Works (CSEL) 15 part 26/31

For me, at any rate, it is profitable to believe God to be good, whom I am to have as judge of my offenses. Let those see to it who are unwilling to believe him good. And so, since this man who tempts is learned in the Law, as is shown in another book, he rightly said: 'No one is good but the one God,' that he might admonish, since it is written: 'You shall not tempt the Lord your God,' but rather should confess to the Lord that he is good. In short, he often presses him hard; for when the man gloried in the Law that he had kept all things from his youth, in order to expose his empty boasting, he showed him that he still lacked what belongs to the Law. And therefore he is brought to sadness at the precept of mercy, and a certain natural form of judgment is rendered upon him.

It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. Great force, great weight in the words. For by what other words could he more vehemently express that a rich man ought not to boast himself in his riches than by such as these, by which it is defined that to be rich and merciful is contrary to nature? Take from me the allurements and tinsel of words, which are wont to enervate the meaning. This man ought not to have been coaxed but broken, who spurned mercy.

Nevertheless, if there are some whom the ornaments of words delight more than the manly sense and natural bearing and form of meaning—as good suitors do in choosing a wife, examining her character, not recalled by her beauty nor by any offense in appearance, since they are drawn by virtue of soul—let these too in the words seek the mystery, which is a certain mind and soul of words, and let them not pick apart the words in the mystery. The camel, then, is taken as a type of the Gentile people, which that lion who seeks whom he may devour drives, laden with treasure, by prophetic gazes into the desert: for 'in tribulation and distress' the lion and the lion's cub; 'to the asps and to the brood of flying asps they bore their riches on asses and camels.'

And the camel is well figured for the Gentile people, because, degenerating in the deformity of superstition, before the people of the nations believed, it bore the appearance of a beastlike foulness, absurd footprints, ugly mouths. More easily, therefore, did this sinner enter through the narrow way, which is the way of Christ, who by the passion of his own body, penetrating the way of death, like a needle restored certain torn garments of our nature, than the people of the Jews, rich in the Law, needy in faith, headlong in fury, infamous in crime. You may also understand it morally of every sinner and of the arrogant rich man.

Does not that publican, weighed down by the conscience of his own offenses, when he did not dare to lift his eyes to God, seem to you like a certain camel to enter more easily into the eye of the needle by the remedies of his confession than that Pharisee into the kingdom of God—arrogant in prayer, boasting of innocence, presumptuous of glory, a reproacher of mercy, a herald of himself, an accuser of another, who would rather confront the Lord than petition him? If anyone, then, shudders at the camel, let him shudder at the man who is fouler in deeds than the camel. 'Honor your father and mother.' Fittingly is the beginning of the Law read to me today, when it is the birthday of my priesthood; for every year my priesthood seems to begin as if anew, when it is renewed by the lapse of the seasons.

It is good also that this is read: 'Honor your father and mother'; for you are my parents who have conferred the priesthood upon me—you, I say, are my sons or my parents, each one of you my sons, all of you together my parents. For gladly would I call you either my children or my parents, you who hear the word of God and do it—my sons. For it is written: 'Come, sons, hear me'; my parents, since the Lord himself said: 'Who is my mother or my brothers? My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it.' Well, therefore, did the Law, which had set first: 'You shall love the Lord your God' and 'You shall love your neighbor,' add: 'Honor your father and your mother.' For this is the first step of piety; for God willed these to be authors of your being to you.

Honor them with dutiful services, so as to abstain from insults, for the piety due to parents is not to be wounded even by a look. But it is too little not to wound them, since the Law provided that they should not suffer injury—for 'whoever curses father or mother shall die the death'—you, honor them, that you may be good. The benefit of the Law is one thing, the office of piety another. Honor your own, since the Son of God honored his own; for you have read: 'And he was subject to them.' If God honored mere servants, how much more should you honor your parents? Christ, then, honored Joseph and Mary, not by the debt of nature but by the office of piety; he honored also God his Father, in such a way as no one was able to honor, so as to be obedient even unto death: honor, then, you too your parents.

