Homilies on Luke 25–29

On the people’s suspicion about John, whether perhaps he himself was the Christ. Chapter 3. Even love has its danger if it goes beyond measure. For one who loves someone ought to consider the nature and merits of the one loved, and not love him more than he deserves. For if he goes beyond the measure and limit of love, both the one who loves and the one who is loved will be in sin. To make this clearer, let us give an example. The people admired John and loved him; and indeed he was worthy of wonder, so that more should be granted to him than to other men, because he had lived differently from all mortals. We are not all content with simple food, but delight in a variety of dishes; one wine does not suffice us to drink, and we buy wines of varied taste. But John always ate locusts, always wild honey, and was content with simple and meagre food, lest his body grow fat on richer fare and be weighed down by exquisite dishes; for our bodies are of such a nature that they are weighed down by superfluous food, and when the body is weighed down, the soul too is burdened, which, spread through the whole body, is subject to its passions. Therefore it is rightly commanded to those who can observe it: “It is good not to eat meat nor drink wine, nor anything by which your brother is made to stumble” (Rom 14:21). John, then, was of a wonderful life and very different from the conduct of other men. He had no purse, no servant, not even a mean hut. He lived in the desert not only until the day of his manifestation to Israel, but even at the time when he was preaching repentance to the people he was in the wilderness of Judaea and refreshed himself with plain water, so as to be different from others in drink too. We who live in cities, in the midst of crowds, seek finer clothes and food and lodgings; but see with what clothing he who lived in the desert was dressed. He had made himself a tunic of camel’s hair and was girded with a leather belt. Everything in him was new, and because of the unlikeness of his life all who saw him admired him, and admiring him honoured him most zealously, above all because he baptized the penitent for the remission of sins. For these reasons they loved him most justly, but did not keep measure in their love: for they wondered whether perhaps he himself was the Christ. Guarding against this disordered and irrational love, the apostle Paul said of himself: “But I fear lest anyone should think of me beyond what he sees in me or hears from me, and lest the greatness of the revelations should exalt me” (2 Cor 12:6–7), and so on. Fearing that he too might incur this, he did not wish to declare about himself all that he knew, lest anyone should think him more than he saw and, exceeding the measure of honour, say what had been said of John, that he himself was the Christ. Some indeed said this of Dositheus, the heresiarch of the Samaritans, and others of Judas the Galilean. Indeed, some broke out into such boldness of love that they invented certain new and unheard-of monstrosities about Paul. For some say that the saying about sitting at the right and left of the Saviour is said of Paul and Marcion: that Paul sits at the right, Marcion at the left. Others again, reading, “I will send you the Advocate, the Spirit of truth,” will not understand it of the third Person, besides the Father and the Son, a divine and sublime nature, but of the apostle Paul. Do not all these seem to you to have loved more than is expedient, and, while admiring each one’s virtue, to have lost the measure of love? We suffer this in the church: many, loving us more than we deserve, boast and say things in praise of our sermons and teaching which our conscience does not accept. Others, slandering our treatises, accuse us of holding what we know we have never held. But neither those who love too much nor those who hate keep the rule of truth: some lie through love, others through hatred. Hence we must put a bridle on love and allow it only so much freedom to roam that it does not fall over the precipice. It is written in Ecclesiastes: “Do not be overly righteous, nor think more than you should, lest perhaps you be stupefied” (Eccl 7:16). Following this example I can say something similar: Do not love a man with all your soul and with all your strength; do not love an angel with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength; but keep the commandment, according to the Saviour’s word, for God alone. For “you shall love,” he says, “the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength” (Matt 22:37). Someone may answer me and say: The Saviour commands, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength, and your neighbour as yourself.” I want to love Christ; teach me, then, how I should love him. For if I love him with all my heart and with all my soul and with all my strength, I act against the commandment, by loving another besides the one God in this way. But if I love him less than the almighty Father, I fear I may be found impious and profane towards the Firstborn of all creation. Teach me and show me the reason, how, walking in the middle between the two, I ought to love Christ. Do you want to know with what love Christ is to be loved? Listen briefly. You shall love the Lord your God in Christ. Do you think one can have a different love for the Father and for the Son? Love the Lord Christ together with him. Love the Father in the Son, the Son in the Father, with all your heart, all your soul, all your strength. And if someone inquires and says, Prove from the Scriptures what you assert, let him hear the apostle Paul, who had a rational love, saying: “For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor strength nor height nor depth nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord and Saviour” (Rom 8:38–39); to whom be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen.

