Letters (CSEL) 1 part 65/85

'A bruised reed,' he says, 'he shall not break,' or, as the Septuagint rendered, 'a broken reed he shall not crush.' The broken reed, which was formerly vocal and used to sing together in praises of the Lord, is to be called Israel, who once struck against the cornerstone and fell upon it and was broken in it; therefore it is said of him: 'Rebuke, O Lord, the beasts of the reed'; and in the book of Joshua a torrent is called Cane, that is, 'of the reed,' which has muddy waters, which Israel chose.

Despising the purest streams of the Jordan and turning back in mind to Egypt, longing for the miry and marshy region and the melons and onions and the rest and the cucumbers and the pots of Egyptian flesh, Israel is most rightly called by Isaiah a broken reed, upon which whoever chooses to lean, his hand shall be pierced through. For whoever, after the coming of the Lord the Saviour, forsaking the spirit of evangelical interpretation, rests in the death of the Jewish letter, all that man's works are wounded. 'Smoking flax also he shall not quench' — the people gathered from the Gentiles, who, the fire of the natural law being extinguished, were wrapped in the errors of the most bitter smoke, which is harmful to the eyes, and of dark gloom.

Whom he not only did not extinguish and reduce to ashes, but on the contrary from a small and almost dying spark he raised up the greatest conflagrations, so that the whole world blazed with the fire of the Lord the Saviour, which he came to send upon the earth and which he desires to burn in all. According to the tropology, what seems to us concerning this passage we have briefly noted in the short commentaries on Matthew.

But this one, who did not break the bruised reed and did not quench the smoking flax, also carried judgment through to victory — whose judgments are true, justified in themselves, that he might be justified in his words and overcome when he is judged; and so long may the light of his preaching shine again in the world, and be crushed and overcome by the snares of no one, until he set judgment in the earth and that be fulfilled which is written: 'Thy will be done, as in heaven, so on earth.' 'And in his name shall the Gentiles hope,' or 'in his law shall the isles hope.'

For just as the isles are indeed struck by the whirlwind and blast of the winds and by frequent tempests, but are not overthrown — after the example of the evangelical house, which is founded with sturdy mass upon the rock — so also the churches, which hope in the law and in the name of the Lord the Saviour, speak through Isaiah: 'I am a strong city, a city that is besieged.' What sense there is in what is written in the evangelist Matthew: 'If any man will come after me, let him deny himself.' What is this denial of self, or how does one who follows the Saviour deny his own self? — Of which in the third book of the commentaries on the same Matthew I have spoken thus briefly: He who puts off the old man with his works denies himself, saying:

'Now I live, not I, but Christ liveth in me,' and takes up his cross and is crucified to the world. And he to whom the world is crucified follows the crucified Lord. To which we can now add these things: after he had shown his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the priests and scribes and chief priests, and be killed, Peter, taking him aside, began to rebuke him and to say: 'Be it far from thee, Lord, this shall not be unto thee.' Who, turning, says to Peter: 'Get thee behind me, Satan; thou art an offence unto me, for thou savorest not the things that are of God, but the things that are of men.' For, terrified by human fear, he dreaded the passion of the Lord. And as, hearing 'suffer many things' and 'be killed,' he was afraid, so, hearing:

'And the third day he shall rise again' — he ought to have rejoiced, and to have mitigated the sorrow of the passion by the glory of the resurrection. Whence, that one having been reproved in place of his fear, he spoke to all his 'disciples,' or he called the crowd together with his disciples, as Mark set it down, or, according to Luke, he said to all: 'If any man will come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.' Of which exhortation this is the sense: confession unto God is not delicate and secure. He who believes in me ought to shed his own blood. For he who shall lose his life in the present shall gain it in the future. Believing in Christ, he daily takes up his cross and denies himself. He who was unchaste, turned to chastity, denies luxury by temperance;

he who was fearful and timid, having assumed the strength of fortitude, does not recognize his former self. The unrighteous man, if he follows righteousness, denies iniquity; the foolish man, if he confesses Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God, denies foolishness. Knowing which, let us deny our former selves, not only in the time of persecution and the necessity of martyrdom, but in every manner of life, in work, in thought, in speech; and let us confess those whom, being reborn in Christ, we now are. For the Lord was crucified for this reason: that we too, who believe in him and are dead to sin, might be crucified with him and might say what Paul the apostle taught: 'I am crucified with Christ,' and:

'But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of my Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world.' He who is crucified with Christ despoils the principalities and powers and triumphs over them on the tree. Whence also [in the Gospel according to John], as a figure of those who were to believe in the Lord and to crucify themselves with him, Simon of Cyrene carries his cross [which, according to the other evangelists, he himself first bore]. What is meant by what is written in the same Matthew: 'Woe to them that are with child and that give suck in those days,' and: 'Pray that your flight be not in winter or on the sabbath'? — Which plainly hangs upon what precedes.

