Therefore hope alone is that which does not confound our affection. Where there is hope, that apostolic word can do no harm: 'without are fightings, within are fears.' Another interpretation has: 'you will not make to blush.' He shall not blush who hopes in Christ; therefore he who hopes well says: 'in you I trust; I shall not blush.' And well he says 'I trust'; for the strength of our hope and a certain authority of the one hoping is confidence. Hope therefore always, and no one confounds you from your expectation. Our expectation is eternal life, our expectation is the kingdom of God, the fellowship of angels, the spiritual blessings. Hope daily; this thing has no end, it knows no truce. Hope even when set amid adversities.
If anyone should say to you, when you are perhaps stricken by the loss of some kinsman: 'What does your righteousness profit you?' — yet hope, and let not your faith fail. If anyone should say to you: 'What have your daily fasts profited you, what your bodily chastity, your modesty of mind? Behold, you are wounded like the unrighteous and the impious' — let not your faith fail. For even though you are weak, yet the faithful Christ is anxious for you; he says to the disciples: 'Give them, you yourselves, to eat, lest they faint on the way.' You have the apostolic food; eat it, and you shall not faint.
Eat that food first, that afterward you may come to the food of Christ, to the food of the Lord's body, to the banquet of the sacrament, to that cup whereby the affection of the faithful is made drunk, that it may put on gladness from the remission of sin, and lay aside the cares of this world, the fear of death, and its anxieties. By this drunkenness, therefore, the body does not totter but rises again; the mind is not confounded but consecrated. 'Help me,' he says, 'and I shall be saved, and I will meditate on your justifications always.' He who hopes presumes to be helped; and where there is the aid of God, there is the sure refuge of salvation. Above he said: 'You are my helper and my upholder'; here again he asks to be helped, as though he should say: 'Help me without ceasing. It is not enough for me that I have asked; again I ask that I may be saved.'
Here there is no great, no true salvation. Then shall I be saved, when I am in paradise, when I have begun to live among your elect angels, when I have escaped the snares of this earth. But lest perhaps, being helped in our necessities, we should afterward, set in prosperity, be negligent, he teaches us that we ought by no means to be forgetful of the heavenly benefits, but to meditate on the justifications of the Lord, so that even when we have done some good work, we may yet always confess our sins to him; for this is the justification of the Lord. In short, the Pharisees did not justify God, who refused to be baptized with the baptism of repentance. Therefore he justifies God whom his offenses repent; for he who repents confesses, as is that saying:
'Against you only have I sinned, and done evil before you, that you may be justified in your words.' And therefore the publican went out from the temple more justified, because the Pharisee justified himself by proclaiming his own righteousnesses, while the publican justified God by confessing his own iniquities. Therefore he who meditates on the justifications of the Lord is always humbled; he is not humbled today and exalted tomorrow, but is always humble of heart and meek of affection. And 'always' is more than 'by day and by night' or 'all the day long'; for this is above time. Therefore even when numbered among the angels you ought to declare the justifications of God always, and not to claim for your own merits that glory which you have obtained, but to ascribe it always to the divine compassion, lest it be said to you:
'But what do you have that you did not receive? And if you received it, why do you glory as if you had not received it?' For every creature, whatever good it has, received it from Christ, who is the Author of all creation. 'You have despised,' he says, 'all who depart from your justifications, for their thought is unrighteous.' Every proud man is unclean in the sight of the Lord, because he cannot cleanse his sins through pride, who by an arrogant spirit aggravates his error; and therefore he is spurned and despised, because he holds the divine commands in contempt. But beautifully the heavenly prerogative of clemency is preserved, because it repels no one; rather, whoever are unwilling to confess their own sins, they themselves depart from the Lord our God.
