is from the nations. And since there is no doubt that in the crowd that believed there was a fair part of proselytes, this Canaanite woman, bearing the figure of the proselytes, will rightly be thought to have gone out of her borders, passing out of the nations into the name of another people: she prays for her daughter, that is, for the people of the nations. And since she knew the Lord from the law, she calls him Son of David. For in the law are contained the rod from the root of Jesse and the Son of David, king of the eternal and heavenly kingdom. She herself no longer needs healing, she who confesses Christ as both Lord and Son of David: but she asks help for her daughter, the people of the nations, occupied by the dominion of unclean spirits. The Lord is silent, by the patience of his silence reserving to Israel the privilege of salvation. And the disciples, pitying her, join their prayers: but he, holding the secret of the Father’s will, answered that he was sent to the lost sheep of Israel: so that it might be quite clear that the Canaanite’s daughter contains the figure of the church; since she was asking for what was being brought to others, not that salvation was not also to be imparted to the nations, but the Lord had come to his own and into his own, awaiting the firstfruits of faith from those from whom he had sprung, the rest to be saved afterward by the preaching of the apostles. And therefore he says: “It is not lawful to take the children’s bread and give it to dogs.” The honor offered to Israel and God’s affection for it heap up resentment; in comparison with it the people of the nations received the name of dogs. But the Canaanite woman, now herself saved through faith and sure of the inner mystery, answered that little dogs are fed by the crumbs that fall from the table, the reproach of “dogs” now softened under the endearment of a diminutive name. And so that we might understand that the Lord’s silence came from the reckoning of the time, not from any reluctance of will, he added: “O woman, great is your faith”: being herself now sure of her own salvation, she may also be confident about the gathering of the nations: at which time, believing thus, they will soon, like the girl, be freed from all the dominion of unclean spirits. And at once the truth of the deed follows. For after the people of the nations had been prefigured in the Canaanite’s daughter, at once on the mountain those beset by various kinds of diseases are brought to the Lord by the crowds, that is, the unbelieving and sick are taught by the believers to worship and fall down: and to them health is given back, and all the services of mind and body are restored for perceiving, beholding, praising, and accompanying God. “But Jesus called his disciples and said: I have compassion on this crowd, for they have now continued with me three days,” and the rest. He keeps the order of the course of working, and a like reason of the words follows the same works. For we remember that the form of the church was established in the Canaanite’s daughter; and we have shown that the healing of the following people is the gathering of the sick nations. So now both the Lord’s words and deeds must be treated carefully: so that we may see whether the preceding matter and speech, as it has been taught by us to be understood, receives the authority of the same understanding from what follows. The Lord pities the crowd because it remains with him three days: he does not wish to send it away fasting, lest it faint on the way from hunger. The disciples plead that there are not enough loaves to fill and satisfy it. The Lord asked how many loaves they had. They answered that there were seven loaves and a few fish. The crowds are ordered to recline on the ground; and the Lord, taking the loaves and fish, gave thanks, broke them, and gave the broken pieces to the disciples to distribute. But the fragments of seven loaves and a few fish fill four thousand men; in such a way, however, that the broken bread, when all were satisfied, abounded to fill seven baskets. Many things occur that are new: the disciples, pitying a fast of one day, wished the five thousand men to be sent away into the villages to buy food: now they are silent through a whole three days. Then the earlier crowd is spread on grass: this one reclines on the ground. There five loaves, here seven are offered: there two fish, here an indefinite number, though signified as few. There five thousand men, here four: there twelve baskets, here seven hampers filled. And I think the earlier things have been answered and all fittingly placed according to the person of the people. Now too let us try to give a reason fitting the matter and the cause: so that, as those fit the believing Jewish people, so these may be compared with the people of the nations. The order in the Lord’s speech, then, is the same as remains in the attaining of grace. For those who are to come to baptism first confess that they believe in the Son of God and in his passion and resurrection: and to this mystery of profession faith is given. And so that a certain truth of the things themselves may follow this pledge of words, remaining in fasts throughout the whole time of the Lord’s passion, they are joined to the Lord by a kind of fellowship of suffering with him. So, whether by the mystery of the pledge or by fasting, they spend with the Lord the whole time of the Lord’s passion. And the Lord, pitying this hope and companionship, says that they have been with him three days. Lest weakness waste them away in the course of worldly life, that is, in the work of the road, he wishes to feed them with his food and strengthen them with the power of his bread for