Sermons 132–138

[On the unity of the faithful.] If nature brought forth and produced all things perfect, sturdy, and needing nothing, kindness would surely be abolished, ingenuity would fail, skill would perish, gold would stay dark in the earth, the gem hidden in the stone: yet the craftsman's training finds both, cleans them, separates them, polishes them; and the same skill brings them to the beauty and grace of a precious necklace. And what the earth produces from nature's ample spring either grows rough with briars or turns into forest under the rule of wild luxuriance, unless the farmer's skilled industry calls it back to cultivation. And not to wander further, let us bring forward one homely example of what we are striving for. A man newly born in the cradle is already a man in the man, but hidden; there is a body, and there is not; limbs are seen, and they are not; things live that have no strength of sense; kindness bends down, industry sweats, skill labors; and to say it more fully, as many limbs as a man has, so many trainings work to bring the man to perfection. What more? All that nature begets or produces, kindness nourishes, industry cultivates, skill adorns. And what wonder, brothers, if God, who willed to suffer for man, willed nature too to be weak in present things so as to honor human industry? Hence the meaning lies hidden in the letter, the divine mystery is concealed in human speech, so that things to come, already open to believers, may be obscured to the faithless and unbelieving, and so the punishment of the unbelievers may overflow into the glory of the faithful. For it is no small torment not to perceive what one sees, not to understand what one hears, to shun saving things as harmful, to beware of virtues as if they were vices, as the Lord himself says: “I speak in parables, so that seeing they may not see, and hearing they may not hear” (Mark 4; Luke 8); and to the faithful: “But to you it has been given to know the mystery of God” (Matt 13). Let no one, then, brothers, regard the word of the Gospel as common or cheap because of its simplicity, especially since the very trumpet of the Gospel reading, sounding forth, has foretold that nothing is to be denied to those who ask well and desire devoutly, saying: “If two of you agree on earth about anything whatever that they ask, it will be done for them by my Father” (Matt 18). You have heard how much the agreement of a holy petition can do and prevail: he did not say this or that, but promises that he will grant whatever the unity of petition desires, when he says: “About anything whatever that they ask, it will be done for them.” Yet with this caution and reverence kept, that things worthy of God are asked of God; for whoever asks evil things of God judges and thinks God the author of evil; and because he prays for cheap and unworthy things, the degenerate petitioner does not know the power and might of the giver. Not impious things, then, but holy; not earthly, but heavenly; not things fitting for allurements, but for virtue; not things worthy of hatred, but suited to concord, are always to be begged from such a giver. Where are those who presume that the assembly of the Church can be despised, and claim that solitary prayers are to be preferred to the venerable congregation, if he promises that he will be in the midst of two or three gathered together, and will grant all that he is asked (Matt 18)? He who denies nothing to so few, what will he deny to those who ask in the councils and congregation of the saints? So believing, the prophet boasts of having obtained this when he says: “I will confess to you, Lord, with my whole heart, in the council of the just and the congregation” (Ps 111:1 [LXX 110:1]). He confesses with his whole heart who hears that all he has asked will be granted him in the council of the saints. But some, under a show of faith, try to excuse the sloth of their contempt; neglecting their ardor for the venerable gathering and congregation, they pretend that they have set aside for prayer the time they have given and spent on household cares; and while they are enslaved to their own desires they despise and look down on divine ordinances. These are the ones who scatter the body of Christ and disperse its members, and do not let the form of the Lord's appearance come to its beauty, which the prophet, when he saw it in the Spirit, sang thus: “Beautiful in form above the sons of men” (Ps 45:2 [LXX 44:3]). Each member has indeed its own proper office; yet they can fulfil it only if, joined and fitted together, they come to the beauty of a perfect body. This, then, is the difference between the glorious fullness of the congregation and the vanity of separation presumed out of ignorance or negligence: in the health and honor of a whole body the unity of the members is beautiful, and in the separation of the organs there is foul, deadly and horrible ruin. Man, what else did your own body teach you, by a joining so divided or a division so joined, except that you should live as one out of many, and one in many? The eye is precious in the saving exchange of the members, but only if it stays in the body; otherwise, where it is lacking to the body, it will not be present to itself: all the members owe it the service of their light; but the eye itself feels that it owes to the body the fact that it is light; for though it provides the service of the members to all the members, torn from the body it does not even see. Whoever thinks himself to be something, taught by such an example, let him remain in the Church so that he may be something; otherwise, where the Church is lacking to him, he at once ceases to be anything to himself. Whoever wants to know this more fully, let him read through the Apostle's teaching when he speaks of the body of Christ (1 Cor 12), since the brevity that befits a sermon does not allow us to run through it. The law was given not to one but to all; Christ came not for one nor to one, but to all and for all, so as to restore all into one; the prophet, foreknowing the future, so proclaims this one good, this one delight: “Behold how good and how pleasant it is for brothers to dwell in unity” (Ps 133:1 [LXX 132:1]). For it is not singularity that is acceptable to God, but unity. The Holy Spirit pours down with the whole abundance of his spring upon the apostles gathered together (Acts 2), and the disciples had been admonished by the Lord's command to await his coming together. Brothers, he loses the divine gifts, forfeits the bounty of grace, is cheated of the goods of love, and the blessing of unity will not remain with him who, harmful to himself and foolishly self-sufficient out of his own deficiency, seeks life outside the Church, which the prophet testifies is only in it, saying: “Behold how good and how pleasant it is for brothers to dwell in unity” (Ps 133:1 [LXX 132:1]), “for there the Lord commanded blessing and life forever.”

