Homilies on Jeremiah

Homily 1. When Jeremiah began to prophesy, under which kings he prophesied, and what was said to him next by the Lord.

God is quick to do good, but slow to punish those who deserve punishment. Though he could bring punishment on those he condemns in silence, without first testifying against them, he never does so; even when he condemns, he speaks, and his purpose in speaking is to turn the one about to be condemned away from the condemnation. There are many examples of this to be taken from the Scriptures, but a few that come to hand will suffice, so that we may come to the purpose of the readings before us. The Ninevites had become sinners and were condemned by God: in three more days Nineveh was to be overthrown. God did not wish to condemn it in silence, but, giving them room for repentance and conversion, he sent a prophet, so that when he said, “Yet three days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown,” those who had been condemned might not be condemned, but might repent and obtain God's mercy. The people of Sodom and Gomorrah had been condemned, as is clear from God's words to Abraham; yet the angels did their part, wishing those who did not wish to be saved to be saved, and saying to Lot, “Have you any sons-in-law here, or sons, or daughters?” They knew well that those men would not follow Lot, but they were acting from their own kindness and love for humankind and from that of him who sent them.

You will find the same thing in the case of Jeremiah. The time of his prophecy is recorded, when he began and until when he prophesied. Then the reader, if he does not attend to the reading or examine the purpose of what is written, will say that this is history, and it has been recorded when Jeremiah began to prophesy and after how long a time of prophesying he stopped. “What is this history to me? I have read it; I have learned that he began to prophesy ‘in the days of Josiah son of Amon, king of Judah, in the thirteenth year of his reign’; then ‘it came in the days of Jehoiakim son of Josiah, king of Judah,’ as he prophesied ‘until the end of the eleventh year of Zedekiah son of Josiah, king of Judah.’ And I have learned that his prophecy stretched over three kings, ‘until the captivity of Jerusalem in the fifth month.’” What, then, are we taught through these things, if we attend to the reading?

God condemned Jerusalem for its sins, and they had been sentenced to be abandoned to captivity. Nevertheless God, who loves humankind, when the time was at hand, sends this prophet too, from the third reign before the captivity, so that those who were willing might take heed and repent because of the prophetic words. He sent the prophet to prophesy both under the second king after the first and under the third, until the very time of the captivity. For God, who is long-suffering, was granting a respite even one day, so to speak, before the captivity, urging the hearers to repent so that the gloomy things of the captivity might cease. That is why it is written that Jeremiah prophesied “until the captivity of Jerusalem, until the fifth month.” It had begun, and still he was prophesying, as though saying: “You have become captives; even so, repent; for if you repent, the things of the captivity will not advance, but the mercy of God will stand over you.” So we have something useful from the record that gives the times of the prophecy: that God in his love for humankind urges his hearers not to suffer the things of captivity. Such things concern us too. If we sin, we too are going to become captives. For “to hand such a one over to Satan” differs in nothing from handing over the people of Jerusalem to Nebuchadnezzar; for as they were handed over to him for their sins, so we are handed over for our sins to Satan, who is a Nebuchadnezzar. And “whom I have handed over to Satan, that they may be taught not to blaspheme,” says the apostle about other sinners.

See, then, how great an evil it is to sin, that people are handed over to Satan, who takes captive the souls of those abandoned by God; and God does not abandon without cause or without judgment those whom he has abandoned. For when he sends rain upon the vineyard, and the vineyard bears thorns instead of grapes, what will God do but “command the clouds not to rain” upon the vineyard? Because of our sins captivity hangs over us too, and unless we repent we are going to be handed over to Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians, so that the spiritual Babylonians may tear us apart. While these things hang over us, the words of the prophets, the words of the law, the words of the apostles, the words of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ speak to us of repentance and summon us to conversion. If we listen, let us believe him who said, “I too will repent of all the evils that I spoke of doing to them.” So much for the introduction.

After the introduction it is written that “the word of the Lord came to him,” that is, clearly, to Jeremiah. And what does the word of the Lord say to him? Something exceptional, beyond what was said to the other prophets; for we have found this said to none of the prophets. Abraham was called a prophet, in “He is a prophet and will pray for you,” yet God did not say to him, “Before I formed you in the womb I know you, and before you came out of the womb I have sanctified you.” Rather, Abraham was sanctified at some later time, when he went out of his land and his kindred and his father's house. Isaac was born by promise, and we have not found this word said even to him. And why need I list the ones that follow? Jeremiah received an exceptional gift: “Before I formed you in the womb I know you, and before you came out of the womb I have sanctified you.”

We are not unaware that some refer these words, as being too great for Jeremiah, to our Savior and Lord. And one should know that most of them fit him and can be referred to the Savior, as I shall set out; but a few of the things said to Jeremiah press hard on this interpretation, since they cannot, in the view of most, apply to the Savior. Which, then, are the ones that fit the Savior? “To all to whom I send you, you shall go, and whatever I command you, you shall speak. Do not be afraid before them, for I am with you to deliver you, says the Lord.” These might not yet seem to be referred to the Savior; but what follows, “And the Lord stretched out his hand to me and touched my mouth, and the Lord said to me: Behold, I have put my words in your mouth. Behold, I have set you today over nations and kingdoms, to root out and to pull down,” presses hard on the interpretation that refers them to Jeremiah. What nations did he root out? What kingdoms did he overthrow? For it is written, “Behold, I have set you today over nations and kingdoms, to root out and to pull down.” And what authority did Jeremiah have “to destroy,” which is said to Jeremiah in “and to destroy”? And whom did Jeremiah build up, so many that it could be said “and to build”? Jeremiah says, “I have not profited, nor has anyone profited me.” How then was it given to him “to build and to plant”? How will “to plant” fit Jeremiah? These words, referred to the Savior, do not press hard on the interpreter, since in them Jeremiah is a symbol of the Savior. But the words about to be set out press very hard even on the most intelligent man who wishes to show how they too can fit the Savior: “And I said: O Master, Lord, who are, behold, I do not know how to speak.” He who is wisdom, he who is power, brought us “the fullness of the Godhead” which “dwelt in him bodily”; how then can “I do not know how to speak” fit the Savior? And further, “I am too young” is forbidden to the Savior as something he said wrongly; for if the Lord says to him, “Do not say this,” clearly he forbids it as something not rightly said. These words, then, do not fit the Savior, while the former do not seem awkward when applied to him. Now it is not hard to say that these are referred to Jeremiah and those to the Savior. But a fair-minded person will be very much pressed in this passage, seeing that to cut up words spoken in one connected sequence, whether to Jeremiah or to the Savior, and to say that these, being too slight for Christ, fit Jeremiah, while those, being too great for Jeremiah, fit not Jeremiah but Christ, is the mark of unfair people. So let the whole be referred to Jeremiah; and let even the things that seem too great for Jeremiah be interpreted.

Everyone who has received words from God and has the grace of the heavenly words has received them “to root out and to pull down nations and kingdoms.” But if everyone who has received words from God is said “to root out nations and kingdoms,” do not understand the nations and kingdoms bodily. Rather, consider human souls ruled by sin, according to what is said in the apostle, “Let not sin therefore reign in our mortal body,” and, seeing the many kinds of sins, interpret figuratively both the nations and the kingdoms as the evils in the souls of human beings, which are rooted out and pulled down by the words of God given either to Jeremiah or to anyone at all. And so both the first sayings, which press hard when applied to the Savior, can fit Jeremiah, and the second can fit Jeremiah for one who knows how to interpret figuratively. One of my hearers will say to me: “Exercise the other interpretation too, and try to show that the whole of what is written fits the Savior.” About the second group, do not worry; for it is plain that the Savior rooted out the kingdoms of the devil and pulled down the nations by abolishing the pagan way of life. But here, where it seems blasphemous with regard to the Savior, exercise the interpretation somehow: how can the Savior say, “I do not know how to speak, for I am too young,” and the rest? You see that the argument is in straits. We know the Savior as Lord. We seek to refer these things to the Savior in a way worthy of the Word and true to the truth. We must take the Scriptures as witnesses; for our conjectures and expositions without witnesses are untrustworthy. And “at the mouth of two or three witnesses every word shall be established” fits expositions better than human beings, so that I may establish the words of the interpretation by taking two witnesses, from the New and the Old Testament, or three, from the Gospel, from a prophet, from an apostle; for so every word will be established. How then can we refer these things to the Savior? Bring forward the Old Testament as witness: “For before the child knows good or evil, he disobeys wickedness in order to choose the good.” And these things are said outright about the Savior in Isaiah: “Behold, the virgin shall conceive in the womb and bear a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel.” And there it goes on, “Before the child knows.” And if we must take an example from the Gospel too: Jesus, not when he had become a man but while still a child, since “he emptied himself,” was advancing (for no one advances who is already perfect; he advances who needs advancement). So “he advanced in stature, he advanced in wisdom and in favor with God and men.” Coming down here and having emptied himself, he was taking back again the things of which “he emptied himself,” having emptied himself willingly. What is absurd, then, in his having advanced “in wisdom and stature and favor with God and men,” and in its being true of him that “before he knows good or evil he will choose the good and disobey wickedness,” and the things I cited from Isaiah?

But someone will say: “Even if you can refer to the Savior his not knowing how to choose, does it not offend you to say these things about the Only-begotten, about the firstborn of all creation, about him who was announced before his conception, according to ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you’; and yet you say, ‘He does not know how to speak’?” See whether you can find in the passage something worthy and great about the Savior: that there are certain things of which he is greater for not knowing them than for knowing them. And I use his own voice as witness that there are things he does not know. He says to those who say to him: “Did we not eat in your name, and drink in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works? Depart from me; I never knew you.” Does “I never knew you,” said there by the Savior, show his power to be less, or greater and more wonderful, because he did not know those who were worse and perishing? For he knew the excellent and better, and “the Lord knew those who are his,” and “if anyone does not know, he is not known.” The sinner, then, is not known by God. One of my listeners will say to me: “You have shown that he does not know sinners, you have shown that he does not know the workers of lawlessness, for they are not worthy of his knowledge; but how will you show that ‘I do not know how to speak,’ said by the Savior, is something great and glorious?” Speaking is a human thing; to speak is to use a language, for example the tongue of the Hebrews, or of the Greeks, or of some others. If you go up to the Savior and see him as the Word who was “in the beginning with God,” you will see that he does not know how to speak, since speaking is human; but he does not know it because what he knows is greater than speaking. And if you compare the tongues of angels with the tongues of men, and see that he is greater even than the angels, as the apostle testified in the Epistle to the Hebrews, you will say that he was greater even than the tongue of angels when he was God the Word with the Father. So he learns, and as it were takes up, a knowledge not of great things but of lesser and smaller ones. And just as I learn, forcing myself to lisp, when I talk with little children (for I do not know how to speak childishly, so to say; being grown, I force myself to converse with children), in the same way the Savior too, while he is “in the Father” and abides in the majesty of God's glory, does not speak human things and does not know how to utter words to those below. But when he comes into a human body, he says at the beginning: “I do not know how to speak, for I am too young”: younger because of his bodily birth, but older as “the firstborn of all creation”; younger, because he has come to dwell in this life “at the end of the ages” and later. So he says “I do not know how to speak,” meaning: I know things greater than speaking, I know things greater than this human voice. Do you wish me to speak to men? I have not yet taken up a human language; I have your language, O God; I am your Word, O God; I know how to converse with you; to men I do not know how to speak, “I am too young.”

“Do not say, ‘I am too young,’ for to all to whom I send you, you shall go.” So he stretches out his hand, touches his mouth, gives him words, and gives him words on account of the kingdoms, so that he may root them out. He had no need of rooting words when he was “in the Father,” nor of words that pull down and destroy the worse things; for nothing there deserved to be pulled down, nothing deserved to be rooted out. It is a great thing, just as “I do not know you, for you are workers of lawlessness,” said thus by the Savior on account of the surpassing greatness of his glory: “I do not know how to speak” is equivalent to “I do not know how to speak human things.”

Whether it is said to Jeremiah or to the Savior, “Before I formed you in the womb I know you,” if you read Genesis and observe what is said about the creation of the world, you will find that Scripture, speaking with great precision, did not say, “Before I made you in the womb I know you.” For when the one “according to the image” was being created, “God said, Let us make man according to our image and likeness”; he did not say, “Let us form.” But when he took “dust from the earth,” he did not make the man but “formed the man,” and “put in the paradise the man whom he had formed, to work it and keep it.” … of making and of forming, that the Lord, whether speaking to Jeremiah or to the Savior, did not say, “Before I made you in the womb,” but “Before I formed you”; for what is from the dust of the earth, this is fashioned in the womb. “Before I formed you in the womb I know you.” If the Lord knew everyone […], he would not have said to Jeremiah as something exceptional, “and I know you.” So God knows those who excel; God knows those worthy of his knowledge, and “the Lord knew those who are his”; but the unworthy God does not know, just as the Savior too says, “I never knew you.” We human beings, as far as we make progress, judge some things worthy of our knowing them, and some things we do not even wish to hear, so that we may not know or see them, while other things we wish to know. And what of the God of the universe? Does he wish to know Pharaoh, does he wish to know the Egyptians? They are not worthy of God's knowledge; but Moses is worthy, and each of the prophets is such. You must do many things rightly for God to begin to know you. Jeremiah he knew before he formed him in the womb; another he begins to know when he is thirty years old, another when forty. These are secret teachings: about the Savior they are not in question, but about Jeremiah they need attention from those who have ears.

How does he say, “Before I formed you in the womb I know you, and before you came out of the womb I have sanctified you”? God sanctifies certain people to himself. This one he did not wait to sanctify after he had come to birth, but already sanctified him before he came out of the womb. If you refer it to the Savior, it is not hard to say that he was sanctified before he came out of the womb. If you refer it to the Savior, he was sanctified not only before he came out, but even earlier. But this Jeremiah was sanctified before he came out of the womb.

“I have appointed you a prophet to the nations.” If you look for “I have appointed you a prophet to the nations” in the case of Jeremiah, observe in what follows that he is commanded to prophesy “against all the nations,” and there is a heading, “What Jeremiah prophesied against all the nations”: against Elam, against Damascus, against Moab. So we have it that “he prophesied against all the nations,” in accordance with the literal statement “I have appointed you a prophet to the nations” spoken to him. But if we take the higher sense: if it concerns Jeremiah, we have already spoken of it; if it concerns the Savior, what need is there even to speak? He truly prophesied to all the nations; for as he is ten thousand other things, so he is also a prophet. As he is high priest, as he is Savior, as he is physician, so he is also a prophet. Moses, at any rate, prophesying about him, spoke of him not merely as a prophet but in exceptional terms: “The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet from among your brothers like me; you shall listen to him, and whoever does not listen to that prophet shall be utterly destroyed from his people.” This, then, is the one appointed also as prophet “to the nations,” and he received grace from God poured out on his lips, so that not only when he was present in the body, but now also, when he is present in power and by the Spirit, he may prophesy “to all the nations,” so that his prophecy may reach from all the nations and draw human beings to salvation.

“And I said, O Master, Lord, who are, behold, I do not know how to speak, for I am too young. And the Lord said to me: Do not say, ‘I am too young,’ for to all to whom I send you, you shall go.” We have often said that one can be a child according to the inner man, even if one is in the old age of the body; and sometimes one can be a child according to the outer man but a grown man according to the inner. Such was Jeremiah, already having grace from God while still at the age of a child in body. That is why the Lord says to him, “Do not say, ‘I am too young.’” And a sign that he was not too young but “a mature man” is: “To all to whom I send you, you shall go, and whatever I command you, you shall speak. Do not be afraid before them.” The Word of God knows that those who carry the word as envoys are in danger among their hearers; for when they are rebuked they hate them, when they are reproved they persecute them. The prophets suffer anything at all: “A prophet is not without honor except in his own country and in his own house,” which we mentioned recently too. So God, in sending the prophet, knows how many dangers he will undergo, and says to him: “Do not be afraid before them, for I am with you to deliver you, says the Lord.” What Jeremiah suffered is recorded: he was cast into a pit of mire and stayed there “eating one loaf a day” and drinking only water, and ten thousand other things that he suffered his prophecy has made known. “Which of the prophets did your fathers not persecute?” was said to the Jews. And it is necessary that “those who wish to live godly in Christ Jesus” be persecuted in every way by the opposing powers through whatever vessels they find. Therefore let those who are persecuted not be surprised, but do everything, praying only that they may be persecuted unjustly and not justly: not for injustice, not for sin, not for greed. And if someone is ever persecuted for righteousness' sake, let him hear: “Blessed are you when they revile you and persecute you and utter every evil word against you falsely for my sake. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven; for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”

“For I am with you to deliver you, says the Lord. And the Lord stretched out his hand to me and touched my mouth, and the Lord said to me.” Note the differences between Jeremiah and Isaiah. Isaiah says: “Having unclean lips, I dwell in the midst of a people having unclean lips, and I have seen with my eyes the King, the Lord of hosts.” And since he confessed that he had not unclean deeds but only words (for so far only was he a sinner), “the Lord did not stretch out his hand,” but “one of the seraphim touched his lips with his hand and said: Behold, I have taken away your iniquities.” But since this man was sanctified “from the womb,” no tongs are sent to him, nor a coal “from the altar” (he had nothing that deserved the fire); rather the very hand of the Lord touched him. That is why he says, “The Lord stretched out his hand to me and touched my mouth, and the Lord said to me: Behold, I have put my words in your mouth. Behold, I have set you today over nations and kingdoms, to root out.” Who is so blessed as to root out, by the words given by God, the kingdoms, which are many, which “the devil shows”: kingdoms of the opposing powers, kingdoms according to the sins? For it is written: “Behold, I have put my words in your mouth. Behold, I have set you today over nations and kingdoms, to root out.” As there are kingdoms, so there are also nations; and a kingdom cannot be called a kingdom unless it has nations under it. For example, there is a kingdom of sexual immorality, and each act of sexual immorality is a nation of it†. One kingdom is the generic sin itself of greed and defrauding, and there are many kingdoms in those who have many kinds of sins. Then, in each sinner, understand the nations under the kingdom, as if to say that so-and-so has many nations of the kingdom of sexual immorality, so-and-so has many nations of the kingdom of defrauding, of slander, of anger. It is the task of the words of God, sent against “nations and kingdoms,” “to root out and to pull down.” To root out what? The Savior taught, saying, “Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be rooted out.” There are things within souls that “the heavenly Father has not planted”; for all “evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, acts of sexual immorality, thefts, false witness, blasphemies” are plants not planted by the heavenly Father. If you wish to see whose plants such thoughts are, hear that “an enemy has done this,” who sowed “weeds among the wheat.” So God stands by with his seeds, and the devil too. If we give “place to the devil,” the “enemy” sows a plant “which the Father did not plant,” to be rooted out entirely; if we do not give “place to the devil” but give place to God, God joyfully sows his seeds in our ruling faculty. Do not think, then, that Jeremiah received a gloomy gift from God because he is appointed “over nations and over kingdoms, to root out.” God is good, rooting out by his words the evil things: the kingdoms hostile to the kingdom of heaven, the warring nations hostile to the nation of God. “To root out and to pull down.”

There is a building of the devil, and there is a building of God. The building “on the sand” is the devil's, for it rests on nothing firm, stable, or united; but the building “on the rock” is God's. See what is said to those who belong to God: “You are God's field, God's building.” The words of God, then, are “over nations and kingdoms, to root out and to pull down and to destroy.” If something is rooted out but what was rooted out is not destroyed, what was rooted out still exists. If something is pulled down but the stones of the demolition are not destroyed, what was pulled down still exists. So it is the work of God's goodness, after rooting out, to destroy what was rooted out, and after pulling down, to destroy what was pulled down. Read carefully how such things are destroyed, in the case of the things that are destroyed and rooted out: “The chaff you shall burn with unquenchable fire,” and “Bind the weeds in bundles and give them to the fire”; so after being rooted out it is destroyed. If you wish to see also the things of the building of wicked material that are destroyed after the demolition: that house pulled down because of leprosy becomes dust, and, having become dust, is thrown “outside the city,” so that not a stone remains, as in “I will grind them like the mud of the streets”; for the worse things must in no way hold together. Something was pulled down: let not the stones be useful for another building which the evil one can build. It was rooted out: let him not again find seeds in the things rooted out, so as to sow the weeds again; for having the seeds of the weeds by all means, he sowed them. That is why “bind the weeds and burn them with fire,” so that after being rooted out they may be destroyed, and after being pulled down the devil's building may be destroyed.

But the words of God do not stop at “rooting out and pulling down and destroying.” For suppose the evil things have been rooted out of me and the worse things pulled down: what benefit is it to me, unless better things are planted in place of what was rooted out? What benefit is it to me, unless excellent things are built up in their place? That is why the words of God first, of necessity, “root out and pull down and destroy,” and after that “build and plant.” And we have always observed in Scripture that the things of gloomy appearance, if I may so call them, are named first, and then the things that seem joyful are mentioned second. “I will kill and I will make alive.” He did not say, “I will make alive,” and after that, “I will kill”; for it is impossible that what God has made alive should be killed by him or by anyone else. But “I will kill and I will make alive.” Whom will I kill? Paul the betrayer, Paul the persecutor; “and I will make alive,” so that he may become “Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ.” If the wretched people from the heresies had understood this, they would not constantly bring these words against us, saying: “Do you see how savage and inhuman the God of the law is, and he says, ‘I will kill and I will make alive’?” Do you not see in the Scriptures the promise of the resurrection of the dead? Or do you not see the resurrection of the dead already being prefigured in each person? We “were buried” with Christ “through baptism” and rose with him. So he begins with the gloomier but necessary words, such as “I will kill,” then, having killed, “and I will make alive; I will strike, and I will heal”; “for the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and scourges every son whom he receives.” First he strikes, and after that he heals; “for he causes pain and restores again.” So too here: “I have set you today over nations and kingdoms, to root out and to pull down and to destroy and to rebuild and to plant.” But first those evil things must be taken away from us. God cannot build in the place of the evil building. “For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? What fellowship has light with darkness?” Wickedness must be rooted out from its foundations, the building of wickedness must be consumed out of our soul, so that afterward the words of God may build and plant; for I cannot understand otherwise what is written: “Behold, I have put my words in your mouth.” What do the words do? “Root out and pull down and destroy.” Words root out “nations,” words pull down “kingdoms,” but not these … worldly ones. Understand what is rooted out and pulled down by words in a way worthy of words that pull down and words that root out. Is there not even now, in what is being said, a power, if God grants it (according to “The Lord will give a word to those who preach the good news with great power”), a power that roots out whatever unbelief, whatever hypocrisy, whatever wickedness, whatever licentiousness there is? Is there not a power that pulls down, if anywhere an idol-temple has been built in the heart? So that when that is pulled down a temple of God may be built, and the glory of God may be found in the rebuilt temple, and there may be no sacred grove but a planting, a paradise of God, where the temple of God is, in Christ Jesus, to whom be the glory and the power for ages of ages. Amen.

Homily 2. On “How have you turned to bitterness, O foreign vine?” as far as “If you wash yourself with lye and multiply soap for yourself, you are stained in your iniquities before me, says the Lord.”

“God did not make death, nor does he delight in the destruction of the living; for he created all things that they might exist, and the generative forces of the world are wholesome, and there is no poison of destruction in them, nor is the dominion of Hades upon earth.” Then, passing over a little of the text, I will say where death came from: “Through the envy of the devil death entered the world.” If, then, there is anything excellent about us, God has made it; but we have created wickedness and sins for ourselves. That is why here too the beginning of the reading in the prophet speaks as if perplexed to those who have come to have in the soul a bitterness contrary to the sweetness that God prepared for it: “How have you turned to bitterness, O foreign vine?” As if he said: God did not make lameness, but made all people sound of foot; what, then, is the cause of the lame? And God made all the limbs healthy in the first place; what cause, then, made someone suffer? In the same way the soul was made “according to the image” not only of the first man but of every human being. For “Let us make man according to our image and according to our likeness” reaches to all human beings. And just as, in Adam, what most people understand as “according to the image” is older than the image that was added to him when through sin he wore “the image of the man of dust,” so in all, being according to the image of God is older than the worse image. We sinners “have borne the image of the man of dust; let us bear,” repenting, “the image of the heavenly.” But the creation was made in the image of the heavenly. So the Word here speaks in perplexity to sinners, by way of rebuke: “How have you turned to bitterness, O foreign vine? For I planted you a fruitful vine, wholly true.” This was said in what precedes, and by taking up a few words again I will persuade you that God planted the human soul as a good vine, but each one, having turned, became contrary to the will of the Creator. “But I planted you a fruitful vine, wholly true,” not partly true, nor partly true and partly false, but “I planted you a fruitful vine, wholly true. How have you turned?” When I planted you a wholly true vine, how have you turned to bitterness and become a foreign vine?

After this let us look at: “If you wash yourself with lye and multiply soap for yourself, you are stained in your iniquities before me, says the Lord.” Did some sinful soul suppose that by taking lye and washing herself with perceptible lye she would be rid of the stain and rid of the sin? Did someone suppose that by taking this herb that springs from the earth and washing and scrubbing himself the soul would be cleansed, so that the Word here says to the one that has turned to bitterness and become a foreign vine, “If you wash yourself with lye and multiply soap for yourself, you are stained in your iniquities before me, says the Lord”? But one must know that the Word has every power; and just as he has the power of all Scripture, so the Word has the power of every medicine, and is the power of everything that cleanses, and most scouring: “For the Word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword.” Whatever you name that is needed, this is in the power of the Word. So there is a word that is lye, and there is a word that is soap, which, when spoken, cleanses such stains. But since not every sin is healed by such a word that is lye and by such a word that is soap, but there are sins that do not call for lye or soap, it is said to the soul that thinks she has sins that can be washed out with lye and soap: “If you wash yourself with lye and multiply soap for yourself, you are stained before me in your iniquities, says the Lord.” And just as some wounds are healed by a poultice, others are healed by oil, and others need a bandage and so become sound, but there are other wounds of which it is said, “It is not possible to apply a poultice, nor oil, nor bandages; but your land is desolate, your cities burned with fire,” so there are some sins that soil the soul, and for these sins a person needs a word that is lye, a word that is soap; but there are some sins that are not healed in this way, for they are not even comparable to dirt. That is why the Lord in Isaiah, knowing the differences between sins, see how he says: “The Lord will wash away the filth of the sons and daughters of Zion, and will cleanse the blood from their midst by a spirit of judgment and a spirit of burning.” Filth and blood: filth by a spirit of judgment, blood by a spirit of burning. If you have sinned, but not “unto death,” you are soiled. “The Lord will wash away the filth of the sons and daughters of Zion, and will cleanse the blood from their midst.” Then there is a correspondence: to “the filth,” “by a spirit of judgment,” and to “the blood,” “by a spirit of burning.” And most of us, if we sin more gravely, need not lye nor the multiplying of soap, but the spirit of burning.

That is why Jesus baptizes (perhaps I now find the explanation) “with the Holy Spirit and fire.” Not that he baptizes the same person “with the Holy Spirit and fire,” but the holy person “with the Holy Spirit,” while the one who, after believing, after being counted worthy of the Holy Spirit, has sinned again, he washes “with fire”; so that it is not the same person who is baptized by Jesus “with the Holy Spirit and fire.” Blessed, then, is the one who is baptized in the Holy Spirit and does not need the baptism of fire. But thrice wretched is he who needs to be baptized with fire. Yet Jesus has both. For “a rod shall come forth from the root of Jesse, and a flower shall come up from the root”: “a rod” for those who are punished, “a flower” for the righteous. So too “God is a consuming fire,” and “God is light”: a consuming fire to sinners, light to the righteous and holy. And “blessed is he who has a part in the first resurrection,” who has kept the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Who is the one saved in another resurrection? The one who needs the baptism of fire, when he comes to that fire, and the fire tests him, and that fire finds wood, hay, and straw, so as to burn them up. So, since these things are said, let us gather the words of the Scriptures as far as we can and lay them up in our heart, and try to live according to them, if perhaps we can become pure before our departure, and, having prepared our works for the departure, go out and be received with those good works and be saved in Christ Jesus, to whom be the glory and the power for ages of ages. Amen.

Homily 3. On “Have I become a wilderness to the house of Israel?” as far as “or a land left untilled?”

The Lord says at the beginning of the reading, about Israel, that he did not become to him a “wilderness,” nor “a land left untilled.” Who, coming to this passage, would not inquire, examining the purpose of what is written? Granted, God did not become a wilderness in Israel, did not become a land left untilled in Israel: has the Lord, then, become a wilderness to Israel today, or is he now a land left untilled to him? And again: when he was not a wilderness to Israel, nor a land left untilled, was he a wilderness and a land left untilled to the nations? For if he is always not a wilderness to all and always not a land left untilled to all, what need was there to say particularly to Israel, as something exceptional, “Have I become a wilderness to the house of Israel, or a land left untilled?” But we may come first to God's universal benefits, and then, after his universal benefits, to the particular ones.

God is a wilderness to no one, making the sun rise on the evil and the good; to no one is he a land left untilled, sending rain on the just and the unjust. How is he a wilderness who makes the day rise and makes the night for rest? How is he a wilderness who makes the earth bear fruit? How is he a wilderness who arranges each person's soul so that he may be rational, may take up knowledge, may exercise his understanding, and, in the body, may have healthy “senses”? So in the universal sense God is a wilderness to no one. But as for the particular sense, I come to the affairs of Israel and say: he was neither a wilderness nor a land left untilled when he did the signs and wonders for the people in Egypt. And if there was a time when they were forsaken, he became as it were a wilderness to them, though he is not a wilderness himself. But when he was not a wilderness to Israel nor a land left untilled, he was, in the particular sense, a wilderness and a land left untilled to the nations. And when he turned away from Israel and became to that Israel a wilderness and a land left untilled, then grace was poured out on the nations, and Christ Jesus has now become to us not a wilderness but full, not a land left untilled but bearing fruit; for “many are the children of the desolate, more than of her who has a husband.” And he threatens those to whom he did not become a wilderness or a land left untilled, saying: I have not become to you “a wilderness” nor “a land left untilled,” but you have said, “We will not be ruled; we will no longer come to you.” Did the sons of Israel say in despair, according to the letter, “We will not be ruled”

Homily 4. On “And the Lord said to me in the days of Josiah” as far as “Israel has justified her soul more than faithless Judah.”

The literal sense of the passage read has something unclear, which must be understood first; and after this, if God grants it, we shall know its mystical meaning. The passage wants us to know that, as is written in the books of Kingdoms, the people were divided in the times of Rehoboam into the kingdom of the ten tribes under Jeroboam and that of the two tribes under Rehoboam; and those under Jeroboam were called Israel, and those under Rehoboam Judah. And this division of the people remained, as far as history goes, until now; for we know of no history that brought Israel and Judah together “into one.” Israel, then, the people under Jeroboam and his successors, sinned first and more, and sinned so much more than Judah that they were condemned by providence to become captives “to the Assyrians,” as Scripture says, “until this day.” After this the sons of Judah sinned too and were condemned to be captives in Babylon, not until this day like Israel, but for “seventy years,” about which Jeremiah prophesied and which Daniel also mentioned. If we understand these things as concerning that people of that time, see whether the words of the prophet do not show something of this kind. For the Word accuses the sins of Israel, and says that when Israel had committed so many sins, the congregation of Judah heard of their failings and of how I made them go into captivity, but was not taught, and added to the sins, so that because of the addition of sins, when compared with the sins of Israel, righteousness was found in Israel compared with Judah. Then, after this, the prophet is ordered to prophesy, as Judah is worse than Israel, so that after the sins it may turn back. So after the prophecy to Israel commanding it to turn back, the prophet prophesies that Israel and Judah are to come together and one day become a single kingdom of both. Whoever cares about the readings, let him take the words of the whole of today's reading, and then he will see these meanings made plain. “And the Lord said to me in the days of Josiah the king: Have you seen what the house of Israel has done to me?” Not Judah, but Israel first. “She went up on every high mountain and under every leafy tree and played the harlot there. And I said, after she had done all these things: Return to me. And she did not return. And faithless Judah saw her faithlessness,” that is, of the congregation of Israel. “And they saw,” those of Judah, “that concerning all the things in which the house of Israel committed adultery, I sent her away and gave her a bill of divorce.” Judah ought to have been taught — for I sent away Israel, the congregation of Israel; I cast them out to the Assyrians “and gave her a bill of divorce into her hands” — “and faithless Judah was not afraid.” After all that I did to Israel, sending him away and giving a bill of divorce, the congregation of Judah ought to have been taught by what those had suffered; but they not only were not taught, but added to their sins, so that the sins of the congregation of Israel, by comparison with the sins of the congregation of Judah, seem to be righteousness. “And I gave her a bill of divorce into her hands; and faithless Judah her sister was not afraid, but went and played the harlot herself too, and her harlotry became as nothing to her, and she committed adultery with wood and stone. And in all these things faithless Judah did not turn to me with her whole heart, but falsely” she turned to me. She did not respect me for what I had done to Israel, so as to turn back completely; but though she ought to have turned in truth, she turned falsely: “And in all these things faithless Judah did not turn to me with her whole heart, but falsely. And the Lord said to me: Israel has justified her soul more than faithless Judah.” The sins of Israel, compared with the failings of Judah, became a justification of the soul of the congregation of Israel.

“Go,” then, “and read these words toward the north.” If the literal sense has been understood, let us see what is meant to be shown in these things. The calling of the nations had its beginning from the trespass of Israel, and the apostles, preaching in the synagogues of the Jews, say: “To you the word of salvation was sent; since you judge yourselves unworthy, behold, we turn to the nations.” And the apostle, knowing what he knows about these things, says: “By their trespass salvation has come to the nations, to make them jealous.” So the many sins of that people caused them to be forsaken and us to come to the hope of the promises, we who were strangers to the covenants, aliens from the commonwealth. For how else would I, who was born anywhere at all, a stranger to the so-called holy land, now discourse about the promises of God, and believe in the God of the patriarchs Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, and by the grace of God receive Jesus Christ, who was proclaimed by the prophets? If you understand these two peoples, the one from Israel and the one from the nations, see for me the deportation of Israel, in the case of that people of Israel too, and understand that it is written about it: “I have sent her away and given her a bill of divorce.” For God sent away that people and gave it a bill of divorce. This is how it is with married people: if the wife is displeasing to her husband, says the law of Moses, a “bill of divorce” was drawn up by the husband and the wife was sent away, and the one who had sent away his former wife, because she seemed to have acted shamefully, was permitted to marry another wife. In this way, by the analogy, see them receiving a bill of divorce. And since they received the bill of divorce, for this reason they have been entirely forsaken. For where are there prophets among them any longer? Where are there signs among them any longer? Where is a manifestation of God? Where is the worship, the temple, the sacrifices? They have been cast out of their place. So he gave Israel “a bill of divorce.” Then we, Judah (Judah because of the Savior, who arose from Judah, for “it is evident that our Lord has arisen from Judah”), have turned to the Lord; and our last state, which may it never be, seems to be becoming like their last state, if not even worse.