Now honor consists not only in showing respect, but also in generosity. 'Honor widows who are truly widows'; for honor is to render according to merits. Feed your father, feed your mother. And if you should feed your mother, you have still not repaid the pains, you have not repaid the torments which she suffered for you; you have not repaid the attentions with which she bore you; you have not repaid the nourishment which she gave with the tender affection of piety, pressing her breasts to your lips; you have not repaid the hunger which she endured for you, lest she eat anything harmful to you, lest she swallow anything that would injure her milk. For you she fasted, for you she ate; for you she did not take the food she wanted, for you she took the food she did not want; for you she kept vigil, for you she wept:

and will you suffer her to be in want? O son, how great a judgment you take upon yourself, if you do not feed your parent! To him you owe what you have, to whom you owe what you are. How great a judgment, if the Church should feed those whom you are unwilling to feed! 'If any believing man,' it says, 'or if any believing woman has widows, let him minister to them, that the Church be not burdened, that it may suffice for those who are truly widows.' This concerning strangers: what of parents? Not idly did we speak just now, because a mother's complaint touched us; but we preferred to admonish publicly the one who is such, rather than to chastise him privately. And if he be not exposed by our voice, let him nevertheless blush at his own feeling.

Do not allow, my son, that the hunger of others should feed your parents; do not allow, my son, that the fasts of the poor should seek food for your parents. If not for the sake of grace and salvation, then for the sake of shame, you at least, my son, feed them. Or are you not ashamed, if, as you enter the church, your aged mother stretches out her hands to strangers, and, her daughter passed over, begs alms from outsiders, while you pass by with lofty neck and, drawing your garment by the noddings of your eyes, wearing earrings and bracelets and rings and the rest which Isaiah mentions? What if she should turn her speech upon you, demanding back the debt of nature, the price of your nurturing, the office which is owed by your hand to her who bore you? What will you answer? Will you give to others? What if they cast back at you: 'Go, first feed your mother'?

For, even if they are poor, they nevertheless do not seek an impious contribution. Have you not heard above that that rich man reclining in fine linen and purple, from whose table Lazarus gathered the crumbs, is tortured with eternal punishments, because he did not impart nourishment to the poor man? If it is grievous not to give to strangers, how much more grievous to shut out one's parents! But you say that you would rather confer upon the Church what you were going to confer upon your parents. God does not seek a gift from the hunger of parents. Whence, when the Jews reproached him because the Lord's disciples did not wash their hands, the Lord answered: 'Whoever shall say: Whatever gift is from me will profit you, has not honored his father or mother.' Wherefore not imprudently did we digress into the obscurity of the sense.

For the Jews, while they follow the tradition of men, neglect the things of God. The disciples, preferring the tradition of God, neglected those of men, in not washing their hands when they ate bread, since 'he who is washed throughout has no need to wash his hands.' Jesus had washed them, they sought no other washing; for by one baptism Christ has loosed all baptisms. And so whomever the Church has washed has no need to wash again. The disciples, therefore, attended to the mystery, seeking not the cleanness of the body but of the soul. This the Jews reproached, but they are shrewdly refuted by the Lord, because they observe empty things and despise the profitable. And therefore he says to them: 'Why do you say to father or mother,' whom the Law commands to be honored:

Whatever gift is from me will profit you'? That is: when a needy father or mother asks something for his support from a son, since the Jew, fearing the Law, looks for an excuse not to give, he is wont to say: 'It is a gift, what would profit you from me,' so that the religious father may dread to accept money dedicated to God. But this is a tradition of men weaving excuses for their avarice; whereas the tradition of God is that you should first feed your parents. For if, according to the divine oracle, an insult to a parent is atoned for by death, how much more hunger, which is heavier than death! At which point the Lord curbs his insolent boasting.

For many, in order to be praised by men, confer upon the Church what they take from their own, although mercy ought to proceed from the household by the office of piety. Give therefore first to your parent, give also to the poor man, give to that presbyter what earthly thing you have in abundance, that from him you may receive the spiritual thing which you lack; for 'he who honors shall be honored.' See, then, that when he receives he gives, and receives not as one destitute, but as one who will repay in greater measure. Give to the poor man for his rest, that you too, sharing of your own with the needy, may obtain rest. But just as Scripture says parents are to be fed, so for God's sake parents are to be forsaken, if they hinder the affection of a devoted mind.

Now it came to pass, when he drew near to Jericho, that a certain blind man sat beside the way. In the book according to Matthew two are brought in, here one; there as he goes out of Jericho, here as he draws near. But there is no discrepancy; for since in this one man there is a type of the Gentile people, which by the dominical sacrament received the brightness of its lost light, it makes no difference whether it receive the cure in one or in two, since, deriving its origin from Ham and Japheth, the sons of Noah, it set forth in two blind men the two authors of its race.

This, too, Luke seems not to have omitted, when he subjoins Zacchaeus, who, 'little of stature'—that is, exalted by no dignity of inborn nobility, scant in merits, like the people of the nations—on hearing of the saving advent of the Lord, desired to see him whom his own had not received. But no one easily sees Jesus, no one set upon the earth is able to see Jesus. And because he had not the prophets, nor the kingdom, as a kind of grace of natural form, he climbed up into the sycamore, treading down, namely, the vanity of the Jews with his footstep, correcting also the errors of a former age; and therefore he received within the lodging of his house the inner things of the laws.

