Blessed are those who now hunger and thirst, for they shall be filled. And further on: Woe to you who are full, for you shall hunger. But do you wish to eat, wish to drink? Come to the banquet of Wisdom, who invites all with great proclamation, saying: Come and eat my bread and drink the wine which I have mixed for you. Do songs delight you, which soothe the banqueter? Hear the Church exhorting, hear her singing not only in songs but even in the Song of Songs: Eat, my neighbors, and drink and be inebriated, my brethren. But this inebriation makes men sober, this is the inebriation of grace, not of drunkenness. It begets gladness, not staggering.
And do not fear that at the banquet of the Church pleasant fragrances, or sweet foods, or varied drinks, or noble guests, or seemly servants should be lacking to you. What is more noble than Christ, who at the banquet of the Church both serves and is served? To the side of this guest as he reclines join yourself, and join yourself to God; do not disdain the table which Christ chose, saying: I have entered into my garden, my sister, my spouse. I have gathered my myrrh with my spices, I have eaten my bread with my honey and have drunk my wine with my milk. In the garden, that is, in paradise, is the banquet of the Church, where Adam was before he committed sin. There Eve reclined, before she created and brought forth guilt.
There you will gather myrrh, that is, the burial of Christ, so that, buried together with him through baptism into death, just as he rose from the dead, you also may rise. There you will eat bread, which strengthens the heart of man; you will taste honey, by which the passage of your throat is made sweet. You will drink wine with milk, that is, with splendor and sincerity, whether because it is pure simplicity, or because it is the unstained grace which is received for the remission of sins, or because she suckles the little ones with the breasts of her consolation, so that, weaned amid delights, they may grow up into the fullness of perfect age. Enter therefore into this banquet.
Or do you fear lest a house too narrow and a small space for the banquet should crowd you? O Israel, how great is the house of God and how vast the place of his possession! Great and without end, lofty and immeasurable. There were those giants who were from the beginning, of great stature, skilled in battle. These God did not choose. And rightly he did not choose them, because they knew battle, not peace; and therefore do you learn peace, that you may be chosen by God. But lest perhaps you think the greatness of the house unadorned and lest pillared lodgings delight you, Wisdom has built herself a house and set up seven pillars. The Lord Jesus himself also relates that there are many mansions with his Father. In this house, therefore, you shall feast on the foods of the soul and the drinks of the mind.
so that afterward you may never hunger nor thirst; for he who eats, eats unto satiety, and he who drinks, drinks unto inebriation. But this inebriation is the guardian of chastity, while that inebriation of wine is the kindling of lust, by which through the flesh the inner vitals are heated, the soul takes fire, the spirit is burned up. A savage goad of crimes is lust, which never allows the affection to remain at rest. By night it seethes, by day it pants, it rouses from sleep, draws away from business, calls back from reason, takes away counsel, disquiets lovers, casts down the fallen, lies in wait for the chaste, by attaining inflames and by use is kindled. There is no measure to sinning, and the insatiable thirst for wickedness cannot be quenched except by the death of the lover. And therefore the Apostle says:
Flee fornication, that by swift flight we may avoid the savagery of that frenzied mistress and escape from a foul servitude. For what shall I say of avarice, that insatiable greed for money and a kind of lust for coin, which the more it has carried off, the more it believes itself poor? Envious toward all, cheap to itself, amid the greatest riches needy in disposition, it makes scant in feeling what it abounds in income. There is no measure to seizing where there is no measure to coveting. So it inflames the mind, so it feeds the mind with its own fire, that it differs only in this, that the former is an adulterer of beauties, the latter of lands. It shakes the elements. It furrows the sea, digs up the earth, wearies heaven with its vows, neither pleased with fair weather nor condemning at clouds, and finds fault with the yearly produce and the offspring of the earth.
But this is a sickness of the soul, not health. Finally, Ecclesiastes says: There is an evil malady which I have seen under the sun, riches kept for the harm of those who possess them. And above: He who loves silver will not be satisfied with silver. Nor is there an end to their acquisition. If you seek treasures, take the invisible and hidden ones, which you should seek in the highest heavens, not those in the veins of the earth. Be poor in spirit and you will be rich whatever your wealth, for the life of man is not in the abundance of riches, but in virtue and faith.