For that our situation too will be such at the end of this age is clear from what the Savior said in the Gospel, where he says: “Because lawlessness is multiplied, the love of many will grow cold. But the one who endures to the end will be saved”; and: “He will do signs and wonders so as to lead astray, if possible, even the elect.” Our situation will be such that the Savior says about his coming, as though a believer would hardly be found out of so many churches: “Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?” And truly, if we judge matters by truth and not by crowds, and judge matters by the will and not by seeing many gathered together, we will see that we are not now believers. But they were believers then, when the noble martyrdoms took place, when, after escorting the martyrs from the cemeteries, we came back to the assemblies, and the whole church was present without being crushed, and the catechumens were instructed in the midst of the martyrdoms and the deaths of those who confessed the truth “unto death,” “not frightened” nor troubled, “toward the living God.” Then we know that people saw astonishing and wonderful signs. Then the believers were few, but truly believers, traveling the narrow and hard way that leads “to life.” But now, when we have become many, since it is not possible for many to be elect (for Jesus did not lie when he said, “Many are called, but few are chosen”), out of the multitude of those who profess godliness very few are they who attain to God's election and to blessedness.

So if he says, “First I sent away Israel for their sins, and sent them into exile, but Judah, hearing what had happened to Israel, did not turn back,” he is speaking of our sins. Since the things that befell Israel and the failings of that people are read, we ought to be afraid, and “if he did not spare the natural branches, how much more will he not spare us?” If God, who is both kind and loving toward humankind, did not spare but cut off those who boasted of being “a cultivated olive,” those rooted in “the root” of the patriarchs Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, how much more will he not spare us? “Note, then, the kindness and the severity of God.” For he is not kind without being severe, nor severe without being kind. If he were only kind and not severe, we would despise “his kindness” all the more. If he were severe and not kind, we might perhaps despair because of our sins. But as it is, as God (for we human beings, when we repent, need his kindness, and when we persist in our sins, his severity), God is both kind and severe; and he speaks to us through the prophets and says: “Have you seen what the house of Israel has done to me?” Understand Israel for me as that people: “She went up on every high mountain and under every shady tree.” If you see the Pharisee going up to the temple boastfully, not beating his breast nor grieving over his own evils, but saying, “I thank you that I am not like the rest of men, robbers, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector; I fast twice a week, I give tithes of all I possess,” you will see that he has gone up “on every high mountain” blameworthily, loving arrogance, and, through boastfulness and pride, every high hill; and he has come “under every tree,” not a fruitful one but “leafy.” For a leafy tree is one thing; when people plant trees in groves, they plant not fruit-bearing ones, not a fig or a vine, but only unfruitful trees for pleasure. You will find such to be the words of those who hold other opinions, and the beauties of their persuasive arguments, which do not convert their hearers. So when someone gives himself over to such words, he has gone “under every leafy tree.” He did not say “every tree” and fall silent, nor again add “every fruitful tree,” but said “under every leafy tree.” From this you will understand why the lawgiver says, “You shall not plant any tree beside the altar of the Lord your God, and you shall not make a grove”; for you have even the name of the grove forbidden.

“And she played the harlot there. And I said, after she had played the harlot in all these things: Return to me. And she did not return; and faithless Judah saw her faithlessness.” We too are reproached, I mean those of us who sin and do not keep God's covenants, nor see that those people lost the covenant though they were of noble birth, being from Abraham, having received the promise. We ought therefore to reckon that, if they have fallen from the blessings and promises and it profited them nothing to be from the fathers, how much more shall we be forsaken if we sin. “If you were children of Abraham, you would do the works of Abraham,” the Savior says to them. And again John: “Do not begin to say among yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as father’; for I tell you that God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham,” hinting at us as stones, who had a heart of stone and were hardened against the truth. And truly God has raised up children to Abraham from the stones, if we remain in childbearing and keep the spirit of adoption. So “faithless Judah,” who did not keep her covenants with God, saw “her faithlessness,” that of the house of Israel, and saw “that concerning all the things for which” that one “was forsaken” (for all these things we, Judah, see when we read Scripture), that concerning the things for which the house of Israel was forsaken, in which she committed adultery, God sent her away and gave her a bill of divorce: that we should be taught by what he did to them, judging them according to their sins, forsaking them and handing them over to captivity, to slaughter, and to their enemies. From this we ought to turn back, and each of us reckon that, if God did not spare the natural branches, how much more will he not spare us? If he thrust out those from the fathers in this way when they became sinners, what shall we suffer who were called from the nations, if we have taken none of this to heart, we who were called so that that people might be made jealous, seeing the slave honored, seeing the low-born come near? If they have suffered so much, how much more shall we be forsaken if we sin? “For all the things in which the house of Israel committed adultery, I sent her away and gave her a bill of divorce into her hands; and faithless Judah was not afraid” of what I did to the house of Israel, when “I sent her away and gave her a bill of divorce.” She “was not afraid” of what had happened to them. Someone has entered the house of a master; he is newly bought; he asks which of the earlier servants the master honored and why, which of the servants he dishonored and why. When he has taken note, if he wishes to remain in the master's house, he takes care not to fall into what the earlier slaves did who sinned and were thrown out and handed over to punishment. Then, having learned what the earlier slaves did who won approval, and for what sort of deeds they obtained their freedom, he emulates them. So we too, who were not slaves of God but of idols and demons, pagans, who came to God only yesterday or the day before: let us read Scripture, let us see who was justified and who was condemned; let us imitate those who were justified, and take care not to fall into what befell those who were taken captive, those who were cast off by God.

“And faithless Judah was not afraid, but went and played the harlot herself too.” After Israel first played the harlot, Judah later played the harlot too. “And her harlotry became as nothing, and she committed adultery with the wood and the stone.” When we sin, we do nothing else than become stony-hearted and commit adultery with “the stone.” When we sin and play the harlot “under every leafy tree,” we too commit adultery with the wood. “And faithless Judah did not turn to me with her whole heart, but falsely.” If we have turned to God, but deficiently, we are accused of not having turned “with the whole heart.” That is why “faithless Judah did not turn to me with her whole heart.” He did not say, “And faithless Judah turned and stood firm,” but: “And faithless Judah did not turn to me with her whole heart, but falsely” she turned. True turning, then, is to read the old writings, to know those who were justified and imitate them; to read those writings and see those who were blamed, and take care not to fall under those reproaches; to read the books of the New Testament, the words of the apostles; and after reading, to write all these things on the heart and live by them, so that a bill of divorce may not be given to us too, but that we may be able to come to the holy inheritance; and when the fullness of the nations has been saved, Israel may then be able to enter. For “if the fullness of the nations comes in, then all Israel will be saved,” “and they will become one flock, one shepherd,” who teaches us to glorify God almighty in Christ Jesus himself, to whom be the glory and the power for ages of ages. Amen.

Homily 5. On “Return, you returning sons, and I will heal your breaches” as far as “For these things gird yourselves with sackcloth.”

It is written plainly in the Acts of the Apostles that the apostles first went into the synagogue of the Jews, proclaiming to them, as kinsmen through Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, what is written about the coming of Jesus Christ. But when they did not receive what was said, and there had to be other hearers of the message, then, having justified themselves to them, they left them; for it is written: “It was necessary that the word of God be proclaimed to you; but since you judge yourselves unworthy, behold, we turn to the nations.” And this, which is said plainly in the Acts of the Apostles, is said in effect in many places in the prophets too; for the Holy Spirit of the prophets speaks first to those of that people, and if at times, after saying much, he was not heard, he prophesies the word that is preached to the nations. This has happened too at the beginning of today's reading. For before it, to those of Israel, is said: “Though you call me Father, you will not turn away from me. But as a wife breaks faith with the one who lives with her, so the house of Israel has broken faith with me, says the Lord.” And when these things about Israel had been said first, and the sons of Israel had heard “that they did wrong in their ways and forgot their holy God,” the Holy Spirit next transfers the word to us who are from the nations, and says: “Return, you returning sons, and I will heal your breaches.” For we are those who were full of breaches, each one might say, even if he has now been cleansed and healed of his breaches: “For we ourselves too were foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various desires and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hateful, hating one another; but when the kindness and love for humankind of God our Savior appeared, through the washing of regeneration he poured out his mercy upon us.” And yet, since I have mentioned that apostolic saying, I will try to present it more clearly. For he did not say, “For we were once foolish, disobedient”; but Paul the apostle, who was from Israel, who was “as to righteousness under the law blameless,” says, “For we ourselves too (we from Israel) were once disobedient, foolish.” So not only those from the nations were foolish, nor only those from the nations disobedient, nor only they sinners; but we too, who had been taught the law, were such before the coming of Christ. So after what was said to Israel it is said to us from the nations: “Return, you returning sons, and I will heal your breaches.”

But someone will say: “These things were said to Israel, and you drag them over to those from the nations.” We wish to show that not long after, but immediately, where he wishes to speak to Israel about returning, he adds the name of Israel. Next, at any rate, it is said: “If Israel returns to me, says the Lord, he shall indeed return; and if he removes his abominations from his mouth, and reverences my presence, and swears, ‘The Lord lives,’ with truth and in judgment and in righteousness, then the nations shall bless themselves in him.” The first words, then, were said to those from the nations; since “if the fullness of the nations comes in, then all Israel will be saved,” according to what the apostle says in the Epistle to the Romans. Notice how God urges us, as we return, to return completely, promising that if, “returning,” we return to him, he will heal our “breaches” through Jesus Christ; and we answer, not delaying or being slow about salvation like that Israel, and say: “Behold, we will be yours.” God said, “Return, you returning sons, and I will heal your breaches”; and those from the nations say, “We will be your servants,” not having been “yours” before, but belonging to demons, being under the opposing powers. For “when the Most High divided the nations,” we did not become your portion, nor, with the people of Jacob, the allotment of your inheritance, but became the portions of others. Yet we, who were once portions of others, when you say to us, “Return, you returning sons, and I will heal your breaches,” answer, “Behold, we”; for this is what we were waiting for, the calling. Not as those were called and made excuses, so too do we make excuses when we are called. For we have in the Gospel parables that, when some had been called first, “one said, ‘I have married a wife; have me excused,’ and another, ‘I have bought five yoke of oxen; I am going to try them; have me excused.’” We from the nations were not called in this way only to make excuses. Why should we? About what field, that we should be occupied with it? About what wise wife? Or about what else should we be busy? So God has said to us: “Return, you returning sons, and I will heal your breaches”; and seeing our own breaches and the promise of healing, we immediately answer and say: “Behold, we will be yours, for you are the Lord our God.” Having listened, then, and said “we will be yours,” let us remember that we promised God, saying to him “we will be yours”; and having said to him “we will be yours,” let us belong to no one else: not to a spirit of anger, not to a spirit of grief, not to a spirit of desire; let us not belong to the devil or to his angels. But having been called and having said, “Behold, we will be yours,” let us show by our deeds that we have become his, that we have dedicated ourselves to no one else but him. And we say, “For you are the Lord our God”; for we confess no other god (not the belly, like the gluttons, “whose god is the belly”; not money, like the lovers of money, and greed, “which is idolatry”; nor do we deify and make a god of anything else of the things that most people make gods; but for us the God over all, “who is over all and through all and in all,” is God; and since we hang upon love for God, for love binds us to God), we say: “Behold, we will be yours, for you are the Lord our God.”

Then, condemning our former evils (when we thought the idols great and lofty, worshipped them, and thought wonderful the things we served; but now we have recognized that all those were false and were nothing), we say as we return: “Truly the hills were for a lie,” we too condemning our former lofty things and former marvels. And perhaps, if we take pains, we shall find the difference between the hills and the mountains among the nations, which those who said, “Behold, we will be yours, for you are the Lord our God,” have abandoned, accusing them as false, both the hills and the mountains. What, then, is the difference between the mountains and the hills among the nations, which we have condemned when we say, “Truly the hills were for a lie, and the power of the mountains”? This we say, condemning our former things. Of the things worshipped among the nations, some are worshipped as gods, others as heroes. For they themselves admit about some that they were formerly men and were deified. They worship Heracles not as one born a god, but as changed from a man into a god; they worship Asclepius as having been changed from among men into a god because of his virtue. But when they worship the fathers of these, whom they call gods, they worship them not as having changed from men into gods, but, as they suppose, as gods from the beginning. So those considered by the nations to be gods from the beginning will be the mountains and “the power of the mountains,” while those considered by them to be gods now, but to have been men before, are “the hills.” Knowing, then, both ranks of things worshipped, we say, “Truly the hills were for a lie, and the power of the mountains.” For those who serve them do not suppose that these things are false. That is why they think the oracles and the healings to be true healings, not seeing the difference between every power and sign and wonder of falsehood, done with all the deceit of unrighteousness for those who are perishing, [and the works of truth. What] Christ Jesus [did], these were signs of truth; and before him what Moses did was a power of truth. But what the Egyptians did were signs and wonders, but of falsehood. So too what Simon the magician did after Jesus, so as to lead astray the nation of Samaria and be thought to be the power of God, these too were signs and wonders of falsehood. So when we condemn those things, we who have condemned them say: “Truly the hills were for a lie, and the power of the mountains.”

Then, since we from the nations know that “by the trespass of Israel we received the way of salvation,” and they have been cast outside until our fullness comes in, and we know that “if the fullness of the nations comes in, after this all Israel will be saved,” for this reason we say, first, “Truly the hills were for a lie, and the power of the mountains,” and second, about Israel after the fullness of the nations: “But through the Lord our God is the salvation of Israel.” And since we have once mentioned the apostolic saying that “by the trespass by which Israel fell, salvation has come to the nations,” and that when “the fullness of the nations comes in,” while Israel remains outside, after the fullness of the nations has come in “then all Israel will be saved,” come, let us unfold the matters in these passages. There was an Israel being saved. The greater part of Israel fell away, but “a remnant according to the election of grace has come to be,” concerning which remnant it is said mystically “in Elijah”: “I have left for myself seven thousand men who have not bowed the knee to Baal.” And interpreting this remnant the apostle says: “So too at the present time a remnant according to the election of grace has come to be.” So there is an Israel, even if only a remnant, that is saved, while Israel was left behind. Transfer these two ranks for me, if you are able, to those from the nations as well. For he did not say, “When all the nations are saved, then all Israel will be saved,” but “when the fullness of the nations comes in, then” — not after all the nations, but after “the fullness of the nations” — “all Israel will be saved.” If anyone can, having found, as it were, Israel being saved after the fullness of the nations, let him go further in thought and consider when all “will serve God under one yoke,” according to what is said in Zephaniah, and bring sacrifices “from the ends of Ethiopia”; when, as is said in the sixty-seventh Psalm, “Ethiopia shall hasten to stretch out her hand to God,” and the Word commands the kingdoms “of the earth,” saying, “Sing to the Lord, sing praises to the God of Jacob.”

So we from the nations say about ourselves, repenting of the false things we thought true: “Truly the hills were for a lie, and the power of the mountains”; and about Israel, which will be saved after us: “But through the Lord our God is the salvation of the house of Israel.” Then, confessing the sins in which our fathers were and we ourselves were when we worshipped idols, we say: “But shame has consumed the labors of our fathers from their youth, their sheep and their oxen, their sons and their daughters.” “Shame has consumed the labors of our fathers,” and the rest of what is said. So if the wicked labor and the false work of the fathers is to be consumed, shame must come; for before shame the labor of the fathers, and what follows, is not consumed. For this reason let us consider the differences among those who sin. There are those who sin and are not ashamed, nor abashed at their sins, nor blush. Such are those who “have become callous and have given themselves up to all licentiousness and all impurity.” For [you see] among those from the nations how at times they list their acts of sexual immorality and their adulteries as feats of valor, not even ashamed to confess they have done such things, and they do not call them sins. As long as they are not ashamed, their labors are not consumed; their sins are not consumed. The beginning of good things is for someone to be ashamed of what he was not ashamed of before. That is why I do not think it is a curse that is spoken in the prophets in “Let all who hate Zion be put to shame and turned back.” For he prays that those insensible to the works of shame may come to awareness, so that, being ashamed, they may be able to consume their labors and their sins.

The irrational movements of the fathers he called “sheep” and “calves.” For not all irrational things are praiseworthy; some are blameworthy, like the sheep of the fathers who sinned; but some irrational things are praiseworthy, for example: “My sheep hear my voice.” These too were sheep, to which we have the corresponding meaning, having the good shepherd in our souls. For when the Savior says, “I am the good shepherd,” I do not hear it only as everyone hears it, that he is the shepherd of those who believe (and that is sound and true), but also that in my own soul I ought to have Christ within me, the good shepherd within me, shepherding the irrational movements in me, so that they no longer go out to pasture at random, but, being led by the shepherd, these things that were once foreign to him may become his own. So now, if the shepherd is in me, he rules my senses; they are no longer under an alien mind, or under Pharaoh, or under Nebuchadnezzar, but under the good shepherd.

“Shame,” then, “has consumed the labors of our fathers from their youth, their sheep and their oxen.” There is something in us that tills us, and it tills either badly (to say “badly” of the one who tills) or well. If it tills badly, it is a labor of the fathers consumed by their shame; if it tills well, it is not a labor of the fathers, but a labor from which the firstborn are brought up to the altar of God. “Their sons and their daughters,” these say. Whose? The sons and the daughters of “them,” that is, “of the fathers,” are consumed by their shame. We have often spoken of the offspring of the soul: that thoughts are sons, and the works and deeds done through the body are daughters. Since, then, there are wicked thoughts, such as those from the nations thought, and there are also wicked works, for this reason sons and daughters are consumed by those who made them, if shame for their sins arises in them. But may it not be ours to beget sons and daughters for the consuming that comes from shame.

After this those who make confession say, “We have lain down in our shame”; and after that they say, “and our dishonor has covered us.” We have often spoken about the veil that lies over the face of those who do not turn to the Lord. Because of this veil, “whenever Moses is read,” the sinner does not understand him; for “a veil lies over his heart.” Because of the veil, if the Old Testament is read, the hearer will not understand. Because of the veil, the gospel too is veiled to those who are perishing. We were saying, then, about the veil, that shame is the veil. For as long as we have “the works of shame,” clearly we have the veil, according to what is said somewhere in the forty-third Psalm: “And the shame of my face has covered me.” I have shown that the one who does not have works of shame does not have a veil, such as Paul was when he said: “But we all, with unveiled face, behold the glory of the Lord as in a mirror.” Paul, then, has an unveiled face; for he does not have works of shame. The one who is not like Paul has a veiled face. As, then, it is said there in the forty-third Psalm, “The shame of my face has covered me,” in the same way it is said here: “Our dishonor,” he says, “has covered us.” As long as we do works of dishonor, we have a veil lying over our heart. If we wish to put off the veil that comes from dishonor, let us come to the works of honor and understand what the Savior said: “that all may honor the Son even as they honor the Father”; let us understand too what the apostle says: “Through transgression of the law you dishonor God.” The righteous man, as he honors the Father, honors the Son. Dishonor, when I dishonor the Son (the very dishonor by which I dishonor the Father or the Son), becomes a covering over my face, and I say, “And our dishonor has covered us.” For this reason, understanding the veil that lies on us from the works of shame, from the deeds of dishonor, let us take off the veil. It lies with us that the veil be taken away; it is no one else's doing. For “whenever Moses turned to the Lord, he took off the veil.” Do you see how Moses is sometimes taken to stand for the people too? As long as he did not turn to the Lord, being a symbol of the people that does not turn to the Lord, he had a veil lying on his face; but when he turned to the Lord, becoming a symbol of those who turn to the Lord, then “he took off the veil.” And it was not as if God ordered him, “Put on the veil” (for the Lord did not say to Moses, “Put on the veil”); rather Moses, seeing that the people could not look on his glory, then put “the veil on his face,” and did not wait for God to say, “Take off the veil,” “whenever he turned to the Lord.”

This, then, is written so that you too, who put the veil on your face through the works of dishonor and shame, may yourself bring about the removal of the veil. If you turn to the Lord, then you take away the veil, and you will no longer say, “Our dishonor has covered us.” For example, anger lying on our soul against someone lies as a veil over our face. For this reason, if we wish to say in prayer, “The light of your face has been signed upon us, O Lord,” let us take away the veil and do that apostolic saying: “I wish, then, that the men pray in every place, lifting up holy hands without anger or disputing.” If we take away anger, we have taken away the veil; and so if we take away all the passions. But as long as these are in our mind, in our reasoning, the veil and the dishonor lie on the inner face, our ruling faculty, so that we do not see the glory of God shining. It is not God who hides his glory from us, but we who lay the veil of wickedness on our ruling faculty.

“For we have sinned before our God, we and our fathers.” Would that we too might say this, as these do in the prophet's personification: “We have sinned.” “We have sinned” is not the same as “we are sinning.” Let the one still in sin not say “we have sinned”; but let the one who sinned before but has repented thoroughly say “we have sinned,” as in Daniel too there is written the confession of those who no longer sin, saying, “We have sinned, we have done lawlessly”; and in the Psalms the prophet says, “Do not remember against us our ancient iniquities.” So let us too confess our sins, not, I hope, yesterday's, not those of three days ago, but, I hope, in confessing let us confess sins committed fifteen years ago, by having had no sin after them for fifteen years. But if we sinned yesterday, we are not yet trustworthy in confessing our sins, nor is there room for these sins of ours to be wiped out. “For we have sinned, we and our fathers, from our youth until this day.” Let those earlier words be taken in another way, as teaching about the best manner of confession; but these words are an accusation of sinning for a long time. “From youth,” he says, “until this day, and we did not obey the voice of the Lord our God.” “We have sinned, and we did not obey” up to the present. Then, having turned and having a beginning of conversion, they say, “We have sinned, and we did not obey.” For we do not obey at once, as soon as we wish to obey; there is still need of time, just as with wounds for healing, so too with conversion, to turn completely and purely to God.

After this God says about Israel: “If Israel returns to me, says the Lord, he shall indeed return”; that is, if he returns completely, he will be returned with a true return, not if he only, as it were, begins to return. Then he says: “And if he removes his abominations from his mouth, and reverences my presence, and swears, ‘The Lord lives,’ in truth and in judgment and in righteousness, then the nations shall bless themselves in him.” If they do these things, “the nations shall bless themselves in him.” What things must they do, so that the nations may bless themselves in him? “If he removes his abominations from his mouth.” And what is removing the abominations from the mouth? Whatever we say wrongly is an abomination in our mouth. Let us, then, remove the abominations from our mouth, removing slanders, vain words, idle words, and words that will cause us to be accused “on the day of judgment; for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.” If, then, we wish that there come to us “And the nations shall bless themselves in him, and in him they shall praise God in Jerusalem,” let us do what was said at the beginning. And what is first? To remove “the abominations from” our “mouth.” Next is also “You shall reverence my presence.” Let us do this second, not simply so as to be reverent; for perhaps there is a reverence that arises, but not before the presence of God. Those, at any rate, who fear without understanding, though they intend to fear, are not reverent before the presence of God. But all who are reverent with understanding, by always seeing and picturing to themselves “the face of the Lord set against those who do evil, to cut off the remembrance of them from the earth,” these are the ones who reverence the presence of God.

“If he removes his abominations from his mouth, and reverences my presence, and swears, ‘The Lord lives,’ in truth and in judgment and in righteousness.” Let us who swear look at ourselves, how we swear not with judgment but without judgment, so that our oaths come about from habit rather than from judgment. We are carried away, at any rate; and rebuking this the Word says: “And if he swears, ‘The Lord lives,’ in truth and in judgment and in righteousness.” We know that it is said in the Gospel by the Lord to the disciples, “But I say to you, do not swear at all”; but let us look at this saying too, and, if God grants it, both will be examined together. For perhaps one must first swear “in truth and in judgment and in righteousness,” so that after this, having made progress, one may become worthy not to swear at all, but to have a “yes” that needs no witnesses that it is so, and to have a “no” that needs no witnesses that it is truly “no.” “And he swears,” then, “‘The Lord lives,’ in truth.” In the one who swears I look first for no falsehood, but the truth, so that he may swear with truth; but we wretches even perjure ourselves. But granted it is “with truth”: even so an oath is not rightly made unless it is “in judgment.” For suppose I swear from habit: I do not swear “in judgment.” If one must bring the God of the universe and his Christ into such an oath about some matter, how great must the matter be for me to kneel and swear? I might do this sometime to heal unbelief that has arisen in some people about my word; but if I swore just as it happened, I would sin. “If,” then, “he swears, ‘The Lord lives,’ with truth and in judgment,” not without judgment, “and in righteousness,” not unjustly, “then the nations shall bless themselves in him.” He united both, those from the nations and Israel; he spoke about the nations, he spoke also about Israel.

He goes on: “And the nations shall bless themselves in him, and in him they shall praise God in Jerusalem. For thus says the Lord to the men of Judah and to those who dwell in Jerusalem.” He has spoken to those from the nations, he has spoken also to those from Israel; he speaks to those from Judah. I remember the figurative interpretations given recently about Judah and those who dwell in Jerusalem. For we, if God grants it, dwell in Jerusalem. Since “where the treasure is, there the heart is too,” if we lay up treasure in heaven, we also have our heart in the Jerusalem above, about which the apostle says: “But the Jerusalem above is free, which is our mother, as it is written,” and the rest. “Thus,” then, “says the Lord to the men of Judah and to those who dwell in Jerusalem: Break up fallow ground for yourselves, and do not sow among thorns.” This word is said especially to those who teach, so that they do not entrust what is said to their hearers before they have broken up fallow ground in their souls. For when, “having put their hand to the plough,” they have broken up fallow ground in the souls of those who listen, like “the good and fair soil,” then they sow, not among thorns. But if, before the plough and before breaking up fallow ground in the ruling faculty of the hearers, someone takes the holy seeds, the teaching about the Father, about the Son, about the Holy Spirit, the teaching about the resurrection, the teaching about punishment, the teaching about rest, about the law, about the prophets, and, in a word, about each of the things written, and sows, he transgresses the commandment that says, first, “Break up fallow ground for yourselves,” second, “and do not sow among thorns.” But one of the listeners will say: “I do not teach; I am not subject to this commandment.” You too, become your own farmer, and do not sow among thorns, but break up for me the field that the God of the universe has entrusted to you. Examine the field; see where the thorns are, where “the cares of life, and the deceit of wealth,” and love of pleasure are. And having noted the thorns in your soul, seek the rational plough, about which Jesus says, “No one who puts his hand to the plough and turns back is fit for the kingdom of God.” When you have sought and found it, gathering from the Scriptures the pure working oxen, plough and break up the ground; and so that it may no longer be old, make it new by “putting off the old man with his practices and putting on the new, which is being renewed in knowledge”; you will make fallow ground for yourself. And if you make the fallow ground, take seeds from those who teach, take seeds from the law, take them from the prophets, from the gospel writings, from the apostolic words; and having taken these seeds, sow the soul through memory and meditation. These things will seem to spring up of themselves; but in truth they will not spring up of themselves after being remembered; God will make them grow: “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth.” And if anyone has been able to understand the Scriptures, he has broken up fallow ground, and having broken it up has sown, not among thorns. These seeds are arranged by God not to become ears of grain suddenly, but, as in the Gospel according to Mark, “first the blade, then the ear,” then it becomes ready for harvest. When it becomes ready for harvest, those sent out to the harvest will come; when it becomes ready for harvest, those will come to whom the Word says: “Lift up your eyes and see the fields, that they are white already for harvest.” So he says to us: “Break up fallow ground for yourselves, and do not sow among thorns.” But if, before you cleanse your soul, while you still have thorns, you come to one who is able, or is thought able, to teach, and ask for spiritual lessons and seeds, you transgress the commandment that says, “Do not sow among thorns.”

And next to this it is said: “Be circumcised to your God, circumcise the foreskin of your heart.” “Be circumcised to your God”: “to your God” is added of necessity. You will understand it from the example of the perceptible: people are circumcised, perceptibly I mean, not only those of the circumcision according to the law of Moses, but many others as well. The priests of the Egyptians are circumcised for idols; but that circumcision is a circumcision for idols and is not a circumcision done to God; while that of the Jews perhaps, and certainly at that time, was done to God. So if the Word says, “Be circumcised to your God,” once you have understood the literal sense, pass over to the figurative sense too, so as to find how, among those circumcised in the figurative sense (so that perhaps some of them could say, “We are the circumcision”), some are circumcised to God, and others are circumcised, but not to God. For there are other teachings besides the teaching of the truth, besides the teaching of the church. Philosophers circumcise their morals and their heart, so to speak, and are self-disciplined; those from the heresies are self-disciplined, and a circumcision comes about for them. But it is a circumcision, yet not to God; for with them the circumcision comes about by a false teaching. But when you are in communion according to the church's rule, according to the purpose of sound teaching, you are not merely circumcised, but circumcised “to God.” “Be circumcised,” then, “to your God, and circumcise the foreskin of your heart.” Who does not pass over these words as clear? And yet there is a foreskin of the heart, and it must be circumcised. One who examines the saying carefully will investigate such things as these in the passage: the foreskin is born with us, circumcision is acquired, and what has come from birth circumcision removes. If, then, the Word commands the removal of “the foreskin of the heart,” there must be something born together with the heart, which it calls a foreskin, which must be removed so that one may be circumcised in “the foreskin of the heart.” If someone understands “We were by nature children of wrath, like the rest,” if someone understands “the body of humiliation” in which we have been born, if someone understands “No one is clean from filth, even if his life be one day; his months are numbered,” he will see how we have been born with uncleanness and a foreskin of our heart.

But so that it may be said by way of a simpler example, able to bring you to see “the foreskin of the heart,” I will point out that in early youth false opinions inevitably arise in the soul; for it is not possible for a human being to receive true doctrines from the beginning. The divine Word provided history and a Scripture according to the letter, so as to nourish the one born to Abraham according to the flesh first in the words according to the flesh, and he becomes first the one from the slave woman, so as afterwards to be able to be born the one from the free woman, the one through the promise. Why this was mentioned: the foreskin of the heart, which comes before circumcision, can be understood. We need, then, to take up the Word who cleanses doctrines and removes everything that has arisen in us through false opinion. This, then, is to put off the foreskin of our heart; for if the heart is what holds our ruling faculty, where the thoughts are, from which “evil thoughts come out,” then the one who removes the evil thoughts removes “the foreskin of the heart”; the one who puts off false opinion has been circumcised in “the foreskin of his heart,” and, being circumcised, becomes a “man of Judah and one who dwells in Jerusalem.” But if someone does not put off “the foreskin of his heart,” let us see what the Word threatens him with: “Lest,” he says, “my wrath go forth like fire and burn, and there be none to quench it.” So the wrath of the Lord goes forth like fire upon those not circumcised to God, upon those who have not put off “the foreskin” of their “heart,” “and there will be none to quench it because of the wickedness of” their “practices.” That fire has as its fuel the wickedness of our practices. Where there is no wickedness of practices, the fire has nothing to feed on. And that the fuel of that fire is the wickedness of practices, hear the prophet saying: “And there will be none to quench it because of the wickedness of your practices.” “Declare in Judah, and let it be heard in Jerusalem; say, declare, signal with the trumpet on the land, and cry aloud.” These things that are announced, he says, say in Judah, to those from the tribe of Judah, the tribe of Christ; “for it is evident that our Savior has arisen from Judah.”

“Signal with the trumpet on the land.” The lofty word, which rouses the hearer, which prepares him for the war against the passions, for the war against the workings of the opposing powers, which prepares him for the heavenly feasts (for the trumpet is used for both these things), is taken as a trumpet. In Numbers such a word is a trumpet; as the Word commands me, and anyone else to whom it is given (it is given to whoever wishes and seeks the meaning of the Scriptures), it commands to make “silver trumpets of beaten work.” So the Word says: “Signal with the trumpet on the land, and cry aloud; say: Gather, and let us enter the fortified cities.” The Word of God does not wish us to enter an unwalled city, but the one that is the church of the living God, walled by the power of the Word (for he is the wall) … it is in the seventeenth Psalm that God is also a wall. “Take up your things and flee to Zion”: all of you who are outside Zion, “take up your things and flee to Zion; hasten, do not stand still”; you who are making progress, hasten to the watchtower, “for I am bringing evils from the north, and a great destruction.” Of the evils brought “from the north,” the north of the adversary, as has often been said, whoever is found not to have hastened nor entered “the fortified cities,” not to have been in the churches of God, but standing outside, will himself be caught and slain by the enemies. And who is the enemy? Let us see from what follows how it is said: “A lion has come up from his lair; destroying, he has set out against nations.” This is the enemy we must flee. A lion is hunting us. Who is he? Peter teaches, saying: “Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour; resist him, firm in the faith”; and according to the ninth Psalm, “he lies in wait in secret, he lies in wait like a lion in his lair.” And this lion lies in wait not by day, but when night comes; for according to the hundred and third Psalm: “You made darkness and it was night; in it all the beasts of the forest will prowl, young lions roaring to snatch and to seek their food from God.”

“A lion,” then, “has come up from his lair.” Where? When? He is below, having fallen; he has come down to the lowest parts of the earth. “A lion has come up from his lair.” You are a human being: you are higher than the devil; for you are better than he, whoever you are; he is below because of his wickedness. “A lion,” then, “has come up from his lair; destroying, he has set out against nations”: having come up “from his lair,” the place fitting for his punishment, “destroying, he has set out against nations; he has gone forth from his place to make your land a desolation.” He wants your land, about which we were speaking a little earlier. He wants to graze on each one of us. So he comes “to make your land a desolation,” so that the lion may trample the seeds, so that he may make your land desert. “And your cities will be pulled down so as not to be inhabited. For these things gird yourselves with sackcloth.” Since, then, a lion has come up, and a lion threatens you and wishes to destroy your land, gird yourself with sackcloth, weep and mourn, call on God in prayer that he may destroy this lion from you and you may not fall into his mouth. For “as when the shepherd snatches from the mouth of the lion two legs or the tip of an ear”: this lion seeks to seize you by the ears, so that, setting false words before you through your appetite for novelty, he may draw you away from the truth; he wishes to snatch your feet from the truth and devour you. But you, gird yourself with sackcloth, beat your breast, weep and wail, seeing the enemy at hand, so that “the fierce anger of the Lord” may turn away from you, and, the anger having turned away, you may be free of care, the lion no longer creeping in on you, because you have entered the fortified city, and may glorify God who delivers you in Christ Jesus, to whom be the glory and the power for ages of ages. Amen.

Homily 6. On “Lord, your eyes are upon faithfulness” as far as “I will go to the great men and speak to them.”

“Lord,” he says, “your eyes are upon faith.” As “the eyes of the Lord are upon the righteous,” for he turns them away from the unrighteous, so the eyes of the Lord are upon faith, for he turns them away from unbelief. That is why “Lord, your eyes are upon faith” is well said by one who understands what he is saying in prayer. So what is written here is “Lord, your eyes are upon faith.” But since “if a man of understanding hears a wise word, he will praise it and add to it,” see how much can be done with “Lord, your eyes are upon faith.” Paul says, “But now these three remain, faith, hope, love; but the greatest of these is love.” As the eyes of the Lord are upon faith, the eyes of the Lord are upon hope, the eyes of the Lord are upon love. And since there is “a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline,” as the eyes of the Lord are upon love, so the eyes of the Lord are upon power, so the eyes of the Lord are upon self-discipline … the eyes of the Lord are upon righteousness. So the eyes of the Lord are upon all the virtues. If, then, you too wish the rays of God's spiritual eyes to reach you, take up the virtues. And as it is “Lord, your eyes are upon faith,” so it will be “Lord, your eyes” are upon each of the goods you acquire. And if you become so great that the eyes of the Lord shine upon you, you will say, “The light of your face has been signed upon us, O Lord.”

