Sermon 15
SERMO 15
Sermon Delivered in the Third Region
IN THE BASILICA OF PETER AT CARTHAGE
On the verse of the Psalm:
"Lord, I have loved the beauty of Your house."
The house of God is the Christians,
We love the beauty of the house of the Lord and the place of the tabernacle of His glory, if we are ourselves. What then is the beauty of the house of the Lord and the place of the tabernacle of His glory, if not His temple of which the Apostle says: "For the temple of God is holy, which you are"? Just as in constructed buildings, when they are elegantly and magnificently built, our physical sight is pleased, so when living stones, the hearts of the faithful, are bound by the bond of charity, it is the beauty of the house of God and the place of the tabernacle of His glory. Therefore, learn what you ought to love, so that you may be able to love. For he who loves the beauty of the house of God, there is no doubt that he loves the Church, not in wrought walls and roofs, not in the sheen of marbles and golden ceilings, but in faithful, holy people, loving God with all their heart and with all their soul and with all their mind, and their neighbor as themselves.
Many are Christians, but few are vessels for honor.
But in the Christian congregation, as much as it pertains to the participation and communion of the sacraments, they have been multiplied beyond number. There is therefore a number, and others beyond the number. The number consists of those whom the Apostle says: "The Lord knows those who are his." Beyond the number, however, because in a great house there are not only gold and silver vessels, but also wooden and earthenware; some indeed for honor, others for dishonor. Therefore, the number is of vessels for honor; beyond the number are vessels for dishonor. Since these are the two kinds of vessels, do we doubt where the decor of God's house is? If therefore you wish to love, doing what you have sung, the decor of the house of God and the place of the tabernacle of His glory, seek the vessels for honor. And I do not want you to say: "I sought, and did not find." For indeed you did not find because you were not what you sought. Similar adheres to similar, dissimilar flees from dissimilar. If you are a vessel for dishonor, doubtless a vessel for honor will be burdensome to you even to see. Do you not hear how some say about someone: "He is even burdensome to us to look at"? What is burdensome for you to see, when will it be open for you to find? For these vessels are of the inner people. Certainly, when a just man has been seen, he is not immediately recognized as just. Both the just and the unjust have the same appearance. Each is a man, but not each belongs to the house of God, even if both are called Christians. Each is a vessel, but not each is for honor, but one for honor, the other for dishonor.
God uses even evils well.
Shall the great house be deserted because of bad vessels? God, that is, the Lord of the great house, knows how to use both vessels for honor and vessels for dishonor. Just as the wicked use good things wickedly, so on the contrary, God knows how to use even evil things well. How many good things do the wicked use! For every creation of God is good. How do the wicked use them wickedly? How does Scripture rebuke them, saying: You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions. What name do those who misuse the good things of God receive? It follows, and says: Adulterers. Why adulterers? Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Adulterers, it says. There are adulterous souls, there are fornicating souls: let us examine them. Fornicating souls are, in a way, prostituted to many false gods; adulterous souls, however, are joined in legitimate marriage but do not keep the chastity of that legitimate marriage. To say this more precisely, the pagan soul is fornicating, the wicked Christian soul is adulterous. The pagan soul does not have a legitimate husband; it is corrupted by various demons to which it is prostituted. But why is the wicked Christian soul adulterous? Because it neither loves chastity nor leaves its husband. Therefore, do not say: "Why are they in the house of God?" It is answered to you: They are vessels for dishonor. God knows how to use them. He who created them knows, for he who could create them knows how to order them: they have their place in the great house. If you ask me how God uses them well, I confess, as a man, I cannot explain God’s counsel. For I know, with the Apostle Paul, to tremble at what he too considered and trembled, and trembling, he exclaimed: Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor? Or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid? For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Our part is consideration, admiration, trembling, exclamation, because there is no penetration. But to him what? Glory forever. Whether from vessels for honor or from vessels for dishonor, to him be glory forever. He crowns some, he condemns others, he never errs. He tests some, from others he makes a test, he orders all.
The good are purified in tribulations like gold in fire.
