Although among very many of you, dearly beloved brethren, the mind is firm and the faith steadfast and the soul devout, which is not moved by the abundance of this present mortality, but like a strong and stable rock rather breaks the turbid assaults of the world and the violent waves of the age, and is not itself broken, and is not overcome by temptations but is proved by them, yet because I perceive among the people certain ones who, whether through weakness of mind, or smallness of faith, or the sweetness of worldly life, or softness of sex, or—what is more—through error of the truth, stand less firmly and do not put forth the divine and unconquered strength of their breast, the matter ought not to be dissembled nor passed over in silence; rather, as far as our slender ability suffices, with full vigor and with a discourse drawn from the Lord's lesson, let the cowardice of the delicate mind be restrained, and let him who has now begun to be a man of God and of Christ be held worthy of God and Christ.
For he ought to recognize, dearly beloved brethren, who serves God, who, placed in the heavenly camp, now hopes for divine things, that there should be in us no trembling at the storms and whirlwinds of the world, no perturbation, since the Lord foretold that these things would come, instructing and teaching and preparing and strengthening the people of his Church by the exhortation of his foreseeing voice for all endurance of things to come. He foretold and proclaimed that wars and famines and earthquakes and pestilences would arise in particular places; and lest a new and unexpected fear of harassing things should shake us, he forewarned beforehand that adversities would multiply more and more in the last times.
Behold, the things that were foretold come to pass; and when the things that were foretold come to pass, there will follow also whatever things were promised, the Lord himself pledging and saying: 'But when you see all these things come to pass, know that the kingdom of God is at hand.' The kingdom of God, dearly beloved brethren, has begun to be at hand: the reward of life and the joy of eternal salvation and perpetual gladness and the possession of paradise lately lost now come, as the world passes away; now heavenly things succeed to earthly, and great to small, and eternal to fleeting. What place is there here for anxiety and solicitude? Who amid these things is trembling and sad, except him to whom hope and faith are lacking? For it belongs to him to fear death who is unwilling to go to Christ.
It belongs to him to be unwilling to go to Christ who does not believe that he is beginning to reign with Christ. For it is written: 'The just shall live by faith.' If you are just and live by faith, if you truly believe in God, why, since you are to be with Christ and secure of the Lord's promise, do you not embrace being called to Christ, and rejoice that you are freed from the devil? Simeon, finally, that just man, who was truly just, who kept the precepts of God with full faith, when it had been answered him from God that he should not die before he had seen Christ, and when the infant Christ had come into the temple with his mother, recognized in the spirit that Christ was now born, of whom it had been foretold to him before; and having seen him, he knew that he would soon die.
Joyful therefore over his death now near, and secure of his approaching summons, he received the child into his hands, and blessing God, he cried out and said: 'Now, Lord, you let your servant depart according to your word in peace, for my eyes have seen your salvation.' Proving, indeed, and bearing witness that then is there peace for the servant of God, then free and tranquil rest, when, drawn out from these whirlwinds of the world, we have sought the harbor of our eternal abode and security; when, this death being completed, we come to immortality. For that is our peace, that our trusty tranquillity, that our stable and firm and perpetual security.
But what else in the world than a battle against the devil is daily waged, than a fight maintained by constant struggles against his darts and weapons? With avarice, with unchastity, with anger, with ambition is our conflict; with carnal vices, with worldly enticements is our constant and troublesome wrestling. The mind of man, besieged and on every side hemmed in by the devil's assault, scarcely meets each foe, scarcely resists: if avarice is overthrown, lust rises up; if lust is suppressed, ambition succeeds; if ambition is despised, anger exasperates, pride puffs up, drunkenness invites, envy breaks concord, jealousy cuts off friendship. You are compelled to curse, which the divine law forbids; you are driven to swear, which is not lawful.
So many persecutions the soul suffers daily, by so many perils is the breast pressed: and does it delight to stand long here among the swords of the devil? When rather it ought to be longed for and desired to hasten with a swifter death to Christ, he himself instructing us and saying: 'Amen, amen, I say to you, that you shall weep and lament, but the world shall rejoice: you shall be sorrowful, but your sorrow shall be turned into joy.' Who would not wish to be free of sorrow, who would not hasten to come to joy? But when our sorrow may come into joy, the Lord himself again declares, saying: 'I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no one shall take from you.'
