Sermons 53–55

[On peace.] “Blessed are the peacemakers,” says the evangelist, dearly beloved, “for they shall be called sons of God” (Matt 5:9). Rightly do the Christian virtues flourish in one who has the unanimity of Christian peace, and the title of son of God is not reached except through the name of peacemaker. It is peace, dearly beloved, that strips a man of servitude, gives him the name of freeborn, changes his person with his condition before God, makes a son out of a servant, a free man out of a slave. Peace among brothers is the will of God, the delight of Christ, the perfection of holiness, the rule of justice, the teacher of doctrine, the guardian of morals, and in all things a praiseworthy discipline. Peace is the support of prayers, the easy and successful way of supplications, the fitting fullness of all desires. Peace is the mother of love, the bond of concord, and the clear sign of a pure mind, which demands of God for itself what it wants; which asks whatever it wishes, and takes whatever it asks. Peace is to be kept by royal commands, as the Lord Christ himself says: “Peace I leave you, my peace I give you” (John 14:27); that is to say: I left you in peace, in peace I will find you: departing, he wished to give what on returning he desired to find in all. It is a heavenly command to keep what he gave; there is one word: I will find what I left. To plant peace by the roots is God's work; to tear it out completely is the enemy's. For as the love of brotherhood is from God, so hatred is from the devil; therefore hatreds are to be condemned, for it is written: “Whoever hates his brother is a murderer” (1 John 3:15). You see, then, dearest brothers, why peace is to be loved and concord cherished; for these are what beget and nourish charity. And you know, according to the apostle, that charity is from God (1 John 4:7); so he who does not have charity is without God. The peace of the people, dearly beloved, is the glory of the bishop, and the perfect charity of the children is the full joy of peace. It is the bishop's part to admonish what is fitting, the people's to hear what he admonishes; it is the shepherd's part to forbid whatever is not lawful, the flock's to hear and to want it not done: if both agree, all is safe: neither does God find in the people anything to punish, nor can the bishop have anything to grieve over. Let us keep, then, brothers, the commands that are of life; let the brotherhood hold itself bound together by the bonds of deep peace, and bind itself with mutual love by the saving chain of charity, which covers a multitude of sins. Love, then, is to be embraced with all desires, which can have as many good things as it has rewards. Peace is to be guarded above all virtues, because God is always in peace. Let us give no room to the enemy, lest he be able to sow tares in the crop of wheat, and, when the farmer is already secure and cheated of the hope of long labor, destroy the awaited fruits at the very ripeness of the harvest; or disturb wine sweet with age, changed into a liquor of faithlessness by the mixing in of dregs; or mix poisons more bitter than gall among sweet honey. Let contentions be sent far off, far off lawsuits, far off curses; and since the tongue of the whisperer and the double-tongued is a snare of death, let each spare his own soul, lest he tie for himself the bonds of death to his own punishment. Love peace, and all is calm, so that you may keep rewards for us and joys for yourselves, so that the Church of God, founded in the unity of peace, may hold perfect discipline in Christ.

