Sermon 365

SERMO 365

Of the verse 7 of Psalm XV:
"I will bless the Lord, who has granted me understanding," and so forth.

God should be praised with the heart, not just with the mouth. Praise without love is neither true nor acceptable to God.

We have sung, and we have said: I will bless the Lord: would that it were with the heart and not only with the mouth: for if with the mouth and not the heart, the praise of the Lord in the mouth of the sinner becomes foul; nor does the confession of the mouth profit him, if there is not within the profession of charity. Look, brothers: charity is not the virtue of the mouth; it sets its seat where the bridegroom’s friend is beautiful. But where is this beauty? All the glory of the king’s daughter is from within. This glory is nothing other than beauty, this beauty is nothing other than charity, charity is nothing other than life. Therefore, to live, love. If you love, you are beautiful: love is good, love is beautiful. If that beauty is absent, you do not live; you have appearance, but not inwardly. Let that tomb propped up by great columns be opened, let the marble be broken open; what else will you find but a horrendous corpse, putrid bones, ashes, worms? There is appearance, but it covers death, the sight of which makes you shudder, bristle. Do you think a dead man says: I will bless the Lord? Indeed, Scripture bears witness: The dead will not praise you, Lord, nor all who descend into hell. Open the Gospel, you will hear the Lord rebuking and saying to the devil: Be silent. Why? Because the dead will not praise you, nor all who descend into hell. No one praises whom he does not love; or if an enemy praises, he loves the virtue he praises in the enemy. He who sins exercises enmities with God: therefore, he does not praise God, nor does he praise the virtue of God; because praise is some good, which does not fall into sin. He who praises someone and lies, slanders, or mocks rather than praises. Remove charity from the heart, only lies remain. Do you want a lie to praise the truth, and for God to take praise from where blasphemy originates? Wise men do not highly value those who are praised by the insane and wicked: will God be praised by an impure and most shameless heart, by a blasphemous and most insane mind? Therefore, say: I will bless the Lord, who gave me understanding. You are not insane; you are healed, you have understanding; praise your God, who gave you understanding, who provides the eye: understanding, to grasp; the eye, to see; grasp how vast is the breadth and length of the love of God, see the author and finisher of faith; grasp charity, see Christ; charity, to love; Christ, to bless, and by loving and blessing, to know the Lord, who gave you understanding; and by knowing, to live: because: This is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.

Against heretics who boast that they have a good understanding by nature.

But whence, I ask, do you have this understanding? Someone will come from sideways and say: He who gave nature, gave understanding; good nature, good understanding; I am to have this good, it suffices: nor indeed will understanding be degenerate; and from there I will bless the Lord, from whom He bestowed understanding upon me, that is, from nature. O heretic, so you have been allotted good nature? Let the Apostle be silent and be confounded: "For I do not do the good I want," he says; and yet he was allotted good nature, and in this good nature, the good which he wishes to do, he cannot do. He wishes, desires, tries: he wishes weakly, desires in vain; tries in frustration; and against what he wishes, desires, tries, this good he does not accomplish. O good nature, whose will is weak, desire in vain, efforts useless! Let philosophers play their parts, and they will thank you greatly, who grant them such a good nature so gratuitously. What then? They know the sky, know the earth, know the sea, probe the depths, investigate the secrets of nature, know the distinctions, differences, essences; they give an account of all these things; what then? Go on, say more. After so many things they fail, and did not glorify God, and became vain in their thoughts, and were made foolish, thinking themselves wise, and changed the glory of God into the likeness of an ox that eats grass, and were dispersed in the error of Baal; and the god of this world blinded them, and they were given over to dishonorable passions, and they became like those they worshipped. And yet they rejoiced in good nature, and in understanding through nature. O madman, do you see that this nature grants understanding, by which they bless God? Rather it grants understanding, by which they curse God, and rise up against the Creator? Rather say, brothers: I will bless the Lord, who has granted me understanding: unless He had granted it, I would not have understood; unless I had understood, I would never have blessed: He gave understanding, He gave sight. Blind Nature, where it herself lacks she does not bestow. Make understanding for yourself, and you will make yourself blind. The light which is in you, is darkness. Hence say: Enlighten my darkness, lest I sleep in death. What is it to sleep in death? To hope for something from nature, to make one’s own arm flesh, to fabricate understanding for oneself: whoever does these things is not only in death but sleeps in death, and is more than four days dead, and stinks more. If he were only in death, he could be raised: but in this very death he sleeps a more than iron sleep, he rests in it. There is no hope for him.

The nature of humans is frail, but Christ has healed it.

But do you want to know what he did who was blessed with a good nature? Did he say as you do: In a good nature, I have good understanding, and he who granted one did not deny the other? Let us crush the scorpion, let us trample it, let its mouth be sealed against iniquity. Read: I have been endowed with a good soul. Proceed, let us hear what kind of treasure you have obtained, which perhaps will turn into coals, and if only into coals that piled up on your head might consume the superfluous. And when I was better situated, I came to an untainted body: and as I knew that I could not otherwise contain myself, unless God gives it; and this itself was wisdom, of which it was the gift to know: I approached the Lord and entreated Him. You have truly been endowed with good nature, who can deny it? For even the nature of the devil is good, and all things that God made are good: but in this nature, although good, will you have the wise understanding, with which you could abstain from lusts and desires, which wage war against the soul, if God does not give it? Learn, heretic, learn at last. And I knew that I could not otherwise contain myself, unless God gives it: and in this the chief part of wisdom, which is entirely understanding, is to know from where you contain yourself, and that you do not contain yourself otherwise than from God alone. Oh excellent nature which can abstain from nothing, nor can do otherwise, unless it falls, if God does not give the understanding with which it does not fall! Therefore let us sing, brothers, let us sing. I will bless the Lord, who has granted me understanding: He gave nature, He gave understanding; He healed nature, He healed understanding. In both, the merciful Samaritan exhibited mercy; He descended, He bound wounds, He cleansed with the wine which we understand, He healed, He took [the wounded] into the inn, that is into the Church, He entrusted him to the host. To what host? The Holy Spirit, the inhabitant of the holy Church. He, having received the coin, but which He poured out from the torn sack for those who pay for the wretched, with His oil, with His ointment, healed the wounds of the lying and expiring nature, and with the same oil that He lights, He illuminated my darkness, and made understanding clear. If you do not believe this, He will not be the Samaritan to you, and you will perish in the wound, who refuse to admit the hand of the healer.

The intellect is a gift of the Holy Spirit, which Christ purchased for us with His Passion.

Let the Apostles be questioned, and let them say who on that fiftieth day from the Lord's resurrection gave them understanding. Did they perchance produce that terrible noise by which the place where they awaited the promises of the Father was shaken? Perhaps they kindled that heavenly fire by which they were all ablaze? Perhaps they themselves created those fiery tongues? Maybe they themselves procured for themselves those divine gifts, among which is understanding, and poured them into themselves according to the desires of their hearts? Whoever says this has no part in this sacred fiftieth day; nor does he obtain understanding, who believes understanding is given according to nature. When, therefore, was understanding given, except when the Spirit was also given? Let us reason together, already you are confused, already you are blushing; and would that you were thus confused so that you might be edified, thus blushing so that you might be glorified. What is the Holy Spirit, if not the promised gift of the Father, if not the gift of the Son? If it is promised, you have the one by whom it is promised, for what is promised is outside of us; and it would be promised in vain if it was either within our power when it is promised, or if it could be possessed whenever we wish. I promise you this which you do not have, and it is in me when I promise, so that what I promise may descend upon you. The Holy Spirit is indeed a gift, and above all a gift, and a gift that is owed to no one, and a gift that is given freely. Christ was born and reclined in a manger to become the food of devout animals: yet He suffered thirst, fatigue, was sold by His own, betrayed and accused by the Jews, scourged by the Gentiles, crowned with thorns, crucified, and finally enclosed in a rock: to what end all these? To purchase for you this gift, which He would later dispense to the believer; or rather dispense so that you might believe. For unless He had first given it, neither before nor after would you believe. Hence, if you have this gift by nature, you render the death of Christ, His suffering, the cross, in vain. For He dies in vain, to acquire for you what is in you, and to give what you possess. Return to the Lord the humility of the manger, return the curse of the cross, return the abundance of the shed blood, all these things in vain: you suffice for yourself, all these things are vain; you are wealthy, and you attribute understanding to the goods of nature, which nature gave, not grace, and for which you are not a debtor to the Creator, except insofar as He granted nature, which bestowed understanding upon you.

The speech returns from the heretics to the brothers; exhortation to investigate inward experience.

You acknowledge, I suppose, the error: and may your kidneys correct you so that you may better recognize, and recognizing, request, and requesting, obtain the spirit of understanding, counsel, and fear, whereby you might become wiser, more cautious, and more subject to the Lord. These things, brothers, even if I did not discuss them, there would still be another who would educate you: and you would be educators among yourselves. For if, God forbid, you had fallen into such a gross and stupid error as to believe that you were endowed with understanding by nature, which you have by God's grace and mercy alone, your kidneys would correct you and shout: Why do such thoughts arise in your heart? Let each one consult himself, touch himself, scrutinize, and not seek outside himself; interrogate his kidneys, and they will say: there has been a law in my members contrary to the law of my mind; I am prone to every crime, so overwhelmed by the waves of desires that I am drowned daily and fall into the depths of sins. Envy rises, pride rises, lust rises, forming an army that attacks the wretched soul: if I avoid Charybdis, I run into Scylla; if I repel lust, I succumb to anger; if greed does not subdue me, drunkenness strikes me; if I refrain from plundering, I close my hand and heart to the poor; if I stop my ears from slanders, death enters through the windows, that is, through the eyes I drink in the incitements of lusts and pleasures; finally, if I plug one crack, a hundred open, through which I receive the hostile storm, and at last I fall apart. These are the things your kidneys discuss within you, and aware of their own weakness, they educate and correct you until night. What kind of night? The murky night of your conscience, whose darkness you would wrap around yourself, if you could, as a shield against the light of truth, and hope well of your own strength. But your kidneys correct you. There is strength in the kidneys and loins, as it is written somewhere in Scripture: but since your loins are so unsteady, your kidneys so flabby, they educate you and tell you: If there is so much weakness, so much infirmity in the kidneys, the source of strength, what will become of the rest? Therefore, when our loins have educated us and taught us how vain is human salvation, what remains except to gird our loins so they do not fall apart? When in our houses, the beams, from either excessive age, excessive heat, storm impact, or some other cause, split apart, we immediately fasten them with nails and braces: let this be done with your loins, that is, with your strength; they loosen, collapse, fall apart, the whole frame is disjointed; you have nails in the crucified one, drive them in forcefully, and the better the deeper; do not place them loosely to uphold what is falling; thus will the disjointed frame be strengthened. The nails of the cross have the power to raise what is fallen, restore what is weak, support what is collapsing. Drive them in, hammer them, to the marrow, to the very soul, from this correction you shall be healed, and being healed, you will say to the Lord: I will guard my strength in you: from you is my strength, to you is my strength. Turned towards the Lord, etc.