Since therefore to see Christ is to rejoice, and our joy cannot be except when one has seen Christ, what blindness of mind or what madness is it to love the pressures and punishments and tears of the world, and not rather to hasten to the joy which can never be taken away? But this happens, dearly beloved brethren, because faith is lacking, because no one believes that the things to be true which God, who is truthful, promises, whose word for believers is eternal and firm. If a grave and praiseworthy man promised you something, you would have trust in the one promising, nor would you believe yourself to be cheated or deceived by him whom you knew to stand by his words and deeds. God speaks with you, and do you, with unbelieving mind, faithlessly waver?
God promises immortality and eternity to one departing from this world, and do you doubt? This is not to know God at all; this is to offend Christ, the master of believing, by the sin of unbelief; this is, set in the Church, not to have faith in the house of faith. How much it profits to depart from the world, Christ himself, the master of our salvation and benefit, shows: who, when his disciples were saddened because he said he would now depart, spoke to them, saying: 'If you loved me, you would rejoice, because I go to the Father,' teaching and showing that, when those dear ones whom we love depart from the world, we should rejoice rather than grieve. Mindful of this matter, the blessed apostle Paul sets it down in his epistle and says:
'For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain'—reckoning it the greatest gain to be no longer held by the snares of the world, to be no longer liable to any sins and vices of the flesh, to set forth, exempted from the pressing afflictions and freed from the venomous jaws of the devil, to the gladness of eternal salvation at Christ's calling. But indeed it moves certain ones that the violence of this disease seizes our people equally with the heathen: as if a Christian had believed for this, that he might enjoy the world and the age happily, immune from contact with evils, and not, having endured all adversities here, be reserved for future gladness. It moves certain ones that this mortality is common to us with the rest.
For what in this world is not common to us with the rest, so long as this flesh, according to the law of our first birth, still remains common? As long as we are here in the world, we are joined with the human race in equality of flesh, but separated in spirit. Therefore, until this corruptible put on incorruption, and this mortal receive immortality, and the spirit lead us to God the Father, whatever are the disadvantages of the flesh are common to us with the human race. Thus, when the earth is barren with sterile produce, famine separates no one;
thus, when some city is taken by hostile inroad, captivity lays waste all alike; and when clear skies withhold the rain of the clouds, one drought is upon all; and when jagged rocks shatter a ship, the shipwreck is common to the voyagers without exception; and the pain of the eyes and the onset of fevers and the sickness of all the limbs is common to us with the rest, so long as this common flesh is borne in the world. Nay rather, if a Christian know and hold by what condition, by what law he has believed, he will know that he must labor more than others in the world, who has more to wrestle with against the assault of the devil. The divine Scripture teaches and forewarns, saying:
'Son, when you come to serve God, stand in righteousness and fear, and prepare your soul for temptation,' and again: 'In pain endure, and in your humility have patience, for gold and silver are tried in the fire.' Thus Job, after the losses of his goods, after the deaths of his children, also grievously afflicted with wounds and worms, was not conquered but proved; who, in his very struggles and pains, showing the patience of a religious mind, said: 'Naked I came forth from my mother's womb, naked also shall I go beneath the earth. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away: as it seemed good to the Lord, so it has been done. Blessed be the name of the Lord.'
And when his wife also urged him, that, impatient through the force of pain, he should speak something against God with a querulous and resentful voice, he answered and said: 'You have spoken as one of the foolish women. If we have received good things from the hand of the Lord, shall we not endure evils?' In all these things which befell him Job sinned not with his lips in the sight of the Lord. And therefore the Lord God bears him witness, saying: 'Have you considered my servant Job? For there is none like him on earth, a man without complaint, a true worshipper of God.'
