Works (CSEL) 15 part 24/31

For the Greek well says ἁρμόζεται; for harmony is called the fitting and apt connection of all things joined together. There is harmony when the pipes of an organ, joined in due order, keep the lawful grace of a melody, and an apt arrangement preserves the concord of the strings. And so marriages do not have their harmony when a heathen woman is unlawfully joined to a Christian man. Therefore, where there is marriage, is there harmony? Where there is harmony, God joins; where there is no harmony, there is strife and dissension, which is not from God, because 'God is love.' Do not, then, dismiss your wife, lest you deny God to be the author of your union. For indeed if you ought to tolerate and amend the manners of strangers, much more those of your wife. Hear what the Lord has said:

'He who dismisses his wife makes her commit adultery.' For indeed upon her who is not permitted, while her husband lives, to change her marriage, the lust of sinning may steal. And so he who is the author of error is also guilty of the fault, in that she is dismissed pregnant with little ones, in that a woman advanced in years is thrust out with tottering step. It is hard, if you shut out the parent yet keep the children, so that to the insult to love you add also an injury to natural affection; harder, if on account of the mother you drive out the children also, when rather the children ought to redeem the parent's fault from the father. How perilous, if you expose the frail age of a young girl to error! How impious, if you abandon the old age of her whose youth you have deflowered!

Shall a commander, then, dismiss even a veteran without glory and with dishonored pay, and thrust him from possession of the empire he served; and shall a farmer drive from his own field the rustic worn out by his labor? Or is that lawful toward a consort which is wicked toward subordinates? You dismiss your wife, then, as if by right and without crime, and you suppose this to be permitted to you, because human law does not forbid it. But the divine law forbids it; you who obey men, fear God. Hear the law of the Lord, which even those who make laws obey: 'What God has joined together, let no man separate.' But here not only is a heavenly precept set aside, but a certain work of God is also dissolved. Do you allow, I beg, that your children, while you live, should be under a stepfather, or while their mother is safe should live under a stepmother? Suppose that, once repudiated, she does not remarry:

even this ought to have displeased you in your wife — that she keeps faith with an adulterer? Suppose she remarries: her necessity is your crime, and the marriage which you think is hers is adultery. For what difference does it make whether you commit adultery by an open confession of crime or under the appearance of a husband, except that it is graver to have made a law for crime than to have committed theft? But perhaps someone says: How did Moses command a bill of divorce to be given and the wife to be dismissed? He who says this is a Jew; he who says this is not a Christian. And therefore, since he objects this which was objected to the Lord, let the Lord answer him: 'For the hardness of your heart,' he says, 'Moses permitted you to give a bill of divorce and to dismiss your wives; but from the beginning it was not so.' Moses permitted, he says, God did not command;

but from the beginning it is the law of God. What is the law of God? 'A man shall leave his father and mother and shall cleave to his wife, and the two shall be in one flesh.' Therefore he who dismisses his wife rends his own flesh, divides his own body. This passage shows, moreover, that the things which were written on account of human frailty were not written by God. Whence the Apostle also says: 'I charge — not I, but the Lord — that the wife depart not from her husband'; and below, concerning the rest, he says: 'I say, not the Lord: if any brother has an unbelieving wife and she leaves him.' And so, where the marriage is unequal, he added: 'But if the unbeliever depart, let him depart.'

At the same time, the same Apostle denied that it is of divine law that a marriage of any kind whatever should be dissolved; he neither commanded it nor gave authority to the one deserting, but he took away the fault from the one who was abandoned. These things morally. Yet, because above he proposed that the kingdom of God is preached, and when he had said that not one tittle of the law can fall, he subjoined: 'Everyone who dismisses his wife and marries another commits adultery.' Rightly the Apostle admonishes, saying that 'this is a great sacrament, concerning Christ and the Church.' You find, therefore, a marriage which no one doubts is joined by God, since he himself says: 'No one comes to me unless my Father, who sent me, draws him'; for he alone could unite these nuptials. And therefore mystically Solomon said: 'By God a wife is prepared for a man.'