These riches will make you truly rich, if you are rich toward God.' You have heard the mysteries of pleasure, you have also heard the gifts of our own abundance, which I have thought should be displayed not as things to be covered with furnishings, but as things to be shown by the bare words of Scripture, so that they might shine by their own light and of themselves send forth a voice in turn. For neither sun nor moon need an interpreter; they have as interpreter the brightness of their own light, with which the whole world is filled. To them illumination is faith, a witness without an informer, so to speak unattested, which needs no testimony of another and suddenly pours itself before the eyes of all. Our works, therefore, are not announced, but they cry out and announce themselves.
Indeed, that I may not pass over even what is reckoned laborious in our affairs: faith is required, zeal is desired, deeds are sought. For by these three the Lord Jesus defined the duties of human devotion, saying: Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and you shall find; knock, and it shall be opened to you. And further on: Everyone therefore who hears these my words and does them is like a wise man. He who has zealously pursued these things will receive the primacy of the blessing, like the patriarch Jacob, who by continence and faith supplanted the traces of human passions. He says: God had mercy on me, and all things are mine.
Let us therefore merit this mercy by faith, zeal, and works, by which disciplines Israel found the grace of God and through it all things: for he rejoiced that not the abundance of this world but the disciplines of the virtues were at his command. Let us appoint as our heirs these things, which holy Abraham appointed for himself in his son Isaac, assigning the whole inheritance of his works to a wise and just man, and leaving no hereditary right to the handmaids or to the sons of the handmaids, but only gifts of a donation. For the perfect virtues receive the whole patrimony of glory, while to the common and middling something cheap is sprinkled. And therefore Hagar, who in Latin is called a stranger and sojourner, and Keturah, which means the fragrant one, are not heirs.
For he who uses the middling disciplines is a sojourner, not a dweller in wisdom. Sprinkled with fragrance, he is not filled with fruit. But it is food, not fragrance, that brings health, since fragrance is the herald of fruits. And so we recognize that the principal disciplines are to be preferred to those that follow, and the native to the sojourners. This according to the natural sense. But according to the mystery, Abraham, the father of the nations, conferred upon his lawful seed, which is Christ, the whole inheritance of his faith—he who was as a stranger in this land, so that he might bear back the fragrance rather than the fruit of this life.
When the mind hears these things, it turns itself away from pleasure and joins itself to virtue, admiring the grace of true comeliness—a pure affection, a simple judgment, a modest garment, that is, not in the persuasion of speech but in the demonstration of the Spirit, such as is the form of the apostolic sentence—gleaming with the cloak of wisdom and piety more precious than all gold; then receiving the choir of prudence, temperance, fortitude, justice, which breathe forth the fragrance of the disciplines, striking reverence, infusing grace. And so, moved by such things, it chooses the pursuits of virtue, to which Jacob, a man full of training, applied his mind.
And therefore he is brought forward as a shepherd of sheep, because to rule over the body and its senses and pleasures, and to keep measure over the voice, lest like a sheep it wander uncertain, is reckoned more excellent than to govern peoples and to preside over cities; for it is harder for anyone to rule himself than another. To conquer the mind, to restrain anger, and to compel into one the warring laws of the flesh and the mind is the work of a certain immortal man, whom the gate of hell shall not seize. Finally, the lawgiver himself claimed this office for himself, that he should pasture the sheep of Jethro, who is called 'superfluous,' and drive them into the desert, because he forced the irrational and superfluous and vulgar loquacity of speech into certain hidden mysteries of sober doctrine.
And therefore shepherds of sheep were an abomination to the Egyptians; for all who are given over to the passions and pleasures of the body of this kind and indulge their own avoid with a certain execration the arbiter of the word and the teacher of virtue. And therefore through these enigmas Moses taught that the sacrifices fitting for God—which every foolish man shuns—are the works and precepts of virtue. And therefore Abel is read to be a shepherd, but Cain a tiller of the earth, who, being a foolish man in regard to his brother, could not bear to carry the form and likeness of virtue expressed. And it came to pass after some days that Cain offered to the Lord a gift from the fruits of the earth. A twofold fault:
one, that he offered after some days; the other, that it was from the fruits, not from the first-fruits. But a sacrifice is commended both by swiftness and by grace. Whence it is commanded: If you vow a vow, make no delay to pay it; for it is better not to vow a vow than to vow and not pay; for when you delay, you do not pay. Now a vow is a request for good things from God with a promise of discharging a gift. And therefore, when you have obtained what you asked, it is the mark of an ingrate to put off the promise. But sometimes either forgetfulness of what was obtained creeps in upon the negligent, or it is the resolve of the swollen and puffed-up to claim outcomes for themselves and to assign them to their own virtues, and not to attribute them to the grace of the Author, but to consider themselves the authors of their own goods.