And Tobias, after his magnificent works, after the many and glorious proclamations of his mercy, suffering the blindness of his eyes, fearing and blessing God in adversities, grew unto praise through the very calamity of his body; whom also his own wife tried to pervert, saying: 'Where are your righteous deeds? Behold what you suffer.' But he, stable and firm about the fear of God, and armed by the faith of religion for all endurance of suffering, did not yield in his pain to the temptation of his weak wife, but rather deserved well of God by greater patience; whom afterward the angel Raphael praises, saying: 'It is honorable to reveal and confess the works of God. For when you and Sarah prayed, I offered the memorial of your prayer in the sight of the brightness of God;
and when you buried the dead in singleness of heart, and because you did not hesitate to rise up and leave your meal and went and buried the dead, I was sent to test you: and again God sent me to heal you and Sarah your daughter-in-law. For I am Raphael, one of the seven holy angels who stand by and dwell before the brightness of God.' This endurance the just always had; this discipline the apostles held from the law of the Lord—not to murmur in adversities, but to receive bravely and patiently whatever befalls in the world; whereas the people of the Jews always offended in this point, that they murmured more frequently against God, as the Lord God testifies in Numbers, saying: 'Let their murmuring cease from me, and they shall not die.'
We must not murmur in adversities, dearly beloved brethren, but whatever befalls must be borne patiently and bravely, since it is written: 'A sacrifice to God is a troubled spirit: a contrite and humbled heart God does not despise.' In Deuteronomy also the Holy Spirit admonishes through Moses and says: 'The Lord your God will afflict you and bring famine upon you, and it shall be known in your heart whether you have kept his precepts well or not,' and again: 'The Lord your God tries you, that he may know whether you love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul.' Thus Abraham pleased God, because, in order to please God, he neither feared to lose his son nor refused to commit what seemed a parricide.
You who cannot, by the law and lot of mortality, keep from losing a son, what would you do if you were bidden to slay a son? The fear of God and faith ought to make you ready for all things. Though there be the loss of family property, though there be from harassing diseases a constant and bloody affliction of the limbs, though there be from wife, from children, from departing dear ones a mournful and sorrowful sundering: let these be to you not stumbling blocks but battles, nor let them weaken or break the Christian's faith, but rather let them show forth virtue in the struggle, since every injury of present evils is to be despised in the confidence of future goods. Unless the fight has gone before, there cannot be victory; when in the encounter of the fight there has been victory, then is the crown also given to the victors.
The pilot is discerned in the tempest, the soldier is proved in the battle line. It is a dainty boast when there is no danger: when there is conflict in adversities, there is the proof of truth. The tree which is founded on a deep root is not moved by the winds that press upon it, and the ship which is solidified by a strong framework is beaten by the waves but not pierced; and when the threshing-floor threshes the grain, the strong and sturdy kernels despise the winds, while the empty chaff is snatched away by the carrying blast. Thus also the apostle Paul, after shipwrecks, after scourgings, after many and grievous torments of flesh and body, says that he is not harassed but amended by adversities, so that, while he is more grievously afflicted, he might be the more truly proved.
'There was given me,' he says, 'a thorn in my flesh, an angel of Satan to buffet me, that I be not exalted. Concerning which I thrice besought the Lord that it might depart from me, and he said to me: My grace is sufficient for you. For strength is made perfect in weakness.' When therefore weakness and feebleness and some devastation rages, then is our strength made perfect, then is faith crowned if, tempted, it stands fast, as it is written: 'The furnace tries the vessels of the potter, and the temptation of tribulation just men.' This, finally, is the difference between us and the rest who do not know God: that they in adversities complain and murmur, while adversities do not call us away from the truth of virtue and faith, but prove us in pain.
This, that now the loosened belly disembowels the body's strength in a flux; that the fire conceived in the very marrow burns out in wounds of the throat; that the bowels are shaken with continual vomiting; that the eyes are inflamed with the force of blood; that in some either the feet or some parts of the limbs are amputated by the contagion of a diseased putrefaction; that, through the losses and damages of bodies, with the languor breaking forth, either the gait is weakened, or the hearing is obstructed, or the sight is blinded—all this avails for the proof of faith.
To grapple against so many assaults of devastation and death with the unshaken virtues of the soul—how great is the greatness of breast, how great the loftiness, to stand upright amid the ruins of the human race, and not to lie prostrate with those who have no hope in God, and rather to give thanks and embrace the gift of the time; that, while we firmly put forth our faith and, having endured the labor, come to Christ by the narrow way of Christ, we may receive the reward of his way and of our faith, he himself being judge. Let him plainly fear to die who, not born again of water and the Spirit, is delivered to the fires of Gehenna. Let him fear to die who is not reckoned by the cross and passion of Christ. Let him fear to die who from this death shall pass to the second death.
