Letters 120.1–120.7

How can one be perfect, and how ought a widow to live who has been left without children? — The same thing is asked by a teacher of the law in the gospel: "Teacher, what shall I do to possess eternal life?" The Lord answered him: "You know the commandments?" He said to him: "Which?" And Jesus said: "You shall not commit murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not bear false witness; honor your father and mother, and you shall love your neighbor as yourself." And when he said, "All these I have done," the Lord added: "One thing you lack. If you wish to be perfect, go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and come, follow me." So I too will answer you in the words of our Lord: if you wish to be perfect, and to take up your cross and follow the Lord the Savior and imitate Peter, who says, "Behold, we have left all that we had and have followed you," go and sell all that you have and give to the poor, and follow the Savior. He did not say, "Give to your children, give to your brothers, give to your relatives" (even if you had them, the Lord would rightly be preferred to them), but "Give to the poor," or rather give to Christ, who is fed in the poor, who, though he was rich, became poor for us, who says in the thirty-ninth psalm: "But I am a beggar and poor; the Lord takes thought for me." And at once the fortieth psalm begins with him: "Blessed is he who understands concerning the needy and the poor." Understanding is needed, and after understanding blessedness, to know who is needy and poor: not, surely, the man who is covered with beggary and filth and yet does not depart from his vices, but those of whom the apostle speaks: "Only that we should remember the poor." For their relief Paul and Barnabas labor in the churches of the Gentiles, so that collections may be made on the first day of the week, and they hasten to carry this offering themselves, not through others, to those who have lost their property for Christ, who have suffered persecutions, who have said to their father and mother, wives and children: "We do not know you." These have fulfilled the will of God and have heard the Lord Savior saying: "These are my mother and my brothers, who do the will of my Father." We say this not to forbid giving alms to poor Jews or Gentiles, or to the poor of any nation at all, but so that we may prefer Christians and believing poor to unbelievers, and so that among Christians themselves there may be a great difference, whether one is a sinner or a saint. Hence the apostle too, approving mercy shown to all without distinction, adds: "especially to those of the household of faith." He is of the household of faith who is joined to you by the same religion, and whom sins do not separate from the fellowship of the brotherhood. And if we are commanded even about enemies that, if they hunger, we give them food, if they thirst, we give them drink, and that by doing so we heap coals on their head, how much more about those who are not enemies and who are Christians, or holy Christians! Nor is the saying, "For in doing this you will heap coals of fire on his head," to be taken in a bad sense, but in a good one. For when we do good to our enemies, we overcome their malice with our kindness, soften their hardness, and bend their angry mind toward friendship, and so we heap on their heads the coals of which it is written: "Sharp arrows of the mighty, with desolating coals," so that, as the coal taken from the altar by the seraph purged the prophet's lips, so the sins of our enemies may be purged, that we may overcome evil with good, bless those who curse us, and imitate the Father, who makes his sun rise on the just and the unjust. You too, then, since you do not have a few children, have very many; make yourself friends of the unrighteous mammon, who may receive you into eternal dwellings. And he rightly said "unrighteous"; for all riches come down from unrighteousness, and unless one person loses, another cannot find. Hence the common saying seems to me most true: "A rich man is either unjust or the heir of an unjust man." When the teacher of the law heard this and could not bear it, because he had great riches, the Lord turned to his disciples and said: "How hard it is for those who are rich to enter the kingdom of heaven!" He did not say impossible but hard, although he gave an example of impossibility: "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven." This is not so much hard as impossible, for it can never happen that a camel passes through the eye of a needle. Will a rich man, then, never be able to enter the kingdom of heaven? But the camel is crooked and bent and weighed down with a heavy load; so we too, when we enter crooked paths, leave the straight way, and are loaded with the riches of the world or the weight of sins, cannot enter the kingdom of God. But if we lay down the heaviest load and take for ourselves the wings of a dove, we shall fly and be at rest, and it is said of us: "If you sleep among the lots, the wings of a dove covered with silver, and the hinder parts of her back with the pallor of gold." Let our back, which at first was shapeless and pressed down by a heavy load, have the green sheen of gold, which is interpreted as understanding, and silvered wings, which are understood as the eloquence of the Scriptures, and we shall be able to enter the kingdom of God. The apostles say that they have left all that was theirs, and boldly ask a reward for this virtue. The Lord answered them: "Everyone who leaves house or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or fields for my name's sake will receive a hundredfold and will possess eternal life." O how great a blessedness, to receive great things for small, eternal things for brief, ever-living things for things that die, and to have the Lord as one's debtor! But if a widow has children (and especially if she is of a noble family), let her not leave her sons in want, but act with fairness: let her remember her own soul first and count it as one of her children, and let her share with her children rather than leave everything to her sons; or rather, let her make Christ co-heir with her children. You will answer: "It is hard, it is severe, it is against nature." But you will hear the Lord answering you: "Let him who can receive it, receive it." And "If you wish to be perfect": he does not lay on you a yoke of necessity, but leaves free choice to your own power. Do you wish to be perfect and stand on the highest summit of dignity? Do what the apostles did: sell all that you have and give to the poor and follow the Savior, and, naked and alone, follow a virtue that is naked and alone. You do not wish to be perfect, but to hold the second grade of virtue? Let go of all that you have: give to your children, give to your relatives. No one blames you if you pursue the lower things, provided you know that she who chooses the first is rightly preferred to you. You say: "This belongs to apostles and to men; a noble woman cannot sell everything, since she needs many aids for this life." Hear, then, the apostle's admonition: "Not that others should have relief and you affliction, but that by equality your abundance should support their want, so that their abundance may also supply your want." Hence the Lord too says: "He who has two tunics, let him give one to him who has none." What if there are Scythian frosts and Alpine snows, which are kept off not by two or three tunics but barely by the skins of beasts? Whatever, then, can protect our bodies and help human weakness (for nature poured us out naked) is to be called one tunic, and whatever is necessary for present food is called one day's sustenance. Hence the command: "Do not be anxious about tomorrow," that is, about the time to come; and the apostle says: "Having food and clothing, with these we are content." If you have more than is necessary for your food and clothing, pay it out; know that in that you are a debtor. Ananias and Sapphira earned the apostle's sentence because they fearfully kept back what was theirs. "Is he then to be punished," you will say, "who has not given what is his?" Not at all. They were punished because they chose to lie to the Holy Spirit, and, while keeping back what was necessary for their living, pursued vainglory as though they were renouncing the world perfectly. Otherwise one is free to give or not to give, though for the one who wishes to be perfect present poverty is to be repaid with future riches. How a widow ought to live the apostle sums up in a few words, saying: "She who lives in pleasures is dead while she lives"; and we think it has been said more fully in the two little books we wrote to Furia and Salvina.

