Sermons 102–104

[On the centurion.] When Christ, while abiding in our body, did not raise all the dead or heal all the sick, let us believe that this was not for lack of power but because of the time. Had he done so, he would then have lit up the whole world with the full brightness of his power, taken away the time of faith, and kept nothing for the glory of his second coming. But he so tempered the signs of his mighty works as to show the mark of his divinity, to grant the fullest proof for believing, and to take away the excuse of crafty unbelief, as the centurion whom the evangelist Luke mentions showed today by his faith and foresight. “A certain centurion's servant,” it says, “who was precious to him, was sick and at the point of death” (Luke 7:2). This centurion was a Roman; but he was a Christian beyond the hundredfold fruit. He served God more than the world; strong in human war, stronger in divine, he remained a guardian of peace. “Whose servant, who was precious to him, was sick and dying.” He was a servant valued at a price. Let us ask, then, who is this servant who was precious to him. If the soul rules, the body serves; and to a man nothing is more precious than the body. This precious servant of the centurion is sick unto death; so the centurion was asking that Christ alone help the mortal body by granting it everlasting life. “When he heard of Jesus,” it says, “he sent elders of the Jews to him.” A Gentile sends Jews to Christ; and he who was without the law shows those placed under the law the author of the law. So let no one wonder if a Gentile, that is, a Christian, calls, leads or brings people to Christ. “He sent elders of the Jews to him, asking him to come and save his servant. And when they came to Jesus, they begged him earnestly, saying: He is worthy that you should grant him this, for he loves our nation, and he himself built the synagogue for us.” Jews ask on behalf of a Gentile who do not ask for themselves, and they work hard for the safety of another's servant who do nothing for the salvation of their own sons. They say: “He is worthy that you should grant him this.” If he is worthy who hears, believes and sends to Christ, how unworthy is he shown to be who comes to Christ, sees and does not believe? “For he loves our nation.” He loves your nation, which he makes a suppliant to Christ in this way; but you hate it, since you make it defiant toward Christ. Or how does a Christian not love your nation, when, confessing that Christ comes from your nation, he raises and exalts to heavenly glory whatever belongs to your nation? “For he loves our nation and himself built the synagogue for us.” You have heard that the synagogue is always in ruins, lies continually in rubble, and does not rise into a heavenly building unless a Christian builder raises it into the summit of the church. “Jesus went with them,” it says. But they did not go with Jesus, with whom they did not go in mind; nor were they with him who, separated in heart, seemed joined to him in body. “And when he was now not far off.” Not far from whom? From the Gentile. As much as the Jews separated themselves from Christ, so much was Christ joined to the Gentiles. “And when he was not far off, the centurion sent friends to him.” He who had first sent Jews now sends friends, to show by saying this that the Jews were enemies, as the Apostle proves when he says: “Enemies for your sake” (Rom 11:28). The Jews, by envying the Gentiles' faith, lost all that belonged both to the law and to grace. “He sent friends to him.” Hear the Lord saying to the apostles: “I will no longer call you servants, but friends” (John 15:15). As faith promotes servants into friends, so faithlessness reduces sons to penal servitude. “He sent friends to him, saying: Lord, do not trouble yourself.” Why? “For I am not worthy that you should come under my roof.” You see that Christ was leading the Jews rather than being led by them, so that they might hear that reverence for the Godhead was with the centurion, the worship of the law with the Gentile, the wages of grace with the soldier, the teaching of faith with the Roman, Christian warmth amid pagan coldness, a heavenly secret in an earthly breast, and the whole knowledge of the lordship on high amid the whole servitude of the world. “Lord, do not