Let him fear to die whom, departing from the world, the eternal flame shall torture with everlasting punishments. Let him fear to die for whom this is granted by a longer delay, that his torment and groaning may meanwhile be deferred. Many of ours die in this mortality, that is, many of ours are freed from the world. This mortality is a pestilence to the Jews and the heathen and the enemies of Christ, but to the servants of God it is a saving departure. As to the fact that, without any distinction of the human race, the just die together with the unjust, there is no reason for you to think that destruction is common to the evil and the good. The just are called to refreshment, the unjust are snatched to punishment; protection is given more swiftly to the faithful, punishment to the faithless.
We are improvident and ungrateful, dearly beloved brethren, toward the divine benefits, and we do not recognize what is bestowed upon us. Behold, the virgins depart in peace, safe with their glory, not fearing the coming threats and corruptions and brothels of antichrist. The boys escape the peril of their slippery age, and happily arrive at the reward of continence and innocence. The delicate matron no longer fears torments, for by the swiftness of dying she has gained release from the dread of persecution and from the hands and tortures of the executioner.
By the terror of this mortality and of the time, the timid are kindled, the slack are braced, the slothful are roused, deserters are compelled to return, the heathen are constrained to believe, the old company of the faithful is summoned to rest, while for the battle a fresh and abundant army is gathered together with stronger vigor, to fight without fear of death when the conflict comes, even he who comes to the warfare in a time of mortality.
And then, dearly beloved brethren, what a thing is this, how fitting, how necessary, that this pestilence and plague which seems so horrible and deadly searches out the righteousness of each one and examines the minds of the human race: whether the healthy minister to the sick, whether kinsfolk dutifully love their relations, whether masters have pity on their ailing servants, whether physicians do not forsake the entreating sick, whether the fierce restrain their violence, whether the rapacious quench even by fear of death the ever-insatiable ardor of their raging avarice, whether the proud bend their necks, whether the wicked soften their audacity, whether the rich, since they must die without an heir, bestow and give at least something to their perishing dear ones.
Even though this mortality should confer nothing else, it has profited Christians and the servants of God exceedingly in this, that we have begun gladly to seek martyrdom, while we learn not to fear death. These are exercises for us, not deaths: they give the soul the glory of fortitude, and by contempt of death they prepare us for the crown. But perhaps someone may object and say: 'This, then, grieves me in the present mortality, that I who was prepared for confession and had devoted myself with my whole heart and full strength to the endurance of suffering am deprived of my martyrdom, since I am forestalled by death.' In the first place, martyrdom is not in your own power, but in the favor of God, nor can you say that you have lost what you do not know whether you will deserve to receive.
Then again, God is the searcher of the reins and the heart, the beholder and knower of hidden things; He sees you and praises you and approves you, and He who perceives that the virtue was ready in you renders the reward for that virtue. Did not Cain, when he offered his gift to God, already have his brother slain? And yet God, foreseeing, condemned beforehand the fratricide conceived in the mind. As there the evil thought and the pernicious conception was foreseen by the foreseeing God, so also in the servants of God, with whom confession is purposed and martyrdom conceived in the mind, the soul devoted to good is crowned with God as judge. It is one thing for the soul to be lacking for martyrdom, another for martyrdom to have been lacking to the soul. Such as the Lord finds you when He calls, such likewise He judges you, since He Himself testifies and says:
'And all the churches shall know that I am the searcher of the reins and the heart.' For God seeks not our blood but our faith. For neither Abraham nor Isaac nor Jacob were slain, yet by the merits of faith and righteousness they were honored and counted worthy to be first among the patriarchs: to whose banquet is gathered every one found faithful and just and praiseworthy. We ought to remember that we are to do not our own will but the will of God, according to that which the Lord has daily bidden us to pray. How preposterous and how perverse it is that, when we ask that the will of God be done, yet when God calls us and summons us out of this world, we do not at once obey the command of His will!