On the text: “His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor,” up to the place where he says, “And he will gather the wheat into his barn.” Chapter 3. Christ is God; and whoever worships him must worship in spirit and truth (John 4:24). Our God is also a consuming fire (Deut 4:24). God is called by two names, spirit and fire: spirit to the righteous, fire to sinners. So too angels are called spirits and fire: “Who makes,” it says, “his angels spirits, and his ministers a burning fire” (Heb 1:7). To the holy, angels are spirits; but to those who deserve it they bring fire and supply burning. In this sense our God and Saviour too, though he is spirit, came to cast fire upon the earth. He is spirit, according to what is written: “But when you turn to the Lord, the veil will be taken away; and the Lord is the Spirit” (2 Cor 3:16–17). But he came to cast fire not upon heaven but upon the earth, as he himself shows when he says: “I came to cast fire upon the earth, and what do I will but that it be kindled already?” (Luke 12:49). For if you have turned to the Lord, who is spirit, Christ will be spirit to you, and he does not come to cast fire upon the earth. But if you do not turn to God, but have earth and its fruit, he comes to cast fire upon your earth. Something like this is written also of God: “The fire of his wrath has been kindled, not up to heaven above but down to the underworld below, and it will devour not heaven but the earth and its produce.” Why have I mentioned these things? Because the baptism with which Jesus baptizes is in the Holy Spirit and in fire. I remember what I said recently, and the earlier explanation still stands; but I want to bring in something new as well. If you are holy, you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit; if a sinner, you will be plunged into fire; and one and the same baptism will be turned into condemnation and fire for the unworthy and for sinners, while to those who are holy and turn to the Lord with full faith the grace of the Holy Spirit and salvation will be given. He, then, who is said to baptize with the Holy Spirit and fire has his winnowing fork in his hand, and will clear his threshing floor, and will gather his wheat into the barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire. I want to find the reason why our Lord has a winnowing fork, and why the light chaff is carried off here and there by a gentle wind, while the heavy wheat is brought together into one place; for without wind wheat and chaff cannot be separated. I think temptations are to be understood by the wind, which, in the mixed heap of believers, show some to be chaff and others wheat. For when your soul has been overcome by some temptation, it is not the temptation that turns you into chaff; but because you were chaff, that is, light and unbelieving, the temptation shows what you were in secret. On the contrary, when you bear trials bravely, it is not the temptation that makes you faithful and patient; it brings into the open the virtue of patience and fortitude that was in you and was hidden. “Do you think,” says the Lord, “that I spoke to you for any other reason than that you might appear righteous?” And elsewhere: “I afflicted you and brought you into want, that what was in your heart might be made manifest.” In this way too the storm does not make a building stand on sand or on firm ground: when it arises, it will not overthrow what is founded on firm ground, but what wavers on sand it proves at once not to have been well founded. Therefore, before the storm arises, before the blasts of the winds rise up, before the rivers swell, while all is still quiet, let us turn all our effort to the foundations of our buildings; let us build our house with the varied and firm stones of God’s commandments, so that when persecution rages against Christians and a hard whirlwind rises, we may show that we have a building upon the rock, Christ Jesus (Matt 7:24–25). But if anyone (may it be far from us) denies Christ, let him know that he did not deny Christ at the moment when he seemed to deny him; he had long had the seeds and roots of denial, and at that time what he had was recognized and brought into the open. Let us pray, then, to the Lord that we may be a building that no storm overturns, founded upon the rock, through our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen.