trouble yourself.” That is to say: God, why do you trouble yourself in a human body? Why do you wear yourself out with earthly labour and tire yourself with the length of the road? Why do you travel from place to place, you who are wholly everywhere and hold and possess the whole creation within yourself? “Lord, do not trouble yourself; I am not worthy that you should come under my roof.” Brothers, what is the roof that makes a man worthy or unworthy, so that it invites or repels divine access? Brothers, this roof is the body, which covers the soul, hides the perception of the spirit, veils the dwelling of the heart and shuts off the freedom of the mind from the heavenly vision. Under this roof, then, the centurion thinks it unworthy that Christ should enter, that is, that the divine majesty should come into a human body. “I am not worthy that you should come under my roof.” But God, who when he wills makes what is human divine, and when he deigns changes what belongs to our flesh into his spirit, does not disdain to dwell in flesh or to enter under the roof of our body. “Therefore,” he says, “I did not think myself worthy to come to you.” Both belong to a devout man: he thinks it unfitting for God to come to him, and knows that he is not worthy to approach him. Who enters before a judge uncalled? Who goes in to a king unbidden? How much more does no one come to God uncalled. “Those whom he called,” it says, “he also justified” (Rom 8:30). So the centurion does not shrink from the Lord's coming or refuse Christ's presence, but acts so that it may be the grace of the one who calls, not the rashness of one who presumes. For he suggests and shows by a human example what God can do, saying: “For I too am a man set under authority, having soldiers under me; and I say to this one, Go, and he goes; and to another, Come, and he comes; and to my servant, Do this, and he does it.” That is: if I, who am set under authority, make those subject to me obey by the command of a word alone, how can you, who are subject to no one and to whose power all things are subject, not heal by a word of command, send health and order mighty works? Or can you not restore by a word what you made by a word? “He spoke,” it says, “and they were made; he commanded, and they were created” (Ps 148:5). Or are you not able to repair something from something, you who prepared all things from nothing? “So say the word, and my servant will be healed.” He fulfilled what the prophet sang of God: “He sent his word and healed them, and rescued them from their corruption” (Ps 107:20). Brothers, this centurion, by saying, “I am not worthy that you should come under my roof,” bears the figure of the Christian people, which judges itself unworthy of Christ's bodily presence, but by the word alone, by the message, by the hearing of faith alone, hears, believes and beholds in its own healing all the Lord's mighty works. For when he says, “I say to this one, Go, and he goes; and to another, Come, and he comes; and to my servant, Do this, and he does it,” he shows in this way the rejection of the Jews, the calling of the Gentiles and the obedience of the Christian people. “I say to this one,” that is, to the Jew who did not believe, “Go, and he goes; and to another,” that is, to the Gentile, because he believed, “Come, and he comes; and to my servant,” that is, to the Christian, “Do this, and he does it.” Let us pray, brothers, that we may be found worthy to be Christians not in name only but in faith, and not only to hear what is commanded but to do what we hear; for as it belongs to a devoted servant to have done what was commanded, so it belongs to a defiant one not to have done it. “Say the word, and my servant will be healed. When Jesus heard this,” it says, “he marvelled.” The creator of marvels marvels; the maker of ears is astonished at what he hears, as though he did not know things before he heard them; but while he marvels that a Gentile has believed in this way, he rebukes the unbelief of the Jews. Then “he says to the crowds following him,” thus rebuking the Jews who remained in death: “Truly I tell you, not even in Israel have I found such faith.” It is true, brothers: faith alone lives and will live among the Gentiles; signs and mighty works grow weary and profit nothing among the Jews.