[On St Andrew the apostle.] Blessed Andrew is rightly believed to have been born today, since he is known to have been begotten, not when he was poured out of his mother's womb into the present life, but by the conception of faith and the childbirth of martyrdom, for heavenly glory; since today no mother's cradle received him wailing, but the secret places above received him triumphant; since today he does not draw the weak nourishment of milk from his mother's breast, but, a most devoted soldier, he shed the blood of virtue for his king. He lives, because the warrior of the heavenly army has slain death. Here by dying he follows his Lord, burning and panting, and with the whole step of his virtue he strives to cling to the Lord's footsteps, so that his course may not make him unequal to his brother, whom nature had made like him, the call a companion, and grace itself an equal. At the one word of the Lord, like him, he left father, homeland and property; in labors, reproaches, journeys, insults, watchings, by Christ's gift, he gave himself tirelessly to fellowship with his brother: it is only that at the time of the Lord's passion he fled; but not even in this was he unequal, because he fled. If denying is thought a fault, fleeing is not graver than denying. But other things must be passed over: pardon made equal, brothers, those whom fault had so separated. And the fervor of martyrdom that followed fully proved devoted those whom the earlier fear had found wanting. For the cross they had fled they afterward ardently seized with joined strength, so that from the place where they had taken on guilt they might ascend to heaven, and from there receive the reward and the crown. For Peter mounted a cross, Andrew a tree, so that those who longed to suffer with Christ might express in themselves the figure and form of his passion, and, redeemed by the wood, might be brought to the palm. So our Andrew, though he yields in order, does not yield in reward and labor.

[On St Felicity, martyr.] Since time does not allow us to count up the various and manifold triumphs of the martyrs, which the cruelty of the persecutor, so often mocked, has heaped up, the whole speech of our sermon takes refuge in her who deserved to have as many sons as the days the world received. Truly a mother of lights, a spring of days, who shines throughout the world with the sevenfold brightness of her offspring. Blessed is she who not only suffered for the law, but deserved, as a holy mother, to bring forth the very seven-branched lamp of the law: a seven-branched lamp, brothers, that would not light up the secret place of a single, temporary tabernacle but would illumine the everlasting Church with sacred fire. Happy is she who deserved to carry as many pledges of virtue as the volumes of the commandments that the ark carried (Exod 25), so that as the ark taught by word, she might teach by example. Even then, brothers, she bore them as martyrs, when she consecrated her childbearing by the mystical number seven. Let holy Paul come here, here, who is still in labor until Christ is formed in man (Gal 4). See, a woman is in labor again and again until weakness is changed into strength, flesh passes over into spirit, earth is carried over into heaven. She burned, she panted to bring forth in one day as holy martyrs those whom she had hardly brought forth as little ones over the course of years. See the woman, see the mother, whom the life of her sons made anxious, their death secure. Blessed is she, beside whom in the future glory stand as many lampstands as she had offspring; blessed is she who sent so many ahead to the kingdom; more blessed, who lost nothing of her own in this world. She ran about more gladly among the pierced bodies than among her sons' dear cradles, because with inward eyes she saw as many prizes as wounds; as many torments, so many rewards; as many victims, so many crowns. What more, brothers? She is not, she is not a true mother who does not know how to love her sons like this.