And well did he climb into the tree, that, like a good tree producing good fruits, having been cut from the wild olive by nature and grafted contrary to nature into the good olive, he might be able to bring forth the fruit of the Law; for the root is holy, even though the branches are useless, whose unfruitful glory the people of the Gentiles, by faith in the resurrection, transcends as it were by a certain elevation of the body. 'And behold, a man named Zacchaeus.' Zacchaeus in the sycamore, the blind man on the way. The Lord awaits the one in order to have mercy on him; the other he ennobles with the brightness of his lodging: the one he questions in order to heal him, with the other he invites himself unbidden; for he knew that the reward of his host would be abundant, yet, although he had not yet heard the voice of one inviting, he had heard his affection.

But lest we seem, like those disdainful of the poor, to have quickly left that blind man and passed over to the rich one, let us await him, since the Lord too awaited; let us question him, since Christ too questioned. Let us question because we do not know, he because he knew; let us question that we may learn from where this man was cured, he questioned that in the one man we might learn, all of us, from where we may merit to see the Lord; for he questioned that we might believe that none but the one confessing can be healed. 'And immediately,' it says, 'he saw and followed him, magnifying the Lord.' And he walked through Jericho. For otherwise he would not see, unless he followed Christ, unless he proclaimed the Lord, unless he passed by the world. Let us also return into favor with the rich;

for we do not wish to offend the rich, we who wish, if it can be done, to heal all. Lest, struck down by the comparison of the camel, and forsaken in Zacchaeus sooner than was fitting, they take the offense of a just resentment. Let them learn that the crime lies not in possessions, but in those who know not how to use possessions; for riches, as they are hindrances in the wicked, so in the good are aids to virtue. Certainly Zacchaeus, though rich, was chosen by Christ; but by lavishing half of his goods on the poor, by restoring also fourfold what he had taken away by fraud—for the one is not enough, nor does liberality have grace if injury persists, since not spoils but gifts are sought—he received a more abundant reward than he was conferring.

And well is he brought in as a chief of the publicans. For who should despair of himself, when even this man attained it, whose wealth came from fraud? And he too, it says, was rich, that you may know not all rich men are greedy. What does it mean that Scripture has expressed the stature of no other but this one: that 'he was little of stature'? See, lest perhaps he was little in malice, or still little in faith; for he had not yet promised when he climbed up, he had not yet seen Christ—rightly still little. In short, John was great, because he both saw Christ and the Spirit remaining like a dove upon Christ, as he himself says: 'I saw the Spirit descending like a dove and remaining upon him.' And what is the crowd but the confusion of an inexperienced multitude, which could not see the summit of wisdom?

Therefore Zacchaeus, so long as he is in the crowd, does not see Christ; he climbed above the crowd and saw, that is: having passed beyond the ignorance of the common throng, he merited to behold the one he longed for. And he beautifully added: 'because the Lord was about to pass that way'—whether where the sycamore was or where one was to believe—that he might both preserve the mystery and sow grace; for thus had he come, that through the Jews he might pass over to the Gentiles. And so he saw Zacchaeus on high; for now by the loftiness of faith he stood eminent among the fruits of new works, as it were by the height of a fruitful tree. And since we have digressed from the type to moral matters, on the Lord's day it is fitting to relax the mind among so many wills of believers and to mingle in some festivity.

Zacchaeus in the sycamore, the new fruit, namely, of the new time, that in this too might be fulfilled that saying: 'The fig tree put forth its green figs'; for to this end Christ came, that from trees not fruits but men might be born. We read elsewhere: 'When you were under the fig tree, I saw you.' Therefore Nathanael under the tree, that is, above the root, since he was just—for the root is holy—yet Nathanael under the tree, because under the Law; Zacchaeus above the tree, because above the Law; the former a hidden defender of the Lord, the latter a public preacher; the former still sought Christ from the Law, the latter now, above the Law, left his own things and followed the Lord. 'Behold, your mina has gained ten minas.'

A good order, that, being about to call the Gentiles and to command the Jews to be slain—those who would not have Christ reign over them—he should send this comparison before, lest it be said: 'He had given nothing to the people of the Jews, whereby they could become better,' or: 'Why is anything required of him who received nothing?' Not a mean thing is this mina, which the evangelical woman above, because she had not found it, lit a lamp, sought by the light brought near, and rejoiced over it found. In short, from the one, one man made ten minas, another five. Perhaps these have moral significance, since there are five senses of the body; those ten are twofold, that is, the mystical things of the Law and the moral things of uprightness.

