Sermon 217
SERMO 217
On the Words of the Lord in the Gospel of John
"This is eternal life, that"
"They may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent."
AND ON THE TRINITY
Both the Father and the Son are the only true God.
The Lord Jesus Christ, who listens to us with the Father, has deigned to pray to the Father for us. What is more certain for our happiness than when He prays for us, who gives what He prays for? For Christ is man and God: He prays as man, gives what He prays for as God. But what you should take hold of is that He assigns everything to the Father, because the Father is not from Him, but He is from the Father. He gives everything to the source whence He is derived. But the source that has been born of the Father is Himself the source of life. Therefore, the Father, a spring, begot a spring. Indeed, the spring begot a spring; but the generating spring and the generated spring are one spring: just as the generating God and the generated God are one God, namely, the Son born of the Father. The Father is not the Son, the Son is not the Father; the Father is not of the Son, the Son is of the Father; but yet the Father and the Son are one because of the one substance, and there is one God because of the inseparable divinity. Therefore, what you have heard Him say: This is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent, take care not to understand it as meaning that the Father alone is the true God, but that the Son is not the true God. For we have a divine testimony about this matter, with John himself clearly saying in his epistle: So that we are in His true Son Jesus Christ: He is the true God and eternal life. Hold that Christ is the true God and eternal life. Therefore, when you hear: That they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent, you should understand it to imply: the only true God; that is, that they may know you and Jesus Christ whom you have sent, the only true God.
Nor should the Holy Spirit be separated from this.
We have completely resolved this question. But what do we do about the Holy Spirit? For if concerning the Father and Christ it was said: "That they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent," that is, they may know You and Jesus Christ as the only true God; we struggle to show how the Holy Spirit is also the true God. Not because He was silent is the Holy Spirit omitted. He is not only the Spirit of the Father, nor only of the Son: but He is the Spirit of both the Father and the Son. Therefore, when both are named, and He is not mentioned, He is understood to be among them, being of both. I am going to quote a certain saying from Scripture, from which you will understand what we mean. The Apostle says: "No one knows the things of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him." For what are the things of a man? What a man thinks as a man: for there he is truly a man, in his thoughts. Does your spirit know my thoughts, or does my spirit know your thoughts? No one knows the things of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him. The Apostle said it; and he added: "So also, no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God." How do we take this? It is a defined sentence. Therefore, if no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God, does the Son of God also not know the things of God? Let the diabolic sentiment be far from us, let it depart from us. Therefore, does the Word of God not know the things of God? Does the Only-begotten of God not know the things of God, through whom all things were made? He knows: and who knows as such, if not the Spirit of God? Therefore, when you hear: "No one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God," do not separate the Son from it; thus, when you hear: "That they may know You, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent, as the only true God," do not separate the Holy Spirit.
Christ is of the same power and the same divinity as the Father.
If there is only one true God, says the heresy, I do not know what you know; because there is no true God but the Father, to whom Christ said: That they may know you, the only true God. Add: and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. I do not want to add, he says. But he himself added it. But I, he says, do not want to add. Nor do I want to listen to you. And yet, you who define the Father alone as the true God, what will you say of the letter of John, where it is read concerning Christ: He is the true God, and eternal life? Finally, to whom was it said, or concerning whom was it said: who alone does marvelous things? Concerning the Father, or the Son, or both? If concerning the Father, then the Son does not do marvelous things. And where is it, that he himself says: As the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so the Son gives life to whom he will? It is of the same power, of the same divinity. If, therefore, the Son also does marvelous things, how does the Father do them alone? But if it was said concerning both, then the Father and the Son are one God. Add the Holy Spirit: add, do not separate, lest you be separated.
God is the Holy Spirit, who has a temple made of limbs.