In short, that man departed who, having journeyed into a far country, squandered all the patrimony of faith and grace that he had received from his father. And because it repented him that he had departed, he afterward returned to the father whom he had forsaken, when he was unwilling to confess his own sin. God, then, is not forsaken by an interval of places, but by depravity of character and deformity of deeds. He departs from the Lord who removes himself far from him, just as Adam, having heard the presence of God, desired to hide. But departing from the Lord, he could not have salvation, since it is written: 'Behold, they who remove themselves far from you shall perish.' Each one therefore by his own pursuits either joins himself or separates himself.
In short, that very many are not separated by intervals of places, nor joined by being adjacent and near, is a proof: for there are very many seated in the body who sojourn away from the body and are present with God, like that man who, when God said: 'Whom shall I send?' answered: 'Behold, I; send me.' Paul too dares to be present with God, because he saw nothing in himself bodily except the matter of the flesh. Cain also went out from the face of God, after, having committed parricide, he did not think that repentance for his sins was to be carried out. But rightly he says: 'You have brought the transgressors to nothing.' He did not say 'sinners,' but 'transgressors'; for what hope would there be for us, when we are all under sin? And beautifully too: 'all the transgressors you have brought to nothing.'
Whether that man be rich, his riches profit him nothing; whether honored, his dignity nothing; whether powerful, his power nothing. But it is one thing to be a transgressor departing from the justifications of God, another to be a transgressor of the earth; the former is more grievous, the latter lighter. And therefore, lest the things added trouble you, see what he added to these: 'I have esteemed as transgressors all the sinners of the earth; therefore have I loved your testimonies always.' Rightly is he called a transgressor who departs from the Lord; in short, in Greek, from departing, an apostate is named. Whence also that saying: 'wine and women,' he says, 'make men apostatize.' The incitements and allurements to offenses are therefore to be guarded against, lest they incline toward crime.
Now in Latin a transgressor is also called a 'crosser-over,' because he crosses over from the Lord's law to error and transgresses the heavenly commandments — he who was told to cleave to the Lord his God. Cleave therefore to him with an undivided affection always, lest any force be able to tear you away from him. If the adversary sees anything rare, anything intermitted, at once he casts himself into your breast and heart, that he may hold you in the snare of his deceit, and that, entangled by the bond of a hostile power, you may be drawn back from devotion. But he is not the only transgressor who slights the Church and crosses over to the worship of idols, but also whoever does not keep the commandments of the law. Every sinner, therefore, is a transgressor; whence is that saying:
'Every transgression receives a just recompense.' The name is common, but the deserts of offenses are diverse; and so the penalties of faults are diverse too. What does he mean by saying 'the sinners of the earth'? Are there then also sinners of heaven, like that man who says: 'Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you'? There are those who say that he who does not keep the heavenly oracles is a transgressor of heaven. But whether this, or because he diminishes the grace which he received from heaven, which the Holy Spirit poured in, or because, having been made a bird of heaven, you ought not to return to earth from heaven. Against heaven, then, you sin, if, being a dweller of heaven, you forsake heaven. There is therefore a diversity among them: some are sinners of heaven, others sinners of the earth.
'In the mornings,' he says, 'I slew all the sinners of the earth.' How could one man slay all the sinners of the earth? But if you consider the righteous man, for whom the night has gone before and the day has drawn near, you can see how, when the Sun of righteousness rises for you, watching from the dawn you may slay all the kindlings of offenses. Would that this grace might breathe upon me, that with the spiritual sword, which is the word of God, I might be able to abolish from the Lord's Church all the incitements of vices and to take away earthly offenses, by which we are cast headlong into a certain pit of slippery error, so that the worker of iniquity may be expelled from the city of God! The city of God is the Church; the Church is the body of Christ.
He sins against heaven who contaminates the rights of the heavenly city and violates the holiness of the unspotted body by the filth of his own vices. And see whether perhaps there are those who are sinners of both heaven and earth. For surely Adam, while he was in paradise, was heavenly; but after the fall he was made earthly and was driven out of paradise and cast forth. Whence the apostle says: 'The first man, of the earth, earthly; the second man, of heaven, heavenly.' Let the image of the earthly therefore be cast off from us; let the image of the heavenly be taken up — not portrayed by dye, not shadowed by waxes or colors, but by morals, in which Christ may recognize himself. 'Nail down my flesh with nails from your fear; for I have feared because of your judgments.'