The third kind is indeed of lesser sin, but of nearly equal arrogance, namely of those who do not deny that God is the giver of good things, but think that whatever has befallen them has been justly conferred on them on account of their own prudence and the merits of their other virtues. They suppose, moreover, that they have been held worthy of divine grace because they would by no means seem unworthy to have such things come to them through divine benefactions. Lest therefore anything of this kind happen, whereby your vow may become a sin to you, the law has informed and instructed you, the Lord who gave the law saying: Take heed to yourself, lest you forget the benefits of the Lord your God and keep not his commandments and judgments and ordinances of justice, which I command you today:
lest, when you have eaten and are full, and when you have built good houses and begun to dwell in them, and when your sheep and your oxen are multiplied, and you are filled with bronze, silver, and gold, and you begin to possess all things, and your barns are full, you exalt your heart and forget the Lord your God. You will then forget the Lord, when you have forgotten yourself. But if you recognize that you are weak, you will recognize that God is above all things, and you will not be able to be unmindful of him, so as to render him the reverence due. Learn now how each one is admonished, lest he think himself the author of his own goods. Say not, it says, in your heart:
My strength and my power have wrought for me this great might; but you shall keep in mind the Lord your God, for it is he who gives strength, that you may do mightily. Whence the Apostle rightly, as an interpreter of the law, did not glory in his own strength, but said that he was the least of the apostles, and that whatever he was, was of divine grace and not of his own merit, and that we have nothing which we have not received. For what, he says, do you have that you have not received? But if you have received it, why do you glory as if you had not received it? You have learned, therefore, to follow humility rather than arrogance, to strive after diligence rather than power. You have received saving precepts; do not neglect the useful instruments of medicine, by which every fiber of a deadly wound is cut out.
He also who justifies himself, lest he be puffed up by the swelling of his own heart—he too received a wholesome command, the oracle resounding to this effect: Say not in your heart, when the Lord your God has begun to consume those nations from before your face, saying: On account of my righteousness the Lord has brought me in to possess this land: but on account of the iniquities of these nations the Lord will root them out from before your face. Not on account of your righteousness nor on account of the equity of your heart did you enter to possess this land, but on account of the iniquity of the nations the Lord will destroy them from before your face and will restore his covenant, which he swore to your fathers. The covenant is the perfect grace of God;
for God gives nothing imperfect, and perfect is virtue and the works of virtue. Now it is called a covenant (testament) by which the inheritance of good things is conveyed. Rightly it is called both a testament and divine, since the things which are truly good are conferred by the attestation of heavenly commands. And it is called a testament because it was dedicated by blood, the old in figure, the new in truth. By this covenant we hold the pledge of divine grace, for God so loved this world that he gave his only Son for us all. Whence, proclaiming the perfection of grace, the Apostle says: How has he not also with him given us all things? The first grace, then, of a vow is the swiftness of its discharge.
Finally Abraham, commanded to offer his son for a burnt offering, offered him not after some days as Cain offered, but rising in the morning he saddled his ass and took with him two servants and Isaac his son, and cutting wood for the burnt offering he rose and departed and came on the third day to the place which God had told him. First note the early and hastening zeal of the one about to sacrifice, so that there was no delay of waiting except until the oracle was heard; then that he himself saddled his ass, undertook all the service, and prepared the things necessary for the sacrifice, and led his victim accompanied also by the two virtues of faith, sure of the power of God and secure of his goodness.
But as to his saying 'on the third day,' either it is that devotion ought to be continual and perpetual—for time is threefold, past, present, and future, by which we are admonished that no forgetfulness of God's benefits, whether past, present, or future, ought to creep in, but a tenacious memory of grace should persevere and obedience not be lacking—or it is because he who sacrifices ought to believe in one splendor, one light of the Trinity; for to him who faithfully sacrifices the day shines, there is no night. So too in Exodus Moses says: We will go a journey of three days and sacrifice to the Lord our God. But elsewhere also, when God had appeared to Abraham at the oak of Mamre, Abraham, it says, looking up with his eyes saw, and behold, three men stood over him.
And seeing them he ran to meet them at the door of his tent and bowed himself to the ground and said: Lord, if I have found grace before you. He sees three, he adores one, he offers three measures of fine flour. For although God is immeasurable, yet he holds the measure of all things, as it is written: Who has measured the waters with his hand and the heaven with his palm and the whole earth with his closed fist? To the Trinity, therefore, perfect in each of the persons, in the inner secret of his mind—that is, of spiritual fine flour—the holy patriarch offered his sacrifice. This is the fine flour which that woman in the Gospel grinds, who shall be taken; for the one, it says, shall be taken, the other shall be left. The Church shall be taken, the synagogue left, or the good mind shall be taken, the wicked left behind.