Then let us look at what is said about sinners: “You scourged them, and they felt no pain.” These perceptible whips, when applied to living bodies, cause pain to those who are whipped, whether they wish it or not; but God's whips are such that some of those who are whipped feel pain, and some of those who are whipped do not. Let us see whether we can explain what it is to feel pain from God's whips and what it is not to feel it, and that those who feel no pain from God's whips are wretched, while those who feel pain from God's whips are blessed. For Wisdom says: “Who will set whips over my thought, and the seal of the prudent upon my lips, that they may not spare my ignorances, and my sins may not destroy me?” Notice “Who will set whips over my thought?” So there are whips that scourge the thought. The whips of God scourge the thought; for a word that takes hold of the soul and brings it to awareness of its sins scourges it. It scourges the blessed person, who feels pain under the whips, for what is said reaches him, and he does not make light of the one who rebukes him. But when someone is found, so to speak, insensible, it will be said of him, “You scourged them, and they felt no pain.” When the same word is spoken by way of rebuke, for example so that what is said may reach the mind of one whose conscience is stained by some sin, if one of the hearers is pained, so that it is said of him, “Did you see how so-and-so was cut to the heart?”, while another of the hearers is not pained but is insensible to those who rebuke him, clearly it will be said of the one who does not even feel it: “You scourged them, and they felt no pain.” This is one explanation of “they felt no pain” or “they felt pain”; let us see whether we have another too. Deadness and dryness occur in certain parts of bodies, and often the deadened members are so affected, in contrast with the living ones, that when things able to cause pain are applied to a living member, the one to which the painful thing is applied feels pain; but when things that cause pain are applied to the insensible member, it does not feel them, since there is deadness about it. If you have seen this in the body, transfer it to the soul, and see that there is also a soul deadened in its members, so as not to feel the whips, even if painful things are applied. Dreadful things are applied, but this soul will not feel them, while another will. And perhaps the one who does not feel the pains applied to him is more grieved at not feeling than he would be at feeling, praying rather to feel pain if painful things were applied (since this is a sign that he is alive), and distressed at not feeling the painful things. Just as this happens with bodies, so I think something of this kind is shown in “They will wish that they had been burned with fire”: as though, when fire is applied to someone and the one burned does not feel it, they will wish, having understood the comparison between those who do not feel their pains and those who do, rather to feel the fire than not to feel it. And one might pray, when that fire appointed for sinners is applied, rather to feel it than not to feel it. So much on “You scourged them, and they felt no pain.” “You made an end of them, and they would not receive instruction.” When God, who provides for the universe, does the cleansing things for the salvation of the soul, he has brought to completion what depends on him. You will understand “You made an end of them, and they would not receive instruction” from the example of one who hands on knowledge and one who does not wish to receive knowledge from the one who hands it on. Let the teacher do everything in his power and bring everything to completion for the handing on of knowledge, but let the other not accept what is said: I would say to the teacher about such a person, “You have completed this one, and he would not receive instruction.” If, then, everything from providence comes to us so that we may be completed and perfected, but we do not accept the things of the providence that draws us toward perfection, it might be said to God by one who understands: “Lord, you made an end of them, and they would not receive instruction.”

“They made their faces harder than rock.” You will understand this too from more bodily things. Of those who sin, some, when they hear words of rebuke for their sin, blush and shrink and bow down when the rebuking word touches them; but others are such that they are shameless, not abashed at the things for which they are rebuked, at the sins they have committed. So you might say of those who are not abashed: “They made their faces harder than rock.” If you have understood it of bodily things, pass over with me in thought to the soul, understanding a face about which it is said, “but then face to face.” And see a hard soul, such as was Pharaoh's hardened heart, so that it stands resistant to what is proclaimed, and as though throwing off what is said, not being shaped by what is proclaimed. For there you will find that “They made their faces harder than rock and would not turn back” fits. “And I said: Perhaps they are poor, because they would not know the way of the Lord and the judgment of God. I will go to the great men and speak to them.” Having understood this about those who would not be instructed, who have no understanding under God's whips, he speaks, having understood the cause of these things: their soul is poor. “And I said: Perhaps they are poor, because they were not able, because they did not know the way of the Lord and the judgment of God.” “I will go to the great men and speak to them.” Those who are great in soul are so called in praise. For among the Greeks too “greatness” and the grandeur of the rational soul are often named. For when someone undertakes great things and has worthy purposes and always considers what is needed, how he may live according to right reason, wishing nothing low and small and looking at nothing such, such a one has greatness and grandeur in his soul. So these, since they were poor, the first ones whom the Word blamed, did not listen, says the prophet. They did not listen for this reason, because they are poor. “I will go to the great men and speak to them.” And if it is a blessed thing to speak “into the ears of those who listen,” it is a blessed thing if one finds a great and noble hearer. So, since these things are said in this way, knowing that the failure to accept what is proclaimed is not so much a loss to those who speak as to those who hear, and that it convicts the poverty of their mind and understanding, let us pray to receive from God, as the Word grows in us, greatness and grandeur in Christ Jesus, so that we may be able to hear the sacred and holy words; to him be the glory and the power for ages of ages. Amen.

Homily 7. On “And it shall be in those days, says the Lord your God, I will not strike you to the end” as far as “so you shall serve foreigners in a land not yours.”

God, who judges “little by little,” gives room to those who are punished, and does not, as soon as someone has sinned, bring the full end of punishment on the one who has sinned. That is why, “judging little by little,” he punishes. And an example of this is in Leviticus; for in the curses on those who transgress the law it is written, after the earlier punishments: “And it shall be, if after this you do not turn back, says the Lord, I too will add seven plagues to you.” And again it describes another punishment: “And it shall be, if after this you do not turn back, but walk crosswise toward me, I too will walk with you in crosswise fury.” And you will find God measuring out punishments with restraint, since he wishes to bring the sinner to conversion, and not paying them all out at once. Such things, then, as far as the letter goes, had happened to the people; and the Word, threatening them with what they will suffer after those things, says: “And it shall be in those days, says the Lord your God, I will not strike you to the end.” Whether these words reach especially to the punishments to come … if not, let him who is able pass over from what happened to the people in this life to those punishments as well. For I would be persuaded to say that, as they “serve a copy and shadow of the heavenly things,” so that people was punished for its sins with a copy and shadow of the true punishments, so that every punishment in the law and the prophets concerning the people contains a shadow of true punishments. If, then, the full end did not come upon them at once for their sins, but only at last, at some time, so perhaps there will be punishment for sinners even after their departure from this life. There was an end for Jerusalem when the captivity of Nebuchadnezzar came. Yet someone will say that not even then was there an end, nor in the times of the Maccabees; but the end for the people came at the coming of my Lord Jesus Christ. For as long as the Savior had not said to them, “Behold, your house is left to you,” it was not left. But when he wept over Jerusalem, saying, “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, killing the prophets and stoning those sent to her, how often I wished to gather your children as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you would not! Behold, your house is left to you desolate,” the house was left, “Jerusalem was surrounded by armies,” since the house had been left, and “its desolation drew near.” Then after their trespass salvation came to us from the nations. So they were being punished, and the end did not reach them until the coming of my Lord Jesus.

I consider whether things are not such for us too, and certain punishments come about, so that some have no experience of second punishments but are sufficed by the first, while others come also to the second, but not to the third, and others will come even to the fourth. For “I will add seven plagues” shows some mystery, the first plague coming on some, and a second and a third, up to the seven mentioned. Not all are struck with seven plagues; but I think some will be struck with six plagues, others with five, others with four, others with three or two; and those lowest of all in punishments I think will be struck with one plague. So God knows the matters of the plagues too. That is why it is written here at the beginning of the reading: “And it shall be in those days,” the days concerning what was spoken, “I will not make an end of you.” Not in those days is there an end; for there are certain days when he will make an end of those of whom he will make an end.

“And it shall be, when you say, ‘Why has the Lord our God done all these evils to us?’ you shall say to them: ‘Because you forsook me and served other gods in your land, so you shall serve foreigners in a land not yours.’” Let the literal sense be understood, and it is enough for the present to set out a reminder from the literal sense for those able to hear. The sons of Israel had the holy land, the temple, the house of prayer. They were bound to worship God. But transgressing the divine commandments, they worshipped idols and took over the idols of Damascus, as is written in the books of Kingdoms, and brought other idols of the nations into the holy land. By taking over the idols of the nations they made themselves worthy to be cast down into the land of the idols, to live there where they worshipped the idols. So the Word says to them according to the letter: “Because you forsook me and served foreign gods in your land, so you shall serve foreign gods in a land not yours.” Everyone who makes a god of anything serves foreign gods. Do you deify food and drink? Your god is “the belly.” Do you honor money as a great good, and the wealth here below? Your god and lord is mammon. For Jesus called it the lord of lovers of money, saying: “You cannot serve God and mammon; no one can serve two lords.” So the one who honors money and admires wealth and thinks it a good, and welcomes the rich as gods while despising the poor as not having their god, makes a god of money. If someone who is in the house of God, the church, worships foreign gods, making gods of things not worthy to be made gods, he will be cast out into a foreign land; and let him worship the gods whom he worshipped while he was inside. Outside let the lover of money be, cast out of the church; outside the church let the glutton be. This is according to one figurative interpretation, so that I may not now busy myself with things beyond me, about the land of which the Savior said, “Who will give you what is ours?”, and that, when a certain worship took place in the land, God so arranged it that some were cast out from his own land and came to the land about which it is written: “Hear, O Israel: why are you in the land of your enemies? You have been counted with those who go down to Hades. You have forsaken the fountain of life, the Lord. If you had walked in the way of God, you would have dwelt in peace for ever.” Now, then, we are in a foreign land, and we pray to do the opposite of what the sons of Israel did in the holy land. For they worshipped foreign things in the holy land; but we in a foreign land worship the God who is foreign to the land, foreign to earthly affairs. For the ruler of this age rules here, and God is a stranger to his sons. When I say “foreign,” I do not mean this: not foreign as though he did not create the world, but foreign to the lord of wickedness, foreign to the sins at hand. And yet, wishing to worship God, who is foreign to the affairs of sin, in this land of affliction, let us see what we do. We do not say, “How shall we sing the Lord's song in a foreign land?” but, “How shall we sing the Lord's song if not in a foreign land?” We seek a place in it to sing the Lord's song, a place to worship the Lord our God in a foreign land. What, then, is the place? I have found it. He came to this land wearing the body that saved, having taken up “the body of sin” “in the likeness of sinful flesh,” so that in this place, because of Christ Jesus who came to dwell here and destroyed the ruler of this age and destroyed sin, I may be able to worship God here, and after this I will worship in the holy land. For if one who worshipped idols in the holy land went away into the foreign land, one who worships God in the foreign land will go away to the holy land in Christ Jesus, to whom be the glory and the power for ever. Amen.

Homily 8. On “The Lord who made the earth by his strength” as far as “Every man has become foolish, without knowledge.”

The prophet takes, as it were, three virtues of God, his strength, his wisdom, and his understanding, and assigns to each of them a work proper to it: to strength the earth, to wisdom the inhabited world, and to understanding the heaven. For hear the text saying: “The Lord who made the earth by his strength, who set upright the inhabited world by his wisdom, and by his understanding stretched out the heaven.” And we too, with regard to our own earth (for it was said to Adam, “You are earth”), need the strength of God; without the power of God we cannot accomplish the things that are not according to “the mind of the flesh.” But when “the members that are on the earth have been put to death,” what is according to the will of the Spirit will come about, since “by the Spirit the deeds of the flesh” are put to death, according to the apostle. “The Lord,” then, “who made the earth by his strength.” And if you come also to this earth, if you can see what is written in Job, as we have found in the more accurate copies, that he set it “upon nothing,” you will see that it lies in the very middle by the strength of God. I come also to the inhabited world. I know a soul that is inhabited, I know a soul that is desert. For if it does not have God, if it does not have Christ, who said, “I and my Father will come to him and make our dwelling with him,” if the soul does not have the Holy Spirit, it is desert. But it is inhabited when it is filled with God, when it has Christ, when the Holy Spirit is in it. That the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are in the human soul is said in the Scriptures in various and different ways. David, at any rate, in the psalm of confession, asks the Father about these spirits, saying, “Establish me with a ruling spirit,” “Renew a right spirit within me,” “and do not take your Holy Spirit from me.” What are these three spirits? The ruling one is the Father, the right one is Christ, and the Holy Spirit is the Holy Spirit. These things are said to show that the inhabited world is set upright in no other way than by the wisdom of God; for “wisdom will help the wise man more than ten rulers who are in the city.” “But he who despises wisdom and instruction is wretched, and his hope is empty, and his labors unprofitable, and his works useless,” says the Wisdom that bears the name of Solomon. For this reason, as far as we can, since the inhabited world is set upright by the wisdom of God, let us too wish our own inhabited world, which has perhaps fallen, to be set upright. For this inhabited world fell when we came into the place of affliction; this inhabited world fell when “we sinned, we acted impiously, we did wrong”; and it needs to be set upright. So God is the one who set upright the inhabited world. But if you do not take “who set upright the inhabited world” in this way, but understand the inhabited world more generally, seek from what he set the inhabited world upright; seek the fall of the inhabited world, so that, having found its fall, you may see its setting upright. If there is anyone in this inhabited world, if you understand the inhabited world in this way, before being set upright he had fallen. If he has fallen, clearly he needs to be set upright; and no one needs to be set upright who has not fallen. If he was set upright, clearly each of those in the inhabited world had fallen through sin. And it is the Lord “who sets upright those who are cast down” and “upholds all who are falling”; “in Adam all die,” and so the inhabited world has fallen and needs to be set upright, so that “in Christ all” may be made alive. So I have given two explanations of the inhabited world, in one showing for each person how every soul is either inhabited or desert, in the other applying the saying to the inhabited world itself.

“And by his understanding he stretched out the heaven.” Not by chance did he take understanding for the heaven; for you will find it said in Proverbs: “God founded the earth by wisdom, and prepared the heavens by understanding.” So there is an understanding of God, which you must seek nowhere but in Christ Jesus. For all such things of God are Christ. He is the wisdom of God, he is the power of God, he is the righteousness of God, he is sanctification, he is redemption; so too he is the understanding of God. But the subject is one, while the many names, by the different aspects, apply to different things. And you do not understand the same thing about Christ when you understand him as wisdom and when you understand him as righteousness. When you take him as wisdom, you take the knowledge of things divine and human; when as righteousness, the power in the universe that assigns to each according to worth; and when as sanctification, what brings it about that those who believe and are dedicated to God become holy. So too you will understand him as understanding, when it is the knowledge of good and evil and of what is neither. Since, then, it is separated for those who dwell in heaven, or for those who bear the heavenly man, † separating the evil from the good, so that that heaven may no longer be defiled, because the heaven has been stretched out by the understanding of God, nor the righteous man who is a heaven (for the righteous man too is a heaven, as has been said): “And he stretched out the heaven by his understanding.” How, then, is the heaven stretched out? Wisdom stretches it out. And that wisdom stretches out is shown in “Since I stretched out words and you did not heed,” and it speaks of a certain stretching out of words; so the heaven is stretched out. And in the hundred and third Psalm it is said, “stretching out the heaven like a skin.” And our soul too is stretched out, which before was contracted, so that it may be able to contain the wisdom of God. But let us return to our subject. We were speaking of the heaven having come into being by understanding. And we say that those who bear the heavenly man are themselves also a heaven. For if it is said to the sinner, “You are earth, and to earth you will go,” would it not be said to the righteous man, whose is the kingdom of heaven, “You are heaven, and to heaven you will go”? Or will it be said, because of the man of dust, to the one who bears “the image of the man of dust,” “You are earth, and to earth you will go,” but, because of the heavenly man, when you bear “the image of the heavenly,” will it not then be fitting to say, “You are heaven, and to heaven you will go”? Each of us, then, has heavenly works and earthly works. Earthly works are those which bring down to the earth akin to them the one who lays them up as treasure on earth and not in heaven. Again, deeds done according to virtue lead up to the regions in heaven akin to those works the one who lays up treasure in heaven, who has borne “the image of the heavenly.”

“And he brought up clouds from the end of the earth.” This text came up recently in the psalm as well, and we were saying how God “brought up clouds from the end of the earth.” It needs to be repeated: for those who know it, as a clarification and reminder of what was said; for those who have forgotten or were not present, to make it clear, whether it was revealed and made plain or understood in some way. We were saying that the saints are clouds. For “your truth reaches to the clouds” cannot be referred to lifeless clouds; but the truth of God reaches to the clouds, which hear God's command and know where to send rain and from whom to withhold it. For it is written, as of clouds whom God commands not to rain, or to rain: “I will command the clouds not to rain rain upon it.” With these clouds, when there is to be no rain, God does not command the clouds not to rain on the vineyard or the land, but no cloud appears at all, as is written in the third book of Kingdoms, where during the time of drought no cloud appeared; but when, according to the word of Elijah's prophecy, the rain was to come, a trace of cloud appeared “like the track of a man,” and a cloud came that made the rain. But as of clouds that exist, yet are commanded not to rain when the soul is unworthy of the rain, it is said, “I will command the clouds not to rain rain upon it.” So each of the saints is a cloud. Moses was a cloud, and as a cloud he said: “Give heed, O heaven, and I will speak; and let the earth hear the words of my mouth. Let my utterance be awaited like rain.” If he had not been a cloud, he would never have said, “Let my utterance be like rain, and let my words come down like dew.” As a cloud he says: “like a shower on the grass, and like snow on the hay; for I have called on the name of the Lord.” So too Isaiah says as a cloud: “Hear, O heaven, and give ear, O earth, for the Lord has spoken.” And since he too was a cloud, he called those who prophesied with him clouds, saying in prophecy: “I will command the clouds not to rain rain upon it.”

If we have understood who the clouds are, let us see how God brings up “clouds from the end of the earth.” How “from the end of the earth”? The Savior says: “Whoever wishes to be first among you shall be last of all.” Paul kept this commandment and was last in this world. That is why he says: “For I think God has displayed us apostles as last, as men sentenced to death, because we have become a spectacle to the world, to angels and to men.” If, then, someone keeps the Savior's commandment and becomes last with regard to this life, he becomes a cloud. And God brings up clouds not from the first of the earth; he does not bring up clouds from consuls, he does not bring up clouds from governors, nor from the rich; for “blessed are the poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.” Do you see how God brings up and gives body to the clouds from the last? So if we wish to become clouds to which the truth of God reaches, let us become last of all and say by our deeds and our disposition, “For I think God has displayed us apostles as last.” Even if I am not an apostle, I may become last, so that God, bringing up clouds “from the end of the earth,” may bring me up. “And he made lightnings for rain.” Those skilled in these matters say that lightning is produced from clouds rubbing against one another. For what happens with flints on earth, so that fire is produced when two stones strike each other, they say happens with clouds too: when clouds strike each other in storms, lightning comes about. That is why lightning generally comes with thunder, the thunder showing the sound of the clouds' collision, the lightning producing the light.

If you have understood the example, see for me the spiritual cloud as well. Moses was a cloud, Joshua the son of Nun was a cloud. They converse with each other, and from their words lightning comes. Jeremiah was a cloud, Baruch was a cloud. They talk with one another, and lightning came from the words of Jeremiah and the words of Baruch. So, if you can, gather from the Scriptures how lightning comes. In the New Testament too Paul and Silvanus were two clouds. They came together, and the lightning of the letter came about. So God “made lightnings for rain, and brought out winds from his treasuries.” Are these winds, then, in treasuries? Or is it not plain how the nature of these, blowing on the earth, comes to be? But there are certain treasuries of winds, treasuries of spirits: “the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and godliness,” “the spirit of the fear of God,” “the spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline.” And you can yourself gather these winds from the Scriptures. These spirits are in treasuries. What are the treasuries? “In whom are hidden the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” These treasures are in Christ. From there, then, come these winds, these spirits, so that one may be wise, another faithful, another have knowledge, another receive some other gift of God: “For to one is given through the Spirit the word of wisdom, to another the word of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit.”

“He brought up,” then, “clouds from the end of the earth, and made lightnings for rain, and brought out winds from his treasuries.” And we hope, through God, to arrive at these treasuries. And since there are many treasuries, perhaps there will be resting places in God's treasuries according to those who rise again. What I mean is this. The resurrection of the dead takes place in certain ranks; for the apostle says, “But each in his own rank.” And since the ranks are not mixed up at random, this rank will be in one treasury of God, and that rank in another treasury of God, and a third, different rank will be in another treasury. Yet all these treasuries have one treasury in which they dwell. That is why it is said by Paul: “In whom are hidden the treasures of wisdom and of knowledge.” And as I acquire “the one pearl of great price” through the many pearls, so I come to the treasure of treasures, the Lord of lords, the King of kings, when I become worthy of the spirits from God's treasuries; for “he brought out winds from his treasuries.”

“Every man has become foolish, without knowledge.” If every man has become foolish, without knowledge, and Paul is a man, then Paul has become foolish, without knowledge: “knowing in part,” he has become foolish, without knowledge, “seeing through a mirror,” seeing and grasping a very small part, and, if one may say so, an infinitesimal part, of things. You will understand “Every man has become foolish, without knowledge” from its opposite. There are sins of Jerusalem, and sins of Sodom too; but by comparison with the worse sins of Jerusalem, the sins of Sodom are righteousness; for it says, “Sodom has been justified by you.” As, then, the sins of Sodom are not righteousness, but are righteousness in comparison with the greater injustice, so, conversely, knowledge, Paul's knowledge, compared with that knowledge which is in the heavens, compared with perfect knowledge, is foolishness. That is why “every man has become foolish, without knowledge.” I think the Preacher said something like this, grasping it: “I said, I will become wise; but it went farther from me than it was, and deep, deep; who will find it?”

The Word is about to venture something and say that what came to dwell in this life emptied itself, so that by its emptying the world might be filled. And if what came to dwell in this life emptied itself, that emptying was wisdom. “For the foolishness of God is wiser than men.” If I had said “the foolishness of God,” how the fault-finders would have accused me! How they would have blamed me! How, while other things that they too thought well said had been said, I would have been accused over this, as they think, not well said, because I said “the foolishness of God”! But as it is, Paul, as a wise man with apostolic authority, dared to call all the wisdom on earth, the wisdom in himself and in Peter and in the apostles, all the wisdom that came to dwell in the world, “the foolishness of God.” For compared with that wisdom which no place on earth can contain, compared with that wisdom above the heavens, above the world, this that came to dwell here is the foolishness of God. But this “foolishness of God is wiser than men.” Than what men? I do not mean the foolish; it is wiser even than wise men. Even if you speak of the wise of this age, whether rulers or prophets, “the foolishness of God” that I have described “is wiser” than the rulers of this age, “than men.”

The Word is about to say something paradoxical: that “the wisdom of the world is foolishness with God,” and “God has made foolish the wisdom of the world.” Did he make the wisdom of the world foolish by wisdom? And can the wisdom of the world contain wisdom, so as to be shown to be foolish? Does the wisdom of God contend with the wisdom of the world in order to refute it? No; there is need of something small, which is a little foolishness of God, so that by this slight foolishness of God the wisdom of the world may be made foolish and refuted; for the wisdom of this world could not bear the wisdom of God. For example, so that you may understand that “the foolishness of God” “made foolish the wisdom of the world”: suppose I, who am thought to know many things and more, must contend with someone senseless and uneducated, who understands nothing and does not contend for noble arguments of any kind. Do I need dialectic against him, or deeper speculations, if his thoughts are foolish? Do I not need a single little phrase, a little sharper than his own words, to be able to refute his foolishness? So, in order that the wisdom of this world may be made foolish, there is no need of the wisdom of God contending with it (for it is below), but the foolishness of God is enough, since “the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.” And my Savior and Lord took on all the opposites, so that by opposites he might undo opposites, and we might be made strong by the weakness of Jesus and made wise by the foolishness of God, and, having been brought in through these, might be able to go up to the wisdom, to the strength of God, Christ Jesus, to whom be the glory and the power for ever. Amen.

Homily 9. On “The word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord, saying: Hear the words of this covenant” as far as “They have turned back to the iniquities of their fathers of old.”

According to the recorded coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, his bodily sojourn was universal and shone upon the whole world, when “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” For “he was the true light, which enlightens every man coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, and the world did not know him. He came to his own, and his own did not receive him.” Yet one must know that he also sojourned before, though not bodily, in each of the saints, and after this visible sojourn of his he sojourns among us again. And if you wish to have proof of these things, attend to “The word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord, saying: Hear,” and the rest. For who is “the word that came from the Lord,” whether to Jeremiah or to Isaiah or to Ezekiel or to anyone at all, but the one who was in the beginning with God? I know no other word of the Lord than this, of whom the evangelist said: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” And we must know this too: that the Word's sojourn is with each of those who can most benefit. For what benefit is it to me if the Word has come to dwell in the world, but I do not have him? And conversely, even if he has not yet come to dwell in the whole world, suppose I have been like the prophets: I have the Word. And I would say that Christ came to Moses, to Jeremiah, to Isaiah, to each of the righteous; and what he said to the disciples, “Behold, I am with you all the days until the end of the age,” was preserved and came true in deed even before his coming; for he was with Moses, and he was with Isaiah and with each of the saints. How could they have spoken the word of God if the Word of God had not come to dwell with them? These things must above all be known by us who belong to the church, who hold that the God of the law and of the gospel is the same, and that Christ is the same then and now and for all ages. But there will be those who, as far as their own opinion goes, cut off the divinity that was before the Savior's coming from the divinity proclaimed by Jesus Christ. But we know one God both then and now, one Christ both then and now. So much on “The word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord, saying.” What, then, are we too to hear? “Hear the words of this covenant, and speak to the men of Judah and to those who dwell in Jerusalem.” We are men of Judah because of Christ; for “it is evident that our Lord has arisen from Judah”; and if I show from Scripture that the name of Judah is referred to Christ, the men of Judah will not be the Jews who do not believe in Christ, but all of us who believe in Christ. “Judah, may your brothers praise you. Your hands shall be on the back of your enemies.” “May they praise you”: his brothers did not praise that Judah, the son of Jacob. But this Judah his brothers will praise, since this Judah says: “I will tell your name to my brothers; in the midst of the congregation I will sing to you.” It is not said to that Judah. “Your hands shall be on the back of your enemies”: where is that Judah found putting his hands on the back of his enemies? The history records nothing of the kind about him. But if you understand the coming of the Lord Jesus, who destroyed the devil, “disarmed the principalities and powers,” made a public example of them, and triumphed over them on the tree, you see how the prophecy that says, “Your hands shall be on the back of your enemies,” has been fulfilled in this Judah. If this is so, and the Word now speaks “to the men of Judah,” to whom would he speak but to those who believe in Christ, who is in some way called Judah because of the tribe of Judah?

The word is spoken “to the men of Judah and to those who dwell in Jerusalem.” This is the church. For the church is the city of God, the Vision of Peace; in it is the peace he brought us, which, if we are children of peace, is multiplied and seen. “Hear,” then, “the words of this covenant, and speak to the men of Judah and those who dwell in Jerusalem. And you shall say to them: Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: Cursed is the man who will not hear the words of the covenant which I commanded your fathers.” Who most of all hears “the words of the covenant which God commanded the fathers”? Those who believe in him, or those shown not even to believe Moses by not having believed in the Lord? For the Savior says to them: “If you believed Moses, you would believe me; for he wrote of me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words?” So they have not believed in Moses, but we, believing in Christ, believe the covenant given through Moses, and it is said to us, so that we may not become accursed: “Cursed is the man who will not hear the words of the covenant which I commanded your fathers.” They, then, bear the curse; for they did not hear “the covenant which God commanded the fathers.” “On the day,” he says, “when I brought them up out of the land of Egypt, out of the iron furnace.” God has brought us too out of the land of Egypt, “out of the iron furnace,” especially for one who understands what is written in the Revelation of John, that the place “where their Lord was crucified is spiritually called Sodom and Egypt.” For if it is “spiritually called Egypt,” and this Egypt is not the one spiritually called Egypt, for it is perceptible, clearly, if you understand the Egypt spiritually so called and come out of it, you are the one who has come out “of the land of Egypt and out of the iron furnace,” and to you it is said: “Hear my voice and do according to all” these things. Then there is God's promise to those who hear, if they do what has been commanded, saying, “And you shall be my people, and I will be your God.” Not everyone who says he is the people of God is his people. That people which was promised to be the people of God heard “not my people” in “for you are not my people”; and it was said to that people, “not my people,” and again this people was called a people. For “they made me jealous with what is no god” (he says this about them), “they provoked me with their idols; and I will make them jealous with what is no nation; with a foolish nation I will provoke them.”

So we have become a people to God, and “the righteousness of God” has come to the people from the nations. For this people is born all at once, and it is said in the prophet too: “Was a nation born at once?” And a nation was born at once when the Savior came, and on one day five thousand believed, and on another day three thousand were added. And one may see a whole people born by the word of God, and the barren woman, who had not borne before, giving birth all at once, to whom it is said: “Rejoice, O barren one who does not bear; break forth and shout, you who are not in labor; for many are the children of the desolate, more than of her who has a husband.” The church was desolate of the law; she was desolate of God. But that synagogue is said to have had the law as husband. What, then, does God promise me? “You shall be my people, and I will be your God.” He is not the God of all, but of those to whom he gives himself, as he gave himself to that patriarch to whom he said, “I am your God,” and again to another, “I will be your God,” and about others, “I will be their God.” When, then, do we attain, I mean each one of us, to having God as our God? If you wish to learn whose God he is and to whom he grants his name, he says, “I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob.” And explaining this, the Savior says: “God is not the God of the dead but of the living.” Who is the dead? The sinner, the one who does not have him who said, “I am the life,” the one who has dead works, who has not yet repented of dead works, of which the apostle says, “not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works.” If, then, “God is not the God of the dead but of the living,” and we know who is living, that it is the one who lives according to Christ and remains with him, if we wish God to be ours, let us renounce the works of deadness, so that he may fulfill his promise that says: “And I will be your God, that I may establish my oath which I swore to your fathers, to give them a land flowing with milk and honey.” For observe that he says, “that I may establish my oath which I swore to your fathers, to give them a land flowing with milk and honey,” as though he had not yet given them “the land flowing with milk and honey.” For this is not the land which God promised “flowing with milk and honey,” but it is the one about which the Savior taught, saying: “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.”

Then the prophet answers what the Lord said before, “Cursed is the man who will not hear the words of this covenant,” and says: “And I answered and said: So be it, Lord.” What is “So be it, Lord”? Cursed is he who will not abide by the words of this covenant. “And the Lord said to me: Read these words in the cities of Judah and outside Jerusalem.” We too read the words of God to those outside, calling them to salvation. “Hear the words of this covenant and do them. And they did not do them. And the Lord said to me: A conspiracy has been found among the men of Judah and among those who dwell in Jerusalem.” Or are we to repent for the sins mentioned concerning the men of Judah, knowing that we are the men of Judah because of Christ, who was prophesied and called Judah? For perhaps, since there are some sinners among us, acting against right reason, that is why the prophet says: “A conspiracy has been found among the men of Judah and among those who dwell in Jerusalem.” For when a bond of injustice and a bond of sins is found in some who bear the name of the church, so that what is said of the sinner fits them, “each is bound fast by the cords of his own sins,” God might say, “A conspiracy has been found among the men of Judah.” But may no bond be found among us! And how will no bond be found among us, if up to now there is a bond in some? “Loose every bond of injustice, undo the knots of violent contracts, tear up every unjust agreement; break your bread for the hungry.” “A conspiracy,” then, “has been found among the men of Judah and among those who dwell in Jerusalem. They have turned back to the iniquities of their fathers of old.” “They have turned back to the iniquities” of whom? He does not say simply “of the fathers.” What is the addition? “They have turned back to the iniquities of their fathers of old.” We were saying that these things are said to us and to those among us who sin. How, then, have those among us who sin turned back not “to the iniquities of the fathers,” but “of their fathers of old”? Perhaps our fathers are twofold, and there is in us a worse kind of fathers; for before we believed we were sons, let us say, of the devil, as the word of the Gospel shows, saying, “You are of your father the devil”; but when we believed we became sons of God. So when we sin, we turn back to the iniquities not simply of the fathers, but of the former fathers. To show that our fathers are twofold, I will use sayings from the forty-fourth Psalm, which run thus: “Hear, O daughter, and see, and incline your ear, and forget your people and your father's house.” A father says, “Forget your father's house”; for it is as a father that he says, “Hear, O daughter.” So our fathers are twofold. But “forget your father's house,” the former one. If, having forgotten your former house, you turn back again to the sins, you have committed the sins spoken of here. “They have turned back to the iniquities of their fathers of old.” I was saying that the devil too was formerly our father, before God became our father, if indeed the devil is not our father even now; which we will show from the catholic epistle of John too, in which it is written: “Everyone who commits sin is born of the devil.” If “everyone who commits sin is born of the devil,” we are born of the devil, as it were, as many times as we sin. Wretched, then, is he who is always being born of the devil, just as blessed, again, is he who is always being born of God. For I will not say that the righteous man has been born of God once, but that he is always being born, in each good deed in which God begets the righteous man. If, then, I point out to you in the case of the Savior that the Father did not beget the Son and release him from his begetting, but always begets him, I will show something similar in the case of the righteous man too. Let us see who our Savior is: “the radiance of glory.” The radiance of glory has not been begotten once and then no longer begotten; but as long as the light produces the radiance, so long is the radiance of God's glory begotten. Our Savior is the wisdom of God; and wisdom is “the radiance of eternal light.” If, then, the Savior is always begotten, and so he says, “Before all the hills he begets me” (not “before all the hills he has begotten me,” but “before all the hills he begets me”), and the Savior is always begotten by the Father, so you too, if you have the spirit of adoption, God always begets you in him, in each deed, in each thought; and being so begotten you become a son of God always being begotten in Christ Jesus, to whom be the glory and the power for ages of ages. Amen.

Homily 10. On “Make it known to me, O Lord, and I shall know” as far as “Gather all the beasts of the field, and let them come to devour it.”