Whence Matthew too set down five talents and two talents: in the five talents that there might be the moral things, in the two both, the mystical and the moral. Thus what is inferior in number is richer in substance. And here we can understand the ten minas as the ten words, that is, the doctrine of the Law, the five minas as the masteries of discipline. But I want the man learned in the Law to be perfect in all things; for the kingdom of God is not in speech, but in virtue. And well, since he speaks of the Jews, do only two bring in the multiplied money—not, to be sure, of bronze, but of the interest of disputation. For the interest of money lent is one thing, the interest of heavenly doctrine another. In short, when the Lord says: 'Why did you not give my money to the bank?' he seeks the interest not of our money, but of his own.

One says that he hid it within the earth, because he buried in the pursuit of pleasure the reason which was given to us according to the image and likeness of God, and hid it as it were in the pit of the flesh. Of the others silence is kept, who, like prodigal debtors, lost what they had received. In those two are the few who, by two sendings, were dispatched to the dressers of the vineyard; in the rest are all the Jews. This comparison Matthew too wished to apply to us, namely that, just as the rich man who does not impart his money to the poor, so also he who does not divide the grace of his doctrine to the unlearned, though he is able to teach, is no slight defendant of guilt. And concerning this, since we have spoken of it in the books written on the faith, it was better to pass it by.

But what can the ten cities be, unless perhaps the souls over whom he is rightly set who lends out to the minds of men the Lord's money and those chaste utterances, tried like silver? For just as Jerusalem is said to be built up like a city, so are there peaceable souls. And as the angels preside, so also do these who have earned the life of the angels. BOOK NINE. And it came to pass, when he had drawn near to Bethphage and Bethany, to the mount that is called Olivet, that he sent two disciples, saying: Go into the village which is over against you, where, as you enter, you will find a colt of an ass tied, on which no man has sat. Beautifully, having left the Jews behind, the Lord ascends to dwell in the affections of the Gentiles as in a temple;

for this is the true temple, in which the Lord is adored not in the letter but in the spirit; this is the temple of God, which the continuity of faith, not a structure of stones, has founded. So those who hated are forsaken, and those who were to love are chosen. And therefore he comes to the Mount of Olives, that he might plant new olive-trees in lofty virtue, whose mother is that Jerusalem which is above. Upon this mountain is that heavenly husbandman, so that all who are planted in the house of God may each one say: But I, like a fruitful olive-tree in the house of the Lord. And perhaps the mountain itself is Christ. For who else would bear such fruits of olives, not bending with an abundance of berries, but with a fullness of the Spirit teeming with the nations?

He himself is the one through whom we ascend and to whom we ascend. He himself is the door, he himself is the way, who is opened and who opens, who is knocked upon by those entering and is adored by those who have served their term. Therefore in the village the colt was, and it was tied together with the ass. It could not be loosed save by the Lord's command. The apostolic hand loosed it: such the deed, such the life, such the grace. Be such, that you may be able to loose the bound. Now let us consider who they were who, their error being detected, were cast out of paradise and bound up in the village. And you see how those whom death had driven out, life called back. And therefore according to Matthew we read of both the ass and the colt, so that, since in two human beings both sexes had been driven out, in two animals both sexes might be called back.

Therefore there in the mother ass he figured Eve, as it were, of the error, while here in the colt he expressed the whole body of the Gentile people. And therefore the colt is set upon the ass. And well is it said: on which no man has sat, because no one before Christ called the peoples of the nations to the Church. Indeed according to Mark you have it thus: whom no man yet has sat upon. But it was held bound by the chains of unbelief, given over to an unjust master, in slavery to error; yet it could not claim mastery over itself, whom not nature but guilt had made its lord. And therefore when he is called 'lord,' one is acknowledged — for there are many gods and many lords, but generally there is one God and one Lord.

And so if a lord is not specified, he is defined not by the joining of a person but by the universality of nature. But Mark introduced it as tied before the door, because outside Christ whoever exists is outside, on the way; but he who is in Christ is not outside. He added 'in the passage,' where there is no one's settled possession, no manger, no fodder, no stall. Wretched is the servitude whose right of ownership is unsettled; for he has many masters who has not one. Strangers bind it that they may possess; this one looses it that he may hold; for he knows that gifts are more powerful than chains. Nor is that idle, that two disciples are sent — Peter to Cornelius, Paul to the rest. And therefore he did not designate persons, but defined a number;

yet if there is anyone who demands persons, he may reckon it of Philip, whom the Spirit sent into Gaza, when he baptized the eunuch of Queen Candace and from Azotus to Caesarea sowed the word of the Lord through all the cities. Nor must that be passed over, that he declares them to be sent back presently, because they were to be directed who would preach the Lord Jesus in the territories of the Gentiles. Those disciples, then, being directed, when they loosed the colt, did they use their own words? By no means, but they spoke just as Jesus had told them, that you may recognize that not by their own speech but by the word of God, not in their own name but in the name of Christ, they poured faith into the Gentile peoples, and the adverse powers, which claimed for themselves the obedience of the nations, yielded to the divine command.