But that you may know that Abraham also believed in Christ: Abraham, he says, saw my day and rejoiced. And he who believes in Christ believes also in the Father, and he who perfectly believes in the Father believes in the Son and the Holy Spirit. Three measures, then, one fine flour, that is, it was one sacrifice, which was offered to the venerable Trinity with a certain equal measure of devotion and a fitting fullness of piety. Recognize yet further the zeal of a swift devotion. He ran, it says, and took one calf, tender and good, and gave it to a servant and hastened to prepare it. Everywhere energetic devotion, and therefore his gift was acceptable to God. You have also elsewhere that you should anticipate the rising of the sun with prayer: Go forth, it says, to meet the rising of the sun.
You have in the Gospel the Lord Jesus saying: Zacchaeus, make haste and come down. And he who had obtained what he wished, to see Christ, and had obtained still more, to be seen and called by Christ, hastening came down and received him with joy. And therefore the Lord approved his affection and rewarded him with a swift recompense, saying: Because today salvation has come to this house. For the Lord too hastened to the benefit, and therefore he did not wait to promise and fulfill afterward, but did it first and declared it afterward. For he said: Salvation has come, which surely was the mark of one who anticipates, not of one who promises. The just man therefore commends his vow by swiftness.
And therefore our fathers ate the Passover in haste, with their loins girded and not loosing their feet from the bands of their sandals, and laying aside as it were a bodily burden, so that they might be ready for the passing over; for the Passover of the Lord is a passing over from the passions to the exercises of virtue. And therefore it is called the Lord's Passover, since both then in that figure of the lamb the truth of the Lord's passion was announced, and now its grace is celebrated. Seek this quickly therefore, O soul, that you may also quickly hear, as Jacob too heard: What is this that you have found so quickly, my son? And he answered according to the teaching: It is what the Lord your God delivered into my hands. Quickly God gives, for he spoke and they were made, he commanded and they were created.
For the Word of God is not, as someone has said, a work, but a worker, as you have it written: My Father works until now, and I work. He anticipates all things; for he is before all things as the Father, and in all things as the same Father, penetrating all things. For it is mighty and sharp and sharper than any sword, penetrating even to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, anticipating the thoughts of all. Of whom God the Father says: Now you shall see whether my word overtakes you or not. For where God is, there too is the Word, as he said: We will come and make our abode with him. And as you have read elsewhere concerning God: I stood here before you, so too the Word says: Before you stood under the fig tree, I saw you.
And it is said concerning the Word himself, that is, the Son of God: In the midst of you stands one whom you know not. For wherever the saints are, there in their midst the Word of God, filling the inmost hearts of each, fills seas and lands. And while he is here, he is also elsewhere, with no change of place, but filling everywhere with the presence of himself; for he is everywhere, who is through all and in all, leaving no place free of himself, and where he is present he was, and where he was he is present. And therefore he who knows that the Word of God is swift asks quickly and quickly obtains. But Pharaoh, who spent his zeal on vain and empty opinions, when Egypt was filled with frogs that gave back an empty sound of things and a vain noise, said to Moses who spoke:
Appoint for me when I should pray for you and for your servants and for your people, that the Lord may destroy the frogs—when, placed in such great necessity, he ought to have asked that he might pray at once and not delay, he answered: Tomorrow; idle and negligent of delay, he was to pay the penalty of the delay with the ruin of Egypt. And so this man, when he obtained his request, became forgetful of the grace and, exalted in the mind of his flesh, forgot God. But humility commended prayer, since that Pharisee too was reproved, who enumerated his fastings as though they were benefits and as it were cast them in God's face and recorded himself as exempt from crimes, but the publican was praised, who, standing afar off, would not lift his eyes to heaven, but smote his breast, saying:
Lord God, be merciful to me a sinner. And therefore the divine sentence preferred him, saying that this publican went down justified rather than that Pharisee. For he is justified who confesses his own sin, as the Lord himself said: Tell your iniquities that you may be justified. And David says: A sacrifice to God is a contrite spirit; and again: A heart contrite and humbled God does not despise. Jeremiah too says: My soul in anguish and my anxious spirit cries out to you. Therefore both Pharaoh and the Assyrian, who said: Which of the gods of these nations has delivered his land out of my hand, that your God should deliver Jerusalem out of my hand?
