Sermon 216
SERMO 216
In the Return of the Creed
TO THE COMPETENTS
Who are the "competents"
The rudiments of our ministry, and the conception in you where faith begins to be generated in the womb by heavenly grace, must be assisted by speech: so that our speech may salutarily address you, and your conception may beneficially console us. We instruct with words, you advance with morals. We scatter the speech of the word, render the fruit of faith. Let us all according to the calling by which we have been called by the Lord, run in His way and path; let no one look back. For the truth that neither deceives nor can be deceived openly proclaims: No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of heaven. This indeed you desire, this you strive for with all the efforts of your mind, as shown by your name by which you are called catechumens. For what else are catechumens, than "those asking together"? For just as co-teachers, co-runners, co-sitters, mean nothing else than those teaching together, running together, sitting together; so also the word catechumen is composed of asking together and seeking something as one. And what is that one thing which you ask for or desire, unless what some, having cast off carnal desires and overcome the terrors of the world, cry out fearlessly? If camps stand against me, my heart will not fear; if war arises against me, in this I will trust. And expressing what that is, he added and said: One thing I have asked from the Lord, this I will seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life. And explaining the blessedness of this region and dwelling, he connects and expresses: That I may behold the delight of the Lord, and be protected by His temple.
Renounce the world and adhere to Christ.
You see, my fellow soldiers, to what delight of the Lord you will come, when you reject the delight of the world? If you despise the world, you will have a pure heart, and you will see him who made the world: and as he overcame, so also in his grace you will overcome this world. You will certainly and immediately overcome and trample upon it, if you trust not in your own strength, but in the aid of the most merciful God. Do not despise yourselves, because it has not yet appeared what you will be. But know that when it appears, you will be like him, when it appears what you will be. But know that you will see him, not as he came to us in the fullness of time, but as he, always remaining, created us. Put off the old man, that you may put on the new. The Lord begins a covenant with you. You have lived for the world, you have given yourselves to flesh and blood, you have borne the image of the earthly man. Therefore, as you have borne the image of him who is of the earth, so also bear the image of him who is from heaven. Human speech, because the Word was made flesh for this reason, that as you have presented your bodies as weapons of iniquity to sin, so now present your members as weapons of righteousness to God. In your destruction, your adversary was armed against you with your own weapons: in your salvation, let your protector be armed against him with your members in turn. He will harm you in no way if he does not hold your members when you take them away from him. He will rightly abandon you, if your vow and will disagree with him.
One should not think lowly of oneself, but bear fruit in good work.
Behold, with the auction and market of faith, the kingdom of heaven is offered to you for sale: inspect and gather the resources of your conscience, collectively collect the treasures of your heart. And yet you buy freely, if you recognize the grace offered to you as pleasing. You expend nothing, and yet what you acquire is great. Do not be worthless to yourselves, whom the Creator of all and your own considers so dear that He daily sheds the most precious blood of His Only Begotten for you. You will not be worthless if you distinguish the precious from the worthless; if you serve the Creator, not the creature; if your lower parts are not dominated over you, so that you may cleanse yourselves immaculately from great and deadly sin; if the seed of the Word of God, which the heavenly sower even now scatters in the field of your heart, is not trampled down in the path by the transit of the unworthy, or compressed among the rocks by the stupidity of your most hardened conscience just as it is germinating, or choked among the thorns by the devastating thorns of your desires. If you shrink from the barrenness of such a damned and damnable land, a fruitful and most abundant land will surely receive you, and with great joy, you will return to your sower and waterer a multiplied bounty of a hundredfold; or if perhaps you are unequal to this, you will pay the return of sixtyfold fruits: but if you do not even achieve this, your harvest of thirtyfold will not be ungrateful; for all will be received into the heavenly barns, all will be stored in eternal rest. From the fruits of all, that heavenly bread will be made, and every laborer working without deceit in the Lord's vineyard will be abundantly and healthfully satisfied: while the glory of such a great sower, waterer, and giver of growth Himself is spread by the preaching of the gospel.
The necessity of conversion to attain life.
Come therefore to Him with a contrite heart, for He is near to all who have a contrite heart, and He will save the humble in spirit. Approach eagerly, so that you may be enlightened. For you are still in darkness, and there is darkness within you. But you will be light in the Lord, who illuminates every man coming into this world. You were conformed to the world, be reformed by God. May you already be weary of Babylonian captivity. Behold, mother Jerusalem, that heavenly one, cheerfully inviting you on the paths, and pleading that you may choose life, and love to see good days, which you never had and will never have in this world. For there your days faded like smoke: wherein to increase, to decrease; and wherein to grow, to fade; and wherein to ascend, to vanish. You who have lived in sin for many evil years, desire to live to God: not many years that will someday end, and running to perish in the shadow of death; but good years, and near to the truth of a lively life; where you will not faint from any hunger, nor thirst; because your food will be faith, and your drink wisdom. For now in the Church you bless the Lord in faith: but then in appearance you will be most abundantly watered from the fountains of Israel.