Whence also the apostles spread their own garments under Christ, either that they might display the glory of their accomplishment by evangelical preaching — for in the divine Scriptures garments are very often virtues — which might soften somewhat the hardness of the Gentiles even by their own virtue, so that they might render the obedience of a happy carrying unhindered to diligent affections. For it did not please the Lord of the world to be borne with public show on the back of an ass, but that, with the mystery hidden, he might spread coverings over the inner chambers of our mind, and in the secret recesses of our souls, in an interior session, the mystic rider might be seated, as though poured into a kind of body of divinity, guiding the steps of the mind, bridling the wantonness of the flesh, that by the leading of piety he might tame the accustomed affection of the Gentile people.

Happy are those who have received such a rider in their inmost reins, plainly happy are those whose mouths, lest they be loosed in much speaking, the rein of the heavenly word has restrained! What is this rein, brethren? Who will teach me how to restrain or to loose the mouths of men? He showed me the rein who said: that speech may be given to me in the opening of my mouth. The word, then, is a rein; the word is a goad, and therefore it is hard for you to kick against the goad. He has therefore taught us to open the heart, to endure the goad, to draw the yoke. Let another also teach to bear the curbs of the tongue; for the virtue of keeping silence is rarer than that of speaking.

Let him plainly teach who, as though mute against guile, did not open his mouth, ready for the scourges and not refusing the blows, that there might be a holy seat for God. Learn from the household servant of God to bear Christ, since first he bore you, when as a shepherd he brought back the wandering sheep; learn to spread the back of your mind diligently beneath him, learn to be under Christ, that you may be able to be above the world. Not just anyone easily carries Christ, but he who can say: I am bowed down and brought very low, I roared from the groaning of my heart. But if you desire not to be shaken, fix your washed footstep upon those garments of the saints. For beware lest you walk with muddy feet, beware lest with crooked steps you forsake the paths of the prophetic ways strewn before you.

For indeed, that the journey might be safer for the Gentiles who were to come, those who went before paved the path for Jesus with their own garments all the way to the temple of God. That you might walk without stumbling, the disciples of the Lord, stripping themselves of the covering of their own body, amid the oppositions of the crowds strewed the way for you with their martyrdom. Yet if anyone wishes to take it thus, we do not resist: that this colt now walked over the garments of the Jews.

But what the broken branches mean — which are wont indeed to entangle the steps of those passing by — I should certainly doubt, had not the good husbandman of the whole world taught me in what went before, that already the axe is laid to the roots of the trees, that at the coming of the saving Lord it might cut down the unfruitful and lay the empty glory of the unfruitful nations upon the ground, to be trodden under the feet of the faithful, so that the nations, by the spirit of a renewed mind, might be able, like the shoots of new trees, to sprout from the old stumps. Therefore do not despise this little ass; for just as in the clothing of sheep there are ravening wolves, so on the contrary there is hidden a man of the heart under the form of a beast.

For under the covering of the body, which we have in common with the beasts, a mind full of God is quickened. That this pertains to the figure of men, holy John declared more clearly by adding that they took for themselves the pith of palms; for the righteous shall flourish like the palm. And therefore at Christ's approach the standards of righteousness and the ensigns of triumphs were already being raised above the shoulders of men. Why does the crowd marvel at what works a mystery? Even though it does not know what it marvels at, yet it marvels, because in that colt wisdom sits, virtue abides, righteousness cleaves. Do not despise that ass either, which once saw an angel of God whom a man could not see.

And it saw and reported and spoke, that you might recognize that in later times, at the coming of the great angel of God, those Gentiles would speak before the asses. But beautifully, according to Luke, we read that the crowds praising God ran to meet him at the descent of the mountain, that they might signify that the worker of a spiritual mystery had come to them from heaven. The crowd, then, acknowledges God, calls him king, repeats the prophecy: Hosanna to the Son of David, that is, it declares that the redeemer of the house of David, the awaited Son of David also according to the flesh, has come — and this that very crowd which after a little while was to crucify him. Truly a memorable token of the divine working, that against itself a testimony is wrung from the unwilling, when they deny by their affections the God whom they confess with their voices.