Whose height of love he expresses, when it is subjoined: 'Greater love than this no man hath, that a man lay down his life for his friends.' The Lord had come to die even for his enemies, and yet he said that he would lay down his life for his friends, that he might indeed show us that, while by loving we can make gain of our enemies, even those who persecute us are friends. But behold, no one persecutes us unto death. Whence, then, can we prove whether we love our enemies? But there is that which ought to be done in the peace of holy Church, whence it may become clear whether in the time of persecution we would be able to die for love. Certainly the same John says:
'He that hath the substance of this world, and shall see his brother in need, and shall shut up his bowels from him: how doth the charity of God abide in him?' (1 John 3:17). Hence also John the Baptist says: 'He that hath two coats, let him give to him that hath none' (Luke 3:11). He therefore who in the time of tranquillity does not give his coat for God, when in persecution will he give his life? Therefore, that the virtue of charity may be unconquered in disturbance, let it be nourished through mercy in tranquillity, so that first it may learn to spend its own goods for almighty God, afterward its very self. It follows: 'You are my friends.' O how great is the mercy of our Creator! We are not worthy to be servants, and we are called friends.
How great is the dignity of men, to be the friends of God! But you have heard the glory of the dignity; hear also the labour of the contest: 'If you do the things that I command you.' You are my friends, if you do the things that I command you. As if he openly said: 'You rejoice at the summit; weigh with what labours one arrives at the summit.' Certainly when the sons of Zebedee, their mother interceding, asked that one might sit at the right hand of God and the other at the left, they heard: 'Can you drink the chalice that I shall drink?' (Matt. 20:22). They were already seeking the place of exaltation, but Truth recalls them to the way by which they might come to exaltation. As if it were said: 'Already the place of exaltation delights you, but first let the way exercise you with labours.'
Through the chalice one attains to majesty. If your mind desires that which delights, first drink that which pains. Thus, thus through the bitter cup of affliction one arrives at the joy of salvation. 'I will not now call you servants, for the servant knoweth not what his lord doth. But I have called you friends, because all things whatsoever I have heard of my Father, I have made known to you.' What are all the things which he heard of his Father, which he willed to be made known to his servants, that he might make them his friends, if not the joys of inward charity, if not those feasts of the supernal fatherland, which he daily imprints upon our minds by the inspiration of his love?
For when we love the things of heaven of which we have heard, we already know the things we love, since love itself is a form of knowledge. He therefore had made all things known to them who, transformed away from earthly desires, burned with the torches of the highest love. Such were the friends of God upon whom the Prophet gazed when he said: 'But to me thy friends, O God, are made exceedingly honourable' (Psalm 138:17). For a friend is called, as it were, the guardian of the soul. Therefore, because the Psalmist foresaw that the elect of God, separated from the love of this world, guard within the heavenly commandments the will of God, he marvelled at the friends of God, saying: 'But to me thy friends, O God, are made exceedingly honourable.' And, as though we might straightway seek from him to have the causes of so great an honour disclosed to us, he at once added:
'Their principality is exceedingly strengthened' (ibid.). Behold, the elect of God tame the flesh, strengthen the spirit, command the demons, shine with virtues, despise present things, and proclaim the eternal homeland by their conduct as well as their voice; they love that homeland even unto dying, and reach it through torments. They can be slain, yet cannot be killed. Their principality, therefore, is exceedingly strengthened. In that very suffering by which they fell in the death of the flesh, behold how great was the summit of their mind. Whence comes this, save that their principality is strengthened? But perhaps such great ones are few? He added: 'I will number them, and they shall be multiplied above the sand' (ibid., 18). Behold the whole world, brethren: it is full of martyrs.
Already we who behold are scarcely as many as the witnesses of the truth whom we possess. Therefore to God they are countable, but to us they are multiplied above the sand, because we cannot comprehend how many they are. 5. But whoever attains to this dignity, that he be called a friend of God, let him look upon himself within himself, yet upon the gifts he receives as above himself. Let him attribute nothing to his own merits, lest he break out into enmity. Whence it is also added: 'You have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and have appointed you, that you should go, and should bring forth fruit' (John 15:16). 'I have set you unto grace, I have planted you that you should go by willing, and bring forth fruit by working.' For he said, 'that you should go,' by willing, because to will to do something is already to go with the mind. And what kind of fruit they ought to bear is added: 'And that your fruit should remain.'