The husband is Christ, the wife is the Church: a wife in love, a virgin in integrity. Therefore let not persecution separate him whom God has drawn to the Son, let not luxury turn him aside, let not philosophy plunder him, let not the Manichaean defile him, let not the Arian turn him away, let not the Sabellian corrupt him. God has joined; let the Jew not separate. All who desire to adulterate the truth of faith and wisdom are adulterers. 'What is this bill,' he says, 'of your mother's divorce, by which I dismissed her?' You have heard of the divorce; believe in the marriage. You have heard what the husband himself says to the people of the Jews: 'Behold, for your iniquities you were sold, and for your sins I dismissed your mother.' Remain, then, in the house of the Father, remain with the bridegroom, strive to please the husband.

O soul that has believed in God, be a brave woman, such as that ecclesiastical soul or the Church, of whom Solomon says: 'Who shall find a brave woman? She who is such is more precious than precious stones; her husband trusts in her.' Let us see what she does for her husband, what her work is, what her service, why Christ trusts in her. A good wife clothes her husband. Let the faith of our laws clothe him with its own body, let it clothe his flesh with the glory of his own divinity, just as she also made two garments for her husband, that both in the present and in the future age she might honor him.

No mean woman is she whose loom is such, whom her husband may find not plucking the soft threads of wool, but handling the wool-weights of precious virtue, who lifts up her hands in the nights and directs her work by the balance, weighing the burden of her own conduct, who knows how to keep also the measure of her deeds, weaving the woof of glorious labor, anxious as to when her husband returns, distressed and sighing and now longing to be with her husband, saying: 'My husband delays to come; I will myself hasten to him; I will meet him face to face, when he begins to come in his glory.' Come, Lord Jesus, that you may find your bride uncontaminated, unadulterated, who has not violated your house nor neglected the commandments. Let her say to you:

'I have found him whom my soul loves'; let him bring you into the house of wine — for 'wine gladdens the heart of man' — let her be inebriated in the spirit, let her recognize the mystery, let her speak the oracle. 'A certain rich man was clothed in purple.' It seems more a narrative than a parable, since even the name is expressed. Not idly, moreover, does the Lord here signify by his suffering that the rich man, given over to worldly pleasures, was set in everlasting hunger among the dead — a man to whom not without reason were five brothers,

that is, the five senses of the body, which by a certain natural kinship seem to have been associated, and which were aflame with immoderate and innumerable desires; but Lazarus he placed in the bosom of Abraham as in a certain lap of rest and a retreat of holiness, lest, enticed by the pleasure of present things, we should remain in vices, or, overcome by weariness of labors, should flee from hardships.

And so, whether Lazarus is a man poor in the world but rich toward God, or some apostolic man poor in word but wealthy in faith — for not all holy poverty nor all riches are criminal, but as luxury defames riches, so holiness commends poverty — or whether, then, he is some apostolic man who holds the true faith and seeks not the fillets of words, the dye of arguments, the ostentatious veils of sentences, he receives a usurious reward as he assails the heretics, the Manichaean, Marcion, Sabellius, Arius, and Photinus — for these are nothing other than brothers of the Jews, to whom they are bound by the kinship of perfidy — restraining also the desires of the flesh, which, as I said, are fanned into flame by those five senses; he receives, I say, a usurious reward, for whom there is a recompense of overflowing abundance and an interest of perpetuity.

Nor do we think it foreign to suppose that this is also a treatise concerning faith, which Lazarus gathers, cast off from the rich man's table — whose ulcers, according to the letter, the fastidious rich man would shrink from, nor amid his precious feasts and perfumed guests would he endure the stench of ulcers licked by dogs, to whom the very smell of the air and nature itself were a disgust; although the insolence and pride of the rich are expressed by fitting tokens, in that they are so unmindful of the human condition as to take, as it were placed above nature, incitements of their own pleasures from the miseries of the poor, to laugh at the needy, to insult the destitute, and to take away from those whom they ought to pity. Whoever, therefore, will, let him gather both, as Lazarus did.