"What do evil men do in this world?" he says. Answer me. In the goldsmith's furnace, what does chaff do? I think chaff is not there without reason where gold is purified. Let us see what all things are there: there is a furnace, there is chaff, there is gold, there is fire, there is the craftsman. But those three, gold, chaff, and fire, are in the furnace; the craftsman is at the furnace. Consider this world as well. The world is the furnace; evil men are the chaff; good men are the gold; tribulation is the fire; God is the craftsman. Observe and see: gold is not purified if chaff is not burned. But see in this psalm, where we love the beauty of the house of God and the place of the tabernacle of His glory, see there the gold, see the voice of gold. It desires to be purified: "Test me, O Lord, and try me, burn my mind." "Test me, O Lord, and try me." "Test me," he says, "O Lord, and try me." He who ought to have feared the trial asks for the trial. "Test me," he says, "O Lord, and try me." And see if he does not seek the fire: "Test me and try me, burn my mind and my heart." Do you not fear lest you fail in the fire? "No," he says. Why? "Because your mercy is before my eyes." Behold, he says, why I securely say, "Test me, O Lord, and try me, burn my mind and my heart," not because I am able by my own strength to endure the fire of trial, but because your mercy is before my eyes. "You who have granted me to be tested as gold, will you allow me to perish in the furnace?" Indeed, you send me in to be purified, you cast me out purified. "May the Lord guard your entrance and your exit." See the very exit, see the entrance into the furnace. "Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet various trials." Behold, you have heard the entrance, seek the exit. For it is easy to enter; to exit is great. But do not fear: God is faithful - for indeed as you had entered, you were thinking of the exit - God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you can bear, but with the trial will also make the exit. What is the exit? That you may endure. You have entered, you have encountered, you have endured, you have exited."
The abundance of evils is the material of the purification of goods.
A great matter for the purification of the good is the abundance of the bad. For in the multitude of the bad, although mixed, the good may lie hidden, the Lord knows who are His. Under the hand of such a great artist, a grain of gold cannot perish in a great heap of chaff. How much chaff there, how little gold? But do not fear; so great is the artist that he can purify, he cannot lose. Behold the blessed Apostle as gold in this furnace of the world, how he is tested by dangers: so let us come to the dishonorable vessels that are inside, which the Lord of the great house knows well how to use. Therefore, when the Apostle was tested by dangers, what did he say? In dangers at sea, in dangers in the wilderness, in dangers from his own people, in dangers from the Gentiles. All these are external. Look within: In dangers among false brethren. Therefore, I speak to the gold of God, I speak to the vessels made for honor, I speak to the grains toiling in the threshing floor among the chaff. I say to you, whoever hears, not me, but through me: Be good, endure evil. I do not want you to say: Who is good? Rather, I do want you to say this: that no matter how good you are, you will not be without some evil. Hence it is most rightly said: No one is good, except one, God. But that good one who does good, is God. If therefore God who does good is good, and He alone is the good maker of good, how is He the maker of good if no human is good? Therefore, in a relative measure man is also good. For if he were not, the Lord Himself would not say: A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good.
The good must tolerate the evil.
Be therefore good, and endure evil. Be simply good, and doubly endure evil. Good, only within: for if not within, good nowhere. Be therefore good within, endure evil both outside and within. Outside, endure the heretic, endure the pagan. Endure also within the evil Christian, for a man's enemies are those of his own household. Patiently endure many troublesome evildoers within; you are distressed, indignant, as if the time of winnowing has already come. You are placed in the threshing, you are still in the threshing, the barn is still being threshed. Still the grains and bundles, when the nations believe, are gathered into the threshing floor. Do you think you can be only wheat in the barn? You err. Groan in the barn, that you may rejoice in the granary. Many evils are done by bad Christians. Those who are outside and do not want to be Christians find excuses. To their encourager to believe, they respond: "Do you want me to be what that one is and that one?" And they name this one and that one. Sometimes they even speak the truth. But when the truth cannot be found, what great matter is it to slander? When that one does not hesitate to slander, he makes another suspect what he does not see. You, when you hear a man saying these things, perhaps because you know your evil brothers, you say to yourself: "He speaks the truth." Dangers in false brothers. But do not falter. What that one seeks, you be. Be a good Christian, that you may convict the slanderous pagan.
Leave behind filth, not faith, and for enemies.