Everything for which we labour according to the present age scarcely suffices unto death. For death, breaking in, cuts off the fruit of our labour. But what is done for the sake of eternal life is preserved even after death; and it begins to appear then, when the fruit of carnal labours begins to be seen no more. There, therefore, that recompense begins where this present one ends. Whoever, then, has already come to know eternal things, let temporal fruits grow worthless in his mind. Let us work such fruits as remain; let us work such fruits as, when death destroys all things, themselves take their beginning from death. For that the fruit of God begins from death, the Prophet testifies, who says: 'When he shall give sleep to his beloved, this is the inheritance of the Lord' (Psalm 127:2-3).
Everyone who sleeps in death loses his inheritance; but 'when he shall give sleep to his beloved, this is the inheritance of the Lord,' because the elect of God, after they have come to death, then shall find their inheritance. 6. There follows: 'That whatsoever you shall ask the Father in my name, he may give it you' (John 15:16). Behold, here he says: 'Whatsoever you shall ask the Father in my name, he may give it you.' Again elsewhere, through the same Evangelist, he says: 'If you ask the Father anything in my name, he will give it you. Hitherto you have not asked anything in my name' (John 16:23-24). If the Father gives us all that we ask in the name of the Son, what then is it that Paul thrice besought the Lord, and did not merit to be heard, but it was said to him:
'My grace is sufficient for thee, for power is made perfect in infirmity' (2 Corinthians 12:9)? Did not that so excellent preacher ask in the name of the Son? Why then did he not receive what he asked? How, then, is it true that whatever we ask the Father in the name of the Son, the Father gives us, if the Apostle asked that the angel of Satan be taken from him in the name of the Son, and yet did not receive what he asked? But because the name of the Son is Jesus, and Jesus means Saviour, or is also called salutary, he therefore asks in the name of the Saviour who asks that which pertains to true salvation. For if that is asked which is not expedient, the Father is not asked in the name of Jesus. Whence also to those same apostles, still weak, the Lord says:
'Hitherto you have not asked anything in my name' (John 16:23). As if it were plainly said: You have not asked in the name of the Saviour, because you know not how to seek eternal salvation. Hence it is that even Paul is not heard, because, if he were freed from the temptation, it would not profit him unto salvation (2 Corinthians 12:9). 7. Behold, we see, dearly beloved brethren, how many of you have gathered for the solemnity of the martyr: you bend your knees, you beat your breast, you send forth the voices of prayer and confession, you drench your face with tears. But weigh, I beseech you, your petitions; see whether you ask in the name of Jesus, that is, whether you seek the joys of eternal salvation. For in the house of Jesus you do not seek Jesus, if in the temple of eternity you pray importunately for temporal things.
Behold, one in his prayer seeks a wife, another asks for a farm, another requests a garment, another entreats that food be given him. And indeed, when these are lacking, they are to be sought from Almighty God. But we ought at once to remember what we received from the command of that same our Redeemer: 'Seek first the kingdom of God and his justice, and all these things shall be added unto you' (Matthew 6:33). And so to ask these things too of Jesus is not to err, provided they are not asked immoderately. But still further—and this is graver—another asks for the death of an enemy, and pursues by prayer the one whom he cannot pursue by the sword. And the man who is cursed still lives, and yet he who curses is already held guilty of his death. But God commands that one's enemy be loved (Matthew
5:44), and yet God is asked to slay an enemy. Whoever therefore prays thus, in his very prayers fights against his Creator. Whence also, under the likeness of Judas, it is said: 'Let his prayer become sin' (Psalm 109:7). For to ask those things which he who is asked himself forbids is prayer turned into sin. 8. Hence the Truth says: 'When you stand to pray, forgive if you have aught against any in your hearts' (Mark 11:25). Which virtue of forgiveness we show more openly if we bring forward a single testimony of the Old Testament. Surely, when Judea had offended the justice of her Creator, her sins demanding it, the Lord, forbidding his prophet from prayer, says: 'Take not up praise and prayer for them' (Jeremiah 7:16).