On the text: “With many other exhortations he preached,” up to the place where he says, “The Holy Spirit descended upon him.” Chapter 3. One who teaches the word of the Gospel announces not one thing but very many. This is what Scripture signifies when it says: “With many other exhortations he preached.” So John preached to the people other things too which are not written; but consider how many of those that are written announce Christ. For he pointed to the baptism of the Holy Spirit, preached salvation to tax collectors, taught soldiers discipline, spoke of the clearing of the threshing floor and the cutting down of trees, and the other things the Gospel history narrates. Besides what is written, then, he is shown to have announced also things that are not written, in that it is said: “With many other exhortations he preached to the people.” And as it is related of Christ in the Gospel according to John that he said many other things which are not written in this book, which, if they were written, I think the world itself could not contain the books that would be written (John 21:25), so understand in the present passage that perhaps Luke, since some things announced by John were too great to be entrusted to writing, did not wish to state them by name but only indicated that they had been said; and therefore he said, “With many other exhortations he preached to the people.” Let us admire John for what follows, above all that among those born of women none was greater than John the Baptist (Matt 11:11), and that by the merit of his virtue he rose to such a reputation that he was thought by many to be the Christ; but there is something much more wonderful. Herod the tetrarch had royal power and could kill him when he wished (Mark 6:17–18); and when he had done an unjust thing, against the law of Moses, taking his brother’s wife, who had a daughter by her former husband, John did not fear him, did not defer to his person, did not, as I said, consider his royal power, did not dread death; for he knew, even had he not been a prophet, that if provoked Herod could kill him. Knowing all this, he rebuked Herod with prophetic freedom and denounced the incestuous marriage; and for this he was shut in prison, where he was concerned not about death nor about the uncertain outcome of his trial, but in chains he thought about Christ, whom he had announced. And because he could not go to him himself, he sends his disciples to ask, “Are you he who is to come, or do we look for another?” You notice that he taught even in prison, since he had disciples even in that place, and for that reason he was instructing them there himself. And when among other things a question arose about Jesus, he sends some of his disciples and asks, “Are you he who is to come, or do we look for another?” The disciples return and report to their master what the Saviour had commanded them to report; armed for battle by his words, John dies confidently and is gladly beheaded, strengthened by the very voice of the Lord in his belief that he was truly the Son of God. So much about John and his freedom, and about the madness of Herod, who added this to his many crimes, first shutting John in prison and afterwards beheading him. But since the Lord was baptized, and the heavens were opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him, and a voice thundered from heaven saying, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased”: it must be said that at the baptism of Jesus heaven was unlocked, and that the heavens were opened and the Holy Spirit descended for the dispensation and the remission of sins, not his, who had committed no sin, nor was deceit found in his mouth (1 Pet 2:22), but the sins of the whole world; so that, after the Lord had ascended on high and led captivity captive, he might give us the Spirit who had come to him. He had indeed given him already at the time of the resurrection, saying: “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive anyone’s sins, they will be forgiven them; if you retain anyone’s, they will be retained” (John 20:22–23). For the Holy Spirit descended upon the Saviour in the form of a dove, a gentle, innocent, and simple bird. Hence we too are commanded to imitate the innocence of doves. Such is the Holy Spirit: pure, winged, rising on high. Therefore in prayer we say: “Who will give me wings like a dove, and I will rest?” (Ps 55:6), that is, who will give me the wings of the Holy Spirit? And in another place the prophetic word promises: “If you sleep among the lots, the wings of a dove covered with silver, and the back parts of her back in the paleness of gold” (Ps 68:13). For if we rest among the lots of the Old and New Testaments, the wings of a dove covered with silver will be given us, that is, the words of God, and her back parts gleaming with the brightness and sheen of gold, so that our understanding may be filled with the understanding of the Holy Spirit, that is, that our speech and mind may be filled by his coming, and we may neither say nor understand anything except what he has suggested; and that all sanctification, in heart, in words, and in deed, may come from the Holy Spirit in Christ Jesus, to whom be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen.