He who loves the Lord's testimonies nails down his flesh with nails, knowing that his old man, crucified with Christ, destroys the luxury of the flesh, lest its desires run riot with untamed fervor, lest the root of avarice spread itself with creeping roots. Nail down, therefore, with nails, and destroy the kindlings of sin; let every enticement of offenses die in your flesh; let the desire of pleasures, fixed to the cross, not have the liberty of wandering. There is a certain spiritual nail which fastens these fleshly parts to the gibbet of the Lord's cross. And perhaps there are certain fleshly parts of the soul, just as the body is of the soul. The fleshly parts of the soul are carnal thoughts; let the fear of the Lord and of his judgments fasten down these fleshly parts and reduce them to servitude.
But if this flesh of ours rejects the nails of the divine fear, then without doubt it is said: My spirit shall not abide in these men, for they are flesh. Unless, therefore, this flesh be fastened to the cross and pierced through with the nails of the fear of our God, the Spirit of God will not abide in them. Just as there are the pricks of fear by which we are pierced, so there are the nails of fear by which we are nailed fast. He who is pricked is roused; he who is nailed fast is put to death, so that he may die to sin and live to God. And that we may know that there are spiritual nails, there are also spiritual goads, of which it is written: It is hard for thee to kick against the goad. Pricked by this goad, Paul rose up from the earth and lifted himself, that he might have his conversation in heaven.
The apostle Thomas was pierced with nails, so that he said: Unless I see in his hands the marks of the nails, and put my finger into the place of the nails. They were the nails of a good desire; they were nails, even if not of a perfect faith, yet of a faith seeking its increase. With these nails is he pierced who dies together with Christ for Christ's sake, that he may rise again with Christ; with these nails is he pierced who bears about in his body the dying of the Lord Jesus; with these nails is he pierced who deserves to hear when Jesus says: Set me as a seal upon thy heart, as a signet upon thine arm, for love is strong as death, jealousy hard as hell. Fix, therefore, upon thy breast and upon thy heart the seal of the Crucified; fix it also upon thine arm, that thy works may be dead to sin.
Let no taint of guilt revive in these, let no error rise again. Perhaps the nails fasten this image not only of fear but also of love, because love is strong as death, jealousy hard as hell. Let not, then, the hardness of the nails offend thee, for it is the hardness of love; nor the firmness of the nails, for love too is strong as death. For it sings down guilt and mortifies all sins; love, like the stroke of death, slays; in short, we die to crimes and to sin while we love the Lord's commandments. Love is God; love is the Word of God, which is mighty and sharper than any most sharp sword, piercing even to the dividing of soul and spirit, of the joints, and penetrating the inmost parts of the marrow.
The jealousy of love is therefore hard, which yields not to hell, since for the sake of God's zeal each man spares not even his own. With these nails of love let our soul and our flesh be pierced, so that it too may say: For I am wounded with love. Love, then, has its own nail, has its own sword by which the soul is wounded. Happy is he who has deserved to be wounded by this sword. These are the wounds that are preferred to kisses: more profitable are the wounds of a friend than the willing kisses of an enemy. Let us offer ourselves to these wounds, by which whosoever has died shall not be able to taste death. Such is the death of those who followed the Lord, of whom it was said: There are some standing here who shall not taste death, until they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.
Rightly did Peter not fear this death; for he did not fear who said that, even if it behoved him to die for Christ, he would not forsake or deny him. Let us, therefore, take up the cross of the Lord which pierces our flesh and destroys sin. There is a fear that pierces the flesh: Unless a man take up his cross and follow me, he is not worthy of me. For he is worthy who has the fear of Christ, that he may crucify carnal sin. This fear is followed by love, which, buried together with Christ, is not torn away from Christ, dies in Christ, is entombed with Christ, that it may rise again with Christ. XVI. THE LETTER AIN. Here begins the sixteenth letter 'Ayin,' whose interpretation is 'eye' or 'fountain.'
