Sermons & Tracts 1 part 4/37

Because, then, He wishes to betroth you to Himself, He sends this servant ahead to you. That servant is the prophetic word, which unless you first receive, you cannot be wedded to Christ. Know, however, that no one untrained and unskilled receives the prophetic word; but he who knows how to draw water from the depth of the well: and who knows how to draw in such measure that it may suffice even for those who seem irrational and perverse, whose figure the camels bear; that he too may be able to say, 'I am a debtor both to the wise and to the unwise' (Rom. 1:14). Finally, thus had that servant said in his heart: 'Of these virgins,' he says, 'who have come to the water, whosoever shall say to me, Drink you, and I will water your camels, she shall be the bride of my lord' (Gen. 24:14).

Thus, then, Rebecca—whose name is interpreted 'Patience'—when she saw the servant, and looked upon the prophetic word, sets down the water-jar from her shoulder: for she sets down the puffed-up arrogance of Greek eloquence, and, bending herself to the humble and simple prophetic word, said, 'Drink you, and I will supply your camels.' The word of God both feeds and is fed. But perhaps you say: If the servant holds the figure of the prophetic word, how is he given drink by Rebecca, whom he ought rather to give drink? See, then, whether perhaps, just as the Lord Jesus, though He Himself is the bread of life (John 6:35), and Himself feeds hungry souls; yet again confesses Himself to hunger, when He says, 'I was hungry, and you gave Me to eat' (Matt. 25:35):

and again, though He Himself is the living water, and gives drink to all who thirst; yet again He Himself says to the Samaritan woman, 'Give Me to drink' (John 4:7): so also the prophetic word, though it itself gives drink to the thirsty, is nonetheless said to be given drink by these, when it takes up the exercises and vigilance of the studious. Such, then, is that soul which does all things patiently, which is so ready, and sustained by such great learning; which is accustomed to draw the streams of knowledge from the depths—that soul can be joined in the nuptials of Christ. Unless, then, you come daily to the wells, unless you daily draw waters, not only will you be unable to give others drink, but you yourself too will suffer thirst for the word of God. Hear the Lord also saying in the Gospel: 'He who thirsts, let him come and drink' (ibid. 7:37).

But you, as I see, neither hunger nor thirst after righteousness. And how will you be able to say, 'As the deer longs for the fountains of waters, so my soul longs for You, O God. My soul has thirsted for the living God; when shall I come and appear before His face?' (Ps. 41:2-3). The Lord's day is daily for Christians. I beseech you who always attend the hearing of the word, hear patiently, until we admonish for a little those who are negligent and slothful. Have patience: for the discourse to you is about Rebecca, that is, about patience: so that it is necessary for us to chastise a little, through patience, those who neglect the assembly and decline to hear the word of God: who do not desire the bread of life.

nor the living water, who do not go out of the camp, nor come forth from the huts of clay, to gather manna for themselves, who do not come to the rock, to drink of the spiritual rock: 'for the Rock is Christ' (1 Cor. 10:4), as the Apostle says. Have, I say, a little patience; for the discourse is to us the negligent, and those who are ill: 'for the whole do not need a physician, but those who are ill.' Tell me, you who assemble at church only on feast days, are the other days not feasts, or are they not the Lord's days? It belongs to the Jews to observe fixed and rare solemn days: and therefore to them the Lord says, 'Your new moons and sabbaths, and the great day I cannot bear;'

'the fast, and the holidays, and your feast days My soul hates' (Isa. 1:13-14). God, then, hates those who think that only one day is a feast day of the Lord. Christians every day eat the flesh of the Lamb, that is, daily take the flesh of the Word of God; 'for Christ our Passover has been sacrificed' (1 Cor. 5:7). And because the law of the Passover is such that it be eaten in the evening, therefore in the evening of the world the Lord suffered, that you might always eat of the flesh of the Word of God, you who are always in the evening, until the morning come. And if in this evening you have been anxious, and have led your life in weeping and fasting, or in every labour of righteousness, you too will be able to say, 'At evening weeping shall abide, and at morning gladness' (Ps. 29:6).

For you shall rejoice in the morning, that is, in the age to come, if in this age you have gathered the fruit of righteousness in weeping and labour. Come, then, you, while it is time; let us drink of the well of vision, where Isaac walks, and where he goes forth to his exercise. SERMON X. On the conception of Rebecca. Genesis 25. The learned should accommodate themselves to the ignorance of the simple. If we should wish to convey the exposition of the holy Scriptures to the ears of your Charity in that order and in that eloquence in which they were expounded by the holy Fathers, the food of doctrine could reach only to a few scholars, while the rest of the multitude of the people would remain fasting.

And therefore I humbly ask that learned ears be content to bear rustic words with equanimity, provided that the whole flock of the Lord may be able to receive spiritual nourishment in simple, and, so to speak, pedestrian speech. And because the unskilled and simple cannot ascend to the loftiness of the learned, let the learned deign to bend themselves to their ignorance. For what has been said to the simple, the learned can understand; but what has been preached to the learned, the simple will not be able to grasp. Isaac a figure of Christ, Rebecca of the Church. Jacob and Esau in the womb of Rebecca, the good and the evil in the womb of the Church. A reading has been recited to us concerning blessed Isaac, and holy Rebecca, and the little ones who struggled together in her womb.

That blessed Isaac bore the type of the Lord and Saviour is unknown to almost none. Isaac, then, figured Christ the Lord, and blessed Rebecca the Church. She, though for a long time she remained barren after the example of the Church herself, yet, when blessed Isaac prayed and the Lord granted it, conceived. But the little ones struggled together in her womb; and not enduring their distress she said: 'If it were to be thus with me, what need was there to conceive?' And the Lord said to her: 'Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples shall be divided from your belly, and one people shall overcome the other people, and the elder shall serve the younger.' All these things, dearest brethren, as the Apostle says, happened to them by way of figure:

but they were written for our sake (1 Cor. 10:11). Rebecca, then, conceived bodily by blessed Isaac: because the Church was to conceive spiritually by Christ. But just as two little ones struggled together in the womb of Rebecca, so also in the womb of the Church two peoples continually oppose one another. For if either the evil alone, or the good alone, existed, there would be one people: but because in the Church both good and evil are found, as it were in the belly of the spiritual Rebecca two peoples struggle together, namely the humble and the proud, the chaste and the adulterous, the meek and the wrathful, the kindly and the envious, the merciful and the greedy. For the good wish to win over the evil; but the evil desire to extinguish the good.

The desire of the good is that those who are evil may be corrected: the zeal of the evil is that those who are good may be destroyed. One kind is that of the godly, another of the ungodly; the kind of the godly is raised to heaven through humility; the kind of the ungodly is plunged down to hell through pride. For all who, in the Catholic Church, are wise as to earthly things, love the earth, covet the earth, and set all their hope on the earth, belong to Esau. Whoever, therefore, chooses to serve God in order that he may increase in honours and gain earthly profits; he too is known to belong to Esau, that is, to earthly felicity. For in Esau the carnal are understood: but in Jacob the spiritual.

For these are the two peoples, as the blessed Apostle plainly assigns, when he shows the carnal, and intimates the spiritual. For thus he says: 'Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are: fornication, uncleanness, luxury, idolatry, sorceries, enmities, contentions, jealousies, wrath, quarrels, dissensions, sects, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings,' and so on. Behold the works pertaining to Esau. But what are the fruits which pertain to Jacob, the same Apostle in what follows adjoined, saying: 'But the fruit of the Spirit is charity, joy, peace, longsuffering, faith, goodness, benignity, modesty, continence' (Gal. 5:19-21).

Behold the spiritual works pertaining to blessed Jacob, that is, to the people of the godly. The greater people, the Jews; the lesser, the Gentiles. But as to what was said, 'One people shall overcome the other people, and the elder shall serve the younger,' we do not see it fulfilled according to the letter in Esau or Jacob: for Scripture does not record that Esau bodily served blessed Jacob. How, then, this ought to be understood, or in what manner the greater people serves the lesser, we must understand spiritually. For unless it came to pass, holy Scripture would not have recorded it. In what manner, therefore, the greater people serves the lesser, whoever diligently attends to this recognizes it among the Christians or among the Jews.

The greater and elder people, that of the Jews, is proved to serve the younger, that is, the Christian people, in that it is known to carry the books of the divine Law throughout the whole world for the instruction of all nations. For the Jews have been dispersed over all the earth to this end: that when we wish to invite some pagan to the faith of Christ, and testify that from all the Prophets this very Christ was foretold, and he in resistance should say that these books of the divine Law were composed rather by us than by the Holy Spirit, we may have wherewith to refute him with sure reasoning, saying to him:

If a doubt arises in you concerning my books, behold the books of the Jews, our enemies indeed (which it is certain I could neither have written nor altered); read these again yourself. And when you find in them the very thing that is also in mine, do not be unbelieving, but believing. In this order the greater people is known to serve the lesser, since even through their books the people of the Gentiles is invited to believe in Christ. 4. The greater people, the wicked; the lesser, the good. But in yet another way the greater people serves the lesser. In what order, you ask? In that order, surely, in which the wicked serve the good; not by obedience, but by persecution. How do the wicked serve the good?