If the oracles of God are in the law and the prophets, in the Gospels and the apostles, the one who is being taught by the oracles of God will have to record God as his teacher; for God is the one “who teaches man knowledge,” as is written in the Psalms too. And the Savior also testifies that one must not record anyone on earth as teacher, saying: “And do not call anyone on earth teacher; for you have one teacher, your Father who is in heaven.” And “the Father who is in heaven” teaches either by himself, or through Christ, or in the Holy Spirit, or, for example, through Paul, or through Peter, or through some other of the saints; only let the Spirit of God and the Word of God be present and teach. Why have I said this? Since the prophet says, “Make it known to me, O Lord, and I shall know”; for I shall not know unless you make it known to me; but if I know because you make it known to me, “then I shall see their practices,” and understand what each one does and of what purpose he is. So the prophet. Then let us see what the Savior says in the prophet: “I, like an innocent lamb led to be slaughtered, did not know. They devised a plan against me, saying: Come, let us put wood into his bread, and let us wipe him out from the land of the living, and his name shall be remembered no more.” As the prophet Isaiah too says, Christ “was led like a sheep to the slaughter, and like a lamb before its shearer is dumb, so he does not open his mouth.” There Isaiah speaks about him, but here Christ says about himself: “I, like an innocent lamb led to the slaughter to be sacrificed, did not know.” He did not say what he did not know. For he did not say, “I did not know evil,” nor, “I did not know good,” nor, “I did not know sin,” but simply, “I did not know.” He has left it to you, then, to examine what he did not know. And learn what he did not know from “him who knew no sin he made to be sin for us”; for to know sin is to sin, as to know righteousness is to act righteously. So the one who proclaims the things of righteousness but does not act righteously has not known righteousness.

“They devised a plan against me, saying: Come, let us put wood into his bread.” That the Jews crucified him is clear, and we proclaim it openly. But how you will fit this to “They devised a plan against me, saying: Come, let us put wood into his bread” is a task to understand. The bread of Jesus is the word by which we are nourished. Since, then, while he was teaching among the people, they wished to add a stumbling block to his teaching by crucifying him, they said, “Let us put wood into his bread.” For when to the word of Jesus' teaching is attached that the teacher was crucified, wood has been put into his bread. They, then, having taken counsel out of treachery, may say: “Come, let us put wood into his bread.” But I will say something more paradoxical: the wood put into his bread has made the bread better. I take an example from the law of Moses: the wood thrown into the bitter water made it sweet. So the wood of the passion of Jesus Christ, coming into the word, has made his bread sweeter. Before the wood came into his bread, at any rate, when it was bread only and there was no wood in his teaching, “his voice” had not “gone out into all the earth.” But since the bread gained power through the wood put into it, for this reason the word of his teaching has spread over the whole world. And then the wood was a symbol of the passion of Jesus, through which the bitter water becomes sweet; for I say that the law, when not understood, is bitter water; but if the wood of Jesus comes, and the teaching of my Savior comes to dwell, the law of Moses is sweetened and becomes most pleasant when read and understood. So they said: “Come, let us put wood into his bread.”

And they also say, “Let us wipe him out from the land of the living, and his name shall be remembered no more.” So they killed him, as if blotting out his name. But Jesus knows how he dies and why. That is why he says: “Unless the grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” So the death of Jesus becomes an ear of wheat, making what was sown manifold and abundant. As if, by supposition, he had not been crucified nor died, the grain of wheat would have remained alone, and many would not have come from it. Notice his words, whether he did not mean this: “Unless the grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” The death of Jesus bore all these as fruit; and if his death bore so many as fruit, how many will his resurrection bear?

“O Lord of hosts, who judge righteously, who test the reins and the hearts, may I see your vengeance upon them.” He prays this prophetically, to see the vengeance of God upon them; for “Jerusalem has been surrounded by armies, and its desolation has drawn near,” and it has been said to her, “Behold, your house is left to you.” “May I see,” then, “your vengeance upon them, for to you I have revealed my cause. Therefore thus says the Lord concerning the men of Anathoth who seek my life, who say: You shall not prophesy in the name of the Lord, or else you will die by our hands. Behold, I will visit them: their young men shall die by the sword, and their sons and their daughters shall perish by famine. And there shall be no remnant of them; upon those who dwell in Anathoth in the year of their visitation.” The name of Anathoth is taken here as a figure; but the whole Jewish mystery is spoken of figuratively in it; for Anathoth is interpreted “Hearkening.” Since, then, God's hearkening was in that people, as was also the kingdom of God, and in the case of the kingdom there came to pass “The kingdom of God will be taken from you and given to a nation producing its fruits,” in the same way it came to pass that “the men of Anathoth,” those in the Hearkening, sought the life not of Jeremiah (for the history does not say that men of Anathoth sought the life of Jeremiah: we have the books of Kingdoms, and Scripture mentions Jeremiah there, but nothing of the kind is said in them, nor in Chronicles; for we have the very book of the prophet, and the men of Anathoth said nothing), but these things are said about Christ. “Who seek my life, who say: You shall not prophesy in the name of the Lord.” The Jews forbade Jesus to teach. “Or else you will die by our hands. Behold, I will visit them: their young men shall die by the sword, and their sons and their daughters shall perish by famine.” Not then did they perish by the sword; but after his coming a famine has now come upon them, “not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but a famine of hearing the word of the Lord.” For “Thus says the Lord almighty” is no longer spoken among them. This is the famine: that there is no longer prophecy; and why do I say prophecy? Not even teaching. Even if wise men are named among them ten thousand times, there is no longer a word of the Lord among them, since it has been fulfilled: “The Lord will take away from Judea and from Jerusalem the strong man and the strong woman, the giant and the strong man, and the man of war, and the judge and the prophet, and the diviner and the elder, and the captain of fifty, and the wonderful counselor, and the wise master builder, and the intelligent hearer.” There is no longer anyone among them who can say, “As a wise master builder I have laid a foundation.” The master builders have passed over; they have come to the church; they have laid the foundation, Jesus Christ. On this those after them also build.

So that people is left “in famine”; for he brings “evils upon those who dwell in Anathoth in the year of their visitation.” “You are righteous, O Lord, that I should plead with you; yet I will speak my judgments to you. Why does the way of the ungodly prosper? All who commit faithlessness have flourished.” We still ask whether the God who gave the law and the prophets is good, seeing that “the way of the ungodly prospers” and he does not punish the ungodly. “All who commit faithlessness have flourished.” The very people who speak against the Creator and blaspheme him “have flourished, have been planted and taken root, have begotten children and borne fruit.” How much fruit has Marcion had, begetting children; how much Basilides; how much Valentinus! For this is what is prophesied and said about the ungodly in “they have begotten children and borne fruit.” “You are near in their mouth, but far from their reins.” They name the name of Jesus, but do not have Jesus; for they do not confess him as they should. “And you, O Lord, know me; you have seen me, you have tested my heart before you. Purify them for the day of their slaughter.” What shall I do to make this clear? He calls the punishments a purification of those who are punished; for he says, “Purify them for the day of their slaughter.” Through their being slaughtered, purify them; “for the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and scourges every son whom he receives.”

“How long will the land mourn, and the grass of the field wither, because of the wickedness of those who dwell in it?” Here too the prophet speaks as though the earth were alive, saying that the earth mourns because of the wickedness of those who walk on it. So in the case of each of us the earth either mourns or rejoices: either it mourns “because of the wickedness of those who dwell in it,” or it rejoices because of the virtue of those who dwell in it. So in the case of each of us the element itself either rejoices or mourns; and perhaps the other elements too. I will say the same of water, and of the angel appointed over the water, so that I may explain the earth too, mourning or not mourning. For it is not this body, “the earth,” that mourns “because of those who dwell in it”; but understand for me that, in the ordering of the universe, someone is appointed over the earth, another appointed over the waters, another over the air, and a fourth over fire. In this way go up with me in thought to the whole ordering, that among living things and among the heavenly stars. An angel is appointed over the sun, another over the moon, another over the stars. These angels, with whom we are, in so far as we are earth, either rejoice if we act righteously, or mourn over us when we sin. The earth mourns, he says, because of those who dwell in it. He called the angel “earth” by the same name as the earth itself. For just as “the thing made by hands is accursed, and he who made it,” not because the lifeless thing itself is accursed, but what sits by the lifeless statue and bears its name is called “the thing made by hands,” so I will say that the angel appointed over the earth is called earth, and the angel appointed over water is called water, as it is said: “The waters saw you, O God, the waters saw you and were afraid; the depths were troubled, the multitude of the sound of waters; the clouds gave forth a voice, for your arrows pass through.”

“I have forsaken my house, I have left my inheritance, I have given my beloved soul into the hands of her enemies.” See for me the one who was “in the form of God,” being in the heavens; see his house above the heavens. If you wish to see something still higher (that he is “in the Father”), see that his house is God. He leaves “father and mother,” the “Jerusalem above,” and comes to the region around the earth, and says: “I have forsaken my house, I have left my inheritance.” For that was his inheritance: the regions with the angels, the rank with the holy powers. “I have given my beloved soul into the hands of her enemies.” He handed over his soul into the hands of the enemies of the soul: into the hands of the Jews who killed him, into the hands of rulers gathered against him, into the hands of kings, when “the kings of the earth stood up, and the rulers were gathered together against the Lord and against his Christ.”

“My inheritance has become to me like a lion in the forest.” This inheritance of his on earth, which he inherited, turned savage against him, and the inheritance, the Jews, became wild against him “like a lion in the forest.” It is not surprising if his inheritance then became “like a lion in the forest”; even now there are lions in the forest wanting to curse Jesus, blaspheming him, and plotting against those who believe in him. “My inheritance,” then, “has become to me like a lion in the forest. It has raised its voice against me; therefore I have hated it. Is my inheritance a hyena's cave to me?” He prophesies about this inheritance: has the inheritance become a hyena's cave, a cave of the hyena, the most savage animal, that feeds on the dead, that haunts tombs, that eats carcasses? “Is my inheritance a hyena's cave to me? Or a cave round about it? Go.” Since they have become such, I command you angels to go and gather the beasts and hand them over to the beasts. “Go and gather all the beasts of the field, and let them come to devour it.” “The beasts of the field” have come; they devour that people. See their hearts devoured by the opposing powers. If Jesus did not spare them but said, “Go, gather the beasts,” how much more will he not spare us? If we do not do the law of God, the word of the Gospel, he will say again: Go, gather the beasts and hand her over. But we have boldness to say in our prayers: “Do not give to the beasts a soul that confesses to you.” Let us confess our trespasses, repenting, and we shall not be handed over to the beasts, but to holy angels who will be our nurses, carrying us in their bosoms, bringing us over from this age to the one to come in Christ Jesus, to whom be the power and the glory for ever. Amen.

Homily 11. On “Because of me the whole land has been utterly laid waste” and on “the loincloth.”

Who is the one who says, “Because of me the whole land has been utterly laid waste”? Christ says this, before whose coming the people committed many sins, but not such that they were entirely forsaken and handed over to a long captivity. But when they filled up “the measure of” their “fathers,” and added to having slain the prophets and persecuted the righteous the killing of “the Christ of God,” then “your house is left to you” came to pass. And because of him they suffered these things, and “the whole land has been utterly laid waste.”

But if you wish to hear “Because of me the whole land has been utterly laid waste” in a higher sense too, see how the land in you was laid waste when Jesus came; for it was laid waste when “the members that are on the earth were put to death,” and the land no longer works its own works; the works of the flesh, by which the flesh flourished, no longer happen in the righteous man: no more sexual immorality, no more impurity, no licentiousness, no idolatry, no sorcery, and the rest. And the Savior too says: “Do you think that I came to bring peace on the earth? I came not to bring peace, but a sword.” For truly, before he came, there was no sword on the earth, nor did “the flesh lust against the spirit, nor the spirit against the flesh”; but when he came and we were taught what belongs to the flesh and what to the spirit, the teaching, having become like a sword on the earth, divided the flesh from the spirit. And “the land” was “laid waste” when we carry about the dying of Jesus in the body, and no longer live according to the flesh, but the spirit lives, and we sow nothing to the flesh but everything to the spirit, so that we may not reap corruption from the flesh, but eternal life from the spirit.

It is said to those who have sinned: “Sow wheat and reap thorns”; for even if they occupy themselves with the oracles of God, those who do not occupy themselves with them well, nor live as they should, nor believe, sow wheat and reap thorns. This can be understood especially of those of other opinions who read the Scriptures and reap thorns, not from the Scriptures but from their own notions. “Their lots will not profit them.” Others too have explained this; and since we do not reject their explanation, we fairly bring it forward, not as having found it ourselves, but as having learned a good lesson. This word will profit both you and us, if we heed what is written, we who seem to be of the clergy, sitting in front of you, so that some wish to attain to this clergy. But know that the clerical lot does not by any means save; for many presbyters too will perish, and many lay people will be shown to be blessed. Since, then, there are some in the clergy who do not live so as to be profited and to adorn the clergy, for this reason, say those who have explained it, it is written: “Their lots will not profit them.” For what profits is not simply sitting in the presbytery, but living worthily of the place, as the Word requires. The Word requires both you and us to live well. But if one must speak thus, “the mighty will be mightily tested”: more is required of me than of the deacon, more of the deacon than of the lay person, and still more is required of the one entrusted with the church's government over all of us. That is why the apostle, who was entrusted with great things, says, listen: “Let a man so regard us, as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God. Moreover it is required in stewards that one be found faithful.” And so rare is it to find a faithful and good steward. Jesus, “who knows all things before they come to be,” says: “Who then is the faithful and wise steward, whom his lord will set over his household to give the measure of grain in due season to his servants?” Then he blames certain stewards and says: “But if the wicked servant begins to say, ‘My lord delays his coming,’ and begins to beat his fellow servants and the maidservants, and to eat and drink and get drunk, the lord of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour he does not know, and will cut him in two, and put his portion with the unbelievers.” So much on “Their lots will not profit them.”

Let us look also at the necessary rebuke that follows, which it is good to take up for the moral sense, saying: “Be ashamed of your boasting, of the reproach before the Lord.” There are things in which, through folly, we boast, which are not worthy of boasting. For example, if someone boasts that he is rich and has acquired much, it might be said to him: “Be ashamed of your boasting.” If someone boasts of this outward noble birth, it will be said to him: “Be ashamed of your boasting.” If someone boasts of costly clothes, of building a richly furnished house, the boast is foreign to the boasting of the saints; so it will be said to such a one: “Be ashamed of your boasting.” Hear the word of the prophet Jeremiah commanding us not to boast even of wisdom: “Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom,” he says, “nor the strong man in his strength, nor the rich man in his riches; but let him who boasts boast in this, to understand and know that I am the Lord.” Do you wish to boast, and in boasting not to hear, “Be ashamed of your boasting”? Boast like the apostle and say: “But far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.” Do you wish to boast, so that it may not be said, “Be ashamed of your boasting”? Listen to Paul boasting, and learn when he says: “Most gladly, then, will I boast in my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.” Hear what boasts he boasts: “in labors far more” (which of us can say this?), “in prisons more abundantly, in deaths often. Five times I received from [the Jews] forty lashes less one; three times I was beaten with rods; once I was stoned; three times I was shipwrecked.” We learn, then, that there are differences among boasts too, so that some boasts deserve shame, about which that apostolic saying might be spoken: “and their glory is in their shame”: in the things they ought to be ashamed of, in these they think they are glorified.

After this let us look at the matter of the loincloth. For “thus says the Lord: Go and get yourself a linen loincloth, and put it around your loins, and do not put it in water. And I got a loincloth according to the word of the Lord and put it around my loins. And the word of the Lord came to me, saying: Take the loincloth that is around your loins, and arise and go to the Euphrates, and hide it there in the cleft of the rock.” After some days he goes there and finds this loincloth rotted. And the Lord adds, giving a starting point for the interpretation of the loincloth, saying: “As the loincloth clings to a man's loins, so I made the house of Israel and all the house of Judah cling to me, says the Lord, to be for me a people of renown and a boast and a glory; but they did not listen to me.” So the prophet is taken in place of God, girding the linen loincloth around his loins, as God does the people; for “I made this people cling to me,” he says; the people becomes, as it were, God's loincloth. But why does it become a loincloth for God around his loins? Whoever is able, reading Ezekiel and seeing God, in the account, as it were given a body, and how his parts from the loins down are fire, and those from the loins up are amber, let him search out the reason why what is lower in God is fire. The things of the loins and of generation, these are fire. For all things in generation need the cleansing that comes from fire; all things in generation need punishment. But the things above the loins, which have gone beyond generation, are like a most pure and precious material; for amber is said to be more precious than gold. Since, then, Scripture uses examples in order to teach that the upper body of God is more precious and the lower body inferior, for this reason it introduced God as made up of fire and amber. […] Each of us in generation is fire; we are not the amber; but if we go up and make progress (for it is possible to pass over from being today among the lower things so as to become the upper body of God), having passed through the fire we shall be the amber around the higher body of God. So he makes the linen loincloth cling around his loins. Why? To show that the people is, as it were, a covering for God; for the people stands against those who wish to accuse God, and as it were defends him with a shield, and does not allow anything absurd to be said in the things concerning God. But when we sin, just as the prophet takes off this loincloth and condemns it to the river Euphrates so that it may rot there, so the sinner is cast away from God's loins and, being cast out, is thrown into the river Euphrates, the river of Mesopotamia, where the Assyrians, Israel's enemies, are, where the Babylonians are, and there he rots. For though there are so many rivers, the prophet is sent from Judea to the river Euphrates to take the trouble to carry away a little linen loincloth. And why “linen”? Because it has its origin from the earth; for it is a plant that springs from the earth, and then, after being cultivated, it is carded and washed and scrubbed and goes through much labor, so as to become fit to be a loincloth or anything else. So all of us too have our origin like God's loincloth, and, having our origin from the earth, we need much preparation, to be carded, to be washed, to put off the color of the earth; for the color of linen from its origin is one thing, and that from the working another. The color of linen from its origin is rather dark, but from the working it becomes most bright. Something of this kind, then, reaches us too who are in generation. We are dark at the beginning of believing; that is why at the beginning of the Song of Songs it is said, “I am dark and beautiful.” And at the beginning we resemble Ethiopians in soul. Then we are scrubbed, so as to become brighter, according to “Who is this who comes up made white?” And we become “linen bright and pure,” and then we are woven into God's loincloth, when we are worthy to cling to God. God does not put us off. He put off the first people, “all the house of Judah” and “the house of Israel.” It became useless; for he no longer girds himself with them. God has girded himself with us in their place; for having cast off the loincloth, he did not remain naked, but wove himself another loincloth. This loincloth is the church from the nations; let her know that “if God did not spare the former ones, how much more will he not spare her if she sins,” if she is not worthy of God's loins. “But he who clings to the Lord is one spirit” in Christ Jesus, to whom be the glory and the power for ever. Amen.

Homily 12. On “And you shall say to this people: Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: Every wineskin shall be filled with wine” as far as “and your eyes shall run down with tears, because the Lord's flock has been crushed.”

What the prophet is commanded by God to say must be worthy of God; yet it appears not worthy of God if we stay with the letter, so that someone else, hearing the letter, might say: “These writings are foolishness.” But it is the unspiritual man who will say this; for “the unspiritual man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness to him.” See, then, what the text says: “And you shall say to this people: Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel” (let what “the Lord, the God of Israel” says be worthy of the Lord of Israel): “Every wineskin shall be filled with wine. And it shall be, if they say to you, ‘Do we not certainly know that every wineskin shall be filled with wine?’” And those who answer, if they say this standing on the letter, saying they have known that “every wineskin shall be filled with wine,” are lying. For not “every wineskin shall be filled with wine.” There are, at any rate, wineskins filled with oil or some other liquid; so some are lying, for not “every wineskin shall be filled with wine.” And the people answers, saying: “Do we not certainly know that every wineskin shall be filled with wine?” These things will receive such an explanation as we are able. If we know the differences among wines and what is said about them, we shall also see, consistently with them, about the wineskins, that “every wineskin shall be filled with wine” is true. For whether someone is good, a wineskin among wineskins, if we may so name him, he will be filled with wine according to his own goodness; or whether, in the comparison of wineskins and the judgment about them, he is wicked, he too will be filled with wicked wine according to his wickedness. How, then, can we take from Scripture something about the different wines? About the worse, this is written: “For their vine is from the vine of Sodom, and their branch from Gomorrah; their grape is a grape of gall, a cluster of bitterness for them; their wine is the fury of dragons, and the incurable fury of asps.” And about the better: “Your cup, intoxicating me, how excellent it is!” And Wisdom calls to her own mixing bowl, saying: “Come, eat my bread, and drink the wine I have mixed for you.” So there is wine from Sodom, and there is wine that Wisdom mixes. And again: “My beloved had a vineyard on a horn, in a fertile place,” planted by God, the vine called Sorek, which is Chosen and Wonderful. But there is also a vine of the Egyptians, which God strikes, according to what is written: “God struck their vine with hail, and their sycamores with frost.”

Consider for me, then, that all human beings are now, figuratively, able to hold wine. And I name them wineskins in this sense, and say that the base man is filled “with wine of the vine of Sodom,” filled with Egyptian wine and with the wine of Israel's enemies, while the holy man, who has been helped, is filled with wine from the vine of Sorek, and with the wine about which it is written, “Your cup, intoxicating, how excellent it is!”; and again the holy man is filled with the wine that Wisdom mixed. Let these things be understood by me with reference to vice and virtue, so that “every wineskin is filled with wine” may be seen. But if we must also see what comes on account of vice and virtue, punishments on account of vice, blessings and promises on account of virtue, let us show from the sacred writings how punishments and promises are called wine: “Take this cup of unmixed wine, and make all the nations to whom I send you drink it.” Jeremiah says this, and he adds: “And they shall drink and vomit and go mad and fall.” So here he has named the punishments unmixed wine, which those drink who deserve unmixed wine, that is, unmixed punishment. But there are others who drink a punishment not unmixed but mixed; for “there is a cup in the hand of the Lord, full of a mixture of unmixed wine; he has tilted it from this to that; yet its dregs have not been emptied; all the sinners of the earth shall drink.” If you wish to see also a cup of blessing, which the righteous drink, that of Wisdom would be enough, about which she said, “Drink the wine that I have mixed for you”; but see for me also the Savior going up for the Passover to “a large upper room furnished and adorned,” keeping the feast with the disciples and giving them a cup, about which it is not written that he mixed it; for Jesus, gladdening the disciples, gladdens them with unmixed wine, and says to them: “Take, drink; this is my blood, which is poured out for you for the forgiveness of sins; do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me”; and: “Truly I say to you, I will not drink it from now on until I drink it new with you in the kingdom of God.” You see that the promise is “the cup of the new covenant”; you see the punishments as a cup of unmixed wine, and another kind of punishment as a mixed cup, so that for each person what he will drink is mixed according to the worth of his good deeds mixed with wicked deeds. Understand for me that those wholly strangers to godliness, paying no attention to themselves but living at random, drink the unmixed wine about which we cited the words of Jeremiah; while those who have not wholly fallen away, and are sinners, yet unworthy of the cup “of the new covenant,” doing at times better and at times contrary deeds, drink wine “full of a mixture of unmixed.” For God “tilted it from this to that.” From which “this”? I see two cups according to the saying: “He tilted it from this to that; yet its dregs have not been emptied.” Understand for me the cup of your good works in one hand of God; or, if you wish me to speak more boldly, let the cup of your good works be in the right hand of God, and then let your cup of sins be in the left hand of God. So when you are about to be punished for your sins, since you have also done better works, the cup “in the hand of the Lord is full of a mixture of unmixed wine, and he tilted it from this to that,” from the one in the left to the one in the right. For you cannot drink only the cup of good things, since you have not done only good works; nor can you drink only the cup of sins, for you have done some good things. That is why “he tilted it from this to that.” In proportion to your works, the wrath and the punishment are mixed for you, so that the punishment may be either more watery for you or sharper and more painful. For in proportion, as I said before, when the sins are compared with the good things, what comes from the cup of wrath is somehow blunted or not blunted, † being given in some measure for each of the sins. But if you are wholly fair and good, you say: “I will take the cup of salvation and call on the name of the Lord.” “Every wineskin,” then, whether good or wicked, “shall be filled with wine,” and according to the fitness of the wineskin, wine will be put into the wineskin, according to the meaning of the wineskins named here. Oil, then, is not put into the wineskins, nor any other liquid; but every wineskin must be filled with wine.

Then he teaches, for the sake of those who had sinned, as far as the letter goes, in Jerusalem at that time and in Judea, with what kind of wine God is going to fill these wineskins, the sinners. For it is written: “If they say to you, ‘Do we not certainly know that every wineskin shall be filled with wine?’ you shall say to them: Thus says the Lord: Behold, I fill all who dwell in this land, and the kings, the sons of David, who sit on his throne, and the priests.” The one who is about to punish spares no one. Not because someone was called a prophet, if he has sins, will he not be filled with the threats spoken. Not because someone was called a priest and seemed to have the preeminence of a more honored name than the people, does God spare him so that he is not punished when he sins. And what is recorded about those people, says the apostle, was written for our sake, “on whom the ends of the ages have come.” If, then, anyone among these priests (I point to us, the presbyters) or among these Levites who stand around the people (I mean the deacons) sins, he will have this punishment; just as, again, there are certain priestly blessings, about which, God granting, we shall know before long, after the examination of the prophetic word, when Numbers is read; for certain things are going to be said there about priests. “And the priests,” then, “and the prophets and Judah and all who dwell in Jerusalem,” God says, he will fill “with drunkenness,” and will scatter “them, a man and his brother, and their fathers and their sons.” And let us understand this too as follows: God gathers the righteous, but scatters sinners. That is why, while people did not move from the east, God did not scatter them; but when they moved “from the east,” and “a man said to his neighbor, ‘Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower whose top will reach to heaven,’” God says about them: “Come, let us go down and confuse their language there,” and each is confused and scattered to some place of the earth. And the people of Israel too, while it did not sin, was in Judea; but having sinned it is then scattered † from the inhabited world and dispersed everywhere. Understand for me something of this kind about all of us too. There is “an assembly of the firstborn enrolled in heaven, where Mount Zion is, and the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem.” The blessed will be gathered there, so as to be together. But sinners are punished in this too, that they are not with one another. I know of some in this life who, by way of punishment, wish to hand over to an island, and by way of torment scatter, the household of someone who has offended the emperor: the wife here, one son there, then the other elsewhere, so that not even in misfortune may the mother have the comfort of her son, or brother of brother. Understand something of this kind also in the case of the unjust. You, the sinner, must taste something more bitter under God's arrangement, so that, being disciplined, you may be saved. And just as you punish a servant or a son whom you punish, not simply wishing to torment him, but to turn him back by the pains, so God too will discipline with the pains of suffering those who do not turn back by the word, those who have not been healed. What he inflicts, he inflicts for discipline, according to the saying: “By every pain and scourge you will be disciplined, O Jerusalem.” So that the disciplining pain may increase, those who suffer are scattered from one another, so that this one and that one are not together; for the severity of the pain would be relieved by the comfort each one gets from the other.

And if another reason for being scattered must be added to the account, I will set this out too. Wicked people, when together, plan wicked things and increase them, just as the good, when together with the good, consider good things. So the wicked counsel, which would have been strong with those like it, is broken up and divided when the wicked are scattered from one another. For this reason God arranges that the base are not with one another, perhaps providing for them too, so that their wickedness may not increase together but may diminish as it is broken up. So much on “I will scatter them, a man and his brother, and their fathers and their sons together, says the Lord.” “I will not long for them, nor spare, nor have compassion, from their destruction.”

Those from the heresies seize on such sayings, saying: “Do you see what kind of being the Creator is? The God of the prophets, who says, ‘I will not spare, nor have compassion, from their destruction’? How can this one be good?” But if I take as an example a judge who, for the common good, does not have compassion, and a magistrate who rightly does not show mercy, I will be able to persuade from the example that God, sparing many, does not spare one. I will also take the example of a physician, showing that in sparing the whole body he does not spare one member. For example, let a judge have this purpose: to create peace and to arrange what is beneficial for the nation under him. Let a murderer be brought before him, handsome in appearance and fair to see. Let his mother come forward, offering pitiful words to the judge, so that her old age may be pitied; let the wife of this man, who does not deserve pity, plead; let children standing around him beg for him. In these circumstances what is to the benefit of the community? That he be pitied, or not be pitied? But if pitied, he will return to the same things; if not pitied, he himself will die, but the community will be improved. So if God spares the sinner and pities him and has compassion on him so as not to punish him, who will not be ruined? Which of the base, who stop sinning through fear of punishments, will not be ruined, will not become worse? Such things can be seen happening in the churches too: someone sinned, and after the sin asked for communion. If he is pitied too quickly, the community is harmed; the sin of others increases. But if the judge, by reasoning, not as merciless nor as cruel, but as providing for the one, yet providing more for the many than for the one, considers the harm that will come to the community from the communion of the one and the pardon of his sin, clearly he will cast out the one in order to save the many. See for me also a physician: how, if he spares cutting what must be cut, if he spares cauterizing what must be cauterized, because of the pains that follow such remedies, the disease increases and becomes worse. But if he boldly proceeds to the cutting and the burning, he will heal by not pitying, by seeming not to have compassion on the one being cauterized and cut. So too God administers not one man, but administers the whole world; he governs the things in heaven, the things on earth, everywhere. He considers, then, what benefits the whole world and all that exists; he considers as far as possible the benefit of the one too, but not so that the benefit of the one comes at the cost of the world. That is why eternal fire has been prepared, that is why Gehenna has been made ready, that is why there is also an outer darkness: these are needed not only for the one punished, but above all for the community.

And if you wish to take Scripture as witness that sinners are punished also for the instruction of others, even if they themselves are at times despaired of as regards healing, hear Solomon saying in Proverbs: “When a pestilent man is scourged, the fool will become more shrewd.” He did not say that the one scourged will become more shrewd and more sensible because of the scourges, but says that the fool changes from folly to good sense because of the scourges applied to the pestilent man; for this is what is meant here by the word “shrewdness.” And the fool changes by seeing others scourged. So the punishment of others is to our benefit, if we become worthy of salvation through others being punished. And as the trespass of Israel was of benefit to the salvation of the nations, so the punishment of some will be of benefit to the salvation of others. That is why God, being good, says: “I will not spare, nor have compassion, from their destruction.”

Now that the one head has been dealt with, let us see what the other teaches us: “Hear and give ear, and do not be lifted up, for the Lord has spoken. Give glory to the Lord our God before it grows dark, and before your feet stumble on dark mountains; and you will wait for light, and there will be the shadow of death, and they will be put into darkness. But if you do not listen secretly, your soul will weep because of insolence, and your eyes will run down with tears, because the Lord's flock has been crushed.” He wants them both to hear and to give ear, not content with their only hearing or only giving ear. That is why he says, “Hear and give ear.” Then after this he commands them not to be lifted up, and teaches what must be done. What, then, is hearing, and what is giving ear? Let us consider from the word itself. “Give ear” is “receive into the ears”; and “hear,” if it is said in distinction from “give ear,” perhaps means “receive into the mind.” And of the things said in the Scriptures, some are more secret and mystical, and others are immediately useful to those who understand. About the more secret things, I think, “hear” is said; about the things immediately useful and able to benefit the hearer without interpretation, “give ear.” So if we examine the whole of Scripture, “having become approved money-changers,” we shall say: this, hear; this, give ear to. Then, when we have listened and given ear, he commands us: “And do not be lifted up.” For “everyone who exalts himself will be humbled.” And the Savior too, in saying, “Learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls,” teaches us not to be lifted up. For among the other human evils this sin too is great in us; sometimes we are lifted up quite irrationally, over things for which one should not be lifted up in the least; and sometimes with some plausibility, because what we are lifted up about seems reasonable; yet even so, to be lifted up over it is not sound.

What I mean will be clear in this way. There are some who are lifted up because they are sons of governors, and because they are of a family with great worldly dignities. Such people, lifted up over a thing that does not depend on their choice and is indifferent, do not even have a reasonable plausibility to lead them to be lifted up. There are those who are lifted up because they have authority to put people to death, and lifted up because they have received what they call promotion, such that they can cut off people's heads. “The glory” of such people “is in their shame.” Others are lifted up over wealth, not the true wealth but that here below; and others are lifted up, for example, over having a fine house or many fields. None of these is worth a word; one must not be lifted up over any of them. But there is plausibility about being lifted up when someone is lifted up because he is wise, and is lifted up conscious that for ten years now he has not touched sexual relations, or has not touched them since childhood; and again another is lifted up because he has worn chains for Christ. Here there is a plausibility that suggests one is reasonably lifted up; but not even over these is one reasonably lifted up, according to the true account. So it is not reasonable to be lifted up even over these. Paul had material for being lifted up, because of the visions, because of the revelations, because of the wonders and signs, because of the labors he labored for Christ, because of the churches he established, making it his ambition to found a church where Christ had not been named. All these were material for him [to be lifted up], if one must speak with plausibility about being lifted up, so that he might have seemed to some rightly to be lifted up. Nevertheless, since even being lifted up over such things is not without danger, the kind Father, as he granted him visions and revelations, so gave him, as a portion of grace, “a messenger of Satan, to buffet him, so that he might not be exalted. And about this he begged the Lord three times that the messenger of Satan might depart from him,” who had been given him so that he might not be lifted up. And the Lord answered him (for Paul was worthy of an answer from the Lord) and said to him: “My grace is sufficient for you; for my power is made perfect in weakness.” So one must not be lifted up over anything; for falling follows being lifted up, according to “Before destruction a man's heart is exalted, and before glory it is humbled.” So much on “Hear and give ear, and do not be lifted up, for the Lord has spoken.”

Let us see also what he commands us to do after this: “Give glory,” he says, “to the Lord our God before it grows dark, before your feet stumble on dark mountains; and you will wait for light.” He wants the one who gives “glory to God” to give “glory to God” while there is light, since God's glory cannot be proclaimed once it has grown dark and darkness has come. When, then, does it grow dark, and when does the darkening not happen? “Work while the light is in you.” “The light is in” you if you have in you him who said, “the light of the world.” As long as this rises on you, glorify God; but know that a darkening can happen, and one must not remain in this darkness, but give glory to God before it grows dark.

Perhaps we shall understand what is written by using a saying of the Gospel spoken by the Savior, which runs thus: “Work while it is day; night is coming when no one can work.” There he named this age “day” (and I have added “there” of necessity, for I know that different things are often meant in different places); so he named this age day, and the consummation darkness and night because of the punishments. “For why do you desire the day of the Lord? It is darkness and not light,” says the prophet Amos. If you see what grim thing follows after the consummation of the world, with almost the whole human race punished for its sins, you will see that then what surrounds us has grown dark, and no one can any longer glorify God, since the Word of God has commanded even the righteous, saying: “Go, my people, enter your chamber, shut your door, hide yourself for a very little while, until the fury of my wrath has passed.” At the same time let whoever can observe in this that he has said, “a very little while.” But that “little while” is little for God; it is not little for a human being; for one must see that for each being something is small and great. And I will show by an example that for each thing something is small or great. For each animal, so much food is little by comparison with its build, and so much food is much, again by comparison with its constitution. And so what is little for a human being is great for another animal. What is little, say, for a man is much for a child. So the whole time of human life, even of a long-lived man, is short in comparison with the whole of the present age. So too God's “little” is much in relation to us, and a whole age is God's “little.” If, then, it is said, “Go, my people, enter your chambers, shut your door, hide yourself for a very little while,” that little must be thought to be said not in relation to the one commanded to go and enter his own chambers, but in relation to the one who commands it, to whom what is much for this one is little. For if some must enter their chambers “until the fury” of God's “wrath has passed,” and there are those whose “sins are not forgiven, not only in this whole age but also in the whole age to come,” clearly the “little while” is stretched out for those mentioned.