The eye uses the office of seeing, yet we often see things that please and often things that displease; nor in this is there fault or worth on the eye's part according to the quality of what it has seen; for the office of the eye is to report what it has seen. There is indeed offence or favour, if one is either delighted by pleasant things or offended by adverse ones. Therefore the eye is frequently called the eye of punishments, the eye of temptation, the eye of the kid, the eye of the heifer, the eye of generation, or the fountain of generation. We read in the Gospel that John baptized in Aenon. Aenon they have interpreted as the eye of punishments. And so no one comes to baptism except him who desires that his own sins be forgiven him, whose punishments he dreads with a foreseeing heart.
And so, although it is called the eye of punishments, it belongs to one foreseeing punishments, not to one enduring them, although the baptism of repentance has some endurance in the acceptance of punishments. It is the eye's part to discharge the office of looking; it is thine to beware of what thou hast seen. Moreover, it is also called the eye of temptation, because through the eye we are often tempted. The eye of a harlot is the snare of a lover. But the eye does nothing wrong, and therefore the saying of the Saviour is full of justice, who says: Whosoever shall look upon a woman to lust after her hath already committed adultery with her in his heart. He did not say 'whosoever shall look upon a woman,' but 'shall look to lust after her.' He acquitted the eye; he bound the mind. Nor did he say 'committed adultery with her in the eye,' but 'in the heart.'
In the eye there was the sight, in the heart the sin. The eye of the kid is that which is on the left, because the sinner cannot see those things which are on the right. But the holy man says: I foresaw the Lord always in my sight, for he is at my right hand, that I should not be moved. And to holy Peter the apostle, when through the whole night he had caught nothing, as we read in the Gospel, it was said by the Saviour: Cast the nets into the right side of the boat. And so, relying on the heavenly commands, he cast the nets and gathered a very great number of fishes. On the left there was night; on the right the daylight brightness of the divine word was shining.
There is also the eye of the heifer, which likewise refers to sinners, because just as heifers drag their iniquities along by a continuous strap, not breaking off nor cutting away their own, but dragging sin by a long rope. For the untamed heifer grows tame slowly and drags the straps, does not take them up willingly, because it is impatient of being held; the longer it has dragged, the more it is entangled. The eye is also called the eye of generation, or the fountain of generation, because from the eye's gaze either good or adverse things are generated. Thou hast seen the beauty of a woman, thou hast praised the work of the Maker, the loveliness of nature: it is a generation of faith, an offspring of devotion. Thou wast content with the comeliness of form, thou tookest her to wife not from ambition for wealth, she bore children of a more liberal grace:
the eye was to thee a generation of prosperous things. Thou hast beheld a holy maiden, the reverence of her strict chastity restrained thine eyes, thou hast proclaimed the Lord Jesus, who had given an aged gravity to a girl of youthful age, and had poured into human affections an unstained life amid the weak allurements of this so slippery flesh: the eye became to thee a fountain of good things. Thou hast seen the possessions of orphans, not for seizing but for protecting, and thou hast groaned with a fatherly heart, if thou hast noticed anything neglected of the lesser ones' interests; thou hast driven back him who would not refrain from invading their bounds, thou hast judged for the orphan: thine eye was to thee a fountain and source of justice.
Thou hast judged for the widow — for as a bad coin is not a coin, so a bad judgment is by no means a judgment — thou hast therefore judged like a just and good judge, thou hast seen the wicked usurper, who reckoned as his prey a woman bereft of a husband's help, thou hast not suffered iniquity, thou hast brought aid to her who was undefended, whereby, helped by thy protection, she carried on the unhindered work of chastity and was not compelled to seek a husband's help; the Lord saith to thee: 'Come, let us reason together, for thou hast justified the widow': thine eye became to thee a fountain of grace. Thou hast seen the naked body of a poor man lying dead, thou didst not pass by like that priest and Levite who are set forth in the Gospel, but straightway, taking pity, thou hast handed it over to the consolations of burial:
the eye generated for thee the material of redemption. On the contrary, if, gazing upon the field of an orphan planted with vines, joyful with crops, with shady groves or with running streams or with bubbling springs or pleasant with the grassy banks of its shores, and inflamed with the torches of avarice thou hast moved the boundaries of his fathers and, wicked man, hast rushed in upon an undefended possession, thine eye has generated for thee the bitter things of everlasting death. Thou hast violated the rights of a neighbouring widow, thou hast compelled her, who ought rather to nurse either her grief or her shame shut up within secret walls, to leap forth into public, to litigate more shamelessly than unjustly: thine eye has been made the offspring of iniquity.
Thou hast looked upon a poor man with a haughty eye and an insatiable heart, thou hast despised the prayer of the poor and hast passed by with disdain him whom thou oughtest to have pitied: thine eye was to thee a fountain and source of sin. Therefore let thine eyes not be the eyes of a wolf and lying in wait for prey, but, as is said to the bride: Thine eyes are pools in Heshbon, in the gates of the daughter of many. Thy nose is as the tower of Lebanon. What are the pools in Heshbon but an abundance in reasonable thoughts, which is in the gates of the Church, to whom is offered a multitude of doctrine? For the daughter of many is the posterity and offspring of very many doctrines, whose nose is a fragrance of sacrifices surpassing all flowers.
For what is more sublime than the fragrance of Christ, who breathed out a sweet savour upon the earth? Let this eye, then, foresee the things that are to come, and, if it foresees adversities threatening, let it not cease to soften and mitigate them with weeping and tears. Therefore Jeremiah, set in the captivity of the Jewish nation, foreseeing the future hardship of a perpetual captivity, which the people of the Jews were to pay as the price of their perfidy, said in the Lamentations under this same letter: For this I weep, mine eyes have grown dim with weeping, because he that comforted me is far from me. He grieved, therefore, not that he himself was led away from his own lands, but that the people were to be forsaken by Christ, and he saw the consolation of the life to come lost.
This is the captivity to be lamented, which seemed deprived of the hope of eternal liberty. In another place also, under this same letter, he repeated in the Lamentations, saying: The Lord hath accomplished what he purposed, his word which he commanded from days of old; he hath thrown down and not spared, and hath made the enemy to rejoice over thee, and hath exalted the horn of him that troubles thee. Is not the future judgment of Christ plainly announced, as it is also certain that it is declared in this present psalm? Let the eye, then, foresee the things that are to come, and avert them either by a flood of tears or by the correction of error. In short, Jeremiah wept, because he beheld the evil cause of the impious people, who by the stubbornness of their perfidy denied their own Author.
But David, foreseeing in a prophetic spirit the judgment of Christ, in which no innocent man shall be endangered, no wicked man shall escape, relying on a good conscience, says: I have done judgment and justice; deliver me not over to those that wrong me. Not as a vainglorious and insolent man does he praise himself, since assuredly, being skilled in the law, he was not ignorant that each one ought to be praised by another rather than by his own mouth. There is here, I say, no boasting of virtues proclaimed, but the assertion of an innocent life, rightly presumed, lest he be deemed worthy to be forsaken by the Lord on account of grave sins and handed over to the power of those who wrong. It is therefore a defence, not arrogance, since no excellence of honour is assumed, but a dreadful hardship is repelled.
In short, Peter uses this kind of defence, saying: Behold, we have forsaken all and followed thee; what therefore shall we have? In which, if there had been any disreputable boldness of arrogant speech, he would not have brought back so great a measure of grace from the sentence of the Lord and Saviour, that he should not only by no means himself be subject to judgment, but should even be announced as one who would judge concerning the merits of others. For neither in judgment, if anyone should disclose what he had done for the sake of guarding his own innocence, would it be reckoned as said for boasting rather than for the defence of his cause. It is one thing to call oneself worthy of a reward, another to call oneself undeserving of injury.