[On the widow's son raised from the dead, and on the resurrection of bodies.] Today the blessed evangelist has announced that the only son of a widowed mother, already bound with the bands of burial, already laid on a mournful bier, already being carried to the tomb with crowds following, was restored to life through Christ (Luke 7:11–17); and he has shaken the hearts of all, moved their minds and astonished their hearing. But let the pagans wonder at this, let the Jews be stunned, let the world tremble: but we, who believe that all the dead of all the ages are to be raised from their tombs at the one voice of Christ, why do we wonder? “The dead will rise,” says Isaiah, “and those in the tombs will rise again” (Isa 26:19 LXX). The Lord: “The hour is coming when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live” (John 5:25). To this the Apostle adds: “In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet; for the trumpet will sound, and the dead will rise incorruptible” (1 Cor 15:52). What is this trumpet which brings war on the underworld, breaks up the masses of the tombs, thunders life to the dead, and gives triumph to those rising into everlasting light? What is it? The one the Lord spoke of above: “The dead will hear the voice of the Son of God” (John 5:25). Not a trumpet that gives a mournful bellow to warriors by breath forced through a hollow horn of wood or bronze, but one that from the heart of the Father, by the mouth of the Son, gives a life-giving cry to those below and those above alike. “And at the last trumpet” (1 Cor 15:52): the trumpet which in the beginning called the world out of nothing will itself at the last call the world back from ruin; and the trumpet which at the beginning raised man from mud will at the end raise man again from dust. Brothers, we believe this because the trumpet of the divine voice divided chaos, gathered the globe, cleansed the elements, set the world in order, hung the sky, founded the earth, bound the sea, sank the underworld, gave the alternations of order, and commanded the continuous service of things; and lest the world bristle empty, it fitted out inhabitants and distinguished their dwellings: in heaven it placed angels, who live by spirit alone; on earth it established the various lives of earthly beings; in the air it gave winged souls to fly about; in the waters it made small and great, so that a multitude of living creatures might live; and in a wonderful way it joined the structure of the world out of separate parts, so that mixture would not confuse what was distinct, nor distinction split unity. Hence the pairing of day and night is so divided that labour rests on rest, and rest on labour. Hence sun and moon go round the bounds of the world in turn, so that the sun with doubled light may enlarge the brightness of day, and the moon with nearly equal light may not leave the times of night wholly blind. Hence the stars by their course change their various risings, both to mark the seasons by night and to guide travellers. Hence times come by going; they begin to be while they cease. Hence seeds are born, grow, mature, become young, grow old, fall, die, and, buried again in life-giving furrows and dissolved by rot, return from a saving death to their own way and are raised from corruption into lasting form. And if, brothers, the voice of God, the trumpet of Christ, through days, months, seasons and years calls, recalls, leads, leads back, commands to be and makes not to be, gives to death and returns to life, why can it not do once in us what it always does in all things? Or does divine power grow weary in us alone, for whose sake alone God's majesty wrought all that has been said? O man, if all your things revive for you from death, why should you not revive for God from death? Or does God's creature perish in you alone, for whose sake the whole creation subsists, is moved, changes and is renewed daily? Brothers, I say these things not wishing to empty the power of Christ's signs; I urge that by the example of one man rising we may be roused to faith in the resurrection of all, and believe that the cross of our body is the plough, faith the seed, the tomb the furrow, dissolution the sprouting, expectation the season; so that, when the spring of the Lord's coming smiles, the ripe greenness of our bodies may rise into a living harvest, never more to know an end, never to know grey hair, not to suffer binding into sheaves or feel the flails; for, the chaff of the old having been laid aside in death, it rises into the new fruit of a glorious body. If at the temporal tears of one widow Christ was so moved as to meet her on the road, to dry the streams of grief dripping from her eyes, to shake off death, bring back the man, raise the body, restore life, turn lament into joy, change mournful funeral rites into a birthday festival, and give back her son alive from death to the mother, from the bier, what will he do now, when he blazes with all his strength at the long tears of his church, at the bloody sweat of his bride? For through the church in supplication he sheds continual tears, through the martyrs he sweats sacred blood, until Christ, meeting her, gives back her only one, that is, the Christian people, whom so many ages carry to death, from the mortal bier to everlasting life, into the everlasting joy of the mother above. But since the time of Christ's birth has come, and virginity about to give birth already shines as a heavenly miracle, and the birth of the divine King is now announced to us not by a star but by the very rising of the sun, let us all run to meet him to adore him, and confess with sacred gifts that God and King has come forth from a virginal temple. Let us offer gifts, because a public offering is always prepared for a newborn king; let us offer gifts, because an empty-handed worshipper is undevout enough. The magus proves this, who, laden with gold, burning with incense, consecrated with myrrh, bows down at Christ's cradle (Matt 2). What sort of thing is it if a Christian does not do what a magus did? What sort of thing is it if, at the joy of Christ's birth, the poor man weeps, the captive groans, the guest laments, the stranger wails? The Jew always honoured the heavenly feasts with tithes; what does the Christian think of himself if he does not honour them even with a hundredth? Brothers, let no one think that I say this from a zeal for declaiming, not from the feeling of one who grieves. I grieve, I truly grieve, when I read that the magi drenched Christ's cradle with gold, and see that Christians have left the altar of Christ's body empty, and especially at this time, when the vast hunger of the poor and a lamentable crowd of captives pour themselves out upon us. Let no one say, “I do not have,” since God asks from what you have, not from what you do not have, since he graciously credits the widow's two coins (Mark 12:42–44). Let us be devoted to the Creator, so that creation may be devoted to us. Let us sustain the needs of our neighbours, so that we may be freed from our own needs. Let us fill God's altar, so that the fullness of fruits may fill our barns. Certainly, if we do not give, let us not complain that we do not receive. May our God himself grant you good things both present and to come, through our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom be all honour and everlasting glory, together with the Holy Spirit, now and always, and through all ages of ages. Amen.

