Sermon 357

SERMO 357

On the Praise of Peace

Regarding the praise of peace, what must be done with those who do not love peace?

It is time to exhort your Charity, with the strength the Lord grants, to love peace and to pray to the Lord for peace. Let peace be our beloved and friend, with whom our heart's chamber may be pure; with whom there may be faithful rest and not bitter partnership, with whom there may be sweet embrace and inseparable friendship. It is more difficult to praise peace than to have it. For if we want to praise it, we desire strength, seek knowledge, weigh words: but if we want to have it, we have it and possess it without any labor. Those who love peace should be praised: but those who hate it should be better pacified by teaching and silence than provoked by reproach. A true lover of peace is a lover of its enemies. For just as, if you loved the light, you would not be angry with the blind, but you would grieve for them; for you would know what good you enjoy, and therefore seeing how much good they are deprived of, they would seem worthy of your compassion; and if you had the means, the skill, the remedy, you would run to heal them rather than condemn them: so if you are a lover of peace, whoever you are, have mercy on him who does not love what you love, who does not have what you have. For such is the thing you love, that you do not envy your co-possessor of it. He has peace with you, and does not diminish your possession. Whatever earthly thing you love, it is difficult not to envy the one who has it. Then if it perhaps comes into your mind to share the land you possess with a friend, so that your benevolence may be praised, so that even in these temporal matters charity may be proclaimed: if therefore you wish to share your earthly possession, such as an estate, a house, or whatever else of this kind, with a friend; you share it with one, and admit him to partnership, and rejoice with him. You think perhaps of admitting a third, and a fourth: already you consider how many the house may accommodate for dwelling, or the field for grazing; and you say: Now it cannot accommodate a fifth, a sixth cannot live with us, when will such a small possession sustain a seventh? Therefore, it excludes others, not you, but the narrowness. Love peace, have peace, possess peace, bring to yourself as many as you can to possess peace: it will be the more expansive the more it is possessed by many. An earthly house cannot accommodate many cohabitants: the possession of peace grows with many inhabitants.

To have peace is to have that which you love.

How good it is to love! For this is to have. But who would not wish that what he loves should grow? If you wish to have few with you in peace, your peace will be small. If you wish to increase that possession, add possessors. For that which I have said, brothers: It is good to love peace, and to love itself is to have, at what cost? With what voice it is praised, with what heart it is considered: Is this to have, that to love? Consider the other things, which humans are inflamed with desire for. See another love lands, silver, gold, numerous children, precious and adorned houses, most pleasant and most precious estates. Does he love this? He loves it. Does he who loves it already have it? It can happen that the lover of all these things is empty. When he does not have it, he loves; he burns with desire to have it; but when he begins to have it, he is tortured with fear lest he lose it. He loves honor, he loves power. How many people sigh, deprived of the power to acquire these things? And often the final day overtakes them before they reach that which they love. How great, then, is the cost of what, when you love, you have? You do not seek what you love at a price; you do not walk to a patron, by whom you will reach it. Behold where you stand, love peace, and what you love is with you. This matter is of the heart; nor do you share peace with your friends as you do bread. If you wish to share bread, the more it is broken among many, the less there is to give. But peace is like that bread which, in the hands of the disciples of the Lord, grew and increased by breaking and giving.

Schismatics are to be recalled to peace peacefully.

Therefore, have peace, brothers. If you wish to draw others to it, be the first to have it, be the first to hold it. Let what you have burn within you, so that it may ignite others. The heretic hates peace, and the bleary-eyed hate light. Is light therefore bad because the bleary-eyed cannot tolerate it? The bleary-eyed hate light; but the eye was created for light. Therefore, those who love peace and want it to be possessed with them should strive to increase their possession by adding another possessor. Let them therefore strive to cure the eyes of the bleary-eyed, by any means, with any effort. The unwilling are cured; they do not want to be cured while they are being cured; but once they see the light, they will be pleased. Suppose he gets angry; do not tire by insisting. Lover of peace, pay attention and delight first in the beauty of your beloved, and burn with zealousness to draw another. Let him see what you see, love what you love, hold what you hold. Your beloved, whom you love, speaks to you; she says to you: Love me, and you will have me instantly. Bring with you those you can to love me: I will be chaste and remain whole. Bring whomever you can, let them find, hold, and enjoy. If this light is not corrupted by many seeing it; do many loving me corrupt me? But they do not wish to come because they do not have the means to see me. They do not wish to come because the brightness of peace dazzles the bleary-eyed of dissension. See the pitiful cry of the bleary-eyed. It is announced to them: It has been seen that Christians have peace. Hearing this news, they say among themselves: Woe to us. Why? Unity is coming. What is this? What a cry: Woe to us, unity is coming? How much more justly would you say: Woe to us, dissension is coming? Let it not be that dissension comes: these are the darkness of those who see. For unity is coming, rejoice, brothers. Why are you afraid? It has been said, unity is coming. Was it said, a beast is coming, fire is coming? Unity is coming, light is coming. If one wants to answer truthfully, he will say to you: I was not afraid because a beast was coming; I am not fearful; but I was afraid because light was coming; for I am bleary-eyed. Therefore, effort must be given to cure. What is shared with them, which does not become narrow by sharing, must be communicated as much as we are able, as much as God grants.

Gentleness should be shown to schismatics who are quarrelling. It is to be done not with quarrels but rather with prayers to God.

Therefore, beloved, I exhort your Charity, that you display to them Christian and Catholic gentleness. Now the time is for healing. The eyes of the saints are in fervor, they must be carefully tended and gently handled. Let no one engage in a quarrel with anyone, let no one desire to defend even his own faith by disputing now, lest a spark arise from the quarrel, lest occasion be given to those seeking it. You decidedly hear reproach, tolerate it, pretend not to notice, pass by. Remember that healing is needed. See how gentle doctors are with those they treat even sharply. They hear reproach, they offer remedy, they do not return reproach for reproach. Let the word be given for the word; so that one is being healed, the other heals: not two disputants. Bear, I beseech you, my brothers. But I do not bear, he says, because he blasphemes the Church. The Church asks you to bear, because the Church is being blasphemed. He slanders my bishop, he says a crime against my bishop, and I remain silent? Let him speak the crime, and remain silent; not by knowing, but by bearing. You offer this to your bishop, if for him you do not intervene at this time. Understand the time, have counsel. How many blaspheme your God? Do you hear, and He does not hear? Do you know, and He does not know? And yet He makes the sun rise on the good and the evil, and rains on the just and the unjust. He shows patience, defers power. Thus also acknowledge the time, do not provoke swelling eyes to disturb themselves. Are you a lover of peace? Be well in your heart with your beloved. And what shall I do? You have what to do. Take away quarrels, turn to prayers. Do not repel with reproaches the one who reproaches, but pray for him. Do you wish to speak against him: speak to God for him. I do not tell you to remain silent; but choose rather where to speak, to whom you speak in silence, with closed lips, with a crying heart. Where he does not see you, be good for him. To him who does not love peace and wants to quarrel, respond peacefully: Whatever you say, however much you hate, as it pleases you to detest, you are my brother. What do you do, that you might not be my brother? Entirely good, bad, willing, unwilling, you are my brother. And he: Whence am I your brother, enemy, adversary? Just as you say these things, you are my brother. It seems strange: he hates, detests, and he is a brother? To him indeed do I wish to believe, not knowing what he says? Whose health I wish for, that he may see the light, and recognize a brother. Indeed, to him do I wish to believe that I am not his brother, because he detests, because he hates, and not rather to the light itself? Let us hear what the light itself says. Read the prophet: Hear, you who tremble at the word of the Lord. The Holy Spirit speaks through the prophet Isaiah: Hear, you who tremble at the word of the Lord. Say: You are our brothers, to those who hate you, and who detest you. What is this? The light has shone, showing brotherhood: and still says the sore-eyed: Close the window. Offer your eyes to the light: recognize a brother not in darkness, while you are in darkness: and say, say with confidence, you speak the words of God and not mine. Say, says God, You are our brothers: to whom? To those who hate you. For what wonder if you say it to those who love you? To those who hate you, and who detest you. Why this? Listen, and consider the fruit of the cause. As if you asked the Lord your God, and said: Lord, how can I say: You are my brother, who hates, who detests? He says why. So that the name of the Lord may be honored. It may appear even in delight: but let them be ashamed. See, I beseech you, the fruit of patience, of so great gentleness. Say: You are our brothers. Why? So that the name of the Lord may be honored. Why indeed does he not recognize you as a brother? Because he honored the name of man. Therefore say: You are my brother: you may hate, you may detest, you are my brother. Recognize in yourself the sign of my Father. Our Father’s speech. Bad brother, quarrelsome brother, you are my brother. For you say as well as I: Our Father who art in heaven. We say the same: why are we not one? I ask you, brother, acknowledge what you say with me, and condemn what you do against me. Consider the words coming out of your mouth. Listen, not to me, but to yourself. See to whom we say: Our Father who art in heaven. Not a friend, not a neighbor; but He Himself to whom we say, commands us to concord. Together we have one voice before the Father: why do we not together have one peace?

Peace fervently burning. Solemn fasting. Hospitality towards those who come to Carthage for the purpose of a conference.

Say such things ardently, say them gently. Say them with the fervor of charity, not with the swelling of dissension, and beseech with us the Lord in solemn fasts. What we now render to God, let us render also for the cause. For already we fast solemnly after Pentecost: and surely we would fast, even if this cause were not. What then do we owe to our brothers, whom in the name of the Lord our God, our physician, we accept to heal and to be healed, they offering themselves to be healed, not presuming upon the hands of the physician ourselves? But what do we do? Let us beseech the same physician, fasting with humble heart, pious confession, fraternal fear. Let us show piety to the Lord, charity to our brothers. Let our alms increase, by which our prayers are more easily heard. Seek hospitality. It is time: the servants of God are coming. It is time, opportunity is here, why does it perish? Consider what you have in the upper room of your house. Consider also what you lay up above, what you keep for yourself, from which you alone are securely rich. Place it above, commend it not to your servant, but to your Lord. Surely there you do not fear lest a thief sneak in, lest a robber invade, lest a turbulent enemy snatch it away? Make sure to have what will be returned to you. And this is not returned to you, what you have placed. The Lord wants you to be a lender, but His own, not your neighbor’s.