For when the Gospel of Christ shall have been preached to all the nations, and the consummation shall have come, and they shall see the abomination of desolation, which was spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place, then it is commanded to those who are in Judaea, that they flee into the mountains; and he who is on the housetop, that he come not down to take anything out of his house; and he who is in the field, that he return not back to take up his coat. Of which we have spoken more fully in the commentaries on the same Matthew. And immediately is joined: 'Woe to them that are with child and that give suck in those days.' In which days? When the abomination of desolation shall have stood in the holy place.

That this is foretold, according to the letter, concerning the coming of Antichrist, is doubtful to no one — when the greatness of persecution compels flight, and heavy wombs and little sucklings retard the flight; although some would have the siege and battle of Titus and Vespasian against the Jews, and especially against Jerusalem, to be signified. Winter also and the sabbath they interpret thus: that they be not compelled to flee at that time when the hardness of the cold does not allow those fleeing in the fields and in desert places to lie hidden, and the observance of the sabbath either makes them transgressors, if they flee, or subjects them to the swords of the enemy, if they keep the rest of the sabbath and its precepts.

But we, hearing the Lord the Saviour bid those who are in Judaea flee to the mountains, ourselves also lift up our eyes to the mountains, of which it is written: 'I have lifted up my eyes to the mountains, whence shall come my help,' and in another place: 'His foundations are in the holy mountains,' and: 'The mountains are round about it, and the Lord is round about his people,' and: 'A city set upon a mountain cannot be hidden'; and we take off the skin of the letter, and with bare feet, ascending with Moses the mountain of Sinai, we say: 'Passing over, I shall see this great vision,' so that we may be able to understand pregnant souls, which have conceived the beginnings of faith from the seed of teachings and of the word of God, and say with Isaiah:

'Because of thy fear, O Lord, we have conceived and have been in travail and have brought forth; we have made the spirit of thy salvation upon the earth.' For just as seeds are little by little formed in the womb, and for so long it is not reckoned homicide, until the confused elements receive their images and members; so a thought conceived by reason, unless it break forth into work, is still held in the belly and quickly perishes by miscarriage, when it shall have seen the abomination of desolation standing in the church, and Satan transfigured into an angel of light. And of offspring of this kind Paul speaks, saying: 'My little children, of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you.' These, therefore, I reckon, according to mystical understandings, to be the women of whom the same apostle writes:

'The woman being deceived was in the transgression; nevertheless she shall be saved through the bearing of children, if they continue in faith and charity and holiness with modesty.' Which women, if they shall at some time have begotten from the divine word, it is necessary that the things begotten grow and first receive the milk of infancy, until they come to solid food and to the mature age of the fullness of Christ. For everyone who is fed with milk is unskilful in the word of righteousness; for he is a babe.

These souls, therefore, which have not yet brought forth, or which have not yet been able to nourish the things that were begotten, when they shall have seen the heretical word standing in the church, are quickly offended and perish, and cannot endure in tempest and in persecutions — especially if they have had leisure from good works and have not walked in the way which is Christ. Of this abomination of heretical and perverse doctrine the apostle said that the man of iniquity and the adversary exalts himself against everything that is called God and religion, so that he dares to stand in the temple of God and to show himself that he is God;

whose coming, according to the working of Satan, makes both the things that were conceived perish by miscarriage, and those that were born unable to come to boyhood and to perfect age. Wherefore the Lord must be prayed to, that at the outset of faith and of growing age winter may not arise — of which it is written: 'The winter is past, it has gone its way' — lest we grow numb in idleness, but, shipwreck threatening, let us rouse the sleeping Lord and say: 'Master, save us, we perish.' What is intended by what is written in the Gospel according to Luke: 'And they received him not, because his face was set as though he would go to Jerusalem.' — The Lord, hastening to proceed to Jerusalem, that the days of his assumption might be fulfilled and that he might celebrate the passover, of which he had said:

'With desire I have desired to eat this passover with you'; and that he might drink the cup, of which he says: 'The cup which the Father hath given me, shall I not drink it?' and might strengthen all his teaching by the gibbet, according to that which is written: 'When I shall be lifted up, I will draw all things to myself' — he set his face firmly to go to Jerusalem. For firmness and fortitude are needed for one hastening of his own accord to the passion; whence also to Ezekiel, to whom God had said: 'Son of man, thou dwellest in the midst of scorpions, and fear them not,' he says: 'I have made firm thy face, and I have given thy face of bronze and thy forehead of iron,' so that, if perchance the hammer of the whole earth should rise up against him, he might resist as a hardest anvil and wear down the hammer, of which it is written:

How is the hammer of all the earth broken and shattered? And he sent messengers, that is, angels, before his face. For it was fitting that angels should minister to the Son of God; or else he calls the apostles angels, since John too, the forerunner of the Lord, was called an angel. And when they had entered a village of Samaria to make ready for him, they did not receive him, because his face was set as though going to Jerusalem. The Samaritans and the Jews are divided against each other by a hostile hatred, and, although they hate all nations, they rage against one another with a peculiar fury, since both contend for the possession of the Law and persecute each other so far that, after the Jews had returned from Babylon, the Samaritans hindered the building of the temple.

And when the Samaritans wished themselves also to build the temple together with them, the Jews answered: 'It is not lawful for us and for you to build a house to the Lord.' Indeed, as a supreme insult the Pharisees reproach the Lord: 'Do you not have a demon and are you not a Samaritan?' And in the parable of the man going down from Jerusalem to Jericho a Samaritan is set forth as a sign and a wonder, because a bad man did good; and at the well it is written of the Samaritan woman: 'For the Samaritans have no dealings with the Jews.' The Samaritans, therefore, seeing that the Lord was going to Jerusalem, that is, to their enemies — which they had heard from his disciples who had come to prepare lodging — recognized that he was a Jew, and, as a Jew and a stranger and one who was going to their foes, they refused to receive him.

Yet another understanding may also be suggested to us: that it was the Lord's will not to be received by the Samaritans, because he was hastening to go to Jerusalem, there to suffer and pour out his blood, lest, occupied with a Samaritan reception and with the teaching of that people, he should defer the day of the Passion which he had come to endure. Whence he says elsewhere: 'I am not come except to the lost sheep of the house of Israel'; and he charged the apostles: 'You shall not enter the cities of the Samaritans,' wishing to remove every occasion of Jewish persecution, lest afterward they should say: 'We crucified him because he had joined himself to our enemies and foes.'

His face, then, was that of one going to Jerusalem, and therefore, according to this second understanding, the Samaritans did not receive him, because he was hastening to enter Jerusalem. But that they should not receive him was of the Lord's own will. Thereupon the apostles, versed in the Law, in which they knew only that justice of 'an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,' strive to avenge the injury and to imitate Elijah, at whose word fire had consumed two captains of fifty soldiers, and they say to the Lord: 'Will you that we say fire should come down from heaven and consume them?' 'Fine!' they say, 'shall we say it? For Elijah too had said: If I am a man of God, let fire come down from heaven upon you.' Therefore, that the word of the apostles might have effect, it belongs to the will of the Lord.

For unless he commands it, the apostles say in vain that fire should come down upon them; and in a certain way they say this in other words: 'If for an injury done to Elijah's servant fire came down from heaven, and the burning consumed not the Samaritans but the Jews, how much more, for contempt of the Son of God, ought the flame to rage against the impious Samaritans!' On the contrary the Lord, who had come not to judge but to save, not in power but in humility, not in the glory of the Father but in the lowliness of man, rebukes them, because they did not remember his own teaching and evangelical goodness, in which he had said: 'To him who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also,' and: 'Love your enemies.' Another little question from the Gospel of Luke you have set before me:

Who is the unjust steward who was praised by the Lord's own voice? Wishing to know the reason for him and from what source he arose, I unrolled the volume of the Gospel and among other things found that, when tax-collectors and sinners were drawing near to the Saviour to hear him, the Pharisees and scribes murmured, saying: 'Why does this man receive sinners and eat with them?' And he spoke to them the parable of the hundred sheep and the one that was lost, which, being found, was carried back on the shepherd's shoulders; and, to show why it had been proposed, he at once added: 'I say to you: so shall there be joy in heaven over one sinner doing penance, more than over ninety-nine righteous who have no need of penance.'