[On Zacchaeus.] The blessed evangelist recently, in describing the life and end of the inhuman rich man, moved and saddened human feelings; but today, by reporting the kindness and faith of the rich man Zacchaeus, he has lifted and advanced us to heavenly joy. “And having entered,” it says, “Jesus was passing through Jericho” (Luke 19:1). Why does he pass through, not walk? Because what Moses had walked, Christ was passing through; and the people whom Moses led into the way, Jesus brought to the rest of the promised dwelling. “He was passing through Jericho.” Jericho is the very city that Joshua son of Nun overthrew with the sevenfold blast of trumpets (Josh 6). But since Christ came to save what had perished, he enters Jericho, so that what the law had cast down with terrible shouting, Jesus might lift up with the cry of devoted preaching. “Jesus,” it says, “having entered, was passing through Jericho; and behold, a man named Zacchaeus, and he was a chief of tax collectors, and he was rich.” Zacchaeus is written to have held, in a lost city, the leadership of a lost work: from the place, the person, and the office the greatness of the guilt is shown, so that from the greatness of the crime the greatness of the one forgiving may shine out. “And he sought to see Jesus.” Whoever seeks to see Christ, let him look at heaven, whence Christ is, not at the earth, whence gold is. The rich man, then, who looks upward does not carry riches but tramples them; is not bent by riches but lifted up; and he drives riches to the service of the one who gives, not to the slavery of riches to avarice; the avaricious man is the slave of riches, not their master; but the merciful man proves himself to have as many servants as coins. “He sought to see Jesus and could not because of the crowd, for he was small in stature.” He was great enough in spirit, who seemed small in body; for he touched the heavens with his mind, who did not equal men in body. Let no one, then, worry about the shortness of his body, to which he can add nothing, but let him take care to stand out in faith. “And running ahead, he climbed a tree.” By what steps do you think he reached the branches of the very high tree? He trod on the earth, climbed above gold, rose beyond avarice, and stepped over the whole mass of riches, so that, leaping into the tree of pardon, he might grasp the fruit of mercy, and from the watchtower of confession behold the giver of indulgence. “He climbed a sycamore tree.” By mystery, not by chance: he climbed a sycamore tree, so that from where Adam had covered the nakedness of his body, Zacchaeus might veil the foulness of avarice. “He climbed a sycamore tree to see Jesus, because he was to pass that way.” Truly he said “to pass,” because Christ had come through earthly ways and human labors not to remain but to pass by. “And when Jesus came to the place, looking up he saw him.” As if, had he not turned his eyes there, he would not have seen him, he who saw Nathanael from afar under the same tree when he was absent (John 1:48)? But he saw him, saw him for pardon, looked on him for grace, gazed at him for life, beheld him for salvation. God, when he sees someone, does not wish to recognize him as one ignorant, but as one knowing wishes to see him for glory. “He saw him and said to him: ‘Zacchaeus, hurry and come down, for today I must stay at your house.’” If he had climbed up well, why is he told to come down? Above it said: “Running ahead, he climbed the tree.” The servant ran ahead of the Lord, and Zacchaeus climbed the tree before the Ruler climbed the cross; that is why he is told: “Hurry and come down.” If you are wise, hurry and come down: come down before the Lord from Adam's tree, so that after the cross of the Lord's passion you may climb up. “Unless one takes up his cross and follows me” (Matt 10:38); he did not say, “goes before me.” Come down, then, so that you may lay down the burdens of so great a fraud, the weights of greed, the mass of interest, the mastery of a tax collector, the leadership of most cruel exaction, and, unencumbered, enter the school of poverty, the discipleship of mercy, the practice of kindness, the discipline of patience, the pursuit of virtues, the knowledge of divinity, the endurance of sufferings, the philosophy of death, and, made perfect, climb the heights of the tree of life. “Come down, for today I must stay at your house.” Whoever's house Christ has not entered will not come to the divine dwelling; and he at whose table Christ has not sat here will not recline at the heavenly table. “And he hurried and came down and received him joyfully.” He rejoices, because he received the one who receives him, because he feeds his shepherd, because the guilty man bends the judge with the