As persecutors serve the martyrs, as the file or the hammer serves the gold, as the millstones serve the wheat, as the oven-fires serve the loaves to be baked—the loaves being baked, the fires being consumed. How, I say, do the wicked serve the good? As in the goldsmith's furnace the chaff serves the gold, where without doubt the chaff is consumed and the gold is proved. Let not the wicked therefore boast, nor exalt themselves, when they have inflicted some tribulations upon the good; for when they persecute them in body, they are shown to slay themselves in heart. So that while the adversity of the wicked man reaches the good man, his own iniquity already rots his soul. He therefore who with an evil mind, inflamed with the fury of wrath, strives to burn up the good man—whether that man can be scorched is still doubtful;

but that this man himself already burns is not doubtful. For perhaps that good man, full of spiritual sap and the refreshment of the Holy Spirit, does not burn when the fire of persecution is set to him; but he who tries to burn him up, without doubt cannot but burn. From one seed of Isaac, then, Esau and Jacob are born; just as from one Baptism of the Lord and Saviour and from one womb of the Church the Christian people is begotten, which nevertheless, according to the diversity of its members, like Esau and Jacob, is divided into two parts: since by the fruits of their works one part is known to be carnal, the other spiritual. And for this reason He said, 'The greater shall serve the lesser,' because the number of the wicked is always greater than that of the good. And as those two little ones in the womb of Rebecca;

so also these two peoples clash together in the womb of the Church until the day of judgement; while, as we have already said above, the proud oppose the humble, the adulterers persecute the chaste, the drunkards—whose number is boundless—harry the sober, the envious grudge against the kind, the plunderers against the almsgivers, the wrathful desire to destroy the peaceable, and the lustful strive to drag down to earth those who savour heavenly things. Wherefore I beg you, dearest brethren, that whosoever feel themselves guilty in these evils should strive, while there is time, with God's help to be transferred to the right hand; and, leaving behind the filth of vices, hasten to return to the adornments of virtues:

so that on the day of judgement, delivered from the evil hearing, they may deserve to hear that longed-for voice: 'Well done, good servant; enter into the joy of thy Lord' (Matt. xxv, 21). Yet more earnestly I beg and admonish you, brethren, that you strive to rise more promptly for the Vigils, and come faithfully to Terce, to Sext, to None. Above all, keep chastity throughout the whole of Lent and even until the end of Easter, even with your own wives. What you were about to eat, distribute to the poor. Have peace yourselves, and those whom you know to be at variance, call back to concord. Receive strangers, and let it not weary you to wash their feet. Let not the Christian blush to do what Christ deigned to fulfil.

With good will give alms to the poor according to your means; for God loves a cheerful giver (2 Cor. ix, 7). The hindrances of the world, if you cannot cut them off entirely, at least in some part restrain, so that you may be able to devote yourselves to reading or to prayer: so that, laying up more abundantly in the holy storehouse of your breast the spiritual wine, that is, the word of God, and repudiating all crimes and sins, you may with a free and sincere conscience be able to serve God:

and when the holy solemnity of Easter has come, faithfully keeping charity not only with the good but even with the wicked, you may with the joy of exultation, with a clean heart and a chaste body, be able to approach the altar of the Lord, and each one of you may deserve to receive His body and blood, not unto the judgement of his own soul: our same Lord Jesus Christ granting it, to whom is honour and dominion with the Father and the Holy Spirit unto the ages of ages. Amen. SERMON XI. On blessed Jacob. 1. The mysteries of Christ are foreshadowed in Jacob. When the divine lesson was being read, dearest brethren, we heard that, at the entreaty of holy Rebecca, Isaac called

his son Jacob, and told him to go into Mesopotamia of Syria, and there to take himself a wife: how he, humbly obeying his father, departed, and on that very journey came to a certain place, and put a stone beneath his head and slept, and saw in a dream a ladder reaching up to the heavens, and the Angels of God ascending and descending upon it, and the Lord leaning upon the ladder and saying to him: 'Jacob, Jacob, fear not, I am with thee, and I shall be the companion of thy journey' (Gen. xxviii, 1-5, 10-15). For blessed Isaac, dearest brethren, when he was directing his son into Mesopotamia, prefigured the type of God the Father; but Jacob designated Christ the Lord.