“Give,” then, “glory to the Lord our God.” How do we give glory to the Lord our God? I do not look for giving glory to the Lord our God in sounds and little phrases; rather, the one who gives glory to the Lord God gives it to him in deeds. Glorify God in self-control, in righteousness; glorify God in doing good; give glory to God in courage and endurance; give glory to God in godliness and holiness and the other virtues. And if this is so, and this is how one glorifies God, do not think I blaspheme if I state the opposite; for I will bring Scripture as witness of that too. The self-controlled man glorifies God; the licentious man dishonors God. For like Nebuchadnezzar he overthrows the temple of God, and “destroys the temple of God,” and “through transgression of the law dishonors God” (this too is an apostolic saying). So the sinner brings dishonor upon God. And questions about providence are raised, so that some doubt whether there is providence, for no other reason than wickedness. Take away wickedness, and you do not stumble at providence. Those who stumble at providence say this over and over: “Why are there so many adulterers and so many effeminate, why so many godless and impious?” And it is the sinners who have produced the dishonor to providence, the stumbling blocks to God, the blasphemy against the Creator of the world. So some give glory to God, but others give not glory to God, those who by their sins do what is contrary to the glory of God.

“Give glory to the Lord our God before it grows dark, before your feet stumble on dark mountains.” There are some dark mountains, and there are some bright mountains; there are both. The bright mountains are the holy angels of God, the prophets, Moses the servant, the apostles of Jesus Christ. All these are bright mountains, and about them I think it is said in the Psalms: “His foundations are on the holy mountains.” And what are the dark mountains? Those who raise up heights against the knowledge of God. The devil is a dark mountain; the rulers of this age, who are being brought to nothing, are dark mountains; and the demon of the moonstruck boy was a mountain, and a dark mountain, about which the Savior said, “You will say to this mountain.” For when the matter of the moonstruck boy was being inquired into, and the disciples were saying, “Why could we not cast it out?”, the Savior answers: “If you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain,” the one you brought up, the one you asked about, “you will say to this one, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move”: “from here,” from the man, “there,” to its own proper place. So those who stumble do not stumble on bright mountains, but on dark mountains, when they come to be with the devil and his angels, the dark mountains. “And you will wait for light.” “And you will wait for light” can indeed be joined to “Give glory to the Lord our God.” If you give glory to the Lord our God “before it grows dark, before your feet stumble on dark mountains,” clearly, even if it grows dark, “you will wait for the light,” and the light will succeed for you. But another might say (I do not know whether understanding soundly or not) that even those who stumble “on dark mountains” will wait, waiting beside the dark mountains for the light of mercy; for this will seem to be “and you will wait for light.” But when someone comes to the dark mountains, let us see what is there: “the shadow of death.” Where the dark mountains are, there is the shadow of death, produced by the dark mountains themselves; “and they will be put into darkness.” “But if you do not listen secretly, your soul will weep because of insolence.” Of those who listen, some listen secretly, others, even if they listen, do not listen secretly. What, then, is listening secretly, if not “But we speak God's wisdom in a mystery, the hidden wisdom, which God foreordained before the ages for our glory”? And again it is said elsewhere that “most of God's works are in hidden things.” If I hear the law, I either hear it secretly or do not hear it secretly. The Jew does not hear the law secretly; that is why he is circumcised openly, not knowing that “he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor is circumcision that which is outward in the flesh.” But the one who hears about circumcision secretly will be circumcised in secret. The one who hears the laws about the Passover secretly eats of the lamb, Christ (for “Christ our Passover has been sacrificed”), and, knowing what kind of flesh the Word's flesh is, and knowing that it “is true food,” partakes of it; for he has heard of the Passover secretly. But this Jew, in the main, killed the Lord Jesus for this reason, and even today is guilty of the murder of Jesus, because he heard neither the law nor the prophets secretly. If you read about the unleavened bread, you can hear the commandment secretly, you can hear it openly. All of you (for the Passover is near) who keep unleavened bread, the bodily unleavened bread, do not hear the commandment that says, “If you do not listen secretly, your soul will weep.” And about the sabbath, women who have not heard the prophet do not hear secretly, but hear openly. They do not bathe on the sabbath day; they return “to the poor and weak elements,” as though Christ had not come, who perfects us and brings us over from the elements of the law to the perfection of the gospel. For this reason let us pay attention when we read the law and the prophets, lest we fall under the prophecy that says: “But if you do not listen secretly, your soul will weep because of insolence.” All of you who keep the Jewish fast, not understanding the day of atonement, after the coming of Jesus Christ: you have not heard of the atonement secretly, but only openly; for to hear of the atonement secretly is to hear how God set forth Jesus as “an atonement for our sins,” and that “he is the atonement for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the whole world.” Even when the Gospel parables are read, if the hearer is one of those outside, he will not hear them secretly. But if the hearer is an apostle, or one of those who go “into the house” of Jesus, he comes to Jesus, asks about the obscurity of the parable too, and Jesus interprets it, and that hearer of the Gospel becomes one who hears it secretly, so that his soul may not weep; for the soul of those who do not listen secretly weeps. Why, wonderfully, did he not say, “You will weep if you do not listen secretly,” but “your soul will weep”? There is a weeping of the soul alone, weeping, and perhaps the Savior teaches us of that weeping, saying: “There will be weeping.” And when he says, “Woe to you who laugh now, for you will mourn and weep,” he speaks of that weeping, which the prophet also threatens here, saying: “But if you do not listen secretly, your soul will weep because of insolence.” For when you are insulted, then you will weep, “and your eyes will run down with tears, because the Lord's flock has been crushed.” If anyone now looks at the affairs of the Jews and compares them with those of old, he will see how “the Lord's flock has been crushed.” For this was once the Lord's flock, and since they judged themselves unworthy, the word turned to the nations. If, then, that flock of the Lord was crushed, ought not we, the wild olive, grafted contrary to its nature into the cultivated olive of the fathers, to fear all the more lest this “flock of the Lord” too be crushed? For it is going to be crushed at some time, according to what the Savior said, when “because lawlessness is multiplied, the love of many will grow cold.” About whom is the saying? Is not “the love of many will grow cold” said about those called Christians? About whom is the saying, “Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?” Is it not about us? For this reason let us take heed to ourselves, doing everything so that daily this flock of God may improve, be made sound, be healed, and every crushing may depart from our souls, so that we may be perfected in Christ Jesus, to whom be the glory and the power for ever. Amen.

Homily 13. On “Who will spare you?” as far as “I have been bereaved.”

We wish to understand the words spoken to Jerusalem with great threatening, which run thus: “Who will spare you, O Jerusalem? Or who will grieve over you? Or who will turn back to ask for your peace? You have turned away from me, says the Lord. You will go backward, and I will stretch out my hand against you and destroy you, and I will no longer let you go. And I will scatter them in a dispersion.” Then, “I have been bereaved.” Perplexity seized me; I take as an example someone declared an enemy of the one reigning on earth: to such a person one may not even give a share of mercy, lest anyone seem to be offending the king who condemned him. And one may not even pity such a man; some go further and do not even grieve over him, lest by grieving they seem to be displeased with the one judged by the king. If you have understood this, see for me the one condemned by God for his many sins, and look at such a one: though there are legions of angels appointed to help human nature, he is pitied by no one. For each of the angels, seeing that the one who condemned is God, that the one who turned away is the Creator, and that the nature of the sins is such that the good God was compelled, so to speak, to bring the sentence against the sinner, each of those who see it does not spare, does not grieve, does not pity, does not return to plead for peace for such a one. So let this Jerusalem (for so it will be spoken of because of the letter) have sinned against my Jesus, and have done such things that Jesus says about her: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, killing the prophets and stoning those sent to her, how often I wished to gather your children as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you would not! Behold, your house is left to you.” Let this Jerusalem be left as it has been left. Let the angels who always helped Jerusalem, through whom the law of Moses too was ordained, “ordained through angels by the hand of a mediator,” leave Jerusalem and say: “Her sins have become great; they killed Jesus, they laid hands on the Christ. As long as the sins were still smaller, we could still intercede and plead for them, we could spare Jerusalem; who will spare her for this?” “If a man sins against a man, they will pray for him; but if he sins against the Lord, who will pray for him?” “Jerusalem has sinned a sin; therefore she has become a tossing.” And to her first of all it is said: “Who will spare you, O Jerusalem? And who will grieve over you?” We do not grieve over Jerusalem and her calamities and what happened to that whole people; for by their trespass our salvation came, to make them jealous. Since their trespass became so great a sin that it was said by the voice of the Lord, “Who then will spare you?”, I too say to her who killed my Jesus: “Who will spare you, O Jerusalem? And who will grieve over you?”

I pass over from the letter, having in fact the way that the word gave, to each soul already counted worthy to see peace; for after the divine teachings you have become Jerusalem, who were formerly Jebus. The history says that the name of that place was Jebus, and afterward it changed its name to Jerusalem too. The sons of the Hebrews say that Jebus is interpreted “Trodden down.” So Jebus, the soul trodden down by the opposing powers, has been changed and become Jerusalem, “Vision of Peace.” If, then, having changed from Jebus so as to become Jerusalem, you have sinned and, like her, you too have trampled on the Son of God and counted the blood of the new covenant common, and are in grievous sins, it will be said of you too: “Who will spare you, O Jerusalem? And who will grieve over you?”, if you become such as to betray Jesus. Each of us, when he sins, and especially if the sins are greater, sins against Jesus. And if he is also an apostate, he does still more to Jesus spiritually what Jerusalem did to him bodily. That is why: “How much worse punishment, do you think, will be deserved by the one who has trampled on the Son of God, and counted as common the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and insulted the Spirit of grace?” If you have trampled on the Son of God and insulted the Spirit of grace, who “will spare you? Who will grieve over you? Who will turn back to ask for the things of your peace?” The soul of the sinner has betrayed the very Son of God who asked for you the things of peace; who can turn back again and plead for peace? Knowing, then, that “it is impossible for those who have once been enlightened, and have tasted the heavenly gift, and have become partakers of the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come, and then have fallen away, to renew them again to repentance, since they crucify again for themselves the Son of God and put him to open shame,” let us do everything so that it may not be said of us too: “Who will spare you, O Jerusalem? And who will grieve over you? Or who will turn back to ask for your peace?”

And what follows will fit either interpretation of Jerusalem: “You have turned away from me, says the Lord. You will go backward.” That you have turned away from the Son of God, and by turning away from the Son of God have turned away from God, what need is there even to say? And since Jerusalem in Judea turned away from Christ, and by her all the Jews must be understood, for this reason “you will go backward.” For there was a time when she did not go backward, but forward; but now she goes backward, “and they turned in their hearts to Egypt,” clearly so as to go backward. And what “you will go backward” is, or what straining forward to what lies ahead is, we will show thus. The righteous man strains forward to what lies ahead, [forgetting] what lies behind. Clearly the one disposed contrary to the righteous remembers what lies behind and does not strain forward to what lies ahead. And remembering what lies behind, he disobeys Jesus, who teaches and says: “Let him not turn back to take his cloak”; he disobeys Jesus, who says: “Remember Lot's wife”; he disobeys Jesus, who says: “No one who puts his hand to the plough and turns back is fit for the kingdom of God.” And in the law too it is written that the angels said to Lot as he came out of Sodom: “Do not look back, nor stop anywhere in the surrounding country; flee to the mountain, lest you be swept away.” And this too has a meaning worthy of an angelic spirit: “Do not look back”: always strain forward to what lies ahead. You have left Sodom; do not turn back to Sodom. You have left wickedness and sin; do not turn back to it, “nor stop anywhere in the surrounding country.” Even if you keep the first commandment, which says, “Do not look back,” it is not enough for your salvation unless you also hear the second commandment, which says, “nor stop anywhere in the surrounding country.” For one who has begun to make progress must not stand in the country around Sodom, even if he has passed through Sodom; but having passed beyond standing in the surrounding country, he must be saved on the mountain, according to “Do not look back, nor stop anywhere in the surrounding country; flee to the mountain, lest you be swept away.” If you wish not to be swept away with the Sodomites, never turn back, nor stop in the country around Sodom, nor be anywhere else than on the mountain; for there alone is it possible to be saved. And the mountain is the Lord Jesus, to whom be the glory and the power for ever. Amen.

Homily 14. On “Woe is me, mother” as far as “Therefore thus says the Lord: If you return, I will also restore you.”

Physicians of bodies, who are with the sick and always give themselves to the care of the sick according to the purpose of the art of medicine, see terrible things and touch unpleasant things, and from others' misfortunes reap griefs of their own, and their life is always in hardship. For they are never with the healthy, but always with the wounded, with those who have spreading sores, with those full of pus, of fevers, of various diseases. And if someone wishes to take up medicine, he will not be vexed nor neglect the purpose of the art he has taken up, when he is with such people as we have described. This introduction has been given because the prophets too are, as it were, physicians of souls, and always spend their time where those who need healing are; for “those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick.” And what physicians suffer from undisciplined patients, the prophets and teachers too suffer from those who do not wish to be healed. For they are hated by them, as giving orders against the choice of the patients' desire, as preventing those who, even in illness, do not wish to take what befits their illness, from indulging and enjoying themselves. So undisciplined patients flee physicians, often even reviling them, speaking ill of them, and doing anything at all that an enemy would do to an enemy. For they forget that the physicians come to them as friends, looking at the painfulness of the diet, at the painfulness of the physicians' blow with the knife, not at the end that follows the pain; and they hate them as fathers only of pains, not of pains that bring the patients to health.

That people, then, was sick; there were various diseases in the people that bore God's name. God sent them physicians, the prophets. One of the physicians was Jeremiah; he rebuked those who sinned, wishing to turn back those who did evil. But they, instead of listening to what was said, accused the prophet, and accused him before judges like themselves. And the prophet was always in lawsuits at the hands of those who, as far as his prophecy went, had been healed, but through their own disobedience were not healed. In these circumstances at one time he says: “And I said, I will not speak, nor name the name of the Lord. And it became like a burning fire flaming in my bones, and I am weakened on every side and cannot bear it.” At another time, seeing himself always taken to court, reviled, accused, the object of false witness, he says: “Woe is me, mother; as what kind of man did you bear me?”, “a man” not judging but “judged,” and not deciding disputes but “disputed with by all the earth.” And since the sick did not listen to him when he gave good and healing counsel, he says: “I did not profit.” And since, when he lent the spiritual silver, those to whom he spoke would not listen so as to profit from what they heard, he says: “Nor did anyone owe me, nor did I owe.”

But I have said these things in anticipation, before explaining “I did not owe, nor did anyone owe me.” For the text is twofold: in most copies it is “I did not profit, nor did anyone profit me,” but in the most accurate, which agree with the Hebrew, “I did not owe, nor did anyone owe me.” So we must both explain the reading that is well worn and current in the churches and not leave unexplained the one from the Hebrew Scriptures. He was preaching the word; no one accepted what was said. It was as if a physician spent his medicines in vain, while the patients were undisciplined and fulfilling their own desires; as if he too said, “I did not profit, nor did anyone profit me.” Perhaps there is a return of benefit, through the kindness of the one benefited toward the one who benefited him, so that the speaker too comes to be benefited, since “blessed is he who speaks into the ears of those who listen.” This benefit, then, a teacher might receive from hearers who make progress and improve; he might be benefited by having fruits in them. Not having this from the Jews, Jeremiah says: “No one profited me.” For if the speaker ought to have fruit in his hearers, but the hearer misunderstands and remains outside what is said, it is said, “Not one profited me”; since he did not have this benefit, which he would have had from the hearer, benefited, becoming the cause of progress and blessedness for the one who benefited him. And in another way too, everyone who teaches, by the very act of teaching, is benefited in what he teaches and learns, in proportion as the learner is more intelligent. And those who speak become better in the lessons they hand on when the hearers are intelligent and do not simply accept, but test in return, ask, and examine the meaning of what is said. So: “I did not profit, nor did anyone profit me.”

But since another explanation is necessary because of the more accurate copies, which run thus, “I did not owe, nor did anyone owe me,” we will also explain the text as it reads so. The one who pays everyone their dues, fear to whom fear, tax to whom tax, tribute to whom tribute, honor to whom honor, and pays everyone what is fitting, so as not to owe what is fitting to anyone, honoring parents, so to speak, as parents, brothers as brothers, sons as sons, bishops as bishops, presbyters as presbyters, deacons as deacons, the faithful as the faithful, catechumens as catechumens: if he pays all that is fitting, he has not owed. But if he ought to do something fitting and has not done it, he cannot say, “I did not owe”; for owing, he has not paid. How, then, shall I explain “nor did anyone owe me”? I was lending and wanted to give the spiritual money, but they turned away from what was said and did not make themselves receptive, so as to owe; that is why not one owed me. For who accepted what was said, so as by accepting to become a debtor of what he heard, and be asked, as a debtor, for the interest on what was said? So in this respect it is better for the hearer to take rational silver from the speaker and owe, than not to accept, not to take, and not to owe. For “not one owed me” stands among the charges.

And “Woe is me, mother; as what kind of man did you bear me, a man judged and disputed with in all the earth?” I do not think it fits the other prophets to say as it fits Jeremiah. For most of the prophets began to prophesy after some time, after wickedness, after sins, having changed; but Jeremiah prophesies from childhood. And one can give an example from what is written. Isaiah did not hear, “Before I formed you in the womb I know you, and before you came out of the womb I have sanctified you; I have appointed you a prophet to the nations”; nor did he say, “I do not know how to speak, for I am too young”; but when he saw the vision recorded in his prophecy, he saw and said: “Woe is me, wretched man, for having unclean lips I dwell in the midst of a people having unclean lips, and I have seen with my eyes the King, the Lord of hosts”; “and one of the seraphim,” he says, “was sent to me, and touched my lips and said: Behold, I have taken away your iniquities, and this will cleanse your sins.” So after the sins he had committed before, Isaiah later became worthy of the Holy Spirit and prophesied. And you might find something similar in another's case. But not so Jeremiah; for, adorned with the prophetic Spirit still from his swaddling clothes, he prophesied from childhood; that is why he said (for I explain the common sense first): “Woe is me, mother; as what kind of man did you bear me, a man judged and disputed with by all the earth?” But one of those before me took up the passage, saying that he said this not to his bodily mother, but to the mother who gives birth to prophets. And who gives birth to prophets but the wisdom of God? So he said, “Woe is me, mother; as what kind of man did you bear me,” O Wisdom? And the children of Wisdom are recorded in the Gospel too: “And Wisdom sends her children.” So it is said: “Woe is me, mother,” my Wisdom, “as what kind of man did you bear me, a man judged”; who am I, that I have been born for so much, to be judged, to be disputed with because of my rebukes, my reproofs, my teaching, by all who are on the earth? If Jeremiah says this, “as what kind of man did you bear me, a man judged and disputed with by all the earth,” I cannot explain “by all the earth”; for Jeremiah was not disputed with by all the earth. Or shall we force it and say “all the earth” instead of “all Judea”? For his prophecy, when he prophesied then, did not reach all the earth. But perhaps, as we have shown in ten thousand other cases that Jeremiah speaks in place of our Lord Jesus Christ, so we shall say here too. At the beginning I noted, “Behold, I have appointed you over nations and kingdoms, to root out and to pull down and to destroy and to build and to plant.” Jeremiah did not do this; but Jesus Christ rooted out the kingdoms of sin and pulled down the buildings of wickedness, and in place of those kingdoms made righteousness and truth reign in our souls. As, then, those words fitted better to be referred to Christ than to Jeremiah, so I think do many others, and these too.

First we must speak about “woe is me,” whether, because of its ill-omened sound, the Savior, who also pronounces others wretched, can say “woe is me.” We will show from acknowledged sayings, which fit no one but the Savior, how he also wept over Jerusalem; and “woe is me” is the cry of one weeping. And it stands in the Gospel that, seeing Jerusalem, he wept over it and said: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, killing the prophets and stoning those sent to her, how often I wished to gather your children,” and the rest. And these words too are clearly spoken by the Savior in “Woe is me, for I have become like one gathering straw at harvest, and like a gleaning at the vintage, when there is no cluster to eat the firstfruits. Woe is me, O soul, for the godly man has perished from the earth, and there is none among men who does right. All go to law for blood.” For he came to the harvest to reap, and finds many sinners, and says, “Woe is me, for I have become like one gathering straw at harvest.” He came to gather the fruit of life among human beings, finds many sins in us, and so says, “and like a gleaning at the vintage, when there is no cluster to eat the firstfruits.” He says something similar to these elsewhere too, speaking to the Father: “What profit is there in my blood, in my going down to corruption?” What have I profited men so greatly? What have they done worthy of the blood I poured out for them? “What profit is there in my blood, in my going down” from heaven? I came down, I came to earth, I gave myself up to corruption, I wore a human body: what worthy of these has been achieved by men? “What profit is there in my blood, in my going down to corruption? Will the dust confess to you, or declare your truth?” Of this kind, then, is what is said here first by the Savior: “Woe is me, mother; as what kind of man did you bear me?” The Savior says “Woe is me, mother” not as God, but as man, as in the prophet: “Woe is me, O soul, for the godly man has perished from the earth.” And the soul was human; that is why it was also troubled, why it was also very sorrowful. But the Word who was in the beginning with God is not troubled; he would not say “woe is me.” For the Word does not admit death either; it is the human element that admitted it, as we have often shown.

“As what kind of man did you bear me, a man judged and disputed with in all the earth?” If you see for me the martyrs everywhere being judged and in each church standing before the judges, you will see how Jesus Christ is judged in each of the martyrs; for he himself is the one judged in those who bear witness to the truth. And you will be persuaded to accept this when you see that he says it is not you who are in prison when you are in prison, but himself; not you who are hungry when you are hungry, but himself; not you who are thirsty, but himself: “I was in prison and you came to me; I was hungry and you gave me food; I was thirsty and you gave me drink.” So when a Christian is judged for nothing else, not for his own sins, but because he is a Christian, it is Christ who is judged. So Christ Jesus is judged in all the earth; and as often as a Christian is judged, it is Christ who is judged: not only in these courts, but suppose a Christian is falsely accused, charged with something, then too Christ is unjustly judged. “As what kind of man did you bear me, a man judged and disputed with in all the earth?”

And you will also understand in this way how he “is judged and disputed with in all the earth.” Who does not judge the Christian teaching? Which of the nations does not examine it, even if simply? Which of the Jews does not speak about the Christians? Which of the Greeks? Which of the philosophers? Which of the unlearned? Everywhere Jesus is judged and put on trial; and by some he is condemned, by others not condemned. If he is not condemned, he becomes accepted: you open the windows to him, he comes in to you; you believe in him, he dines with you. But if, on hearing about Christianity, you do not accept it, you have done nothing else than condemn Jesus as a liar, as having led men astray, as not speaking the truth, by not having believed the word he teaches. “As what kind of man did you bear me, a man judged and disputed with in all the earth?” Those who wholly disbelieve condemn him; but those who do not disbelieve but doubt about him dispute about him. Jesus suffers two things among men: he is condemned by unbelievers, and disputed about by the double-minded. If you bear “the image of the heavenly,” having put off “the image of the man of dust,” you are not earth that condemns him, nor earth in which he is condemned, nor any longer earth that disputes about him.

“My strength has failed among those who curse me.” The apostle says of the Savior that “he was crucified in weakness.” And the prophet says things similar to these in “Lord, who has believed our report? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? We announced before him as a child, as a root in thirsty ground; we saw him, and he had no form nor beauty, but his form was without honor, failing beyond the sons of men. A man in affliction and in pain, and knowing how to bear sickness, because his face was turned away; he was dishonored and not esteemed. He bears our iniquities and suffers pain for us, and we reckoned him to be in pain and in affliction and in ill-treatment. But he was wounded for our iniquities, and made sick for our sins; the chastisement of our peace was upon him, by his bruise we were healed.” So he took on the weakness of our sins and bore us, and came to those who cursed him, and his strength failed at the hands of those who cursed him, as he came down from heaven. For at the same time he took on the form of a servant and emptied himself, as the apostle said: “he emptied himself, taking the form of a servant.” So he says, “My strength has failed among those who curse me.”

Let us see whether, the Word himself granting it, we can say something else clearer than what has been said on “My strength has failed among those who curse me.” “He was the true light, which enlightens every man coming into the world.” “The true light” is the Son of God, “which enlightens every man coming into the world.” And whoever is rational shares in the true light; and every human being is rational. So among all human beings who share in the Word, in some the strength of the Word has increased, in others it fails. If you see a soul subject to passion and sinful, you will see there the strength of the Word failing; but if you see a holy and righteous soul, you will see the strength of the Word bearing fruit daily, and you will apply to the righteous what is said about Jesus. For not only in himself did “Jesus advance in wisdom and stature and favor with God and men,” but also in each of those who receive advancement in wisdom, stature, and favor, “Jesus advances in wisdom, stature, and favor with God and men.” So the Word, the Son of God, who is in the one who said, “Woe is me, mother,” and the rest, says that “my strength has failed among those who curse me.” Whoever curses the Word at once receives punishment for cursing the Word, for blaming the teaching of Jesus; for the strength of Jesus fails in such a person, and there is no strength of the Word in him. As again, conversely, if you bless Jesus and receive him, his strength undergoes the opposite of what it suffered in those who cursed him; for as there it failed in those who curse, so here it grows in those who bless.

“So be it, Lord, when they go aright, if I did not stand before you in the time of their evils.” What is “So be it, Lord”? Let whoever can gather such a thing for himself. “Master, Lord, when they go aright,” may the strength that fails in those who curse come about, when, having repented after speaking evil of me, they turn to the straight way and walk in it. “So be it, Master, when they go aright, if I did not stand before you.” Then he pleads in defense of those who speak evil of him, saying: “if I did not stand before you in the time of their evils.” He stood before the Father, being “the atonement for our sins,” and interceded for them in the very time of our evils. For he did not stand forth after the time of our evils, but “while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” “If I did not stand before you in the time of their evils, in the time of their afflictions, for good against the enemy.” And in the time of their affliction, he says, the one from the enemy, I stood before you on their behalf. And who is the enemy but “our adversary the devil,” who afflicted us? And clearly, in the time of his enmity against human beings, our Savior stood before the Father and prayed about our captivity, so that we might be redeemed and rescued from the enemy. Let either the Savior or the prophet have said these things; for the prophet too can have said such things and prayed for the people “in the time of their evils.”

After this God answers the people accused by the prophet or by Christ, and says to it: “Your strength is iron and a covering of bronze”: hard, unyielding, not to be beaten out. “Your strength is iron and a covering of bronze”: your strength is, as it were, cutting and dividing, not a strength for good. “And I will give your treasures for plunder, in exchange for all your sins.” What “treasures” of sinners does God give “for plunder,” and give them “in exchange for all” their “sins”? Is it those they lay up for themselves on earth? For every human being lays up treasure: if he is base, on earth; if good, in heaven, as we have been taught by the Gospel. Or does he say to that people, “I am going to give your treasures for plunder because of your sins”? What treasures of that people were given for plunder? See: one of the treasures is Jeremiah, another treasure Isaiah; Moses too was a treasure. These treasures God took from that people, and through Christ, who said, “The kingdom of God will be taken from you and given to a nation producing its fruits,” gave them to us. “I will give,” then, “your treasures for plunder because of your sins.” And he gave the treasures of that people to us; for “they were first entrusted with the oracles of God,” and then after them we were entrusted, the oracles of God having been taken from them and given to us. And we say that “The kingdom of God will be taken from you and given to a nation producing its fruits” was spoken by the Savior and has been fulfilled. Not that the Scripture was taken from them, but now they no longer have the law and the prophets, because they do not see the meaning in them. For they have the books; but how was the kingdom of God taken from them? The meaning of the Scriptures was taken from them. No interpretation of the law or the prophets is any longer preserved among them, since, because of Christ's coming, there was fulfilled: “Say to that people: You will indeed hear and never understand, and you will indeed see and never perceive; for the heart of this people has grown fat.” There has also been fulfilled what was said by Isaiah: “The Lord will take away from Judea and from Jerusalem the strong man and the strong woman, the giant and the man of war, the judge and the prophet, and the diviner, and the wise master builder, and the intelligent hearer.” All these God took away from them and gave, if indeed we receive them, to us from the nations. So much on “And I will give your treasures for plunder.” “In exchange for all your sins, and in all your borders.” As if he said: because of your sins, which have reached all your borders; for there is no border of that people that has not been filled with sin. And how were all their borders not to be filled with sin, since, as far as it depended on them, they killed righteousness, if Christ is righteousness; killed wisdom, if Christ is wisdom; killed truth, if Christ is truth? For by condemning the Son of God to death they cast away and lost all these. And my Lord Jesus, having risen from the dead, no longer appeared to those who killed him; for we do not have it in the history that he appeared to those who killed him, but he appeared, risen from the dead, to believers only.

“And I will enslave you among all your enemies in a land you did not know.” That people has been enslaved among its enemies, and has come to be in a land it did not know. “For a fire has been kindled from my anger; it will burn upon you.” After this, and after the words of the threats spoken to the people, the one who prayed earlier completes his prayer and joins this to what was said before: “You know, O Lord; remember me and visit me, and acquit me of those who persecute me, not in long-suffering.” Let the prophet say this, persecuted by those whom he rebuked, hated by those who could not contain the truth; for he became an enemy to those who heard him by telling them the truth. And let our Savior too say the same, who was also persecuted by the people and says, “not in long-suffering.” What is “not in long-suffering”? You have always been long-suffering toward the people over their sins, but over what they have dared against me, do not be long-suffering. And truly God was not long-suffering. If you examine the times of the passion and of the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the city, and how God forsook that people because they killed Christ, you will see that he no longer used long-suffering toward the people. If you wish, hear: from the fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesar to the destruction of the temple, forty-two years were completed. For a short time had to be allowed for repentance, above all for the sake of those of the people who were going to believe from the signs and wonders that would be done by the apostles.

“Know how I have received reproach for your sake from those who reject your words.” Let it be the prophet, speaking and despised for what he said, rejected by sinners; for he himself says, “I continued being mocked.” So he was reproached by those who rejected the words spoken by God through him, and he prays to be helped by God because he was reproached, saying: “Know how I have received reproach for your sake from those who reject your words; make an end of them.” Let the prophet say it; but “make an end of them” fits better when said by the Savior; for an end came upon Jerusalem and the people because of what befell our Savior from the people's plotting. After this, since the prophets suffered much for rebuking, for carrying the word as envoys, and for receiving God's commands, it is necessary to remind the hearers about their life, their promises, and our own purpose, so that, as far as we can, if we wish to have rest with the prophets, we may emulate the works of the prophets. What I mean is this. We often say in our prayers: “God almighty, give us our portion with the prophets, give us our portion with the apostles of your Christ, so that we may be found with Christ himself.” But saying this, we do not perceive what we are praying for; for in effect we say: “Grant us to suffer what the prophets suffered; grant us too to be hated as the prophets were hated; give us such words as will make us hated; grant us to fall into as many hardships as the apostles.” For to say, “Give me a portion with the prophets,” without having suffered what the prophets suffered and without being willing to suffer it, is unjust. To say, “Give me a portion with the apostles,” without being willing to say truly, from the disposition of Paul, “in labors far more, in beatings far more, in prisons more abundantly, in deaths often,” and the rest, is the most unjust of all. If, then, we wish to be with the prophets, see the lives of the prophets: from rebuking, from reproving, from censuring, they were tried, disputed with, condemned. “They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were tempted, they died by the sword, they went about in sheepskins, in goatskins, destitute, afflicted, ill-treated, wandering in deserts,” when there were many synagogues of the Jews; and these were “wandering in deserts and mountains and caves and the holes of the earth.” What is strange, then, if someone who wishes to emulate the prophetic life, rebuking and reproving the sinner, is spoken ill of, hated, plotted against? Just as at the present time † something of the kind had to happen in the church of God. The one condemned was condemned; so-and-so, † sitting …, was doing such things; there had to be a church judgment, and there was; the one entrusted with it did the work he had to do. That man goes about speaking ill of the one who vindicated the truth. But let us not do this; let us not lend our ears to those who, because they have been cast out, speak ill of the one who cast them out, or of the one who voted with him, even when injustice has been proved and has taken place †. The wonderful apostles, insulted ten thousand times for the truth, say: “I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and distresses, for Christ's sake.” Only may I, when insulted, know that I am insulted for nothing else than for Christ; when in hardships, know that the cause of the hardships is Christ. May I, when reviled, know that the pretext for the reviling is nothing else than that I vindicate the truth and plead for what is written, so that everything may be done according to the word of God; that is why I am slandered. So let all of us too, as far as we can, hasten to the prophetic life, to the apostolic life, not fleeing what is troublesome; for if an athlete flees the trouble of the contest, he will not receive the sweetness of the crown.

“And your word will be to me for gladness.” It is not now, but “will be”; for at present your word is to me for prisons, for lawsuits, for troubles, for slanders, for pains; but the end of these will be gladness. “And your word will be to me for gladness and joy of my heart, for your name has been called upon me, O Lord almighty.” Even if Christ says this, the name of the Father has been called upon him. “I did not sit in the council of them as they played.” If ever the prophet saw the council of those not in earnest but playing, he fled rather than gathered with them, rather than hastened to an assembly of players. So you must understand the difference between a council of those who play and of those in earnest. This council is earnest and does everything with earnestness and things worthy of earnestness, and according to the saying: earnestness is the word, earnestness is the life; and it is in every way a council not of players but of those in earnest. But when the council, abandoning earnestness about necessary things, gives its leisure to the games of this age and to games that come from wickedness, it becomes a council of players. So this one says: “I did not sit in the council of them as they played, but I was reverent before the face of your hand.” Two courses being set before me, to sit in a council of players and so offend you, God, and not please you, or to rise from a council of players and do what was dear to you, I chose rather to rise from the council of the players and be your friend than, by doing the opposite, to become an enemy of your blessedness. “I did not sit in the council of them as they played, but I was reverent before the face of your hand.” And our Savior did not sit “in the council of them as they played,” but rose and left them. And a sign that the Savior rose from a council of players is his having said, “Your house is left to you desolate.” For the Word of God has left the council of the Jews and made for himself another council and assembly, the church from the nations.