support of kindness, because by the interest of food and drink he makes and acquires his debtor for himself; and so it comes about that this tax collector does not lose his profit but changes it. “And when they saw it,” it says, “they all murmured, saying that he had gone in to a sinful man.” And who is without sin? And if no one is, he denies pardon to himself who accuses God for going in to sinners. God, when he seeks a sinner, seeks not the sins but the man, so as to look past the sin, which is the work of man, so as not to lose his own work, which is man. Hear the prophet saying: “Turn away your face from my sins” (Ps 51:9), that is, from my works. But of himself: “Do not despise the works of your hands” (Ps 138:8). A judge, when he wants to pardon, looks at the man, not the fault; a father, when he wants to have mercy on his son, thinks of his affection, not the offence: so in man God remembers his own work so as to forget the human work. You, then, who rebuke, who murmur why Christ turned in to a sinner, take from such an entrance the way of salvation, the example of pardon, the hope of mercy, and take care that what is for you an occasion of salvation may not become for you material for blasphemy. Where does a physician go but to the sick? “Those who are well,” he says, “have no need of a physician, but those who are sick” (Matt 9:12). Where does a panting shepherd go but to the lost sheep? When does a king mingle himself with enemies, except when he wants to free a captive? And whoever loses a precious pearl does not disdain to enter squalid places and does not shrink from searching for it amid the very dung. Into what headlong place does a mother not throw herself after her son? And is God, who created man in his image and likeness (Gen 1:26), blamed for seeking man amid sins with the love of a creator? You murmur, O man, why God seeks man amid sins: what will you do when you see him, for man's sake, penetrate the very darkness of hell? But hear what Christ's entering in to a sinner did. “Zacchaeus,” it says, “stood and said.” You see how he who lay low is raised up. We lie in vices, and lie crushed; we stand when we are raised to progress by good works. “Zacchaeus,” it says, “stood and said: ‘Half of my goods I give to the poor.’” He believes that he will live after death, who sends half his goods ahead on the way to come. Although he is perfect who always sends ahead from here everything he has to the place where he will live, yet this man is a companion of the virtues, a partner of prudence, a sharer of faith, who sends even half to God, because what a man leaves here he loses. And truly, brothers, as this man believes that he lives there who sends his goods there, so that man does not believe that he will live there who has prepared nothing there that he should have. For if we can scarcely bear temporal poverty, who will endure becoming a beggar forever? What soldier does not send to his homeland whatever he acquires by the sweat of war, so that a delightful old age may make up for the labors of youth? And how does a Christian, for whom living in the world is soldiering, not think how to console earthly dangers with heavenly leisure? How a Christian should do this, Zacchaeus himself teaches by word and shows by example: “Half of my goods I give to the poor, and if I have taken anything from anyone by fraud, I restore fourfold.” Whoever spends what belongs to others plunders more by giving than by stealing; nor does he still the groans of the grieving but prolongs them. I dare to say: whoever offers to God from fraud heaps up crimes, he does not cleanse them; because in such a gift God sees the spoils of his poor, not acts of mercy. He weeps to God in vain, against whom the poor man has justly wept to God. The voice of God is: “If you take your brother's tunic in pledge, you shall return it to him before sunset” (Exod 22:26). As a lamp betrays a thief, so the sun accuses those who defraud. If we want to offer our goods to God, if we want to possess our goods with God, let us too deserve to hear such things as Zacchaeus heard: “Today salvation has come to this house, because he too is a son of Abraham.” The inhuman rich man, though he was a son of Abraham, became a son of Gehenna; this man, though he was a son of plunder, by giving his own and returning others', is adopted as a son of Abraham. Yet let no one think that Zacchaeus, by offering half his goods, held the summit of perfection, he who after all his goods so gave himself also to the Lord that, supported by the honor of the episcopate, he came from the tax collector's table of gain to the table of the Lord's body; and, leaving behind the fraudulent riches of the world, he found in the poverty of Christ the true riches of the world.

[On God's fatherly love for us, on the love of fathers for their children, and on the punishment of the Jews.] Since the precepts of the law, spread through volumes and gathered in books, were not enough to commend divine love to us, God's affection is set and slipped into the hard hearts of men by comparisons and examples. “Which of you,” he says, “if his son asks his father for bread, will give him a stone? Or for a fish will he give him a serpent instead of a fish? Or if he asks for an egg, will he hand him a scorpion? If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the good Spirit to those who ask him?” (Luke 11:11–13). “Which of you, if his son asks his father for bread, will give him a stone?” Love has no guile, devotion no fraud, affection admits no falsehood. If he is a father, he cannot not love; if he loves, he does not know how to give anything but what is good. He denies his father who is suspicious of his father's generosity; he does not know himself a son whom a father's gifts make anxious. He shuts out everything that belongs to devotion who does not believe that whatever a father gives is wholesome; or how could a father give evil for good to his children, who is always ready to bear evils for his children, who does not shrink from death, does not avoid dangers for his children? And so God made you a father, so he willed that a man be begotten by you, he who, surely, since he had made you from the earth, could have made very many; but he acted so that by begetting you might know how great is the affection of one who begets, and might prove in yourself the love of your Author for you to be as great as you, the author of a child, strive to spend on your child. Certainly God wished you to perceive not only in yourself what the affection of one who begets is, but he willed you to see it in wild beasts, cattle, and birds: when he had brought them forth from the earth by his command alone, he afterward made them feel the labor of begetting, change their homes, seek places fit for dens, fortify their young in difficult places, bring them forth with groans, rear them with the greatest labors, and not refuse themselves to death if they see their young being taken. So if not by comparison with man, then at least by comparison with wild beasts, by the likeness of cattle, by the examples of birds, learn how great is the sincerity in a father's love. If, then, you believe God and have confessed him Father, whatever he has commanded, whatever he has chosen in you, believe that it is quite salutary for you, believe that it is quite life-giving. It is not right to examine a mother's gifts, it is not fitting to call a father's warnings into question; so, though the appearance of a father's command may be rather sad, the thing itself is salutary and life-giving. So Abraham, when he believed God to be Father, did not attend to the harsh and bitter forms of the commands; he accepted shameful circumcision (Gen 17); and what the heavenly Father commands he does not examine but judges glorious: he considers the most criminal parricide, but because God commands it he entrusts everything to devotion. Hence Isaac, when he saw his father's sword over him, rejoiced to be a victim when he could have shuddered and grieved (Gen 22). Hence the daughter of Jephthah paid her father's gift, her father's vows, by her death with full gladness (Judg 11). Why, then, does one who already knows God dispute the gifts of the Father, when a little innocent child asking of its father receives only what is good and profitable for it? But let us inquire why the Lord made these comparisons. “Which of you,” he says, “if his son asks his father for bread, will give him a stone?” He could have said: Will he give tares, will he give darnel, which by nearness and likeness imitates bread but brings distress? But Christ had come to the sons, that is, to the Jews, whom he complained he had begotten, with such a cry: “I have begotten sons and raised them up, but they have despised me” (Isa 1:2). So he had come to the sons, the bread from heaven had come, who said: “I am the bread that came down from heaven” (John 6:41). But for the Jews he was turned into a stone of stumbling (Rom 9:32–33) and a rock of scandal (Isa 8:14), as the Lord says: “Behold, I lay in Zion a stone of stumbling and a rock of scandal” (Isa 28:16). Why a rock? Because they were eager to bite a rock, not to seek bread from the Father. “Many dogs,” it says, “have surrounded me” (Ps 22:16). In short, after they are proved to have been turned from men into dogs, the heavenly bread was turned for them into a rock, not by the fault of the giver but by the wickedness of the receivers, so that it did not refresh them but killed them; nor, set as a foundation, did it advance them to the summit, but it gave over and rolled into deep ruin those who were bent on the killing of their Father. He added another likeness: “Will he give him a serpent instead of a fish?” Christ was also the fish, drawn up from the bed of the Jordan, who, laid on the coals of the passions, after the resurrection gave his own, that is, the disciples, a life-giving food; but for the Jews this fish is changed into a serpent, as the Lord says: “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up” (John 3:14). The Jews saw Christ in the serpent, because the ungodly eye cannot see God, cannot see kindness. He also gave a third likeness: “If he asks for an egg, will he hand him a scorpion?” It is the usual and established custom that little children always ask for an egg, and parents do not refuse an egg to the little ones asking. But since Christ had come to gather as a hen her chicks (Matt 23:37), he brought forth the egg of the word, by which the holy offspring of the Church might be nourished. But since the Jew out of envy wished to pour out that egg rather than take it, he finds there a scorpion, so that, according to the Apostle, “the commandment that was for them unto life proved to be for them unto death” (Rom 7:10). In commendation of kindness the Lord brought forth and showed three examples, so that by three testimonies, as by three witnesses, he might both encourage the devout to faith in his love and refute the ungodly, showing that they had failed to receive the grace of love not by the Father's fault but by their own. [Sermon 56. On the Apostles' Creed.] The sudden and confused storm of an untimely birth would trouble me, and premature shoots would disturb me, were it not that those about to be born, often breaking through the delays of the times, and by a crude robbery, the barriers of the womb broken, seek and seize the sudden gains of living. This is why a man often, despising the term of the tenth month, casts off and deserts in the seventh month the narrow and confined dwelling of his first home, the womb, so that, a new warrior, he may rejoice to have won the victory before the time rather than pay his servitude to the times. And if this is allowed to human nature, what can resist the heavenly and divine nature? Or what can the Holy Spirit not do, if the flesh can do this? Or how does heavenly grace not accomplish what human frailty obtains and fulfills? Did not Paul so harass the way of our faith and the womb of the mother with bitter pain, as with a heavenly whirlwind and the whole storm of the Church, as to anticipate the time of the one giving birth, so that he was born suddenly and on the way (Acts 9), he who was to provide the Gentiles a way to faith? Rightly does he call himself one untimely born (1 Cor 15:8), and wonders that he was born, who knew that he had undergone no time of conception. For while he, as an enemy, was still striking from outside the womb of the holy mother and dashing her venerable offspring at their very birth, he is suddenly changed into a holy offspring, he who had been the fiercest persecutor of that very offspring. The eunuch too is begotten on the way (Acts 8), so that the one whom human harshness had castrated for a man's service and whom unwilling chastity had placed within a king's palace, a voluntary and vowed chastity might advance and transfer to the glory of the heavenly palace, to the service of the eternal King. Blessed is he to whom it was granted not to lose the insignia of the palace but to change them. This is what reason says, little children, so that you, whom we received sorrowful, we may bring most joyful to the mother's womb in one and the same moment. Hear the faith, learn the prayer. But since, with time hindering us, neither can we open the mystery to you nor can you solemnly give back to us what is handed over, act so that now you learn simply the words of the Creed, and at the Easter season, when these things are handed over more fully, you may be able to come to know the inner meaning of the sacrament itself. Take what you want, seize what you desire, because “the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it by force” (Matt 11:12). Take what you want; and what force can take, grace bestows. The entrance of life, the door of salvation, the gateway of faith, a singular, innocent, and pure confession is taught, as the prophet says: “Enter his gates with confession” (Ps 100:4). Hence the same prophet, so admonished, asks for entrance into the house of God who speaks in him, saying: “Open to me the gates of righteousness, and having entered them I will confess to the Lord” (Ps 118:19). You see that he cannot confess who has not entered this house of salvation and faith, into which, as confession lets one in, so denial without doubt shuts one out. But let us hear how we must confess. “With the heart,” says the Apostle, “one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation” (Rom 10:10). And he showed what is to be believed: “If you believe in your heart,” he says, “the Lord Jesus, and confess with your mouth, you will be saved.” “With the heart one believes unto righteousness, with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.” Little children, we see in this a great shortcut of our faith, when the whole sacrament of human salvation is turned and carried out between the heart and the tongue. You have, O man, the means by which you ought to believe: “with the heart one believes unto righteousness”; you have the means by which you ought to confess: “with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.” And what shall I say? He has everything in himself who has himself; but he has himself who has God; and he has God who believes and confesses him as his Author. Sign yourselves. The faith that is received by hearing, believed with the heart, uttered with the mouth for salvation, is to be placed in the secret of the mind, and entrusted to the very vitals of our breast, lest, if it is carelessly written down with paper and ink, it be not kept for believers unto life but betrayed to the unbelieving unto ruin. In yourself, O man, you ought to guard what, placed outside you, could be lost to you.