It is necessary to mourn the desire for eternal life and to mortify the members.
But in this journey, let your tears be your bread by day and by night; while they say to you daily: Where is your God? you cannot demonstrate to the carnal what the eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has entered into the heart of man. Until you come and appear before the eyes of your God, do not fail. For He Himself will come to fulfill the promises, who professed Himself a debtor by His own will: who borrowed nothing from anyone, and deigned to be a debtor by His promise. We were owing; and we owed as much as we had sinned. He came without debt, because He was without any sin; He found us oppressed by a harmful and condemning debt, and repaying what He did not seize, mercifully freed us from an everlasting debt. We had committed the fault, we were expecting the punishment; He, not sharing our fault, but sharing our punishment, chose to be at once the giver for the fault and of the punishment. For He is the one who will save the souls of the believers from usury and iniquity, and from the heart of each one saying: I believe I shall see the good things of the Lord in the land of the living. This land, not earthly or dead, but in a certain heavenly and living way, must be longed for. It is of this land that another psalmist, burning with love for it and singing joyfully, says: You are my hope, my portion in the land of the living. Towards which those strive, who mortify their members on earth in a vital way: not the members by which the composition of the body of this world consists, but those members by which the strength of the soul is miserably weakened. Enumerating and designating them very clearly, the apostle Paul, the chosen vessel, says: Mortify your members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. Behold what you must mortify in this land of the dying, if you desire to live in that land of the living. Thus be made members of Christ, so that you do not take them and make them members of a prostitute. For what prostitute is baser, what is more disgraceful, than the one which is fornication at first, and covetousness at last? Which he truly called idolatry; because you must recognize and avoid not only the luxury of the body, but also the lust of the soul, lest you incur that perdition from the threatening and chaste bridegroom and just judge, to whom it is said: You have destroyed all who are unfaithful to you. How much more justly, how much more usefully, will each of you cry out in chastity of heart to Him: It is good for me to adhere to God. This adherence is granted by that love, of which it is similarly said: Love without dissimulation; abhorring what is evil, adhering to what is good.
Scutinies: the rites of the Church and the wrestle against the devil.
Behold where is your stadium, behold where is the struggle of those contending, behold where is the race of those running, behold where is the boxing match of those striking. If you wish to overpower the most pernicious wrestler of faith with your muscles; overthrow evil, embrace good. If you wish to run in such a way that you may obtain; flee unrighteousness, pursue justice. If you wish to box in such a way that you may not strike the air, but strike the enemy manfully; chastise your body and bring it into subjection, that abstaining from all and contending legally, you may triumph as participants of the heavenly reward and incorruptible crown. What we do in you by invoking the name of your Redeemer, complete with the scrutiny and contrition of your heart. We, with prayers to God and rebukes, resist the deceits of the inveterate enemy: you, with vows and the contrition of your heart, persist, that you may be rescued from the power of darkness and transferred into the kingdom of His light. This is now your task, and this your labor. Let us heap upon him the curses deserving of his iniquities: with your rather aversion and pious renunciation, declare the most glorious contest upon him. He must be crushed, bound, excluded as the enemy of God and yours, and rather as his own. For his fury is revealed to be both presumptuous against God, nefarious against you, and pernicious unto himself. He may pant for slaughter everywhere, set traps, sharpen his many treacherous tongues: all his poisons, by invoking the name of the Savior, pour out from your hearts.
It is for those who are striving to ensure that births are healthy so that they are not tragically aborted.
Whatever he would cast in the most criminal suggestions, whatever he would send forth in the most wicked allurements, now shall be exhausted, now shall be revealed. Now his captivity, by which he tyrannically possessed you, shall be plundered. The yoke, by which he monstrously oppressed you, shall be removed from you and placed upon his neck: only provide your consent to your Redeemer for your liberation. Hope in him, all the assembly of the new people, and you people who are to be born, whom the Lord has made, strive to be born healthily, lest you perish destructively. Behold the womb of Mother Church, behold she labors in her groaning to give birth to you and bring you forth into the light of faith. Do not, with your impatience, shake the maternal womb and narrow the doors of your birth. O people being created, praise your God: praise, you who are created, praise your Lord. Because you are nursed, praise: because you are fed, praise: because you are nourished, grow in wisdom and age. He also allowed this temporary birth delay, who neither fails by the brevity of time, nor progresses by any length of time, but excluded all constraints and time from eternal days. Do not be like children in mind, as the kind nurturer advises, but in malice be as children, in mind be perfect. Grow appropriately as the Competents in Christ, that you may grow up in young manhood into a perfect man. Rejoice, as it is written, in your progress of wisdom your father, and do not sadden your mother with your lack thereof.
The excellence of regeneration by which we are born of God the Father and the Church as mother.
