Sermons 86–89

[On the announcement and conception of blessed John the Baptist.] Worldly speech, since it comes from human understanding, serves and complies with human talents; but divine speech is in the power of the one who gives it, not of the one who speaks. You have heard how that Zacharias, the splendour of the high priesthood, was struck dumb while he was praying; the father of the voice fell silent (“I am,” says John, “the voice of one crying in the wilderness,” John 1:23); the begetter of the cry was struck dumb, and he who had gone in to bring back answers came out bringing back silence. You see, then, that my silence, which saddened you earlier, comes from ancient priestly precedent, not from the inroad of novelty. When he felt that the bonds of his tongue had shut the door of his speech, he gave orders by a nod that no one should inquire into the reasons for his silence, because he who had learned to know the heavenly mystery had not learned to speak it. But this was for a time, because the priest's speech is postponed, not taken away; stored up, not denied; suspended by a mystery, not driven out. Indeed, that Zacharias is silent is not a punishment but a sign; not an earthly infirmity but a heavenly secret. God who gives speech causes silence, and he who implants the word commands silence. The divine word rules; it does not serve, because God is the Word; and so it speaks not when ordered but when it orders; not when it is demanded but when it gives; not when compelled but when it comes. So, brothers, when it comes, listen; when it does not come, be patient; when it gives itself, receive it; when it withholds itself, pray; for the teacher receives what the hearer deserves. So the sermon was suspended last time for you as much as for me, so that our modesty might conceal the woman's flow, the cause of her shameful wound, and her shame, and what she kept silent might also be enclosed by our silence (Matt 9:20–22). But let us return to the word we began. The pool at Jerusalem overflows when the angel stirs it (John 5:4), not when the hearer is thirsty; so the priest's speech abounds when God gives it, not when the priest pleads. That is why Zacharias, who used to speak prophecies to the peoples, is silent to himself, so that we might not be ungrateful to God if he once willed silence for us, to whom he has always granted unhindered speech. He did not disdain to receive back speech from his son, to whom he had given light; and you, my sons, pray for a voice for me, so that you may hear a sermon. Restore my joy, so that you may possess your accustomed gladness and fulfil the Apostle's word: “Who is there to make me glad but the one whom I grieved?” (2 Cor 2:2). So let blessed Zacharias come, let him come into our midst, who though silent consoles us by his loving example and by his silence does not let us be sad over our own silence. Let him come, let the forerunner of the Word come, the mirror of the priesthood, the example of holiness, the first of the evangelists, the last of the prophets. “There was,” it says, “in the days of Herod, king of Judea, a priest named Zacharias” (Luke 1:5). When it is said under which king someone was priest, the evils are tempered: there is always comfort in grief, and one whom a persecutor threatens does not lack a consoler. “There was in the days of Herod, king of Judea, a priest named Zacharias.” Until Herod, priestly holiness, the gravity of elders and the piety of the fathers presided over the Jewish nation; divine law was its right; ambition counted for nothing there, rashness for nothing, presumption for nothing, because everything was done by divine order, not human. But Herod, coming from a foreign nation, invaded the kingdom, violated the priesthood, confounded order, changed customs, despised the elders, killed the young, mixed the tribes, destroyed the genealogies, corrupted the stock, and utterly removed whatever there was of divine and human discipline. But what is this to holy Zacharias? So that nothing of the kind might be believed to have touched Zacharias himself, the evangelist is compelled to report thus: “There was in the days of Herod, king of Judea, a priest named Zacharias, of the division of Abijah”: because down to him the priestly stock, handed down from great-grandfathers, grandfathers and fathers, remained, and the time of the law and the whole discipline of sacrifice were preserved, since the merit and life of the priest held in check the king's impiety, the iniquity of the time, the madness of ambition and the fury of rashness. But let us hear what follows. “It happened that he entered the temple of the Lord to offer incense, and the whole multitude of the people was praying outside at the hour of incense.” At the hour of incense, brothers, the sun was already setting in the Jewish temple, so that it might rise in the morning in the church; the evening of Jewish teaching was at hand, because the dawn of the gospel was approaching; the day of the law was growing dark so that it might shine out wholly in grace. That is why Zacharias, at the hour of incense, that is, at the last time of the ceremonies of the law, offers incense by the prophetic Spirit: he offers prayers, brings desires, commends vows, presses the time, repeats the promises, demands Christ. “And the whole multitude was praying outside.” So he prays that the people standing outside may be brought in, because those whom the law leads to the door grace brings into the temple. “And an angel of the Lord appeared,” it says, “standing at the right of the altar of incense; and when Zacharias saw him he was troubled, and fear fell upon him.” So it is no wonder if the priest is troubled, the teacher stunned, the high priest afraid; if the least is silent when he sees the greatest, if he abandons words when he beholds signs. And lest Zacharias alone seem to have been afraid, hear another prophet saying: “Lord, I have heard your report and was afraid; I considered your works and was terrified” (Hab 3:2). He who speaks with God is terrified; he does not know from where the angel speaks; and what do we gather? Let us now say why the priest is silent. “And the angel answered him and said: I am Gabriel, who stand in the presence of God, and I have been sent to speak to you and to bring you this good news; and behold, you will be silent and unable to speak.” What fault is there in the one who is silent, if the power of the one who commands imposes silence? So consider that our silence too, small as we are, came not from forgetfulness but from the time; it was divine business, not human calculation. So let us not be sad, because, if God grants it, the silence of a moment will be made up by continuous speech, and the little of our sadness will be turned into great joy. I thank my God, who has turned the loss of speech into a gain of love for me: for how great your charity toward me is your pallor betrayed, your cries attested, your tears showed and your outpoured prayer made plain.

[On the same.] When eyes have been darkened by excessive pain and long illness, light becomes hostile to them unless it is let back in gradually, although light was made for the eyes alone and is a friend to the eyes alone, since through them it is given to the rest of the body or denied it. So too, when minds have been darkened by a long disease of faithlessness, unless the brightness of faith is restored little by little, the gloom of faithlessness grows thicker at the very suddenness of faith's splendour; for nature is always either drawn out or dulled by long habit. That is why the Lord, when hearts had already been blinded by the black cloud of unbelief, sent ahead the conception of a hopeless and aged barrenness, in order to shed light on the mystery of the virgin birth; so that one who saw dry limbs come to life again after long old age, and, after the course of an aged life was finished, blossom again into first youth, and nature itself roused in its declining age to the marks of a servant's birth, might believe that the flower of modesty, the inscription of chastity, the mark of purity and the bars of virginity could remain after childbirth and be preserved when the Author himself came forth from the womb. And so that the very authority of which we are speaking may be present and support our preface and the comparison we took from eyes worn out by long illness, and may prove that the eyes of men, badly accustomed to night and darkened, were gradually called back to the light: the Lord kindled in John the lamp of his light and sent it ahead, so that, having tasted the light, they might then bear the very radiance of the divine Sun in himself and take in the very brightness of the deity; according to what was said of John: “He was a burning and shining lamp” (John 5:35); so that John might open the thick darkness of night with a gentle light, and the Lord himself might give back to those already longing for it a day that knows no night, for everlasting light. That is why a faintly twinkling star accustoms the magi, still dwellers in night and dazzled in all their eyes, to the light, and draws them step by step to the very spring of light and of days (Matt 2). And truly, brothers, it is fitting, because the four-horse chariot runs round the whole year's turning-posts of the seasons, and recalls for us the birthday feast of our Lord, and now brings back its joys. Let us speak now of John's birth, of the barren woman's childbearing, so that by this shortcut to belief we may come, amid wintry lights uncertain with clouds and mists, with the lamp going before and the star leading, to that birth which is a birth without the usual birth, where the very author of the one who begets is created, where the very origin of the one who generates is born. “There was,” says the evangelist, “a priest named Zacharias, and his wife Elizabeth; and they had no son, because Elizabeth was barren, and both were advanced in their days” (Luke 1:5–7). Barrenness is heightened by extreme old age, and everything of body and nature is withdrawn from the hope of generating; and so that not even a thought of offspring might remain, it had come to such a time and age that, with vital warmth gone, mortal cold already possessed the barren womb, so that the father himself recognized that a man could no longer be born through a man from a place where human things had departed. So, so, brothers, belief is established in the hard hearts of men and faith is implanted; and then everything is believed divine, when there is nothing human. “It fell to Zacharias by lot to offer incense, entering into the temple of the Lord.” He rightly said “entering into the temple,” not “entering the temple,” because he himself was God's more intimate temple, carrying in the purity of his breast all the secrets of the law and offering the incense not so much of frankincense as of pure supplication. For God rests more gladly in his own work than in man's, and does not so willingly smell a drop from the Arabian tree as the holiness of a sincere heart and breast. “An angel of the Lord appeared to him,” it says, “standing at the right of the altar of incense.” It would have been enough to say, “An angel appeared”; why such stress on “at the right of the altar”? So that the hearer may understand that in the holy angels there is nothing on the left, as Scripture says: “The ways that are on the right the Lord knows” (Prov 4:27 LXX). “An angel appeared to him,” when the whole man had already failed, so that John, of whom it was said, “Behold, I send my angel” (Matt 11:10), might be born of a barren woman before Christ was born of the Virgin. Happy nature, which failed thus in the old so that it might grow toward God; happy, which exchanged the losses of barrenness for virginal fruitfulness; happy, which in one birth conceived what it lamented being confounded throughout the whole world; happy, which became the mother of living offspring, it which was before the pitiable origin of mortals, bearing to sorrows with sorrow, giving birth to groans with groaning, bringing forth man to dangers at the danger of the one who bears, and in the very rising announcing the setting with laments and tears, always devouring its offspring, knowing that it bears with such great griefs those who will die. So nature fed rather on barrenness, lest it rage more heavily through fruitfulness, likely to produce weeping rather than children; nature which with tears, grief and groans had for so long sought and appealed to its author, understanding that this had befallen it through guilt and had not been established by its most loving author when it was created. That is why the Lord, the very founder of nature, passes along the way of virginal conception and virginal birth with an invisible footprint and by an unknown path, and walks the road of human birth with a divine step, not a human one, so that by being born he might first free nature itself from the servitude of death to which it had been so bound, and, having cleansed the spring, give back heavenly purity to its streams. Rightly does John leap in the womb, who was found worthy to know the freedom of his origin before he existed, to feel before he lived. At the hour of incense, through an angel, barrenness is opened, conception is ordered, birth is promised, and a sacred birth is arranged among the holy places. That is why, while John was still in the womb, with the frame of his limbs barely conceived, prophecy in him speaks by God's nod before it arrives at the office of the voice. But lest, while I wish to close the deep and wonderful things of a very broad reading in a short sermon, I pass over what most needs to be said, next time, if it pleases God, we shall discuss what follows.

[On the same.] It is always anxious, brothers, to be in debt, always sad to be bound by the chains of interest; but in my case, whom my promise often makes your debtor, the very nature and obligation of such a debt is pleasant enough, because the one who promises gives and does not receive; and he who owes by giving makes the creditor more indebted to himself; and where the one who lent owes, and the one who owes has lent, the contract is shown to be one of affection, not of necessity, and in such a loan the very sweet interest is one of soul, not of burden, of honour, not of load. After the gospel word had described how an angel of the Lord appeared to Zacharias the priest, it added: “And Zacharias was troubled when he saw him, and fear fell upon him” (Luke 1:12). If one who is anxious about a judge's power is always troubled and trembles at the arrival of an official, and assesses and measures the weight of the summons by the person who comes, and, though of good conscience, is afraid until he knows the reasons for the arrival and understands what kind it is: what will the weak nature of man do, with what fear will it tremble, when it senses heavenly power, when man looks upon an angel and sees a minister of the divine throne? The flesh is never secure about its own conscience, as Zacharias himself, of whom we now speak, proved: he gave offence at the very time of propitiation; while he believes, he doubts, as the angel says, “Because you did not believe my words”; while he obtains what he asked, he incurs a penalty; he is condemned when he receives the very gifts; he loses his voice at the moment he receives the Voice. That is why the angel, before disclosing the commands, handing over the gifts and reporting what was obtained, dispels dread, drives out fear and strengthens minds troubled by uncertain thought, so that the mind which had gone out of itself through an excess of fear, having returned to itself, might feel and grasp the great generosity of the benefits, saying: “Do not be afraid, Zacharias, for your prayer has been heard; and your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you shall call his name John.” Do you think that so great a priest was so forgetful of the people, so forgetful of all, as to pray for the conception of his aged wife and the childbearing of a hopelessly barren woman; that as envoy of all he was present then for himself alone; that as advocate of all he prayed only for himself; that he narrowed so great an office of the high priesthood within domestic cares, shut it in and occupied it within family straits; that the aged high priest devoted the incense of the whole people to the one desire for a child of his own, and with such a desire, very old and already mindful of the time, burned for an untimely birth? Far be it, brothers, far be it that a faithful soul should suspect this of holy Zacharias. And yet the angel reports that the effect of the whole supplication lay in this, saying: “Your prayer has been heard, and your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son.” If the angel answered what was asked, the priest prayed only for a child; if the priest's supplication acted for all, why did the angel report as obtained only the child? What do we gather, and why do we keep the minds of our hearers in suspense so long? That this venerable high priest stood not for himself alone but for all; that the angel answered for all; that God provided for all in this one offspring of the priest, whom he had chosen for his parents and for nature itself precisely so that he might give him to the whole world, bestow him on the ages and grant him to the peoples; so that he might be a son of the sacrament, brought in among the holy places and granted among the sacred rites; that he might be a high priest begotten of a venerable high priest; that he might be an angel conceived in the womb by the mouth of an angel; that he might be the voice of Christ, “I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness” (John 1:23); that he might be the voice of Christ kept for Christ until his own time; that he might be the herald who would cry out the presence of the Judge; that he might call the peoples of Christ to pardon by repentance. How this priest, already unaware of himself, already dead to himself, a stranger to his wife, already denied offspring, acted for all and obtained for all, let us learn at once from the angel's report: “And many,” it says, “will rejoice at his birth.” He is no only son who was created for the joy of all. “For he will be great before the Lord.” Who will prove how great among men is one who is great before God? “And he will drink no wine or strong drink.” He who was born from the holy body of a priest, and in extreme old age, purged of all vices and free from the fires of youth, does not know wine and is ignorant of strong drink, which produce the excesses and vices of drunkenness and scatter all the beauties of conduct and the ornaments of the virtues. “And he will drink no wine or strong drink, but will be filled with the Holy Spirit even from his mother's womb,” according to the Apostle's word: “Brothers, do not get drunk with wine, in which is debauchery, but be filled with the Holy Spirit” (Eph 5:18). “And he will be filled with the Holy Spirit even in his mother's womb.” Blessed is John, who was found worthy to thunder with God's Spirit before he wailed with human weeping; blessed, who was found worthy to possess divine things before he obtained human ones; blessed, who was found worthy to know heaven before earth; blessed, who before he saw present things was found worthy to announce future ones; blessed, who could contain God before he was contained by his own body; blessed, singularly blessed, who gained merit before he knew how to seek it; blessed, who did not come to grace through labour, but came down to labours by the condescension of grace itself. “And he will turn many of the sons,” it says. To whom? Let the angel say it, so that the heretic, because he blasphemes and denies, may be struck dumb; let the angel say it, so that the faithful may hear and rejoice, and the heretic may believe and come running back. “He will turn.” To whom? “To the Lord their God,” it says. Who is this God? The one of whom the prophet says: “This is our God, and there is no other besides him, who found every way of discipline and gave it to Jacob his servant and to Israel his beloved” (Bar 3:36–37). When did he give it? Surely when he wrote on the tables of the law the whole rule of life and the whole norm of discipline. Be attentive, hearer, so that you may know who this our God is, besides whom there is no other. Who is he? “After this he was seen on earth and lived among men” (Bar 3:38). Who else was seen on earth but Christ, who lived in our flesh? And who else lived among men but he who dwelt with men in a human body? And if this is our God, and there is no other besides him, heretic, if you do not have him, whom will you have? “There is no other,” it says, “besides him”; and now do you not say, “Then where is the Father?” The prophet says, “There is no other besides him”; and where is the Father? In the Son, surely, because apart from the Son the Father is not: “I am in the Father,” he says, “and the Father is in me” (John 14:10). Hence the prophet did not say, “There is no other,” but “There is no other besides him”: that is to say, the Father is, but he is in him. But you say: “If he is in him, how is he another?” Heretic, he is another in person in such a way as to be the same in substance; he is the same in substance in such a way that there is no confusion in the Trinity; the unity of the Trinity is such that there is no distance in the Godhead; the whole Trinity is in itself, and not without itself, in such a way that in Father, Son and Holy Spirit there is defined personhood, not separated divinity. “And he will go before him.” Before whom? Before Christ, who is their God, our God, the God of all, the God besides whom there is no other: “in the power of Elijah.” Let no one who hears this impute metempsychosis: here he means the spirit which John earned through divine grace, not the one which he received for the life of the flesh; and he means the power which he had from above, not the one he acquired from the strength of the body. So John comes in the spirit of Elijah and walks in his power, since in food, clothing, honour, chastity, abstinence and all virtues he represents Elijah, and Christ. “To make ready for the Lord a perfect people.” May our God and Lord deign to make it ready and confirm it in you, to the glory of his name.

[On the same.] All things created by God are good for us, and very good, as Scripture says: “And God saw all that he had made, and behold, it was very good” (Gen 1:31). So all things created by God are good and very good; but they are so placed in the middle between vices and virtues that from them the learned take matter for teaching and the unlearned find cause for error. For the wise know the Creator by contemplating creation; but the foolish, while they think creatures themselves to be gods, cannot know the Creator. That is why the pagans made gods for themselves of the sun, moon, stars, gold, stones and wood, which Christians know to be bound to service. Nor is it surprising that creation stands thus in the middle, when Christ himself, the creator of all, is for salvation to the faithful and for ruin to the unfaithful, as the evangelist says: “He is set for the fall and rising of many” (Luke 2:34). The apostles too are held by some as unto death and by others as unto life, as Paul proves when he says: “To some we are a fragrance from death to death, to others a fragrance from life to life” (2 Cor 2:16). So too the gospel readings become for the good the matter of saving understanding, but for the wicked an occasion of error. Earlier, when the most blessed evangelist reported that John the Baptist was bound in Herod's chains, put to death through Herodias's adulteries and beheaded as the prize of a dancer, we perceived that some were disturbed: why did God hand over a saint to a sacrilegious woman, a virgin to an adulteress, an angel to a dancing girl? Brothers, we shall treat John's virtues and Herod's crimes fully in another sermon; now let us declare the reason for the chains, the necessity of the prison and the usefulness of death in John's case. John could not die by the common lot, who was born by a singular privilege: when Christ, God, was being born in the flesh, John was begotten as an angel on earth, so that earthly offices might mingle with heavenly ones just as divine things were mingling with human, and on earth the service of an angel to God, of the heavenly order to the Lord, might not be lacking. But let us hear the order of John's birth, so that we may be able to find the causes of his death. “There was,” it says, “in the days of Herod, king of Judea, a priest named Zacharias, of the division of Abijah; and his wife was of the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth. And they were both righteous before God, walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless” (Luke 1:5–6). Great orators of excellent talent, whenever they prepare to narrate the virtues of famous men, mention their grandfathers and great-grandfathers, so that the dignity of the ancients may add to the honour of the present, and the praise of the fathers may overflow to the glory of the sons. Glory inborn is greater than glory sought; what comes from origin goes before what follows from labour; it is more blessed to have glory than to seek it. That is why the evangelist, to extol John's glory, tells the lineage of Zacharias the father and Elizabeth the mother, mentions their ancestors, records their merits, speaks of their titles, sets out their ranks, discloses their life, enlarges on their distinctions and proclaims their holiness. “There was,” it says, “in the days of Herod, king of Judea.” He mentions the time of a wicked king who violated the sacred honour of the priesthood, confounded order, dissolved what was established and took away what was instituted. And this adds to Zacharias's merit: though Herod extended the daring of his rashness against almost everyone, he dared nothing against him; he was overcome by this man's virtues, so that the priest's spotless succession might be kept for the glory of his offspring. “And his wife was of the daughters of Aaron.” Aaron, the first high priest under the law, was the origin of the priesthood; so, rightly passing over all others, she is called the daughter of the one whose holiness she displayed in her memory of him, and which, as the loving guardian of so great a lineage, she most gloriously passed on to her son. But the evangelist describes this mother's praises: “They were both,” it says, “righteous before God.” It is a new happiness and a singular marriage when one mind remains in two, one holiness in two: what differed in sex agreed in mind; in conduct they were one, though appearance made them two; and virtues made equal those whom nature had made unequal. “They were both,” it says, “righteous before God.” To please human judgments, to be righteous before men, belongs to human virtue and is of the greatest labour; to be righteous before God, who searches hearts, examines thoughts and sees the movements of minds, is not of human labour but of divine gift. If he is great who does not sin in the flesh, how great is he who does not sin in heart? So John, born above the flesh, was born of these who sinned before God neither in heart nor in body. The evangelist added, saying: “Walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless.” “Walking”: he walks who does not stand in the crossroads of sinners, who feels himself a stranger in this world, who fearlessly enters the rough stations of the virtues, who as an untiring traveller climbs the mountains of ordinances and the hills of commandments, so that he may enjoy the presence of God his parent and the blessedness of the heavenly homeland. “Walking in all the commandments and ordinances.” These in all, in which no one, or few, walk. “In all the commandments and ordinances.” Who passes through the fires of desires without knowing their smoke? Who escapes the slippery path of life without ever falling? Who walks undefiled through the whirlpools of the vices? Who carries out the affairs of the flesh, the business of life and the griefs of the world, and is not in complaint, when being born itself is full of tears and complaints? For the woman in labour complains from pain, and the one born complains in tears by nature. But in Zacharias and Elizabeth guilt died, complaint perished, every accusation was cut off, because in them was being prepared that from which all holiness would be born. But let this now shine out from the reading itself. “And they had no son,” it says, “because Elizabeth was barren.” This barrenness was not accursed but mystical; in it childbearing was not taken away but deferred; it was closed not to a child but to a time; it was cultivated by time, sown by virtue, ripened by age, grew in old age, so that the whole fruitfulness might be paid out in a singular son, when in one man was born a heaped-up multitude of virtues. Blessed barrenness, which was kept for one birth and waited for John, so that, since all firsts were owed to him, the dignity of the firstborn might not perish. “And both were advanced in their days.” Advanced, not departed: age lived on in the saints; it did not fail but advanced. Or who fails, to whom increases of virtue always come? So in Zacharias and Elizabeth sex is stunned, the flesh grows cold, the limbs are put to sleep, time passes, age goes by, everything that belongs to the human order and to married life fades away, so that an angel might be born from human beings by divine gift, not by ordinary childbearing. We had promised to set out from John's birth the causes of his death; but because the sermon has drawn us out too long today, and what follows is quite necessary for proving the matter, let what has now been said of his birth be counted to his glory; and let us not be ungrateful to you, we who postpone the debt but do not deny it: for with debtors delay grows into the creditor's favour. So await what the debtor promises, and await it securely, because promises cannot be denied when what was denied is so generously paid to a barren woman.