Let us adore God, of whose temples we are. For, brothers, if we were to make a temple out of wood and stones, we could only make it for God. If we were pagans, we would make temples for the gods: for we would make temples for false gods, just as the unbelieving nations alien to God have done. However, Solomon, being a prophet of God, made a temple out of wood and stones, but nonetheless for God: for God, not for an idol; for God, not for an angel; for God, not for the sun, not for the moon; for God, who made heaven and earth: for the living God, who made heaven and earth, and who remains in the heavens, he made a temple from the earth; and God did not disdain it, rather He commanded it to be made. Why did He command that a temple be made for Himself? Did He have no place to dwell? Hear St. Stephen, when he suffered: Solomon, he said, built Him a house, but the Most High does not dwell in temples made with hands. Why then did He want a temple to be made, or that a temple be made? So that it would be a figure of the body of Christ. That temple was a shadow: the light came and drove away the shadow. Seek now the temple that Solomon made, and you will find ruin. Why is that temple in ruins? Because what it signified has already come to pass. And the temple itself, the body of the Lord, fell, but rose again; and so it rose again, that it can no longer fall at all. Finally, when the Jews had said to Him: What sign do you show us, that we may believe you? He said to them: Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up. But He was speaking to them in the temple built by Solomon, and He said: destroy this temple; but what this meant they did not hear, what this meant they did not understand, they thought He was speaking about that temple. Finally, they answered Him: This temple was built in forty-six years, and you will raise it up in three days? Thus the Evangelist immediately adds: But He was speaking of the temple of His body. Therefore, the temple of God is the body of Christ. What about our bodies? They are members of Christ. Hear the Apostle himself: Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? He who said: Your bodies are members of Christ, what did he show, except that our bodies and our head, which is Christ, together form one temple of God? Let us trust that the body of Christ and our bodies are the temple of God, and we will be: for if we do not believe, we will not be. Therefore, since our bodies are members of Christ, hear what else the Apostle said: Do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God? Behold, there is a temple: and is He not God? If He had it made of wood and stones, He would be God: if He had a temple made by human hands, He would be God: and is He not God, who has a temple of the members of God? Therefore, join together in the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is God. There is one God, the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The Father is not the Son, the Son is not the Father, the Spirit of both is neither the Father nor the Son: but the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit is one God. Build yourselves up in unity, lest you fall into separation.
Let us choose a good place prepared by Christ, by doing good in a bad place.
You have heard what he asked for us, or rather what he said he wanted: Father, those whom you have given me, I want. I want, Father: what you will I do, do what I want. I want. What? That where I am, they also may be with me. O blessed home! O secure homeland! It has no enemy, it has no pestilence; we live safely there, we do not seek to move, we do not find a safer place. Whatever you choose here on earth, you choose for fear, not for security. Choose for yourself a place, while you are in a bad place, that is, in this age, in this life full of temptations, in this mortality full of groans and fears; while you are in a bad place, choose for yourself a place that you may move to from the bad place. You cannot move to a good place from a bad place unless you have done well in the bad place. What kind of place is that? where no one hungers. Therefore, if you want to dwell in a good place where no one hungers, in this age break your bread for the hungry. Because in that blessed place no one is a stranger, everyone lives in their homeland; therefore, if you want to be in a good place, where you find a stranger in a bad place who has nowhere to enter, receive him into your home; offer hospitality in the bad place, so that you may come to a place where you cannot be a guest. In a good place no one needs clothing: there is no cold there, no heat there: why a roof? why clothes? Where there will not be a roof, but protection, behold, even there we find a roof: Under the shadow of your wings I will hope. Therefore, in this bad place provide a roof for someone who does not have one, so that you may be in a good place where you have such a roof that you will not seek to make patched roofs: because there the rain does not drip, where there is a perpetual fountain of truth. But that rain delights, it does not wet; that rain itself is the fountain of life. What is it: Lord, with you is the fountain of life? And the Word was with God.
Evil days pass: the good day is eternal and blessed.
Therefore, brothers, do well in a bad place, so that you may come to a good place, of which He who prepares for us says: I want that where I am, they also may be with me. The Lord Christ ascended to prepare, so that we may come secure to the prepared place. He prepares himself: remain in him. Is Christ a small house to you? You no longer fear his suffering: He has risen from the dead, and does not die, and death will no longer have dominion over him. A bad place, bad days, this age; but let us do well in the bad place, and live well in the bad days. The bad place passes, and the bad days, and the good eternal place will come, the good eternal days; and those good days will be one day. Here, why are the days bad? Because one passes, so another comes: today passes, so tomorrow comes: yesterday passed, so today would come. Where nothing passes, there is one day: and that day is Christ. And the Father is day: but the Father is day from no day, the Son is day from day. Sing to the Lord a new song, sing to the Lord all the earth. Sing to the Lord, and bless his name; announce well day after day his salvation. Christ is the day. If you do not recognize it, listen to the wise elder: if you do not yet understand, whoever you are, young man, listen to the white hairs of truth. That old Simeon looked at the infant Lord Christ who was carried by his mother, and contained the heaven. He looked at the small, recognized the great, and received him in his hands; because he had received a response from God, that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord's Christ. He received him in his hands, and said: Now you dismiss your servant, Lord, according to your word in peace, for my eyes have seen your salvation. Therefore, announce well day after day his salvation. For so said Simeon: He whom I expected has come; what am I doing here? He received him, to be received by him: he carried the man Christ, he was carried by God Christ.
The rule to be observed when the Father is said to be greater than the Son.
Therefore hold this: I give you a rule, so that you may not be frightened when the Son says something where the Father seems to be signified as greater: either He speaks from the person of a man, because God is greater than man; or He speaks from the person of one begotten, in honor of Him by whom He was begotten. Seek no more than this: for God begot God, the great begot the equal. If God did not beget true God, and the great did not beget the equal, He begot a monster, not a true son. Because indeed He begot a true son, this is how He is what He Himself begot.