[On St Lawrence.] Today is made illustrious by the crown of the baptism of the martyr Lawrence, whose merits as an outstanding martyr no part of the Roman world is unaware of. He suffered in the very capital of the nations, that is, in the city of Rome itself. There he served as deacon, and in the very flower of his youth he made the beauty of his youth purple with his blood. His passion is famous and very wonderful; with the Lord's help I will tell it briefly. Blessed Sixtus was bishop when he was archdeacon, and Sixtus's triumph in martyrdom was three days before. When holy Lawrence, then, was following his bishop Sixtus on his way to martyrdom, strong in faith but sad in affection, not because Sixtus was suffering but because he himself was being left behind by him, the venerable old man looked back at the venerable young man and said to him: “Do not be sad, son; after three days you will follow me.” Then Lawrence drank in the prophecy; already most ready in heart, drunk with the Spirit, he hoped for as certain the future that one who knew had foretold. Then he was seized and brought in; and since he was archdeacon, the wealth of the Church was believed to be with him, which the persecutor desired, not so much from greed as from fury. He hated the man he was killing, but he loved in him what the man despised. Holy Lawrence was poor in riches, rich in character: he did not deny that he had the Church's riches, but to show them he asked for a delay of three days, and then had crowds of the poor gathered. Then, on the very day of his crown, brought before the court as if to show what the persecutor sought, he showed what he had. Then the persecutor said: “Where are the Church's goods?” And he, stretching out his hand toward the poor, said: “These are the Church's goods.” He spoke the truth, but a bitter truth. What wonder if truth increased hatred? The cruel tyrant and greedy enemy, smarting at being mocked, who had perhaps thought of a milder punishment, of killing the venerable young man with the sword, ordered flames to be prepared; he burned more than he was burned: Lawrence was burned in the flesh, the persecutor burned in his heart. His punishment was the heavier the more inward it was. Then was brought that noble gridiron of Lawrence, for roasting, or to speak more truly, for cooking him to martyrdom: he was bound to the iron, but he thought the gridiron of punishment a bed of rest; I said “punishment” according to the mind of the one punishing, not according to the conscience of the one suffering. For there is no punishment for the condemned where there is no penalty of sin. So the most blessed martyr, showing how quietly he lay on that fiery iron, said to those standing around: “Turn me over now, and if one side is done, eat.” Let us marvel at the patience; let us marvel at the gift of God. There faith not only did not burn, but even comforted the one burning. Why did faith comfort the one burning? Because it held the faithful one who promises. That faith might not fail, that hope might not be turned aside, that love might be more inflamed amid the fiery bodily punishments: these were God's gifts. My brothers, let no one claim for his own power what only God gives. Rightly the Apostle, speaking to martyrs, as you heard when his Epistle was read today, says: “To you it has been granted for Christ's sake not only to believe in him but also to suffer for him” (Phil 1). Therefore let us praise the merits of the martyrs as gifts of God; let us love them, pray, and submit our will. For the will follows; it does not go before. Yet love is not lacking if the will is not lacking; for the ardent will itself is called love. Who is there that fears when he wills? Who is there that loves when he does not will? Let prayer be fervent, and let the martyr's feast be celebrated: but so that he who celebrates may not be empty, let him imitate.

[On Adelphus the bishop.] The holy mind and condescension, full of kindness, of the bishop Adelphus has this about it: that a rich man enters a poor man's lodging, sits down at a poor man's table, and makes himself one with the lowly, he whom riches, power and honor have made and rendered singular. For this willingness must be counted among the greatest virtues, which, scorning the pride of its retinue, despising the regard due to a magnificent house, trampling even the height of its own power, and casting off the inner awareness of its wealth, from which the greatest swelling always rules in human minds, has bent down to the meanest straits of poverty in order to raise up a poor man by its company. Plainly blessed is this mind, far from every disease of arrogance, which entered a poor man's lodging so that it might first be a debtor of humanity before being its giver. Clearly it was eager to imitate God, who first received human services in his body before granting divine benefits to man. This we see Adelphus, the bishop of God most high, here present, has done: though he is rich in word, abundant in knowledge, great in talent, first in rank, he has desired to hear our poor thought and middling eloquence, like that prophet who hungered for the widow's last food and pressed her little ones' straits with his own hunger, putting off a new ministry by his request, so that by asking he might give, by hungering he might fill, and by draining it he might heap up the barn of the needy with divine bounty (1 Kgs 17 [3 Kgdms 17]). And we, little children, do not regret having given what we had: for though the deed disturbed us for a time, the example lifts us up and consoles us. Quickly, at the word of this man of God, the smallness of our talent, like that widow's food, will advance with heavenly increase; and from now on, from the store of our heart, the substance of life will not fail, but poverty itself and want will be abolished. Happy the vein that is enriched by its own watering and draws in and acquires the whole abundance of its own well. See, he has come, and a heavenly rain has poured into your lofty minds, and with the whole rush of the river from above has watered by its flowing the city of God which is in you, so that our earth, soaked with divine dew, may be made fruitful even to a hundredfold. Open your senses, enlarge your hearts, and stretch out the lap of your minds, so that whatever he pours out generously to you from heavenly treasures you may possess for eternal glory and as a lasting wealth.

[On the preaching of St John the Baptist.] After the fertility of the Jewish soil had been exhausted by the plowshare of the law and continual cultivation, blessed John, flying to the desert of the nations, burning up the thorns of crimes with the fire of the Spirit, cutting down unfruitful trees with the axe of vengeance, leveling the rough hills of pride, raising the valleys of humility to an even level, and fitting the whole plain of the earth (its wild growth destroyed), bringing in the nourishing waters of the Jordan, so prepares broad new fields for the Gospel seed and makes them fruitful. “The word of the Lord came,” it says, “upon John the son of Zechariah in the desert” (Luke 3). “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1). “Upon John”? Why not “to John,” but “upon John”? Because “he who is from above is above all.” “The word of the Lord came upon John.” Because John is the voice, God the Word. “The word of the Lord came upon John”: God upon John, the Lord upon the servant, the word upon the voice. But you say to me: “What of the fact that the voice goes before the word?” It goes before, but it does not excel; it goes ahead to serve the one who follows, not to show its own power. The voice is not itself the judge, but the messenger of the one who judges: the word judges, the voice thunders beforehand; power belongs to the one who commands, not to the one who cries out. But let the voice itself, the herald himself, who cries out, confess, testify and assert this: “He who comes after me,” he says, “is mightier than I” (Matt 3). Why? Because in me is terror, in him the sentence. “He came into all the region of the Jordan.” He came to the Jordan, because a water jar could no longer wash the Jewish filth, but a river could, as it is written: “There were stone water jars for the purification of the Jews” (John 2). He came to the Jordan, so that water, not wine, might carry the penitent. “He came into all the region of the Jordan, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.” With John there was pardon, but not without repentance; there was remission, but bought with mourning; there was care of the wound, but with pain; there was a baptism that took away fault but did not wipe out conscience. What more? By John's baptism a man was purified for repentance; he was not advanced to grace. But Christ's baptism so regenerates, so changes, so makes a man new from old that he knows nothing of the past and does not remember former things, since from being earthly he now possesses heavenly and divine things. Hence the father gives back to the son returning after his debauchery the first robe of immortality, puts on him the ring of freedom, kills the fatted calf, and turns the waters of repentance into the wine of grace, so that the banquet of grace might now satisfy with unmixed cups (Luke 15): so that the sober drunkenness of the Lord's cup might blot out the pains of conscience, the groans of repentance, the laments of sins, as the prophet says: “And your cup that inebriates, how splendid it is!” (Ps 23:5 [LXX 22:5]). For as much as earthly drunkenness is ugly, so much is heavenly drunkenness splendid and becoming. “He said therefore to the crowds that came out to be baptized by him: Brood of vipers, who showed you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear therefore fruits worthy of repentance, and do not begin to say: We have Abraham as our father. For I tell you that God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. For even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees. Every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.” “Brood of vipers.” He rebukes by example, marks by comparison, exposes by figure, so that he may now change not only the conduct but the very nature of the poisonous offspring. “Brood of vipers.” Because those whom God had created men and made children of Abraham, malice had given birth to and turned into vipers; and those whom the heavenly Creator had filled with the sweetness of kindness, bitter impiety had made pour out deadly vomit and serpent's venom, and, with an unspeakable omen of cruelty, be conceived from the death of a father and born from the death of a mother. “Brood of vipers”: offspring ungrateful to nature, whose rising is the destruction of the begetter, whose life is the death of the parent. “Brood of vipers.” The viper, it is said, at the time of conception bites off the head of her mate when it has been received into her mouth, so that through bloody kisses she conceives not offspring but a crime, as if she bore sons to be executioners of her own wickedness, by the order of vengeance, not of nature. For the brood of the father, conceived from slaughter, demand the nourishment of blood before that of milk, and seek vengeance; for the young vipers are said to tear open their mother's womb, and to break, while their bodies are still unripe, with ripe fury, the wicked dwelling of their conception, so that for them to live means not to see their mother, the mother who bore them such. We have been compelled to describe more broadly the type and figure of the comparison that holy John made, so that it may be seen to be a matter of truth, not of abuse, that the Jews are so named by him. “Brood of vipers.” He shows, brothers, that the synagogue and her sons were such, to whom Christ came with the affection of a husband, as John says: “He who has the bride is the bridegroom” (John 3): amid the embraces and bloody kisses of Judas, the head of Christ was sought, and demanded by mouth, when it was said: “Crucify, crucify” (John 19). Hence the offspring conceived in blood are soon armed for their mother's destruction, so that, the synagogue's womb burst open, they ran together at John's voice and were reborn as God's offspring. “Brood of vipers, who showed you to flee from the wrath to come?” What is this wrath to come? That which has no end, which does not release a man by death but binds him; which no longer allows hope of pardon to one it has once assigned to the punishment of Tartarus. So warned, they recognize both their kind and their crime, and so they answered, saying: “What shall we do to be saved?” He answered and said to them… What he is about to say, brothers, I am afraid to say, lest he make as many people stubborn as I see despisers among my hearers today. What shall I do? I am afraid to speak; I cannot be silent: kindness forbids me one thing, usefulness drives me to the other: kindness, lest the hearer incur guilt by despising it; usefulness, lest one who would do it should not hear it, and the teacher give offense by that. I say it, brothers, so that the naked may clothe himself, and I strip myself. “Whoever has two tunics,” he says, “let him give to one who has none; and whoever has food, let him do likewise.” Do you think he asks enough who asks for one tunic out of two? He does not ask enough, because he does not ask for a gem but a tunic, not gold but bread. And if someone who does not give one tunic out of two is guilty, what is he who refuses one out of many, who imprisons his clothes and locks up his bread so that the poor man perishes of hunger and is consumed by cold? He buries his clothes, he does not store them; he entrusts them not to care but to tombs; what he denies the poor he gives to moths; and he himself in his clothes is a devourer of a body, as the Lord says: “Their worm shall not die” (Isa 66), because the poor man's hunger struck Christ; the pain of a man of God leapt to his inmost parts; the captive's groan penetrated Christ's heart; contempt for the needy overflowed into an injury to his Creator, as he himself declares when he says: “I was hungry and you did not give me to eat; I was naked and you did not clothe me” (Matt 25). “Tax collectors also came, saying: What shall we do?” Let the tax collectors hear: “Ask for nothing more than what is appointed you.” He has shown what makes a tax collector guilty: “Ask for no more.” He who asks for more is a collector of fraud, not of tax: let them consider how guilty before God is the one who strips the exhausted and oppressed, oppresses and wears him down more and more by his fraud, and on one scarcely able to pay what is due imposes and increases what is not due. “Soldiers also came, saying.” Let soldiers too hear what this teacher answered soldiers when they asked: “And what shall we do? And he said to them: Do not extort from anyone, nor accuse falsely; be content with your wages.” He is a true soldier who does not extort but defends; who does not bring false accusation but repels it; who runs to the king's pay, not who runs to plunder. Blessed John taught divine things in such a way as not to disturb human things: he set the state in order, he did not overturn it; he proved that what he taught was ordained by God, and that one can do and keep justice. As for the difference between John's baptism and Christ's baptism, since it must be explained more broadly, we are silent now.

[On peace.] It would have been better, dearest brothers, if our common father and teacher had let our lack of skill stay hidden, and had not made public the poverty which till now has been covered in us by the veil of our own modesty. It would have been better if he who abounds so richly in the spiritual riches of doctrine had not demanded the toll of a slender word from a poor man's little boat. For what could a needy man confer on the rich, a stranger on citizens, a rustic and unlearned man on scholars? Yet since we are compelled to obey his orders, the same reason of humility that seems to excuse us compels us to speak, compels us to obey. What is it, then, O devout people of the Lord, that we, however poor and however unlearned, yet fittingly offer you? Peace, without doubt, which our Lord Jesus Christ bids us offer to every house as we enter (Luke 10); hence we too, at the beginning of our greeting, prayed from the Lord for it for you; it is always to be had and always to be prayed for: not that faithless and unstable peace of this world, which is either sought for advantage or kept out of fear, but the peace of Christ, which, according to the saying of the apostle Paul, surpasses all understanding and guards the hearts of believers (Phil 4); a peace that is nourished at the fruitful breasts of love; a peace that is the nursling of faith, the pillar of justice; a peace that is a fit pledge of future hope; a peace that unites those present and invites the absent; a peace that reconciles earthly things with heavenly and human with divine; for so the Apostle says: that our Lord Jesus Christ has made peace through his blood, not only for the things on earth but also for those in heaven (Col 1). These things, then, dearest ones, a traveling stranger has set out for you according to the means of his poor provisions, expecting rather to be fed together with you at the table of a powerful teacher with abundant and plentiful dishes. May the God of peace, who joined earthly things to heavenly, grant us to think the same things toward one another and to rejoice in full unanimity, through Christ our Lord, through whom be glory to God the Father almighty for ages of ages. Amen.