Sermons 83

Since this homily is a continuation of the preceding one, which we said Gennadius mentioned, the Benedictine monks of the Congregation of Saint Maur, recognizing this, adhered to the authority of the same. So in the preface to the sermons of Saint Ambrose. Their assertion is confirmed by the testimonies of two manuscripts, namely no. 99 of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, and the Vatican 1268, which adorned it with the name of the holy bishop of Turin and reported it as a discourse connected with the former. In the Laurentian codex, Pluteus XIV, no. 10, this homily is anonymous; yet its title, «Likewise the continuation,» declares that it pertains to the one that precedes it. Wherefore the collectors of the homilies—with the exception of Cumdius, who published it separately in volume I, page 131—edited both in succession, namely Gymnicus, page—

—271, Galesinius page 172, Raymudus page 41, Margarinus in the Bibliotheca Maxima, volume IV, page 44, with the added title: «The second homily of the same, from the source above.» I believe I said quite abundantly last Sunday, for the correction of those who, enjoying divine gifts, do not render thanks to the Creator; and using heavenly benefits, do not requite the author of benefits, as ungrateful and unworthy of the benefits; ungrateful, I say, who neither fear God as servants their Lord, nor honor Him as sons their parent. God says through the prophet: «If I am the Lord, where is my fear? if a father, where is my love?» (Malachi 1). That is, if you are a servant, render to the Lord the homage of fear; if a son, show to the father of the household the affection due.

But you, since you give no thanks, neither love God nor reverence Him; whence you are either a defiant servant or a proud son. He, therefore, who is a worthy Christian ought always to speak the praises of his Father and Lord, and to procure all things unto His glory; as the blessed Apostle says: «Whether you eat, or drink, or do anything else, do all to the glory of God» (1 Corinthians 10). See what kind of banquet the Apostle wished the Christian man's to be, that the faith of Christ should be consumed rather than the fattening of a meal, and that the frequent invocation of the Lord's name should refresh a man more than the manifold and copious provision of dishes, and that religion should feed the hungry better than fattening food. «Do all things,» he says, «to the glory of God.»

Therefore let all our acts be accomplished with Christ as our companion or witness—on this account, namely, that we may do good things with Him as their author, and shun evil things on account of fellowship with Him. For he is ashamed to do evil who knows that he has Christ as his partner. Now Christ is a helper in good things, and in evil things He is our preserver. Therefore, when we have risen at dawn, we ought, before we go forth from the bedchamber, to give thanks to the Saviour, and before all the acts of the age to have the acts of piety—to Him who guarded us as we rested and slept in our little beds. For who but God guards the sleeping man?

who, thus dissolved into sleep and forgetful of his human vigor, becomes a stranger to himself, so that he knows not what he himself is, nor where he tarries, nor can he certainly even be present to himself. God, therefore, is necessarily present to those who sleep, because those who sleep cannot be present to themselves; and He Himself guards the race of men from nocturnal snares; because at that time of night no one else keeps full watch, I therefore owe thanks to Him who, that I may sleep secure, Himself keeps watch. For God Himself receives us, as we go to bed, in a certain restful bosom, and keeps us stored away in the treasury of peace, and by a certain guardianship of the shadows defends us into the light; so that the malice of hostile men may be repelled by the darkness, which could not be driven off by kindness;

and that the darkness may afford peace to the weary, which humanity did not afford; for while a man knows not where to pursue his adversary, the peace which, though willing to bestow, he was unwilling to bestow, he bestows unwillingly. We ought, therefore, when we rise, to give thanks to God, and to do every work of the day in the sign of the Saviour. Did you not, when you were still a heathen, use to search out signs—collecting with great inquiry which signs were auspicious for which affairs? Now, I do not want you to err in the multitude; know that in the one sign of Christ there is safe prosperity for all affairs. He who has begun to sow in this sign will obtain the fruit of eternal life; he who sets out to make his journey in this sign will arrive all the way to heaven.

In this name, therefore, all our acts are to be directed, and to Him is the whole movement of our life to be referred; because, as the Apostle says: «In Him we live, and move, and have our being» (Acts 17:28). But also when evening closes the day, we ought by the psaltery to speak His praise, and to sing together His glory with modulated sweetness, so that, the contest of our works being consummated, we may as victors acquire rest, and the forgetfulness of sleep may be, as it were, a palm of our labor. And that we may do this, brethren, we are not only taught by reason, but also admonished by examples.

Do we not see even the tiniest birds, when the dawn brings forth the shining day, singing out with varied sweetness in certain chambers of their nests, and doing this earnestly, before they go forth, so that, since they cannot with speech, they may soothe their Creator with sweetness; and how each of them, since it cannot by confession, renders its homage by melodies; so that she seems to give thanks the more devoutly who has sung the more sweetly, and to do this likewise when the day's course is completed? What, then, does that song, arranged at fixed times, and that continual attention mean, unless it be a certain unrestrained confession of thanksgiving? For to its Shepherd the harmless bird, since it cannot by speech, fawns with sweetness;

for the birds too have their Shepherd, as the Lord says: «Behold the birds of the air, that they sow not, neither do they reap, and your Father, who is in heaven, feeds them» (Matthew 6). But with what food, after all, are the birds fed? With the vilest and most earthly, namely. The birds, therefore, give thanks for vile food; you are fed with the most precious viands, and are ungrateful. Who, then, would not blush—having the understanding of a man—to close the day without the solemn singing of psalms, when the very birds leap up to give thanks with the sweetness of the psaltery; and not to sound forth with the sweetness of verses the glory of Him whose praise the birds proclaim with modulated song? Imitate, therefore, brother, the tiniest birds, rendering thanks to the Creator morning and evening;

and if you are more devout, imitate the nightingale, for whom, since the day alone does not suffice for uttering praises, runs through the spaces of the night with wakeful song; and you too, then, surpassing the day with your praises, add to your work the running courses of the night, and console with the sweetness of the psaltery the sleepless diligence of the labor undertaken. And since I have made mention of those birds which keep watch by night, I do not want you to be an imitator of the owl, which, although it watches through the night, is yet by day sluggish or blind, which with its great eyes loves the murk of darkness and shudders at the splendor of the sun; for it is illumined, in a marvelous manner, by darkness, and blinded by light. That animal—

is a figure of heretics and heathens, who embrace the darkness of the devil and shudder at the light of the Saviour, and with the great eyes of their disputations discern vain things, but do not look upon the eternal. Of these the Lord says: «They have eyes, and shall not see: they walk in darkness» (Psalm 113). For they are keen toward superstitious things, dull toward divine things; who, while they think to soar higher with their words, are, like owls, troubled by the splendor of the true light.