We struggle and resist, and after the manner of obstinate servants we are brought into the Lord's presence with sadness and grief, departing hence by the bond of necessity, not by the obedience of will: and we wish to be honored by Him with heavenly rewards, to whom we come unwillingly. Why then do we pray and ask that the kingdom of heaven may come, if an earthly captivity delights us? Why with prayers oftentimes repeated do we beg and entreat that the day of the kingdom may hasten, if our greater desires and stronger longings are to serve the devil here rather than to reign with Christ?
Finally, that the tokens of divine providence might shine forth more plainly, showing that the Lord, foreknowing things to come, provides for His own unto true salvation: when one of our colleagues and fellow-priests, worn out by sickness and anxious about his approaching death, was praying for a respite, there stood by him as he prayed, when he was already all but dying, a young man venerable in honor and majesty, lofty in stature and bright of aspect, such as the human gaze could scarcely behold with fleshly eyes as he stood by him—except that one about to depart from the world was now able to see such a one. And he, not without a certain indignation of soul and voice, groaned and said:
'You fear to suffer, you are unwilling to depart; what shall I do with you?' This was the voice of one rebuking and admonishing, of one who, anxious concerning persecution but unconcerned about the summons, does not consent to a present desire but takes thought for the future. Our brother and colleague, about to die, heard what he might say to the rest. For he who heard it was about to die, and he heard it for this purpose, that he might tell it: he heard it not for himself but for us. For what could he learn who was now about to depart? He learned it rather for those who remain, so that, since we know the priest who was asking for respite was rebuked, we might learn what is expedient for all.
To us also, the least and lowest, how often has it been revealed, how frequently and plainly has it been enjoined by the favor of God, that I should constantly testify and publicly proclaim that our brethren who are freed from the world by the Lord's summons are not to be mourned, since we know that they are not lost but sent before us; that those who depart go before us, as those who set out on a journey, as those who sail, ought to be longed for, not lamented; that we should not put on black garments here, when they have already there assumed white robes; that we should give no occasion to the heathen, that they should rightly and justly reprehend us, in that we mourn as extinguished and lost those whom we say to be living with God, and do not prove by the testimony of the heart and breast the faith which we profess in word and voice.
We are betrayers of our hope and faith, if what we say seems feigned, fictitious, and painted over. It profits nothing to display virtue in words and to destroy the truth by deeds. Finally, the apostle Paul disapproves and rebukes and blames those who grieve over the departure of their own. 'We would not,' he says, 'have you ignorant, brethren, concerning them that are asleep, that you sorrow not even as the rest who have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also that have fallen asleep in Jesus will God bring with Him.' He says that those grieve at the departure of their own who have no hope.
But we who live in hope and believe in God, and trust that Christ suffered for us and rose again, abiding in Christ and through Him and in Him rising again—why are we either unwilling to depart hence from the world ourselves, or do we mourn and grieve over our own who depart as though lost? When Christ Himself, our Lord and God, admonishes and says: 'I am the resurrection. He that believes in Me, though he die, yet shall he live; and every one that lives and believes in Me shall not die for ever.' If we believe in Christ, let us have faith in His words and promises: that, since we shall not die for ever, we may come with joyful confidence to Christ, with whom we shall both live and reign for ever.
In that we die for a time, we pass over by death unto immortality; nor can eternal life follow, unless it befall us first to depart hence. This is not a departure but a passage, and, the temporal journey being run through, a crossing over unto the eternal. Who would not hasten to better things? Who would not desire to be changed and reformed to the likeness of Christ and to the dignity of heavenly grace more quickly? As the apostle Paul proclaims: 'Our conversation,' he says, 'is in heaven, from whence also we look for the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall transform the body of our lowliness, conformed to the body of His glory.'