“I sat alone.” Here too the words are arranged with purpose. When there is a multitude of sinners and they do not bear the righteous man who lives righteously, there is nothing absurd in fleeing the council of wickedness and imitating the one who said, “I sat alone,” and imitating Elijah too, who says: “Lord, they have killed your prophets, they have torn down your altars, and I alone am left, and they seek my life to take it.” But perhaps, if you examine “I sat alone” more deeply, you will find a meaning worthy of prophetic depth. When we imitate the life of the many, so that our life is not withdrawn, better, and exceptional compared with the many, I cannot say “I sat alone,” but “I sat with many.” But when my life becomes hard to imitate, so that I become so great that no one is like me in character, in word, in deeds, in wisdom, then I can say, because I alone am such and no one has imitated me, “I sat alone.” So even if you are not a presbyter, not a bishop, not honored with any church office, you may say this: you may emulate “I sat alone” and take up such a life as to say, “I sat alone.” “For I was filled with bitterness.” If “narrow and hard is the way,” … your feast is kept with bitter herbs; for when you keep the feast, it says, “you shall eat unleavened bread with bitter herbs.” We must consider what the word means in saying that the one who keeps the feast to God must eat “unleavened bread with bitter herbs.” The apostle explained the unleavened bread; the interpretation is not mine; but the consequent interpretation must be similar to the apostolic explanation. The apostle explained the unleavened bread, saying: “Let us keep the feast not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.” We must give the account of the bitter herbs consistently with the unleavened bread being of sincerity and truth. Have sincerity and truth, and there will be bitter herbs for you, and you eat the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth with bitter herbs, like Paul. Since he ate the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth, he also ate bitter herbs. How did he eat bitter herbs? Saying, “I have become your enemy by telling you the truth.” How did he eat bitter herbs? “In toil and hardship, in sleepless nights often, in hunger and thirst, besides other things.” The law said, “You shall eat unleavened bread with bitter herbs”; it did not say, “You shall eat unleavened bread with bitter herbs until you are filled,” as is said of certain other things, “You shall eat and be filled.” But the prophet goes further, saying not that he ate bitterness, but “I was filled with bitterness”: as far as possible I partook of bitter things, so as to partake of the fullest bitter herbs.

“Why do those who hate me prevail?” He had many troubles; he suffered from those who would not hear the truth, and they were stronger than he here in this age, since the kingdom of God is not of this age but from better regions, as the Savior says: “If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have fought, that I might not be handed over to the Jews.” So those who grieved the prophet prevailed over him in this world. For that they are strong, look at the martyrs. The judge sits judging and living in luxury in the courtroom; the Christian, in whom Christ is judged, is filled with bitterness, is oppressed by the unjust man, and is condemned.

“My wound is severe; whence shall I be healed?” Those who prevail over me strike me, and my wound is severe. Whether he prophesies the Lord's cross (for the cross is a severe wound, as far as those who crucify him are concerned), or it is said of all the righteous, in whom he receives a severe wound, or you hear it of the prophet (for he too suffered what is recorded in the prophecy), it admits the same meaning according to the text that says, “My wound is severe.” “Whence shall I be healed?” If the Savior says, “Whence shall I be healed?”, he prophesies the resurrection from the dead after the severe wound; and if it is taken of the righteous man, after the wounds healing comes again. “It has become to me like deceitful water that has no faithfulness”; for the wound does not remain, but passes away. “Therefore thus says the Lord: If you return, I will also restore you.” This again is said to each one whom God will call to return to him. And a mystery seems to me to be shown here in “I will restore you.” No one is restored to a place where he has never been; restoration is to one's own. For example, if a limb of mine is dislocated, the physician tries to restore the dislocated limb. When someone is outside his country, whether justly or unjustly, and recovers the right to be in his country again according to the laws, he has been restored to his own country. Understand the same for me in the case of a soldier cast out of his own rank and restored. So he says here to us who have turned away that, if we return, he will restore us. For the end of the promise is of this kind, as is written in the Acts of the Apostles in “until the times of the restoration of all things of which God spoke through the mouth of his holy prophets from of old,” in Christ Jesus, to whom be the glory and the power for ages of ages. Amen.

Homily 15. On “Woe is me” again, in another way, as far as “Cursed is the man who has his hope in man, and will lean on flesh as his arm.”

Those who call the prophets blessed, and by calling them blessed pray to have their portion with the prophets, should gather from the prophetic words the exceptional features of their prophecy; seeking them, they would be persuaded that, if they live by them (even if it will seem hard to them in this life to imitate the prophetic life), they will obtain rest and blessedness with the prophets. One can gather the exceptional features of the prophets from many places: their freedom, their vigor, their watchfulness, their alertness; that, when they were in hardships, they took no thought for them because of their freedom, only to rebuke, only to turn people back, as prophets, by speaking God's word boldly, reproving sinners, even if those rebuked seemed very powerful. But though one can do this from everywhere, let us look at it also from today's readings. The prophet rebuked many and spoke to many; for he lived among people who had become sinners, as is clear from the captivity having happened in his times. Having rebuked many, and been judged by many, he utters such things as these.

For let us look first at the prophetic word, then also at the higher sense, … the prophet's. “Woe is me, mother; as what kind of man did you bear me, a man judged and disputed with in all the earth?” O mother, why have you borne me a man judged by all who are on the earth, and disputed with by all who are on the earth? For the prophetic task was set before this prophet, and Isaiah, and the rest: to teach, to rebuke, and to turn people back. So this prophet too had the task of judging, rebuking, being able to judge and to be judged along with sinners, rebuking the sins of the people. And what those of the people did to them, what need is there to say? One they stoned, another they sawed in two, another they killed “between the temple and the altar,” this one they threw into a pit of mire when they were rebuked. And our Savior did this above all, and better than these, as Lord of the prophets. For though he himself was scourged and crucified and handed over by the Jews, or by the teachers of the Jews and the leader of the people, he said: “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites”; and he adds for each one “woe” and “because” of this and that. So let us too, if we are eager for the blessings of the prophets, do the same, so that, through speaking and through being judged before many people, we too may say: “Woe is me, mother; as what kind of man did you bear me, a man judged and disputed with in all the earth?”

This prophetic saying can more properly be referred to the Savior. For suppose the prophet says it; he will not say it truly, but perhaps by exaggeration; for he was not disputed with before all the earth. But if I come to my Savior and Lord, and especially because of “he will come into judgment” and “that you may be justified in your words, and prevail when you are judged,” I shall see that my Savior and Lord is going to stand before the Father, being judged together with all of us human beings. And he is judged with all human beings. I say he is judged: he too is examined, and he stood vindicating the truth, but not as an accuser. “Woe is me, mother; as what kind of man did you bear me, a man judged and disputed with in all the earth?” A prophet cannot say “in all the earth.” But there are those who love our Lord and are indignant, saying that it is not the Savior who says this, that the saying is not fitting for the Son of God. One must show that “Woe is me, mother” is not foreign to the Son of God: “My soul is very sorrowful, even to death,” and “My soul is troubled,” and, like what is said in the prophets, so here: “Woe is me, mother; as what kind of man did you bear me, a man judged and disputed with in all the earth?”, or when the gleaning is lost, so that no cluster is found: “Woe is me, O soul, for the godly man has perished from the earth, and there is none among men who does right.” Who says there, “Woe is me, for I have become like one gathering straw at harvest”? Does the prophet gather, and wish to gather? Does the prophet have a field? No; it belongs to no one to gather all from the harvest and from what has been sown, except to the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Since, then, there are many falls among the nations, and also among us, he speaks of the sins, saying: “Woe is me, for I have become like one gathering straw.” Let each of us examine himself: is he an ear of grain? Will the Son of God find in him something to harvest or reap? We shall find that we are blighted by the wind; if we have a little still in ourselves, two or three grains, our sins upon us are many. So, seeing even the churches that bear the name full of sinners, he says: “Woe is me, for I have become like one gathering straw at harvest, and like a gleaning at the vintage.” He came seeking fruit on the vine; for each of us is planted as a vine “in a fertile place,” and “you brought a vine out of Egypt,” “but I planted you a fruitful vine, wholly true.” He comes; he seeks somehow to gather grapes; he finds some gleanings and small clusters, not flourishing nor many. Which of us has clusters of virtue? Which of us has produce for God? “O Lord our God, how wonderful is your name in all the earth!”

Let this be said by me by way of digression on “Woe is me, mother”: that it is not foreign to the divinity of our Savior, as he looks upon the sins of human beings, now to say “woe is me,” the Savior saying it not as God but as man, not as Wisdom but as soul; I cited that prophetic word: “Woe is me, O soul, for the godly man has perished from the earth, and there is none among men who does right.” The blessed soul came into human life, took a body for the sake of human beings. If it sees sins, it says to the Father: “What profit is there in my blood, in my going down to corruption? Will the dust confess to you?” But let him not say “woe is me” over us; let the angels of heaven not say it over us. When our Savior says “woe is me,” they too will say “woe is me”; for they are not better than our Savior, and they too see our failings. But blessed are those over whom the angels will not say “woe is me,” but who are called blessed; for “there is joy in heaven over one sinner who repents, more than over ninety-nine who need no repentance.” These things by way of consolation. “Woe is me, mother; as what kind of man did you bear me?” Whom does he call mother? Can he not mean, among women, both his soul and Mary? And if anyone accepts, “Just now my mother the Holy Spirit took me and carried me up to the great mountain Tabor,” and the rest, he can see his mother. “Woe is me, mother; as what kind of man did you bear me, a man judged and disputed with in all the earth?” He is judged by all the earth and disputed with, and he is going to say to each one: “I did this and that, and my dispensation accomplished this and that, and I endured for your salvation.” When the Savior says these things, what shall we do? For he is going to be disputed with in all the earth.

I want to look at what follows. It can be referred, on one explanation, both to the prophet and to the Savior. Let us look at what follows: “I did not owe, nor did anyone owe me.” “The ruler of this world is coming, and he has nothing in me.” And truly he did not owe. But each of us is a debtor through sins, and is a debtor having a bond. After their bond was blotted out, † how many bonds have they made? “He who committed no sin, nor was deceit found in his mouth,” did not make a bond. And what is “not one owed me”? How shall we explain “not one owed me” of the Savior? Even if we have read it so, one must also know that most of the copies of the Septuagint edition do not have it so; but later, having examined the other editions too, we recognized it to be a scribal error. … So that “not one” owed him: he forgave all their debts. “A certain moneylender had two debtors: one owed five hundred denarii, the other fifty. When they could not pay, he forgave them both.” Do you wish to see the two debtors, the one who owed five hundred and the one who owed fifty? From two peoples they have believed in God: the people from the Jews, disbelieving in Christ, owes the fifty; perhaps we from the nations, who had become the most impious of all, owe the five hundred, about whom it is said in the case of that sinful woman who repented. And yet someone might say, how are the five hundred referred to her? From “and what sort of woman this is who is touching him,” in reply to which he said to Simon: “A certain moneylender had two debtors; one owed five hundred denarii, the other fifty,” and the rest. So much on “I did not owe, nor did anyone owe me,” which it was necessary to set before you. “I did not owe, nor did anyone owe me; my strength has failed among those who curse me.” Even if he died “in weakness, yet he lives by the power of God.”

Then, since many words have gone by, there would be something to say about each of the things said, but time presses and does not allow it. Let us speak, then, on what was read next: “Cursed is the man who has his hope in man.” From this † those who think that the Savior, the Son of God, was a man (for among the many human evils they dared to say this too, that “the Only-begotten,” “the firstborn of all creation,” is not God); for “cursed is he who has his hope in man.” Clearly those who have their hope in a man are accursed. I would say that I do not have my hope in a man; hoping in Christ Jesus, I do not know a man. Not only do I not know a man, but I know Wisdom, Righteousness itself, him through whom “all things were created, … powers.” “Cursed is the man who has his hope in man.” Even if the Savior testifies that what he bore was a man, yet even if he was a man, now he is in no way a man. “For even if we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet we know him so no longer,” says the apostle. Because of him I am no longer a man, if I follow his words; but he says: “I said, You are gods, and all sons of the Most High.” So as he is “the firstborn from the dead,” so he has become the firstborn of all human beings, having changed into God. “Cursed,” then, “is the man who has his hope in man, and will lean on flesh as his arm”: whoever makes the things of the flesh supreme, whoever acquires bodily strength and wages war according to the flesh. But the holy man is not so; for “he does not lean on flesh as his arm”; for he “always” has “the dying of Jesus in” his “body,” and puts to death “the members that are on the earth, sexual immorality, impurity.” Having put these to death, “he does not lean on flesh as his arm.” “Cursed is he who has his hope in man.” At the same time, it is also against those who hope in dignities: “So-and-so is my friend, a centurion, a procurator; so-and-so is my friend and rich and provides for me.” Then to such a one too this is said: “Cursed is the man who has his hope in man.” We hope in no man, even if they seem to be our friends; for we hope not in them but in our Lord, who is Christ Jesus, to whom be the glory and the power for ages of ages. Amen.

Homily 16. On “Behold, I am sending many fishermen, says the Lord” as far as “The sin of Judah is written with an iron pen, with a diamond point engraved on the breast of their heart.”

It is recorded in the Gospel according to Matthew that our Savior came beside the sea of Galilee and saw “Simon and Andrew his brother casting a net into the sea; for they were fishermen.” Then the text says that the Savior, seeing them, said: “Come after me, and I will make you fishers of men. And they left their nets and followed him.” And Jesus made them take up fishing for men. And “he found two other brothers, James the son of Zebedee and John his brother, in the boat with their father, mending their nets; and he called them” to the same skill, and made them too fishers of men. And if anyone has considered those who have from God a grace of speech woven like nets and put together from the sacred Scriptures like a casting net, so that the mesh is thrown around the souls of the hearers, and has considered that this is done skilfully according to the knowledge, now our Savior sends fishers of men, having trained them, so that we may be able to come up out of the sea and escape its bitter waves. But those lifeless fish, brought up in seines and casting nets and nets or on hooks, die a death not succeeded by life. But the one caught by the fishermen of Jesus and brought up from the sea also dies, but dies to the world, dies to sin, and after dying to the world and to sin is made alive by the Word of God and takes up another life. As if you could, by supposition, conceive of the fish's soul changing after leaving the fish's body and becoming something better than a fish (I have taken an example; let no one take occasion from it † for what he did not hear), understand something of this kind. You have come up from the sea, having fallen into the nets of Jesus' disciples; coming out, you change your soul; you are no longer a fish living in the salty waves of the sea, but at once your soul changes and is transformed and becomes something better and more divine than it was before. And that it is transformed and changed, hear Paul saying: “But we all, with unveiled face beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, as from the Lord, the Spirit.” And this fish, caught by Jesus' fishermen and transformed, leaving its haunts in the sea, makes its haunts in the mountains, so that it no longer needs fishermen to bring it up from the sea, but a second group, called hunters, who hunt “from every mountain and from every hill.” So you, having come up from the sea and been caught in the nets of Jesus' disciples, change from the sea, forget it, come to the mountains, the prophets, and to the hills, the righteous, and make your haunts there, so that afterward, when your time comes, [the hunters may take you, as before] the fishermen. And who might these be but those appointed to receive the souls on the hills, the souls not lying below? And see whether the prophet has not cried out mystically in saying this and presenting this meaning in “Behold, I am sending many fishermen, says the Lord, and they will fish for them; and after this I will send many hunters, and they will hunt them on every mountain and on every hill.”

If, then, you wish to be caught by the hunters, see that you do not make your haunts in the valleys nor spend your time somewhere below, but seek the mountains. Go up to the mountain where Jesus was transfigured; go up to the mountain which Jesus ascended “seeing the crowds,” and his disciples followed him, where “opening his mouth he taught, saying: Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven,” and the beatitudes that follow. And these hunters may not catch from anywhere else but from the mountains and the hills and from the clefts of the rocks. For these three are mentioned in the prophet: “For I will send many hunters, and they will hunt them on every mountain and on every hill and from the clefts of the rocks.” From where, then, am I to understand the rocks and the clefts in the rocks? I come to Exodus; I seek to find a trace of an explanation of the clefts of the rocks; I find Moses there wishing to know God, and God promising him and saying: “Behold, I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and you will see my back parts; but my face will not be seen by you.” If you understand the rock there, and see the cleft in the rock, through which, seeing, he sees God through the cleft of the rock, you will also see the many rocks and their clefts. What, then, is that rock, the one rock? “And the rock was Christ”; “for they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them”; and “he set my feet upon a rock” is said in the thirty-ninth Psalm. What is the cleft in the rock? If you see Jesus' coming, understanding him wholly as the rock, you will see the cleft as his coming, through which cleft the things after God are seen. For this is what is meant in “and you will see my back parts.”

But I have found one cleft of one rock; I pass over in thought from the cleft to the hole of the rock, and I also seek the many rocks. If I come to the choir either of the prophets or of the apostles, or even of the holy angels who have gone up higher, I say that all the imitators of Christ, as he is a rock, become rocks. And just as he has a cleft through which the back parts of God are perceived, in the same way each, giving a way for God to be understood through the things he says, makes a cleft in himself, or, if you wish to name it otherwise, a hole. Through this cleft or hole you will see, through Moses the law, through Isaiah his prophecy, through Jeremiah other words of God. And if it is an angel speaking, as he spoke according to what is said in “and the angel who spoke in me,” there too I stand upon the angel, and see there too a rock and a cleft of the rock, and I see God in an angelic way.

But I need an example to show how one can come to an angel and see God through an angel. For it is written in Exodus: “An angel of the Lord appeared to Moses in a flame of fire from the bush. And Moses sees that the bush is burning with fire, and the bush is not consumed.” And Scripture did not say, as it said at the beginning that “an angel appeared,” so here, “I am an angel of the Lord,” but, “I am the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.” So God was seen there in the angel, as God is known through the rock and the cleft in it. You do not know, then, when the hunters are sent. For this reason never come down from the mountains, nor leave the hills, nor be outside the clefts of the rocks; for if you are found outside, it will be said to you, as to one who is outside and speaks the things of those outside: “Fool, this night they demand your soul from you; and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?” This will be said to you if you say: “I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and I will say to my soul: Soul, you have good things laid up for many years; take your ease, eat, drink, be merry.” You see the one below the mountains, below the hills, outside the clefts of the rocks, how he errs even in his judgment about good things, thinking these to be good. That is why he says: “And I will say to my soul: Soul, you have good things laid up for many years.” He has thought grain and the abundance of earthly things to be good; for he did not see that the truly good things are not in the cursed earth, but the truly good things are in heaven. He laid up treasure on earth because he thought the things on earth were good. But if someone passes over from laying up treasure “on earth,” obeying Jesus, to laying up treasure “in heaven,” it will not be said to him, “Fool, this night they demand your soul from you,” but the hunters will come, seeking not the creatures below but those on the mountains, those on the hills, those sheltered in the clefts of the rocks, and will take them and lead them away from that hunt. Where? To the rest of the saints and the blessed in Christ Jesus. “For my eyes,” he says, “are upon all their ways.” God has his eyes upon all the ways of such people, those who make their haunts on the mountains and on the hills and in the clefts of the rocks. “And they were not hidden from my face,” such people; for it is the base who hide from God's face. Adam, after the transgression, heard “the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the evening” and hid; but the holy man does not hide, but has a heart with boldness toward God, the boldness that comes from a holy way of life. For “if our conscience does not condemn us, it has boldness toward God, and whatever we ask we receive from him.” Adam, though he sinned, did not sin a sin grievous to excess; that is why he hid “from the face of God.” But Cain, more sinful than he and most impious, the fratricide, what did he do? “He went out from the face of God.” So, by comparison of evils, hiding from God's face is the lesser; for such a one hides not shamelessly but out of respect for God. “They were not hidden,” then, “from my face.” These, who have done these things, were once in sins and were fished out of the sins in the sea.

So that those who were fished out and afterward came to the mountains may not suppose that these things came to them from their own righteousness, the Word reminds not only them but us too of our former sins. That is why it is said after the benefits: “And their iniquities were not hidden from before my eyes.” What follows is going to cause us a struggle. For whether we understand it as consequent, we shall think carefully about the requital of sins; or whether it seems not consequent on what was said before about those fished and hunted, even so it throws us into no ordinary struggle. For he says: “And I will repay first their iniquities and their sins double, because they profaned my land with the carcasses of their abominations and with their lawlessness, with which they filled my inheritance.” Whether some, not understanding it, removed “first” from what was written, or the Seventy removed it for some purpose, God would know. We, however, comparing it with the other editions, found it standing: “And I will repay first their iniquities double,” so that it might be shown that, even if they are worthy of blessedness because of their later works, since they are human beings and have been in sins, they must first receive back their sins. And see whether the word is not true. Who will not receive back his sins, except the one who, after believing and receiving forgiveness of sins (so as to hear Jesus saying, “Your sins are forgiven you”), sins no more? But if, after the forgiveness of sins and the dispensation of the washing of regeneration, we sin, as we do, the many of us who have not been made perfect like the apostles, and after sinning, and while sinning, we also do some things as we ought, we must consider what awaits us. If we depart this life having sins, but having good deeds too, shall we be saved because of the good deeds and released from the sins committed knowingly? Or shall we be punished for the sins and receive no reward anywhere for the good deeds? But neither the one, I mean receiving back the worse and not receiving the better, is in keeping with a just God, nor the other, I mean receiving the better and not receiving back the worse, is in keeping with a just God, who wishes to cleanse and cut away wickedness. For suppose that, on the foundation, Christ Jesus, whom you have been taught, you have built not only “gold and silver and precious stone” (if indeed you have gold, much gold or little); suppose you have silver, precious stone; but I do not say these only; suppose you also have “wood and hay and straw”: what do you wish to happen to you after your departure? To enter into the holy places with your wood and your hay and straw, so as to defile the kingdom of God? Or again, do you wish to remain in the fire because of the hay, the wood, the straw, and receive nothing for the gold and silver and precious stone? Nor is this reasonable.

What, then? It follows that first, because of the wood, we receive the fire that consumes the wood and the hay and the straw; for our God is said, to those able to understand, to be in his being a consuming fire. And the prophet was silent about what it consumes, saying, “Our God is a consuming fire,” and left it to us to understand. Since he said, “God is a consuming fire,” there is something consumed. What, then, is consumed? For it does not consume what is according to the image and likeness; it does not consume its own creation, but the hay built upon it, the wood built upon it, the straw built upon it. The passage was very hard to explain. There were promises, and after the promises he says: “And I will repay first their iniquities double.” “First” is added of necessity; for first the things of iniquity, then the things of righteousness are repaid; God does not repay in reverse. If he first repaid the good things, so that we received the good things, and then repaid the evil, the good things would have to cease so that we might receive the evil. But we shall first receive the evil things and after that the good, so that the punishment of those who suffer may come to an end through the destruction of the evils, and after this he may repay the good. That is why you will find in the sacred Scriptures God saying first the things that seem gloomier and after them the better: “I will kill and I will make alive; I will strike, and I will heal.” “He causes pain and restores again; he struck, and his hands healed.” On these things one who understands and is piously disposed toward what is said may say: “Lord, who shall sojourn in your tent? Or who shall dwell on your holy mountain? He who walks blameless and does righteousness, who speaks truth in his heart; who has not deceived with his tongue, and has done no evil to his neighbor, and has not taken up a reproach against those nearest him.” (But we reproach even those who repent and turn back, though Scripture says, “Do not reproach a man who turns away from sin.”) “He has not taken up a reproach against those nearest him; the evildoer is despised in his sight, but those who fear …” we shall receive back our sins.

But one of the hearers will say: “Explain ‘double’ too. Suppose I receive back my sins first, so that, when I have received back my sins, after that what the apostle said may be fulfilled: ‘If anyone's work is burned up, he will suffer loss, but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire.’ Why, then, do I receive back my sins ‘double’?” But one must say that “the servant who knew his master's will and did not act according to his will shall be beaten” not with few but “with many.” So it is fitting that those from the nations who sin receive back their sins single, but that we receive back our failings double; “for if we sin willfully after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful expectation of judgment and a zeal of fire about to consume the adversaries.” The things about those who were to be fished and hunted and to receive back first their sins double have been prophesied. After this the calling of the nations is prophesied more clearly, of those not being called but already called, and not ignorant of what to confess and what to give thanks for, but already taught. For in the former words we learned that they were called, fished, hunted; but what they will experience, in the latter. Let us see what he prophesies about us, who are already learning to pray, or rather have learned.

“O Lord, my strength and my help and my refuge in the day of evils: to you nations will come from the end of the earth and will say: How false are the idols our fathers acquired, and there is no profit in them.” Have the nations come to God from the end of the earth, and have the nations said, “Our fathers acquired false idols, and there is no profit in them”? How “from the end of the earth”? There are some who are first of the earth and some who are last of the earth. Who are the first? “The wise of the world” are the first of the earth, not simply first: “the wise of the world, the well-born,” the rich, the dignitaries. Who are the last? “God chose the foolish things of the world, the low-born, the despised, the things that are not.” “Nations,” then, “will come from the end of the earth,” as if he said: from the last of the people on earth, from the foolish, from the low-born, from the despised, “and will say: How false are the idols our fathers acquired, and there is no profit in them.” Not that there are some true idols, in contrast with which false ones are spoken of, but idols that are by nature false; “and there is no profit in them.”

“Will a man make gods for himself?” Not only from statues do men make gods for themselves; but you will also find men making gods for themselves from fabrications. For all who can fabricate another god and another creation of the world besides the one recorded by the Spirit, an ordering of the world besides the true world, all these have made gods for themselves and worshipped the works of their hands. For example, consider either among the Greeks those who begot the doctrines, let us say, of this philosophy or that, or in the heresies those who first begot doctrines: these made idols for themselves and fabrications of the soul, and turning worshipped the works of their own hands, accepting their own fabrications as truth. So the Word, refuting all who make gods for themselves, perceptibly and intellectually, says: “Will a man make gods for himself, and these are not gods? Therefore I will show them my hand at this time, and I will make known to them my power.” What time but this one? Showing the time of the Lord's coming, “and they will know,” he says, “that my name is the Lord.”

Then there is another prophecy, which, I do not know how, we did not find in the Seventy, but found in the other editions, clearly because it stands in the Hebrew; and it is full of most necessary matters, able, if we pay attention, to turn our soul. The words run thus: “The sin of Judah is written with an iron pen, with a diamond point engraved on the breast of their heart.” One can give oneself to the easier course and say: “This is written about the Jews, that their sin ‘is written.’” But if you see, as we have often shown, that Christ is figuratively called Judah, perhaps “the sin of Judah” is ours, who believe in Christ, who is from the tribe of Judah. And if you can hear it in another, more mystical way, perhaps he prophesies about Judas the betrayer, so that the prophecy is about him, saying: “The sin of Judas is written with an iron pen, with a diamond point engraved on the breast of the heart”; but again “their” does not follow in his case. So perhaps he was saying that these prophesied things reach us, if we become sinners. We have sinned, and our sin is written not outside us but in our heart, and it is written “with an iron pen, with a diamond point.” That the sins we commit are written into us by sinning, the matter itself will show. I was not conscious in myself of this deed or this sin; having done it, I have an imprint of it, and the imprint of my sin, the sin committed, is as it were written in my soul. And if my sin were written in ink, I would have wiped it out; but as it is, it is written “with an iron pen,” written “with a diamond point,” written “on the breast of” our “heart,” so that I may come to the judgment seat and the prophecy may be fulfilled that says: “Nothing is hidden that will not be made manifest, and nothing covered that will not be revealed.” My breast is laid bare, and my heart having the letters of sin written in it, the imprints of my sins in my breast and in my heart. “For nothing is hidden that will not be made manifest,” but “their thoughts among themselves accusing or even excusing them,” and “do not judge anything before the time, until the Lord comes, who will also bring to light the things hidden in darkness and make manifest the counsels of the hearts.” To whom will he make them manifest? Not to himself; for he knows “all things before they come to be.” To whom, then, will he make them manifest? To all who will see, because of their purity, the sin of the sinner, so that sinners “may rise to reproach and to everlasting shame”; from which may the God of the universe deliver us, so that we may rise to the glory that is in Christ, to whom be the glory and the power for ever. Amen.

Homily 17. On “The partridge cried out” as far as “and I did not desire the day of man; you know.”

We have come to the celebrated question of seeing who the partridge is, about which Scripture now says: “The partridge cried out; it gathered what it did not hatch, making its wealth without judgment. In the middle of its days they will leave it, and at its end it will be a fool.” From the study of the nature of animals we must take up what is reported about the partridge, so that, knowing the facts about the animal, we may know whether the partridge now spoken of should be placed on the better side or on the worse. It is said to be a most malicious animal, deceitful and crafty, wishing to deceive hunters, and often rolling about the hunter's feet so as to distract him, as though the animal were close, so that he does not come to the nest. And when it judges that it has drawn the hunter away and the chicks have escaped, then it too flies off. And the animal is very unclean, so that the males fight one another over mating and male mounts male. If, then, this animal is malicious, unclean, crafty, and deceitful, clearly to place it on the better side and say that it can be referred to the Savior appears impious. We must see, then, if we wish to interpret it of the adversary, whether the whole interpretation follows for us.

Let us begin, then, with “The partridge cried out; it gathered what it did not hatch.” So the devil does not gather his own creatures; he does not gather what he begot; but when he cries out, he gathers the creatures of another and makes them his own. The partridge cried out through Valentinus, the partridge cried out through Marcion, it cried out through Basilides, through all those of other opinions; for none of them could speak the voice of Jesus: “My sheep will hear my voice.” But the voice of Jesus is in Paul and Peter; that is why Paul said, “Since you seek proof of the Christ who speaks in me.” But the voice of the partridge, which gathers what it did not hatch, is in those who lead astray and deceive the simpler believers because of their guilelessness and lack of preparation. “The partridge,” then, “cried out; it gathered what it did not hatch, making its wealth without judgment.” The partridge has grown rich. See how many tens of thousands are his; many have become the partridge's, the opposing power's. And he made his wealth without caring for judgment or having judgment, acting without discernment. That is why it is said that the partridge is “making its wealth without judgment.” But my Savior makes his wealth with judgment, and his wealth is judged and chosen.

“In the middle of its days they will leave it.” All of us who were once under the partridge that cried out (for it cried out not only through those already mentioned, but also, in a word, through all who deceive and call people to godlessness as if to godliness, to doctrines contrary to the truth) have left it “in the middle of its days.” For all its days are the days of this age; but since Christ Jesus has delivered “us from the present evil age,” for this reason we have left it “in the middle of its days.” “And at its end it will be a fool.” When was it ever wise, that at its end it should become a fool? But we shall say that it was wise; for “the serpent was the wisest of all the beasts on the earth which the Lord God had made.” It was wise according to what is said in Isaiah: “For I will bring it upon the great mind, the ruler of the Assyrians. For he said: By strength I will do it, and by wisdom

[From the Latin:] … you may accept: “If anyone among you,” he says, “thinks that he is wise in this age, let him become a fool.” The one who cried out before resolves it: be foolish and simple, so that you may become wise. If, then, there is a blameworthy wisdom, according to which “the sons of this age are wiser than the sons of light in their generation,” God is good, who overturns opposites by opposites, so that what was said may be fulfilled: “its end will be foolish.” When will its end be foolish? Christ must “reign until God puts all his enemies under his feet,” and when he has subjected all things to him, “the last enemy to be destroyed is death.” When death has been destroyed, then the end of the partridge will come, and its end will become foolish. So much on the partridge. The beginning of the second section read is this: “A throne of glory, exalted from the beginning, is the place of our sanctification, our support, the support of Israel. O Lord, let all who have forsaken you be put to shame as they depart; let them be written on the earth, for they have forsaken the fountain of life, the Lord.” The blessed prophet Isaiah, seeing the Lord and his kingdom, said: “I saw the Lord of hosts sitting on a throne high and lifted up.” Jeremiah too saw how God reigns; that is why, glorifying him, he says: “A throne of glory, exalted from the beginning, is the place of our sanctification.” Whether you wish to understand these words of Christ, you will not sin; or of the Father, you will not think impiously; for the Savior is a throne of glory, exalted and from the beginning. “A throne of glory,” because his kingdom is exalted; [the Greek resumes:] “our sanctification” is Christ; “for he who sanctifies and those who are sanctified are all from one.” “The support of Israel.” Just as the Savior is righteousness itself, truth itself, sanctification itself, so he is endurance itself. And it is not possible to be righteous without Christ, nor holy without him, nor to endure without having Christ; for he himself is the endurance of Israel. And even if you refer it to God, not even so will you be impious. “O Lord, let all who have forsaken you be put to shame as they depart.” Each of us, when he sins, forsakes Christ by the things in which he sins, and in forsaking Christ forsakes God. For in doing wrong he forsakes righteousness, and in becoming profane he forsakes sanctification, and in making war he forsakes peace, and in coming under the enemy he forsakes redemption, and in being outside the wisdom of God he forsakes wisdom. So the prophet calls down a curse on all who forsake God, teaching us what will happen to them, saying: “Let all who forsake you be put to shame.” As far as they have departed, so far let them be put to shame. “Let them be written on the earth.” All human beings are written down: the saints in heaven, the sinners on the earth. It is said to the disciples by the [Lord]: “Rejoice that your names are written in heaven.” So one must rejoice if one becomes such that his name is written in heaven. And as the name of the saints is written in heaven, so the names of those who live earthly lives, who do not pass through the land of Edom but hold the fields and vineyards of the land of Edom, are written on the earth as of those who forsake God. For he says, “Let them be put to shame as they depart; let them be written on the earth”; for “with the measure you measure, it will be measured to you.” Each is the cause for himself of being written down. If you seek the things on earth, you do not seek the heavenly things. If your soul has bent toward the affairs here, you become the cause for yourself, since Jesus says: “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal; but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven.” Do you lay up treasure in heaven? You are the cause for yourself of your name being written in heaven. So much on “let them be written on the earth.” And he gives the reason: “for they have forsaken the fountain of life, the Lord.” And at the beginning the same prophet said in the person of God, “They have forsaken me, the fountain of living water,” and now, “they have forsaken the fountain of life, the Lord.” Let us too, then, if we wish not to forsake the fountain of life, the Lord, say the words of Jesus' true disciples, which they spoke to the teacher when he said to them, “Do you also wish to go away?” What, then, shall we say? “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” Here the second section too came to an end.

Then again there is a prayer that runs thus: “Heal me, O Lord, and I shall be healed; save me, and I shall be saved; for you are my boast. Behold, they say to me: Where is the word of the Lord? Let it come. But I have not grown weary following after you, and I have not desired the day of man; you know.” Only to the one who came as physician for those who are sick, and who says, “Those who are strong have no need of a physician, but those who are sick,” can everyone who wishes to be healed of the sickness of his soul say with confidence: “Heal me, O Lord, and I shall be healed.” But if anyone else besides him promises the healing of souls, you could not say to him truthfully, “Heal me, O Lord, and I shall be healed.” For that woman “with a flow of blood” spent “all she had” on physicians, and “could not be healed by any of them”; for it was not reasonable to say to any of them, “Heal me, O Lord, and I shall be healed,” but only to him whose “fringe of his garment” it was enough to touch. So I say to him: “Heal me, O Lord, and I shall be healed”; for if you heal, the end will follow the healing from you, the cure, so that I am saved. But whatever others save, I shall not be saved; the only and true salvation is if Christ saves, since then I shall be saved. “A horse is a false hope for salvation”; false too are all the other things besides God for salvation. That is why I would say to him: “Save me, O Lord, and I shall be saved.” And I say this if I can also say what follows, by renouncing every boast, so as to say, “For you are my boast”; that is, when I fulfill the commandment that says: “Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, nor the strong man in his strength, nor the rich man in his riches; but let him who boasts boast in this, to understand and know that I am the Lord.” Blessed, then, is the one who has renounced every earthly boast, for example in so-called noble birth, in beauty, and in bodily things, in wealth, in glory, and is content with one boast, so as to say: “For you are my boast.”