finishing the whole journey: while the disciples complain that there are no loaves in the desert. Yet in what preceded they had taken the example that nothing is impossible to God. But the causes of the events work out the reason of inner understanding. For how great the apostles’ zeal was for saving Israel, the letters of most blessed Paul teach: and therefore, while this zeal remains, now at the gathering of the nations both the complaint about bread and the silence about the fast are introduced. So seven loaves are offered. For no salvation for the nations is taken from the law and the prophets, but they live through the grace of the Spirit, whose gift, as is handed down through Isaiah, is sevenfold. So the Spirit, through faith, is salvation for the nations. They recline on the ground; for they had not before been spread on any works of the law, but, clinging to the origin of their sins and bodies, they are called to the gift of the sevenfold Spirit. The indefinite number of fish signifies the distributions and ministries of different gifts and charisms, by which the faith of the nations is filled with a diversity of graces. That seven hampers are filled indicates the overflowing and multiplied abundance of the sevenfold Spirit, which overflows with what it gives: and it becomes ever richer and fuller as we are satisfied. That four thousand men are gathered is understood as the multitude of innumerable people from the four parts of the world. For, as the form of the future, the people is counted and satisfied in as many thousands of parts as there would be thousands of believers running together from the parts of the world to the gift of heavenly food. So the crowd is sent away satisfied and filled. And since the Lord remains with us all the days of our life, he enters the ship, that is, the church, accompanied by the believing people.

The Pharisees and Sadducees are present, insolent in their confidence in the law and disdaining the works of power that belong to faith, and they ask that a sign from heaven be shown them. Looking at the humility of flesh and body in Christ, they disdain to accept teaching from the things he did in the guise of a man. Mocking their insolence and emptiness, he answered that they are accustomed to infer much about the nature of the sky, when from a red sunrise or evening they declare fair or stormy weather; but that they do not know the signs of the times, though the whole law and the prophets signify the indications of his coming by wonder at the works he did: so that, as the redness of morning or evening gives assurance about the weather in the sky, so the indications of his powers and works ought to supply a manifest knowledge of the times. But he who had risen from heaven appointed for them an earthly sign, to keep them within the confession of bodily humility, saying that the sign of Jonah would be given. The Lord compares himself to him, whom he had sent ahead in a like figure to the Ninevites for the preaching of repentance, for the effect of his future passion. For Jonah, when the winds raged, was thrown out of the ship and swallowed by the whale, and after three days sent out alive, not held by the monster, not consumed by the condition of food; but, against the nature of the human body, whole and unharmed, he escaped into the upper air by the power of the Lord’s prefiguration. He shows, then, that this was appointed as the sign of his power: himself preaching forgiveness of sins through repentance, to be thrown out of Jerusalem or the synagogue by the ruling blast of unclean spirits, and handed over to the power of Pilate, that is, to the judgment of the world; to be swallowed by death as by the monster of the same element; and after three days to emerge from it alive and incorrupt, not held, against the condition of the man he had taken up. So he willed that the things in the man taken from the Virgin’s conception which were full of divine powers be known and understood about himself both by the sign of the prophet and by the example of a man. “And leaving them, he went away.” It is not, as is read in other places, “having dismissed the crowds he went away”: but since the error of unbelief held the minds of the insolent, he is written not to have dismissed them but to have left them. “And when they had come across the sea, his disciples had forgotten to take loaves. And Jesus said to them: Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees.” All obscurity about the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees is cleared up. That the apostles are ordered to keep away from it warns them not to mix themselves with the teaching of the Jews; because the works of the law were established for the effect of faith and for the prefiguring of things to follow: so that those into whose times and age the truth had come should think that no further hope is placed in the likeness of the truth; lest the teaching of the Pharisees, not knowing Christ, should corrupt the effects of gospel truth. “And Jesus came into the districts of Caesarea Philippi, and he asked his disciples,” and the rest. In the progress of his speech and work he gives his disciples a more complete knowledge of himself, and establishes a certain form and method of understanding him. This is the true and inviolable faith: that God the Son came forth from God of eternity (to whom, because he was always Son, the right and name of Father always belongs; lest, if he were not always Son, he should not always be Father), and that he has eternity from the eternity of his parent. That he was born was his will, in whose power and might it lay that he should be born. So the Son of God is God from God, one in both: for he received the theotēs, which the Latins call deity, of his eternal parent, from whom he came forth by being born. He received what he was: and the Word was born which was always in the Father. And so the Son is both eternal and born: because nothing else was born in him than what is eternal. That he took a body and became man is the complete confession: because, as eternity took the body of our nature, so it must be acknowledged that the nature of our body can take up the power of eternity. Since, then, this is the highest good in this faith, he asks the disciples whom men said he was: and he added, “the Son of Man.” For this is the method of confession to be held, that we remember him as Son of Man as well as Son of God: because the one without the other gives no hope for salvation. So, after the various opinions men had about him were set out, he asks what they themselves think of him. Peter answered: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” But Peter had weighed the condition of the question. For the Lord had said: “Who do men say that I, the Son of Man, am?” And certainly the sight of his body showed the Son of Man: but by adding “who do they say that I am,” he signified that something besides what was seen in him must be understood; for he was the Son of Man. What judgment of opinion about himself, then, was he seeking? Not, we think, that which he had confessed about himself: but that which was hidden was what was being asked about, to which the faith of believers had to extend itself. And Peter’s confession plainly obtained a worthy reward, because he had seen the Son of God in the man. Blessed is he who was praised for having looked and seen beyond human eyes: beholding not what was of flesh and blood, but the Son of God by the revelation of the heavenly Father; and judged worthy to be the first to recognize what of God was in Christ. O happy foundation of the church in the naming of a new name, and a rock worthy of its building, which would dissolve the laws of the underworld, the gates of Tartarus, and all the bars of death! O blessed doorkeeper of heaven, to whose decision the keys of the eternal entrance are handed over, whose judgment on earth is an authority decided beforehand in heaven: so that what has been bound or loosed on earth obtains the condition of the same decree in heaven also. He also commands the disciples to tell no one that he is the Christ: for others had to be the witnesses of his Spirit, namely the law and the prophets. But the testimony of the resurrection belongs properly to the apostles. And since the blessedness of those who know Christ in the Spirit has been shown, the danger of denying his humility and passion is in turn declared. For when he had begun to preach that he must go to Jerusalem, then suffer many things from the elders of the people and from the scribes and chief priests, be killed, and rise after the third day, Peter, taking hold of him, said: “Far be it from you, Lord; this shall not be.” But he, turning, said to Peter: “Get behind me, Satan; you are a stumbling block to me.” As it is the gift of God to know Christ as God in the Spirit, so it is the work of the devil not to know Christ in the man. And it is a matter of the same danger either to deny the body without God or to deny God without the body. To God in the eternity of the Spirit there is no body of this flesh: but for the sake of human salvation Christ is in the body which he took from man. So after the preaching of the passion, the devil, taking the opportunity (for he had withdrawn from him until a time), because it would seem quite incredible to the apostles that he in whom God was could suffer, seizing this occasion of human unbelief, slipped the feeling of this opinion into Peter. Accordingly he so detested the passion as to say, “Far be it”: in which word the execration of things to be detested is contained. But the Lord, knowing the prompting of the devil’s craft, says to Peter: “Get behind me”; that is, that he should follow him by the example of the passion. But turning to him through whom this opinion was being suggested, he added: “Satan, you are a stumbling block to me.” For it is not fitting to think that the name of Satan and the charge of being a stumbling block should be assigned to Peter after such great proclamations of the blessedness and power granted him. But since all unbelief is the work of the devil, the Lord, offended by Peter’s answer, detested the author of this unbelief with the reproach of the name. “Then Jesus said to his disciples: If anyone wishes to come after me, let him deny himself,” and the rest. O blessed loss and happy forfeit! The Lord willed us to grow rich by the loss of soul and body, and exhorts us to be like him: because he, set in the form of God, made humble and obedient even to death, received the sovereignty of all the power that is in God. So he is to be followed with the cross taken up, and accompanied in his passion, if not in fact, at least in will. For what does it profit to have seized the world, and to brood over the wealth of the world with the whole dominion of earthly power, if the soul is to be lost and the loss of life incurred? And what exchange for the soul will be sought when it has been lost? For Christ will be present with the angels, rendering to each as they will deserve. What shall we bring for life? Treasures, I suppose, of earthly wealth prepared for future trading, ambitious titles of honors and fame, or the ancient portraits of a pampered nobility? All these must be denied, so that we may abound in better things: and Christ is to be followed in contempt of all things, and the eternity of spiritual things is to be bought at the loss of earthly things.

“Truly, truly I tell you that there are some of those standing here who will not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.” The Lord teaches by both deeds and words; and speech and work equally build up the faith of our hope. For he had laid a heavy burden on human weakness: that, though men had begun to have the sense of life from the affection of living, they should give up the fruit of that which, present, was pleasing to their bodies, and deny themselves, that is, should be unwilling to be what they had begun to be, though they had had the beginning of this sense from the affection of the will; and then that they should follow the opinion of a doubtful and uncertain hope, when in the things held present there were the allurements of pleasing joy. So there was need of the authority of a true and manifest example, so that, against the force and sense of judgment, the loss of present things might become desirable, for the henceforth undoubted gain of future things. So after he had warned that the cross must be taken up, the soul lost, and the eternity of life exchanged for the loss of the world, turning to the disciples he said that there would be some of them who would not taste death until they beheld the Son of Man in the glory of his kingdom. By the condition of “tasting” he shows a slight libation, as it were, of death for the faithful. And so the deed follows the words. For after six days Peter, James, and John are taken apart, and they stand on a high mountain; and while they watch, the Lord is transfigured and shines around with the full appearance of his glory. And in this kind of deed both reason, number, and example are kept. For after six days the glory of the Lord’s appearance is shown: that is, when the times of six thousand years have run their course, the honor of the heavenly kingdom is prefigured. And by the three taken up, the future choosing of a people from the origin of the three, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, is shown. That Moses and Elijah, out of the whole number of the saints, stand by: Christ in the kingdom is between the law and the prophets; for with them, by whose testimony he was proclaimed, he will judge Israel: and at the same time so that it might be taught that the glory of the resurrection has been decreed for human bodies, since Moses stood there visible. The Lord himself becomes whiter than snow and sun, that is, conspicuous with the splendor of heavenly light beyond our imagining. To Peter, offering that three tents be made there, no answer is given: for it was not yet the time to remain in this glory. But while he was still speaking, a bright cloud overshadowed them, and they are surrounded by the Spirit of divine power. The voice from the cloud signifies that this is the Son, this the beloved, this the one well pleasing, this the one to be heard: so that he himself might be the fit author of the precepts, who, after the loss of the world, after the will of the cross, after the death of bodies, had confirmed the glory of the heavenly kingdom from the resurrection of the dead even by example. Then he raised them up, terrified and dismayed; and they see him alone, whom they had seen standing between Moses and Elijah. For Moses and Elijah had stood on the mountain as the form of the future and for the assurance of the deed. He commands silence about the things done which they had seen until he should rise from the dead (for this reward of faith was being reserved, that honor might be given to those with whom the authority of the precepts would not be found light); for he had perceived that they were weak at hearing the voice: so that, when they were filled with the Holy Spirit, they might then be witnesses of spiritual deeds. Anxious also about the times of Elijah, they inquire. He answers them that Elijah will come and restore all things, that is, will call back to the knowledge of God the remnant of Israel that he finds. But he signifies that John came in the power and spirit of Elijah, on whom they had inflicted every grievous and harsh thing: so that, announcing beforehand the Lord’s coming, he might also run ahead of his passion by the example of injury and harassment. “And when he had come to the crowd, a man came to him, falling on his knees, saying: Lord, have mercy on my son.” When the Lord had returned to the crowds, a demon-possessed boy, who often fell both into water and into fire, is brought by his father kneeling down; the disciples could not bring him healing. The disciples rebuked and the demon reproved, the boy was made well. The apostles had indeed believed: yet they were not yet of perfect faith. For while the Lord stayed on the mountain and they remained with the crowd, a certain sluggishness had relaxed their faith; and therefore he says: “Unbelieving and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you?”: because in his absence the habit of the old unbelief had crept in. So he teaches that those can bring no salvation who, in the time between the Gospels and his second coming, depart from the faith as if the Lord were absent. Finally, when they asked him why they could not cast out the demon, he answered that it came from a lack of faith that they could not: if it were in them like a grain of mustard seed, they would command this mountain to pass