When he had also proposed another parable, of the ten drachmas and the one that was lost and found, he brought it to a similar conclusion: 'So, I say to you, there shall be joy before the angels of God over one sinner doing penance.' He also proposed a third parable, of a man who had two sons and divided his substance between them. And when the younger, having wasted his possessions, began to be in want and to eat the husks that were the food of swine, he returned to the father and was received by him. The elder brother, too, envying, is corrected by the father's voice, because he ought to have rejoiced and been glad, since his brother was dead and lived again, was lost and is found.

These three parables he spoke against the Pharisees and scribes, who were unwilling to admit the penance of sinners and the salvation of tax-collectors. 'And he said also,' the text says, 'to his disciples' — no doubt, 'a parable' — just as before to the scribes and Pharisees; by which parable he might exhort his disciples to clemency and might say in other words: 'Forgive, and it shall be forgiven you,' so that in the Lord's Prayer you may ask with unabashed brow: 'Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors.' What, then, is the parable that provokes the disciples to clemency? 'A certain man was rich, who had a steward,' or manager; for this is what oikonomos means.

A steward (vilicus) properly is the governor of a country estate (villa), whence he takes the name 'vilicus' from 'villa.' But oikonomos is the dispenser both of money and of crops and of all that the master possesses. Hence too the Oikonomikos of Xenophon is a most beautiful book, which, as Tullius (Cicero) interpreting it signifies, treats not of the governance of a farm but of the dispensation of an entire household. This dispenser, then, was accused before his master, that he had squandered his substance. When he had been summoned, the master said: 'What is this I hear of you? Render an account of your dispensation; for you can no longer manage what is mine.' The man said within himself: 'What shall I do, since my master takes the dispensation away from me? To dig I am not able; to beg I am ashamed.'

'I know what I shall do, so that, when the dispensation shall have been taken from me, they may receive me into their houses.' And he called each one of his master's debtors and said to the first: 'How much do you owe my master?' He said to him: 'A hundred baths of oil.' He said to him: 'Take your bond and, sitting down quickly, write fifty.' Then he said to another: 'And you, how much do you owe?' He answered: 'A hundred cors of wheat.' He says to him: 'Take your bond and write eighty.' And the master praised the unjust steward, or dispenser, because he had acted prudently: for the children of this world are more prudent than the children of light in their generation. And I say to you: make for yourselves friends of the unjust mammon, that, when it shall fail, they may receive you into everlasting dwellings.

He who is faithful in little is faithful also in much, and he who is unjust in the least is also unjust in much. If, then, you have not been faithful in the unjust mammon, who will entrust to you what is true? And if you have not been faithful in what is another's, who will give you what is your own? No servant can serve two masters. For either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will listen to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon. Now the Pharisees, who were covetous, heard all these things, and they scoffed at him.

I have set down the whole text of this parable, so that we may not seek its meaning from elsewhere and strive to find definite persons in the parable, but may interpret it as a parable, that is, a likeness — which is so called from the fact that it is 'thrown alongside' (paraballetai), that is, likened to another, and is as it were the shadow or prelude of the truth. If, then, the dispenser of the unjust mammon is praised by his master's voice, because from an unjust thing he prepared justice for himself, and the master, having suffered losses, praises the dispenser's prudence, because he acted indeed fraudulently against his master but prudently for himself, how much more will Christ, who can suffer no loss and is inclined to clemency, praise his disciples, if toward those

who were entrusted to them, they have been merciful! Finally, after the parable he added: 'And I say to you: make for yourselves friends of the unjust mammon.' Now 'unjust mammon' — riches are so called not in the Hebrew but in the Syriac tongue — because they are gathered out of iniquity. If, then, iniquity well dispensed is turned into justice, how much more the divine word, in which there is no iniquity, which was also entrusted to the apostles, if it shall have been well dispensed, will raise its dispensers into heaven! Wherefore it follows: 'He who is faithful in the least,' that is, in carnal things, 'will be faithful also in much,' that is, in spiritual things.

But he who is unjust in a little, so as not to give to the brethren for their use what was created by God for all, this man will be unjust also in dispensing spiritual wealth, so that he distributes the Lord's teaching not according to need but according to persons. 'But if,' he says, 'you do not well dispense the carnal riches which slip away, who will entrust to you the true and eternal riches of the teaching of God? And if in these things which are another's — and everything that is of the world is another's to us — you have been unfaithful, who will be able to entrust to you those things which are your own and are properly assigned to man?' Hence he rebukes avarice and says that he who loves money cannot love God. Therefore for the apostles too, if they wish to love God, riches must be despised.