“Behold, they say to me: Where is the word of the Lord? Let it come. But I have not grown weary following after you.” Jesus says to you, “Take up your cross and follow me,” and “Leave everything and follow me,” and “Whoever does not leave father and mother and follow after me cannot be my disciple.” If, then, you become such as always to follow Jesus, you will also follow, and as long as you follow you will not grow weary; for “there will be no toil in Jacob, nor will pain be seen in Israel.” There is no weariness for one who follows Jesus; following itself takes away weariness. That is why he himself says, so that we may no longer be weary, having grown weary before beginning to follow him: “Come to me, all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” If, then, being weary, we come to him and follow him, we shall say: “But I have not grown weary following after you.” And consistent with this is our saying also, “I have not desired the day of man.” There is a day of man, and there is a day of God. Let each of us desire the day of the resurrection of the saints, not that about which it is written: “Woe to those who desire the day of the Lord; it is darkness and not light.” Who is the one who says, “And I have not desired the day of man”? The plainness of the word will convict us that we have desired the day of man. Often, when we have been ill and have come to the prospect of death at our departure, we beg the brothers who visit us, saying: “Ask leave for me; ask that I may remain in life.” Saying this, we desire not the holy day of God but the day of man. So let us put away love of life and the desire for a human day, and seek to see that day on which we shall obtain blessedness in Christ Jesus, to whom be the glory and the power for ever. Amen.

Homily 18. On “The word that came from the Lord to Jeremiah, saying: Arise and go down to the potter's house” as far as “to make their land a desolation and a hissing.”

There are two visions of Jeremiah read in sequence: the first contains the matter of the clay vessel in the potter's hand, which after breaking admits of repair (for it can be reshaped); the other vision contains the matter of the earthenware flask, for which, once broken, there is no remedy. For while it was clay, if it was broken, even if already shaped, since it was clay it could again become a second lump and be made a second time; but when, after being clay, it has become earthenware and been hardened by the fire, then it was not possible, after the earthenware was broken, for it to be remedied. What these things mean, let us first consider in outline, then, if it is granted, examine them word by word. As long as we are in this life we are being shaped, so to speak, as by a potter, because our vessel is of clay, and we are shaped either according to wickedness or according to virtue. But we are shaped in such a way that our wickedness can be broken so that a new and better creation may come about, and our progress can be undone after it has been shaped into a clay vessel. But when, after the present age, we come to the end of life, and then are fired, whether by the fire of the evil one's flaming darts, whatever we become, or by the divine fire (since “our God is a consuming fire”), if, I say, having become whatever we become under this or that fire, we are broken, whether we were broken and perished after becoming good vessels or after becoming wicked vessels, we are not made anew, nor does our make admit of improvement. That is why, as long as we are here, as it were in the potter's hand, even if the vessel falls from his hands, it admits of remedy and of being made anew. Let this be said somewhat summarily, before we examine what remains in detail, about the two kinds of vessels, the one of clay, not yet fired, and the second, which has already become earthenware.

Let us look, from the text itself, at what is said about the clay vessel in the potter's hand, and how the Word in the prophet himself, the Lord who prophesies in him, gives other, not small, starting points for interpreting what concerns the thing formed in the potter's hand. “The word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord, saying: Arise and go down to the potter's house.” Jeremiah is above; he has gone beyond the clay vessels. The clay vessels are below, and the nature that governs the clay vessels, coming down with the things it governs, is below; that is why the word spoken to Jeremiah from the Lord says to him: “Arise and go down to the potter's house, and there you will hear my words.” To Moses it is said, “Come up to the mountain and hear”; to Jeremiah it is said, “Go down to the potter's house and hear”; for each of those who hear the word is taught either about higher things or learns about lower things. If I am taught the lower things, I go down in thought so as to see the lower things; if I learn the higher things, I go up in thought to the higher things so as to behold what is there. And so that all of you, as far as you are able, may follow what is said, I will use examples from Scripture too, and beside the example I will add clarity that brings you closer to the interpretation given. “At the name of Jesus every knee will bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” There is a wisdom about each of these: wisdom about the heavenly things, how the heavenly things are ordered; wisdom about the things under the earth, since there is a wisdom of God also about the ordering of the things under the earth; and likewise about the earthly things. If I am to contain the wisdom about the heavenly things, I go up to the heavenly things, as Moses went up to the top of the mountain, so that the voice from heaven might be heard by him, as it is written. For he was to be taught heavenly worship; for there is a shadow and copy of heavenly mysteries in the laws of worship that are recorded, as the apostle taught, saying: “who serve a copy and shadow of the heavenly things.” As, then, when I am to be taught about the heavenly things I go up, so, if I need to learn about the things under the earth, even if I become a prophet, I go down. And perhaps that is why Samuel, when he was taught the things under the earth, went down below and came to be in Hades, not condemned to be in Hades, but to become a scout and beholder of the mysteries under the earth. The apostle's words about wisdom can be of this kind too, distinguished as knowing “what is the breadth and length and depth and height.” Are you to know the height? You go up in thought to the height. Are you to know the things between the height and the depth? You know the breadth and the length. Everywhere the mind that can follow the Son of God reaches, guided by the Word, who teaches about all things. And he follows who has renounced the world and takes up the cross; for he can follow Jesus who can say, “The world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.” It was necessary to explain “Go down to the potter's house, and there you will hear my words.” For it had to be compared with “Come up and you will hear my words.” For of those who hear, some go up to be taught, but go up not at all bodily; others go down and have their soul above, so as to see the highest word about the lowest things. My Lord Jesus Christ himself has gone up and gone down; for “he who went up is the same who also went down, far above all the heavens.” If, then, you too are to understand him who went up to the highest, the word about the highest things, and him who went down to the lowest, who teaches about the lowest things, “do not say: Who will go up into heaven? that is, to bring Christ down; or: Who will go down into the abyss? that is, to bring Christ up from the dead. But what does Scripture say? The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart,” through which you go up into heaven. Both about the ascent, “the word is near you,” and about the lowest things, “the word is near you”; for what can the holy man have in himself but the Word who is everywhere? “For the kingdom of heaven is within you.”

So the prophet goes down to the potter's house and describes what he saw, saying: “And behold, he was making a work on his wheels, and the vessel he was making fell from his hands in the clay; and again he made it into another vessel, as it pleased him to make.” But I do not know what the prophet saw when he was at the potter's. For he saw the potter working; the vessel made was of clay; the vessel fell. Why did he not say precisely, “He dropped the vessel from his hand,” nor attribute the cause to the potter? Because the word is about living vessels, which fall of themselves; that is why it is said, “The vessel fell from his hands.” Take heed, then, to yourself too, lest, while you are in the potter's hands and still being formed, you fall of yourself from his hands. For “no one” snatches “out of his hands,” according to what is said in the Gospel according to John. But it is not written that, as no one snatches, so no one falls out of his hands; for free will is free. And I say: no one will snatch from the hand of the shepherd; no one can take us from the hand of God; but we can, through negligence, fall from his hands.

“And the word of the Lord came to me, saying: Can I not do with you, house of Israel, just as this potter? says the Lord.” Each understands what is written according to his ability: one more superficially, taking the meaning from them as from a spring at ground level; another more deeply, as drawing from a well. And both can be benefited, since the same thing is to one a spring, to the other a well. The Gospel testifies, when it tells about the Samaritan woman; for there the same thing is named “spring” and “well,” and in turn it is called now a spring, now a well. Let whoever can consider it, so as to know that what is the same in reality is a spring to the superficial and a well to the deeper. This is my introduction to the explanation that is to follow, on the clay vessel that fell from the potter's hand and was formed again. Some have looked at these things more simply and understood them. I will set before you their account and explanation; after that, if we have anything deeper, we will explain that too. Here, they say, the matters of the resurrection can be shown. For if the clay vessel fell from the potter's hands, and from the same material of the same clay he makes “it into another vessel, as it pleased him,” God, the potter of our bodies, the maker of our constitution, can, when it has fallen and been broken for whatever cause, take it up and renew it and make it more beautiful and better, “another vessel, as it pleased him to make.” Let this explanation too have its value.

But let us hear the Lord himself explaining and saying: “Can I not do with you, house of Israel, just as this potter? says the Lord. Behold, as the clay of the potter, so are you in my hands. At last I will speak against a nation and a kingdom, to remove them and to destroy them; and if that nation turns from their evils about which I spoke to it, I too will repent of the evils I planned to do to them. And at last I will speak about a nation and a kingdom, to build it up and to plant it; and if they do evil before me so as not to hear my voice, I too will repent of the good things I spoke of doing to them, says the Lord.” We see that this, concerning the potter's house, is referred not to any single individual but to two nations; for he says at the start that he is going to speak about nations, so as to suggest something to those who can hear secret mysteries: “At last I will speak against a nation.” Seek both the “at last” and the first nation, against which he speaks the things of destruction because of their sins; and having spoken the things of destruction because of the sins, he none the less promises that, if they repent, he will repent of the evils he spoke of doing to them. And again he speaks about another, second nation, “to build it up and to plant it,” a whole nation; and since this nation that is built up and planted has a fair promise, but can sin, he says, after speaking these things, if they depart from good works: “I will repent of the good things I spoke of doing to them.” What, then, are the two nations: the first named, which the word threatens, and the second, to which it makes promises? He threatens so that, if it repents, he may not do what he threatened. He promises so that, if the second nation falls away and does not become worthy of the promises, it will not obtain them. The whole dispensation of God for human beings in the world is set out chiefly about two nations. The first nation was Israel; the second, from the coming of Christ, this nation. To the first God threatened what he threatened, and we see the fulfillment of the threat to the first nation: it has been in captivity, their city has been razed, the sanctuary torn down, the altar thrown down; nothing of their former sacred things is preserved among them any longer. For God said to that nation, “Repent,” and they did not repent. After these things were said to them, God speaks to this second nation about building it up. But he sees that this nation too consists of human beings, who can fall away again. That is why he threatens this one too and says: Even if I have spoken beforehand about building and planting and cultivation, yet this nation too is going to sin, and if it sins, the same things will befall it that were said to those because of their sins, and they will suffer them unless they repent. Search the whole of Scripture, and you will find most things said about these two nations. God chose the fathers, gave them a promise, brought a people of the race of the fathers out of Egypt, was long-suffering toward them when they sinned, disciplined them as a father, brought them in, gave them the land of promise, sent them prophets from time to time, disciplined them and turned them back from their sins. He was always long-suffering, sending those who would heal them, until the chief physician should come, the prophet surpassing the prophets, the physician surpassing the physicians. When he had come, they betrayed and killed him, saying, “Away, away with such a man from the earth; crucify, crucify him.” At once a visitation came upon the nation; the place where my Jesus was crucified was made desolate; God chose another nation. See how great the harvest is, even though the laborers are few. And in another way too God arranges for the net always to be cast into the sea of this life, and fish of every kind are gathered; he sends out “the many fishermen,” he sends out “the many hunters”; they hunt from “every mountain,” they hunt from “every hill.” See how great a dispensation there is for the salvation of the nations. “Note, then, the kindness and the severity of God: on” the first nation, which fell, “severity, but on you,” the second nation, promises and “kindness, if you continue in his kindness; otherwise you too will be cut off.” For the axe was not laid at the root of the trees only then; the axe is ready to come again. “The axe is laid at the root of the trees,” my Jesus said then, prophesying about Israel, beside whom the axe was. He himself was the axe for the fruitless tree, and he said: “Already the axe is laid at the root of the trees.” All the trees there that did not bear fruit were cut down and thrown into the fire and have been punished. But now another cultivated field has come into being, analogous to the first, about which it is said: “Bring them in and plant them on the mountain of your inheritance, in your prepared dwelling place.” God has brought his nation in to the mountain of his inheritance. I seek the mountain not, like the Jews, in lifeless materials. The mountain is Christ. In him we have been planted; on him we have been kept. See, then, even if he is long-suffering, lest the master of the house come and say: “For three years now I have come to this fig tree, and it has borne no fruit; cut it down; why should it use up the ground?” For he uses up the good ground, Christ, the mystery of the church, who comes to the assembly and bears no fruit.

“At last I will speak against a nation or against a kingdom.” The “at last” will seem to be said simply. But it is said in this sense: in “I will speak against a nation or a kingdom,” the “at last” is of this kind: “I will raze” is said to the first nation as the last word; to the second nation, “I will build you up.” And again “I will uproot” is said to the first, and “I will plant” to the second. Must the end, then, come about because the end has been spoken? God, who does not repent, is said in Scripture to repent. And let us attend to the text, so that, if we can defend how these things are said, we may accept the word. “At last,” he says, “I will speak against a nation or against a kingdom, to remove them and to destroy; and if that nation turns from their evils about which I spoke against it, I too will repent of the evils I planned to do to them. And at last I will speak about a nation or a kingdom, to build it up and to plant it; and if they do evil before me so as not to hear my voice, I too will repent of the good things I spoke of doing to them.” We are required to give a defense concerning God's repentance; for repenting seems blameworthy and unworthy not only of God but even of a wise man. For I do not conceive of a wise man repenting; the one who repents, as far as customary use of the word goes, repents of having planned badly. But God, foreknowing the future, cannot have planned badly and so repent. How, then, did Scripture introduce him saying “I will repent,” not to speak yet of what is said in the books of Kingdoms, “I repent that I anointed Saul king,” and of what is said generally about him, “and repenting of evils”? But see what we are taught about God in general. In one place, “God is not like a man, to waver, nor like a son of man, to be threatened,” and we learn through this text that God is not like a man; but through another, that God is like a man, which says, “For the Lord your God has disciplined you, as a man disciplines his son,” and again, “he bore with your ways, as a man bears with his son.” So when the Scriptures speak of God in himself, and do not intertwine his dispensation with human affairs, they say he is not like a man. For “of his greatness there will be no end,” and “he is to be feared above all gods,” and “Praise him, all his angels; praise him, all his hosts; praise him, sun and moon; praise him, all you stars and light.” And gathering ten thousand other things from the sacred writings you might find things to which you will apply “God is not like a man.” But when the divine dispensation is intertwined with human affairs, it takes on the human mind and manner and speech. And just as we, if we talk with a two-year-old child, lisp for the child's sake (for it is not possible, if we keep the dignity of a grown man's age and speak to children without coming down to their language, for the children to understand), understand something of this kind about God too, when he dispenses the affairs of the human race, and especially of those who are still infants. See how we grown men even change words for babies, and name bread for them in a special way, and name drinking with another word, not using the language of grown men which we use with grown men of our own age, but some other childish and babyish word. And if we name clothes for children, we give them other names, as it were inventing a child's name. Are we then imperfect? And if anyone hears us talking with children, will he say, “This old man has become foolish; this man has forgotten his beard, his manhood”? Or is it granted, by way of accommodation, that one who talks with a child should speak not in an old man's or a grown man's language, but in a child's? And God speaks to children: “Behold,” says the Savior too, “I and the children God has given me.” It might be said to the old man who speaks to the child childishly, or, to put it more expressively, babyishly, “You have borne with your son's ways; you have taken on the ways of the baby and put on his condition.” So understand for me the Scripture too that says: “The Lord your God bore with your ways, as a man bears with the ways of his son.” And it seems that those who translated from the Hebrew, not finding the word current among the Greeks, coined this one too, as in many other cases, and made “The Lord your God tropophorēsen you (that is, bore your ways), as a man bears with (according to this example I have given) his son.” Since, then, we repent, when God speaks with us who repent he says “I repent”; and when he threatens us, he does not pretend to be foreknowing, but threatens as one speaking to babies. He does not pretend that he has foreknown “all things before they come to be,” but, if I may so put it, playing the part of the baby, he pretends not even to know the future. And so he threatens a nation for its sins and says: “If the nation repents, I too will repent.” O God, when you threatened, did you not know whether the nation would repent or not? What then? When you promised, did you not know whether the man, or the nation to whom the word was spoken, would remain worthy of the promises or not? But he does not make a show of it. And you might find many such human expressions in Scripture, such as “Speak to the sons of Israel; perhaps they will hear and repent.” God did not say “perhaps they will hear” as though in doubt; for God does not doubt, so as to say, “perhaps they will hear and repent”; but to show your free will fully and so that you may not say, “If he foreknew that I would perish, I must perish; if he foreknew that I would be saved, I must certainly be saved.” So he does not make a show of knowing what depends on you, so as to preserve your free will by not having anticipated or foreknown whether you will repent or not. And he says to the prophet: “Speak; perhaps they will repent.” You will find ten thousand other such things said of God bearing with the ways of man. If you hear of God's wrath and anger, do not think that wrath and anger are passions of God. They are accommodations in the use of words, to turn and improve the baby; since we too put on a frightening face for children, not from our disposition but by way of accommodation. If we keep a gracious expression toward the baby on our face and show the tender affection we have for it, not altering ourselves or, as it were, changing for its correction, we ruin it and make it worse. So God is said to be angry and says he is wrathful, so that you may turn and be improved. And truly he is neither angry nor wrathful; but you will suffer the effects of wrath and anger, coming into pains hard to bear because of wickedness, when he disciplines you with what is called God's wrath.

Next, after the word about the two nations, the first to which the threat is given, and the second to which the promise is given, he says (clearly to the first): “And now say to the men of Judah and to those who dwell in Jerusalem: Thus says the Lord: Behold, I am forming evils against you.” Because these evils I am forming against you are in my hand, they can fall. Make them fall from my hand, so that I may change the evils I am forming against you and make them good. You would not find, “Behold, I am forming good things for you,” and what corresponds to it said next, so that he might then show that he lets fall from his hands the good things he forms so as to make them evil. But he forms evils, according to the example given, and in forming evils he arranges (apart from the interpretation given of “it fell from my hands”) that, if it falls, the end of the evils being formed may turn out, I know not how, different.

“Let each turn now from his evil way, and make your practices better.” Sometimes the simpler folk say: “Blessed were the people of old, because they heard the Lord speaking through the prophet: ‘And the Lord spoke to them.’” The Lord speaks to us too now through what is written: “Let each turn from his evil way”; the Lord himself converses with you, saying: “And make your practices better.” But those to whom the words exhorting to repentance were spoken answered; and let us see what they answered, so that we may not answer the same. What, then, do they say in answer? “We will be bold, for we will go after our turnings away, and we will each do what pleases his evil heart.” Even if you do not say it in words, but your life is such as to sin, you too in effect say by your evil deeds, after the words of exhortation: “We will be bold, for we will go after our turnings away, and we will each do what pleases his evil heart.” What is “we will go after our turnings away”? Those who have begun to put their “hand to the plough” and [to strain forward to what lies ahead] have turned away from evil things. So when someone who has put his “hand to the plough” turns back, he will go “after his turnings away”; for he will go after the things he turned away from, and runs back to the sins he left. So of those who hear these things, whether catechumens who have left the pagan life, or believers who have already made progress in “straining forward to what lies ahead,” if their life has become wicked, they say nothing else than “we will go after our turnings away, and we will each do what pleases his heart,” not simply, but “his evil heart.” For there is an evil heart and there is a good heart. So let no one go “after his turnings away,” nor do “what pleases his evil heart.” “Therefore” to those who answer thus “the Lord says: Ask now among the nations: who has heard such horrible things as the virgin of Israel has done exceedingly?” This too will seem to be said simply. But if the church from the nations [is meant] … it will be said: “Ask now among the nations: hear the horrible things the virgin of Israel has done exceedingly.” For let us compare the life of those who sinned with the life of those who turned and believed, and we shall know that those did horrible things in killing “the Lord of glory,” while these, when those had done horrible things, turned to him who was put to death by them and died for the sins of the world. “Ask,” then, “among the nations: who has heard such horrible things as the virgin of Israel has done exceedingly?”

“Will the breasts fail from the rock, or the snow from Lebanon? Or will the water turn aside, violently driven by the wind? For my people have forgotten me; they have burned incense to vanity, and they will grow weak in their ways, on the everlasting paths, to walk on tracks that have no way to travel, to make their land a desolation and an everlasting hissing.” He has spoken here of differences of waters: first in “Will the breasts fail from the rock?”; second in “or the snow from Lebanon?”; third in “Will the water turn aside, violently driven by the wind?” These three kinds of waters are the springs of waters which the soul of the righteous, likened to the deer, longs for, so that each could say: “As the deer longs for the springs of water, so my soul longs for you, O God.” Who, then, has become a deer, an enemy to the race of serpents, suffering nothing from their venom, as is told of the deer? Who has so thirsted for God as to say, “My soul has thirsted for the living God”? Who has so thirsted for the breasts of the rock? “And the rock was Christ.” Who has so thirsted for the Holy Spirit as to say, “As the deer longs for the springs of water, so my soul longs for you, O God”? Unless we thirst for the three springs of water, we shall not find even one spring of water. The Jews seemed to thirst for one spring of water, God; but since they did not thirst for Christ and the Holy Spirit, they cannot drink even from God. Those from the heresies seemed to thirst for Christ Jesus; but since they did not thirst for the Father, who is the God of the law and the prophets, for this reason they do not drink even from Jesus Christ. And those who keep one God but despise the prophecies did not thirst for the Holy Spirit who is in the prophets; for this reason they will not drink either from the Father's spring, or from him who cried out in the temple and said, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink.” So “the breasts do not fail from the rock.” But those “forsook the fountain of the water of life”; the fountain of the water of life did not forsake them. For God does not distance himself from anyone, but “those who distance themselves from him will perish”; rather God draws near to some and meets the one who comes to him. When the son who had devoured his property returned, at any rate, the father met him. And he promises through the prophets, saying: “I will draw near to them, closer than the tunic of their skin.” For “I am a God who draws near,” he says, “and not a God far off, says the Lord.” So “the breasts will not fail from the rock,” the waters of Jesus, “or the snow from Lebanon,” the Father's waters. For frankincense (libanos) is the sacred incense according to the law of God, and there is offered on the altar “clear frankincense, equal with equal.” And the mountain has the same name as this frankincense, and there is snow coming down from Lebanon, just as the water of the Holy Spirit, about which it is said, “Will the water turn aside, violently driven by the wind?” For it is carried by the wind. The water of the Holy Spirit does not “turn aside,” does not flee; but each of us, when he sins, himself becomes a fugitive from drinking of the Holy Spirit.

“For my people have forgotten me; they have burned incense to vanity.” Everyone who sins has forgotten God; but the righteous man says: “All these things have come upon us, and we have not forgotten you, nor done wrong.” And we must consider what “they have burned incense to vanity” is. If we take up what was said recently on the hundred and fortieth Psalm, we shall understand what “they have burned incense to vanity” is. Something of this kind was said in the Psalm: “Let my prayer be set forth as incense before you.” So my prayer, compounded … of a subtle heart, when our heart is not grown fat, when it is sent up, becomes like incense before God. If, then, the prayer of the righteous man is incense before God, the prayer of the unrighteous is incense, but such incense that it could be said of it and of the unrighteous man who prays: “They have burned incense to vanity”; as it is written of Judas: “Let his prayer become sin.” He, in praying, burned incense to vanity. And who is the one who burns incense to vanity? Let us consider it still more in this way. “Three times a year,” he says, “all your males shall appear before the Lord your God,” to which is immediately added: “You shall not appear before me empty.” So of those who come to appear …

Homily 19. On “And Pashhur son of Immer, the priest, heard” as far as “You deceived me, O Lord, and I was deceived.”

… of the meaning of Scripture, which comes to an eye that can take in the clarity of the sacred writings. I have said these things by way of introduction, rousing and awakening both myself and the hearers to attend to what has been read, so that we may ask Jesus to come and appear to us and teach us now the things written here.

“Jeremiah prophesied; and Pashhur son of Immer, the priest, heard the words of the prophecy. And though so many, in all likelihood, as far as the bare sequence of the prophecy goes, had heard Jeremiah, no other is readily recorded as having heard except Pashhur. Scripture took care to say whose son he was, that he was Immer's, and that he bore the title of priest, and what rank he had among the people, that he had been appointed overseer of the house of the Lord at the time when Jeremiah prophesied these words. And it is recorded that Pashhur, having heard the words of this prophecy, struck Jeremiah, and was not content with striking him, but also threw him into a certain dungeon. Scripture took care to say where this dungeon was, in the gate of Benjamin, and that the dungeon was in a place where there was an upper room, an upper room of none other than the house of the Lord. The Holy Spirit recorded that these things befell Jeremiah because of his prophecy, and befell him from Pashhur. Then it says: on the next day Pashhur brought Jeremiah out of the dungeon. And Jeremiah, having been brought out, said to Pashhur that the Lord has not called you by this name, Pashhur; another name has been given you: as to Jacob Israel, as to Abram Abraham, as to Sarai Sarah, so he has given you the name Emigrant. And he called you Emigrant for this reason, since the Lord says: Behold, I give you into exile with all — whom? Not with your wife and sons and daughters, but with your friends. And when you are given into exile, your friends will fall by the sword. Then, as though there were a difference among those who fall by the sword, whether they fall by the sword of enemies or by the sword of others, he says that the friends of the one who threw Jeremiah into the dungeon will fall by the sword of their enemies. And your eyes, he says, will see these things that are prophesied. And you and all Judah I will give into the hands of the king of Babylon, after your friends have suffered these things, and they will carry them away to Babylon and cut them down; for the king of Judah and those from Judah they will cut down with the sword, and ‘of their enemies’ is no longer added, as in the case of the former, who are said to be Pashhur's friends. Then he says: and I will give all the strength of this city, and all the treasures of the king of Judah, and all the labors of this city into the hands of their enemies, so that the enemies may plunder the treasures and take the things mentioned and lead Judah and its king to Babylon. And you, Pashhur, and all who dwell in your house, will go in captivity to Babylon, and there you will die, and there you will be buried, you and all your friends to whom you prophesied lies.” The whole passage had to be summarized and made clear, not yet its deep meaning (if indeed we can grasp it), but the text and the letter itself, which even an ordinary person who attends carefully to the writings, and not in passing, can understand at least in this way. What, then, do these things mean? Here is the struggle, to present the meaning of these writings. And indeed I confess that by myself I cannot explain them, but need, as I said before, an appearing of the power of Jesus, as he is Wisdom, as he is the Word, as he is Truth, so that his appearing may make light on the face of my soul.

… The magicians of the Egyptians too had rods, which wished to discredit the rod of Moses and that of Aaron as not being from God. But the rods from God overturn those of the sophists and magicians: “Aaron's rod swallowed them up”; for it was enough for this even without the rod of Moses. “Pashhur,” then, “struck Jeremiah the prophet,” and it is said with emphasis: “and he struck Jeremiah the prophet.” “The prophet” is added too. Here, then, the one who struck Jeremiah struck the prophet. And it is recorded in the Acts that someone struck Paul at the command of Ananias the high priest. That is why Paul said, “God is going to strike you, you whitewashed wall.” And even now the Ebionites, at the command of a lawless high priest, the word, strike the apostle of Jesus Christ with blasphemous words. And Paul says to such a high priest, the word, “God is going to strike you.” And such a high priest is outwardly fair and a whitewashed wall. Christ says: “I gave my back to the scourges, and my cheeks to blows, and I did not turn away my face from the shame of spitting.” The simple know these things only of that time, when Pilate scourged him, when the Jews took counsel against him. But I see Jesus every day “giving his back to the scourges.” Go into the synagogues of the Jews, and see Jesus scourged by them with the tongue of blasphemy. See those from the nations gathering, taking counsel against Christians, how they seize Jesus, and he “gives his back to the scourges.” Consider the Word of God insulted, spoken ill of, hated by unbelievers. See that “he gave his cheeks to blows,” and having taught, “If anyone strikes you on the cheek, turn the other too,” he himself does it. So many strike and scourge him, and he is silent and does not speak. For it is recorded that he did not speak when he was scourged. And “Jesus has not turned away his face from the shame of spitting” to this day. Who of those who hold his teaching in contempt does not, as it were, spit on Jesus to this day, while he bears it?

It followed from the prophet's having been struck to tell of those who have been struck, for example the apostle, and if anyone else has been struck, and to set out also the things concerning Jesus himself. “Pashhur,” then, “struck Jeremiah the prophet, and threw him into the dungeon that was in the gate of Benjamin of the upper room.” The dungeon was of Benjamin, of the upper room. Jerusalem is the allotment of Benjamin, in which is the temple of God, as one who can listen to the divine readings will find from the allotment recorded in the book of the son of Nun. Since, then, the temple was in the allotment of Benjamin, which is interpreted “Son of the right hand” (for there is nothing left-handed about the temple of God), for this reason this man throws him “into the dungeon that was in the gate of Benjamin of the upper room of the house of the Lord.” Though there was “an upper room in the house of the Lord,” he “threw” the prophet “into the dungeon.” And let us pray that, taking Jeremiah now, we may bring him up to the upper room “in the house of the Lord.” I will show from Scripture that the upper room is the lofty and exalted mind, when it testifies to the saints that they received the prophets into upper rooms. In the third book of Kingdoms is recorded a widow who received Elijah the prophet in Zarephath of Sidon, who lodged the prophet “in her upper room.” And in the fourth, the woman who received Elisha prepared a room for him in the upper story. But the sinner Ahaziah fell from the upper room. And Jesus commands you too not to come down from the housetop. “When,” he says, such and such things happen, “then let him who is on the housetop not come down to take what is in his house.” The one who flees in persecutions is not told not to go up to the housetop, but not to “come down” from the housetop “to take what is in his house.” It is good, then, to be in upper rooms, good to be on housetops and to be somewhere above. And the wonderful apostles too, as is recorded in their Acts, when they were together devoting themselves to prayer and to the word of God, were in an upper room. And since they were in an upper room, they were not below. That is why “divided tongues as of fire appeared to them.” And Peter too, when he was sending up prayer to God, “went up to the housetop”; and if he had not gone up to the housetop, he would not have seen “a vessel coming down from heaven like a sheet let down from heaven by four corners.” And the woman who did works of charity, “Tabitha, which translated is called Dorcas,” was not below, but “in the upper room,” where Peter went up and raised her from the dead. And Jesus too, when he was about to keep with his disciples this feast, of which we keep the Passover as the symbol, when they asked, “Where do you want us to prepare the Passover for you?”, said: “As you go, a man carrying a jar of water will meet you; follow him. He will show you a large upper room, furnished, swept, ready; there prepare the Passover.” So no one who keeps the Passover as Jesus [wishes] is below; he is above in a large upper room, in a swept upper room, in an adorned and ready upper room. And if you go up with him to keep the Passover, he gives you the cup of the new covenant, he gives you also the bread of blessing; he grants his own body and his own blood. That is why we urge you: “Go up on high; lift up your eyes on high.” And to me too, if I teach the divine word, the Word says: “Go up on a high mountain, you who bring good news to Zion; lift up your voice with strength, you who bring good news to Jerusalem; lift it up, do not fear.” So much because of Pashhur, who, though there was “an upper room in the house of the Lord in the gate of Benjamin,” did not bring the prophet up to the upper room, but “threw him into the dungeon” below.

“And it came about on the next day that Pashhur brought Jeremiah out of the dungeon.” O Lord Jesus, come again; make these things clear to me and to those who have come for spiritual food. How does he bring “Jeremiah out of the dungeon” “on the next day”? For as long as this present day stands (and this whole age is today), the sinner throws the prophet down into the dungeon; but if the present day ceases and tomorrow comes, then, having repented, he brings him out of the dungeon. Then Jeremiah tells him what Pashhur will suffer. What does he tell him? “The Lord has not called your name Pashhur, but Emigrant. For thus says the Lord.” This Pashhur is going to be carried away to Babylon, as his sins deserve, not alone but with his friends too. For he is handed over to Nebuchadnezzar and goes away into Confusion and is punished for his sins, since “he threw the prophet into the dungeon.” Who, then, are the friends of Pashhur, whose name means “Blackness of mouth”? All who have received his words, who have been blackened together with his blackened mouth, who have received doctrines of blackness. “And they will fall by the sword of their enemies.” Those appointed over punishments are the ones who have the swords and make them fall; about whom the Word prophesies and says, “And your eyes will see.” These things that are prophesied, he says, “your eyes will see.” “And you and all Judah I will give into the hands of the king of Babylon.” Whoever of Judah is found so sinful as to be worthy of the king of Babylon, of Confusion, will be handed over to him. And the king of Babylon receives sinners. The king of Babylon, according to the history, is Nebuchadnezzar, but according to the higher sense, the evil one. The sinner is handed over to him, since he is both enemy and avenger. And that the sinner is handed over to him, let Paul teach you, where he speaks about Phygelus and Hermogenes, “whom I have handed over to …,” and about the man who committed sexual immorality: “When you are gathered together, and my spirit, with the power of the Lord Jesus, I have decided to hand over such a one to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that the spirit may be saved in the day of the …” … into the hands of the king of Babylon, and they carry him away to Babylon. “And they will cut them down with the sword. And I will give all the strength of this city.” It is easy to say that these things are prophesied about Jerusalem; for all its strength, and what follows, was handed over then to the king of the Babylonians. It is easy to say that these things are prophesied about “this city” when it was handed over to its enemies in the times of the Savior. And the sons of Jerusalem went away into captivity and the city was razed. But if you examine the matter and see a city not as stones but as people, you will see that that Jerusalem too, the people, was handed over “into the hands of the king of Babylon” because of their impiety and sin against Christ. And you are now Jerusalem. If, then, the Word now threatens Jerusalem, fear lest you, if you sin, are a sinful Jerusalem and are handed over, so that you are no longer Jerusalem but become Babylon and Confusion, when Nebuchadnezzar, king of the Babylonians, takes you. “And all the labors” of Jerusalem he hands over. How does he hand over “all the labors”? If, after contending and struggling, you fall away and sin, all your labors have come into the hands of Nebuchadnezzar. How all your labors? It will be said to you, if you fall after laboring much for the truth: “Did you suffer so many things in vain?” Above all, those who are conscious of having endured many labors for virtue ought to fear lest, if some sin occurs, Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, take the labors they have performed as Jerusalem. And so that you may see more clearly how Nebuchadnezzar takes the labors of Jerusalem when she sins, I will use what is written in Ezekiel, which runs thus: “If the righteous man turns from his righteous deeds and commits a trespass, I will not remember the righteous deeds he has done.” Why? Because Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, takes the righteous deeds done with labor and destroys them. “And all the honor” of Jerusalem he takes, when a man, being honored by God and “being in honor,” “did not understand” and sinned. If, then, you know that you are in honor, and having been called to honor you insult yourself again by sins, the Babylonian king takes the honor of Jerusalem. “And all the treasures of the king of Judah.” Jerusalem is rich; but if she sins, the Babylonian takes her treasures. “And they will plunder them and take them and carry them to Babylon. And you, Pashhur, and all who dwell in your house, will go in captivity to Babylon, and there you will die, and there you will be buried.” The one caught in Confusion dies in Babylon; and the one disposed contrary to being buried with Christ is buried in Babylon. For it is possible to be buried well with Christ through baptism, according to “We were buried with Christ, and rose with him.” As being buried with Christ is a mystery, so it is a mystery for one who has become a sinner through lawlessness to be buried in Babylon. “And all your friends,” he says, “you will go there, to whom you prophesied lies.” The one who expounds the oracles of God badly and throws the prophetic words into a dungeon prophesies, but prophesies lies; for when someone expounds the prophetic words, if he speaks truly, he too prophesies, and prophesies truth; but if he lies, he is a false prophet, lying against the prophetic words.