On the genealogy of the Saviour, in that different ancestors are given for him in Matthew and in Luke. Chapter 3. Our Lord and Saviour, who is the Saviour of many, whose better generation Scripture did not teach, is now described as born according to the order of the fathers. And though his divinity is not subject to a beginning, he willed to be born for your sake, who were born in the flesh; and yet the order of his birth is not told in the same way by the evangelists, a thing that has greatly disturbed some. For Matthew, beginning to weave the series of his birth, goes from Abraham until he reaches the point of saying, “Now the birth of Jesus Christ was thus”; and he describes not him who was baptized but him who came into the world. Luke, however, setting out his birth, does not lead down from higher to lower, but, having first spoken of him as baptized, goes up to God himself. Nor are the same persons in his generation when he is said to descend and when he is said to ascend. For the one who presents him as descending brings in women, and not just any, but sinners and those whom Scripture had censured; while the one who narrates him as baptized makes mention of no woman. For in Matthew, as we said, Tamar is named, who lay by fraud with her father-in-law; and Ruth the Moabite, not of the race of Israel; and Rahab, whose origin I cannot tell; and the wife of Uriah, who violated her husband’s bed. For since our Lord and Saviour had come for this purpose, to take upon himself the sins of human beings (and God made him who had committed no sin to be sin for us), therefore, descending into the world, he took on the person of sinful and vicious human beings, and willed to be born of the stock of Solomon, whose sins are recorded, and of Rehoboam, whose offences are related, and of the others, many of whom did evil in the sight of God. But when he ascends from the washing and a second order is described, he is born not through Solomon but through Nathan, who rebuked his father over the death of Uriah and the birth of Solomon. Moreover, in Matthew the word “begot” is always added, but here it is wholly absent. For there it is written: “Abraham begot Isaac, Isaac begot Jacob, Jacob begot Judah and his brothers, Judah begot Perez and Zerah by Tamar,” and “begot” is always set down to the end. But in Luke, where Jesus ascends from the washing, he is called “son”: “being, as was thought, the son of Joseph”; and in so long a series of names, apart from his being thought the son of Joseph, the word for begetting is not written. In Matthew “beginning” is not written; but here, because he was to ascend from baptism, “beginning” is read, Scripture reporting: “And Jesus himself was beginning.” For when he was baptized and took up the mystery of the second birth, so that you too might destroy the former birth and be born in the second regeneration, then he is said to have begun. And as the people of the Jews, when it was in Egypt, had no beginning of months, but when it went out of Egypt was then told, “This month shall be for you the beginning of months, the first of the months of the year” (Exod 12:2), so one who has not yet been baptized is not said to have begun. Let us not think that “beginning” was added for nothing to the words “Jesus himself was.” And what he says, “about thirty years old,” must also be considered. Joseph was thirty years old when he was released from bonds and, having interpreted Pharaoh’s dream, was made ruler of Egypt and gathered wheat in the time of plenty, so as to have something to distribute in the time of famine. I think that Joseph’s thirty years went before as a figure of the Saviour’s thirty years. For this Joseph did not gather such wheat as that Joseph in Egypt, but true and heavenly wheat, so that, having gathered wheat in the time of plenty, he might have something to distribute when famine was sent upon Egypt: not a famine of bread nor a thirst for water, but a famine of hearing the word of God (Amos 8:11). He gathers from the prophets, from the law, from the apostles, words of abundance, so that, when books are no longer being written, nor any new testament composed, nor are the apostles sending out what Jesus had brought into the apostles’ barns, that is, into their souls and those of all the saints, he may distribute it and nourish Egypt in peril of famine, and above all his brothers, of whom it is written: “I will tell of your name to my brothers; in the midst of the church I will sing to you” (Ps 22:22). Other people too have words of patience, words of justice, and words of the other virtues: this is the wheat that Joseph distributed to the Egyptians. But there is another grain that he distributed to his brothers, that is, to his disciples, from the land of Goshen, the land that looks to the east: the wheat of the Gospel, the wheat of the apostles. From this wheat we must make bread, yet so that it is not mixed with the old leaven; and let us have new bread from the wheat of the Scriptures, flour ground in Christ Jesus, to whom be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen.

