So great is the connection of this homily with the preceding one that, when the author of one of them is known, the author of both is known. But concerning the author there is great variety in the manuscript codices, and dispute among the writers, since in the Vatican codex 1268 it is referred to Saint Ambrose; but in another codex, likewise Vatican, which is number 6452, and in the Florentine of the Holy Cross Minor, now Laurentianus IV, Plut. XXXIII, it is received [perhaps ascribed] to Saint John, bishop of Constantinople. The author's name is lacking in the codex Vaticanus 4951, as also in the Urbevetanus. There exist also perhaps some in which it is read as ascribed to Saint Augustine.
For certain editors would not have attributed it to the same holy Augustine, as in fact they do attribute it, unless his name were set forth in at least some one manuscript. But Gennadius, an ancient and above all a careful author, removes the doubt; and together with Gennadius the manuscripts of Santa Croce in Jerusalem, the Turin, the Laurentian (Plut. XIV), and the St Gall codex. And so the Benedictine monks of the Congregation of St Maur, in the appendix to the sermons of St Augustine (sermon 80, page 102, Antwerp edition of the year 1700), say: 'Long since it was restored to its own author, Maximus, bishop of Turin, whose name it bears in the writings and in the printed books.' About the title I do not trouble myself.
I have used the same title that Gymnicus and the other editors used, although I am not unaware that among the monks of that same Congregation of St Maur this homily is thus entitled: 'On Matthew chapter XXVII, concerning Judas the betrayer, and concerning the field purchased for the burial of strangers out of the price of the sale of Christ.' Your beloved charity retains that we preached this on the last Lord's Day: that Judas Iscariot, condemned by his own verdict before the Pharisees, brought back the wages of the Lord's blood, and, driven by remorse, poured out again the price of the sale and hanged himself in a noose; so that he who had fined himself in money should be fined also in life. For understanding how great a crime he had committed, it did not suffice him to lack the wages of his sacrilege unless he lacked also his salvation;
for he judged himself worthy of death, in that he had betrayed Christ, the life of all. Judas therefore, a most severe judge of himself, even in taking vengeance confesses the one whom he had denied in betraying. He restored the money then to the Pharisees; but not even the Pharisees willingly accept it, for they say it is forbidden them to keep it in their treasuries. See therefore how great is the power of the Lord's money, which Judas casts from him and the Pharisees will not lay up in store: for iniquity dreads to possess the price of righteous blood. Yet the Pharisees take counsel that a potter's field be bought with it, in which the bodies of strangers might be laid.
This indeed I think was done by providence, that the price of the Saviour should not furnish an expense for sinners, but should minister rest to strangers; that it should not serve the sacrilegious for their sport, but serve the dead for a tomb; so that from thenceforth Christ might both redeem the living by the passion of His blood, and receive the dead by His precious passion. With the price then of the Lord's blood a potter's field is bought. We read in the Scriptures that the salvation of the whole human race was redeemed by the blood of the Saviour, as the apostle Peter says: 'For you were not redeemed with corruptible gold or silver, but with the precious blood of the unspotted and immaculate Lamb, Jesus Christ' (1 Peter 1). Therefore, if the price of our life is the blood of the Lord;
see then that what was redeemed is not so much the earthly frailty of a field as the everlasting safety of the whole world: for the Evangelist says, 'Christ came not that He might judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him' (John 3). See, I say, that that money is not so much a small purchase of a field as an abundant possession of the whole world, as David the prophet says: 'Ask of me, and I will give thee the nations for thy inheritance, and the ends of the earth for thy possession' (Psalm 2). This field then is this whole world, in which we, scattered and sown abroad, bring forth for the Lord the fruit of good works. But perhaps you will inquire of me, if the field is the world, who then is the potter who can have dominion over the world?
Unless I am mistaken, He Himself is the potter who made the little vessels of our body from clay: of whom Scripture says, 'And God made man from the slime of the earth' (Genesis 2). He is the potter who animated the miry mud of our flesh with the breath of His Spirit, and, as it were, baked the moist and earthly matter with fiery heat. He, I say, is the potter who by His hands formed us unto life, and through His Christ reformed us unto glory, as the Apostle says: 'We are reformed into the same image, from glory unto glory' (2 Corinthians 3); namely, that we who by our own vices fell from our first making, may in a second birth be repaired by the mercy of this potter;
that is, that we who fell in death through Adam's transgression, may rise again anew through the Saviour's grace. He plainly is the potter of whom the blessed Apostle speaks: 'Shall the thing formed say to him who formed it, Why hast thou made me thus?' And again: 'Has not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour?' (Romans 9). For out of the same clay of our body God, according to the merits of each, reserves some unto punishment, others unto glory. This potter's field, bought with Christ's blood, is for strangers; for strangers, I say, who were without home, without country, and were tossed about as exiles throughout the whole world: for them rest is provided by Christ's blood;
so that those who have no possession in the world may have burial in Christ. But these whom we call strangers, who are they but the most devout Christians, who, renouncing the world and possessing nothing therein, rest in Christ's blood? For the Christian who does not possess the world, here possesses the whole Saviour. And burial in Christ is promised to strangers for this reason: that whoever has kept himself, as a stranger and an alien, from carnal vices, may merit the rest of Christ. For what else is the burial of Christ but the rest of the Christian? We therefore are strangers in this world, and dwell as guests in this light, as the Apostle says: 'For while we are in this body, we are absent from the Lord' (2 Corinthians 5).
We are strangers, I say, and a burial has been bought for us with the price of the Saviour's blood. For we were buried together with Him, as the Apostle says, through baptism into death (Colossians 2). Baptism therefore is for us the burial of Christ, in which we die to our sins, are buried with our crimes, and, the conscience of the old man being dissolved, we are restored to another birth in a revived infancy; baptism, I say, is for us the burial of the Saviour: because there we lose what we lived before, and there we receive anew, that we may live. Great therefore is the grace of this burial, in which both a profitable death is brought upon us, and a more profitable life is granted; great, I say, is the grace of this burial, which both purifies the sinner and gives life to the dying.