Works (CSEL) 15 part 20/31

But briefly He touches upon many of their vices: men who direct all their zeal to the paying of tithes of the cheaper fruits, yet have neither any fear of the future judgment nor any love of God, since works without faith are vain; for 'they pass over the judgment and the love of God'—judgment, because they do not refer all that they do to the judgment; love, because they do not love God out of affection. But again, lest He make us zealous of faith yet negligent of works, He concludes the perfection of the faithful man in a brief saying, so that he may be approved both by faith and by works, saying: 'These things you ought to have done, and not to have omitted those.' He also reproves the arrogance and boastfulness of the Jews, in that they seek the first places of reclining at banquets.

Against the very experts of the law also a sentence of condemnation is promulgated—men who, like tombs that do not appear, deceive in appearance and disappoint in use, so that, while outwardly they promise things fair, within they enclose a full stench. This many teachers do, who exact from others what they themselves cannot match. And therefore they themselves are graves, as it has also been said elsewhere: 'Their throat is an open sepulchre.' It is also a good passage against the most vain superstition of the Jews, who by building the tombs of their fathers the prophets condemned the deeds done, but by emulating their fathers' crimes turned the sentence back upon themselves.

For indeed, by the building of the prophetic tombs they were accusing those who had slain them, and by the emulation of similar deeds they were also declaring themselves heirs of their fathers' iniquity. Not the building, then, but the emulation is reckoned in place of the crime. For neither can those be absolved from the hereditary iniquity who, by crucifying the Son of God—which is more grievous—have added a heap to their fathers' crimes. And therefore He well added elsewhere: 'Fill up the measure of your fathers,' because there is nothing more grievous than the wrong against God that they could sin. Therefore 'wisdom sends to them apostles and prophets.' Who is wisdom but Christ? Finally, in Matthew you have: 'Behold, I send to you prophets and wise men.'

They are further reproved under the name of the Jews and are established as liable to future punishment, because, while they usurp to themselves the teaching of divine knowledge, they hinder others and do not themselves acknowledge what they profess. 'Are not five sparrows sold for two farthings, and not one of them is in forgetfulness before God? But even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not, you are of more value than many sparrows.' The Savior wove in a most beautiful passage about holding fast to simplicity and emulating faith, lest after the manner of Jewish perfidy we cherish one thing in affection and feign another with the voice, since at the last time the secrets of our mind seem about to be laid open by the hidden things of thoughts accusing or even defending.

For what greater allurement to simplicity is there than that each one should know that there can be no lurking-place for deceit? But since the cause of the wallet is twofold—because it is born either from ingrained malice or from accidental fear—lest anyone terrified by the fear of power should be compelled to deny the God whom he knows in his heart, He has beautifully added that only the punishment of the soul is to be dreaded, that the penalty of the body is not to be feared—for death is the end of nature, not a penalty—and therefore that death is a failing of the bodily punishment, but that the punishment of the soul is perpetual, and that God alone is to be feared, to whose power nature does not prescribe but to which nature itself is subject; and that death indeed is not terrible, since immortality is destined to redeem it with a more abundant interest.

The Lord had inspired the affection of simplicity, had raised up the virtue of the mind; faith alone was wavering; well did He strengthen it from the cheaper things; for if God has not forgetfulness of sparrows, how can He have forgetfulness of men? And if the majesty of God is so great and so eternal that not one of the sparrows nor the number of our hairs is apart from the knowledge of God, how unworthy it is to suppose that the Lord either is ignorant of, or despises, the hearts of the faithful—He who knows the cheaper things! Perhaps someone may say: How did the Apostle say, 'Is it of oxen that God has care?'—since surely an ox is more precious than a sparrow? But care is one thing, knowledge another. Finally, the number of the hairs is taken not in the act of computation, but in the ease of knowledge;

for God does not direct the anxious watch of one who counts with care, but to Him to whom all things are known, all things are as if numbered. Yet they are well said to be 'numbered,' because we number those things which we wish to preserve. We can, however, here discuss some secret of spiritual understanding, especially since this seems absurd—that men should be compared to sparrows rather than men to men. For these five sparrows seem to be the five senses of the body—touch, smell, taste, sight, hearing—which, after the manner of sparrows, if they grub up the filth of earthly defilements and seek their food from uncultivated and foul places, being caught in the snares of their own offenses, cannot fly back to the fruits of the higher works on which souls feast.

For there is a certain snare of enticing pleasure, which fastens certain bonds beneath the footsteps of our souls, so that, if the sense of earthly matter has dulled the fiery vigor and purity of nature, it sets it, sold for the price of luxury, under a certain auction of worldly vices. There are also certain markets of our offenses. And so, captured by the allurements of various pleasures, we are either sold under sin or redeemed from sin. Christ redeems us, the adversary sells; the one auctions us off unto death, the other redeems unto salvation.

Whence Matthew well set down two sparrows, signifying body and soul, since the flesh too, if, consenting to the law of God and putting off the law of sin, it has passed over into the nature of the soul by purity of sense, is lifted up to heaven on spiritual wings. And so we are taught that nature gave us the grace of flying, but pleasure took it away, which weighs down the soul with the foods of evils and inclines it to the nature of a corporeal mass. And He deservedly set down that 'none of them falls without the will of God'; for what falls inclines toward the earth, and what flies is borne aloft to the summit of immortality. But lest there should be any doubt as to what Matthew said, Luke evidently resolves it, because the will of God is knowledge;

for not whoever falls by the will of God, but whoever has fallen by the mass of his own offenses, cannot be hidden from God; for Job too is tempted by the will of God. He gave you an adversary, but He set before you a reward. Nor should you excuse your frailty: because you have an image, you have received a fortification, whence this too profits unto salvation, that you may know the devil cannot harm without God's permission, lest you fear the power of the devil more than the offense against the Godhead. Now it is not doubtful that the sparrow is compared to the soul, when you read: 'Our soul like a sparrow has been snatched from the snare of the hunters.' And elsewhere: 'How do you say to my soul: Migrate to the mountains like a sparrow?' Man himself too we read is compared to a sparrow, because it is written:

'But I am like a solitary sparrow on the housetop'—namely, formed from two sparrows into one sparrow, that is, into the subtlety of a spiritual substance, fashioned from the joining together of both wings in harmony. Therefore the sparrow is good, to which the nature of flying ministers. There is also a bad sparrow, which by the fault of an earthly fall has abolished the use of flying—such are these sparrows which are sold for two farthings. In one place they are sold for an as, in another for two farthings. How great is the cheapness of offenses! For death is cheap, but virtue is precious.

For indeed the adversary, as though they were captive chattels, knocks them down at the price of a cheaper valuation; but the Lord, as though they were comely servants, whom He made after His own image and likeness, a worthy appraiser of His own work, has redeemed us at a great price, as the holy Apostle said: 'For you were bought at a great price.' And well 'at a great price,' because it is reckoned not by money but by blood, since 'Christ died for us,' who freed us by His precious blood, as the holy Peter also commemorates in his epistle, writing to us: 'For you were redeemed,' he says, 'not with corruptible things, with silver or gold, from your vain conversation of your fathers' tradition, but with the precious blood, as of a lamb undefiled and unspotted, of Christ Jesus.'

And well 'precious,' because it is the blood of an undefiled body, because it is the blood of the Son of God, who has redeemed us not only from the curse of the law, but also from the perpetual death of impiety. In sum, then, this is the sense: if the Lord has provided for cheap birds and faithless men, whether in the rising sun or in the fruitfulness of the earth, if He imparts the gift of His mercy to all, it is by no means to be doubted that with Him the regard for the merits of the faithful shall have its force. But excellently both, by sharpening faith, He wove it in, and to faith itself He set beneath the foundations of the virtues: for as the incentive of fortitude is faith, so the firmament of faith is fortitude.

'And everyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man, it shall be forgiven him; but he who has spoken against the Holy Spirit, it shall not be forgiven him.' By the Son of Man we understand Christ, who was begotten of the Holy Spirit and of a Virgin, because His parent on earth is a Virgin alone. Is the Holy Spirit, then, greater than Christ, so that those who sin against Christ obtain pardon, but those who offend against the Holy Spirit do not deserve to obtain remission? But where there is unity of power, there is no question of comparison nor controversy of greatness, since the Lord is great and there can be no end of His greatness.

If therefore, as we believe, there is a unity of the Trinity, the greatness is assuredly undistinguished, just as the operation is undistinguished, which is demonstrated in what follows; for whereas it was said elsewhere, 'The Father gives you what you should speak,' here He added: 'For the Holy Spirit shall teach you in that hour what you ought to say.' Therefore, if the operation is one, the affront is also one. But let us return to the matters proposed. Here it seems to some that we should understand the same to be both the Son of Man and the Holy Spirit—Christ—with the distinction of persons and the unity of substance preserved, because Christ is one and the same, both God and man and Spirit, as it is written:

Christ the Lord is the Spirit before our face; He likewise is holy, for just as God is Father and Son, and Lord is Father and Son, and God is Father and Son, so too the Father is holy, and the Son is holy, and the Spirit is holy. Therefore the Cherubim and Seraphim cry out with untiring voices: 'Holy, holy, holy,' so that the Trinity may be signified by the threefold repetition of the appellation. If, then, Christ is each, what difference is there, except that we should know that it is not permitted to us to deny the divinity of Christ? In short, in persecution what is sought except that we deny Christ to be God? And so whoever does not confess in Christ that He is God and from God and Christ in God does not deserve pardon.

But moreover, every spirit that does not confess that Christ has come in the flesh is not from God; for whoever has denied the man has denied God, because in the man there is God and in God there is the man, who is Christ. Yet very many hold this, that they say that blasphemy is not pardonable if anyone should say that Christ casts out demons by Beelzebul and not by divine power. And a certain man from the crowd said: 'Master, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.' But He said to him: 'Man, who appointed me a judge or a divider over you?' This whole passage is set up for undergoing suffering on behalf of confessing the Lord, whether through contempt of death, or through hope of reward, or through the announcement of an abiding punishment for which pardon is never loosened.

And since covetousness is generally accustomed to tempt virtue, a precept for abolishing this evil too is subjoined, along with an example, in the Lord's saying: 'Who appointed me a judge or a divider over you?' Well does He decline earthly things, who had come down for the sake of divine things, nor does He deign to be a judge of lawsuits and an arbiter of possessions, He who holds the judgment of the living and the dead and the arbitration of merits. Therefore one must consider not what you ask, but from whom you request it, nor should you think, with your mind intent on greater things, that you ought to be interrupted with lesser matters.

Hence not undeservedly is this brother rebuffed, who was eager to occupy with corruptible things one who was the dispenser of heavenly things, since among brothers a patrimony ought to be divided not by a judge as middleman, but by piety as mediator—although it is the patrimony of immortality, not of money, that men ought to seek; for in vain does he gather riches who knows not that he will use them, like that man whose barns, when they were bursting, filled with new harvests, was preparing for himself receptacles for his overflowing fruits, not knowing for whom he was gathering. For all things that belong to the world remain in the world and pass from us to our heirs, whatever we gather; for those things are not ours which we cannot carry away with us.

Virtue alone is the companion of the dead, mercy alone follows us, which, as guide and forerunner of the heavenly mansions, by the cheap interest of money acquires eternal dwellings for the departed, as the Lord's precepts testify, saying to us: 'Make for yourselves friends of the mammon of iniquity, that they may receive you into their eternal dwellings.' Good therefore and salutary and fitting is the precept, which can even rouse the avaricious, whereby they may strive to exchange corruptible things for everlasting, earthly for divine. But since the devotion of faith is often called back by weakness, and men prompt to contribute their patrimony are held back by consideration of their own livelihood, to this the Lord added, saying: 'Be not anxious for your soul, what you shall eat, nor for your body, what you shall put on.'

The soul is more than food, and the body more than clothing. For nothing is more conducive to producing faith in those who believe that all things can be bestowed by God, than that that aerial spirit perpetuates without our labor the living fellowship of soul and body joined in companionship, nor does the salutary use of nourishment fail, except when the final day of dying has come. Since therefore the soul is clothed with the garment of the body, and the body is animated by the vigor of the soul, it is absurd that we should think the abundance of food will fail us, who attain the continuous substance of living. 'Consider,' He says, 'the birds of the air.' A great and apt example indeed, which we should follow with faith. For if to the birds of the air—

—to which there is no exercise of cultivation, no income from the fertility of harvests, divine providence nevertheless bestows unfailing nourishment, it is true that the cause of our want appears to be covetousness. For to them the use of untoiled-for fodder abounds for this reason, that they do not know how to claim by any special dominion the fruits given as common food for themselves; we have lost what is common while we claim our own; for nothing is truly one's own where nothing is everlasting, nor is there sure abundance where the outcome is uncertain. For why should you reckon up your riches, when God has willed that your food too be common with the other living creatures? The birds of the air claim nothing special for themselves, and therefore know not how to lack fodder, because they know not how to envy others.

'Consider the lilies, how they grow'; and further on: 'But if God so clothes the grass, which today is and tomorrow is cast into the oven.' A good discourse indeed and moral, in that the Lord's word has summoned us to faith in the divine mercy that is to be bestowed—whether according to the letter, since unto the stature of our body, or spiritually, since beyond the measure of our stature we can add nothing without the favor of God—by the comparison of the flower and the grass. For what is so—

—moral for persuasion, as when you see that even irrational things are so clothed by God's foresight that they lack nothing either for grace or for adornment by any use—how much more should you believe that a rational man, if he places his every use in God and does not violate his faith by an eagerness for wavering, can never be in want, since he has rightly presumed upon the divine favor?

But nevertheless, that we may weigh these things even more deeply, since it does not seem idle that the flower is either compared to man, or indeed is set above men almost more than men in Solomon—who merited so much that he might both in figure build a temple to God and in mystery prefigure the Church of Christ—it does not seem foreign that through the brightness of color we should think the glory of the heavenly angels expressed, who are truly the flowers of this world, in that the world is adorned by their brightnesses, and they breathe forth the good odor of sanctification. Supported by their protection we can say: 'We are the good odor of Christ unto God among those who are saved,' who, hindered by no anxiety, wearied by no labor of toil, preserve in themselves the grace of the divine generosity and the gifts of the heavenly nature.

Hence well is Solomon here shown clothed with his own glory and elsewhere covered, in that the glory of his works clothed the weakness of his bodily nature, as though covered over by a certain virtue of the mind. But the angels, whose more divine nature remains free from bodily injury, are rightly—though in consideration of our injury—preferred to the greatest man. Therefore, since through the resurrection men shall be as the angels in heaven, the Lord too has bidden us, after the example of the angels, to hope for an increase of heavenly glory, He who granted it also to them, until this mortal be swallowed up by life; for this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.

Very many also think this comparison more fitting according to the nature of the soil and the use of the proposed sprout, in that lilies require the cultivation of no yearly use, nor does labor's toil return upon farmers in its cycle for the generation of this flower as it does for the yield of other crops. For in whatever droughts of the field, all that is nourished into the flower is animated by a certain generative power out of itself and within itself, by sap ever-remaining. Thus, when you see the stalk of mature leaves to have withered, the nature of the flower nonetheless lives on; for the greenness is hidden, not lost. But when it has been roused by the caresses of spring, the adornment of the lily resumes the garment of its sprout, the foliage of its flower.

This passage now, since we remember that it has been treated more abundantly elsewhere, it is enough to have touched upon lightly, lest there be a recurrence into the same matter; but it is delightful to note that lilies are produced not on the harshness of mountains and the uncultivated places of woods, but in the pleasantness of gardens. For there are certain gardens fruitful in diverse virtues, according to what is written: 'A garden enclosed is my sister, my spouse, a garden enclosed, a fountain sealed,' in that where there is integrity, where chastity, where religion, where the faithful silences of secrets, where the brightness of angels is—there are the violets of confessors, the lilies of virgins, the roses of martyrs. Nor should anyone think it incongruous that lilies are compared to angels, since Christ Himself has recorded that He is a lily, saying:

'I am the flower of the field and the lily of the valleys.' And well is Christ a lily, because where the blood of martyrs is, there is Christ, who is the flower sublime, immaculate, harmless, in whom the harshness of thorns gives no offense, but grace poured round about shines forth; for roses have thorns, since the torments of martyrs exist. The unoffending Godhead has no thorns, which felt no torments. Therefore either lilies or angels are clothed above the glory of men; nor ought we to despair of God's mercy toward us, to whom through the grace of the resurrection the Lord promises a form like that of the angels. In which place He also seems to touch lightly upon that question which the Apostle too did not omit, since the Gentiles of this world ask how the dead rise and with what kind of body they come.

For when He says: 'Seek the kingdom of God, and all these things shall be added unto you,' He shows that grace will be lacking to the faithful neither for the present nor for the rest, provided that those who desire divine things do not seek earthly ones. For it is unseemly that men who soldier for the kingdom should be concerned about food. The King knows how to feed, nourish, and clothe His household, and therefore He said: 'Cast your thought upon God, and He Himself will nourish you.' 'I came to send fire upon the earth, and what do I will but that it be already kindled? I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how am I straitened until it be accomplished?'

In the foregoing He willed us to watch, awaiting through all the moments the salutary coming of the Lord, lest while anyone slackens and neglects, deferring his works from day to day, he be forestalled on the day of the coming judgment or by his own death and lose the merit of his commendation. And that form of precept indeed is general for all, but the sequence of the following example seems to be set forth for stewards, that is, for priests, that they may know that a grievous punishment is to be undergone by them in the future, if, intent on worldly delights, they neglect to govern the household of the Lord and the people committed to them.

But since slight is the progress and small the grace of merits to be recalled from error by the fear of punishment, and the prerogative of charity and love is greater, the Lord therefore sharpens our zeal to earn His grace and inflames us with desire for acquiring divinity, saying: 'I came to send fire upon the earth'—not indeed that fire which consumes the good, but the author of good will, which betters the golden vessels of the Lord's house, but consumes the hay and the stubble. And all worldly things compacted with the pleasure of the world and the perishing work of the flesh, that divine fire burns up, which blazed in the bones of the prophets, as holy Jeremiah says: 'For it became as a burning fire flaming in my bones.'

For there is a fire of the Lord, of which it was said: 'A fire shall burn before Him.' And the Lord Himself is also a fire, as He Himself says: 'I am a consuming fire and not consumed'; for the fire of the Lord is eternal light. By that fire are kindled those lamps, of which He said above: 'Let your loins be girded and your lamps burning.' And therefore, because this day of life is night, a lamp is necessary. That this fire was sent by the Lord into themselves, Emmaus and Cleopas testify, saying: 'Was not our heart burning within us on the way, while He opened to us the Scriptures?' Thus they have plainly taught what kind of operation is that fire's, which illumines the secrets of the heart.

Perhaps therefore the Lord is to come in fire, that at the time of the resurrection He may consume all vices and fulfill by His sight the desires of each one, and kindle the light of merits and of mysteries. So great therefore is the Lord's condescension, that He testifies there to be in Him a zeal for pouring devotion into us, for consummating perfection in us, and for hastening for our sake His passion. For He who had in Himself nothing over which to grieve, was nonetheless anguished by our hardships, and at the time of death put forth a sadness which He had taken on not from fear of His own death, but from the delay of our redemption, according to what is written: 'And how am I straitened until it be accomplished?'—certainly He who is straitened up to the accomplishment is secure concerning the accomplishment. But also elsewhere:

'My soul is sorrowful,' He says, 'even unto death.' Not on account of death, but even unto death is the Lord sorrowful, because the condition of bodily affection, not the dread of death, troubled Him. For He who took up a body had to undergo all that belongs to the body, so as to hunger, thirst, be straitened, be saddened; but the Godhead knows not how to be changed through these affections. At the same time He shows that in the contest of the passion, the death of the body is a release from anxiety, not an accumulation of grief. 'Do you think that I came to give peace on the earth? No, I tell you, but separation. For from now on there shall be five in one house divided, three against two and two against three.'

'Father against son and son against father shall be divided, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.' Since in almost all Gospel passages a spiritual understanding is at work, yet especially in the present passage, lest the harshness of a bare exposition offend anyone, the sequence of the meaning must be tempered with spiritual loftiness, especially since the sacrosanct religion, by moral disciplines and the gentle examples of piety, clemently invites even the exiles of faith to its reverence, so that, faith's discipline going before, it may by its meekness dissolve the hard things of superstitions and compel even to believe by faith those minds liable to errors, which it was able to soothe by piety. For indeed, since the heights of faith are not grasped by weak breasts,

by means of those things which are enjoined, those things which are to be venerated are estimated, so that just things may witness to a just Author of their goods, holy things to a holy one. Shall we then suppose that that Lord, who at once embraced the persuading of reverence for the Godhead and the grace of piety, saying: 'You shall love the Lord your God,' and 'You shall love your neighbor,'—has now so changed as to abolish the names of kinships and to dash together the affections of piety? Shall we believe that He commanded the sunderings of the dearest pledges? And how is He Himself our peace, who made both one? How does He Himself say: 'My peace I give you, my peace I leave you,' if He has come to separate parents from children, children from parents, by the sundering of kinship?

How is he accursed who does not honor his father, yet religious who forsakes him? But if we observe that the first cause is that of religion, the second that of piety, we shall judge even this question easily resolved; for one must subordinate human things to divine. For if duty must be rendered to parents, how much more to the Author of parents, to whom you owe gratitude even on behalf of your parents! Or if those parents do not at all acknowledge their Parent, how should you acknowledge them? He does not, then, say that one must renounce the pledges of nature, but that God must be preferred to all. In short, you have in another book: 'He who loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me.' You are forbidden not to love your parents, but to prefer them to God.

For indeed the pledges of nature are the benefits of the Lord, nor ought anyone to love more the benefit he has received than the God from whom the benefit is kept as received. Therefore even according to the letter a religious exposition is not lacking to those who understand piously; yet there lies beneath it that by which we should think this sense is to be referred more loftily, since He added: 'There shall be from now on five in one house divided, three against two and two against three.' For who are the five, when a subjection of six persons seems to have been made—of father and son, mother and daughter, mother-in-law and daughter-in-law? Although the same one may be taken as mother who is mother-in-law;