And yet that very man, the supreme master of philosophy, as they say, when he was accused, being asked with what penalty he thought himself worthy, is reported to have answered that he should be received daily at a public banquet in the prytaneum. He claimed an honour; this man guarded against hardship. He arrogated glory to himself; this man preserved humility. For what greater humility can there be than that one conscious to himself of judgment and justice should fear to be handed over to the power of the devil? He acknowledged himself to be a man, in unequal war against the spiritual wickednesses in the heavenly places. He knew that Enoch was caught away, lest malice should change his heart; that Noah was made drunk; that Lot was defiled with incest; that the first of priests, Aaron himself, was tempted together with his sister Miriam.
Miriam was first sprinkled with the marks of leprosy, afterward absolved; Moses was almost slain, had not his wife Zipporah, by the circumcision of her son and by such a shedding of blood, driven away all peril from him. Warned, therefore, by these examples, by no means does he trust to his own strength, but a cautious humility, by praying, attaches to itself the divine help, asking that he be not handed over to those who wrong. For he knows that the prince of the world is the author of all transgressions. He himself rends the individual affections of neighbours, stirred by the goads of wrath; he himself kindles the flame of lust; he himself fans the cravings of avarice, so that the more we have seized, the more we crave; he himself suggests and supplies the fuel of luxury; he himself exasperates with hatred and inflames with the zeal of immoderate ambition.
This vice, flattering in its beginning, savage in its progress, could not be recalled even by the contemplation of brotherly kinship: while the aspirer to heavenly grace grieved that his brother was preferred, from a sacrifice he proceeded to fratricide. The apostle, therefore, teaches that the devil is the author of incontinence: Lest Satan tempt you because of your incontinence. We read also that he himself is the instigator of avarice, Paul saying: They that will be rich fall into temptation and the snare of the devil; and elsewhere: Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth: fornication, uncleanness, lust, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry.
For in these things we do the will of the devil and carry out his power, who through the desires of this flesh works the incitement of his deceit. Whomsoever, therefore, he shall have found in possession of his own vices, he will claim him as one subject to his right. Someone commits adultery, practises lust, plunders what belongs to others: he is the devil's portion. But the chaste and continent and merciful man is Christ's portion. The servant of Christ, then, he cannot claim for himself, unless perchance he catch him fallen into vices. Not even then does he claim him, but demands that he be handed over to him as his own. Therefore David says: I have done judgment and justice, not to arrogate, but to excuse himself, lest as a sinner he be forsaken by Christ.
Let the apostolic reading be an example to us as to why each one is handed over. For him who had his father's wife, because he had so acted, the apostle, as he says, handed over to Satan. He would not, then, have been handed over, had he not done the works of the devil. Whence not undeservedly does the prophet refuse to be handed over to those who wrong, who alleges that he has done not the works of the devil, but of Christ. For Christ says: Judge for the orphan and justify the widow. This, then, is 'I have done judgment and justice': in judgment I despised not the poor, I oppressed not the widow, I respected not the person of the rich, in all my works I preserved justice. The end of judgment is justice; in the one there is the keeping of truth, in the other the fruit of equity, yet each is not a private but a public virtue.
For to keep the body unstained from manly intercourse and to bear the palm of chastity in a body of clay even to the conversation of angels by the keeping of integrity is a private advantage but a public praise. To be frugal and modest and to keep the measure of a sober thrift is approved by many, but profits oneself alone. Fortitude is eminent in battles, but grows cold in leisure; its work is necessary in time, but in one's wish it is adverse; for men prefer not to fight rather than to conquer. Justice alone there is, which is born for all other times rather than for itself, by its daily use and public fruit. At its own loss it guards the advantages of others, having nothing of advantage and very much of praise.