Blessed Isaac, therefore, neglecting the women of the region in which he dwelt, sent his son to take a wife for himself in a far country: because God the Father was about to send His only-begotten, who, having rejected the Synagogue, would join the Church to Himself from among the Gentiles. This was then fulfilled in truth when the Apostles said to the Jews: 'It was necessary that the word of God should first be spoken to you; but seeing you have judged yourselves unworthy of eternal life, behold, we turn to the Gentiles' (Acts xiii, 46). 2. Jacob carries a staff, Christ the wood of the cross. Of blessed Jacob we do not read that he went off with horses or asses or camels, but only this we read: that he carried a staff in his hand. For thus, when he was making supplication to the Lord, he himself said:

'Lord,' he says, 'I am less than all Thy mercies; with my staff I crossed over this Jordan, and behold, I return with two companies' (Gen. xxxii, 10). Jacob, then, in order to take a wife, presented a staff; and Christ, in order to redeem the Church, brought forth the wood of the cross. Jacob sleeping placed a stone beneath his head, and saw a ladder reaching to heaven, and the Lord leaning on the ladder. See, brethren, how great are the mysteries in this passage: Jacob bore the type of the Lord and Saviour, and the stone which he placed beneath his head nonetheless figured Christ the Lord. Why the stone as a head should signify Christ, hear the Apostle: 'Because the head of the man is Christ' (1 Cor. xi, 3). Finally, blessed Jacob anointed that very stone.

Attend to the anointed one, and you understand Christ. Christ is interpreted from 'anointing,' that is, He is called anointed from the chrism. 3. What the ladder that Jacob saw figures. But if Jacob sleeping on the earth figured the Lord, what does it mean that in heaven the Lord leaned resting upon the ladder? How was Christ the Lord seen to be both at the summit of the ladder in heaven, and in blessed Jacob upon the earth? That Christ is both in heaven and on earth, hear Christ Himself saying: 'No one ascends into heaven, except He who came down from heaven, the Son of Man, who is in heaven' (John iii, 13). Observe, that the Lord Himself said He was both in heaven and on earth. Christ the Lord, dearest brethren, we confess to be the head of the Church.

If He is the head of the Church, according to the head He is in heaven, according to the body on earth. Finally, when blessed Paul the apostle was persecuting the Church, Christ cried out from heaven: 'Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?' (Acts ix, 4). He did not say, 'Why persecutest thou my servants?' nor did He say, 'Why persecutest thou my members?' but He said this: 'Why persecutest thou me?' As it were, when the foot is trodden upon, the tongue cries out, 'You have trodden on me,' though the tongue certainly could not be trodden upon: but through the concord of charity the head cries out on behalf of all the members. Jacob, then, was sleeping, and saw the Lord leaning upon the summit of the ladder. What is it to lean upon a ladder, but to hang upon the wood? Consider, brethren, who it was that, hanging upon the wood of the cross, prayed for the Jews;

and you will recognise who it was that, leaning upon Jacob's ladder, cried out from heaven. But why was this done on the journey, before Jacob took a wife? Because the true Jacob, our Lord, first lay down upon the ladder, that is, upon the cross, and afterwards joined the Church to Himself, giving her in the present the pledge of His blood, being about to give the dowry of His kingdom hereafter. 4. The Lord leaning upon the ladder figured Christ. That both Jacob sleeping and the Lord leaning upon the ladder figured Christ, attend and see the depth of this matter. For when our Saviour, speaking of Nathanael, had named blessed Jacob, saying: 'Behold an Israelite, in whom there is no guile,' in what followed He said: 'Henceforth you shall see heaven

opened, and the Angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man' (John i, 47, 51). What Jacob had seen in figure in his dream, this the Lord proclaimed of Himself in the Gospels. 'You shall see,' He says, 'the heavens opened, and the Angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.' If the Angels were descending to the Son because He was on earth, how were these same Angels ascending to the Son of Man, except because He was also in the heavens? And thus in Jacob He Himself was sleeping, and from heaven He Himself was crying out to Jacob. 5. The preachers, the Angels ascending and descending. — All these things, brethren, as the Apostle cries, befell them in figure: but they were written for our sake, upon whom the ends of the ages have come (1 Cor. x, 11).

Yet how, brethren, the Angels of God ascend into heaven to the Son of Man, and descend to that same Son upon earth, attend diligently. For when the preachers of God announce from the holy Scriptures things high and profound, which are understood only by the perfect, they ascend to the Son of Man; but when they preach those things which pertain to the correction of morals, and which the whole people can understand, they descend to the Son of Man. So also the Apostle says: 'We speak wisdom among the perfect, a wisdom not of this age; but the mystery, hidden, which God predestined before the ages unto our glory' (ibid., 6 and 7). When he said these things he was without doubt ascending to the Son of Man.