I think him like to that one who, often beaten by the Jews, offered the ulcers of his body to be licked, as it were by certain dogs, unto the patience of believers and the calling of the Gentiles; because it is written: 'They shall turn back at evening and shall suffer hunger like dogs.' This mystery that Canaanite woman recognized, to whom it is said: 'No one takes the bread of the children and casts it to the dogs.' She recognized that this bread was not the bread which is seen, but that which is understood, and therefore she answered: 'Yea, Lord; for even the little dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters' table.' These crumbs are of that bread. And because the bread is the Word, and faith is of the Word, the crumbs are, as it were, certain doctrines of faith. Whence the Lord answered, to show that it was faithfully said:

'O woman, great is your faith.' O happy ulcers, which shut out perpetual pain! O abundant crumbs, which drive away everlasting fasting, which fill the gathering poor man with eternal nourishment! The ruler of the synagogue cast you off from his table, when he refused the inner mysteries of the prophetic scriptures and of the law; for the crumbs are the discourses of the scriptures, of which it is said: 'And you have cast my words behind you.' The scribe cast you off, but Paul most diligently gathered you up, reading the people amid his injuries. They licked his ulcers who, when the serpent was shaken off, beheld him unharmed by the serpent's bite and believed. That keeper of the prison licked, who washed the wounds of Paul and believed.

Blessed are the dogs into whom the moisture of such ulcers distills, that it may fill their heart and fatten their jaws, whereby they may grow accustomed to guard the house, to keep the flock, to beware of wolves. Set now before your eyes the Arians, intent upon worldly pursuits, who court the alliance of royal power, that with military arms they may assail the truth of the Church: do they not seem to you to lie upon couches built of a certain purple and fine linen, who defend painted things in place of true, who abound in rich discourses, when they boast that the earth trembled beneath the Lord's body, that the heaven was overspread with darkness, that the seas were stirred up or calmed by his word — yet nevertheless denying that he is the Son of God?

Set also before you that poor man, who, knowing that the kingdom of God is not in word but in power, expressed in few words what he felt, saying: 'You are the Son of the living God.' Do not those riches seem to you to be in want, and this poverty to overflow? Rich heresy composed many gospels; poor faith held this one Gospel alone, which it received. Rich philosophy made for itself many gods; the poor Church knew one God. Between this rich man, therefore, and the poor man there is a great chasm, because after death merits cannot be changed; and therefore the rich man is brought in, in hell, desiring to draw something of refreshing spirit from the poor man; for water is the refreshment of a soul set in torments, of which Isaiah says:

'And you shall draw water with joy from the fountains of salvation.' But why is he tormented before the judgment? Because for the luxurious man to lack his delights is a punishment. For the Lord also says: 'There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth, when you shall see Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of heaven.' Late, however, does this rich man begin to be a teacher, when he now has time neither for learning nor for teaching. In which place the Lord most clearly declares that the Old Testament is the firm foundation of faith, blunting the perfidy of the Jews and shutting out the wickedness of the heretics, by whom the weaker mind is supplanted; for these are the little ones, who as yet know not the increases of virtue.

It is permissible, moreover, to observe that in the comparison of that steward above and of this present rich man there is an incentive to mercy; and there perhaps mercy is to be shown to the saints, whom he calls friends and to whom he assigns tabernacles, but here he teaches that it is to be bestowed upon the poor. 'If your brother has sinned against you, rebuke him.' How well, after the rich man who is tormented in punishments, did he subjoin the precept of pardon to be granted — to those, surely, who turn back from error — lest despair should fail to recall anyone from his fault! How moderate, indeed, was he, that pardon should be neither difficult nor indulgence too lax, lest either a harsh rebuke should strike anyone down, or connivance should invite anyone to fault! So too elsewhere: 'If your brother has sinned against you, go and reprove him between you and him alone';