On the text: “And Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned,” and on his first temptation. Chapter 4. When you read in the Gospel, “And Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned,” and in the Acts of the Apostles where it is said that they were filled with the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:4), take care not to think the apostles equal to the Saviour; but know that Jesus, the apostles, and any other of the saints are full of the Holy Spirit according to the measure of their vessel. For example, if you wish to say, “These vessels are full of wine or oil,” you do not at once judge that they are full with an equal measure (for one can hold a sextarius, another an urn, another an amphora); in the same way both Jesus and Paul were full of the Holy Spirit, but Paul’s vessel was much smaller than Jesus’ vessel, and yet each was full according to its measure. Having received baptism, then, the Saviour, full of the Holy Spirit, who had come upon him from heaven in the form of a dove, was led by the Spirit. For since “as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God” (Rom 8:14), and he, beyond all others, was properly the Son of God, he too had to be led by the Holy Spirit. For it is written: “And he was led by the Spirit into the desert” (Matt 4:1). For forty days Jesus is tempted, and what the temptations were we do not know; perhaps they were passed over because they were too great to be entrusted to writing. If one may say so: as the world could not contain all the books, if what Jesus did and taught had been written, so the world could not have borne the forty days’ temptations by which the Lord was tempted by the devil, had Scripture told them. It is enough for us to know only this, that he was in the desert forty days, was tempted by the devil, and ate nothing in those days. For he was putting to death the mind of the flesh by constant and continuous fasting; and when the days were completed, he was hungry. “And the devil said to him: If you are the Son of God, tell this stone to become bread.” “Tell this stone,” he says. What stone? Surely the devil was pointing to the one he wanted to become bread. What kind of temptation is this? When the Son had asked the Father for bread, would the crafty deceiver give a stone instead of bread? Was this what the devil wanted, that the stone should become bread, and not rather that he might turn, not a stone into bread, but a man into the stone which he had pointed to as bread? I think that to this day the devil shows a stone and urges each one to say, “Tell this stone to become bread.” With every temptation with which human beings were to be tempted, the Lord, by reason of his taking of flesh, was tempted first; and he is tempted so that we too, through his victory, may conquer. What I am saying may perhaps be obscure unless it is made clearer by an example. If you see heretics eating the falsehood of their doctrines as bread, know that their teaching is the stone that the devil shows. And do not think that he has only one stone; he has many stones, and Matthew brings him in saying, “Tell these stones to become loaves” (Matt 4:3). Marcion said it, and the devil’s stone became bread for him. Valentinus said it, and another stone was turned into bread for him. Basilides too had such a thing, and the other heretics. Hence we must take careful precautions lest, eating the devil’s stone, we think we are eating the bread of God. Otherwise, what temptation was there in bread being made from a stone and eaten by the Saviour? Suppose that at the devil’s proposal the Lord turned a stone into bread, ate what he had made by his own power, and satisfied his hunger: what kind of temptation, what victory over the devil, would this be, if these things were written in the simple sense? But considered with the reasoning we have given, they show both that it would have been a temptation had these things been done, and a victory in that their doing was scorned. At the same time it is shown that this bread which is made from a stone is not the word of God, which feeds a man, of which it is written: “Man lives not by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God shall man live.” I will answer you, crafty and wicked one, who are not afraid to tempt me: there is another bread, the word of God, which gives life to man. And let us note at the same time that it is not the Son of God who says this, but the man whom the Son of God deigned to assume; for he answers as a man and says, “It is written, Man lives not by bread alone” (Matt 4:4); from which it is clear that it was not God but the man who was tempted. Sifting the meaning of Scripture carefully, I think I find the reason why John did not describe the Lord’s temptation, but only Matthew, Luke, and Mark. For John, who had begun from God, saying, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1), and could not weave the order of a divine generation but had only expressed that he was from God and with God, added, “And the Word became flesh.” And since God, of whom he was speaking, cannot be tempted, he does not bring in his being tempted by the devil. But since “the book of the generation of Jesus Christ” is narrated of him in Matthew’s Gospel, and his generation is described in Luke, and in Mark it is a man who is tempted, therefore a like answer is reported: “Man lives not by bread alone.” If, then, the Son of God, who is God, became man for you and is tempted, you who are by nature a man should not be indignant if perhaps you are tempted. And if, when tempted, you imitate him who was tempted for you, and overcome every temptation, you will have hope with him who was then a man but now has ceased to be a man. For he who was once a man, after he was tempted and the devil departed from him until the time of his death, has risen from the dead and will die no more; but every man is subject to death; therefore he who will never die is no longer a man but God. And if he who was once a man is God, you too must become like him. When we are like him and see him as he is, you too will necessarily become God, in Christ Jesus, to whom be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen.