Works (CSEL) 15 part 22/31

Nor could this woman have been healed otherwise except that she fulfilled the law and grace — the law in the precepts, grace in the laver, through which, dead to the world, we rise again with Christ; for in the ten words of the law is perfection, and in the number eight is the fullness of the resurrection. The work of the sabbath therefore is a sign of what is to come, namely, that each person, having discharged the law and grace, through the mercy of Christ shall be stripped of the troubles of bodily frailty. And for this reason a sanctification was sent ahead beforehand, in a sign, through Moses, that there might be an exercise of the sanctification to come and of the spiritual observance of abstaining from worldly works. In short, God too rested from the works of the world — not from works, whose operation is eternal and unceasing, as the Son says:

'My Father works until now, and I work' — that, after the likeness of God, our worldly and unholy works might cease. But the ruler of the synagogue, not understanding this, forbade anyone to be healed on the sabbath, although the sabbath is a type of the holidays to come — and therefore there are holidays not of good work but of evil work — and for this reason it was prescribed that, bearing no burden of offenses nor fasting from good works, we should celebrate the sabbaths to come after death. Hence the Lord seems to answer spiritually, when He says: 'Hypocrites, does not each one of you on the sabbath loose his ox or ass and lead it to water?'

For why did He name no other animal except to show that, although the rulers of the synagogue oppose it, it will nevertheless come to pass that the Jewish and the Gentile people will lay aside the thirst of the body and the heat of this world by the abundance of the Lord's fountain? For 'the ox knew its owner, and the ass its lord's crib.' And so that people, which before was fed with the nourishment of cheap hay — which dries up before it is plucked — received that bread which descended from heaven. And therefore, through the calling of the two peoples, He says that the Church will be saved, which, the time of the law being fulfilled and at the age of the Lord's resurrection, had received the time of its own absolution. How merciful therefore is the Lord, how loving in both, when He either has mercy or takes vengeance!

In the type of the synagogue He orders the tree to be cut down; in the type of the Church He saves the woman. How sweet the parable, and how easy the solution! He compares bond with bond, that the false charge of the Jews may be refuted by their own deed. For since they themselves loosen the bonds of animals on the sabbath, they reprehend the Lord, who freed men from the bonds of sins. 'To what is the kingdom of God like, and to what shall I judge it to be like? It is like a grain of mustard, which a man took and put in his garden, and it grew and became a tree, and the birds of heaven rested in its branches.' The present reading teaches us that in comparisons the nature is to be regarded, not the appearance. And so let us see why the lofty kingdom of heaven is compared to a grain of mustard;

for I remember that elsewhere too the grain of mustard is read, where it is compared to faith, the Lord saying: 'If you have faith like a grain of mustard, you shall say to this mountain: Be removed and cast into the sea.' Nor is this a small faith, but a great one, which can command a mountain to transfer itself; for the Lord does not demand a mediocre faith from the apostles, who, He knows, must contend against the height of spiritual wickedness that exalts itself. Do you wish to know that a great faith is required? Read in the Apostle: 'And if I have all faith, so that I remove mountains.' Therefore, if the kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard and faith is like a grain of mustard, then faith assuredly is the kingdom of heaven, and the kingdom of heaven is faith.

And so he who has faith has the kingdom of heaven, and the kingdom is within us and faith is within us; for we read: 'The kingdom of God is within you,' and elsewhere: 'Have faith in your own selves.' In short, Peter, who had all faith, received the keys of the kingdom of heaven, that he might unlock it also for others. Now let us estimate, from the nature of the mustard, what the force of the comparison is. Its grain is certainly a thing cheap and simple: if it begins to be crushed, it pours out its strength. Faith too at first seems simple, but if it is crushed by adversities, it pours out the grace of its strength, so as to fill with its odor others also who either hear or read. A grain of mustard are our martyrs Felix, Nabor, and Victor: they had the odor of faith, but they lay hidden.

Persecution came; they laid down their arms, bent their necks, and, crushed by the sword, scattered the grace of their martyrdom through all the bounds of the world, so that it might rightly be said: 'Into all the earth their sound went forth.' But sometimes faith is crushed, sometimes pressed, sometimes sown. The Lord Himself is the grain of mustard. He was whole, untouched by injury, but, like a grain of mustard, the people who had not touched Him did not know Him. He chose rather to be crushed, that we might say: 'For we are the good odor of Christ unto God'; He chose to be pressed. Hence Peter said: 'The crowds press You.' He chose to be sown like a grain, 'which a man took and put in his garden.' For in a garden Christ was both seized and buried; in a garden He grew, where also He rose again, and He became a tree, as it is written:

'As the apple tree among the trees of the wood, so is my brother in the midst of the sons.' Therefore you too, sow Christ in your garden — for a garden is assuredly a place full of various flowers and fruits, where the grace of your work may bloom and the manifold odor of varied virtue may breathe forth. There, then, let Christ be, where the fruit is. Sow the Lord Jesus: He is a grain when He is seized, a tree when He rises; a tree overshadowing the world; a grain when He is buried in the earth, a tree when He is lifted up to heaven. Press too, with Christ, and sow faith. Faith is pressed when we believe Christ crucified. Paul pressed faith, when he said:

'And I, when I came to you, brethren, came not with eminence of speech or of wisdom, preaching to you the mystery of God; for I judged not that I knew anything among you save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified.' And because he taught how to press faith, he taught also how to lift it, saying: 'Now indeed we no longer know Christ crucified.' But we sow faith when, from the gospel and the apostolic and prophetic readings, we believe in the Lord's passion. We sow faith, therefore, when we cover it as in a softened and worked soil, the Lord's flesh, so that, as by the vapor and pressing of the sacred body, faith may sow itself abroad. For he who has believed that the Son of God became man believes that He died for us, believes that He rose again for us.

I sow faith therefore when I plant in His burial. Do you wish to know that Christ is the grain and Christ is the sown one? 'Unless a grain of wheat falling into the earth dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it brings forth much fruit.' Therefore we have not erred in saying what He had Himself already said. Now He is both a grain of wheat, because He confirms the heart of man, and a grain of mustard, because He kindles the heart of man. And although each is fitting for all purposes, yet He seems a grain of wheat when His resurrection is treated of; for He is the bread of God which descended from heaven, in that the word of God and the example of the resurrection nourishes the minds.

He sharpens hope, He strengthens affection; but a grain of mustard, in that the word concerning the Lord's passion is more bitter and more keen — more bitter to weep over, more keen to stir. And so, when we hear and read that the Lord fasted, that the Lord thirsted, that the Lord wept, that the Lord was beaten, that the Lord said at the time of His passion: 'Watch and pray, that you enter not into temptation,' rebuked as it were by the sap of a more bitter word, we temper the sweetnesses of bodily pleasures that are sweeter than is right. Therefore he who sows a grain of mustard sows the kingdom of heaven. Do not despise this grain of mustard; it is indeed the least of all seeds, yet it becomes, when it has grown, greater than all herbs. If Christ is a grain of mustard, how is Christ either least or growing?

But it is not by nature, but by appearance, that He again grows great. Do you wish to know the least? 'We saw Him, and He had no form nor comeliness.' Learn the greatest: 'Beautiful in form beyond the sons of men.' For He who had no form nor comeliness was made more excellent than the angels, beyond all the glory of the prophets, whom weak Israel had eaten like herbs; for it had refused the one bread, by which hearts are strengthened, and had not received the other. Now Christ is the seed, because He is the seed of Abraham; for to Abraham were the promises spoken, and to his seed. He does not say, 'and to seeds,' as in many, but as in one: 'and to your seed,' which is Christ.

Nor is Christ only a seed, but also the least of all seeds, because He came not in a kingdom, not in riches, not in the wisdom of this world. But suddenly, like a tree, He poured forth the lofty crown of His power, so that we may say: 'Under His shadow I desired and sat.' And often, I think, He seemed at once both a tree and a grain. He is a grain when it is said: 'Is not this the son of Joseph the carpenter?' But amid these words He suddenly grew, the Jews themselves bearing witness, who, as it were, could not grasp the branches of a spreading tree, saying: 'Whence has this man this wisdom?'

The grain therefore is a figure, the tree is wisdom, in whose leafy branches that 'night-raven in the dwelling,' that 'solitary sparrow on the roof,' that one caught up into paradise, to be caught up into the air, and the safe cloud, now rest in a secure seat. There rest too the powers and the angels of the heavens, and whoever by spiritual deeds have deserved to fly up. Saint John rested, when he reclined upon the breast of Jesus; nay, he too is extended like a branch by the sap of that tree. A branch is Peter, a branch is Paul, 'forgetting the things that are behind and reaching forth to the things that are before.'

Into whose bosom and into certain recesses of disputation, we who were far off — namely we who were gathered from the nations, whom for a long while the storm of the world's emptiness and the whirlwind of spiritual wickedness used to drive — fly with the oars of virtues taken up, so that the shadow of the saints may defend us from the burning of this world, as we now flourish in the security of a sure station, because our soul, before bent down with grievous sins like that woman, has, like a sparrow snatched from the snare of the fowlers, migrated into the branches and mountains of the Lord.

And so we, who before flitted about, vain in superfluous observances and with empty levity, now at last, freed by the faith of Christ in our hands and free from the bonds of the sabbaths, apply ourselves to good works, and even in our very feasts we have liberty; we shut out intemperance, lest, free from the law, we serve our cupidities. For the law bound itself, that it might absolve us from our cupidities. Grace, which took away the lesser servitude, has commanded far weightier things: 'All things are lawful to us, but not all things are expedient.' For it is a grave thing to use power, so that you fall back under power. Cease to be under the law, that you may be above the law in virtue. To what shall I judge the kingdom of God to be like? It is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in flour, until the whole was leavened.

This comparison, in pursuing the questions to be examined, sheds so much ambiguity that it yields the divergent opinions of very many. Fittingly, then, we said above that the grain of wheat is Christ, since the spiritual leaven was hidden in us; and on this account most people suppose Christ to be the leaven, because it raises up the power it has received. And just as leaven excels its own kind by force, not by appearance proceeding from the meal, so Christ too, equal in body to the fathers, yet stood preeminent, incomparable in his divinity. Therefore let the holy Church, which is figured by the type of that woman of the Gospel — whose meal we are — hide the Lord of the laws in the inner recesses of our mind, until the color of heavenly wisdom overspreads the secret chambers of our soul.

And because in Matthew we read that the leaven was hidden in three measures, it seemed fitting that we should believe the Son of God to be hidden in the Law, veiled in the Prophets, and fulfilled in the preaching of the Gospel, so that he might procure for us a perfect faith out of them all; and, formed within us by the collation of the Scriptures, in us who are his body, he might be made all and in all. For he himself was the Word of God and the mystery which was hidden from the ages and from the generations, than which nothing can be said more attested to the expression of his eternity. For indeed he was: for he was such that, hidden from the sacrilegious, made manifest among the saints, and foreordained before the ages, he was kept unto glory.

And this is the glory, brethren: that we may be able to search out the mystery hidden from the ages in God. What is in God is surely from God; for God cannot be capable of an alien nature. Nor am I doubtful in mind that some suppose this was said of this world, that it should be leavened in the Law, the Prophets, and the Gospel, so that every tongue may confess the Lord. Let us therefore examine all things, and search the more diligently. No one finds unless he has first sought. Let us build the tower, let us reckon the cost of the Scriptures, let us weigh the expenses, lest anyone say even of some work of ours: This man wished to build and could not finish. He who builds ought to lay a good foundation. A good foundation is faith; a good foundation is that of the apostles and prophets;

for our faith rises up from the two Testaments, nor does he do wrong who has said that in both there is an equal measure of perfect faith, since the Lord himself says: If you believed Moses, you would believe me; for in Moses also the Lord has spoken. Well, then, is the perfect measure in both, because he is perfect in both, and the faith of each is one, since the oracle and the response are of one power and one meaning. Yet it pleases me to follow what the Lord himself taught — that the leaven of the Church is spiritual doctrine; for since it is written: Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, and since the Apostle has said: Not in the leaven of malice and wickedness, it is shown that doctrine is leaven.

But one leaven is that of the tares, another the leaven of wheat; whence also we agree with good authors in saying that the Church sanctifies with the spiritual leaven the man reborn, who consists of body, soul, and spirit; for body and soul are sanctified, and the spiritual grace itself receives an increase of sanctification, when, through the Church's office as it were of leavening and through the teaching of the Scriptures — which grows, as it were, by the collation and abundance of heavenly discourses — that practice, poured into the whole man and thoroughly mingled, takes deep root, so that even these very things become one leaven. And this indeed comes to pass when these three accord together with a certain equal balance of desires, and an equal concord of wills breathes harmoniously upon them.

This work of the Church, therefore, is not haphazard nor accidental, but is gathered by long meditation, so that these three may be one, whole and free from the law of sin. As the asserter of this opinion we have the Apostle, who says: But may the Lord himself sanctify you in all things, that your whole spirit and soul and body may be kept without blame in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. This does not come about through worldly temptations, unless that woman of the Gospel hides that leaven, to which the kingdom of heaven is compared, in three measures of meal, until the whole is leavened;

for there are three measures, as I have said — of flesh, soul, and spirit — but the spirit by which we all live, set within this body, lives the more truly when the wantonness of the flesh does not overflow, and the soul is not bent down by bodily errors, and the measure of living is kept unoffended in the whole man. But because the equality of the measures hardly endures without the aid of the Church and of doctrine, therefore that woman, who bears the figure of the Church, mingles into them the power of spiritual doctrine for so long, until that whole inner man, hidden in the heart, is leavened and rises up into the grace of the heavenly bread. For well is the doctrine of Christ called leaven, since Christ is the bread, and the Apostle says: Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body.

There comes to be, then, one leaven, when the flesh does not lust against the spirit nor the spirit against the flesh, but we mortify the deeds of the flesh, and the soul, conscious that it has taken the breath of life from the breathing of God, turns away from the earthly contagions of worldly attachment. Whence the Apostle also commanded us to walk not in the flesh but in the spirit, so that, sanctified through the washing of regeneration, putting off the old man with his desires and putting on the new, who is created according to Christ, we may walk not in the oldness of the letter but in the newness of the spirit; that even at the time of the resurrection an uncorrupted fellowship of body and soul and spirit may abide for us, and that now we may obtain all things which we ask.

This, as it seems to many, the Lord also signified when he says: If two of you shall agree upon earth concerning anything whatsoever you ask, it shall be done for you by my Father who is in heaven. And so some take the two as soul and body, others as soul and spirit, so that if on earth — that is, in the body — the soul and spirit agree with each other and do not assail one another with diverse desires, all the things prayed for may seem able to be brought to effect. And this comes to pass when both have become one, if, hostilities being removed or dissolved, the two are founded into one new man — that is, soul and spirit — so that we may pray with the spirit and pray also with the mind.

Although many take the two as two peoples — from Israel and from the Gentiles — to be gathered into one at the time of the resurrection, so that a perfection that shall abide forever may come to be, and that which is in part may be destroyed. But many take it of husband and wife, agreeing together in zeal of charity. And so, if in this life the three measures remain in the same leaven, until they are leavened and become one, so that there is no distance between the equal things, nor do we seem composite out of a diversity of three, there will be in the future, for those who love Christ, an uncorrupted fellowship, and we shall not remain composite; for we who are now composite shall be one, and shall be transformed into one substance.

For neither in the resurrection will one thing be inferior to another, as now in us there is the frail weakness of the flesh, and the bodily condition of nature either lies open to wounds or is subject to injuries, or, pressed down by the weight of its own burden, cannot raise its footstep higher above the earth and lift it up. But we shall be fashioned into the grace of a simple creature, when that shall be fulfilled which was said by John: Beloved, now we are the sons of God, and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be; but we know that when it shall be revealed, we shall be like him. And so, since the nature of God is simple — for God is spirit — we too shall be fashioned into the same image, so that as is the heavenly One, such also are the heavenly.

Therefore, as we have borne the image of that earthly one, let us bear also the image of this heavenly one, which our soul ought to put on. And therefore, first from this point onward, the man with dropsy is healed, in whom the overflowing flux of the flesh weighed down the offices of the soul and quenched the ardor of the spirit. Then humility is taught, while at that wedding banquet the craving for the higher place is restrained — yet gently, so that the kindliness of persuasion might exclude the harshness of coercion, that reason might advance to the effect of persuasion, and correction might amend the disposition. To this, as on a near threshold, kindness is joined, which is so distinguished by the definition of the Lord's verdict, if it be bestowed upon the poor and the feeble; for to be kindly disposed toward those who will repay is a matter of avarice.

Lastly, as to a man who has, so to speak, completed his term of service, the bestowal of riches to be despised is prescribed, because neither can he who, intent on lower pursuits, buys for himself earthly possessions attain the kingdom of heaven — since the Lord says: Sell all that you have and follow me — nor can he who has bought oxen (when Elisha slew those he had and divided them among the people), nor he who marries a wife and thinks on the things of the world, not on the things of God; not that marriage is reproached, but because integrity is called to a greater honor, since the unmarried woman and the widow think on the things of the Lord, that she may be holy in body and spirit. For she who is married thinks on the things of the world, how she may please her husband.

But that we may return into favor — as above with the widows, so now also with the married — we do not shrink from the opinion which most follow: that we reckon three kinds of men to be excluded from the fellowship of that great supper — of Gentiles, Jews, and heretics. And therefore the Apostle says that avarice is to be fled, lest, hindered after the manner of the Gentiles by iniquity, malice, unchastity, and avarice, we be unable to attain to the kingdom of Christ; for every covetous or unclean person — which is the service of idols — has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God. The Jews, however, impose upon themselves the yokes of the Law by a bodily service, and therefore, according to the prophet, let us burst their bonds and cast away from us their yoke;

for we have received Christ, who has hung upon our necks the gentle yoke of his own piety. And the five yoke of oxen are the ten words, or the five books of the old Law, of which he seems to say to the Samaritan woman in the Gospel: For you have had five husbands. But heresy, like Eve, assails the firmness of faith with feminine feeling, and, slipping away in slippery facility, courts the allurements of false beauty, neglecting the inviolate beauty of truth. Therefore they excuse themselves, because the kingdom is barred to no one except him whom the profession of his own voice has excluded; for the Lord graciously invites all, but either our sloth or our error turns us away.