'If Moses and Samuel shall stand before me, my soul is not toward this people' (ibid., 15:1). What is it that, so many of the fathers being passed over and left aside, Moses and Samuel alone are brought into the midst, whose wondrous power of obtaining is shown at the very moment when even they are said to be unable to intercede? As if the Lord plainly said: Not even those do I hear whom, on account of the great merit of their petition, I by no means despise. What then is it that Moses and Samuel are preferred above the other fathers in petitioning, save that these two alone, in the whole course of the Old Testament, are read to have prayed even for their enemies? The one is assailed with stones by the people (Exodus 17:4), and yet he entreats the Lord for the one who stoned him;
the other is cast down from his rule, and yet, when asked to intercede, declares, saying: 'Far be it from me this sin against the Lord, that I should cease to pray for you' (1 Samuel 12:23). 'If Moses and Samuel shall stand before me, my soul is not toward this people' (Jeremiah 15:1). As if he plainly said: Not even these do I now hear for their friends, whom I know, by the merit of great virtue, to pray even for their enemies. The virtue, therefore, of true prayer is the loftiness of charity. And then does each one obtain what he rightly asks, when his mind in the petition is not darkened by hatred of an enemy. But for the most part we conquer the resisting mind if we pray even for our enemies. The mouth pours out a prayer for adversaries—but would that the heart held love!
For often we even offer prayer for our enemies, but we pour it forth rather out of precept than out of charity. For we ask even for the life of our enemies, and yet we fear lest we be heard. But because the inward Judge considers the mind rather than the words, he asks nothing for his enemy who does not pray for him out of charity. 9. But behold, the enemy has grievously sinned against us, inflicted losses, injured those who helped him, persecuted those who loved him. These things ought to be retained, if the sins committed against us were not to be forgiven us. For our Advocate has composed for us the prayer in our own cause; and he himself, who is the Advocate, is also the Judge of that same cause. But to the prayer which he composed he inserted a condition, saying:
'Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors' (Matthew 6:12). Because, therefore, the same one has come as Judge who stood forth as Advocate, he who made the prayer himself hears it. Either, then, not doing it, we say, 'Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors,' and by so saying bind ourselves the more; or perhaps we omit this condition in the prayer, and our Advocate does not recognize the prayer which he composed, and says at once within himself: I know what I enjoined; this is not the very prayer that I made. What then is to be done by us, brethren, save that we bestow the affection of true charity upon our brethren? Let no malice remain in the heart.
Let Almighty God consider our charity toward our neighbour, that he may bestow his mercy upon our iniquities. Remember what we are admonished: 'Forgive, and you shall be forgiven' (Luke 6:37). Behold, it is owed to us, and we owe. Let us therefore forgive what is owed to us, that what is owed by us may be forgiven. But against these things the mind struggles, and wishes to fulfil what it hears, and yet resists. We stand at the tomb of the martyr, of whom we know from what death he came to the heavenly kingdom. If we lay not down our body for Christ, let us at least conquer our mind. God is appeased by this sacrifice; he approves in judgment the victory of our peace, that fruit of his own mercy. For he beholds the struggle of our heart;
and he who had rewarded us when we conquered now aids us in our contending, through our Lord Jesus Christ his Son, who lives and reigns with him in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, world without end. Amen. At that time, there was a certain ruler, whose son was sick at Capernaum. When he had heard that Jesus was coming from Judea into Galilee, he went to him, and besought him that he would come down and heal his son; for he was beginning to die. Jesus therefore said to him: Unless you see signs and wonders, you believe not. The ruler said to him: Lord, come down before that my son die. Jesus said to him: Go, thy son lives. The man believed the word which Jesus said to him, and went his way.
And as he was now going down, his servants met him and brought word, saying that his son lived. He asked therefore of them the hour in which he had begun to be better. And they said to him: Yesterday at the seventh hour the fever left him. The father therefore knew that it was at that same hour in which Jesus had said to him: Thy son lives. And himself believed, and his whole house (John 4:46-53). 1. The reading of the holy Gospel which you have just now heard, brethren, needs no exposition. But lest we seem to have passed over it in silence, let us say something on it by way of exhortation rather than of exposition. This alone do I see must be inquired into from the exposition: why did he who had come to seek his son's healing hear, 'Unless you see signs and wonders, you believe not'?
For he who sought his son's healing undoubtedly believed. For he would not have sought healing from him unless he believed him to be the Saviour. Why then is it said, 'Unless you see signs and wonders, you believe not,' to one who believed before he saw a sign? But remember what he asks, and you will plainly recognize that he wavered in faith. For he begged that he would come down and heal his son. He therefore sought the bodily presence of the Lord, who by his spirit was nowhere absent. He believed less, then, in him whom he thought unable to give healing unless he were present also in body. For if he had believed perfectly, he would undoubtedly have known that there is no place where God is not.