[On the rich man whose land was fruitful.] Whenever this rich man comes into our midst, whom the cry of the divine voice accuses through so many ages, over the whole world, every day, so often is the deceptive allure of riches put to flight, so often is the raging flame of desires quenched, so often is the mad frenzy of avarice calmed. For the Lord Jesus began thus today: “The land of a certain rich man brought forth plentiful crops; and he thought to himself, saying: What shall I do, since I have nowhere to store my crops? And he said: I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store all my goods that have grown for me; and I will say to my soul: Soul, you have many goods laid up for many years; rest, eat, drink, feast. But God said to him: Fool, this night they demand your soul from you; and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?” (Luke 12:16–20). Wretched man, whom fertility made barren, abundance anxious, plenty inhuman, riches a beggar! A generous field bore an ungenerous master; and what the earth poured out generously he shut up and gathered narrowly, so as to be the keeper of what belonged to others, he who refused to be the dispenser of his own: ungrateful to God, wicked to himself, an enemy of the poor, a disgrace to the rich, a prison of nature. “The land of a certain rich man brought forth plentiful crops, and he thought within himself.” As if anyone could think outside himself! But this man thought within himself, who, having received into his heart the counsel of impiety, left himself nothing of piety and nothing of mercy. “He thought within himself, saying.” He used a counsellor worthy of himself, who could have no comforter for his bad mind and no colleague. “And he thought within himself, saying.” An impious mind was contending with piety, and he who had lost the peace and quiet of mercy was suffering war within. “And he thought within himself, saying: What shall I do?” It is the voice of one asking; and whom do you think he was asking? There was another in him, because the devil had already settled as owner in his inner rooms; and he who had entered the heart of Judas was holding the secret of his mind. “What shall I do, since I do not have?” Have you heard how the rich man does not have? See, he cries: “I do not have.” It is true, because he who always seeks always does not have; and he does not have where to gather who seeks in order to gather. But let us hear what his inner counsellor answered him. “I will pull down my barns.” It plainly appeared who was lurking, because the enemy always begins with destruction. He works, he works so that you destroy what you have and do not build up what you have desired. Wretched rich man, ignorant about the present, you argue most foolishly about the future; how much better had you transferred your present goods to where the seat of the soul is! But now the bars of your barns have tightened the throats of the poor, bound the necks of strangers, crushed the bowels of the hungry; hence the groans of the poor go before you and follow you, the pale faces of strangers accuse you, the wailing crowd of beggars assails you; so that, sentenced by the Judge above, you may take your fill of punishments, you who, by denying others, have shut yourself in with the bolts of your barns. To the rich man thinking within himself he rightly answered thus who “knows the thoughts of men, that they are vain” (Ps 94:11): “Fool, this night they demand your soul from you; and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?” Rightly “fool,” because everything there had been of the flesh, nothing of the heart. Rightly “fool,” because for a soul soon to depart he was preparing stores that would last a long time. “This night they demand your soul from you.” Fittingly “this night,” for one who, fleeing the light of mercy, had enslaved himself to the darkness of avarice, saying: “Eat, drink, feast.” That drinkers are sons of night, not of day, the Apostle declares thus: “And those who get drunk are drunk at night” (1 Thess 5:7). He is carried through dark places and taken away through darkness, who entrusted and stored the support of his life in the bars of his barns. “They demand your soul from you.” Why did he not say, “He who gave it demands it back,” but “they demand”? Because God demands back and leads home the souls of the saints, while the ministers of Tartarus demand and drag away the souls of the impious. “And he thought within himself, saying: What shall I do, since I have nowhere