for a friendly rebuke profits more than a turbulent accusation: the one instills shame, the other stirs up indignation. Let that rather be preserved which he who is admonished may fear to have made public. For it is good that he who is rebuked should believe you to be a friend rather than an enemy; for one more readily acquiesces in counsel than yields to injury. Whence the Apostle also says: 'Rebuke him as a brother, that he may be ashamed; do not regard him as an enemy.' For fear is a weak guardian of perseverance, but shame is a good master of duty; for he who fears is restrained, not amended, whereas what shames a man he turns into his nature. Beautifully, moreover, he set it down: 'If he has sinned against you'; for the condition is not equal, to sin against God and against man.

Finally, the Apostle, who is the true interpreter of the divine oracle, says: 'A heretic, after one rebuke, avoid,' because perfidy is not equally pardonable as a fault. And since for the most part error creeps in through inexperience, he commanded that the man be rebuked, so that either obstinacy may be avoided or the lapse corrected. But what is meant by: 'If he turns to you seven times, forgive him'? Is the number of pardons fixed beforehand, or rather, because, when on the seventh day God rested from all his works, after the week of this world a lasting rest is promised to us, so that, just as the evils of this world shall cease in their respite, so also the severity of vengeance shall come to rest?

But the Sabbath is not only of days, but also of months; and therefore on the tenth day of the seventh month there is a sabbath of sabbaths, and not only of months but also of years; and not only of years, but also of generations; and finally of the world itself, of which the great Sabbath is a type, just as in the Law there is the seventh week, after which the Jubilee year is celebrated. This mystery the Lord wished to reveal to us when He says: not seven times only, but even seventy times seven; for in the seventh generation, as you have it according to Luke, Enoch was caught up, lest malice should change his heart, and in him the sting of sorrow was stilled.

And in the seventieth and seventh generation the Lord was born of Mary, taking upon Himself the sins of the human race and granting remission of all transgressions. Therefore, although according to the letter you may learn to forgive frequently and not to hold resentment — for there is nothing by which one can be offended when forgiveness has become a habit — yet recognize the mystery. For not idly did the Lord say on the Sabbath to the woman: you are loosed from your infirmity, showing to His people, which like that woman was called to follow, that by His coming He had remitted sins. And so Lamech is condemned seventy times and seven, because he sins more gravely who commits a crime even while punishing one. But the sacraments of baptism remit every enormity of crime.

Learn therefore to forgive your injuries, because Christ forgave His persecutors. Nor is this without meaning, that He suffered on the Sabbath, signifying that there would be a great Sabbath in which death would be destroyed by Christ. But if the Jews so keep the Sabbath that they hold a whole month and a whole year as a kind of Sabbath, how much more ought we to celebrate the resurrection of the Lord! And therefore our elders handed down to us that all the fifty days of Pentecost are to be celebrated as the Pasch, because the beginning of the eighth week makes Pentecost. Whence also the Apostle, as a disciple of Christ who knew that there was a diversity of seasons, writing to the Corinthians says: perhaps I shall remain with you and pass the winter; and below: but I shall remain at Ephesus until Pentecost;

for a great door is opened to me. And so among the Corinthians he passes the winter, by whose errors he was troubled, because their affection toward the worship of God grew cold; while with the Ephesians he celebrates Pentecost and delivers to them the mysteries, and relaxes his mind, because he saw them fervent with the ardor of faith. Therefore through these fifty days the Church knows no fasting, as on the Lord's Day, on which the Lord rose, and all the days are as the Lord's Day. There will also be another Lord's Day, on which the Lord's body shall rise. Paul knew this, who says: but you are the body of Christ and members of His members. For this body of the Lord, and bones of His bones, shall cleave to the head; but the head of the Church is Christ.