And now the one section is finished; let us begin the second too; for it has no ordinary matters, right from its first words. And attending to the text, let us ask again for Jesus to come, and let us beg him to come more manifestly and brightly, so that he may come and teach us all whether the prophet spoke what follows truthfully, as one should think about a prophet, or falsely, which it is not permitted to say about a holy prophet. He says to God: “You deceived me, O Lord, and I was deceived; you were stronger and prevailed. I became a laughingstock; all day long I continued being mocked. For I will laugh with my bitter word; I will call on faithlessness and misery; for the word of the Lord has become to me a reproach and a derision all day long. And I said: I will not name the name of the Lord, and I will not speak any more in his name. And there came in my heart as it were a burning fire flaming in my bones, and I am weakened on every side and cannot bear it, for I heard the blame of many gathering round about,” and clearly “saying: Rise up, and let us rise up against him, men his friends; watch his purpose, whether he will be deceived, and we shall prevail against him and take our vengeance on him.” But while they say this, the prophet says: “And the Lord is with me like a mighty warrior; therefore they persecuted and could not understand; they were greatly ashamed, because they did not understand their dishonors, which will not be forgotten for ever.” This is the second section of the reading. How, then, does the prophet say, “You deceived me, O Lord, and I was deceived”? Does God deceive? I am at a loss how to handle the saying. For if, because of God and his word, I look to him, what is to be said needs a noble handling. Having ceased to be deceived, the prophet says, “You deceived me, O Lord, and I was deceived,” as though his elementary instruction and introduction had come about in a deception, and he could not have been instructed and introduced into godliness unless he had first been deceived, so that he might later come to perceive the deception. It is enough to give just one example useful for the matter at hand. We speak to children when we are bringing up children, and we speak to them not as to grown people, but as to children needing training, and we deceive the children by frightening them, so that they may stop the lack of discipline found in children; and we frighten the children by saying words of deception because of what belongs to their infancy, so that through the deception we may make them afraid and go to their teachers and recite and do what befits children's progress. We are all children to God and need the upbringing of children. That is why God, sparing us, deceives us (even if we do not perceive the deception before the time), so that, as though we had passed beyond infancy, we may no longer be trained by deception but by deeds. A child is brought to fear in one way, and one who has advanced in age and passed beyond childhood in another. For if I can train him by deception … so that God who deceives may say: “I will discipline them by the report of their affliction.” I will cite histories to show how God deceives for salvation and says certain things, so that the sinner may stop doing what he would have done had he not heard such words. Did the one who said, “Yet three days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown,” speak truly, or not truly, deceiving with a deception that converts? If that conversion had not happened, it would no longer have been a deception but the truth, and the overthrow would have followed for Nineveh. It lay with the hearers either to be deceived and believe what was said as true, and so be benefited and not be overthrown; or, the saying not being true and they not deceived, but perceiving that what was said would not happen, to despise what was said as a deception and suffer, not “Yet three days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown,” but, I dare to say, far worse than “Yet three days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.” For on the supposition that the Ninevites, having sinned, had not repented, perhaps “Yet three days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown” would have happened; but suppose this did not happen: something worse than this would have happened; they would have been handed over to eternal fire. That is why one punishment is stated in the law for those trained as children, while for those to whom “the fullness of time has come” other punishments are recorded. Compare the punishments of sinners under the law with the punishments of sinners under the Gospel, and you will see that they, as infants, heard of punishments fitting for them as infants, while we, as grown in age, hear of harsher punishments. If at that time there was an adulterer or an adulteress, the threat was not Gehenna, not eternal fire, but: he shall be stoned with stones: “Let all the congregation stone him.” The adulterer found in these things, the adulteress found in these things, will go away and say: “Would that the word had spoken so for me too: the people stoned me, and I had not been reserved for eternal fire.” For not only the adulterer is “liable to the Gehenna of fire,” but also the one who says to his brother, “Fool.” But if the one who says to his brother, “Fool,” “will be liable to the Gehenna of fire,” to what will the adulterer be liable? I look for some punishment greater than the Gehenna of fire. And perhaps I might say that Gehenna is for those … who can be cleansed. But just as, in the case of the good things of the righteous, “what God has prepared for those who love him has not entered into the heart of man,” so what he has prepared for sinners for committing sexual immorality, for committing adultery, “has not entered into the heart of man.” For if what the one who says to his brother “Fool” becomes liable to has entered into the heart, clearly what is prepared for those who have committed worse sins is greater than what enters into the heart. I cannot conceive of anything greater than Gehenna, but I only believe that there is something greater than Gehenna, that which is prepared for adulterers. So I come also to the other punishments under the law, and I take an apostolic saying agreeing with these, one that has kept silent about my punishment if I sin, since I do not wish, having accepted “You deceived me, O Lord, and I was deceived,” to be deceived to good purpose. What does the apostle say? “Anyone who has set aside the law of Moses dies without mercy on the evidence of two or three witnesses; how much worse punishment, do you think, will be deserved by the one who has trampled on the Son of God?” Name the punishment, O Paul; tell it. “But I do not tell it,” he says; the punishment of those who sin under the Gospel is greater than what can be told, greater than what can be heard, greater than what can be conceived. That is why the prophet was brought in as a child, having heard and been afraid and been trained, and after this, made perfect, says: “You deceived me, O Lord, and I was deceived.” And you, as long as you are a child, fear the threats, so that you may not suffer things beyond the threats: the eternal punishments, the unquenchable fire, or perhaps something greater than this, laid up for those who have lived for the most part against right reason. May we never experience any of these, but, being perfected in Christ Jesus, may we be justified worthily of the heavenly feasts and of the Passover there, in the higher sense, in Christ Jesus, to whom be the glory and the power for ages of ages. Amen.

Homily 20. On “You deceived me, O Lord, and I was deceived,” again in another way, as far as “who understands the reins and the hearts.”

All things written about God, even if at first sight they seem incongruous, must be understood as worthy of a good God. For who will not say that it is incongruous, when referred to God, that he has anger, uses wrath, repents, and even sleeps? But each of these, for one who knows how “to hear dark sayings,” will be found worthy of God. For his anger is not fruitless; but as his word disciplines, so his anger disciplines too; for those not disciplined by word he disciplines by anger. And it is necessary for God to use what is called anger, as he uses what is named word; for his Word is not such as the word of all. For no one's word is “a living being,” no one's word is “God,” no one's word was “in the beginning” with him whose word it was, even if … from some beginning. So too God's anger is called anger, not as anyone's anger. And just as the Word of God has something strange compared with anyone's word, and it is strange for him to be God and to be the Word as a living being, to subsist by himself, to serve the Father, so, since what is called his anger has once been named God's, it has something strange and foreign to all anger as defined. So too his wrath has something peculiar; for it belongs to the purpose of one who rebukes with wrath, wishing through the rebuke to turn back the one rebuked. A word also rebukes, as a word also disciplines; but a word does not rebuke as wrath rebukes. For those who have not benefited from rebuke by word will need rebuke by wrath. We were saying that there is also a repentance of God that at first sight seems incongruous, since it is written: “I repent that I anointed Saul king.” But you will inquire worthily into the repentance too, and not think that his repentance has any kinship with the repentance of those who repent. For as his Word had something exceptional, his anger something, his wrath something surpassing, and nothing about them was akin to things of the same name, in the same way his repentance too is homonymous with our repentance; and homonyms are things of which only the name is common, but the account of the being corresponding to the name is different. So only the name is common to the wrath of God and the wrath of anyone, and only the name is common to the anger of anyone and the anger of God. So too must repentance be understood. And whoever can will inquire what God's repentance effects, what it effected. It removed Saul, who reigned lawlessly, and raised up for the people a king after the heart of God; for he said because of that good repentance, “I have found a man after my heart, David son of Jesse.” But all these things are my introduction, because the beginning of the reading from Jeremiah runs thus: “You deceived me, O Lord, and I was deceived.”

For we ask whether, as the wrath of all is evil, but God's is corrective, and the anger of all is harsh, but what is called God's is disciplinary, and the repentance of all of us accuses the weakness of what preceded the repentance, while in God's case his repentance accuses not God but the outside affairs over which the repentance is taken, so too one must understand God's deception as different in kind from our deception, with which we deceive. What, then, is God's deception, which the prophet understood when he ceased being deceived, and, knowing the benefit of having been deceived, says: “You deceived me, O Lord, and I was deceived”? And first I will use a Hebrew tradition, which came to us through a man who fled because of faith in Christ and because he had gone up beyond the law, and came to where we live. He told a story, whether it seems a myth or an account able to bring the hearers closer to “You deceived me, O Lord, and I was deceived.” He said something like this: God does not play the tyrant but reigns as king, and reigning does not compel but persuades, and wishes those under him to submit themselves willingly to his dispensation, so that one's good may not be by necessity but by one's own free will. Paul, knowing this, said in the Epistle to Philemon, to Philemon about Onesimus: “so that your good may not be by necessity but by free will.” The God of the universe could have made what is thought good in us such that we would give alms by necessity and be self-controlled by necessity; but he did not will it. That is why he does not command us to do what we do reluctantly or under necessity, so that what is done may be voluntary. So he seeks a way, so to speak, by which one might willingly do what God wishes. The tradition told me something like this too. He wished to send Jeremiah to prophesy to all the nations, and before all the nations to the people. But since the prophecies had something rather gloomy about them (for they announced punishments, how each would be punished according to his deserts), and he knew the will of the prophet, who did not wish to prophesy the worse things to the people of Israel, he arranged to say: “Take this cup, and make all the nations to whom I send you drink it.” So God commanded Jeremiah to take a cup, and, urging him to take “the cup of unmixed wine,” he says: “and I will send you to all the nations, having this cup of unmixed wine.” Jeremiah, hearing that he was being sent to all the nations, to serve them a cup of wrath, a cup of punishments, not suspecting that Israel too was going to drink from the cup of punishment, was deceived and took the cup to give all the nations drink; having taken the cup, he heard: “And you will give drink first to [Jerusalem].” Since, then, he expected one thing and met another, on this account he says: “You deceived me, O Lord, and I was deceived.” He gave an account similar to this in the case of Isaiah too. For he also, not knowing what he was going to be commanded to say to the people, hears God saying, according to what is written: “Whom shall I send, and who will go to this people?” And he, it says, answered: “Here I am; send me”; and he hears: “Go and say to this people: You will indeed hear and never understand, and you will indeed see and never perceive. For the heart of this people has grown fat,” and the rest. Since, then, not knowing what he was going to prophesy, and that he was going to threaten such things to the people, he said, “Here I am; send me,” for this reason, he says, in what follows, “A voice of a lion: Cry out,” he did not answer as eager to do what was commanded, but said, “What shall I cry?” For he was wary lest he hear again, as in the former prophecy, “Go and say to this people: You will indeed hear and never understand.” “What,” then, “shall I cry?” “All flesh is grass, and all its glory like the flower of the grass,” and the rest. He heard nothing in these words against Israel. This is what that man told us, handing on the meaning of “You deceived me, O Lord, and I was deceived.”

But I pray not only to keep what I receive from those who give, nor to bury in the ground the talent of those who speak to me, nor “to tie up in a handkerchief” the mina of those who teach something useful, but to make an increase of the lessons I receive from one who hands on, and is able to hand on, useful things. I pray to make the mina, whether of the Gospel, or of an apostle, or of a prophet, or of the law, manifold. Having heard these things, then, I was considering by myself “You deceived me, O Lord, and I was deceived.” And considering, I pray to find something true on the passage. Perhaps, then, as a father wishes to deceive his son while still an infant for his benefit, since the child cannot otherwise be helped unless he is deceived, as a physician takes pains to deceive the sick man who cannot be healed unless he accepts words of deception, so too the God of the universe, since he has as his purpose to benefit the human race. Let the physician say to the sick man: “You must be cut, you must be cauterized, you must suffer other harsher things”: he would not submit himself. But sometimes he says something else, and hides under the sponge that cutting, dividing knife, and again hides, so to speak, under honey the nature of the bitter and the unpleasant medicine, wishing not to harm but to heal the one being treated. The whole of divine Scripture is full of such medicines. And some are kind things hidden, some bitter things hidden. If you see a father threatening as though he hated his son, and saying frightening things to his son, and not showing his tender affection but hiding his love for his son, you will see that he wishes to deceive the infant; for it does not benefit the son to know the father's love, his friendly intention; he will grow slack and not be trained. That is why he hides the sweetness of his affection and shows the bitterness of the threat. God does something of this kind, analogous to a father and a physician. There are some bitter things which heal even the most righteous and the wisest … for everyone who has sinned must be punished for his sins. “Do not be deceived; God is not mocked.” “Whether sexually immoral, or adulterer, or effeminate, or homosexual, or thief, or drunkard, or reviler, or robber, they will not inherit the kingdom of God.” If this is understood and examined closely by those who cannot see the physician's knife under the sponge, by those who cannot perceive the bitter medicine under the honey, one will lose heart. For who of us is not conscious of having drunk not deliberately and become drunk? Who of us is clean of theft, and of not having procured necessities as he should? But see what the word says: “Do not be deceived, for these will not inherit the kingdom of God.” The mystery of the passage must be kept hidden, so that the many may not lose heart, so that, having learned the facts, they may not expect their departure as rest but as punishment. Or who will be found a Paul, able to say, “For it is better to depart and be with Christ”? My wood must be burned in me. For I know that if I depart, my wood must be burned in me. And the wood I have is revilings, the wood I have is drunkennesses, the wood is thefts, and ten thousand other pieces of wood I have built on my building. You see that all these things escape the notice of most believers, and it is well that they do; and each of us thinks, since he has not worshipped idols, since he has not committed sexual immorality (would that we were clean even of such things!), that when he is released from life he will be saved. We do not see that “we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each may receive the things done in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or evil.” We do not see him who said, “You only have I known of all the families of the earth; therefore I will punish you for all your practices,” not some and not others. Since, then, the physician sometimes hides the medical knife under the soft and tender sponge, and the father too hides his affection by an appearance of threat, and of the deceptions some remove tumors and varicose veins and whatever else harms the constitution of the body, while the other removes lack of discipline and slackness: the prophet understood mystically that God does something of this kind, and, seeing in what he had been deceived by God for good, says: “You deceived me, O Lord, and I was deceived.” It brought him to so great a grace, to pray and say to God: “Deceive me, if this is beneficial.” For the deception from God is one thing, and the deception from the serpent another. See what the woman says to God: “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.” And the deception from the serpent removed Adam and his wife from the paradise of God; but the deception that befell the prophet who said, “You deceived me, O Lord, and I was deceived,” brought him to so great a grace of prophecy, to the increase of power in him, to his being made perfect and able to serve the will of the Word of God without fearing man. Understanding these things, then, let us too pray, both for the present and for the future, to be deceived by God. Only let the serpent not deceive us. And elsewhere something akin to this is written, as it is said in Isaiah: “For the Lord has mixed for them a spirit of error.” You will note there too what the spirit of error mixed by God does. And it is well that God did not give the spirit of error unmixed, but, as the prophet named it, mixed it.

I wish to take a risk and give an example of those who have been deceived and benefited. There are some who practice chastity and purity for this reason, and others who practice single marriage for this reason: because they expected that one who has had marital intercourse is lost, that one who has married twice is lost. Let us compare by ourselves what is profitable for the once-married woman: to have been deceived, and to think that the twice-married woman is punished and handed over to eternal punishment, so that she remains once-married and pure; or to know the truth and marry a second time? I think anyone at all who sees what follows can say: it was more blessed to remain pure and not marry twice without being deceived, and to see that the twice-married woman too shares in a certain salvation, but not in as much blessedness as the woman who, though she could have married twice, remained pure; but if she cannot do this, it is better to be deceived, thinking that the twice-married are lost, and through the deception to remain pure, than to know the truth and be in the lesser rank, that of the twice-married. You will find something of this kind also in the case of some who practice chastity and complete purity. And many other things might be found done by us through deception and benefiting us. And how many reputed wise men, having found the truth about punishment and seen through, as they suppose, what was deception, have come to a worse life! It would have profited them to think as they thought before about “their worm will not die,” and that “their fire will not be quenched,” and that “they will be a spectacle to all flesh,” and that “the chaff will be burned with unquenchable fire.” But if, imagining something else than their first understanding, they are going “to despise the riches of God's kindness and forbearance and long-suffering,” see whether truly, because they did not think themselves deceived, they have stored up for themselves “wrath on the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God,” which they would not have stored up had they been deceived. So much because of the deception from God, since the prophet said, “You deceived me, O Lord, and I was deceived.” Let us pass also, separately, to “I was deceived.” Why did he not say only, “You deceived me, O Lord,” but added “I was deceived”? It is sometimes possible to conceive of someone working the deception, and another guarding himself against being deceived and not being deceived. But when the one works the deception, and the other does not guard himself against being deceived but falls into the deception, he might say: “You deceived me, O Lord, and I was deceived.” And coming to the passage I would say something like this: whatever the serpent says to me, whether he tells me the truth or wishes to deceive me, I suspect his words, being persuaded that, whether he deceives me or tells the truth, he harms me. For even his truth harms; nothing beneficial comes from the serpent, since “a bad tree cannot bear good fruit.” But whatever God says to me, and I am persuaded that it is God who speaks, I am ready to submit myself. He tells the truth: I accept. He wishes to deceive me: I am willingly deceived; let God alone deceive me. And since I submit myself, persuaded that it is God who speaks, even to be deceived, and do not pry, wishing, when deceived, to be deceived not by another but by God, for this reason I say that not only did you work the deception, but I too underwent being deceived by you; and in this sense I say, “You deceived me, O Lord, and I was deceived.” And what follows from God's being the one who deceives and man the one deceived? “You were stronger and prevailed.” And having prevailed he is able. But if he does not prevail, then I need labors. “You were stronger and prevailed.”

Next to this he says: “I became [a laughingstock]” … [From the one who handed on] the passage [to me] I heard this: that Jeremiah lived in the times of the greatest sinners (in his time, at any rate, the captivity came about). And they were such sinners as to mock and laugh and jeer if ever the prophet spoke the prophetic introduction, “Thus says the Lord.” The hearers laughed and mocked at what was said. The one who had been deceived, and benefited from being deceived, took care not to say, “Thus says the Lord.” So he too, wishing to deceive for their benefit from the deception, said: “I speak my own words to you, since you do not listen to the words of the Lord.” Then they lent their ears as to the words of Jeremiah, and heard the words of God. This the one who handed the passage on to me told me, examining the introductions and beginnings of the prophecies. Now the beginning of Jeremiah's prophecy with us, as the Seventy have handed it on, with what purpose I do not know, is: “The word of God which came to Jeremiah son of Hilkiah, of the priests”; but in the Hebrew and the other editions: “The words of Jeremiah son of Hilkiah,” and all agreed in saying, “The words of Jeremiah son of Hilkiah.” Why, then, “the words of Jeremiah”? Because his introduction, in speaking to those who did not wish to listen, was: “Hear my words.” And we too sometimes do such things, when it seems profitable to us. Sometimes we bring words to those from the nations, wishing to bring them to the faith, and if we see that they are prejudiced against Christianity and loathe the name and hate to hear that this teaching is the Christians', we do not make a show of speaking a useful teaching of Christians. But when that teaching has been built up by us as well as we can, and we seem to be winning the hearer, who has listened to what was said with more than passing attention, then we confess that this praiseworthy teaching was the teaching of Christians. And we do something similar to the one who no longer said, “Thus says the Lord,” but: “Hear the words of me, Jeremiah.” So much on “I became a laughingstock.” And are we indignant if ever, when we speak, we are laughed at, when so great a man as Jeremiah says, “I became a laughingstock; all day long I continued being mocked”? Why do I say Jeremiah? My Jesus too was mocked; for “the Pharisees, who were lovers of money, heard all these things,” it says, “and mocked him.” But “the Lord will mock” all who mock the words of God. “I became a laughingstock.” See what kind of lives the prophets lived: at times laughed at, at times in danger, thrown down, stoned by the people, killed, hated, persecuted; and they suffered and endured all things, so that, according to the will of God, “seeking the glory that comes from the only God,” and preaching the word, they might obtain the end that comes from God. “All day long I continued being mocked”: all day long he continued being mocked.

“For with my bitter word I will laugh.” Laughter is a promise, of which promise the patriarch Isaac bears the name; for Isaac is interpreted “Laughter.” That laughter is a promise is clear from “Blessed are those who weep now”; and the promise is “for they will laugh.” Just as “they will be called sons of God,” and “they will see God,” and “they will inherit the earth,” and “theirs is the kingdom of heaven” are promises, so laughter is a promise; to which promise the weeping that is called blessed is the opposite. And you will inquire whether, in different aspects, the blessed weeping agrees with this good laughter, while another weeping, laid up for those pronounced wretched for contrary things, is opposed to it. For “woe to those who laugh now, for they will mourn and weep”; for the weeping called blessed is one thing, and the one laid up for those who have lived badly is another. Whether that too has some beneficial end, I do not know. What am I saying? Hear Paul. When he taught, he took pains, in speaking, to grieve his hearers. And he confesses that he rejoiced most when someone was grieved by him; for he says: “And who is it that makes me glad, but the one who is grieved by me?” And if anyone is able to move the soul of a hearer, especially of one who has sinned, he prays to speak such words as, spoken with power and array and divine quality and sacred thoughts, will shake the soul of the hearer and move it to mourning and weeping and tears, so that the speaker rejoices † when he sees the audience delighted and filled with what is said. For where he leads to promises, as “through the narrow and hard way,” the way of grief, “to life,” he leads also through weeping to the laughter that is called blessed. But when he does not achieve this, I fear lest he may say such things as: “Woe to you who laugh now, for you will mourn and weep.” Why have I said this, but wishing to hint that he says, “With my bitter word I will laugh,” and to set forth the laughter of weeping, and that weeping which those who laugh here will weep, God perhaps taking pains to produce weeping in them? For “there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” And God takes pains for this, seeing that the one who weeps for his own sins, who laments his own transgressions, has already come to awareness of his own evils. Would that each of us said, for each sin, “Every night I will wash my bed; I will drench my couch with my tears.” Would that each of us said, weeping over his own sins, “My tears have become my bread day and night.” If my word is rather bitter here, and bitter because I am afflicted on its account, those who hear are displeased. Those who are rebuked, when they are burdened by the speaker: I know that the end of my bitter word is to laugh, and to laugh the laughter of the blessed. And perhaps the prophet, knowing this, said: “For with my bitter word I will laugh”: already “with a bitter word,” but I do not yet laugh; rather “with my bitter word I will laugh.”

“I will call on faithlessness and misery.” The righteous man calls on God; the unrighteous too calls on Wisdom: “For it will be,” she says, “when you call on me, but I will not hear you.” There, the unrighteous; and the righteous too clearly call at times on Wisdom: “And everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” But here the prophet says, “I will call on faithlessness and misery,” as on God, so on faithlessness; as on the Lord, so on misery. Is it a good thing you call on, Jeremiah, since you declare, saying, “I will call on faithlessness and misery”? But one must consider the agreements we make and the breaking of them, since at times one makes agreements badly; and after making agreements badly, would that we might call on faithlessness to them! So too, if I consider “the broad and spacious way that leads to destruction,” and that walking on it I suffer no misery, I pass over “from the broad and spacious way” and come “to the narrow and hard one,” and, suffering misery, I say: “I will call on misery.” I am going to break the agreements with the world and worldly affairs, so as to take up heavenly agreements: “I will call on faithlessness.” So, leaving the [path] of “the broad and spacious way” and coming “to the narrow and hard one,” so as to become miserable like Paul, I say: “I will call on misery.” For not every man will say, “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from the body of this death?” But the one who has understood the body of death, who wishes to be delivered from the body of this death, will say, “Wretched man that I am.” But the lover of the body, the common man, who disbelieves in the age to come, does not say, “Wretched man that I am,” but calls himself blessed that he is a man, and that he is in the body of death. If, then, understanding how Paul said, “Wretched man that I am,” I can, not having yet called on misery, call on it by breaking the agreements with wickedness, I say, like Jeremiah: “I will call on faithlessness and misery.” For he did not say, “I will call on faithlessness to God.” I wish to give an example from Scripture of a righteous person who broke agreements, to show how that person called on faithlessness in deed. Judith made an agreement with Holofernes that she would go out for so many days to pray to God, and after so many days would give herself to the bed of Holofernes. Holofernes accepted this agreement. He released Judith for her prayers outside the camp. What ought Judith to have done: keep the agreement or break it? It is agreed: break it; for to break the agreement with Holofernes was blessed before God. Judith was going to break her agreement with Holofernes; she was going to say, “I will call on faithlessness”; and she did call on faithlessness. Would that I too might become such as to say, “I will call on faithlessness,” and call on faithlessness toward the serpent, toward the devil. The serpent once made an agreement with Eve, and she was his friend and the serpent the woman's. But God, as good, took pains that this agreement should be dissolved and this evil friendship scattered, and as the good God he says: “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed.” Let us, then, hear with understanding how God makes enmity toward the one so as to make friendship toward Christ; for it is impossible to be a friend of opposites at once. And as “no one can serve two masters,” so no one can be a friend both “to God and to mammon,” a friend both to Christ and to the serpent. Friendship with Christ must make enmity toward the serpent, and friendship with the serpent must beget enmity toward Christ. “I will call on faithlessness and misery.” And so that you may better understand “I will call on misery,” I will describe something that happens to ascetics. Often, when it is open to someone to marry and have no trouble from the flesh rising against the spirit, he chooses not to use the right to marry, but to suffer misery and toil, “to pummel the body” with fasts “and enslave it” with abstinence from certain foods, and in every way “by the Spirit to put to death the deeds of the body.” Has not such a one called on misery, when he could have given himself to luxury and pleasure and not called on misery? If anyone, then, can imitate the prophet, let him call on faithlessness, as we have explained, and let him call on misery in his ascetic practices. And the history about Jeremiah happens to be true too, that he lived in chastity; for the Lord said to him, “You shall not take a wife, nor have children.” And he lived in chastity; for he called on faithlessness and misery.

“For the word of the Lord became to me a reproach.” Blessed is Jeremiah, who had no other reproach than the word of the Lord. But we wretches have reproaches not because of the word of the Lord, but because of our own sins, and we are reproached for the things in which we stumble and have stumbled, and are reviled for our wickedness. But the Savior does not want us to be reproached with such reproaches, saying: “Blessed are you when they reproach you and persecute you and say every evil word against you for my sake.” “Rejoice in that day and leap for joy.” “The word,” then, he says, “of the Lord became to me a reproach and a derision all day long.” Then consider how fair-minded the prophets are as men, and do not hide their own sins as we do, but tell, not only for those of that time but for all generations, if they have sinned. I hesitate to confess my sins before the few here, since my hearers are going to condemn me. But Jeremiah, having undergone something sinful, was not ashamed, but recorded his sin; for what follows in “And I said, I will not name the name of the Lord, and I will not speak any more in his name” was a sin. You have been taught “to do all things in the name of the Lord,” to act in God's name; and do you say, “I will not name the name of the Lord”? But what name are you going to name? “You shall not remember the name of other gods in your hearts”; and do you say, “I will not name the name of the Lord, and I will not speak any more in his name”? He says it, then, having suffered something human, which we too are often in danger of suffering. And especially if someone is conscious of having suffered misery and ill-treatment and hatred at some time because of his teaching and the word, he often says: “I will withdraw; what have I to do with troubles? If from this I am in troubles, from teaching, from putting forth the word, why do I not rather withdraw to the desert and quiet?” The prophet too suffered something of this kind, saying: “And I said, I will not name the name of the Lord, and I will not speak any more in his name.” But in this the Lord is good, who prevents such sins of such great men. He did not let the prophet make good what he had said, but made Jeremiah call on faithlessness in this too and break what he had said. For he said, “I will not name the name of the Lord, and I will not speak any more in his name”; “but there came,” he says, “in my heart as it were a burning fire, flaming in my bones, and I am weakened on every side and cannot bear it.” The word of the Lord began to burn his heart. “And there came in my heart as it were a flaming fire, burning in my bones.” He cast off the sin he had committed in saying, “I will not name the name of the Lord, and I will not speak in his name any more”; and Jeremiah cast off the sin as soon as he said it. Would that I too, as soon as I sinned and spoke a sinful word, might perceive that “a fire has come in my heart, burning and flaming, so that I cannot bear it.” The word is about to venture something, and I do not know whether it is beneficial for such an audience and such a people: it has said that there is a kind of fire, a fire not perceptible, which punishes the one punished with pain so that he cannot bear it. For he said, “There came in my heart as it were a flaming fire,” and “burning,” not in my heart only but also “in my bones, and I am weakened on every side and cannot bear it.” I fear that such is what is laid up for us: a fire coming about as it came in Jeremiah's heart. But we have not suffered it. If we had suffered it, and the two fires were set before us, this fire and the outward fire which we see in those burned by the governors of the nations, we would choose that fire rather than this. For that one burns the surface, but this burns the heart, and beginning from the heart it penetrates to all the bones, and penetrating to the bones it comes upon the whole of the one burned, and comes in such a way that the one burned cannot bear it. Who, in that fire, can say, “and I cannot bear it”? I know that even robbers have been able to endure that fire, the pain from that fire. The pain from the fire that Jeremiah described is another, when he said: “And there came in my heart as it were a burning fire, flaming in my bones, and I am weakened on every side and cannot bear it.” That fire the Savior kindles, who said, “I came to cast fire on the earth.” And since the Savior kindles that fire, for this reason with those who are beginning to hear him he begins from fire, and first casts fire on their heart; which Simon and Cleopas confess, saying at his words: “Was not our heart burning on the way, as he opened the Scriptures to us?” Here the heart of Simon and of Cleopas is burned with fire. Hear them saying, “Was not our heart burning?” Who is worthy now to receive that fire in the heart, so as not to receive it there? I wish to describe who it is that has this fire in his heart. Describe for me two who have committed the same sin in kind, the foul, the unclean sin of sexual immorality; and of these two who have committed sexual immorality, one not grieving nor pained nor stung, but experiencing what is said in Proverbs of the immoral woman, “who, when she has done it, washes herself and says she has done nothing wrong.” See for me the other, after the fall, unable to bear it, but punished in his conscience, tormented in his heart, unable to eat and drink, fasting not by decision but through the pain of repentance. Describe for me such a one “all day long going about with a sad face and bowed down, groaning from the sighing of his heart, seeing his sin before him” continually convicting him. And see such a one punished not for one day nor for one night, but for a long time. Which of the two do you prefer? Which do you say has hopes with God? The one who committed sexual immorality and did not care, but “became callous and gave himself up to licentiousness,” or this one who, after his one sin, mourns and laments? This one † has hopes. The more he is burned by the fire of grief, the more he is shown mercy; and a sufficient time of punishment is given him, as much as is given in time of punishment to the one who committed sexual immorality and grieved. And since for him a time of punishment here is profitable, for this reason [Paul] took pains to punish the one who had committed sexual immorality, and when he had punished him with grief and saw that the grief was sufficient, he says: “lest such a one be swallowed up by excessive grief, reaffirm your love for him.” Let each of us examine his own conscience and see what he has sinned, since he must be punished. Let him pray to God that this fire that was in Jeremiah may come upon him, and then the fire that was upon Simon and Cleopas; but if he has sinned and has not cared, he will be kept for that fire. “And there came in my heart as it were a burning fire, flaming in my bones, and I am weakened on every side and cannot bear it, for I heard the blame of many gathering round about.” The blameless, the blessed Jeremiah (I speak with the exception of this small sin and anything else slight he did) was blamed by many. But the blame of the many was praise for him with God. For those who blamed him said: “Rise up, and let us all rise up against him, men his friends; watch his purpose, and he will be deceived.” They wished to deceive him with another, destructive deception, opposite to the deception of which he said, “You deceived me, O Lord, and I was deceived.” And these who rise up against him say: “And we shall prevail against him, and take our vengeance on him.” Those rebuked for their own sins think they have been wronged, and for this reason, thinking themselves wronged, they say: “We shall take our vengeance on him.” Those who sawed Isaiah did something of this kind; for as though wronged (since the prophecies turned them back and punished them, rebuked and reproved them) they sawed him and passed a sentence of death on him. But Jeremiah says against those who rose up: “And the Lord is with me like a mighty warrior.” If we become such as we ought to be, and accept that fire coming upon our sins, as it came to Jeremiah and those like him, the Lord afterward is with us “like a mighty warrior.” And “therefore they persecuted and could not understand,” because the Lord was with the one persecuted, and the one persecuted cannot come into their hands. Perhaps, then, as many things of Jeremiah are referred to the Savior, this too can be such? For “Rise up, and let us rise up against him” is said also of the Savior. And “the Lord” was with him “like a mighty warrior; therefore they persecuted and could not understand,” the Jews who persecuted him: “they were greatly ashamed and did not understand their dishonors”; dishonored for so long a time, they do not tell their own sins, “which will not be forgotten for ever,” but they think that in this age their iniquities will be forgotten. But we see that their iniquities will not be forgotten for ever, and seeing it we remember: “Do not be high-minded, but fear; for if God did not spare the natural branches, how much more will he not spare” those contrary to nature? “The Lord of hosts,” then, is with us, “testing righteous things, understanding the reins and the hearts.” The Lord tests righteous things and rejects unrighteous ones, and is, if I may so name him, a money-changer of the righteous and the unrighteous; and this Lord is also the one “who understands the reins and the hearts.” I ask what the difference is between “understanding the reins and the hearts” and “examining the hearts and the reins.” He does not examine the hearts and reins of all, but of those who have sinned; for I note the meaning of “examining,” which in this life is used of those under torture. In the courts some examine, others are examined, and others are in the heaviest pains. But [God] alone has a new manner of examinations, for he examines hearts, and to the Lord alone belongs examining hearts and reins. Robbers here are examined on the ribs at the order of a governor; but there a man is examined in reins and heart not at God's order but by the Lord himself, unless perhaps I say here that the one commanded is the Son, the one commanding the Father, and the one who examines hearts and reins is the Word. And I think that, of all tortures, of all pains, those from the Word are the heaviest, when he examines both hearts and reins. So let us do everything so as not to be handed over to that examination. I think those handed over to the torturers spoken of in the Gospel suffer less than that examination; for they are handed over to many, perhaps to more torturers at the beginning, not yet having become worthy to be handed over to the one Word who examines hearts and reins. That rich man was not yet worthy to be handed over to the one who examines hearts and reins; that is why he was tormented by several. Whether he later suffers this or not, let whoever can examine. But what awaits us is torturers and one who examines the hearts and reins for our sins; and unless we are quickly rid of these sins, we shall be among these things. So let us rise and ask for help from God, so that we may be blessed in Christ Jesus, to whom be the glory for ever. Amen.