Commentary on Matthew 5–6

We are also commanded to pray with the door of our room shut, and we are taught to pour out prayer in every place: and the prayer of the saints was received among wild beasts, in prisons, in flames, and from the depth of the sea and the belly of a monster. So we are admonished to enter not a hidden part of the house but the room of our heart, and, with the secret place of our mind shut, to pray to God not with many words but with conscience, because the deed surpasses all the words that are spoken. From the need to comment on the mystery of prayer Cyprian, a man of holy memory, has freed us. Tertullian too wrote a most fitting volume on it; but the man’s subsequent error took away authority from his commendable writings. “When you fast, do not become sad like the hypocrites; for they disfigure their faces so as to appear to men to be fasting,” and so on. He teaches that the profit of fasting must lie outside the boasting of a worn-out body, and that the favor of the nations must not be pursued by showing off the injury; rather, all fasting must be set in the beauty of holy works. For it is the heavenly and prophetic word that oil is the fruit of mercy. So our head, that is, the mind of our life, is to be adorned with works of goodness, because all understanding is in the head; and the filth on the face is to be washed away, so that there may be nothing of horror from vices but rather the grace of brightness when one meets us: and so, washed into the splendor of a good conscience and anointed with the grace of merciful work, we may commend our fasts to God. Otherwise, if in our fasts we flee the knowledge of men by anointing our heads, we shall be both more ridiculous and more noticed. “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth,” and the rest. So, setting aside concern for human glory and wealth, he shows that all care must be taken to please God: because either the faults of bodies or the disparagement of the envious spoils human praise; and this treasure of money is dangerous either through loss or through theft. But heavenly praise is eternal, neither to be taken away by thieves creeping in nor eaten away by the moth or rust of envy; and our heart will follow the seat of the treasure, whichever it is, and with the light of our understanding will be either with ruinous money or with the everlasting God. “The lamp of your body is your eye.” The sense continues. From the office of the eye’s light he expressed the light of the heart. If it remains simple and bright, it will give the brightness of eternal light to the body and pour the splendor of its own origin into the corruption of the flesh. But if it is darkened by sins and wicked in will, the nature of the body will be subject to the vices of the mind. “And if the light that is in you is darkness, how great must be the darkness itself?” Because the vicious origin of earthly flesh is apt dangerously to dominate the nobility of the soul, and the sins of bodies grow far heavier if they are also helped by the desires of souls; and from this our bodies become dark contrary to their nature, if the light of minds is extinguished in them; whereas if we keep it through simplicity of spirit, it must illuminate the body too with its light. “No one can serve two masters,” and so on. Service to two masters is faithless, and care for the world and for God cannot be equal. For there must be hatred toward one and love toward the other: because the same work cannot suit the different wills of masters, nor can the poor in spirit who please God be fit for the ambitious boasting of this world. “Therefore I tell you, do not think in your heart what you will eat, nor about your body what you will wear. Is not your soul worth more than food, and your body worth more than clothing?” In all the preceding discourse he had taught contempt of the world and confidence in the future. For when he commands us to be ready for injury, willing for loss, careless of vengeance, indiscriminate in loving, and unconcerned about human glory, he labors to strengthen us in the hope of eternal goods. For both the love of present things and despair of the future make many uncertain, and either capture them with allurements or confound them with unbelief. So he wishes the kingdom of heaven, which the prophets announced, John preached, and our Lord professed to be in himself, to be hoped for without any doubt of an uncertain will: otherwise there is no justification by faith, if faith itself becomes doubtful. So he commands that there be no care for clothing and food, saying that the soul is more precious than foods and the body than clothing. And indeed it is a fine thing to spend care only on divine things in contempt of present things; but the speech goes deeper, and the reason underlying the words extends into the understanding of the heavenly saying. The Lord commanded treasure to be stored in heaven, promised splendor to the body from the light of the eye, and testified that no one can please two masters; and after this he says: “Therefore I tell you, do not think in your heart what you will eat, nor about your body what you will put on.” What follows does not fit the premises well enough. Can a servant of one master not also be anxious about clothing and food? Will the body be darkened if the light of the eye is dulled by ill health? Or what light of the body can there be from the eye? Can nakedness or hunger alone store up treasure in heaven? But since the mind of unbelievers is corrupt concerning care for the future, as they cavil about what form bodies will have in the resurrection and what nourishment there will be for the substance of eternity; and since, from the difficulties of useless questions, a kind of reason has been sought for enjoying present pleasures, and, lingering in useless fear about reverence for God, they pass over into the joys of the world; and so it comes about that the service of one man to two masters is faithless: therefore, out of the highest affection of godliness, having first foretold the gravest danger of distrust, he admonishes thus: “Is not the soul worth more than food, and the body worth more than clothing?” In the words of God there is truth, and the whole efficacy of things to be created lies in the word. So neither is what he promised doubtful nor what he spoke ineffective. There is nothing that is not bodily in its substance and creation; and the elements of all things, whether in heaven or on earth, whether visible or invisible, have been formed. For even the kinds of souls, whether they occupy bodies or are exiled from bodies, still receive a bodily substance of their nature; because everything that is created must be in something. And so God, refuting the folly of a most useless question, does not allow our hope of the future in the resurrection to linger in anxiety about food and clothing, when soul and body are to be placed in the substance of eternity: lest insult be offered to him who restores things so precious, namely body and soul, by supposing he would not provide lesser things. “Look at the birds of the sky: they do not sow or gather into barns, and your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not worth much more?” Under the name of birds he exhorts us by the example of unclean spirits, to whom, without any business of seeking and gathering, the substance of living is nevertheless granted by the power of the eternal counsel. And to show that this must be referred to unclean spirits, he added: “Are you not worth much more than they?”, showing by the superiority of the comparison the difference between wickedness and holiness. “But which of you can add one cubit to his stature? And why are you anxious about clothing?” He strengthened faith in the substance of our life by the proof of the spirits; but he left the opinion about our future appearance to the judgment of common understanding. For since he will raise the diversity of all bodies that have drawn life into one perfect man, and he alone is able to add to each one’s height one cubit, or a second or third, why do we doubt about clothing, that is, about the form of bodies, with such insult to him, who, to make every man equal and uniform, will add only so much measure to human bodies? “Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they do not labor or spin. But I tell you that not even Solomon in all his glory was covered like one of these,” and so on. The lilies do not labor or spin; and Solomon, a great prophet and dear to God by the merit of the wisdom he loved, was not covered with their glory. But lilies are born rather than covered. Covering is the veil of a body, not the body itself. If it is referred to the sense of human understanding, the whiteness of a garment could have rivaled the color of the lily. But by the lilies that neither labor nor spin are to be understood the brightnesses of the heavenly angels, to whom the whiteness of glory was granted by God apart from the learning of human knowledge and the wage of their own work, lest they should be thought to have anything from their own labor or skill. And since in the resurrection men will be like angels, he wished us to hope for the covering of heavenly glory by the example of angelic brightness. It is in the nature of this plant that it is most fittingly compared to the heavenly substances of the angels. For when it is in flower, if it is torn from the stalk of the root held in the ground, it hides the power of its nature, though it may be thought to have withered, and when the season returns it is clothed again with the honor of its lily. For it flowers and is restored from itself; and what it is, it can owe neither to the root nor to the earth, since the sap that rises in it is from itself. And so, though it is annual, by the example of this greenness it imitates the power of their heavenly substance: since it is nourished into flower only by what it has received within itself. So the lilies do not labor or spin, because the powers of the angels receive their everlasting being from the honor of their origin which they obtained. “If God so clothes the grass of the field, which is today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, how much more you, of little faith?” He confirms the inviolable confidence of our faith by the authority of examples: so that the more carefully he has removed every occasion of unbelief, the greater the danger of doubting. Grass is not born in order to be given to the fire, nor does God take special care to clothe it in order that it be burned; but we often find that the nations are called by God by the name of grass. It is a plant that, when the flower of its strength has fallen, dries up in the heat of the sun. So no rest will be given to the nations, nor quiet, as they wish, by the shortcut of death; but a bodily eternity will be appointed for them too, so that there may be in them eternal material for eternal fire, and everlasting vengeance may be exercised on all who are everlasting. If, then, bodily eternity is granted to the nations only so that they may soon be appointed to the fire of judgment, how profane it is for the saints to doubt about the glory of eternity, when the work of eternity is provided to the wicked for punishment. So he requires all our expectation to be placed in faith in the promises and in the might of his power: so that, laying aside care for the things we need, we may rather expect all things from him from whom we ourselves took the beginning of life, and seek the kingdom of God with the service of our life. And this is the reward of those who live rightly and perfectly, that they are carried over from this material of a corruptible body into a new and heavenly substance, and earthly corruption is changed into heavenly incorruption. It belongs to the nations, then, to be tormented by the anxiety of this unbelief: who, held by love of the world and occupied with the joys of the body, seek and desire no way into the heavenly kingdom through faith and confession of God. “So do not be anxious about tomorrow. For tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own evil.” It is the common judgment that a day is the course of passing times lit by the light of the sun, which the intervening night divides and by its coming puts a day in place of a day; and the meaning of future time is contained in “tomorrow.” So God forbade us to be anxious about the future. And the carelessness of relaxed anxiety belongs not to negligence but to faith. For why should we be anxious about tomorrow, when the next day is anxious for itself? So the day itself, being anxious for us, drives away our anxiety. But anxiety, I think, is a feeling proper to man; for it is stirred up by the distress of care, fear, or pain. A day is the course of time; and only things that have attained foresight receive the feeling of anxiety. It would have to be established, then, that the day is a living being, which takes care, foresees, and is concerned, for which its own evil is also enough and is not to be heaped up by sin falling on it from outside. But the nature of the thing does not allow a feeling of mind to be assigned to a day: so both that it is anxious for itself, that its evil is enough for it, and that we are forbidden to be anxious about tomorrow, are all contained under sayings of heavenly meaning. We are commanded, then, not to doubt about future things; for the evil of our life and the sins of the days in which we live are enough that the whole meditation and labor of our life should be spent on cleansing them and on earning merit, lest from distrust about the future an inexpiable irreligion should also be contracted: since, when our care ceases, the future things themselves are anxious in their own office, by which they will be, and the advance of eternal glory is prepared for us, no longer anxious, by the providing goodness of God. “Do not judge, so that you may not be judged. For with the judgment you judge, you will be judged.” God removes every office of judgment entirely and allows none at all to be taken up. But what follows is thought to conflict with what was set forth, when he says: “With the judgment you judge, you will be judged.” But above he says: “Do not judge, so that you may not be judged.” Will it not be right to take up the decision of a good judgment? Yet he professes that we are to be judged according to the condition of our judgment, and that all will be measured by the kind of measure they used. So there will never be good judgment if there is to be no judging at all. But, as is recognized above, for a long time nothing light or empty is treated in the words of God; and all speech here goes beyond the sense of the ears of the nations. For he forbade judgment about his promises: because, as judgments among men are taken up from uncertain matters, so this judgment against God is taken up from ambiguity of feeling and opining. This he drives entirely away from us, so that steadfast faith may rather be kept; because, unlike other matters, the sin is not that one has judged wrongly; but in these matters merely to judge about God is the beginning of crime. “Why do you see the speck in your brother’s eye and not see the beam in your own eye?” and the rest. In what follows he taught that only blasphemy against the Spirit will be beyond pardon, God granting forgiveness for all other things. The sin against the Spirit is to deny God the might of power and to take away from Christ the substance of eternity, through whom, because God came into man, man in turn will come into God. So he shows that, as great as the difference between a speck and a beam, so far does the sin against the Spirit exceed the condition of other crimes: so that, while unbelievers reproach others with faults of the body, they do not first see in themselves the burden of the sin by which they doubt the promises of God, the beam of unbelief sitting in their eye as in the eye of the mind. For it often happens that we take to ourselves the authority of correcting others without any example of our own amendment, and put forward the boast of healing another’s blindness while we ourselves are set in the darkness of corrupted light: since it is hard for anyone to supply what he lacks, and it is best to teach by example rather than by words. Care must be taken for one’s own blindness: because it is in the nature of things that no one can become a fit teacher for removing the speck from his brother’s eye until he has cast out from the light of his own mind the heavy beam of faithlessness.

Nothing is more precious and holier than the precepts and promises of God, which bestow on us, once sanctified, the treasure of immortality. We are not permitted, then, either to carry out their mysteries and powers to the nations or to share them with heretics. For the nations are called dogs because of their rage in barking against God. The name of pigs belongs to the heretics: because, although their hoofs are cloven, they do not dispose of the knowledge of God they have received by chewing it over. So it is fitting that we do not treat indiscriminately the embodiment of the Word of God, the mystery of the passion, and the power of the resurrection, nor bring them out unskillfully and carelessly: lest, if instruction in perfect knowledge is lacking, they trample and tread down our ignorance, mock the weakness of the passion in God, and, turning on us, break apart our unskillfulness and faith with the stings of their contradictions. But in the things we do not know, a way of attaining the truth is opened to us, which can be obtained only by persevering in prayer. So, that we may perceive and believe all things and not be delayed by any uncertainty of a doubtful will, we must ask, seek, and knock: by prayer we shall find mercy, by seeking progress, by trying entrance. Indeed, we are taught to hope for obtaining by the example of human affection. For since we would not give a serpent or a stone to our sons asking for fish or bread, how much more will God, the best and most excellent Father, bestow the gifts of perfect faith on us when we pray; nor will he give, instead of the food of life, the stone of pagan hardness, or, instead of the keeping of baptism, the serpent of heretical poison. Then he completed all things with the example of goodness, joining all in the peace of mutual love: setting in this the commandments of the law and the prophets, that, wishing the goodness of all toward us, we ourselves may be good to all. “Enter through the narrow gate. How wide and spacious is the way that leads to destruction!” Man’s road to heaven is steep, and the entrance narrow and thin; but the way of destruction is wide. Many keep to the latter; few find the former. For losses of present things are dear to few, for whom it is the greatest gain of heavenly hope to conquer the desires of the soul, to break those of the body, and to pass by the enticements of all allurements set out with the whole strength of the world. But for those whose only good is to fornicate, carouse, scheme for office, grow insolent, scorn, hate, and plunder, such a well-trodden road has a very large company. And since it belonged to few to find the narrow way, he exposes the deceit of those who would falsely claim to seek it, saying: “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing,” and so on. He warns that flattering words and pretended gentleness must be weighed by the fruit of action: so that we look not at what kind of person someone presents himself to be in words, but at what he makes himself in deeds; because in many a wolf’s rage is covered by sheep’s clothing. So, just as thorns do not produce grapes or thistles figs, and as bad trees do not bear useful fruit, so he teaches that the effect of good work does not lie in these people either; and therefore all are to be known by their fruits. For the mere services of words do not obtain the kingdom of heaven; nor will he who has said, “Lord, Lord,” be its heir. For what merit is there in saying to the Lord, “Lord, Lord”? Will he not be Lord unless he has been called so by us? And what holiness of duty is there in naming a name, since the road to the heavenly kingdom will be found by obedience of the will rather than by naming God? “Many will say to me on that day, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name?” and the rest. Here again he condemns the deceit of false prophets and the pretenses of hypocrites, who presume glory for themselves from the power of the word, in the prophecy of teaching, the putting to flight of demons, and powers of works of this kind, and from this promise themselves the kingdom of heaven. As if anything they say or do were their own, and the power of God, when invoked, did not accomplish all: since reading brings the knowledge of teaching, and the name of Christ drives the demons to flight. That blessed eternity, then, must be earned from what is ours; and something must be supplied from our own, that we may will the good, avoid all evil, and obey the heavenly precepts with all our affection, and be known to God by such services, and do rather what he wills than glory in what we can do: he rejects and repels those whom works of iniquity have turned away from knowing him. “Everyone, then, who hears my words and does them, I will liken to a wise man who built his house upon the rock,” and the rest. The sense is joined to what precedes. For rebuking the boasting of false prophets and the fictions of hypocrites, he sets out by the example of a comparison the man of perfect faith in himself: that he who both hears and does his words is built on the rock and stands on a stable and firm foundation, and cannot be broken up by the onset of storms that fall upon him; the Lord signifying himself by the rock, the strong foundation of the building. He who has grown up from it into a lofty work cannot be moved by rains, rivers, or wind. By the rains he signifies the allurements of soft pleasures slipping in gradually, by which faith first grows damp through opening cracks; after these comes the onrush of torrents, that is, the movements of heavier desires; and then the whole force of the winds blowing around rages, that is, the whole spirit of the devil’s power is brought to bear. But the man built on the foundation of the rock will stand and cannot be moved from his place. The fool, ignoring what he has heard, as if he had spent the work of building on sand, stands faithlessly, soon to be washed away by the rains slipping in, driven by the rivers, scattered by the winds, according to the nature of the sands on which he was built, to be broken up with the heavy disaster of his ruin. And so by the example of the preceding comparisons the Lord willed us both to do what he commanded and to believe what he promised. When all had been completed, the crowds marveled at his teaching, since he had not taught in the manner of the scribes and Pharisees. For they measured the effect of his powers by the power of his words.