Then therefore fasting shall cease, since in perpetual joy weariness, anxiety, and lassitude shall cease. Then death shall be destroyed; for the last enemy, death, shall be destroyed. For although death ceased in Enoch and was not found in him, yet it was not destroyed; for he was caught up that he might escape, but Christ was sacrificed that He might destroy. And therefore He well said: O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting? Therefore in this resurrection Christ shall again rise, as it were, in His own body. Blessed therefore is he who shall have part in the first resurrection; for as Christ is the firstfruits of those who sleep, so then the firstfruits of those rising again shall be His holy ones, the Church. This mystery Peter could not know. Perhaps he knew about Enoch:

yet who could comprehend with a human mind the mystery hidden in God? Let the Lord therefore come into my soul, into my mind, and subject it to Himself, so that when my mind has been made subject, I may say: I will fear no evils, for You are with me. If you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, you shall say to this mulberry tree: 'Be uprooted and cast into the sea,' and it shall obey you. Of the grain of mustard seed enough was said above; now we must discuss the mulberry tree. I read of the tree, yet I do not believe it to be a tree. For what reason, what profit is there for us in this, that a tree which bears fruit for the toiling farmers should be uprooted and cast into the sea?

Although we may judge this possible by the power of faith, that an insensible nature should obey commands addressed to sensible things, yet what does the very species of the tree itself signify? I have indeed read: I was a herdsman of goats, plucking mulberries; and I think the prophet signified to us that he himself, a sinner, was converted out of the flock of sinners — although it is fitting that the future prophet of the nations should be seen to have sought fruit among brambles, to have drawn food from brambles, intending to place the discolored and foul flocks of the nations, the peoples of the gentiles, in the pastures of his own writings, that they might grow fat with spiritual refreshment, while he himself might milk spiritual milk from the converted sinner.

But since in another book of the Gospel a mountain is spoken of, whose appearance is bare of growth, barren of vine and olive, unfruitful in harvests, fit for the lairs of beasts and restless with the courses of wild animals, and seems to express the height of spiritual wickedness exalting itself, as it is written: behold I am against you, O mountain of corruption, who corrupt the whole earth — it is fitting that we should suppose this also to be said in this place, since faith excludes the unclean spirit, especially since the nature of the tree agrees with this opinion. For its fruit at first is white in the flower, then, once formed, grows red, and at maturity turns black. The devil too, cast down by transgression from the white flower of angelic nature and from its glowing power, bristled with the foul stench of sin.

Behold, here you have Him saying to that mulberry tree: be uprooted and cast into the sea; when He casts the legion out of the man, He permits it to pass into the swine, which, driven on by the diabolical spirit, plunged themselves into the sea. This passage therefore, exhorting to faith, teaches morally that even those things which have been made solid by faith can be dissolved. From faith, however, comes love; from love, hope; and these are again poured back into themselves in a certain holy circuit. It follows that no one should glory in works, because by right we owe obedience to the Lord. For if you do not say to a servant who is plowing or feeding sheep: pass on, recline at table — where it is understood that no one reclines unless he has first passed on; finally Moses too passed on first, that he might see the great vision — if therefore you not only do not say to your servant:

recline at table, but require of him yet another service and give him no thanks, so neither does the Lord allow in you the practice of a single work or labor, because, while we live, we ought always to be working. Therefore recognize that you are a servant indebted by many services. Do not prefer yourself, because you are called a son of God — grace is to be acknowledged, but nature is not to be ignored — nor boast if you have served well, since you did what you were bound to do. The sun obeys, the moon submits, the angels serve. The chosen vessel of the nations says: I am not worthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the Church of God. Then elsewhere, showing himself conscious of no fault, he added: but I am not justified by this.