What is meant by what is written in Matthew: "But I say to you, I will not drink from now on of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in the kingdom of my Father"? — From this passage some build the fable of a thousand years, in which they contend that Christ will reign bodily and will drink wine, which he has not drunk from that time until the consummation of the world. But let us hear that the bread which the Lord broke and gave to the disciples is the body of the Lord Savior, since he himself says to them: "Take and eat; this is my body," and that the cup is the one of which he spoke again: "Drink of this, all of you; for this is my blood of the new covenant, which will be poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins." This is the cup of which we read in the prophet: "I will take the cup of salvation and call on the name of the Lord," and elsewhere: "My cup that inebriates, how glorious it is!" For if the bread that came down from heaven is the body of the Lord, and the wine that he gave to the disciples is his blood of the new covenant, which was poured out for the forgiveness of all sins, let us reject Jewish fables, go up with the Lord to the large upper room, furnished and cleaned, and receive from him above the cup of the new covenant, and there, celebrating the Passover with him, be inebriated with the wine of sobriety. For the kingdom of God is not food and drink, but righteousness and joy and peace in the Holy Spirit. Nor did Moses give us the true bread, but the Lord Jesus, himself both guest and banquet, himself the one who eats and the one who is eaten. We drink his blood, and without him we cannot drink; and daily in his sacrifices we tread out the red new wine from the fruit of the true vine and of the vine of Sorek, which means "chosen," and from it we drink new wine in the kingdom of the Father, not at all in the oldness of the letter but in the newness of the spirit, singing a new song that no one can sing except in the kingdom of the church, which is the kingdom of the Father. This bread the patriarch Jacob too desired to eat, saying: "If the Lord God is with me and gives me bread to eat and clothing to cover me." For as many of us as are baptized in Christ put on Christ, eat the bread of angels, and hear the Lord proclaiming: "My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work." Let us do, then, the will of him who sent us, the Father, and accomplish his work, and Christ will drink his own blood with us in the kingdom of the church.

Why the evangelists have told the resurrection and the appearance of the Lord differently. — Among these questions you first ask why Matthew said that the Lord rose "late on the sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week," while Mark records that his resurrection took place in the morning, writing thus: "When he had risen, early on the first day of the week he appeared to Mary Magdalene, from whom he had cast out seven demons; and she went and told those who had been with him, as they mourned and wept. And they, hearing that he was alive and that she had seen him, believed." This question has a twofold solution. Either we do not accept this testimony of Mark, which is carried in few Gospel books, almost all the Greek books not having this section at the end, especially since it seems to narrate things different from and contrary to the other evangelists; or we must answer that both told the truth: Matthew, when the Lord rose, that is, late on the sabbath; Mark, when Mary Magdalene saw him, that is, early on the first day of the week. For it should be punctuated thus: "When he had risen," and then, after a short pause for breath, one should go on: "early on the first day of the week he appeared to Mary Magdalene," so that he who, according to Matthew, had risen late on the sabbath appeared, according to Mark, early on the first day of the week to Mary Magdalene. John the evangelist too indicates this, showing that he was seen in the morning of the next day.