That we shall be such, Christ the Lord also promises, when, that we may be with Him and rejoice with Him in eternal dwellings and in heavenly kingdoms, He prays the Father for us, saying: 'Father, those whom You have given Me, I will that where I am they also may be with Me, and may behold the glory which You have given Me before the world was made.' He who is to come to the seat of Christ, to the glory of the heavenly kingdoms, ought not to mourn and lament, but rather, according to the Lord's promise, according to faith in the truth, to rejoice in this his setting-out and translation. Thus, finally, we find that Enoch also, who pleased God, was translated, as the divine Scripture testifies and speaks in Genesis:
'And Enoch pleased God, and was not found afterward, because God translated him.' This was to have pleased in the sight of God, to have merited to be translated from this contagion of the world. Moreover, by Solomon the Holy Spirit teaches that those who please God are taken from hence the sooner and freed the quicker, lest, while they linger longer in this world, they be defiled by the contacts of the world: 'He was caught away,' it says, 'lest wickedness should alter his understanding. For his soul was pleasing to God; therefore He hastened to lead him out of the midst of iniquity.' So also in the Psalms the soul devoted to God hastens to God with spiritual faith, as it is written: 'How beloved are Your dwellings, O God of hosts! My soul desires and hastens to the courts of God.'
It belongs to him to wish to remain long in the world whom the world delights, whom the flattering and deceiving age invites with the allurements of earthly pleasure. Furthermore, since the world hates the Christian, why do you love that which hates you, and do you not rather follow Christ, who both redeemed you and loves you? John in his epistle cries out and speaks, and exhorts us not to love the world by following carnal desires. 'Love not,' he says, 'the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him: for all that is in the world is the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the ambition of the age, which is not of the Father but of the lust of the world. And the world passes away, and the lust thereof:'
'but he that does the will of God abides for ever, even as God abides for ever.' Rather, dearly beloved brethren, with sound mind, firm faith, and robust virtue, let us be prepared for every will of God; with the dread of death cast out, let us consider the immortality that follows. Let us show ourselves to be what we believe, that we may neither mourn the loss of our dear ones, and that, when the day of our own summons comes, we may without hesitation and gladly come to the Lord at His own calling. And though this ought always to be done by the servants of God, it ought now to be done much more, when the world is already collapsing and beset by the whirlwinds of assailing evils, so that we who perceive that grievous things have already begun, and know that more grievous are impending, may reckon it the greatest gain, if we swiftly depart hence.
If in your dwelling the walls were tottering with age, the roof above were trembling, and the house, already worn out and weary, were threatening imminent ruin with its structures collapsing through old age, would you not migrate with all speed? If, as you sailed, a turbulent and stormy tempest, with its waves more violently aroused, foretold a coming shipwreck, would you not more swiftly seek the harbor? Behold, the world totters and slips and bears witness to its own ruin, not now by the old age of things but by their end: and do you not give thanks to God, do you not congratulate yourself, that by an earlier departure you are withdrawn and rescued from the ruins and shipwrecks and plagues that threaten? It must be considered, dearly beloved brethren, and again and again pondered, that we have renounced the world and dwell here meanwhile as guests and sojourners.
Let us embrace the day which assigns each one to his own dwelling, which, when we are snatched hence and loosed from the snares of the world, restores us to paradise and to the kingdom. Who, when set in a foreign land, would not hasten to return to his own country? Who, hastening to sail to his own people, would not more eagerly desire a favoring wind, that he might the sooner embrace his dear ones? We reckon paradise to be our country; we have already begun to have the patriarchs as our parents: why do we not hasten and run, that we may behold our country, that we may greet our parents? There a great number of our dear ones awaits us; a dense and abundant throng of parents, brothers, and children longs for us, now secure of their own immortality, yet still anxious for our salvation.
To come to the sight and embrace of these—how great a joy is it both for them and for us in common! What is there the pleasure of the heavenly kingdoms, without fear of dying and with the eternity of living—how supreme and perpetual a felicity! There is the glorious choir of the apostles, there the number of the exulting prophets, there the innumerable people of martyrs crowned for the glory and victory of their struggle and passion, there triumphant virgins who subdued the lust of the flesh and of the body by the strength of continence, there the merciful rewarded who did the works of righteousness by the nourishment and bounties given to the poor, who, keeping the Lord's precepts, transferred their earthly patrimonies to heavenly treasures.
To these, dearly beloved brethren, let us hasten with eager longing, that it may befall us to be with them quickly, to come quickly to Christ. May God behold this our purpose; may Christ look upon this resolve of mind and faith—who is to give the ampler rewards of His love to those whose desires toward Him have been the greater.