to store my crops? And he said: I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store all my goods that have grown for me; and I will say to my soul: Soul, you have many goods laid up for many years; eat, drink, feast. But God said to him: Fool, this night they demand your soul; and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?” So this rich man was overtaken in such a way that he lost his thoughts rather than his preparations; and the prophet's word was fulfilled: “His spirit will go forth, and he will return to his earth; on that day all their thoughts will perish” (Ps 146:4). He thought about what he would leave behind him, not about what he would send on ahead of him; hence, according to the Apostle: “They became futile in their thinking, and their senseless heart was darkened; claiming to be wise, they became fools” (Rom 1:21–22). “Fool” is said to him, and, roused from the sleep of the present life, he finds nothing in his hands in that eternity, as the Psalmist said: “They have slept their sleep, and all the men of riches have found nothing in their hands” (Ps 76:5). So, rich man, keep awake for good work and sleep to evil, so that your hand may not be empty for the poor and may always be full for you. For a rich man overflows in goods as generously as he pours them out generously. So be rich in mercy, if you always want to be rich; and then your barns will be greater, then they will be full, if they have been emptied by generosity, not shut up by greed. [Sermon 105. On the woman who had a spirit of infirmity.] Today Christ's healing has given a wonderful proof of divine power, laid bare the cunning of diabolical fraud, and released a woman wounded by a long and hidden wound, as the Evangelist says: “Jesus was teaching in the synagogue on the sabbath, and there was a woman who had had a spirit of infirmity for eighteen years, and she was bent over and could not look up at all. When Jesus saw her, he called her and said to her: Woman, you are freed from your infirmity. And he laid his hands on her, and at once she was made straight and glorified God” (Luke 13:10–13). She had a spirit of infirmity and was bent over: the wound was plain, but the author of the wound was not plain; everyone saw the illness, but they did not see the cause of the illness. The punishment was in the open, but the executioner lay hidden, shut up in the punishment itself; a bent body was seen, but the weight on the bent body was not seen; in the midst of her fellow citizens the woman carried her enemy, but the citizens did not see the enemy so as to drive him off. The art of the most wicked spirit was believed to be a bodily ailment, so that the crafty robber might hold captive by deceit one whom he could not hold by strength. The devil would be nothing if men were more careful and more cautious. Or what has he ever achieved in man by strength, and not by art, lying, ambush, fraud, deceit, wickedness, the service of vices and the frenzy of crimes? He always explores men's wills; he flees from good wills but complies with bad ones, so as to be the minister of wickedness, the pander of crimes, the very parasite of the vices. And since he cannot rule by power, he lords it over the basest minds by the basest servitude. So he deceived Eve by a lie (Gen 3), so he snared Judas by greed (Mark 14), so he blinded the Jews by envy (Mark 15), so he darkened the nations with the error of idols, so he confuses peoples with the pomp of things, so he has preoccupied little ones with vanity so that they may not think sound thoughts. Now let us hear what he contrived against the present woman. “And behold,” it says, “a woman who had had a spirit of infirmity for eighteen years, and she was bent over and could not look up at all.” You see that this woman was sighing, pressed down by the weight of the most wicked spirit, who always presses men down with the burdens of sins and bends them to the earth, so that they may not see heaven, not savour the things above, not look on God, not return to their freedom through their author, but with bowed head, eyes cast down and face to the ground, may always be held under the captive yoke of the ancient enemy. So that tax collector was pressed down, who could not lift his eyes to heaven but struck his breast, conscious of sin; and since there was no room for denial, he sought room for mercy, saying: “God, be merciful to me a sinner” (Luke 18:13). Bearing this, the most blessed prophet sang thus: “My iniquities have gone over my