How is it that, according to Matthew, Mary Magdalene saw the Lord risen late on the sabbath, while John the evangelist reports that early on the first day of the week she was weeping by the tomb? — "The first day of the week" is to be understood as the Lord's day, because every week is divided into the sabbath and the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth day after the sabbath, which the pagans call by the names of idols and of the elements. Thus the apostle too commanded that the collection of money prepared for the needy be gathered on the first day of the week. Nor should we think that Matthew and John held different views; rather, they called one and the same time, between midnight and cockcrow, by different names. Matthew writes that the Lord appeared to Mary Magdalene "late on the sabbath," that is, late, not as the night was beginning but when it was already deep and largely past, and that he appeared "late on the sabbath as it dawned toward the first day of the week," explaining himself what he meant by "late on the sabbath," namely, as the light of the following day was already approaching. And John did not say simply, "On the first day of the week Mary Magdalene came to the tomb in the morning," but added, "while it was still dark." So of one and the same time, between midnight and cockcrow, the one named the end and the other the beginning. And it seems to me that the evangelist Matthew, who wrote his gospel in the Hebrew language, said not so much "in the evening" as "late," and that the one who translated it, deceived by the ambiguity of the word, rendered it not "late" but "in the evening"; although the usage of human speech holds that sero means not evening but lateness. For we are accustomed to say, "You have come sero," that is, late, and, "You who ought to have done it before, at least do it sero," that is, late. But if the objection is raised how the same Mary, who had earlier seen the Lord risen, is afterwards reported to weep at his tomb, it must be said that, both alone and with another woman or with other women, mindful of the benefits the Lord had conferred on her, she often ran to his tomb, and now worshiped him whom she saw, now wept for him whom she sought and found absent. Some, however, contend that there were two Mary Magdalenes from the same village of Magdala, one who in Matthew saw him risen, the other who in John sought him absent. We read in the Gospels that there were four Marys: one the mother of the Lord Savior, another his aunt, who was called Mary of Clopas, a third Mary the mother of James and Joseph, and a fourth Mary Magdalene; although others contend that the mother of James and Joseph was his aunt. Some, to free themselves from the question, would have it that in Mark she is one of the Marys but without the added surname Magdalene, and that the surname crept in superfluously through a fault of copyists, because the evangelist did not originally write it. But to us the answer seems simple and plain: the holy women, unable to bear Christ's absence, ran to the Lord's tomb throughout the whole night, not once or twice but often, especially since the earthquake, the split rocks, the fleeing sun, and nature thrown into confusion, and, greater than all these, their longing for the Savior, had broken the women's sleep.

How is it that according to Matthew Mary Magdalene, late on the sabbath, together with the other Mary, fell at the Savior's feet, and according to John, early on the first day of the week, she hears from the Lord: "Do not touch me; for I have not yet ascended to my Father"? — She who had earlier seen the Lord risen, with the other Mary, and had fallen at his feet, afterwards returned during the night (for she could not stay at home for longing for him) and came to the tomb; and when she saw that the stone with which the tomb had been closed had been taken away, she ran to Simon Peter and to the other disciple whom Jesus loved most, and said to them: "They have taken the Lord from the tomb, and we do not know where they have put him." The woman's error was joined with devotion: devotion in that she longed for him whose majesty she knew; error in that she said, "They have taken the Lord from the tomb, and we do not know where they have put him." Then, when Peter and John had entered the tomb and seen the linen cloths set apart and the napkin that had been wrapped around the Lord's head laid aside by itself, and believed that he had risen whose body they had not found in the tomb, Mary stood outside by the tomb weeping. And when she stooped, she saw two angels in white sitting in the place of the tomb, at the head and at the feet, where the body of Jesus had been laid, so that, under a guard of such dignity, she should not believe that one who was kept by ministering angels could have been stolen by men. And the angels whom she saw said to her: "Woman, why are you weeping?" This is like what the Lord says to his mother: "What have I to do with you, woman? My hour has not yet come." By calling her "woman" they rebuked her for weeping in vain and said: "Why are you weeping?" But Mary Magdalene had been so stunned and numbed, and, terrified by the miracles, held her faith as if in a fog, that she did not even perceive the sight of the angels before her, but answered as a woman and said: "I weep because they have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have put him." O Mary, if you believe him to be the Lord, and your Lord, how do you suppose that he has been taken away by men? "I do not know," she says, "where they have put him." How do you not know him whom a little earlier you worshiped? And when she saw the angels and, terrified with amazement, did not recognize those she saw, she turned her face this way and that, longing to see nothing but the Lord; and turning back she saw Jesus standing, and did not know that it was Jesus: not because, as Mani and other heretics hold, the Lord had changed his form and face and appeared different and varied at will, but because Mary, stunned by the miracle, took him whom she was seeking with such zeal for the gardener. So the Lord too speaks to her in the same words as the angels: "Woman, why are you weeping?" and adds of his own: "Whom are you seeking?" And she answered: "Sir, if you have taken him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will take him away." Here she calls him "lord" not in confession of true faith in the Savior, but out of humility and fear she pays respect to the gardener. And see how great the ignorance! She thinks that one who was guarded by a cohort of soldiers, whose tomb angels watched over, has been taken away by a single gardener; and, forgetting a woman's weakness, she promises herself such strength as to suppose that the body of a grown man, which, to say nothing else, had been smeared with a hundred pounds of myrrh, could be carried by one frightened woman. And when Jesus called her and said, "Mary," so that she might recognize by his voice him whom she did not know by his face, she, persisting in error, calls him not Lord but "Rabboni," that is, "Teacher." And see how great the confusion! She who, thinking him the gardener, had called him "lord" calls the risen Son of God "teacher." So to her who was seeking the living among the dead, who with a woman's error and weakness was running this way and that and seeking the body of the slain one whose feet she had held when he was alive, the Lord speaks and says: "Do not touch me, for, as far as you are concerned, I have not yet ascended to my Father." The sense is: "You do not deserve to touch as living him whom you seek as dead. If you think that I have not yet ascended to the Father, but have been carried off by human fraud, you are unworthy of my touch." He said this not to blunt the zeal of the one seeking him, but so that she might know that the economy of the flesh he had assumed had been changed into the glory of the divinity, and might not wish to be with the Lord bodily when she ought to believe spiritually that he reigns with the Father. Hence the apostles too are of greater faith, who, without seeing angels and without seeing the Savior himself, believed that he had risen from the underworld after they had not found his body in the tomb. Others think that what John narrates came first: that Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw the stone rolled away; that afterwards, having returned with the apostles Peter and John, she remained alone at the tomb and, being still unbelieving, was therefore rebuked by the Lord; and that, having gone back home, she came again to the tomb with the other Mary, was warned by an angel, and, going out of the tomb, worshiped the Lord and held his feet, when they both heard from him: "Hail." "And they came and held his feet and worshiped him"; and they advanced so far that they were sent to the apostles and heard, first, "Do not be afraid," and second, "Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me."

How did Peter and John freely enter the tomb, with a crowd of soldiers on guard and none of the guards stopping them? — For this reason, clearly: because late on the sabbath, as it dawned toward the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary came to see the tomb. "And behold, there was a great earthquake. An angel of the Lord came down from heaven, came and rolled back the stone, and sat upon it; and his appearance was like lightning and his clothing like snow. For fear of him the guards were terrified and became like dead men." Those, then, who had been so terrified that they were thought dead must be believed either to have abandoned the tomb and fled, or to have become so numb in body and mind that they did not dare to stop, I will not say men, but not even little women who wished to enter the tomb. For great fear had terrified them, as they saw the stone rolled back, and an earthquake not of the usual kind but great, shaking everything and threatening the utter overthrow of the earth, and an angel of God come down from heaven with a face so bright that it resembled not lamps or a light kindled by human skill but the lightning of the sky, by which all things are lit up. Hence they could see even in the darkness. So they enter freely; for Mary Magdalene had come and told them that the stone was rolled away and the Lord's body taken from the tomb. Let us not think that the angel came in order to open the tomb for the rising Lord and roll away the stone, but that, after the Lord had risen at the hour he himself willed, which is known to no mortal, he showed what had been done, and by rolling away the stone showed the tomb empty and made his own presence known. All this was seen by his shining face, the brightness of his radiance overcoming the horror of the darkness.

How is it that Matthew and Mark write that the apostles were commanded through the women to go ahead of the Savior into Galilee and see him there, while Luke and John record that he was seen by the apostles in Jerusalem? — It is one thing for him to present himself to the eleven disciples, who were hiding for fear of the Jews, when he came in to them through closed doors and, when they thought they were seeing a spirit, showed them his hands and side wounded by the nails and the lance; it is another when, according to Luke, he showed himself to them by many proofs, appearing to them over forty days and speaking of the kingdom of God, and, eating with them, commanded them not to depart from Jerusalem. In the one case he was seen to console their minds, and was seen briefly and again taken from their eyes; in the other there was such familiarity and continuance that he ate together with them. Hence the apostle Paul too reports that he appeared to five hundred disciples at once, and in John we read that he stood on the shore as the apostles were fishing and ate part of a roasted fish and a honeycomb, which are proofs of a true resurrection. But in Jerusalem he is not said to have done any of these things.