But he slanders and harms the good. He tells lies, and he is often believed. What does gold do? Everywhere there is chaff, fire. Set aside filth, not faith. Be purer, by that practice be purer. Let him be worth to you, who removes what makes you dirtier, not who suppresses what makes you gold. For if you fail, you perish in chaff, and if you perish in chaff, you were not gold, but you pretended to be gold. The Lord knows who are his. But those who are evil, about whom you are ashamed when you are among the evil who are outside, remember that they are not, in the great house where you are, vessels for honor but for dishonor. The Apostle has taught you, God governs you. If there were no evil persons, for whom would we pray, when it is said to us: Pray for your enemies? Or perhaps we would wish to have good enemies? How can that happen? You will not have a good enemy unless you are evil. But if you are good, your enemy will only be evil. Pray for your enemies. Therefore the good should pray for the evil. Return to your heart, oh you who are purified in this furnace, if your voice could be: Test me, O Lord, and try me; burn my kidneys and my heart, since your mercy is before my eyes: behold, return to your heart. You are under God, you are about to pour out a prayer. He who has harmed you meets you, he who has oppressed you meets you, he who has robbed you meets you, he who put you in prison meets you. Come now, pay attention to your heart, look at your Lord. Behold, your evil enemy, behold, your good Lord. Your evil enemy harms you. Pray for your enemy, your good Lord tells you. Between your evil enemy and your good Lord, what will you do? Will you pray against him, or will you obey Him?
The Lord commanded, He commanded hard things, but promised great things.
You undertake, by the command of your Lord, to pray for that wicked enemy of yours. What will you do? The Lord commanded it, He commanded something hard, but He promised great things. What did He command that is hard? Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who persecute you. Those things are hard, but for the words of Your lips, I have kept the ways that are hard. From where do you, by your strength, keep the hard ways, except because Your mercy is before my eyes? Behold, He commanded hard things, He commanded bitter things, see what He promised: Pray for those who persecute you, that you may be the sons of your Father who is in heaven. If He were to say to you: Pray for your enemy so that you may be the son of your father, to prevent your earthly father from disinheriting you - who is going to leave you something that cannot be taken away from here - you would be afraid and do it. It is promised to you for these hard things that you may be the son of the Most High. Consider the Father and recognize the inheritance. Therefore say, begin to pray for that great enemy of yours, who has done you much evil, who has inflicted many hard things on you, begin to pray for him, and see your heart arguing with you. Therefore, what you want, what is pleasing to you, what delights you according to the inner man, you obey your Lord, and you pray for your enemy, you are gold. But truly, when you begin to pray, carnal weakness starts to argue with you; those are the impurities from which God wants to purge you in the furnace.
Evils are more easily apparent than goods. Yet there are very many good people seeking God with all their heart.
Therefore, exercise amidst evils, O good one, if you are good, not from your own goodness because you were evil, but from His who is never evil, exercise amidst evils. And do not say to me, "At least if it were necessary for our exercise that there be evildoers, they should be few, evildoers should be few, and good people many." Do you not consider that if they were few, they would not harm many? Surely, consider, wise man, that if there were many good and few evil, the few evil would not dare to harm the many good. But if they did not dare, they would not exercise. Now, however, because there are many evildoers, few good ones labor among many evildoers; and when they labor they sweat; and when they sweat, the gold is purified. Be therefore an ornament of the house of God. Already your weakness has fought within your heart. Invoke that you may conquer. God be present with you, let Him help who commands. You have now become victorious over your weakness, you have now received the spirit and reward of praying for your enemy. See what good it is. Compare him to yourself. He contemplates temptations, you pour out prayers. If he harms, he harms openly; God knows that you pray for him. He does not believe, because he does not examine your heart. Therefore, while he harms openly, you pray secretly. In this press - for the Church is likened to a press - see if not he, who harms openly, is the dregs running through public. The dregs run through public, but the oil has hidden passages to its residence. And while it passes secretly, it appears in greatness. For many, my brothers, many in this conflict of things, in the malice of this world, in this abundance of evildoers, have withdrawn themselves, and turned to God, and have bid farewell to the world, and began to suddenly give their goods to the poor, who a little while before, were snatching away others'. Yet many robbers, invaders, plunderers appear publicly: they are the dregs running through the streets. But those, one here, one there, joined in heart, ashamed of doing bad deeds, thinking on the admonitions of God, mocking the hope of the world, waiting for the hope of heaven, changing their loves and habits, are the oil in the press of sanctity, are vessels for honor in a great house, are gold in the furnace, grain in the barn. There is the ornament of the house of God.