were cast down by their own exaltation, but the just man, like Jacob, refers whatever good he has obtained to God the Author, saying of all that he recognizes to have prospered for him that the Lord your God delivered them into my hands. This therefore is the better discharge of vows, as David too says: Sacrifice to God a sacrifice of praise and render your vows to the Most High. To praise God is to commend and to discharge a vow. Whence that Samaritan also is preferred above the rest, who, when cleansed from leprosy with nine others according to the Lord's command, alone returned to Christ, magnifying God and giving thanks. Of whom Jesus says: Was there none of these who returned and gave thanks to God except this stranger? And he said to him:
Rise and go your way, for your faith has saved you. There is also that discipline of commending prayer and the vow, that we should not divulge our prayer, but keep the mysteries hidden, as Abraham kept them, who made cakes baked in the ashes. The fathers too kept them, who baked the dough they had brought out of Egypt, making in the ashes the unleavened bread which in Greek they call 'enkryphia,' because they are hidden in the ash, signifying—just as that leaven which the woman in the Gospel hid in three measures until the whole was leavened—that the teaching of the mysteries also must be kept pressed down and concealed. This the Lord taught more openly in his Gospel, saying:
But when you pray, go into your chamber, and when the door is shut, pray to your Father in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you. And when you pray, do not heap up many words; and further on: For your Father knows what you have need of before you ask him. Your chamber is the inner recess of the mind and the hidden place of the soul. Enter into this chamber of yours; that is, enter into the depths of your heart, go in wholly out of the outer porch of your body, and shut your door. Learn what your door should be: Set a watch, O Lord, before my mouth, and a door round about my lips. Paul too asks that prayer be made for himself, that, as he says, a door of utterance may be opened to me to speak the mystery of Christ.
But he, as one chosen for the preaching of the Gospel, rightly desired a door of utterance to be opened to him, because from his mouth came the salvation of the nations, from his mouth proceeded the life of the peoples; we, however, should shut our door, lest fault enter, lest any slip of speech go out. Fault enters, if a slip has gone forth. Hear how fault enters: In the multitude of words, it says, you shall not escape sin. Wordiness went out, sin came in, because in much speaking the word that goes forth is by no means weighed. One slips imprudently, although even to speak anything beyond measure is itself a great sin. Therefore beware of speaking imprudently; for the lips of the imprudent lead him into evils. Beware of exalting yourself in prayer; for the prayer of one who humbles himself pierces the clouds.
Beware lest you incautiously divulge the mysteries of the Creed or of the Lord's Prayer. Or do you not know how grave it is to contract sin in the very prayer where you hope for remedy? Surely the Lord taught through the prophet that this is a grievous curse, saying: And let his prayer become sin; unless perhaps you reckon this a small matter. For it is distrust to judge concerning the power of God that you are not heard unless you cry aloud. Let your works cry out, let your faith cry, let your love cry, let your sufferings cry, let your blood cry, like that of holy Abel, of whom God said to Cain: The voice of your brother's blood cries to me. He hears you in secret who cleanses in secret. We cannot hear except one who speaks; but with God it is not words that speak, but thoughts.
And that you may know this to be true, the Lord Jesus said to the Jews: Why do you think evil in your hearts? This is not the voice of one inquiring, but of one who knows. The evangelist makes this clear to you, saying: But Jesus knew their thoughts. Therefore as the Son knows, so also does the Father know. You have learned that the Son knows; hear now, that the Father knows, the Son who is the Father's counsellor and witness, saying: For your Father knows what you have need of before you ask him. Cook, therefore, your hearth-cake by the warmth of the Holy Spirit; cook also the passions of your soul by the heat of the Word. And if your passions are still rather raw, having perhaps but lately come out of Egypt, cover them over and boil them out with a gentle heat, lest, being unable to bear a fiercer fire, they be scorched rather than cooked;
For there are very many things which displease when raw but delight when cooked. Cherish the deep mysteries in your breast, lest by premature speech you commit them, as it were uncooked, to faithless or weak ears, and the hearer turn away and reject them with loathing. But if he should taste them better cooked, he would perceive the sweetness of spiritual food. And divinely the Lord Jesus taught you also the goodness of the Father, who knows how to give good things, that you may ask good things of the Good One; and he urged earnestly and repeatedly that we must pray, not that prayer should be drawn out wearisomely, but that it should be frequent and constant. Vain things commonly cloud a long entreaty, but when prayer is intermitted, negligence creeps in altogether.