Love what you will be. For you will be children of God, and children of adoption. This will be given to you freely and conferred freely. In this, you will abound more generously and more abundantly, the more you have been grateful to Him from whom you have received these things. Aspire to Him who knows who are His. Then He will not disdain to acknowledge you among those who are His if, naming the name of the Lord, you depart from injustice. You have, or have had, parents of your flesh in the world, who begot you to labor, pain, and death: but each of you, due to a more fortunate destitution, can say concerning such parents: My father and my mother have forsaken me; recognize, Christian, that Father who, having left them, took you from the womb of your mother, to whom a certain faithful one faithfully says: From my mother's womb You are my protector. God is Father, the Church is Mother. You will be born very differently from them than you had been born of those. For these births, there will be no labor, no misery, no weeping, no death; but ease, happiness, joy, and life will receive you. Through those births, generation is lamentable; through these, generation is desirable. Those, by generating us, generate into eternal punishment because of ancient guilt; these, by regenerating, neither allow punishment to remain nor guilt. This is the regeneration of those who seek Him, who seek the face of the God of Jacob. Seek humbly: when you have found it, you will come to secure height. Your infancy will be innocence, childhood reverence, youth patience, adolescence virtue, adulthood merit, old age nothing other than wise and intelligent gray hair. Through these articles or stages of age, you will not unfold but, remaining, you will be renewed. For the second will not succeed the first as it declines, nor will the birth of the third be the end of the second, nor is the fourth born so that the third might die; the fifth will not envy the fourth so that it remains, nor will the sixth bury the fifth. While these stages do not come simultaneously, nevertheless, in a pious and justified soul they persist together and in harmony. These will lead you to the seventh perpetual rest and peace. But, as we read, you will be liberated from the necessities of the mortal age six times, already in the seventh, evil will not touch you. For those evils which are not will not contend, nor will those which do not dare prevail. There will be secure immortality, there secure immortality.
Exhortation to advance in faith.
And whence do these things come, but from the alteration of the right hand of the Most High, who will bless your children within you, who will set your boundaries at peace? Awake therefore to these things, united, distinct; united in good, distinct from evil: chosen, beloved, foreknown, called, to be justified, to be glorified: so that growing, maturing, and aging in faith and strength, not in the corruption of members, in rich old age, you may tranquilly proclaim the works of the Lord, who has done great things for you, who is mighty: for great is His name, and of His wisdom there is no number. If you seek life, run to Him who is the fountain of life: and having dispelled the darkness of your smoky desires, you will see light in the light of His Only Begotten, your most merciful Redeemer, and most brilliant illuminator. If you seek salvation, hope in Him who saves those who hope in Him. If you pursue drunkenness and delights, He will not deny you even these. Just come and worship, fall down and weep before Him who made you: and He will make you drunk with the richness of His house, and will make you drink from the river of His delights.
In humility, one must strive to return to the Father's house.
But beware, lest the foot of pride come upon you; and watch, lest the hands of sinners move you. First, do not let it happen, pray that he may cleanse you from your hidden faults: secondly, lest it rush upon and cast you down, asking that he may spare you from others' sins; lying down, arise, arising, stand, standing by, persist while standing by. Do not bear the yoke any longer: rather break their chains, and cast away from you their yoke, lest you be held again by the yoke of servitude. The Lord is near; be anxious about nothing. Now eat the bread of sorrow: the time will come, when after the bread of sadness, the bread of joy will be served to you. But the merit of that is the tolerance of this; your aversion and flight have earned the bread of mourning: convert, repent, and return to your Lord. He is ready to distribute the bread of joy to the penitent and returning one; if you do not delay or postpone tearfully making a lamentable prayer for your flight. Therefore, in such great crowds of those causing trouble, clothe yourselves in sackcloth, and humble your soul in fasting. What is rendered to humility is denied to pride. And indeed, when you examined yourselves, and the persuader of that flight and desertion was rightfully rebuked in the tremendous omnipotence of the Trinity, you were not clothed in sackcloth: but still, your feet mystically stood in the same.
Health which appeared in the body must be preserved in the heart.
Vices must be shunned and the fleeces of goats plucked: the garments of the left-handed kids must be torn. With the first robe, the merciful father will meet you voluntarily, who did not hesitate to sacrifice the fatted calf to dispel your pestilential hunger. You will be fed with his flesh, you will drink with his blood: by whose shedding sins are forgiven, debts are pardoned, stains are cleansed. Eat as the poor, and then you will be satisfied. So that you too may be among those of whom it is said: The poor shall eat, and shall be satisfied: and being wholesomely satisfied, belch his bread and glory. Run to him, and be converted: for he it is who converts the averse, follows the fugitives, finds the lost, humbles the proud, feeds the hungry, frees the shackled, illuminates the blind, cleanses the impure, refreshes the weary, raises the dead, and snatches away those possessed and captured by evil spirits. Since we have now proven that you are immune from these; rejoicing, we admonish you that the health which has appeared in your body may be preserved in your hearts.