Let us therefore not demand praise from ourselves, nor seize beforehand the judgment of God, nor anticipate the sentence of the Judge, but reserve it for its own time, for its own Judge. After this the ungrateful are reproved, and so at length we come to the discourse on the coming judgment. In that hour, let him who is on the housetop and whose goods are in the house not go down to take them away; and let him who is in the field likewise not return back. Remember Lot's wife. When the Lord was asked by the disciples when the kingdom of God would come, He said: the kingdom of God is within you — namely through the truth of grace, not through the servitude of fault. And so he who wishes to be free, let him be a servant in the Lord; for in that part by which we share in servitude, we share also in the kingdom. He says therefore:

the kingdom of God is within you; but when it would come, He would not say, but He said that the day of judgment would come, that He might strike all with the terror of the imminent judgment and not bring the false security of delay. And lest He should seem to grieve the disciples by denying them anything, He says in another book: but of that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven nor the Son. He well placed the Son in the middle; for the same one is the Son of Man and the Son of God, so that we should rather reckon this said according to the Son of Man, because He knows the end of times not through the nature of man, but through the nature of God. Yet it is not foreign to faith if you should take it of the Son of God. For what is there that the good Father should have hidden from the Son, to whom He gave all things?

Or how did He not give the knowledge of the time, who gave the very power of judgment? And how can the Son be ignorant of what the Father knows, since the Son is in the Father, and the Spirit searches even the deep things of God, since the Son Himself is the height of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God? But why He would not say, He shows in another place: it is not for you to know the times and the years which the Father has placed in His own power. Do you see whither he tends who denies that the Trinity is of one power, so that there should be something which the Son does not know? For why should the Father hide anything from His own Son? For either we are unwilling to disclose to others what we know out of envy, or lest perchance we should be betrayed; but neither the suspicion of envy falls upon the Father, nor of treachery upon the Son.

Therefore they are of one knowledge, because they are of one power. Next, He who knows the signs of the coming judgment surely knows also the end. For what is there that He should not know, who is as the flashing lightning, in that, being the light, the Son of God, He illuminates the inner things of the heavenly mystery? In that hour, He says. Therefore He knows the hour also, but He knows it for Himself, He does not know it for me. He rightly asserts that the cause of the flood and of the fire and of the judgment proceeded from our sins, because God did not create evil, but our own deserts found it out for themselves. For they were eating and drinking, taking wives and giving in marriage.

Not that marriages are condemned, nor indeed are foods condemned, since in the former are the supports of succession, in the latter the supports of nature — otherwise one would have to depart from this world — but in all things moderation is sought, and whatever is in excess is from evil. Let there be some agreement for a time, that we may be free for prayer; let there be amid the cares of the world and the drunkenness of intemperance some sobriety of religion and a truce of chastity. Therefore, since on account of the wicked it is necessary that the upright suffer in this age contrition of heart and mind, that they may receive a more abundant reward in the future, they are equipped with remedies, that those who are in Judea may flee into the mountains. What is this Judea? For I know also another Judea, according to the spirit, not according to the letter;

for in Judea God is known. But what are these mountains, which could restrain the upheaval of the coming judgment, when it is written: trembling shall seize the mountains? Heaven and earth shall pass away: how shall a portion of the lands remain unharmed, or be able to protect me, which does not even preserve itself? Where then shall I hide myself from His wrath, who troubles the depth of the sea? If I ascend into heaven, He is there; if I descend into hell, He is present. He therefore cannot be deceived who is everywhere, but He can be appeased. And so the day of judgment is at hand. If you wish not to be caught, then flee daily, flee daily. Do you ask whither to flee? Ascend the mountain, you who bring good tidings to Zion, that by the summit of your lofty merits you may be eminent; for God is the God of the mountains, and not the God of the valleys.

Ascend thither, where Christ sits at the right hand of God, whose foundations are in the holy mountains, and the mountains are round about Him. Your mountain is Paul, your mountain is Peter. Upon their faith set the footstep of your mind. Those established in the law of God and in the inheritance of faith, the day of judgment finds not for punishment, but for glory. If anyone too is set on the housetop, that is, has ascended to the upper parts of his house and to the summit of eminent virtues, let him not fall back to the earthly works of this world. For I know the housetop on which Rahab — she who was a harlot in figure, but in mystery the Church, joined by fellowship of the sacraments to the gentile peoples — hid the spies whom Joshua had sent.