head, and like a heavy burden they have weighed upon me” (Ps 38:4). And to disclose the author of this work, he declares elsewhere: “the hairy crown of those who walk about in their offences” (Ps 68:21); because the devil rides on and runs over the head of those who do not resist their offences but walk about in them, so that those who go to evil of their own accord may be led to worse by the devil's impulse, as the Apostle says: “You were led as you went” (1 Cor 12:2). But let us search out what spiritual understanding remains in this history. “And behold a woman who had had a spirit of infirmity for eighteen years, and she was bent over and could not look up at all.” Who is this woman, whose very years of infirmity are recorded? Who is she, whom a crafty ailment strove not to lift from the earth but to bend toward it? Who is she? She who is now the holy mother of saints, the holy church of sons, whom, as the Apostle says, the spirit of this air, the spirit of disobedience, the spirit of error (Eph 2:2; 6:12) was harassing with a spiritual affliction, bending her down with various weights and laying her on the earth, so that she was never lifted up to look at heaven. But why is she who bears the type of the church found thus bent over in the synagogue? Why? Because while she flees the sacrileges of the nations and avoids the burdens of idols, she runs into heavier ones and carries the weights of the synagogue, as the Lord proves when he says: “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, who bind heavy burdens and lay them on men's shoulders, but you yourselves will not move them even with your least finger” (Luke 11:46; Matt 23:4). Hence blessed Peter too says: “Why then do you now tempt God by putting on the necks of the disciples a yoke which neither we nor our fathers were able to bear?” (Acts 15:10). That is why Christ, desiring to relieve men of these burdens, cries out: “Come to me, all you who labour and are burdened, and I will refresh you; take my yoke upon you, because it is sweet” (Matt 11:28–30). When he says “all,” he surely calls both Jews and Gentiles. But why is this woman's sickness drawn out through eighteen years? Because unless the decalogue of the law had come to the grace of the eighth day, the holy church, this woman, would never have come to the fullness of time, to the day of salvation, to the acceptable time, to the presence of her Saviour. That this woman bore the figure of the church the very manner of her healing shows. “He called her to himself,” it says, “and laid his hands on her.” Whoever has been found worthy to become a Christian, and sees Christians being made every day, knows well that this is how the church is always healed. For, so that a Gentile bent by sins may be raised up to heaven, first the wicked spirit is driven out of the Gentile by the laying on of hands. He who had put demons to flight by a word alone and had healed all infirmities by command alone, why does he lay his hands on this woman? Why does he change the order of healing in her case, unless because he then heals all in one; or rather, because he does not receive the church until he has purified her from the devil by the laying on of his hands and made her Christian; and further, by the sacrament of the present healing he forms and establishes the care of making Christians. But the ruler of the synagogue is indignant that Christ heals on the sabbath; and today the Jew is tormented with the fury of zeal at the church's healing, while he turns heavenly meanings over with earthly understanding, and thinks the sabbath consecrated to beasts of burden, not to men, he who hurries on the sabbath to an ox or an ass in danger, but grants nothing of piety, nothing of mercy, to a dying man on the sabbath. And the senseless man does this so that he violates the sabbath in his heart and violates holiness itself in a man; and so he lays down rules for God by God's law, and, by observing the sabbath, pays back to God the sabbath which God mercifully granted the Jew as rest from earthly labour and work of the flesh. “And they were turned into a crooked bow” (Ps 78:57), they who in this way twist the most upright precepts of the law against the Lord of the law. Jew, he who freed you from human labour so that at least on one day, the sabbath, you might rest in caring for your own welfare … And you, Christian, keep the Lord's day for the Lord, if you want to see that day of the Lord, if you want to possess through the Lord whatever belongs to the Lord.