from place to place, with the power of accomplishing it. But he had already come down from the mountain and was saying these things among the crowds. So he called himself the grain of mustard seed, the least of all, and named the devil the mountain: because in it are the spiritual wickednesses and heavenly powers to be cast out by them and thrown into the depth of the sea as into the depth of the underworld, those whom fasting and prayer accompany to this efficacy. We shall also keep this order, that under the name of the disciples the person of the Pharisees and scribes is treated. To them, as to the disciples, the law brought the people to be healed, as a father his son, while the Lord was absent. The people, sins ruling it, now fell into the fire of judgment, now was sunk into the water by the habit of its daily filth. These, then, brought no help: because, while Moses stayed with the Lord on the mountain, they had become unbelieving. And so that the typological reason might be fulfilled, the disciples wonder that they could not cast out the demon, though all power had been granted not only of putting demons to flight but even of raising the dead. But since the law would no longer be with them, he says, “unbelieving and perverse generation” (he does not seem to say this to those whom he had sanctified), “how long,” he says, “shall I be with you?” Because, not having faith, they were going to lose even the law which they had. If they had had that faith in themselves, since he himself is the grain of mustard seed, by the power of the word, casting out from the one being brought to them this burden of sins and the heavy mass of unbelief, they would have transferred it, like a mountain into the sea, to the way of life of the nations and of the world. “While they were staying in Galilee, Jesus said: The Son of Man is about to be handed over into the hands of men.” Sadness follows the knowledge of the passion: for the mystery of undergoing the cross had not yet been revealed by the power of the resurrection. “And when Jesus had come to Capernaum, those who collected the didrachma came to Peter.” The Lord is asked to pay the didrachma: for the law had established this for all Israel, for the redemption of soul and body, in the ministry of those serving the temple. But the law, as we know, is the shadow of things to come. For God did not desire a price in bronze, so that by so small an expense some redemption might be granted for the crimes of body and soul. So that we might offer ourselves in Christ, who is the true temple of God, enrolled, professed, and sealed with the name of Christ, the offering of this didrachma was established as a testimony to the Son of God. So he forestalls Peter, who was silent after being approached, with such words: “What do you think, Simon? From whom do the kings of the earth take tribute or tax?” and so on. Is there any doubt that the sons of kings are not liable to tributes, and that those who have the inheritance of the kingdom are free from servitude? But the speech aims more deeply. The didrachma was being demanded from the people. For the law is enclosed within that faith which was to be revealed through Christ. So this same didrachma, by the custom of the law, was being demanded from Christ as from a man. But to show that he was not subject to the law, and to testify in himself to the glory of the Father’s dignity, he set out the example of an earthly privilege: that the sons of kings are not held by tax or tributes, and that he is rather the redeemer of our soul and body than that anything should be demanded for his redemption; because the king’s son must be outside the common lot of the rest. So he pays to avoid scandal, but he is free of the debt of the law. Then under the effect of present things he set out both the meaning of the law and the steadfastness of gospel freedom: so that it might be easy to know what the didrachma prefigured in the law. Peter is ordered to go to the sea, cast a hook, look in the mouth of the first fish coming up, and offer the stater found in it for himself and for the Lord. The Lord is asked for a didrachma, that is, two denarii; why does Peter offer a stater? Then, when he is told to look for the first fish, more are shown to be about to come up. Would the nature of fish allow that it should hold in its mouth, rather than store within its belly, a stater found by chance on the shore? So an inner reason underlies the accomplishing of present things. For Peter, destined for preaching and made a fisher of men, cast the hook of teaching into the world, to draw out of it the wandering and drifting, drawn to him by its sweetness. To this hook clung that blessed first martyr, who held a fourfold denarius in his mouth: that is, by the unity of the gospel number, he preached the glory of God and the Lord Christ, beholding him in his passion. So Stephen came up first, Stephen held the stater in his mouth: in which there was also the didrachma of the new preaching, as two denarii. This the law prefigured; it carried about the shadow of this truth, as the image of a body; this redemption of soul and body was being signified: and therefore he says, “Give for me and for you”: because now such a payment, no longer a didrachma but a stater, was to be paid both for Christ and for the preaching of Christ.