But when he said, 'Flee fornication' (ibid., vi, 18); when he said, 'Be not drunk with wine, wherein is riot' (Eph. v, 18); when he declared, 'The root of all evils is covetousness' (1 Tim. vi, 10): in these words, as an Angel of God, he was descending to the Son of Man. But when he said, 'Savour the things that are above, not the things that are upon the earth' (Col. iii, 2), he was ascending; whereas when he said, 'Be sober, and sin not' (1 Cor. xv, 34), and preached the rest of the things that pertain to the correction of morals, ministering the milk of doctrine as a nurse to little ones, he was descending; because he was speaking those things which even the unskilled could grasp.

In this order there is both ascending and descending to the Son of Man, when both solid food is given to the perfect (Heb. v, 14), and the milk of doctrine is not denied. But blessed John too was ascending, when he said: 'In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.' He was ascending sufficiently high when he said these things. But because the Angels of God not only ascend but also descend; bending himself down to the little ones, he said: 'The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us' (John i, 1, 14). 6. Recapitulation of what was said above. That these things which we have set forth above may cling more tenaciously to your holy hearts, we shall briefly repeat what has been said.

Blessed Isaac, as we have said, sending his son, held the type of God the Father; Jacob who was sent designated Christ the Lord. The stone which he had at his head, and anointed with oil, also signified the Lord and Saviour. The ladder reaching up to the heavens had the figure of the cross. The Lord leaning upon the ladder is shown to be Christ crucified. The Angels ascending and descending upon it are the Apostles and apostolic men, and all the teachers of the Churches—ascending, when they preach perfect things to the perfect; descending, when they instil into the little ones and the unskilled simple things which they can understand. But we, brethren, who see all the things that were figured in the Old Testament to be fulfilled in the New Testament;

let us give as many thanks to God as we can, who has deigned to bestow such great things upon us with no preceding merits; labouring with all our strength, with His help, that these so great and so excellent benefits may not bring us judgement, but profit. Nay rather, let us so strive to live spiritually, and always to persist in good works, that when the day of judgement finds us chaste, sober, merciful and devout, we may not be punished with the impious and sinners; but with the just and those who fear God may deserve to attain to eternal Beatitude, our Lord granting it, etc. SERMON XII. On blessed Jacob, II. 1. Jacob a type of the Saviour. The marriages of the Patriarchs at wells.

I have frequently suggested to your Charity, most beloved brethren, that blessed Jacob held the type and figure of the Lord and Saviour. In short, just as Christ was to come into the world in order to be joined to the Church, so in blessed Jacob this was prefigured, when he journeyed into a far country in order to obtain a wife. Blessed Jacob therefore went off, as you have heard, into Mesopotamia to take a wife; and when he had come to a certain well, he saw Rachel coming with her father's sheep; and when he had recognised that she was his cousin, having watered the flock, he kissed her (Gen. xxviii, 6; xxix, 2-11).

If you have listened diligently, brethren, you can recognise that it was not without cause that the holy Patriarchs find their marriages at wells or springs. If this had happened only once, someone might say that it was done for no signification, but rather befell by chance: but when both blessed Rebecca, who was to be joined to Isaac, is found at a well (ibid., xxiv, 45), and Rachel whom Jacob was to take is recognised at a well (ibid., xxix, 9), and no less Zipporah who was joined to Moses is found at a well (Exod. ii, 16);

we ought without doubt to recognise some sacred mysteries in these things. And because all these three patriarchs bore the type of the Lord and Saviour, therefore they find their marriages at springs or at wells; because Christ was to find the Church at the water of Baptism. Finally, Jacob coming to the well first watered Rachel's flock, and afterwards kissed her. It is true, dearest brethren; unless first through the water of Baptism the Christian people be washed from all evils, it does not deserve to have the peace of Christ. Could not blessed Jacob, seeing his cousin, have kissed her before he gave water to the flocks? He certainly could have, but a mystery was being enacted.

For it was fitting that through the grace of Baptism the Church should be freed from all iniquity and discord, and thus deserve to have peace with God. 2. Leah and Rachel, the Synagogue and the Church. But that in that pilgrimage Jacob took two wives, he figured two peoples, that of the Jews and that of the Gentiles. For at the coming of Christ no small number even of the Jewish people is read to have believed in Him. For thus it is contained in the Acts of the Apostles, that three thousand believed in one day, likewise five thousand on another day, likewise afterwards many thousands (Acts ii, 41, 44). And that two peoples believed in Christ, the Lord Himself also confirms in the Gospel, where He says: 'I have also other sheep,