Sermon 51
On the Agreement of the Evangelists Matthew and Luke in the Genealogies of the Lord

1. 1. May he who stirred up the expectation of your love also fulfill it. For although we presume that what is to be said to you is not ours but God's, yet all the more do we say what the Apostle says in humility: We have this treasure in earthen vessels, so that the surpassing power may be God's and not from us (2 Cor 4:7). We do not doubt, then, that you remember our promise. We made our promise in him through whom we now make it good. For when we promised, we were asking of him; and when we make it good, we receive from him. Now your love remembers that on the morning of the Lord's Nativity we put off the question we had set out to answer, because many were with us who, even though the word of God is usually burdensome to them, were keeping the solemnity owed to that day. But now I think no one has gathered except the one who longs to hear. So we are not speaking to deaf hearts, nor to disdainful minds. And this expectation of yours is a prayer on my behalf. Something more has come about, because the day of the Games has scattered many away from here; and just as we are taking pains for their salvation, so, brothers, we exhort you to take pains, and with intent mind to plead with God for those who are not yet bent on the spectacles of truth but are given over to the spectacles of the flesh. For I know, and I am quite certain, that there are now among your number some who held this day in contempt; yet they break with what they have grown used to. For people change, both for the better and for the worse. By such daily experiences we are by turns gladdened and saddened: gladdened by the corrected, saddened by the corrupted. And so the Lord did not say that he who begins will be saved, but: He who perseveres to the end will be saved (Matt 10:22).

1. 2. And what more wonderful thing could the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who is also the Son of man (for he deigned to be this too), grant us; what more magnificent thing could he do than to gather into his sheepfold not only the spectators of frivolous games but even some of those who are usually watched there? For he hunted to salvation not only the lovers of hunters but the hunters themselves, because he too was watched as a spectacle. Hear how. He himself said it, he himself foretold it before he was made a spectacle, and as though it had already happened he announced beforehand in prophetic speech what was to come, saying in the Psalm: They have pierced my hands and my feet, they have numbered all my bones (Ps 22:16-17 (21:17-18)). See how he was made a spectacle, so that his bones might be numbered. And he speaks more plainly of the spectacle itself: They themselves considered and looked upon me (Ps 22:17 (21:18)). He was watched to be mocked, watched by those who would not even favor him in that spectacle but raged at him; just as he first made his martyrs to be watched, as the Apostle says: We have become a spectacle to the world, to angels and to men (1 Cor 4:9). But two kinds of people watch such spectacles: one of the carnal, the other of the spiritual. The carnal watch and think those martyrs wretched who were thrown to the beasts, beheaded, or burned with fire, and they detest and shudder at them. But others watch as the holy angels also do, not attending to the mangling of bodies but marveling at the integrity of faith. A mind whole within, while the body is torn apart, offers a great spectacle to the eyes of the heart. When these things are read in church, you gladly watch with the eyes of the heart. For if you watched nothing, you would hear nothing. You see, then, that today you have not despised the spectacles, but chosen them. So may God be present, granting that to your friends, whom you grieve to see today run to the amphitheater and unwilling to come to church, you may sweetly report your own spectacles, so that what they have made cheap by loving it may begin to grow cheap to them, and that they may love God with you, of whom no lover need ever blush, because he loves one who cannot be conquered. May they love Christ with you, who by the very thing in which he seemed conquered conquered the whole world. For he conquered the whole world as we see, brothers: he subjected all powers, he subdued kings, not with a proud soldiery but by a derided cross; not raging with the sword but hanging on the wood; suffering bodily, accomplishing spiritually. His body was lifted up on the cross; he was subjecting minds to the cross. And what gem, in short, is more precious in the diadem than the cross of Christ on the brow of those who reign? In loving him you are never put to shame. For how many return conquered from the amphitheater, conquered by those for whom they rave? They would be conquered all the more if they won. For they would be subjected to an empty joy, subjected to the exultation of a depraved desire; they are conquered by the very thing in which they run there. For how many, brothers, do you think hesitated today whether to come here or to go there? And those who, in that very hesitation, considered Christ and ran to the church, conquered not just any man but the devil himself, the worst hunter of the whole world. But those who in that hesitation chose rather to run to the amphitheater were conquered by the one whom these conquered. And they conquered in him who said: Rejoice, for I have conquered the world (John 16:33). For the Commander allowed himself to be tempted in order to teach the soldier how to fight.

2. 3. So that our Lord Jesus Christ might do this, then, he was made the Son of man by being born of a woman. But if he had not been born of the Virgin Mary, what would have been lacking? Someone says: He wished to be a man; let him be a man, yet not be born of a woman; for he did not make the first man, whom he made, from a woman either. Consider what is answered to this. You say: why did he choose a woman for his birth? You are answered: rather, why should he have shunned a woman for his birth? Suppose I cannot show what he chose in being born of a woman: you show what he ought to have shunned in a woman. But these things have already been said at times: if he had shunned a woman's womb, he would have signified, as it were, that he could have been contaminated by her. But the more incapable of stain he was through his own substance, the less he ought to have dreaded the womb of flesh, as though he could be stained by it; rather, born of a woman, he ought to show us something of a great mystery. For in truth, brothers, we too confess that if the Lord had willed to become man in such a way as not to be born of a woman, this was surely easy for his Majesty. For just as he could be born of a woman without a man, so he could be born without a woman at all. But he showed us this, namely, that no human creature should despair of itself in either sex. For the human sex is of males and females. If, then, existing as a man, which he certainly had to be, he were not born of a woman, women would despair of themselves, mindful of their first sin, because the first man was deceived through a woman; and they would think they had no hope at all in Christ. He came, then, as a man, to single out the male sex, and born of a woman, to console the female sex, as if addressing it and saying: That you may know that God's creature is not evil, but that depraved pleasure perverted it, in the beginning when I made the human being, I made male and female. I do not condemn the creature I made. Behold, I am born a man, behold, born of a woman. I do not, then, condemn the creature I made, but the sins I did not make. Let each sex see its honor, and let each confess its iniquity, and let each hope for salvation. To the man being deceived poison was given to drink through a woman; to the man being restored let salvation be given to drink through a woman. Let a woman make up for the sin of the man deceived through her, by bringing forth Christ. Hence too it was women who first announced to the apostles that God had risen. A woman announced death to her husband in paradise; and women announced salvation to men in the Church. The apostles were to announce the resurrection of Christ to the nations; women announced it to the apostles. Let no one, then, slander Christ for being born of a woman, by whose sex the Liberator could not be stained and which sex the Creator was bound to commend.

3. 4. But, they say, how are we to believe that Christ was born of a woman? Let me answer: from the Gospel that has been and is preached to the whole world. But, blind, they try to force a question upon a matter already believed throughout the whole earth, eager to blind others, and not seeing what ought to be seen while they try to tear down what ought to be believed. For they answer and say: Do not press us with the authority of the whole world; let us consider Scripture itself. Do not appeal to the crowd: a deceived multitude favors you. First I answer this: A deceived multitude favors me? This multitude was once a tiny few. Whence grew this multitude that was announced so long beforehand by these very increases? For it would not have been seen to grow, had it not been foreseen. I do not say, There was a tiny few: there was one, Abraham. Consider, brothers, there was one Abraham in the whole world at that time, in the whole earth among all men, among all nations, to whom this man it was said: In your seed shall all nations be blessed (Gen 22:18). What one man believed concerning his own singleness was displayed to many through the multitude of his seed. Then it was not seen, and it was believed; now it is seen, and it is attacked; and what was then said to one and believed by one is now opposed by a few, since it is displayed in many. He who made his disciples fishers of men enclosed every kind of authority within his nets. If the multitude is to be believed, what is more abundant than the Church spread throughout the whole world? If the rich are to be believed, let them note how many rich it has caught; if the poor are to be believed, let them note the thousands of the poor; if the noble, almost all the nobility is now within; if kings, let them see all made subject to Christ; if the more eloquent, the more learned, the more prudent, let them behold how many orators, how many experts, how many philosophers of this world have been ensnared by those fishermen, that they might be drawn from the deep to salvation; thinking of him who, descending to heal by the example of his humility the great evil of the human soul, that is, pride, chose the weak things of the world to confound the strong, and the foolish things of this world to confound the wise; not those who were such, but those who seemed to be such; and chose the lowly things of this world, and the things that are not, that he might bring to nothing the things that are (1 Cor 1:27-28).

4. 5. Say what you like, they say; we have caught, where you read that Christ was born, that the Gospels disagree among themselves, and both cannot be true where they disagree. For when I have shown the disagreement, one of them says, I rightly reject the faith; but you who accept the faith, show the agreement. What disagreement, I ask, will you point out? An obvious one, he says, which no one can contradict. How securely you hear this, because you are faithful! Attend, dearly beloved, and see how wholesomely the Apostle admonishes us, saying: As therefore you have received Christ Jesus our Lord, so walk in him, rooted and built up in him, and confirmed in the faith (Col 2:6-7). For by that very simple and certain faith we ought to remain firmly in him, so that he may open to the faithful what is hidden in himself; because, as the same Apostle says: In him are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge (Col 2:3). He does not hide them in order to deny them, but in order to rouse desire by what is hidden. This is the usefulness of the secret. Honor in him what you do not yet understand; and honor it all the more, the more veils you discern. For the more honored a man is, the more veils hang in his house. Veils make for the honor of the secret; but for those who honor, the veils are lifted. Those who mock the veils, however, are driven away from the neighborhood of the veils. Because, then, we pass over to Christ, the veil is taken away (See 2 Cor 3:16).

5. 6. Certain ones bring forward their slanders and say: Is Matthew indeed an evangelist? We answer, yes, with devout mouth, with devoted heart, in no way doubting; we answer plainly, Matthew is an evangelist. Do you believe him? they say. Who would not answer, I believe? How that resounded from your devout murmur! So, brothers, if you believe securely, there is nothing for you to blush at. I am speaking to you, I who was once deceived, when as a boy I first wanted to bring to the divine Scriptures the keenness of dispute before the piety of seeking; I myself, by my perverse habits, was closing the door of my Lord against myself; when I ought to have knocked for it to be opened, I was adding instead to its being closed. For in my pride I dared to seek what only the humble can find. How much more blessed are you now! How securely you learn, how safely, all you who are still little ones in the nest of faith and receive spiritual food! But I, wretched, when I thought myself fit to fly, left the nest; and I fell before I flew. But the merciful Lord, lest I be trampled by passersby and die, lifted me up and put me back in the nest. For these were the things that troubled me, which now I both set before you and explain, secure in the name of the Lord.

5. 7. So, as I had begun to say, they slander thus: Matthew, they say, is an evangelist, and you believe him? Consequently, the one whom we confess to be an evangelist we necessarily believe. Attend to the genealogy of Christ that Matthew set down: The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham (Matt 1:1). How son of David, how son of Abraham? It cannot be shown except through the succession of the line. For it is established that when the Lord was born of the Virgin Mary, neither Abraham nor David was among the living. And you say that the same one is the son of David, and the same the son of Abraham? As if we were to say to Matthew, Prove, then, what you say. For I await the succession of the line of Christ. Abraham, he says, begot Isaac, and Isaac begot Jacob. And Jacob begot Judah and his brothers. And Judah begot Perez and Zerah by Tamar. And Perez begot Hezron. And Hezron begot Ram. And Ram begot Amminadab. And Amminadab begot Nahshon. And Nahshon begot Salmon. And Salmon begot Boaz by Rahab. And Boaz begot Obed by Ruth. And Obed begot Jesse. And Jesse begot David the king (Matt 1:2-6). Now from here attend to how one comes from David to Christ, who was called the son of Abraham and the son of David. And David, he says, begot Solomon by her who had been Uriah's wife. And Solomon begot Rehoboam. And Rehoboam begot Abijah. And Abijah begot Asa. And Asa begot Jehoshaphat. And Jehoshaphat begot Joram. And Joram begot Uzziah. And Uzziah begot Jotham. And Jotham begot Ahaz. And Ahaz begot Hezekiah. And Hezekiah begot Manasseh. And Manasseh begot Amon. And Amon begot Josiah. And Josiah begot Jechoniah and his brothers, at the deportation to Babylon. And after the deportation to Babylon, Jechoniah begot Shealtiel. And Shealtiel begot Zerubbabel. And Zerubbabel begot Abiud. And Abiud begot Eliakim. And Eliakim begot Azor. And Azor begot Zadok. And Zadok begot Achim. And Achim begot Eliud. And Eliud begot Eleazar. And Eleazar begot Matthan. And Matthan begot Jacob. And Jacob begot Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ (Matt 1:6-16). So, then, through the order and succession of parents and forebears, Christ is found to be the son of David, the son of Abraham.

5. 8. Against this matter, faithfully recounted, they raise this first slander, that the same Matthew goes on and says: All the generations from Abraham to David are fourteen generations; and from David to the deportation to Babylon, fourteen generations; and from the deportation to Babylon to Christ, fourteen generations (Matt 1:17). Then he added, to recount how Christ was born of the Virgin Mary, going on to say: Now the generation of Christ was in this way (Matt 1:18). For by the order of the parents he enumerated why Christ is called the son of David, the son of Abraham.

6. 8. But how he was born and appeared among men must now be recounted; and the account itself follows, by which we believe our Lord Jesus Christ to have been not only born of the eternal God, coeternal with him who begot him before all times, before every creature, through whom all things were made, but also now born of the Holy Spirit from the Virgin Mary, which we likewise confess. For you remember and know (since I am speaking to my Catholic brothers) that this is our faith, that this is what we profess and confess. For this faith thousands of martyrs have been slain throughout the whole world.

6. 9. For what follows is what those wish to ridicule who wish to detract from the faith due to the books of the Gospels, so as to make it seem that we have rashly believed what is said: When his mother Mary was betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child of the Holy Spirit. But Joseph her husband, being a just man and unwilling to expose her, wished to put her away quietly (Matt 1:18-19). For because he knew she was not pregnant by him, he now reckoned her, as it seemed to follow, an adulteress. Being a just man, as Scripture says, and unwilling to expose her, that is, to make it public, for many codices have this too; he wished to put her away quietly. The husband is indeed troubled, but being just he does not rage. For so great a justice is attributed to this man that he neither wished to keep an adulteress nor dared to punish a woman publicly exposed. He wished, he says, to put her away quietly; because not only did he not wish to punish her, but neither to expose her. Attend to his sincere justice. For he did not wish to spare her because he desired to keep her. For many spare adulterous wives out of carnal love, wishing to keep them even as adulteresses, that they may take their full pleasure of them through carnal desire. But this just man does not wish to keep her: therefore he does not love carnally. And yet he does not wish to punish her: therefore he spares her mercifully. What kind of just man is this? He neither holds on to an adulteress, nor does he seem to spare her because he loved her with lust; and yet he neither punishes nor exposes her. Deservedly, then, he was chosen as a witness to the virginity of his wife. He who was troubled by human weakness was strengthened by divine authority.

7. 10. For it follows, and the Evangelist says: As he was thinking these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in his sleep, saying: Joseph, do not fear to take Mary your wife. For what is born in her is of the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus (Matt 1:20-21). Why Jesus? For he, he says, will save his people from their sins (Matt 1:21). It is understood, then, that "Jesus" in the Hebrew tongue is in Latin rendered "Savior," which we notice from the very explanation of the name. For as if it were asked why Jesus, he at once added, disclosing the reason for the name: For he, he says, will save his people from their sins. This we devoutly believe, this we hold most firmly: that Christ was born of the Holy Spirit from the Virgin Mary.

7. 11. What, then, do they say? If I find a lie, one says, you surely do not believe the whole. I have found one, let us see. I count the generations. For by their slanders they invite and lead us to this. If we live devoutly, if we believe Christ, if we do not desire to fly from the nest before our time, they lead us to this, that we may come to know the mysteries. Let your Holiness, then, attend to the usefulness of heretics; a usefulness that is according to God, who uses well even the wicked. According to themselves, indeed, what is returned is what they intended; not what God brings about well from them. As in the case of Judas, how much good he did! By the Passion of the Lord the nations were saved. But that the Lord might suffer, Judas betrayed him. God therefore both frees the nations by his Son's suffering and punishes Judas for his crime. For the mysteries that lie hidden there no one would examine, content with a simpler faith; and so no one would find them, because no one would examine them, were it not for the slanderers knocking. For when heretics slander, the little ones are troubled; when they are troubled, they inquire; their inquiry is like a knocking from the head against the mother's breasts, that as much may flow as is enough for the little ones. Those troubled ones seek; but those who know and have learned, because they have searched and God has opened to them as they knocked, themselves open to the troubled. And so it comes about that the heretics are useful for finding the truth, while they slander to seduce into error. For truth would be sought more negligently if it had no lying adversaries. For there must, he says, be heresies too. And as if we were asking the reason, he at once added: That those who are approved may be made manifest among you (1 Cor 11:19).

8. 12. What, then, do they say? Behold, Matthew counts the generations, and says there are fourteen from Abraham to David, and fourteen from David to the deportation to Babylon, and fourteen from the deportation to Babylon to Christ. Multiply fourteen by three, and they make forty-two. But they count, and find forty-one generations, and raise their slander, and insult with mockery. What, then, does it mean, when the Gospel says there are three times fourteen, and yet all counted are found to be not forty-two but forty-one? Without doubt it is a great mystery. And we rejoice, giving thanks to the Lord, because even through the occasion offered by the slanderers we have found something which, the more it was covered up to be sought out, the more it delights when found. For as we said beforehand, we are putting on a spectacle of minds. From Abraham, then, to David there are fourteen. There the count begins from Solomon; for David begot Solomon. The count begins from Solomon and reaches Jechoniah, in whose lifetime the deportation to Babylon took place; and there are another fourteen generations, with Solomon counted at the head of the second interval, and with Jechoniah also counted, at whom the count itself is closed, so that fourteen are completed. But the third interval begins from that same Jechoniah.

8. 13. Let your Holiness attend to a mystical and sweet matter: I confess to you the taste of my heart, whence I believe that when I have brought it forth and you have tasted it, you will report the same back. Attend, then. From Jechoniah himself, with whom the count of the third interval begins, to the Lord Jesus Christ there are fourteen; because that Jechoniah, both the last of the previous interval and the first of the following interval, is counted twice. But someone may say: Why is Jechoniah counted twice? Nothing was done in the people of Israel of old that was not a mystery of things to come. Jechoniah is indeed counted twice not without reason; because if there be a boundary between two fields, whether a stone or some division of a wall, both he who is on this side measures up to that wall, and he who is on the other side takes from it again the beginning of his measuring. But why this was not done in the first joining of the interval, where from Abraham we count fourteen generations to David, and another fourteen not by repeating David but by beginning to count from Solomon, the reason must be given, which contains a great mystery. Let your Holiness attend. The deportation to Babylon took place when Jechoniah was set up as king in the place of his deceased father. The kingdom was taken from him, and another set up in his place. Yet the deportation to the nations took place while Jechoniah was living. For no fault of Jechoniah is named, on account of which he was deprived of the kingdom; rather, the sins of those who succeeded him are brought in. The captivity therefore follows, they go off to Babylon. The wicked do not go alone; but with these the saints also go. In that captivity was the prophet Ezekiel, in it was Daniel; there were the three young men ennobled amid the flames. And they went off according to the prophecy of the prophet Jeremiah.

9. 14. Remember that Jechoniah, condemned without any fault, thereupon ceased to reign and made the crossing to the nations, when the deportation to Babylon took place; and attend to the image, shown beforehand, of things to come in the Lord Jesus Christ. For the Jews were unwilling that our Lord Jesus Christ, in whom they found no fault, should reign over them. He was rejected in himself, rejected also in his servants; and the crossing was made to the nations, as though to Babylon. For this too Jeremiah prophesied, that the Lord commanded them to go to Babylon. And whatever other prophets told the people not to go to Babylon, Jeremiah convicted as false prophets. Let those who read the Scriptures recall this with us; let those who do not read believe us. Jeremiah, then, in the person of the Lord, threatened those who were unwilling to go to Babylon; but to those who would go he promised rest there, and a certain happiness in planting new vineyards and laying out gardens and in an abundance of fruits (See Jer 29:5-7). How, then, does the people of Israel now pass over to Babylon, no longer in figure but in truth? Where were the apostles from? Were they not of the people of the Jews? Where was Paul himself from? For I too, he says, am an Israelite, of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin (Rom 11:1). Many of the Jews, then, believed in the Lord. From there the apostles were chosen; from there were more than five hundred brothers who were granted to see the Lord after his resurrection (See 1 Cor 15:6); from there were the hundred and twenty in the house when the Holy Spirit came (See Acts 1:15; 2:1-4). And what does the Apostle say in the Acts of the Apostles, when the Jews spurned the word of truth? To you, he says, we were sent; but since you have spurned the word of God, behold, we turn to the nations (Acts 13:46). The deportation to Babylon, then, took place according to the spiritual dispensation of the time of the Lord's Incarnation, which was prefigured then in the time of Jeremiah. But what does Jeremiah say to those being deported among these Babylonians? Because in their peace, he says, will be your peace (See Jer 29:7). When, therefore, Israel was being deported through Christ and the apostles to Babylon—that is, the Gospel was coming to the nations—what does the Apostle say, as if in the voice of Jeremiah then? I urge, then, first of all, that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all men, for kings and for all who are set in high places; that we may lead a quiet and tranquil life, with all godliness and chastity (1 Tim 2:1-2). There were not yet Christian kings, and he prayed for them. Praying, then, in Babylon, Israel was heard. The voices of the Church were heard, they became Christians; and you see fulfilled what was said figuratively: In their peace will be your peace. For they received the peace of Christ and ceased to persecute Christians, so that now in the security of peace churches might be built, and peoples planted in the husbandry of God, and all nations bear fruit in faith, hope, and love that is in Christ.

9. 15. The deportation to Babylon took place then through Jechoniah, who was not allowed to reign in the people of the Jews, as a type of Christ, whom the Jews were unwilling to have reign over them (See John 19:15). Israel made the crossing to the nations, that is, the preachers of the Gospel passed over to the peoples of the nations. Why, then, do you marvel that Jechoniah is counted twice? For if he bore the figure of Christ passing from the Jews to the nations, attend to what Christ is between the Jews and the nations. Is he not that cornerstone? Attend, in the corner, to the boundary of one wall and the beginning of another. Up to that very stone you measure one wall, and from it the other. The cornerstone, then, which joins both walls, is counted twice. Jechoniah, therefore, bearing the figure of the Lord, presented the type as a cornerstone. And just as Jechoniah was not allowed to reign over the Jews, but the going was to Babylon, so Christ, the stone which the builders rejected, has become the head of the corner (Ps 118:22 (117:22); Matt 21:42), that the Gospel might reach the nations. Do not, then, hesitate to count the head of the corner twice, and the written number comes out for you; and so there are fourteen, and fourteen, and fourteen, and yet they are not forty-two generations but forty-one. For just as, when a row of stones runs in a straight line, they are all counted singly, but when the row is turned aside to make a corner, that stone from which it turns must be counted twice, because it belongs both to that row which ends at it and to that which begins from it: so the order of the generations, as long as it remained in that people, in the twice-seven, that is, the fourteenth interval, made no corner; but when the order was turned aside, so as to be deported to Babylon, a kind of corner was made, as it were, from Jechoniah, so that he had to be counted twice, in the type of that venerable cornerstone.

10. 16. Another slander of theirs is this. The generations of Christ, they say, are counted through Joseph, and not through Mary. Let your Holiness attend a little. They ought not, they say, to be counted through Joseph. Why not through Joseph? Was not Joseph the husband of Mary? No, they say. Who says this? For Scripture says, by angelic authority, that he was her husband. Do not fear, he says, to take Mary your wife. For what is born in her is of the Holy Spirit (Matt 1:20). He is also commanded to give the boy a name, although born not of his seed. She will bear, he says, a son, and you shall call his name Jesus (Matt 1:21). But Scripture means this, that he was not born of Joseph's seed, when, to Joseph anxious about whence she was heavy with child, it is said: It is of the Holy Spirit. And yet paternal authority is not taken from him, since he is commanded to give the boy a name. Finally, the Virgin Mary herself, well aware in her own conscience that she had not conceived Christ from his embrace and intercourse, nevertheless calls him the father of Christ.

10. 17. Attend to how. When the Lord Jesus Christ was twelve years old according to the man—he who according to God is before the ages and without time—he remained behind them in the temple, and was disputing with the elders, and they marveled at his teaching. But they, returning from Jerusalem, sought him in their company, namely among those who walked with them; and not finding him, troubled, they returned to Jerusalem and found him disputing in the temple with the elders, being—as I said—twelve years old (See Luke 2:42-47). But what wonder? The Word of God is never silent, but is not always heard. He is found, then, in the temple, and his mother says to him: Why have you done so to us? Your father and I were sorrowing as we sought you. And he: Did you not know that I must be about the things that are my Father's? (Luke 2:48-49) He said this because the Son of God was in the temple of God. For that temple was not Joseph's, but God's. Behold, someone says, he did not grant himself to be the son of Joseph. Attend a little more patiently, brothers, because of the shortness of the time, that it may suffice for the sermon. When Mary had said, Your father and I were sorrowing as we sought you, he answered, Did you not know that I must be about the things that are my Father's? For he did not wish to be their son in such a way that he would not be understood to be the Son of God. For the Son of God is always the Son of God, creating these very persons. But the Son of man is so in time, born of a virgin without marital seed, yet he had both as parents. Whence do we prove this? Mary has already said: Your father and I were sorrowing as we sought you.

11. 18. First of all, brothers, the holy modesty of the Virgin Mary is not to be passed over, especially for the instruction of women, our sisters. She had borne Christ, the angel had come to her and had said to her: Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High (Luke 1:31-32). She had merited to bear the Son of the Most High, and she was most humble: she did not put herself before her husband, neither in the order of naming, so as to say, I and your father; but: Your father, she says, and I. She did not attend to the dignity of her womb, but attended to the conjugal order. For the humble Christ would not have taught his mother to be proud. Your father and I were sorrowing as we sought you. Your father, she says, and I; because the head of the woman is the man (See 1 Cor 11:3). How much less ought other women to be proud? For Mary herself was called a woman, not with her virginity corrupted, but by the proper appellation of her people. For the Apostle too said of the Lord Jesus Christ: Made of a woman (Gal 4:4); yet he did not break the order and texture of our faith, by which we confess him born of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary. For she as a virgin conceived, as a virgin bore, and remained a virgin. But they called all females women, by the property of the Hebrew tongue. Hear a most evident example. The first woman, whom God made, taken from the man's side, before she lay with the man—which is written to have happened after they went out of paradise—was nevertheless already called woman, as Scripture says: He formed her into a woman (Gen 2:22).

11. 19. So when the Lord Jesus Christ answers: I had to be about the things that are my Father's (Luke 2:49), he does not so point to God as Father that he denies Joseph to be father. Whence do we prove this? From Scripture, which speaks thus: And he said to them: Did you not know that I must be about the things that are my Father's? But they did not understand what he had spoken to them. And when he had gone down with them, he came to Nazareth, and was subject to them (Luke 2:49-51). He did not say: He was subject to his mother; or, He was subject to her; but, He was, he says, subject to them. To whom was he subject? Was it not to his parents? Both were parents to whom he was subject, by that condescension by which he was the Son of man.

12. 19. Women received their precepts a while ago; now let the children receive theirs, to obey their parents and be subject to them. The world is subject to Christ, Christ is subject to his parents.

12. 20. You see, then, brothers, that he did not say, "I must be about the things that are my Father's," in such a way that we should understand it as if he said, You are not my parents. But they were his parents in time, that Father his eternally. They were the parents of the Son of man, that Father the Father of his Word and Wisdom, the Father of his Power, through whom he formed all things. If through her all things are formed—she who reaches from end to end mightily and orders all things sweetly (Wis 8:1)—then through the Son of God those too were formed to whom the same one would afterward, as the Son of man, be subject. And the Apostle calls him the son of David: Who was made for him, he says, of the seed of David according to the flesh (Rom 1:3). Yet the Lord himself sets a question before the Jews, which the Apostle resolves in these very words. For when he said, Who was made for him of the seed of David, he added to this, according to the flesh, so that it might be understood that according to his divinity he is not the son of David but the Son of God, the Lord of David. For in another place too the Apostle speaks thus, when commending the stock of the Jews: Whose are the fathers, he says, and from whom is Christ according to the flesh, who is over all things, God blessed forever (Rom 9:5). In that he is according to the flesh, he is from there the son of David; but in that he is God over all things, blessed forever, from there he is the Lord of David. The Lord, then, says this to the Jews: Whose son do you say that Christ is? They answered: David's (Matt 22:42). For this they knew, which they easily grasped from the preaching of the Prophets. And truly he was of the seed of David, but according to the flesh, through the Virgin Mary betrothed to Joseph. So when they answered that Christ was the son of David, Jesus said to them: How then does David in spirit call him Lord, saying, "The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies a footstool under your feet"? If then David in spirit calls him Lord, how is he his son? (Matt 22:43-45) And the Jews could not answer. So we have it in the Gospel. He did not deny that he was the son of David, so that they should not be ignorant that he was the Lord of David. For they held in Christ what was made in time; in him they did not understand what is in eternity. Therefore, wishing to teach them his divinity, he raised a question about his humanity: as if he said, "You know that Christ is the son of David; answer me how he is also the Lord of David." But lest they say, "He is not the Lord of David," he set David himself as a witness. And what does he say? He certainly speaks the truth. For you have this too in the Psalms, where it is said to David: Of the fruit of your womb I will set upon your throne (Ps 132:11 (131:11)). Behold the son of David. How is he also the Lord of David, who is the son of David? The Lord, he says, said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand (Ps 110:1 (109:1)). Do you marvel that David has his own son as Lord, when you see that Mary bore her own Lord? The Lord of David, because God; the Lord of David, because the Lord of all; but the son of David, because the Son of man. The same is Lord, the same is son: the Lord of David, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count it robbery to be equal with God; but the son of David, because he emptied himself, taking the form of a servant (Phil 2:6-7).

13. 21. Joseph, then, was not any less a father because he did not lie with the mother of the Lord; as though it were lust that makes a wife, and not conjugal love. Let your Holiness attend. The Apostle of Christ was going to say, after some time, in the Church: It remains that those who have wives should be as though not having them (1 Cor 7:29). And we know many of our brothers, bearing fruit in grace in the name of Christ, who by mutual consent restrain the desire of the flesh from each other, yet do not restrain conjugal love from each other. The more the one is repressed, the more strongly the other is confirmed. Are they not spouses who live thus, not seeking from each other the fruit of the flesh, not exacting from each other the debt of bodily desire? And yet she is subject to her husband, because so it is fitting; and the more subject, the more chaste; and he loves his wife truly, as it is written, in honor and sanctification (See 1 Thess 4:4), as a coheir of grace, as Christ, he says, loved the Church (Eph 5:25). So if there is union, if there is marriage, if it is not therefore no marriage because that is not done which can be done even outside marriage, but unlawfully: would that all could; but many cannot. Let no one, then, separate those who can, and on that account deny that the one is a husband or the other a wife, because they do not mingle carnally with each other, but are joined in their hearts.

13. 22. From this, my brothers, understand what Scripture meant about those parents of ours who were so married that they sought from their spouses only offspring. For so chastely did those keep them—those who, for their time and the custom of their people, even had several—that they did not approach carnal intercourse except for the sake of procreation, truly holding them in honor. But the man who craves the flesh of his wife more than the bounds prescribed by the cause of procreating children acts against the very tablets by which he took her as wife. The tablets are read out, and read out in the sight of all who attest them, and there is read out, For the sake of procreating children; and they are called marriage tablets. Unless wives are given and taken for this end, who with a sound face gives his daughter to another's lust? But so that the parents need not blush when they give her, the tablets are read out, that they may be fathers-in-law, not procurers. What, then, is read from the tablets? For the sake of procreating children. The father's brow is wiped clean and made serene on hearing the voice of the tablets. Let us look at the brow of the man taking a wife. Let the husband too blush to take her otherwise, if the father blushes to give her otherwise. But if they cannot (we have already said these things at times), let them exact the debt; let them not go beyond their debtors. Let both woman and man console their weakness in each other. Let him not go to another woman, nor she to another man; whence it is called adultery, as it were "to another" (ad alterum). And if they go beyond the bounds of the marriage compact, let them not go beyond the bounds of the conjugal bed. Is it not a sin to exact the debt from a spouse beyond what the necessity of procreating children compels? It is indeed a sin, but a venial one. The Apostle says: This I say by way of indulgence; speaking on this matter: Do not, he says, defraud one another, except by consent for a time, that you may be free for prayer; and come together again, lest Satan tempt you because of your incontinence (1 Cor 7:5). What is this? Do not lay upon yourselves anything beyond your strength; lest, by abstaining from each other, you fall into adulteries. Lest Satan tempt you because of your incontinence. And lest perhaps what he was permitting should seem to be commanded (for it is one thing to command for virtue, another to permit for weakness), he at once added: This I say by way of indulgence, not by way of command. For I would that all men were as I myself (1 Cor 7:6-7). As if he said: I do not command that you do it, but I pardon it if you have done it.

14. 23. So, my brothers, attend. As for the great men who had wives for the sake of procreating children, such as we read the Fathers were, and find by many proofs, the holy pages crying out altogether without doubt: if, then, any men had wives only for the begetting of children, and if it could be granted them to have children without intercourse, would they not embrace so great a benefit with ineffable joy? Would they not receive it with vast gladness? For there are two carnal works by which the human race subsists; into these two works the prudent and the holy go down out of duty, but the imprudent rush into them through desire. For it is one thing to go down to something out of duty, another to fall into something through desire. What are these by which the human race subsists? In ourselves the first is what pertains to taking nourishment (which surely cannot be taken without some delight through the flesh), eating and drinking: if you do not do it, you will die. By this one support, then, the human race stands, according to the measure of its nature, of eating and drinking. But by this support men are sustained in what pertains to themselves; they do not provide for succession by eating and drinking, but by marrying. For thus the human race subsists, first that men may live; but because, however much care is given to the body, they cannot live forever, the next provision is that those being born succeed those dying. For the human race is, as it is written, like leaves on a tree—but on a tree of olive, or laurel, or some such kind, which is never without foliage; yet it does not always have the same leaves. For as it is written, it puts forth some and casts off others (See Sir 14:18); because those that spring up succeed the others that fall. For it always casts off leaves, it is always clothed with leaves. So too the human race does not feel the loss of those dying daily, through the replacement of those being born: and thus, in its own measure, the whole species of the human race stands; and just as leaves are always seen on a tree, so the earth is seen full of men. But if men only died and were not born, then, just as some trees of all their leaves, so the earth would be stripped of all its men.

14. 24. Since, then, the human race so subsists that two supports are necessary, of which enough has been said, to each the wise and prudent and faithful man goes down out of duty, he does not fall through lust. To eating and drinking, how many rush greedily, placing there their whole life, as though it were the very cause of living! For though they eat in order to live, they think they live in order to eat. These the wise man reproves, and most of all divine Scripture: the gluttonous, the drunken, the wastrels, whose god is the belly (Phil 3:19). To the table nothing leads them but the desire of the flesh, not the need of refreshment. And so these fall into food and drink. But those who go down out of the duty of living do not live in order to eat, but eat in order to live. And so, if it were offered to these prudent and temperate men that they should live without food and drink, with what joy would they embrace this benefit, that they need neither fall, where they were not accustomed to fall, nor be compelled to go down; but might always be suspended in the Lord, the necessity of propping up the body's ruins not bringing down their intentions! How do you think holy Elijah received it, when he received a cup of water and a small loaf of bread, that it might be enough for him as nourishment for forty days (See 1 Kgs 19:6-8)? Surely with great gladness, because he ate and drank for the duty of life, not for the slavery of desire. Try to offer this to a man who has set his whole blessedness and happiness in feasting, like a beast at the stall. He hates your benefit, he thrusts it from him, he thinks it a punishment. So too in that conjugal duty, lustful men seek wives for nothing else, and so they are scarcely ever content even with their wives. And would that, if they cannot or will not take away their lust, they would not let it go beyond what the conjugal debt prescribes, even what is conceded to weakness. But plainly, if you said to such a man, "Why do you take a wife?" he would answer you, perhaps abashed, "For the sake of children." If someone said to him, one whom he would believe without any doubt, "God is able to give you, and will surely give you, children, even though you do not do that work with your wife": there at last he would be cornered and confess that it was not for the sake of children that he sought a wife. Let him confess his weakness, then; let him receive what he pretended to receive out of duty.

15. 25. So those former saints, men of God, sought children, wished to receive children. For this one thing they were joined to women; for this they had intercourse with women, that they might procreate children. Therefore it was permitted them to have several. For if immoderate lust pleased God, it would have been permitted in that time for one woman to have several husbands, just as one husband had several women. Why did all chaste women have no more than one husband, but a man several women, unless because for one man to have several women pertains to the multiplying of offspring; whereas one woman, however many husbands she had, could not bear the more children for that? Therefore, brothers, if our Fathers were joined and had intercourse with women for no other reason than to procreate children, it would have been a great joy to them if, apart from that carnal work, they could have the children for whose sake they did not rush into it through lust, but went down to it out of duty. Was Joseph not a father, on this account, because he received a son without carnal desire? Far be it that Christian chastity should hold this, which not even Jewish chastity held. Love your wives, but love them chastely. Seek the carnal work only up to the point of procreating children. And because you cannot otherwise have children, go down to it with sorrow. For it is the punishment of that Adam from whom we have sprung. Let us not be exalted over our punishment. It is the punishment of him who deserved to beget mortally; because by sin he was made mortal. God did not take away the punishment itself, that man might remember whence he is called back, and to what he is called; and might seek that embrace where there can be no corruption.

15. 26. In that people, then, because an abundant propagation had to take place up to Christ, through the multitude of the populace in which would be prefigured all the lessons that had to be prefigured for the Church, they had the duty of taking wives through whom the people might grow, the people in which the Church was to be foreshadowed.

16. 26. But when the very King of all nations was born, the dignity of virginity began from the Mother of the Lord, who merited both to have a son and not to suffer corruption. So, then, that was a marriage, and a marriage without any corruption: as the wife chastely bore, why should the husband not chastely receive? For as she was chastely a wife, so was he chastely a husband; and as she was chastely a mother, so was he chastely a father. He, then, who says, He ought not to be called father, because he did not so beget the son, seeks lust in the procreating of children, not the affection of love. He was the better man, who fulfilled in mind what another desires to fulfill in flesh. For those too who adopt children beget them more chastely in heart, whom they cannot in flesh. See, brothers, see the law of adoption, how a man becomes the son of one of whose seed he was not born; so that the will of the one adopting has more right in him than the nature of the one begetting. Thus, then, Joseph not only ought to have been a father, but most especially ought to have been. For men beget children from women who are not their wives, and they are called natural children; and the children of marriage are preferred to them. As far as the work of the flesh is concerned, they were born equally: whence are these preferred, unless because the love of the wife, from whom children are procreated, is more chaste? It is not the carnal mingling that is regarded there, which is equal in either woman. Where does the wife win out, except in the affection of fidelity, the affection of marriage, the affection of a more sincere and chaste love? If, then, anyone could receive children from his wife without intercourse, ought he not to have done so the more gladly, the more chaste she is whom he loves the more?

17. 27. From this now see also that it can come about that one man has not only two sons but also two fathers. For now that adoption has been named, let it occur to your thoughts that it can come about. For it is said: A man can have two sons, but he cannot have two fathers. On the contrary, he is found able to have even two fathers, if one begets him by seed, the other adopts him by love. If, then, one man can have two fathers, Joseph too could have two fathers, being begotten by one, adopted by the other. And if he could, why do those slander, who say that Matthew followed one genealogy and Luke another? And indeed we find that the one followed one, the other another. For Matthew said Jacob was the father of Joseph (See Matt 1:16), but Luke said Heli (See Luke 3:23). And it can indeed seem that one man, whose son Joseph was, had two names. But because they enumerate different grandfathers and great-grandfathers and other forebears further up, and in that very count one has more, the other fewer, it is plainly shown that Joseph had two fathers. Now that the slander of the question has been removed, since clear reason has shown it can come about that one is the father who begot, another who adopted, with two fathers established, it is no wonder if the grandfathers and great-grandfathers and the rest of the forebears upward are counted differently from the different fathers.

18. 28. Nor let the law of adoption seem to you foreign to our Scriptures, and, as something observed in the custom of human laws, unable to fit the authority of the divine books. For it is an ancient thing, and customary in the ecclesiastical sayings themselves, that not the origin of seed alone should beget a son, but also the grace of the will. For women too used to adopt as sons those born of the seed of their husbands by handmaids, if they themselves had not borne children; indeed, they would even command their husbands to beget them, as Sarah did (See Gen 16:2), as Rachel (See Gen 30:3-6), as Leah (See Gen 30:9). In which duty the husbands did not commit adultery, because they obeyed their wives in that matter which pertains to the conjugal debt, according to what the Apostle says: The woman does not have power over her own body, but the husband; likewise also the husband does not have power over his own body, but the wife (1 Cor 7:4). Moses too, born of a Hebrew mother and exposed, was adopted by Pharaoh's daughter (See Exod 2:5-10). There were not indeed the very legal formulas that exist now; but the decision of the will was held in place of the norm of law; just as the Apostle says in another place, that the nations, not having the law, do by nature the things of the law (Rom 2:14). But if it was lawful for women to make those their sons whom they had not themselves borne, why not also for men those whom they had not themselves begotten of carnal seed, but by the love of adopting? For the patriarch Jacob himself, the father of so many sons, we read nevertheless made his own grandsons, the sons of Joseph, his sons, saying thus: These two shall be mine, and shall receive the land with their brothers; the others whom you beget shall be yours (Gen 48:5-6). Unless perhaps someone says that the very word of adoption is not found in the holy Scriptures. As though it mattered at all by what word it is called, when the thing itself exists, that a woman has a son whom she did not bear in the flesh, or a man someone whom he did not beget in the flesh. And, for my part, I do not object if he does not call Joseph adopted, provided he grant that he could have been the son even of one of whose flesh he was not born. Although the apostle Paul too constantly mentions the name of adoption, and in a great mystery. For though Scripture testifies that our Lord Jesus Christ is the only Son of God, it says that the brothers and coheirs whom he deigned to have come about by a kind of adoption of divine grace. But when, he says, the fullness of time came, God sent his Son, made of a woman, made under the Law; that he might redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons (Gal 4:4-5). And in another place: In ourselves, he says, we groan, awaiting the adoption, the redemption of our body (Rom 8:23). And again, when he spoke of the Jews: I myself could wish to be anathema from Christ for my brothers, my kinsmen according to the flesh, who are Israelites; whose is, he says, the adoption, and the glory, and the Testament, and the giving of the Law; whose are the fathers, and from whom is Christ according to the flesh, who is over all things, God blessed forever (Rom 9:3-5). Where he shows that among the Jews of old there was either the name of adoption or the thing itself, like the Testament and the giving of the Law, which he mentions together.

19. 29. To this is added that there was another mode proper to the Jews, by which someone became the son of one of whom he was not carnally born. For relatives used to take the wives of their relatives who had died without children, in order to raise up seed for the deceased (See Deut 25:5-6). Thus the one who was born was both the son of the man of whom he was born and the son of the man in whose succession he was born. These things have been said lest anyone, thinking it impossible that two fathers of one man be rightly named, should suppose that any of the Evangelists who recounted the genealogies of the Lord ought to be charged, by a sacrilegious slander, as it were with a lie: especially since we see ourselves admonished by their very own words. For Matthew, who is understood to mention the father by whom Joseph was begotten, enumerates the generations thus, This one begot that one, so that he can arrive at what he says at the end: Jacob begot Joseph (Matt 1:16). But Luke, because one who becomes a son either by adoption or by being born of her who had been his wife in the succession of the dead is not properly said to be begotten, did not say, "Heli begot Joseph"; or, "Joseph whom Heli begot"; but, Who was, he says, the son of Heli (Luke 3:23); whether by adoption, or by being born of a relative in the succession of the dead.

20. 30. Now as for the fact that it ought not to disturb anyone why the generations are counted through Joseph and not through Mary, enough has been said: because, just as she was a mother without carnal desire, so he was a father without carnal mingling. Through him, then, let the generations descend, and through him let them ascend. Nor let us separate him on this account, that carnal desire was lacking. Let a greater purity confirm his fatherhood, lest holy Mary herself reprove us. For she was unwilling to put her own name before her husband's, but said: Your father and I were sorrowing as we sought you (Luke 2:48). Let not the perverse murmurers do, then, what the chaste spouse did not do. Let us count, then, through Joseph: because as he is chastely a husband, so he is chastely a father. But let us put the man before the woman, by the order of nature and of God's law. For if, setting him aside, we set her up, he says, and rightly says: Why have you separated me? Why do the generations not either ascend or descend through me? Is it said to him, Because you did not beget by the work of your flesh? But he will answer, Did she then bear by the work of her flesh? What the Holy Spirit wrought, he wrought for both. Being, it says, a just man (Matt 1:19). A just man, then, a just woman. The Holy Spirit, resting in the justice of both, gave a son to both. But in that sex which it was fitting should bear, he wrought this, that the son should be born to the husband too. And so the angel tells both to give the boy a name; whereby the authority of the parents is declared. For Zechariah too, while he was still mute, the mother gave the name to the son being born. And when those who were present made signs to the father what he wished him to be called, taking writing tablets he wrote what she had already said (See Luke 1:59-63). It is said to Mary too: Behold, you will conceive a son, and you shall call his name Jesus (Luke 1:31); it is said also to Joseph: Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary your wife. For what is born in her is of the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus: he will save his people from their sins (Matt 1:20-21). It is said also: And she bore him a son (See Matt 1:25); where the father is confirmed altogether not by flesh, but by love. So, then, he is a father just as he is. For most carefully and most prudently the Evangelists count through him, whether Matthew descending from Abraham to Christ, or Luke ascending from Christ through Abraham to God. The one counts descending, the other ascending, both through Joseph. Why? Because he is the father. Why a father? Because he is the more firmly a father, the more chastely a father. He was thought, indeed, to be the father of our Lord Jesus Christ in another way, namely as other fathers who beget in the flesh, not receiving children by spiritual affection alone. For Luke too said: Who was thought to be the father of Jesus (Luke 3:23). Why thought? Because human reckoning and estimation was carried to what is usually done by men. The Lord, then, was not of Joseph's seed, although this was thought; and yet, by the godliness and love of Joseph, a son was born to him of the Virgin Mary, and the same was the Son of God.

21. 31. But why does the one count descending, why does the other count ascending? Hear this, I ask, attentively, as far as the Lord helps, now with an untroubled mind and free from all the annoyance of knotty slanders. Matthew descends through the generations, to signify our Lord Jesus Christ descending to bear our sins, that in the seed of Abraham all nations might be blessed. Therefore he does not begin from Adam: for the whole human race is from him. Nor from Noah: because from his family too, after the flood, the whole human race arose. Nor could the man Christ Jesus pertain to the fulfillment of the prophecy as one from Adam, from whom are all men, or from Noah, from whom again are all men; but from Abraham, who was then chosen, in whose seed all nations would be blessed, when the earth was already full of nations (See Gen 22:18). But Luke ascends, not beginning to enumerate the generations from the very beginning of the Lord's birth, but from that place where he recounts that he was baptized by John. And just as in the Lord's Incarnation the sins of the human race are taken up by him to be borne, so in the consecration of Baptism they are taken up to be cleansed. And so the one, signifying him descending to bear sins, enumerates the generations descending; but the other, ascending, signifying the cleansing of sins—not his own, indeed, but ours—enumerates the generations ascending. But the one descends through Solomon, in whose mother David sinned; the other ascends through Nathan, another son of the same David, through whom David was cleansed of his sin. For we read that Nathan was sent to him to rebuke him, and that he was healed through penance (See 2 Sam 12:1-13). Both met each other in David, the one descending, the other ascending; and from there up to Abraham, or from Abraham to David, they differ in no generation. Thus Christ, both the son of David and the son of Abraham, passes over to God. For we must in Baptism be led back, renewed, to God by the abolition of sins.

22. 32. In the generations, indeed, that Matthew enumerates, the number forty stands out. For the divine Scriptures have this custom, that what exceeds certain articles of numbers they sometimes do not reckon. So too four hundred years are spoken of, after which the people of Israel went out of Egypt (See Exod 12:40-41; Gal 3:17); though they are four hundred and thirty. So too one generation that exceeds the number forty does not take from this number its primacy. Now this number signifies the life by which one labors on this earth, as long as we are pilgrims away from the Lord (See 2 Cor 5:6), in which the dispensation of truth temporally preached is necessary. For the number ten, by which the perfection of blessedness is signified, multiplied fourfold, on account of the fourfold time and the fourfold world, makes the number forty. Therefore there was a fast of forty days, both by Moses (See Exod 34:28) and by Elijah (See 1 Kgs 19:8) and by the Mediator himself, our Lord Jesus Christ (See Matt 4:2): because in this time abstinence from bodily enticements is necessary. The people too were pilgrims forty years in the desert (See Num 14:33-34); in forty days the flood took place (See Gen 7:17). For forty days after the resurrection the Lord conversed with the disciples, persuading them of the truth of his risen body (See Acts 1:3): where he signified that in this life, in which we are pilgrims away from the Lord (See 2 Cor 5:6), the number forty—as has been said—mystically conveys the memory of the Lord's Body, necessary for us, which we make in the Church until he comes (See 1 Cor 11:26). To this life, then, because our Lord descended, and the Word was made flesh (See John 1:14), that he might be handed over for our offenses and rise for our justification (See Rom 4:25); Matthew followed the number forty: so that the one generation which there exceeds the number forty either does not hinder it, just as those thirty years do not hinder the perfection of the four hundred; or this very thing too signifies, that the Lord himself, joined to whom they make forty-one, so descended to this life to bear our sins that nevertheless, by his own and singular excellence—by which he is so a man that he is also God—he is found to be an exception from this life. For of him alone is it said what could never be said, nor ever can be, of any holy man, however perfect in wisdom and justice: The Word was made flesh (John 1:14).

23. 33. But Luke, who ascends through the generations from the Lord's baptism, completes the number seventy-seven, beginning to ascend from our Lord Jesus Christ himself through Joseph, and arriving at God through Adam: that is, because in this number is signified the abolition of all sins, which takes place in Baptism—not because the Lord himself had anything to be forgiven in baptism, but because by his humility he commended what was useful for us. And although that was the baptism of John, yet in it there sensibly appeared the Trinity of Father and Son and Holy Spirit, by which the baptism of Christ himself was consecrated, with which future Christians were to be baptized: the Father, in the voice that came from heaven; the Son, in the man himself, the Mediator; the Holy Spirit, in the dove (See Matt 3:16-17).

23. 34. But why the number seventy-seven should contain all the sins that are forgiven in Baptism, this probable reasoning seems to present itself: that the number ten has the perfection of justice and blessedness, since the sevenfold creature clings to the Trinity of the Creator; whence too the decalogue of the Law was consecrated in ten precepts. But the transgression of the ten is signified by the number eleven: and it is understood that sin is transgression, when a man, desiring something more, exceeds the rule of justice. Whence the Apostle calls avarice the root of all evils (See 1 Tim 6:10). And to the soul that fornicates away from God it is said, in the person of the same Lord: You hoped that, if you departed from me, you would have something more. Because, therefore, he who sins refers transgression, that is, sin, to himself, since he wishes to rejoice in a certain private good of his own; whence those too are reproved who seek their own things, not the things of Jesus Christ (See Phil 2:21), and love is praised that does not seek its own things (See 1 Cor 13:5): therefore that same number eleven, by which transgression is signified, is not multiplied tenfold, but sevenfold, and they make seventy-seven. For transgression pertains not to the Trinity of the Creator, but to the creature itself, that is, to man himself, which creature the number seven shows. Three on account of the mind, where there is a certain image of the Trinity of the Creator; for there man was made to the image of God; and four on account of the body. For the four primal elements of which the body consists are most well known. And he to whom they are not known can easily notice that the very body of the world, in which our body is moved through places, has as it were four principal parts, which divine Scripture too constantly mentions: East and West, South and North.

24. 34. And because sins are committed either in the mind, as in the will alone, or also in the works of the body, now visibly: therefore the prophet Amos constantly mentions God threatening and saying: For three and four impieties I will not turn away (Amos 1:3), that is, I will not overlook. Three, on account of the nature of the mind; four, on account of the nature of the body: of which two man consists.

24. 35. So eleven times seven, as has been said, the transgression of justice referred to sinful man, makes the number seventy-seven; by which all sins are signified to be contained, which are forgiven through Baptism. Whence Luke ascends through seventy-seven generations to God, showing that man is reconciled to God through the abolition of all sins. Hence the Lord himself, to Peter asking how often he ought to forgive his brother: I say to you, he says, not seven times, but seventy times seven (Matt 18:21-22). And whatever else can be drawn out of these secrets and treasures of God's mysteries by the more diligent and the more worthy. We, however, according to our capacity, as far as the Lord has helped and granted, and given the shortness of the time too, have said what we could. If any of you grasps more, let him knock at the door of him from whom we too receive what we can grasp, what we can say. Above all, hold this: that you be not troubled by the holy Scriptures not yet understood; and when you understand, be not puffed up; but both put off with honor what you do not understand, and hold with love what you do understand.

Sermon 52
On the Trinity

1. 1. The Gospel reading has set before us something from which to speak to your love, as if by the Lord's command—and truly by the Lord's command. For my heart waited from him for, as it were, an order to bring forth the sermon, so that from this I understood that he willed me to speak of what he himself had willed to be read. Let your zeal and devotion hear, then, and aid my labor before our Lord God himself. For we see, and as if by a divine spectacle set before us we behold, at the river Jordan our God commended to us in Trinity. For when Jesus came and was baptized by John—the Lord by the servant (which he did as an example of humility; for in that very humility he showed justice to be fulfilled, when, as John said to him, I ought to be baptized by you, and do you come to me? he answered: Let it be so now, that all justice may be fulfilled (Matt 3:14-15)): when, then, he had been baptized, the heavens were opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in the form of a dove; then a voice followed from above: This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased (Matt 3:16-17). We have, then, the Trinity in a certain way distinguished: in the voice the Father, in the man the Son, in the dove the Holy Spirit. This indeed had to be mentioned, for to see it is very easy. For this Trinity is evidently, and with no scruple of doubt, commended, since the Lord Christ himself, coming to John in the form of a servant, is surely the Son: for it cannot be said that he is the Father, nor can it be said that he is the Holy Spirit. Jesus came, it says (Matt 3:13): surely the Son of God. Of the dove who would doubt; or who would say, What is the dove? when the Gospel itself testifies most plainly: The Holy Spirit descended upon him in the form of a dove (Luke 3:22)? And about that voice likewise there is no doubt that it is the Father's, when he says: You are my Son (Luke 3:22). We have, then, the Trinity distinguished.

2. 2. And if we consider the places, I dare to say (though I say it timidly, yet I dare) the Trinity as if separable. When Jesus came to the river, from one place to another; the dove descended from heaven to earth, from one place to another; the voice of the Father itself sounded neither from the earth nor from the water, but from heaven: these three are as if separated by places, separated by offices, separated by works. Let someone say to me: Show the inseparable Trinity. Remember that you speak as a Catholic, that you speak to Catholics. For our faith, that is, the true faith, the right faith, the catholic faith, gathered not by the opinion of presumption but by the testimony of reading, not made uncertain by heretical rashness but founded on apostolic truth, conveys this; this we know, this we believe. Though we do not see it with our eyes, nor yet with the heart, as long as we are being cleansed by faith; yet by that very faith we most rightly and most firmly hold that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are an inseparable Trinity, one God, not three gods. Yet so one God that the Son is not the Father, that the Father is not the Son, that the Holy Spirit is neither the Father nor the Son, but the Spirit of the Father and the Son. This ineffable divinity, abiding in itself, renewing all things, creating, re-creating, sending, recalling, judging, freeing: this Trinity, then, we know to be at once ineffable and inseparable.

2. 3. What, then, do we do? Behold, the Son came separately in the man, separately the Holy Spirit descended from heaven in the form of a dove, separately the voice of the Father sounded from heaven: This is my Son (Matt 3:17). Where is the inseparable Trinity? God has made you attentive through me. Pray for us, and as it were opening your bosom, may he himself grant whence what you have opened may be filled. Labor together with us. For you see what we have undertaken; not only what, but indeed who has undertaken it; from what condition we wish to speak, where we are placed, how placed, in a body that is corrupted and weighs down the soul, and the earthly dwelling presses down the mind that ponders many things (See Wis 9:15). When, then, I draw this mind away from the many things, and gather it to the one God, the inseparable Trinity, that I may see something to say; do you think that in this body which weighs down the soul, I shall be able to say something worthy to speak to you: Because to you, O Lord, I have lifted up my soul (Ps 25:1 (24:1))? May he help me, may he lift it up with me. For I am weak before him, and it is heavy to me.

3. 4. This question is usually raised by the most zealous brothers, usually discussed in the conversation of the lovers of the word of God, usually much knocked over before God for, with men saying: "Does the Father do something that the Son does not do; or does the Son do something that the Father does not do?" Let us speak meanwhile of the Father and the Son. But when from this our effort has been delivered—we to whom we say, Be my helper, do not forsake me (Ps 27:9 (26:9))—it is understood that the Holy Spirit too in no way departs from the operation of the Father and the Son. Hear, then, brothers, about the Father and the Son. Does the Father do anything without the Son? We answer, No. Or do you doubt? For what does he do without him through whom all things were made? All things, it says, were made through him. And, plying it abundantly upon the slow, the hard, the quarrelsome, he added: And without him was made nothing (John 1:3).

3. 5. What then, brothers? All things were made through him (John 1:3); we understand, surely, that the whole creation was made through the Son, that the Father made it through his Word, God through his Power and Wisdom: are we going to say, "All things, indeed, when they were created, were made through him, but now the Father does not govern all things through him"? Far be it. Let this thought withdraw from the hearts of the faithful, let it be driven from the sense of the devout, from the understanding of the godly. It cannot be that he created through him, and does not govern through him. Far be it that what exists should be governed without him, when through him it was made to exist. But let us teach this too by the testimony of Scripture, that not only were all things made and created through him, as we recalled from the Gospel: All things were made through him, and without him was made nothing; but that through him also the things that were made are governed and ordered. You acknowledge, then, Christ as the Power of God and the Wisdom of God: acknowledge what is said of Wisdom too: She reaches from end to end mightily, and orders all things sweetly (Wis 8:1). Let us not doubt, then, that all things are governed through him, through whom all things were made. Nothing, therefore, does the Father do without the Son, nothing the Son without the Father.

3. 6. A question occurs, which in the name of the Lord and by his will we have undertaken to resolve. If the Father does nothing without the Son, and the Son nothing without the Father, will it not, as it were, follow that we should say the Father too was born of the Virgin Mary, the Father suffered under Pontius Pilate, the Father rose again and ascended into heaven? Far be it. We do not say this, because we do not believe this. For I believed, therefore have I spoken: and we believe, therefore we also speak (2 Cor 4:13; Ps 116:10 (115:1)). What is in the faith? That the Son was born of the Virgin, not the Father. What is in the faith? That the Son suffered under Pontius Pilate, and died, not the Father. It escaped us that certain ones who understand wrongly are called Patripassians, who say that the Father himself was born of a woman, that the Father himself suffered, that the Father himself is the one who is the Son, that there are two names, not two realities. And the catholic Church has removed these from the communion of the saints, lest they deceive anyone, so that, separated, they quarrel apart.

3. 7. Let us, then, bring back the difficulty of the question to your senses. Let someone say to me: You said that the Father does nothing without the Son, nor the Son without the Father; and you brought testimonies from the Scriptures, that the Father does nothing without the Son, because all things were made through him (See John 1:3); nor is what was made governed without the Son, because he is the Wisdom of the Father, reaching from end to end mightily, and ordering all things sweetly (See Wis 8:1). Now you tell me, as if speaking against yourself: The Son was born of the Virgin, not the Father; the Son suffered, not the Father; the Son rose again, not the Father. Behold, I hold something that the Son does which the Father does not do. Either, then, confess that the Son does something without the Father; or confess that the Father too was born, suffered, died, rose again. Say either the one or the other: choose one of the two. I choose neither, I say neither this nor that. I do not say that the Son does anything without the Father; for I lie, if I say this: nor do I say that the Father was born, suffered, died, rose again; for I lie no less, if I say this. How, he says, will you extricate yourself from these straits?

4. 8. The question set forth pleases you: may God help, that its solution may please too. Behold what I say, that it may free both me and you. For we stand in one faith in the name of Christ, and live in one house under one Lord, and are members in one body under one head, and are quickened by one Spirit. So that the Lord may free both me who speak and you who hear from these straits of a most troublesome question, I say this: The Son indeed, not the Father, was born of the Virgin Mary; but that very birth of the Son, not of the Father, from the Virgin Mary, both the Father and the Son wrought. The Father indeed did not suffer, but the Son: yet the Son's suffering both the Father and the Son wrought. The Father did not rise again, but the Son: yet the Son's resurrection both the Father and the Son wrought. From this question we now seem to be extricated; but perhaps by my words—let us see whether also by the divine words. It pertains to me, then, to show by the testimonies of the holy books that both the Father wrought the birth of the Son and the Son did; so the suffering; so the resurrection: so that, although the birth and suffering and resurrection are of the Son alone, yet these three which pertain to the Son alone were done neither by the Father alone nor by the Son alone, but by the Father and the Son together. Let us prove them one by one, you who hear are the judges, the case has been set forth, let the witnesses come forward. Let your judgment say to me what is usually said to those pleading cases: Prove what you promise. I prove it plainly with the Lord's help, and I recite a reading of the heavenly law. You have heard the one proposing attentively; hear now more attentively the one proving.

4. 9. Concerning the birth of Christ I must first show how both the Father wrought it and the Son wrought it, although what the Father and the Son wrought pertains only to the Son. I cite Paul, a competent counselor in divine law. For advocates today have Paul too as one who dictates the laws of litigants, not of Christians. I cite, I say, Paul dictating the laws of peace, not of strife. Let the holy Apostle show us how the Father wrought the birth of the Son. But when, he says, the fullness of time came, God sent his Son, made of a woman, made under the Law, that he might redeem those who were under the Law (Gal 4:4-5). You have heard, and because it is plain and open, you have understood. Behold, the Father made the Son be born of a virgin. For when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, namely the Father sent Christ. How did he send him? Made of a woman, made under the Law. The Father, then, made him of a woman under the Law.

4. 10. But does it perhaps trouble you that I said "of a virgin," and Paul says of a woman? Let it not trouble you, let us not linger over it; for I am not speaking to the untaught. Scripture says both, both "of a virgin" and "of a woman." How "of a virgin"? Behold, a virgin shall conceive in her womb, and bear a Son (Isa 7:14). But "of a woman," as you have heard; it is not contrary. For the property of the Hebrew idiom calls "women" not those whose virginity has been corrupted, but females. You have the evident Scripture of Genesis, when Eve herself was first made: He formed her into a woman (Gen 2:22). Scripture also says in another place that God commanded the women to be set apart who had not known the bed of a man (See Num 31:18). This, then, ought now to be known; and let it not detain us, that we may, with the Lord's help, explain the other things which will deservedly detain us.

4. 11. We have proved, then, that the birth of the Son was wrought by the Father; let us prove that it was wrought by the Son too. What is the birth of the Son from the Virgin Mary? Surely the assumption of the form of a servant. Is being born anything else for the Son than receiving the form of a servant in the womb of the Virgin? Hear that the Son too did this: Who, though he was in the form of God, did not count it robbery to be equal with God; but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant (Phil 2:6-7). When the fullness of time came, God sent his Son, made of a woman; who was made for him of the seed of David according to the flesh (Gal 4:4; Rom 1:3): we see, then, the birth of the Son wrought by the Father; but because the Son himself emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, we see the birth of the Son wrought also by the Son himself. This has been proved; let us pass on from here: attentively receive another point, which follows in order.

4. 12. Let us prove the suffering of the Son too, both wrought by the Father and wrought by the Son. Let the Father bring about the suffering of the Son: Who did not spare his own Son, but handed him over for us all (Rom 8:32). Let the Son too bring about his own suffering: Who loved me, and handed himself over for me (Gal 2:20). The Father handed over the Son, the Son handed over himself. This suffering was done to one, but was done by both. As with the birth, then, so the suffering of Christ neither the Father did without the Son, nor the Son without the Father. The Father handed over the Son, the Son handed over himself. What did Judas do here, except sin? Let us pass on, and come from here to the resurrection.

4. 13. Let us see the Son indeed, not the Father, rising again, but both the Father and the Son bringing about the resurrection of the Son. Let the Father work the resurrection of the Son. For on this account he exalted him from the dead and gave him a name that is above every name (Phil 2:9). The Father, then, raised the Son, by exalting him and rousing him from the dead. Does the Son also raise himself? He plainly raised himself. As a figure of his body, he said of the temple: Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up (John 2:19). Finally, as laying down the soul pertains to the suffering, so taking up the soul again pertains to the resurrection: let us see whether the Son indeed laid down his soul, and whether the Father restored his soul to him, not he himself to himself. For that the Father restored it is manifest. For the Psalm says of this: And raise me up, and I will repay them (Ps 41:10 (40:11)). But that the Son too restored his soul to himself, what do you await from us? Let him say it himself: I have power to lay down my soul (John 10:18). I have not yet said what I promised. I said to lay down: but already you have cried out, because you fly ahead. For trained in the school of the heavenly Master, like ones intently hearing the lessons, devoutly rendering them, you are not ignorant of what follows. I have power, he says, to lay down my soul, and I have power to take it up again. No one takes it from me; but I lay it down of myself, and take it up again (John 10:18).

5. 14. We have discharged what we promised: we have proved our propositions, as I think, by the most firm proofs of the testimonies. Hold what you have heard. I recapitulate briefly, and commend to your minds a most useful matter, as I judge, to be lodged there. The Father was not born of a virgin: yet both the Father and the Son wrought that birth of the Son from the virgin. The Father did not suffer on the cross: yet both the Father and the Son wrought the suffering of the Son. The Father did not rise from the dead: yet both the Father and the Son wrought the resurrection of the Son. You have the distinction of persons, and the inseparability of operation. Let us not say, then, that the Father works something without the Son, or the Son something without the Father. Or do the miracles that Jesus did perhaps trouble you, lest he did some that the Father did not do? And where is: But the Father abiding in me, he does his works (John 14:10)? These things we have said were plain; they only had to be said: there was no need to labor that they be understood, but care to be taken that they be remembered.

5. 15. I want to say something more, where indeed I require both your keener attention and your devotion before God. For only bodies are held or occupied by bodily places. Divinity is beyond bodily places. Let no one seek it as in a space. Everywhere it is present, invisible and inseparable: not greater in one part, lesser in another; but everywhere whole, nowhere divided. Who sees this? Who grasps this? Let us restrain ourselves; let us remember who we are, from what condition we speak. Whatever it is that God is, let it be devoutly believed, holily thought; and as far as it is granted, as far as it is possible, ineffably understood. Let words be still, let the tongue cease; let the heart be roused, let the heart be lifted there. For it is not such a thing as ascends into the heart of man, but that to which the heart of man ascends. Let us attend to the creature: For his invisible things, from the creation of the world, are clearly seen, being understood through the things that are made (Rom 1:20); lest perhaps in these things that God made, in which we have a certain familiarity of habit, we find some likeness whereby we may prove that there are certain three things, which three may be brought forth separably yet operate inseparably.

6. 16. Come, brothers, be present with your whole mind. See first what I promise; lest perhaps I find in the creature, because the Creator is exalted above us. And perhaps one of us, whose mind the flash of truth strikes with a certain lightning, can say those words: I said in my ecstasy. What did you say in your ecstasy? I am cast away from the sight of your eyes (Ps 31:22 (30:23)). For it seems to me that this man who said this had lifted up his soul to God, and poured out his soul over himself, when it was said to him daily: Where is your God? (Ps 42:3 (41:4)) had arrived by a certain spiritual contact at that unchangeable light, and was unable to bear it by the weakness of his vision; and had fallen back again into his sickness, as it were, and his languor, and had compared himself to it, and had felt that the edge of his mind could not yet be tempered to the light of the wisdom of God. And because he had done this in ecstasy, snatched away from the senses of the body and caught up into God, when he was in some way recalled from God to man, he says: I said in my ecstasy. For I saw I know not what in ecstasy, which I could not long bear; and returned to my mortal members, and to the many thoughts of mortals, from the body that weighs down the soul, I said. What? I am cast away from the sight of your eyes. You are far above, I am far below. What, then, shall we say, brothers, of God? For if you have grasped what you wish to say, it is not God: if you have been able to comprehend it, you have comprehended something else in place of God. If you have been able as it were to comprehend, you have deceived yourself by your thought. This, then, is not God, if you have comprehended it: but if it is God, you have not comprehended it. What, then, do you wish to speak, which you could not comprehend?

6. 17. Let us see, then, whether perhaps in the creature we may find something whereby to prove that certain three things are both shown separably and operate inseparably. Where shall we go? To heaven, to discourse of the sun and moon and stars? To the earth, to discourse perhaps of the thickets, the trees, the animals filling the earth? Or of heaven itself, or of the earth itself, which contain all that is in heaven and on earth? How long, O man, do you go round about the creature? Return to yourself, look at yourself, examine yourself, scrutinize yourself. In the creature you seek certain three things to be both shown separately and to operate inseparably: if you seek in the creature, first seek in yourself. For you are not no creature. You seek a likeness. Are you going to seek it in a beast? For you were speaking of God when you sought a likeness. You were speaking of the Trinity of the ineffable Majesty; and because you failed in things divine, and confessed your weakness with due humility, you came to things human; there examine. Do you seek in a beast, do you seek in the sun, in a star? For which of these was made to the image and likeness of God? Surely you seek something of these more familiarly and better in yourself. For God made man to his own image and likeness. Seek in yourself, lest perhaps the image of the Trinity have some trace of the Trinity. And what? An image made, far distant: yet a likeness and image far distant, not as the Son is the image of what the Father is. For the image in a son is one thing, in a mirror another. There is much difference. In a son, your image is yourself. For a son is by nature what you are. By substance what you are, in person other than you. Man, then, is not the image as the only-begotten Son is, but made to a certain image and to a certain likeness. Let him seek in himself something, if he can find it, even certain three things which may be pronounced separably, yet operate inseparably. Let me seek, seek with me. Not I in you, but you in yourselves, and I in myself. Let us seek in common, and let us handle in common our common nature and substance.

7. 18. See, O man, consider whether what I say is true. Do you have a body, do you have flesh? I do, you say. For whence am I, whence am I in a place, whence am I moved from place to place? Whence do I hear the words of a speaker, except through the ear of the flesh? Whence do I see the mouth of a speaker, except through the eyes of the flesh? You have one, it is established, nor need we be long busy about a manifest matter. See something else, see what operates through the flesh. For you hear with the ear, but you do not hear from the ear. There is another within who hears through the ear. You see through the eye; gaze upon him himself. Have you recognized the house, and neglected the dweller? Does the eye see by itself? Is it not another who sees through the eye? I do not say, The eye of a dead man does not see, of which it is established that the dweller has departed from the body; but the eye of one thinking of another matter does not see the face of one present. Look, then, to your inner man. For there rather is to be sought some likeness of certain three things shown separately, operating inseparably. What does your mind have? Perhaps if I seek, I find many things; but there is something near at hand, which is more easily understood. What does your soul have? I call to mind within, recall. For I do not ask that what I am about to say be believed of me: do not accept it, if you do not find it in yourself. Gaze, then; but first let us see what had slipped away: whether man is the image not only of the Son, or the image only of the Father, but of the Father and the Son; and indeed, consequently, of the Holy Spirit too. Genesis speaks: Let us make, it says, man to our image and likeness (Gen 1:26). The Father, then, does not make without the Son, nor the Son without the Father. Let us make man to our image and likeness. Let us make; not, "let me make"; or, "make"; or, "let him make": but, let us make. To the image; not, "yours"; or, "mine"; but, to ours.

7. 19. So I ask, I speak of a dissimilar thing. Let no one say: Behold what he has compared to God. I have already spoken, and forewarned, and made you cautious, and been cautious myself. These things are far distant, the lowest from the highest, the changeable from the unchangeable, the created from the creating, the human from the divine. Behold, first I commend this, that what I am about to say is far distant; let no one slander me. So that I may not perhaps seek ears, while another readies his teeth, I promised I would display this: certain three things shown separately, operated inseparably. How similar or dissimilar these are to the almighty Trinity I do not now treat: but in the very creature, lowest and changeable, we find certain three things which can be shown separably and operate inseparably. O carnal thought, and conscience stubborn and unbelieving! Why do you doubt of that ineffable Majesty in a matter which you have been able to find in yourself? Behold, I say, behold, I ask: Man, do you have memory? If you do not, how have you held what I said? But perhaps already you have forgotten what I said a little before. This very thing that I say, I said; you would not hold these two syllables, except through memory. For whence would you know there are two, if, when the second sounded, you had forgotten the first? Why, then, longer? Why am I so pressed? Why am I so compelled to convince you? It is manifest, you have memory. I ask another thing: Do you have understanding? I do, you say. For if you did not have memory, you would not hold what I said: if you did not have understanding, you would not recognize what you held. You have this too. You recall your understanding to what you hold within, and you see, and by seeing you are formed, so that you are said to know. I seek a third: You have memory, by which you hold what is said; you have understanding, by which you understand what is held; concerning these two I ask of you, willingly did you hold and understand? Willingly indeed, you say. You have, then, a will. These are the three which I had promised I would speak to your ears and minds. These three things which are in you, which you can number, and cannot separate. These three, then—memory, understanding, and will—these three, I say, notice are pronounced separately, operate inseparably.

8. 20. The Lord will be present, and I see that he is present: from your understanding I understand that he is present. For from these voices of yours, by how you have understood, I notice; I presume he will help, that you may understand all things. I promised that three things would be shown separably, and operate inseparably. Behold, I did not know what was in your mind; you showed me by saying, Memory. This word, this sound, this voice went forth to my ears from your mind. For this, which is memory, you were thinking silently, and not saying. It was in you, and had not yet come to me. But that what was in you might be brought forth to me, you said the very name, that is, Memory. I heard: these four syllables in the name of memory I heard. It is a name of four syllables, it is a voice, it sounded, it went forth to my ear, it conveyed something to the mind. What sounded passed away; what was conveyed remains. But this I ask: when you said this name "of memory," you see surely that this name pertains only to memory. For the other two have their own names. For one is called understanding, not memory; another is called will, not memory; but one is called memory. But that you might say this, that you might produce these four syllables, from what did you produce them? This name, which pertains only to memory, both memory wrought in you, that you might hold what you were saying; and understanding, that you might know what you held; and will, that you might bring forth what you knew. Thanks be to the Lord our God. He has helped us, both in you and in us. Truly I say to your love, I had approached this discussion and conveyance most fearfully. For I feared lest perhaps I might gladden the talent of the capable, and make a grievous tedium for the slower. But now I see that you, by your attention in hearing and your quickness in understanding, have not only perceived what was said, but flown ahead of what was to be said. Thanks be to the Lord.

9. 21. See, then—now secure I commend what you have understood; I do not press the unknown upon you, but repeating I commend what has been perceived. Behold, of those three, one thing was named, the name of one thing was said: Memory is the name of one of those three, and yet the name of one of those three the three themselves wrought. "Memory" alone could not be said, except by will, understanding, and memory operating. "Understanding" alone cannot be said, except by memory, will, and understanding operating. Nor can "will" alone be said, except by memory and understanding and will operating. The things promised have, I think, been unfolded: what I pronounced separately, I thought inseparably. One of these names the three wrought: but yet this one thing which the three wrought pertains not to three, but to one. The three wrought the name "of memory": but this pertains only to memory. The three wrought the name "of understanding": but it pertains only to understanding. The three wrought the name "of will": but it pertains only to will. So the Trinity made the flesh of Christ: but it pertains only to Christ. The Trinity made the dove from heaven: but it pertains only to the Holy Spirit. The Trinity made the voice from heaven: but the voice pertains only to the Father.

9. 22. Let no one, then, say to me, let no slanderer try to press me, the weak: What, then, of these three things which you have shown to be in our mind or in the soul, which of these three pertains to the Father, that is, as to a likeness of the Father; which of these to the likeness of the Son, which of these to the likeness of the Holy Spirit? I cannot say, I cannot unfold it. Let us leave something for those who reflect, let us grant something to silence too. Return to yourself, and remove yourself from every noise. Look within yourself, whether you have there some sweet inner chamber of your conscience, where you do not make a racket, where you do not quarrel or prepare lawsuits, where you do not plot dissensions and obstinacy. Be meek to hear the word, that you may understand. Perhaps you are about to say: To my hearing you will give exultation and gladness, and the bones shall exult, but humbled (Ps 51:8 (50:10)), not "exalted."

10. 23. It suffices, then, that we have shown that certain three things are shown separably, and operate inseparably. If you have found this in yourself, if this in man, if this in a certain person walking on earth, still bearing the fragile body that weighs down the soul: believe that the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit can, through certain individual visible things, through certain forms of an assumed creature, both be shown separably and operate inseparably. This suffices. I do not say, The Father is memory, the Son is understanding, the Spirit is will: I do not say this, however it may be understood; I do not dare. Let us reserve greater things for those who grasp more, weak ones to the weak what we can. I do not say these things are to be equated, as it were, to that Trinity, as if to be directed to an analogy, that is, to a certain ratio of comparison: I do not say this. But what do I say? Behold, in you I have found three things shown separably, operated inseparably; and each one of those three a name made by the three, which yet pertains not to three, but to some one of these three. Believe now there what you cannot see, if here you have heard and seen and held. For what is in you, you can know: what is in him who made you, whatever it is, when can you know? And if you will be able, you cannot yet. And yet when you are able, will you be able so to know God as God knows himself? Let it suffice, then, for your love: we have said what we could; we have rendered the promises to those exacting them: the rest that must be added, that your understanding may profit, seek from the Lord.

Sermon 53
On the Words of the Gospel of Matthew 5: "Blessed Are the Poor in Spirit," and What Follows

1. 1. On the solemnity of the holy virgin, who bore witness to Christ and merited a witness from Christ, openly slain, secretly crowned, we are prompted to speak to your love of that exhortation which the Lord just now brought forth from the Gospel, naming many causes of the blessed life, which there is no one who does not wish for. For no one can be found who does not wish to be blessed. But oh, if only men, as they desire the reward, would not refuse the work of the reward! Who would not run eagerly, when it is said to him, You shall be blessed? Let him gladly hear too when it is said, If you do this. Let the contest not be refused, if the prize is loved; and let the mind be kindled to eagerness for the work by the commendation of the reward. What we want, what we desire, what we ask, will be afterward: but what we are commanded to do, for the sake of that which will be afterward, let it be now. Behold, begin to recall the divine sayings, and the evangelical precepts, or gifts, themselves. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven (Matt 5:3). Afterward the kingdom of heaven will be yours; now be poor in spirit. Do you wish that afterward the kingdom of heaven be yours? See now whose you yourself are. Be poor in spirit. You ask me perhaps what it is to be poor in spirit. Everyone puffed up is not poor in spirit: therefore the humble man is poor in spirit. The kingdom of heaven is on high: but he who humbles himself shall be exalted (Luke 14:11).

2. 2. Attend to what follows: Blessed, he says, are the meek, for they shall possess the earth by inheritance (Matt 5:4). Already you wish to possess the earth: see that you are not possessed by the earth. You will possess it if meek, you will be possessed if unmeek. And when you hear the prize set forth, that you may possess the earth, do not stretch out the bosom of avarice, by which you wish now to possess the earth, shutting out even your neighbor in some way: let not that opinion deceive you. You will truly possess the earth then, when you cling to him who made heaven and earth. For this is to be meek, not to resist your God: that in what you do well, he himself may please you, not you yourself; in what you justly suffer ill, that he himself may not displease you, but you yourself. For it is no small thing that you will please him, displeasing yourself; but you will displease him, pleasing yourself.

3. 3. Attend to the third: Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be consoled (Matt 5:5). In the mourning is the work, in the consolation is the reward. For those who mourn carnally, what consolations do they have? Troublesome, fearful ones. There the mourner is consoled, where again he fears lest he mourn. For example, a grown son saddens, a newborn gladdens: that one death carried off, this one was received; in that one is sadness, in this one fear: in neither, then, is there consolation. Therefore that will be the true consolation, by which will be given what is not lost; so that they may afterward rejoice to be consoled, who now mourn that they are pilgrims.

4. 4. Let the fourth work and gift come on: Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice, for they shall be filled (Matt 5:6). You wish to be filled. With what? If the flesh craves fullness, when the fullness is digested, you will suffer hunger again. And he who drinks, he says, of this water will thirst again (John 4:13). The medicine that is put on a wound, if it heals, then no longer hurts: but what is put against hunger, that is, food, is so put that it relieves for a little. For when the fullness is past, hunger returns. The remedy of fullness comes daily, indeed, but the wound of weakness is not healed. Let us hunger, then, and thirst for justice, that we may be filled with that very justice for which we now hunger and thirst. For we shall be filled with that for which we hunger and thirst. Let our inner man hunger and thirst: for he has his food, he has his drink. I am, he says, the bread that came down from heaven (John 6:41). You have the bread of the hungry; desire also the drink of the thirsty: For with you is the fountain of life (Ps 36:9 (35:10)).

5. 5. Attend to what follows: Blessed are the merciful, for God will have mercy on them (Matt 5:7). Do, and it will be done: do for another, that it may be done for you. Because you both abound and are in need: you abound in temporal things, you are in need of eternal things. You hear a beggar of a man, you yourself are a beggar of God. You are asked, and you ask. What you do with your petitioner, this God will do with his. You are both full and empty: fill the empty one from your fullness, that from God's fullness your emptiness may be filled.

6. 6. Attend to what follows: Blessed are the pure in heart, that is, those who are clean of heart; for they shall see God (Matt 5:8). This is the end of our love; the end by which we are perfected, not by which we are consumed. Food comes to an end, clothing comes to an end: food, because it is consumed by eating; clothing, because it is finished by weaving. Both come to an end: but this end pertains to consumption, that to perfection. Whatever we do, whatever we do well, whatever we strive for, whatever we praiseworthily burn for, whatever we blamelessly desire, when we come to the vision of God we shall require nothing more. For what would he seek to whom God is present? Or what would suffice him to whom God does not suffice? We wish to see God, we seek to see God, we burn to see God. Who does not? But see what was said: Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Prepare that whereby you may see. For, to speak according to the flesh, why do you desire the rising of the sun with bleary eyes? Let the eyes be sound, and that light will be a joy; let the eyes not be sound, and that light will be a torment. For you will not be permitted to see with a heart not pure what is seen only by a pure heart. You will be driven back, you will be taken away, you will not see. For blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. How often has he now numbered the blessed? What causes of blessedness, what works, what gifts, what merits, what rewards? Nowhere was it said: They shall see God. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are the meek: they shall possess the earth by inheritance. Blessed are those who mourn: they shall be consoled. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice: they shall be filled. Blessed are the merciful: they shall obtain mercy (Matt 5:3-7). Nowhere was it said: They shall see God. It came to the pure in heart, and there the vision of God was promised. Not without cause, but because there are the eyes by which God is seen. Of these eyes the apostle Paul, speaking, says: The eyes of your heart enlightened (Eph 1:18). Now, then, these eyes, according to their weakness, are enlightened by faith: afterward, according to their firmness, they will be enlightened by sight. For as long as we are in the body, we are pilgrims away from the Lord. For we walk by faith, not by sight (2 Cor 5:6-7). But as long as we are in this faith, what is said of us? We see now through a mirror in an enigma; but then face to face (1 Cor 13:12).

6. 7. Let no bodily face be thought of here. For if, kindled with the desire of seeing God, you prepare your bodily face for seeing, you will desire such a face of God too. But if you already at least understand of God spiritually, so as not to think God is corporeal (on which we treated at greater length yesterday, if indeed we accomplished anything); if in your heart, as in the temple of God, we have broken the idol of the human form; if it has now come well into your mind, and possessed your inner depths, where the Apostle detests those who, saying they were wise, became fools; and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into the likeness of the image of corruptible man (Rom 1:22-23).

7. 7. If you already detest such an evil, if you turn away from it, if you cleanse for the Creator his own temple, if you wish that he come and make a dwelling with you: Think of the Lord in goodness, and in simplicity of heart seek him (Wis 1:1). See to whom you say it, if indeed you say it, if you truly say it: To you my heart said, "I will seek your face." Let your heart say it too, and add: Your face, O Lord, will I seek (Ps 27:8 (26:8)). For you seek well, because you seek with the heart. God's face is spoken of, God's arm is spoken of, God's hand is spoken of, God's feet are spoken of, God's seat is spoken of, the footstool of his feet is spoken of: but do not think of human members. If you wish to be the temple of truth, break the idol of falsehood. The hand of God, the power of God. The face of God, the knowledge of God. The feet of God, the presence of God. The seat of God, if you wish, is you. Or will you perhaps dare to deny that Christ is God? No, you say. Do you grant this too, that Christ is the Power of God and the Wisdom of God (See 1 Cor 1:24)? I grant it, you say. Hear: The soul of the just man is the seat of wisdom. For where does God have his seat, except where he dwells? And where does he dwell, except in his temple? For the temple of God is holy, which you are (1 Cor 3:17). See, then, how you receive God. God is spirit; in spirit and truth must God be adored (John 4:24). Now let the ark of the testament enter your heart, if you please, and let Dagon fall (See 1 Sam 5:1-4). Hear now, then, and learn to desire God, learn to prepare yourself whereby you may see God. Blessed, he says, are the pure in heart, for they shall see God (Matt 5:8).

8. 7. Why do you prepare the eyes of the body? If it will be seen so, what is seen will be in a place. He who is everywhere whole is not in a place. Cleanse that whereby he may be seen.

8. 8. Hear, and understand, if with his help I shall be able to unfold it: may he help us to understand how all the works and gifts mentioned above were fitly placed, in things that agree. For where was anything said of the reward that did not agree with the work, that did not harmonize? Because the humble seem as it were estranged from a kingdom: Blessed, he says, are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven (Matt 5:3). Because meek men are easily shut out of their own land: Blessed, he says, are the meek, for they shall possess the earth by inheritance (Matt 5:4). Now the rest are open, clear, known of their own accord: they need no disputant, they have need of one to recall them. Blessed are those who mourn. Who that mourns does not desire consolation? They, he says, shall be consoled. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice. Who that hungers and thirsts does not seek satiety? And they, he says, shall be filled. Blessed are the merciful. Who is merciful, except one who wishes, from the very work, the turn to be repaid to him by God, that it be done about him which he does about the poor man? Blessed, he says, are the merciful, for God will have mercy on them. How through these individual things proper things were placed for each, and nothing was applied in the reward that did not agree with the precept! For the precept is that you be poor in spirit: the reward is that you have the kingdom of heaven. The precept is that you be meek: the reward is that you possess the earth. The precept is that you mourn: the reward, that you be consoled. The precept is that you hunger and thirst for justice: the reward, that you be filled. The precept is that you be merciful: the reward, that you obtain mercy. So the precept is that you cleanse your heart: the reward, that you see God.

9. 9. Do not, then, so understand these precepts and rewards that, when you hear: Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God (Matt 5:8), you think the poor in spirit will not see, or that the meek will not see, that those who mourn will not see, that those who hunger and thirst for justice will not see, that the merciful will not see. Do not suppose that only those who are pure in heart will, as it were, see, with the others separated from the vision. For all these are the very same persons. They shall see, and not for this reason shall they see, because they are poor in spirit, because they are meek, because they mourn, because they hunger and thirst for justice, because they are merciful: but because they are pure in heart. Just as if bodily works were fitted to bodily members, and someone said, for example: Blessed are those who have feet, for they shall walk: blessed are those who have hands, for they shall work: blessed are those who have a voice, for they shall cry out: blessed are those who have mouth and tongue, for they shall speak: blessed are those who have eyes, for they shall see. So, composing as it were spiritual members, he taught what pertains to what. Humility is fit for having the kingdom of heaven; meekness fit for possessing the earth; mourning fit for consolation; hunger and thirst for justice fit for satiety; mercy fit for obtaining mercy; a pure heart fit for seeing God.

10. 10. If, then, we desire to see God, by what shall this eye be cleansed? For who would not take care, who would not seek that by which he may cleanse the eye by which he can see him whom he desires with all his affection? The divine testimony has expressed this: cleansing their hearts by faith (Acts 15:9). Faith in God cleanses the heart, the pure heart sees God. But because faith itself is sometimes defined by men who deceive themselves as if it were enough merely to believe (for some promise themselves even the sight of God and the kingdom of heaven, believing and living wickedly); against these, kindled and as it were vexed with spiritual love, the apostle James says in his Epistle: You believe that God is one (Jas 2:19). You applaud yourself for your faith: for you notice that many impious men reckon there are many gods, and you rejoice in yourself, believing that God is one. You do well. The demons too believe, and tremble (Jas 2:19). Will these too see God? They will see who are pure in heart. But who would call unclean spirits pure in heart? And yet they believe, and tremble.

10. 11. Our faith must be distinguished from the faith of demons. For our faith cleanses the heart: but their faith makes them guilty. For they do evil, and therefore say to the Lord: What have we to do with you? (Mark 1:24) When you hear the demons say this, do you think they do not recognize him? We know, they say, who you are. You are the Son of God (Mark 1:24; Luke 4:34). Peter says this, and is praised (See Matt 16:16-17): a demon says this, and is condemned. Whence is this, except that the voice is equal, and the heart unequal? Let us distinguish, then, our faith, and let it not suffice to believe. It is not such a faith that cleanses the heart. Cleansing, it says, their hearts by faith (Acts 15:9). But by what faith, by what kind of faith, except that which Paul the Apostle defines, where he says: Faith that works through love (Gal 5:6)? This faith distinguishes ours from the faith of demons, distinguishes it from the shameful and lost ways of men. Faith, he says. What faith? That works through love, hopes for what God promises. Nothing is more weighed than this definition, nothing more perfect. So those three are there. It is necessary that in him in whom there is faith that works through love, he hope for what God promises. Hope, then, is the companion of faith. For hope is necessary, as long as we do not see what we believe; lest perhaps, not seeing and despairing, we faint. It saddens us that we do not see: but it consoles us that we hope we shall see. Hope, then, is present, and is the companion of faith. Then love too, by which we desire, by which we strive to attain, by which we burn, by which we hunger and thirst. This too is applied: and there will be faith, hope, and love. For how will love not be there, since love is nothing else than charity? But faith itself was defined as that which works through love. Take away faith, and what you believe perishes; take away love, and what you do perishes. For it pertains to faith that you believe; to love, that you act. For if you believe and do not love, you do not move yourself to a good work: and if you move, you move as a servant, not as a son: fearing punishment, not loving justice. That faith, then, I say, cleanses the heart, which works through love.

11. 12. And now what does that faith itself do? With so many testimonies of the Scriptures, with so manifold a reading, with so varied and copious an exhortation, what does it do, except that we may see now through a mirror in an enigma, afterward face to face (See 1 Cor 13:12)? But again do not return to that face of yours. Think of the face of the heart. Compel your heart to think of divine things, force it, urge it. Whatever like a body occurs to you as you think, cast it away. You cannot yet say: "This is it": at least say: "This is not it." For when will you say: "This is God"? Not even when you will see him: for ineffable is what you will see. The Apostle says he was caught up to the third heaven, and heard ineffable words (See 2 Cor 12:2-4). If the words are ineffable, what is that of which they are the words? As you think, then, of God, there occurs to you perhaps in human form some wondrous and most ample greatness: you have set it in the gaze of your thought, as something great, most ample, vast, spread out in an enormous mass. You have ended it somewhere. If you have ended it, God is not. If you have not ended it, where is the face? You think of a mass, and that you may distinguish members, you bound the mass. For you cannot otherwise distinguish members, unless you give the mass an end. What are you doing, foolish and carnal thought? You have made a great mass, and the greater the more you thought you honored God further. Another adds one cubit, and makes it greater.

12. 13. But I have read, you say. What have you read, you who have understood nothing? And yet, tell me, what have you read? Let us not drive away the little one playing in heart. Tell me, what have you read? Heaven is my throne, and the earth is the footstool of my feet (Isa 66:1). I hear; I have read it too: but you perhaps think yourself the better, because you have read and believed. I too believe what you have said. Let us believe together. What do I say? Let us seek together. Behold, hold what you have read and believed: Heaven is my throne, that is, my seat; for "throne" in Greek is "seat" in Latin: and the earth is the footstool of my feet. Have you not read this too: Who has measured heaven with a span? (Isa 40:12) I think you have read it: you recognize it, and you confess that you believe it. For there we read both, both we believe. Now think, then, and teach me: I take you as teacher, and make myself the little one. Teach me, I beg you. Who is it that sits in his own span?

13. 14. Behold, you have drawn the figures and lineaments of God's members from the human body. But perhaps it has crept upon you to think that we were made to the image of God according to the body. Meanwhile I take it up to be considered, examined, inquired into, shaken out by disputing. If you please, hear me: because in what pleased you, I have heard you. God sits in heaven, and measures heaven with a span. Does the same heaven become broad when he sits, and narrow when he measures it? Or is God himself as great in sitting as in his span? If this is so, God did not make us to his likeness: for we have a span much narrower than the part of the body by which we sit. But if he is as broad in his span as broad in his sitting, he made our members unequal. This is not a likeness. Let such an idol, then, be ashamed in a Christian heart. Accordingly, take "heaven" for all the saints. Because "earth" too is said for all who are on the earth: Let all the earth adore you (Ps 66:4 (65:4)). If we speak well according to those who dwell on the earth, Let all the earth adore you: we speak well also according to those who dwell in heaven, Let all heaven bear you. For the saints themselves who dwell on earth tread the earth with the flesh, dwell in heaven with the heart. For not in vain are they admonished to have the heart on high, and when admonished they answer that it is so; or in vain is it said: If you have risen with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God; savor the things that are above, not the things that are on earth (Col 3:1-2). Insofar, then, as they dwell there, they too bear God, and are heaven; because they are God's seat; and when they announce the words of God: The heavens declare the glory of God (Ps 19:1 (18:2)).

14. 15. Return, then, with me to the face of the heart: prepare it. Within is he to whom God speaks. The ears, eyes, and other visible members are the dwelling or the instrument of a certain inner being. Within is the man where Christ dwells for now through faith: there to dwell by the presence of his divinity, when we have known what is the breadth, length, height, depth; and have known also the love of Christ surpassing knowledge, that we may be filled unto all the fullness of God (See Eph 3:17-19). Now, then, if this understanding does not displease you, summon yourself to comprehend the breadth, length, height, depth. Do not run about with the imagination of thought through worldly spaces, and through the comprehensible greatness of this so great mass. In yourself attend to what I say. Breadth is in good works; length is in the longanimity and perseverance of good works; height is in the expectation of the rewards above; on account of which height it is said to you to have the heart on high. Work well, and persevere in good works, on account of the benefits of God. Esteem earthly things as nothing, lest, when this earth of yours is disturbed by some scourge of that wise One, you say you worshiped God without cause, did good works without cause, persevered in good works without cause. For by doing good works you had, as it were, breadth: by persevering in them you had, as it were, length: but by seeking earthly things you did not have height. Attend to the depth: the grace of God is in the secret of his will. For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor? (Rom 11:34) And: Your judgments are like a great deep (Ps 36:6 (35:7)).

15. 16. This conduct of working well, of persevering in it, of expecting things above, of God's giving grace secretly—wisdom, not folly; and of not finding fault as to why one man is thus, another thus; for there is no iniquity with God (See Rom 9:14)—this conduct, then, if you please, fit also to the cross of your Lord. For not in vain did he choose such a death, in whose power it was either to die or not to die. If it was in his power to die and not to die, why was it not in his power to die in this way or that? Not in vain, then, did he choose the cross, where he crucified you to this world. For breadth is in the cross the transverse wood, where the hands are fixed: on account of the signifying of good works. Length is in that part of the wood which tends from the transverse down to the earth. For there the body is crucified, and in a way stands: and that standing signifies perseverance. But height is in that wood which projects upward from the same transverse toward the head: that by it the expectation of things above is signified. Where is the depth, except in that part which is fixed in the earth? For grace is hidden, and lies in secret. It is not seen, but from it projects what is seen. After these things, if you have comprehended all these, not only by understanding but also by doing (for a good understanding is to all who do it (Ps 111:10 (110:10))); then now extend yourself, if you can, to recognizing the knowledge of the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge. When you have arrived, you will be filled unto all the fullness of God. Then will be that face to face. But you will be filled unto all the fullness of God, not that God be full of you, but that you be full of God. Seek there, if you can, a bodily face. Now let trifles be taken away from the gaze of the mind. Let the little child cast away his toys, let him learn to handle greater things. We too are little ones in many things: and when we were more than we are, we were borne with by the greater. Follow peace with all, and sanctification, without which no one will be able to see God (See Heb 12:14). For by this too the heart is cleansed: because there is the faith that works through love. Hence: Blessed are the merciful, for they shall see God (See Matt 5:7-8).

Sermon 53/A
On the Eight Sayings of the Beatitudes from the Gospel

1. Your love has heard the holy Gospel with us: as we speak to you of that very chapter which was read, may the Lord help us, that the things we say may be fit for you and bear fruit in your ways. For every hearer of the word of God ought to think that what he hears ought to come about; nor let him seek to praise the word of God with the tongue and despise it in his life. For if the things said are sweet when heard, how much sweeter ought they to be when done? For we are like sowers, and you are God's field: let the seeds not perish, let the harvest bear fruit. You heard the Lord Christ with us, when his disciples had come to him: Opening his mouth, he taught them, saying: Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven (Matt 5:2-3), and the rest. As his disciples came to him, then, the one and true Master taught these things, saying what we have briefly mentioned. And you have come to us, that with his help we may speak to you, and teach you. What better do we do than when we teach the things which so great a Master, expounding, said?

2. Be, then, poor in spirit, that yours may be the kingdom of heaven. Why do you fear to be poor? Think of the riches of the kingdom of heaven. Poverty is feared: let it be feared, but iniquity. For after the poverty of the just there will come a great happiness, because full security; but here, the more the riches that are so called and are not are increased, both fear is increased and desire is not ended. You can give me many rich men: can you give me one secure man? He burns to acquire; he trembles lest he lose. When is such a servant free? He is a servant who serves any mistress whatever: and is he free who serves avarice? Blessed, then, are the poor in spirit. What is poor in spirit? Poor in their wills, not in their means. For he who is poor in spirit is humble: and God hears the groans of the humble, and does not despise their prayers. From there the Lord began to commend his sermon, from humility, that is, from poverty. You find a religious man, abounding in these earthly things, yet not puffed up with pride. You find a needy man, having nothing, and sitting in nothing. This one has no more hope than that one: for that one is poor in spirit, because he is humble; but this one is poor, and not in spirit. Therefore the Lord Christ, when he had said: Blessed are the poor, added: in spirit. Whoever of you, then, have heard us and are poor, do not seek to be rich.

3. Hear the Apostle, not me; see what he said: But godliness with contentment, he says, is great gain. For we brought nothing into this world, nor can we take anything away; having food and covering, let us be content with these. For those who wish to become rich—he did not say "those who are," but "those who wish to become"—those, then, who wish to become rich, fall into temptation, he says, and into a snare, and many foolish and harmful desires, which plunge men into ruin and perdition. For avarice is the root of all evils, which some craving have erred from the faith, and entangled themselves in many sorrows (1 Tim 6:6-10). As though "riches" were a sweet name when heard. They fall into temptation: is that a sweet name? Many foolish and harmful desires: is that a sweet name? Ruin and perdition: is that a sweet name? To be entangled in many sorrows: is that a sweet name? Let not one false good seduce you, so that you cling to so many true evils. But because by these words the blessed Apostle did not address those who are rich, but those who are not, lest they wish to be what they are not, let us see also what suits those whom he finds already rich. We have told you what had to be said, you who are poor have heard; but if any of you here are rich, hear the same blessed Apostle.

4. Writing to Timothy his disciple, among the other things he admonished him, he said this too: Charge the rich of this world. Now the Word of God finds them rich: for if it had found them poor, it would have said those things which I have already mentioned. Charge, then, the rich of this world not to be proud-minded, nor to hope in the uncertainty of riches, but in the living God, who furnishes us all things abundantly to enjoy. Let them be rich in good works, give readily, share, lay up for themselves a good foundation for the future, that they may lay hold of the true life (1 Tim 6:17-19). Let us consider a little these few words. Above all, he says, charge the rich not to be proud-minded. For nothing so begets pride as riches. A rich man, if he is not proud, has trodden riches underfoot, has suspended himself toward God; the proud rich man does not possess, but is possessed. The proud rich man is like the devil. What does the proud rich man have, when he does not have God? He added also: Nor to hope in the uncertainty of riches. So he ought to have riches that he know what he has can perish. Let him have, then, what he cannot lose. So when he had said: Nor to hope in the uncertainty of riches, he added: but in the living God. For riches can perish: and would that they so perish as not to destroy you. The psalm addresses and mocks the rich man hoping in riches: Although man walks in the image of God. For man was made to the image of God; but let him acknowledge what he was made, lose what he himself made, and let what God made him remain. Although, then, man walks in the image of God, yet he is troubled in vain (Ps 39:6 (38:7)). What is troubled in vain? He stores up, and does not know for whom he gathers it (Ps 39:6 (38:7)). The living attend to these things about the dead: they see that the goods of many dead men are not possessed by their sons, but either lose by luxury what was left to them, or by false accusations let it go; and, what is graver, while what one has is sought after, the one who has it perishes too. Many are killed because of their riches. Behold, what they had here they left behind: since what he commanded they did not do with it, with what face have they gone out to him? Let your riches, then, be true: God himself, who furnishes us all things abundantly to enjoy.

5. Let them be rich, he says, in good works. There let the riches appear, there let them sow. For the same Apostle was speaking of such works where he says: But in doing good let us not grow weary: for in due time we shall reap (Gal 6:9). Let them sow: he does not yet see what he is going to acquire: let him believe and scatter. For does the farmer, the sower, already see the harvest gathered? With so much labor and so much care he casts out and throws away the grain that was stored up. He entrusts his seeds to the earth: do you not entrust your works to him who made heaven and earth? Therefore: Let them be rich, but in good works. Let them give readily, share. What is share? Let them not have alone. You have spoken, O Apostle, and taught us to make the sowing: show us the harvest too. He shows it. Hear the harvest too. O greedy man, do not be slow to sow: hear, I say, the harvest too. For he adds, when he had said: Let them be rich in good works, give readily, share; because he said only this, that they scatter, he ought to say what they gather. Let them lay up, he says, for themselves a good foundation for the future, that they may lay hold of the true life (1 Tim 6:19). The false life, where riches delight, will pass away. So after this life one must come to the true life. You love what you have: put it in a safer place, lest you lose it. Surely your whole anxiety, whoever you are who love riches, is nothing but lest you lose what you have. Hear the counsel of your Lord. There is no safe place on earth: migrate to heaven. You wished to entrust what you gathered to your most faithful servant: entrust it to your faithful Lord. Your servant, however faithful to you, can lose it even unwillingly; your God can lose nothing: whatever you entrust to him, you will have with him, when you will have him too.

6. Because I said, migrate and put it in heaven, let not a carnal thought creep upon you and say to you: "And when do I dig out of the earth, or take up from the earth what I have, and put it in heaven? How do I ascend? By what machines do I lift up there what I have?" Attend to the hungry, attend to the naked, attend to the destitute, attend to the pilgrims, attend to the captives: they will be your porters as you migrate to heaven. Perhaps here you think, and say to yourself: "How will these be porters? As I was thinking how I might lift to heaven what I had, and did not find a way, so I think how those to whom I give may lift it to heaven, and likewise I do not find a way." Hear, then, what Christ says to you: "Make a transfer; give it to me there, and I will repay you here." Christ says: "There, on earth, where you have it, give to me, but here I repay you." Even here you are about to say: "How do I give to Christ? Christ is in heaven, he sits at the right hand of the Father: when he was here in the flesh, he deigned for our sake to hunger, to thirst, to need lodging: all these things were furnished him by the devout, who were worthy to receive into their house their Lord; now Christ needs no one, he has placed his incorruptible flesh at the right hand of the Father. How do I give here to him who is not in need?" It has slipped your mind that he said: What you have done for one of the least of mine, you have done for me (Matt 25:40). The head is in heaven, but he has members on earth: let a member of Christ give to a member of Christ, let him who has give to the needy. You are a member of Christ, and you have what you may give; he is a member of Christ, and he is in need that you may give. You both walk one road, you are both companions: the poor man is light on the shoulders, you the rich are weighed down with burdens: give of that by which you are pressed, of that which loads you give to the needy; and you both relieve yourself and lift up your companion. Holy Scripture says: The poor man and the rich man met each other: but the Lord made them both (Prov 22:2). A most sweet saying, the poor man and the rich man met each other. Where did they meet each other, except in this life? That one is well clothed, this one ragged, but it was when they met each other. Both are born naked, for the rich man too is born poor: let him not attend to what he found, but look to what he brought. What did the wretch bring when he was born, except nakedness and tears? Therefore the Apostle says: We brought nothing into this world, nor can we take anything away from here (1 Tim 6:7). Let him, then, send on ahead of himself what he may find when he goes out. There is a poor man, then, there is a rich man too, and they met each other; but the Lord made them both: the rich man, that through him he might help this one; the poor man, that through him he might prove that one. Blessed, then, are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven (Matt 5:3). Let them have riches, let them not have riches: let them be poor, and theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

7. Blessed are the meek, for they shall possess the earth by inheritance (Matt 5:4). The meek. Those not resisting the will of God, they are the meek. Who are the meek? Those who, when it is well, praise God, and when it is ill, do not blaspheme God; in their good works they glorify God, in their sins they accuse themselves. They shall possess the earth by inheritance. What earth, except that of which the psalm says: You are my hope, my portion in the land of the living (Ps 142:5 (141:6))?

8. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be consoled (Matt 5:5). My brothers, mourning is a mournful thing, when it is the groan of one repenting. For every sinner ought to mourn. Who is mourned, except the dead? And what is so dead as the wicked man? A great thing: let him mourn himself, and he comes to life again: let him mourn in penance, and he will be consoled by pardon.

9. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice, for they shall be filled (Matt 5:6). This is in this our earth, to hunger for justice. The satiety of justice will be in another place, where no one will sin, such as is the satiety of justice in the holy angels. But we, who hunger and thirst for justice, let us say to God: Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven (Matt 6:10).

10. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy (Matt 5:7). In the best order, when he had said: Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice, for they shall be filled, he added: Blessed are the merciful, for God will have mercy on them. For you hunger and thirst for justice. If you hunger and thirst, you are a beggar of God. You stand, then, a beggar before the door of God; another beggar stands too before your door: what you do with your beggar, this God does with his.

11. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God (Matt 5:8). Let him do all those things which are said above, and his heart is cleansed. He has a clean heart who does not feign friendships and hold enmities in his heart. For where God sees, there he crowns. Whatever it is that there delights you in your heart, let it not be approved, let it not be praised: and if an evil desire titillates, let it not be consented to: and if it burns much, let God be entreated against it, that something be done within, and the heart be cleansed, where God himself is entreated. For surely, when you wish to entreat God in your chamber, cleanse your chamber, that God may hear; cleanse the inner chamber. Sometimes the tongue is silent, and the soul groans, and God is surely entreated within, in the chamber of the heart: let there be nothing there that offends the eyes of God, let there be nothing there that displeases God. But perhaps you labor in cleansing your heart: invoke him who will not disdain to cleanse a place for himself, and will deign to dwell with you. Or do you fear to receive one so great, so powerful, lest he disturb you; as middling and narrow men are wont to fear, lest they be compelled to receive some greater men passing into their house? Surely nothing is greater than God: do not fear the narrowness, receive him, and he enlarges you. You do not have what to set before him? Receive him, and he feeds you; and, what you may hear more sweetly, he feeds you with himself. He will be your food, because he himself said: I am the living bread, who came down from heaven (John 6:51). Such bread refreshes, and does not fail. Therefore blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

12. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God (Matt 5:9). Who are the peacemakers? Those who make peace. Do you see men at variance? Be a minister of peace among them. Speak good things to this one of that one, and to that one of this one. Do you hear evil things of one of them from the other, as from one angry? Do not betray it: suppress the reproach you hear from the angry one, give faithful counsel for concord. But also, if you wish to be a peacemaker between two friends of yours at variance, begin to be a peacemaker with yourself: you ought to pacify yourself within, where perhaps you quarrel with yourself in daily combat. Did he not have a quarrel within himself who said: The flesh lusts against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh; for these are opposed to each other, so that you do not do the things you wish (Gal 5:17)? These are the words of the holy Apostle. For I delight in the law of God according to the inner man; but I see another law in my members fighting against the law of my mind, and taking me captive in the law of sin, which is in my members (Rom 7:22-23). If, then, there is in the very inner man a certain daily quarrel, and a praiseworthy fight does this, lest the higher things be overcome by the lower, lest lust conquer the mind, lest desire conquer wisdom, that itself is the right peace which you ought to make in yourself, that what is better in you may command the lower things. That is the better thing in you, where the image of God is. This is called the mind, is called intelligence; there faith burns, there hope is made firm, there love is kindled. But does your mind wish to be fit to conquer your lusts? Let it be subject to the greater, and it will conquer the lower; and there will be in you a true peace, certain, most ordered. What is the order of this peace? God commands the mind, the mind the flesh: nothing more ordered. But the flesh still has its weaknesses. It was not so in paradise: by sin it was made such, on account of sin it has a bond of discord against us. One came without sin to make our soul concord with our flesh, and deigned to give us the pledge of the Spirit. For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God (Rom 8:14). Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. But all this fight, which wearies us by our weakness—and when we do not consent to evil desires, yet by the very battle we are in some way occupied, we are not yet secure—all this fight will not be then, when death is swallowed up in victory. Hear how it will not be: The corruptible body must—this the Apostle says—put on incorruption, and this mortal put on immortality. But when this mortal has put on immortality, then will come about the word that is written: Death is swallowed up in victory (1 Cor 15:53-54). The war is finished, and concluded in peace. Hear the voice of those triumphing: Where, O death, is your strife? Where, O death, is your sting? (1 Cor 15:55) Now this is the voice of those triumphing: no enemy at all will remain, neither the wrestler within nor the tempter without. Blessed, then, are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.

13. Blessed are those who suffer persecution for justice's sake (Matt 5:10). This addition distinguished the martyr from the robber: for the robber too suffers persecution for his evils, and seeks no crown, but pays the punishment he owes. It is not the punishment that makes a martyr, but the cause: let him first choose the cause, and securely bear the punishment. There were three crosses in one place when Christ suffered: he himself in the middle, on this side and that two robbers. Attend to the punishment, nothing more alike: yet one of the robbers found paradise on the cross. He in the middle, judging, condemns the proud one, helps the humble one. That wood was a tribunal for Christ. What does he do, about to judge, who could do these things while being judged? To the robber confessing he says: Amen I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise (Luke 23:43). For that man was putting it off. For what had he said? Remember me, Lord, when you come into your kingdom (Luke 23:42). "I know," he says, "my evils: surely let me be tortured up to here, until you come." And because everyone who humbles himself shall be exalted, at once he brought forth the sentence, gave the indulgence: Today, he says, you will be with me in paradise. But was the whole Lord buried that same day? According to the flesh he was to be in the sepulcher; according to the soul he was to be among those below, not to be bound, but to loose the bound. If, then, that same day, according to the soul he was to be among those below, according to the flesh he was to be in the sepulcher, how did he say: Today you will be with me in paradise? But is the whole Christ soul and flesh? It has slipped your mind, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God (John 1:1). It has slipped your mind, that Christ is the Power of God and the Wisdom of God (1 Cor 1:24). Where, then, is the Wisdom of God not? Was it not said of it: She reaches from end to end mightily, and orders all things sweetly (Wis 8:1)? Therefore according to the person of the Word he said: Today you will be with me in paradise. "Today," he says, "according to the soul I descend to those below, but according to my divinity I do not depart from paradise."

14. All the beatitudes of Christ I have expounded to your love, as far as I could. I see you so eager that you still wish to hear more. Your love has provoked us to say many things, and perhaps we could say others: but it is better that you ruminate well on what you receive, and digest it wholesomely.

Sermon 54
On What Is Written in the Gospel of Matthew 5:16: "So Let Your Light Shine Before Men, That They May See Your Good Works, and Glorify Your Father Who Is in Heaven"; and on the Contrary, Matthew 6:1: "Take Heed That You Do Not Your Justice Before Men, to Be Seen by Them"

1. 1. It usually troubles many, dearly beloved, that our Lord Jesus Christ in the Gospel sermon, when he had first said: Let your light shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven (Matt 5:16), afterward said: Take heed that you do not your justice before men, to be seen by them (Matt 6:1). For the mind of one who understands little is disturbed, and, desiring to obey the precept, is stretched between contrary and opposing things. For no one can obey even one master commanding contradictory things, just as no one can serve two masters: which the Savior himself attested in the same sermon (See Matt 6:24). What, then, will the wavering mind do, when it judges that it cannot obey, and is afraid not to obey? For if it sets its good works in the light for men to behold, so as to do what is commanded: So let your light shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven; it will think itself held guilty, because it acted against the precept where it is said: Take heed that you do not your justice before men, to be seen by them. And again, if, fearing and avoiding this, it has hidden the things it does well, it will not think itself serving him who commands and says: Let your light shine before men, that they may see your good works.

2. 2. But he who understands rightly fulfills both, and will serve the most universal Lord, who would not condemn a sluggish servant if he commanded things that could in no way be done. For hear Paul, the servant of Christ Jesus, called an apostle, set apart for the Gospel of God (See Rom 1:1), both doing and teaching both. See how his light shines before men, that they may see his good works. We commend ourselves, he says, to every conscience of men in the sight of God (2 Cor 4:2): and again: For we provide good things, not only before God, but also before men (2 Cor 8:21): and again: Please all men in all things, as I too please all in all things (1 Cor 10:33). See, on the other hand, how he takes heed not to do his justice before men, to be seen by them. But let each one prove his own work, he says; and then he will have glory in himself, and not in another (Gal 6:4): and again: For this is our glory, the testimony of our conscience (2 Cor 1:12): and that which is most manifest: If, he says, I still pleased men, I would not be the servant of Christ (Gal 1:10). But lest any of those who are troubled by the seemingly conflicting precepts of the Lord himself raise the question all the more against his Apostle, and say: "How do you say: Please all men in all things, as I too please all in all things: and you the same say: If I still pleased men, I would not be the servant of Christ?" May the Lord himself be present, who spoke even in his servant and apostle, and open his will to us, and grant us the ability to obey.

2. 3. For the very words of the Gospel carry their own explanations with them; nor do they close the mouths of the hungry, because they feed the hearts of those who knock. For one must consider whither the intention of the human heart is directed, and at what it looks. For if he who wishes his good works to be seen by men sets his glory and advantage before men, and seeks this in the sight of men, he has fulfilled none of what the Lord commanded on this matter: because he both took heed to do his justice before men, to be seen by them; and his light did not so shine before men that they should for this reason see his good works, that they might glorify the Father who is in heaven. For he wished himself to be glorified, not God; and he sought his own advantage, he did not love the will of the Lord. Of such men the Apostle says: For all seek their own things, not the things of Jesus Christ (Phil 2:21). And so the sentence was not ended there, where he says: So let your light shine before men, that they may see your good works: but he at once added why it must be done: that they may glorify, he says, your Father who is in heaven: so that a man, when seen by men doing well, may have the intention of the good deed in his conscience, but may have the intention of becoming known only in the praises of God, for the advantage of those to whom he becomes known; whom it profits that God, who granted this to a man, should please them; and so that they may not despair that this can be granted to them too, if they wish. And so the other sentence, where he says: Take heed that you do not your justice before men, he ended nowhere else than where he said, to be seen by them: nor did he add: And that they may glorify your Father who is in heaven; but rather added: Otherwise you will not have a reward with your Father who is in heaven (Matt 6:1). For from this he shows that those who are such as he does not wish his faithful to be seek their reward in this very thing, that they are seen by men, that they place their good there; there delight the vanity of their heart, there are emptied and puffed up, there swell and waste away. For why does it not suffice to say: Take heed that you do not your justice before men; but he added, to be seen by them: except because there are certain ones who so do their justice before men, not that they may be seen by them, but that the works themselves may be seen, and the Father who is in heaven may be glorified, who deigned to grant these things to the wicked once justified?

3. 4. Those who are such do not reckon the justice as their own, but his by whose faith they live. Whence the Apostle too says: That I may gain Christ, and be found in him, not having my own justice, which is of the Law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, which is from God, the justice from faith (Phil 3:8-9): and in another place: That we may be the justice of God in him (2 Cor 5:21). Whence he also reproves the Jews thus: Being ignorant, he says, of the justice of God, and wishing to establish their own, they have not been subject to the justice of God (Rom 10:3). Whoever, then, so wishes his works to be seen by men that he may be glorified from whom he received the things that are seen in him, and so that those very ones who see may be provoked by the godliness of faith to imitate the good, his light truly shines before men: because the light of love radiates from him, not the smoke of pride is belched out; and in this very thing he takes heed not to do his justice before men, to be seen by them; because he neither reckons that justice his own, nor does it that he himself may be seen; but that he may be understood who is praised in the justified man, that he may bring about in the praiser too what is praised in another, that is, that he may make the praiser praiseworthy. Attend to the Apostle too, when he had said: Please all men in all things, as I too please all in all things; how he did not remain there, as if he had set there the end of his intention, that he might please men; otherwise he would have spoken falsely: If I still pleased men, I would not be the servant of Christ: but at once he added why he pleased men. Not seeking, he says, what is useful to me, but what is useful to many, that they may be saved (1 Cor 10:33). So he both did not please men for his own advantage, lest he be not the servant of Christ; and pleased men for their salvation, that he might be a fit dispenser of Christ: because his conscience sufficed for him before God, and from him there shone before men what they might imitate.

Sermon 55
On the Words of the Gospel of Matthew 5:22: "Whoever Says to His Brother, 'You Fool,' Shall Be Liable to the Fire of Hell," and What Follows

1. 1. The chapter of the holy Gospel which we just heard read greatly terrified us, if we have faith: but it did not terrify those who do not have faith. And because it does not terrify them, they wish to be perversely secure, not knowing how to apportion and distinguish the times of fear and of security. Let him fear, then, who now leads a life with an end, by which he may have in that life security without end. So we have feared. For who would not fear the Truth speaking and saying: Whoever says to his brother, You fool, shall be liable to the fire of hell? (Matt 5:22) But no man can tame the tongue (Jas 3:8). And man tames a wild beast, but does not tame the tongue: he tames a lion, and does not curb his speech: he tames another, and does not tame himself: he tames what he feared; and to tame himself, he does not fear what he ought to have feared. But what happens? The sentence is true, and this too came forth from the oracle of truth: But no man can tame the tongue.

2. 2. What, then, shall we do, my brothers? I see that I am speaking to a multitude: but because we are all one in Christ, let us take counsel as if in secret. No stranger hears us, we are one, because we are unto one. What shall we do? Whoever says to his brother, You fool, shall be liable to the fire of hell: But no man can tame the tongue. Shall all, then, go into the fire of hell? Far be it. Lord, you have become our refuge, from generation to generation (Ps 90:1 (89:1)). Your anger is just: you send no one into hell unjustly. Where shall I go from your spirit, and where shall I flee from you (Ps 139:7 (138:7)), except to you? Let us understand, then, dearly beloved, that if no man can tame the tongue, we must take refuge in God, who may tame our tongue. For if you wish to tame it, you cannot, because you are a man. No man can tame the tongue. Attend to a likeness from the very beasts that we tame. The horse does not tame itself; the camel does not tame itself; the elephant does not tame itself; the asp does not tame itself; the lion does not tame itself: so too man does not tame himself. But that the horse, the ox, the camel, the elephant, the lion, the asp may be tamed, a man is sought. Therefore let God be sought, that man may be tamed.

3. 3. So: Lord, you have become our refuge. We betake ourselves to you, and it will be well with us from you. For it is ill with us from ourselves. Because we forsook you, you forsook us to ourselves. Let us be found, then, in you, because we had perished in ourselves. Lord, you have become our refuge. What, then, my brothers, ought we to doubt that the Lord will make us meek, if we offer ourselves to him to be tamed? You tamed a lion, which you did not make; will he not tame you, who made you? For whence were you able to tame beasts so monstrous? Are you equal to them in bodily strength? By what power, then, were you able to tame huge beasts? The very animals that are called beasts of burden are wild beasts. For untamed they are not borne with. But because habit does not know them except in the hands of men and under the bridles of men and under the power of men, do you think they could have been born tame? Surely, attend to the monstrous wild beasts. The lion roars, who would not fear? And yet, whence do you understand yourself stronger? Not by bodily strength, but by the inner reason of the mind. You are stronger than the lion, whence you were made to the image of God. The image of God tames a wild beast; and will God not tame his own image?

4. 4. In him is hope, let us submit to him, and pray for mercy. In him let us place our hope, and until we are tamed and thoroughly tamed, that is, perfected, let us bear the tamer. For very often our tamer brings forth even scourges. For if you, to tame your beasts of burden, bring forth a rod, bring forth a scourge; does God not bring forth, to tame his beasts of burden—which we are—he who will make sons of his beasts of burden? You tame your horse: what are you going to give your horse, when, tame, it begins to carry you, to bear your discipline, to obey your command, to be a beast of burden, that is, an aid (adiumentum) of your weakness? What do you repay it, which you do not even bury when it is dead, but throw out to be torn by the birds? To you, when tamed, God reserves an inheritance, which is God himself: and you, dead for a time, he raises up. Your flesh, even to the number of the hairs, he will restore to you: and he will set you with the angels forever, where you no longer need to be tamed, but only to be possessed by the most loving One. For then God will be all in all (See 1 Cor 15:28): nor will there be any unhappiness to harass us, but only a happiness to feed us. He himself is our shepherd, our God: he himself our drink, our God; our honor, our God; our riches, our God. Whatever varied things you seek here, he himself, one, will be all to you.

5. 5. For this hope is a man tamed, and is the tamer reckoned intolerable? For this hope is a man tamed, and against this useful tamer, if perhaps he brings forth a scourge, is there murmuring? You have heard the Apostle exhorting: If you are apart from discipline, then you are bastards, and not sons (Heb 12:8). Bastards are children of adultery. For what son is there to whom his father does not give discipline? And we had fathers of our flesh, he says, as correctors, and we revered them; shall we not much more be subject to the Father of spirits, and live? (Heb 12:7,9) For what could your father grant you, in that he corrected you, in that he beat you, in that he brought forth a scourge and struck you? Could he grant that you live forever? What he could not grant himself, when would he grant it to you? For his money, however little, which he gathered from interest and labor, he trained you with scourges, lest his labor, left to you, be squandered by your living ill. And he struck his son, fearing that his labors would perish: since he left to you what he could neither keep here nor take away. For he left you here nothing that could be his own: he yielded it, that you might so receive it. But your God, your redeemer, your tamer, your chastiser, your father, trains you. To what end? That you may receive an inheritance where you do not bury your father, but have your father himself as the inheritance. For this hope you are trained, and you murmur? And if anything sad happens, perhaps you blaspheme? Where will you go from his spirit? Behold, he lets you go, and does not scourge you: he deserts you blaspheming, will you not feel him judging? Is it not better that he scourge you and receive you (See Heb 12:6), than that he spare you and desert you?