He was therefore in great part distrustful, because he gave honour not to the majesty, but to the bodily presence. And so he sought healing for his son, and yet wavered in faith, because he both believed the one to whom he had come to be powerful to cure, and yet supposed him to be absent from his dying son. But the Lord, who is asked to go—showing that he is not absent where he is invited—restored healing by his command alone, he who created all things by his will. 2. In which matter this is to be diligently observed by us, that, as we have learned from another Evangelist's testimony, the centurion came to the Lord saying: Lord, my servant lies at home sick of the palsy, and is grievously tormented. To whom it is at once answered by Jesus: I will come and heal him (Matthew 8:6-7).
What is it that the ruler asks that he come to his son, and yet he refuses to go bodily; but to the centurion's servant he is not invited, and yet promises that he will go bodily? To the ruler's son he does not deign to be present by bodily presence; to the centurion's servant he does not disdain to hasten. What is this, save that our pride is beaten back, we who venerate in men not the nature by which they were made in the image of God, but honours and riches? And when we weigh the things that are about them, we by no means provide for the inner things, while, considering the things that are despised in their bodies, we neglect to weigh what they are.
But our Redeemer, to show that the things which are lofty among men are to be despised, and that the things which are despised among men are not to be despised by the saints, was unwilling to go to the ruler's son, yet was ready to go to the centurion's servant. Our pride, therefore, is rebuked, which knows not how to weigh men for the sake of what men are. It weighs only, as we have said, the things that stand about men; it does not regard nature, it does not recognize the honour of God in men. Behold, the Son of God is unwilling to go to the ruler's son, and yet is ready to come for the servant's healing. Surely, if some man's servant were to ask us that we ought to go to him, our pride would at once answer us in silent thought, saying:
Go not, for you degrade yourself, your honour is despised, your rank grows worthless. Behold, he who came from heaven does not despise to hasten to a servant on earth; and yet we who are of the earth disdain to be humbled on earth. But what can be baser before God, what more despicable, than to keep honour among men, and not to fear the eyes of the inner Witness? Whence also in the sacred Gospel the Lord says to the Pharisees: You are they who justify yourselves before men, but God knows your hearts; for that which is high to men is an abomination before God (Luke 16:15). Note, brethren, note what is said.
For if that which is high to men is an abomination before God, the thought of our heart is as low before God as it is high to men, and the humility of our heart is as high before God as it is low to men. 3. Let us therefore despise whatever good we do; let no work of ours puff us up, let neither abundance of goods nor glory exalt us. If we swell inwardly at any of the goods that flow to us, we are despised by God. On the contrary, of the humble the Psalmist says: 'The Lord keeps the little ones' (Psalm 116:6). Because he calls the humble 'little ones,' after he has uttered the sentence, he subjoins counsel; for, as though we should ask what he himself did in this regard, he added: 'I was humbled, and he delivered me' (ibid.).
These things, therefore, brethren, consider; weigh these with all intent. Do not venerate in your neighbours the goods of this world. Honour this in men for God's sake—men to whom you are nevertheless not committed—namely, that they were made in the image of God. This you truly preserve toward your neighbours if you do not first swell within your own heart. For he who still exalts himself for transitory things knows not how to venerate in his neighbour that which remains. Do not, therefore, weigh in yourselves what you have, but what you are. Behold, the world which is loved flees away. These saints, at whose tomb we stand, trod down the flourishing world by contempt of mind. Life was long, health continuous, wealth abundant in possessions, fruitfulness in offspring, tranquillity in enduring peace;
and yet, while the world flourished in itself, it had already withered in their hearts. Behold, now the world has withered in itself, and yet in our hearts it still flourishes. Everywhere is death, everywhere mourning, everywhere desolation; on every side we are stricken, on every side we are filled with bitterness; and yet with a mind blinded by carnal concupiscence we love those very bitternesses of the world, we follow it as it flees, we cling to it as it slips away. And because we cannot hold it back as it slips, we slip along with it whom we hold as it falls. Once the world held us to itself by delight; now it is so full of great blows that the very world now sends us to God. Weigh, therefore, that there is nothing which runs its course in time. The end of temporal things shows how nothing is that which could pass away.
The fall of things shows that a passing thing was, even then when it seemed to stand, well-nigh nothing. Weigh these things, therefore, dearly beloved brethren, with anxious consideration, and fix your heart in the love of eternal things; that while you despise to attain earthly heights, you may come to the glory which you hold by faith, through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns, God with the Father in the unity of the Holy Spirit, world without end. Amen. At that time, as the eleven disciples were at table, Jesus appeared to them, and he upbraided them with their incredulity and hardness of heart, because they did not believe them who had seen him after he was risen again. And he said to them:
Go into the whole world, preach the Gospel to every creature. He who believes and is baptized shall be saved; but he who believes not shall be condemned. And these signs shall follow them that believe: In my name they shall cast out devils, they shall speak with new tongues, they shall take up serpents; and if they shall drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them. They shall lay their hands upon the sick, and they shall recover. And the Lord Jesus, after he had spoken to them, was taken up into heaven, and sits on the right hand of God. But they going forth preached everywhere, the Lord working withal, and confirming the word with signs that followed (Mark 16:14-20).
1. That the disciples were slow to believe the Lord's resurrection was not so much their infirmity as, so to speak, our future firmness. For the resurrection itself was shown to them as they doubted by many proofs; and while we, reading them, acknowledge them, what else are we but strengthened by their doubting? For Mary Magdalene, who believed more quickly, profited me less than Thomas, who long doubted. For he, by doubting, touched the scars of the wounds, and cut away the wound of doubt from our breast. To confirm the truth of the Lord's resurrection, it is also to be noted what Luke relates, saying: 'Eating together with them, he commanded them that they should not depart from Jerusalem' (Acts 1:4). And after a few words:
'While they beheld, he was raised up, and a cloud received him out of their sight' (ibid., 9). Note the words, mark the mysteries. 'Eating together, he was raised up.' He ate and ascended, so that, namely, through the effect of eating the truth of his flesh might be made manifest. But Mark relates that, before the Lord ascended into heaven, he rebuked the disciples for the hardness of heart and unbelief. In which matter what is to be considered, save that the Lord therefore then rebuked the disciples when he was leaving them bodily, so that the words which he spoke in departing might remain more firmly impressed on the heart of the hearers? Their hardness, therefore, being rebuked, let us hear what he says in admonishing: 'Go into the whole world, preach the Gospel to every creature.'
1. Was the holy Gospel, my brethren, to be preached to senseless things or to brute animals, that it should be said to the disciples of it: 'Preach to every creature'? But by the name of 'every creature' man is signified. For there are stones, but they neither live nor feel. There are herbs and shrubs; they live indeed, but they do not feel. They live, I say, not by a soul, but by verdancy, for Paul also says: 'Foolish man, that which you sow is not quickened unless it first die' (1 Corinthians 15:36). That therefore lives which dies, in order to be quickened. And so there are stones, but they do not live. There are shrubs, and they live, but they do not feel. But brute animals exist, they live, they feel, but they do not discern.
Angels indeed exist, they live, they feel, and they discern. But man has something of every creature. For he has being in common with stones, living with trees, feeling with animals, understanding with angels. If, therefore, man has something in common with every creature, in respect of something every creature is man. To every creature, then, the Gospel is preached when it is preached to man alone, because it is he who is taught, for whose sake all things on earth were created, and from whom, by a certain likeness, all things are not alien. By the name of 'every creature' can also be designated every nation of the Gentiles. For it had before been said: 'Go not into the way of the Gentiles' (Matthew 10:5).
But now it is said, 'Preach to every creature,' so that, namely, the preaching first rejected by Judea might then become a help to us, when she in her pride had rejected it unto the testimony of her own condemnation. But when the Truth sends the disciples to preach, what else does he do in the world but scatter grains of seed? And he sends few grains in the seed, that he may receive from our faith the crops of many harvests. For neither would so great a harvest of the faithful spring up in all the world, had not those grains of the preachers, cast forth by the hand of the Lord upon the rational earth, come. There follows: 3. He who believes and is baptized shall be saved; but he who believes not shall be condemned. Perhaps each one may say within himself:
I have already believed, I shall be saved. He speaks the truth, if he holds his faith by works. For true faith is that which does not contradict by conduct what it says in words. Hence it is that Paul says of certain false faithful: 'They profess that they know God, but in their works they deny him' (Titus 1:16). Hence John says: 'He who says that he knows God, and keeps not his commandments, is a liar' (1 John 2:4). Since this is so, we ought to recognize the truth of our faith in the consideration of our life. For then are we truly faithful, if we fulfil in works what we more truly promise. On the day of baptism we all promised to renounce all the works of the ancient enemy and all his pomps.