Therefore both he who bought the farm is a stranger to the kingdom — for those buying and selling, as you have read, the flood swallowed up in Noah's time — and he who chose the yoke of the Law rather than the gift of grace, and he who excuses himself because of a wife to be married; for it is written: If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother and wife, he cannot be my disciple. For indeed, if for your sake the Lord renounces his own mother, saying: Who is my mother, or who are my brethren? why should you desire to set anyone before your Lord? Yet the Lord commands neither to be ignorant of nature nor to be a slave to nature, but so to indulge nature that you may reverence the Author, and may not, on account of love for parents, fall away from God.

And so, after the supine disdain of the rich, he betook himself to the Gentiles, and bids both the good and the bad come in — that he might increase the good, and change the disposition of the bad to better things — so that there might be fulfilled what was read today: Then the wolves and the lambs shall feed together. He invites the poor, the feeble, the blind, whereby it is shown to us either that no weakness of body excludes from the kingdom, and that he the more rarely offends to whom the enticement of sinning is wanting, or that the infirmity of sinners is forgiven through the mercy of the Lord, so that, redeemed from his crime not by works but by faith, if he glories, he may glory in the Lord. And so he sends to the outgoings of the ways; for prudence is sung at the outgoing. He sends to the streets.

because he sent to sinners, that from the broader ways they might come to the narrow way that leads to life. He sends to the ways and along the hedges, because evidently these are fit for the kingdom of heaven who, occupied by no desires of present things, hasten to the things to come, established as it were on a certain path of good will; and who, after the manner of a hedge that separates the cultivated from the uncultivated and wards off the inroad of beasts, know how to distinguish good from evil and to set up the defense of spiritual faith against the temptations of wickedness. Finally the Lord, to show that his vineyard had been fortified, says: I set a hedge about it and dug round it. And the Apostle says that the middle wall of the hedge has been taken away, which had broken through the continuity of the fortification.

Faith, therefore, and reason are sought, and they are sought in the streets — that is, in the passages of the inner affection — because it is written: Let your waters be diffused in your streets. Nor yet is this complete, that anyone invited should arrive, unless he has a wedding garment — that is, unless he has faith and charity. And therefore he who has not brought peace and charity to the altars of Christ shall be taken by his feet and hands and cast into the outer darkness. There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. What is this outer darkness? Is there even there some prison, and quarries to be entered? By no means.

But whoever are outside the promises of the heavenly commandments are in the outer darkness, because the commandments of God are light, and whoever is without Christ is in darkness, because the inner light is Christ. Therefore there is neither any gnashing of bodily teeth, nor any perpetual fire of bodily flames, nor a bodily worm. But these things are so on this account: because, just as from much undigested matter both fevers and worms are born, so if anyone does not digest his sins by a certain interposed sobriety of abstinence, but, by mixing sins with sins, contracts as it were an indigestion of old and recent offenses, he shall be burned by his own fire and consumed by his own worms. Whence also Isaiah says:

Walk in the light of your fire and in the flame which you have kindled. The fire is that which the sorrow of sins begets; the worm is this — that the irrational sins of the soul prick the guilty mind and conscience, and gnaw away certain inward parts of the conscience, which are born like worms from each one, as from the body of the sinner. Finally, the Lord declared this through Isaiah, saying: And they shall see the members of the men who have transgressed against me; and their worm shall not die, and the fire shall not be quenched. The gnashing of teeth also betrays the disposition of one indignant, in that each one too late repents, too late groans, too late is angry with himself that he has sinned with such stubborn wickedness.

Which of you, he says, is the man who has a hundred sheep, and, if one of them should go astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that went astray? You had learned in the former passages to banish negligence, to shun arrogance, to take up devotion, not to be held by worldly occupations, not to prefer fleeting things to eternal ones; but because human frailty cannot keep a firm footstep on so great a slipperiness of the world, the good physician has shown you remedies even against error, and the merciful judge has not denied the hope of pardon. And so not idly did holy Luke set in order three parables: the sheep which had perished and was found, the drachma which had perished and was found, the son.