Wherefore the scribes and Pharisees, who were covetous, understanding that the parable was spoken against them, scoffed at him, preferring things carnal and certain and present to things spiritual and future and, as it were, uncertain. Theophilus, seventh bishop of the church of Antioch after the apostle Peter, who, fitting together the sayings of the four evangelists into one work, has left us the monuments of his genius, spoke thus concerning this parable in his commentaries: 'The rich man, who had a steward or dispenser, is God almighty, than whom nothing is richer. His dispenser is Paul, who learned the sacred letters at the feet of Gamaliel, and had received the law of God to be dispensed.

When he had begun to persecute those who believed in Christ, to bind, to kill, and to squander all his master's substance, he was rebuked by the Lord: "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? It is hard for you to kick against the goad." And he said in his heart: "What shall I do? I who was a master and steward am compelled to be a disciple and a laborer. To dig I am not able. For I see all the commandments of the Law, which lay upon the earth, destroyed, and the Law and the prophets ended, up to John the Baptist. To beg I am ashamed, that I, who had been a teacher of the Jews, am forced to beg the teaching of salvation and faith from the Gentiles and from the disciple Ananias."

'I will do, therefore, what I understand to be useful to me, so that, after I have been cast out from my stewardship, Christians may receive me into their houses.' And he began to teach those who had formerly been engaged in the Law and had so believed in Christ that they supposed they were to be justified in the Law — to teach that the Law was abolished, that the prophets had passed away, and that the things which before had been for gain were to be reckoned as dung. So he called two of his many debtors.

First, the one who owed a hundred baths of oil — namely those who had been gathered from among the Gentiles and greatly needed the mercy of God — and from the number one hundred, which is full and perfect, he made them write fifty, which properly belongs to penitents, according to the Jubilee and that parable in the Gospel in which to one are forgiven five hundred and to the other fifty denarii. But second, he called the people of the Jews, who had been nourished with the wheat of God's commandments and owed him the number one hundred, and compelled them, out of the hundred, to make one hundred and eighty — that is, to believe in the Lord's resurrection, which is contained in the number of the eighth day — and out of eight to complete a decade, so that from the Sabbath he might pass over to the first day of the week.

For this reason he is commended by the Lord, because he did well and, for his own salvation, was changed from the severity of the Law into the clemency of the Gospel. But if you ask why he is called 'the steward of iniquity' in the Law, which is God's: he was an unjust steward, who indeed offered well but did not divide well — believing in the Father but persecuting the Son, having God almighty but denying the Holy Spirit. So Paul the apostle was, in his transgression of the Law, more prudent than the once-children of light, who, engaged in the observance of the Law, lost Christ, who is the true light of God the Father. What Ambrose, bishop of Milan, thought of this passage you will be able to read in his commentaries.

The explanation of Origen and Didymus on this parable I could not find, and whether it has perished through the age of time or whether they themselves did not write it, I hold uncertain. To me, according to the former interpretation, this seems the case: that of the unjust mammon we ought to make ourselves friends — not any poor people whatever, but those who can receive us into their houses and into everlasting dwellings — so that, when we have given them small things, we may receive great things from them, and, giving what is another's, we may receive our own and sow in blessing, that we may reap blessing; for he who sows sparingly shall also reap sparingly. In what sense that is to be taken which we read in the Epistle to the Romans: 'For scarcely for a righteous man does one die; yet perhaps for a good man one might dare to die.'

Two heresies, taking occasion from this testimony, which they do not understand, blaspheme — with different error indeed, but with equal impiety. For Marcion, who makes the just God to be also the creator of the Law and the prophets, but the good God to be that of the Gospels and the apostles, whose Son he wishes Christ to be, introduces two gods: one just and the other good. And for the just he asserts that either none or few met death, but for the good — that is, for Christ — innumerable martyrs arose. Arius, moreover, refers 'the just' to Christ, of whom it is said: 'O God, give your judgment to the king and your justice to the king's son'; and Christ himself of himself in the Gospel: 'For the Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son'; and:

'I, as I hear, so I judge' — but he says that the good God is the Father, of whom the Son himself confesses: 'Why do you call me good? No one is good except the one God, the Father.' And when up to this point he has been able to find the devious byways of his blasphemy, in what follows he stumbles and falls. For how does anyone dare to die for the Father, and scarcely dies for the Son, when for the name of Christ so much blood of martyrs has been poured out? He, then, who expounds this passage simply, can say this: that under the old Law, in which is justice, scarcely a few were found who poured out their blood, but in the new covenant, in which is goodness and clemency, innumerable martyrs have arisen. But from the fact that he added: