Sermones. De Utilitate Jejuni Sermo

Sermon of Saint Aurelius Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, on the Usefulness of Fasting. Chapter One. — 1. Fasting is an offering to God proper to men, not to Angels. We are reminded to speak something on the usefulness of fasting; and God reminds us, and the season reminds us. For this observance, this virtue of the mind, this defrauding of the flesh and gain of the mind, is not offered to God by Angels. For there all is abundance and everlasting security: and therefore there is no lack, because there is full affection toward God. There is the bread of Angels: which bread of Angels, that man might eat it, man was made man. Here all souls bearing earthly flesh fill their bellies from the earth: there rational spirits presiding over celestial bodies fill their minds from God. And there is food here, and there is food: but this food, when it refreshes, it weakens, and so fills the belly that it itself is diminished; that food, however, both fills and remains whole. Christ enjoined us to hunger for this food, saying: Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice, for they themselves shall be filled (Matthew 5:6). Therefore it pertains to men living this mortal life to hunger and thirst for justice: but to be filled with justice pertains to another life. With this bread, with this food, Angels are full: but men, while they hunger, stretch themselves; while they stretch themselves, they are dilated; when dilated, they become capable; having become capable, they will be filled in their own time. What then? Do those who hunger and thirst for justice take nothing of it here?

They understand clearly: but it is one thing when we inquire about the refreshment of travelers, and another when we inquire about the perfection of the blessed. Hear the Apostle hungry and thirsty, and certainly for justice, as much as can be grasped in this life, as much as justice can be borne. For who of us would dare to compare himself to him, let alone prefer himself? But what does he say? "Not because I have already received, or am already perfect." See who is speaking: the Chosen Vessel, and in a certain way the fringe of the Lord's garment; yet that which heals the one who touches it by the flow of blood, because he is a believer: for he is the last of the Apostles and the least, as he himself says, "I am the last of the Apostles; and, I am the least of the Apostles": and again, "I am not worthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the Church of God: but by the grace of God I am what I am; and His grace in me was not empty, but I labored more than all of them: not I myself, however, but the grace of God with me" (1 Cor. 15:8-10). Hearing this, you seem to hear someone full and perfect. You have heard what he belches forth, hear also what he hungers for. "Not because I have already received, or am already perfect," he says. "Brethren, I do not consider that I have grasped it: but one thing I, who have forgotten what is behind, am stretched out toward what is before, according to my intention I follow to the palm of the heavenly calling of God in Christ Jesus" (Phil. 3:12-14). He says he is not yet perfect, that he has not yet received, not yet grasped: he says he is stretched out, he says he follows to the palm of the heavenly calling. He is on the way; he hungers.

he desires to be fulfilled, he is eager, he longs to arrive, he burns: nothing is for him such a great delay as to be dissolved and to be with Christ (Phil. 1:23). CHAPTER II. — 1. Fasting of men and those holding a middle place between the carnal and the Angels. Therefore, dearest ones, because there is earthly food, by which the weakness of the flesh is nourished; but there is also heavenly food, by which the piety of the mind is filled; and this earthly food has its own life, and that one has its own: the life of this food is of men, the life of that food is of Angels. Faithful men, already separated in heart from the crowd of unbelievers, suspended toward God, to whom it is said, "Lift up your heart," bearing another hope, and knowing that they are pilgrims in this world, hold a certain middle place: they are to be compared neither to those who think nothing else good than to enjoy earthly delights, nor yet to those supernal inhabitants of heaven, for whom the only delights are the bread itself from which they were created. Those men prone to the earth, seeking pasture and joy only from the flesh, are compared to beasts: they are far from the Angels both in condition and in morals; in condition, because they are mortal; in morals, because they are lustful. Between that people of heaven and the people of earth, the Apostle hung in a certain way in the middle: he was going there, he was raising himself up from here.

Nor was he yet with them, however; for he would say, "I am already perfect." Nor was he with those others, the sluggish, the torpid, the withered, the drowsy, who think there is nothing else except what they see, and what passes away, and what is born, and what is destined to die; for if he were with them, he would not say, "I follow toward the palm of the heavenly calling." Therefore we ought to govern our fasts. This is not, as I have said, an angelic office; nor yet is it the office of those men who serve their bellies: it is the matter of our middle state, by which we live, separated from the unbelievers, yearning to be joined to the Angels. We have not yet arrived, but we are already on the way: we do not yet rejoice there, but we already sigh here. What then does it profit us to abstain somewhat from food and carnal pleasure? The flesh drags toward the earth; the mind strains upward: it is snatched by love, but slowed by weight. Concerning this matter, Scripture speaks thus: "For the body, which is corrupted, weighs down the soul, and the earthly dwelling depresses the mind that thinks many things" (Wis. 9:15). Therefore, if the flesh, inclining toward the earth, is a burden to the soul, and a load weighing down the one striving to fly; the more each one delights in his higher life, the more he lays down his earthly burden. Behold what we do when we fast.

CHAPTER III. —3. Fasting is necessary for subduing the flesh. Do not, therefore, think it a light or superfluous matter, lest anyone, doing this by the custom of the Church, should think within himself and say, or hear the tempter whispering inwardly: "What are you doing, fasting? You are defrauding your soul, not giving it what delights it; you are inflicting punishment on yourself, becoming your own torturer and tormentor. Does God then delight in your self-torment? Then He is cruel, who takes pleasure in your sufferings." Answer such a tempter. I torment myself, plainly, that He may spare me; I inflict punishment on myself, and He may come to my aid, that I may please His eyes, that I may delight His mercy. For even the victim is tormented, that it may be placed upon the altar. My flesh will press less upon my mind. And to such an evil dissuader, a servant of the belly, reply with this similitude, and say: If you were by chance riding a beast of burden, if you were using a horse which by its prancing could throw you headlong; would you not, to travel safely, withhold fodder from the restive animal, and tame by hunger what you could not with the bridle? My flesh is my beast of burden: I am journeying to Jerusalem; it often carries me away and tries to shut me out from the way; but my way is Christ: shall I not restrain such a prancing creature by fasting? If anyone understands this, he proves by experience itself how usefully fasting is undertaken. For is this flesh, which is now being tamed, to be tamed forever? While it fluctuates in time, while it is weighed down by the condition of mortality, it has its manifest and dangerous exultations for our mind.

The flesh is still corruptible; it has not yet risen; for it will not always be thus: it does not yet have its own state of heavenly condition; for we have not yet been made equal to the Angels of God. CHAPTER IV. — 1. The error of the Manichaeans concerning the struggle of flesh and spirit. The struggle of the flesh is the penalty of sin. Let your Love not therefore suppose that the flesh is hostile to the spirit, as if the flesh had one author and the spirit another. For many, thinking this, have been truly carried away by the flesh itself and have gone astray, and have set one author for the flesh, another for the spirit. They use, as it were, an apostolic testimony which they do not understand: "The flesh lusts against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh" (Galatians 5:17). This is true; but why do you not also attend to this: "For no one ever hates his own flesh; but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the Church" (Ephesians 5:29)? In that first sentence which I recalled, there seems to be a kind of wrestling of two enemies, flesh and spirit; because the flesh lusts against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh. In this one, however, it is like a conjugal union: "For no one ever hates his own flesh; but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the Church." What then are we to do between these two sentences? If they are contrary, which shall we reject, which shall we hold? But they are not contrary. Let your Charity pay attention: in the meantime I accept both, and I will show them to be in harmony, as far as I am able.

But you—whoever you are who assign one author to the flesh and another to the spirit—what are you doing about that? For no one ever hates his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the Church. Or does the comparison not frighten you? Because he says, "nourishes and cherishes," just as Christ does the Church. You think the flesh is a fetter: who loves his own fetter? You think the flesh is a prison: who loves his own prison? For no one ever hates his own flesh. Who would not hate his own chain? Who would not hate his own punishment? And yet, "No one ever hates his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the Church." Therefore, you who assign one author to the flesh and another to the spirit, you are going to assign one to the Church and another to Christ: he who understands this is foolish. So each one loves his own flesh, the Apostle says, and apart from the Apostle's statement, each one proves it in himself. For however much you may be a tamer of the flesh, however much you may burn with severity against it, I do not know whether you would not close your eyes if some blow were imminent.

Therefore, there is a certain marriage, as it were, of spirit and flesh. Whence, then, does the flesh lust against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh? Whence this penalty, which is drawn from the propagation of death? Whence is it said, "All die in Adam" (1 Cor. 15:22)? And whence does the Apostle say, "We were once by nature children of wrath, as also the rest" (Eph. 2:3)? For he received the vengeance of death from whom we are born, and we draw it that we may overcome it: and therefore we lust against the flesh, so that we may subdue the flesh tamed to ourselves, and draw it to obedience. Do we then hate that which we desire to obey us? Each one of us, in his own house, often gives discipline to his wife; and he subdues her resisting, not persecutes her as an enemy. You tame your son so that he obeys you: do you hate him? Do you consider him an enemy? Finally, you love your slave and chastise him, and in chastising make him obedient. You have on this matter the clear and full sentence of the Apostle himself: "I do not run as into uncertainty," he says, "nor do I box as if striking the air: but I chastise my body, and reduce it to servitude, lest, while preaching to others, I myself be found reprobate" (1 Cor. 9:27). Therefore, the flesh, from its mortal condition, has, as it were, certain earthly appetites of its own: over these the right of the rein has been granted to you. The one set over you rules you, so that you may be able to rule the one subject to you.

Your flesh is beneath you; your God is above you. When you wish your flesh to serve you, you are reminded how you ought to serve your God. You attend to what is beneath you; attend also to what is above you. You have no laws for the inferior except from the superior. You are a servant; you have a servant. But the Lord has two servants. Your servant is more in the power of your Lord than in yours. Therefore, you wish to be obeyed by the flesh; can it do so in all things? It obeys your Lord in all things; it does not obey you in all things. "How so?" you ask. You walk, you move your feet, it follows; but will it go with you as far as you wish? Is it animated by you as long as you wish? Do you feel pain when you wish? Are you healthy when you wish? For your Lord often exercises you through your servant, so that because you were a despiser of the Lord, you may deserve to be corrected through your servant. Chapter V — 6. The delight of the flesh is to be restrained somewhat even from lawful things. Our fasting differs in purpose from the fasting of pagans, Jews, and heretics. For heretics to benefit from fasting, they must return to the Church. But what does that concern you? Do not relax the delight of the flesh to the point of unlawful things; restrain it somewhat even from lawful things. For he who restrains himself from no lawful things is near to unlawful ones. Therefore, brothers, marriage is lawful, adultery is unlawful; yet temperate men, in order to be far from unlawful adultery, restrain themselves somewhat even from lawful marriage.

A lawful fullness is one thing, a lawless drunkenness is another: yet moderate people, to distance themselves from the disgrace of drunkenness, discipline themselves somewhat even from the freedom of fullness. Let us therefore act thus, brothers, let us be temperate; and let us know why we do what we do. When the joy of the flesh ceases, the joy of the mind is acquired. Hence the end of our fasts is for our journey: what that journey itself is, and toward what we are heading, this must be considered. For pagans also fast at times, and they do not know the region toward which we are heading; and Jews also fast at times, and they have not grasped the path on which we walk. This is like someone taming a horse on which he will go astray. Heretics fast: I see what sort they are; I ask where they are going. "You fast, to please whom?" "God," they say. "Do you think he accepts the gift? But first see what he says: 'Leave your gift, and go, first be reconciled to your brother' (Matthew 5:24). Do you rightly tame your own limbs, you who tear apart the limbs of Christ? 'Your voice is heard in the clamor,' he says, 'and those who are under your yoke you goad and beat with your fists.' 'I have not chosen such a fast,' says the Lord (Isaiah 58:5). Your fast would therefore be disapproved if you were too harsh toward your servant; will your fast be approved when you do not recognize your brother? I do not ask from what food you abstain, but what food you love. Tell me what food you love, so that I may approve that you abstain from that food. Do you love justice? 'Perhaps,' you say, 'I do.'

Let your justice therefore be seen. For I think it is just that you serve a greater, so that a lesser may obey you. For we were speaking of the flesh, which is lesser than the spirit, and which is subject to being tamed and moderated. You deal with it so that it obeys you, and you take food away from it, because you love it subject to you: acknowledge the greater, acknowledge the superior, so that the inner part may rightly yield to you. CHAPTER VI. — The harmony of the body’s members recalls them to unity. What if your flesh obeys you, and you do not obey your God? Are you not condemned by it itself, when it obeys you? Does it not, by obeying you, bear witness against you? “And to whom,” you say, “shall I obey as a greater?” Behold, Christ speaks; you had called yourself a lover of justice: “A new commandment I give you, that you love one another” (John 13:34). Therefore hear your Lord giving a commandment, that we love one another. When from all of us as members He makes a body for Himself, which body has as its head the Lord and Savior Himself, you on the contrary tear yourself away from the members of Christ, you do not love unity. Would you not be alarmed at this in your own members? If you had a crooked finger, would you not run to a doctor to correct your finger? Certainly your body is then in a good state when your members are in harmony with one another: then you are called healthy, then you are well. But if something in your body disagrees with the other parts, you seek someone to correct it. Why then do you not seek to be corrected, so that you may be recalled to the joining of the members of Christ, and fit together in that body which is also your own?

Certainly the hairs of your head are more worthless than the other members? What is more worthless in your body than your hairs? What more contemptible? What more abject? And yet, if someone cuts your hair badly, you become angry with the barber, because he does not preserve equality in your hair: and do you not maintain unity in the members of Christ? What then is the purpose, or to what end, do your fasts serve? You think it unworthy of God that He should be served in unity by all who believe in Him: and yet you wish unity to be preserved in your limbs, in your body, in your hairs. Do your entrails, your members, speak a true testimony against you, and do you speak a false one against the members of Christ? Have you separated your fast from that of the pagans? You think this, and therefore you seem secure to yourself. For I, you say, fast for Christ, but they fast for idols and demons. I accept what you say, and indeed I do not deny that it is distinct. But see how, as I was just recalling, your members were giving testimony against you, to remind you what you ought to be with the members of Christ, your God; and the pagans themselves, from whom you separate your fast, may remind you of something concerning the unity of your Christ.

CHAPTER VII. — The Concord of the Pagans Themselves in the Worship of Their Quarreling Gods. Behold, those many false gods they worship, yet they are not divided: have we then found the one true God, only to be not in unity under the one? They have many and false, we have one and true: and they, under their mute false gods, have no division; we, under the one true God, do not maintain unity. Do you not grieve, do you not groan, do you not blush? I add another thing: not only do the Pagans worship many false gods, but many of them are contrary and hostile to each other. For example, let us recall some of theirs, if we cannot recall all: Hercules and Juno were enemies, for they were human beings; he a stepson, she a stepmother. The Pagans built temples to both of them, both to Juno and to Hercules. They adore him, they adore her; they go equally to Juno, equally to Hercules: with those gods angry at each other, the worshippers are in concord. Vulcan and Mars are enemies, and Vulcan has a just cause: let a judge be given who will hear the case. For the wretched man hates his wife's adultery; yet he does not dare to forbid his worshippers from the temple of Mars. They adore both him and him at the same time. If they imitate the gods, they themselves quarrel. They go from the temple of Mars to the temple of Vulcan: a great indignity! Yet they do not fear that the husband will be angry with them because they come to him from the temple of the adulterer Mars. They have a heart; they know that a stone cannot feel.

Behold, those who worship many false, diverse, and adverse gods nevertheless maintain some kind of unity in worshipping them: behold, even the pagans themselves, from whom your fasts have separated you, bear witness against you. Come therefore to unity, brother. We worship one God: we have never seen the Father and the Son quarreling. Nor should the pagans be angry with me for having said these things about their gods. For why should they be angered by my words, and not rather by their own writings? Let them first, if they can—nay, if they are willing—erase those writings: let not the grammarians hang up their sails to teach them. He is angry with me because I speak, he who pays a fee so that his own son may learn. CHAPTER VIII. — 10. Pagans ought not to be turned away from the Christian religion by the discord of Christians. Charity is life; dissension is death. Therefore, dearest brethren, those men indeed have such gods, or rather had them. For because they themselves were unwilling to abandon them, they were abandoned by them. And they have abandoned them unavenged, and still abandon them, they cast down their temples in their own hearts: but let us rejoice over them, because they are coming to unity, not to division. Let not the pagan find an occasion for not wanting to be a Christian. Let us be in concord, brothers, worshipping one God, so that by our concord we may in some way exhort them to abandon many gods, that they may come to peace and to unity in worshipping one God.

And if by chance they are disdainful, and from this they slander us, that we Christians do not have unity among ourselves, and for that reason they are slow and sluggish to come to salvation; I will address them briefly, and I will say what you may say to them. Let them not prefer themselves to us on account of their supposed concord, let them not take pride in their unity. For the enemy whom we suffer, they do not suffer: he possesses them, even though they do not act as we do. He sees them as worshippers of false gods; he sees them as slaves, and as slaves of demons—what profit is it to him that they quarrel, or what loss is it to him that they do not quarrel? Even though they feel one thing, albeit false and vain, and agree among themselves, he possesses them thus. But when they were being abandoned, and many were flocking to the one God, abandoning his sacrilegious sacraments, overturning temples, breaking idols, forbidding sacrifices; he saw that he had lost those whom he held, he saw that they had withdrawn from his household, had come to know the true God: what was he to do? How was he to plot against us? He knows that if we are united, he cannot possess us; he cannot divide the one God for us; he cannot set false gods before us; he feels that our life is charity, our death is dissension: he sowed quarrels among Christians, because he could not fabricate many gods for Christians; he multiplied sects, sowed errors, instituted heresies. But whatever he did, he did from the Lord's chaff.

Behold, we have security, even while he rages, even while he lies in wait and sows various dissensions among Christians: if we acknowledge our God, if we hold fast with concord, if we keep faith, we are secure. Brethren, the grain either does not depart from the threshing floor, or it returns; the wind of temptation carries off some chaff, from which it makes for us not a path of perdition, but a work of exercise. But how much chaff it does not blow away, and yet that too is to be winnowed at the last; and not all the chaff except into the fire. Therefore we must strive, my brethren, while there is time, with as much strength as we can, with as much intentness as we can, so that, if it be possible, the chaff may return, while the grain does not perish. Our love is tested here, a great work of our life is set before us. We would not discover how much we love our brethren, if no one were in peril; it would not appear how great is the love of seeking, if the abyss of perdition held nothing.

CHAPTER IX. — 11. We must act by all means so that heretics may return to unity. The offices of fishermen and hunters are different. Let us labor, brothers, let us not cease, with every work, with every effort, with pious affection toward God, toward them, among ourselves, lest in wishing to quiet their old quarrel we stir up new disputes among ourselves: and above all let us be cautious to hold the firmest love among ourselves. They have grown cold in their iniquities: how will you melt the ice of iniquity in them, if you do not burn with the flame of charity? Nor should we care that we seem troublesome to them by compelling them; let us consider this: in that we are secure. Is it not from death, rather than to death? By all means, in whatever ways we can, but modestly, let us handle old wounds: and let us be cautious, lest the one being treated die in the hands of the physician. Why then should we be concerned that the boy weeps when he is led to school? Should we be concerned that the one being cut pushes away the physician’s hand? The Apostles were fishermen, and the Lord said to them, I will make you fishers of men (Matt. 4:19). But through the prophet it is said that God would first send fishermen, afterwards hunters (Jer. 16:16). First he sent fishermen, afterwards he sent hunters. Why fishermen, why hunters? From the abyss and depth of the sea of superstitious idolatry they fished for believers with the nets of faith. But where were the hunters sent? When they wandered through mountains and hills, that is, through the pride of men, through the swellings of the earth.

There is one mountain Donatus, and another mountain Arius; another mountain Photinus, another Novatus: through these mountains they wandered; the error of these men needed hunters. Therefore the offices of fishermen and hunters have been distributed, lest those men say to us: Why did the Apostles compel no one, drive no one? Because the fisherman is one who casts nets into the sea, and draws in whatever runs into them. But the hunter surrounds the woods, shakes the thickets, and with terrors multiplied on all sides drives into the nets. Do not go this way, do not go that way: run up there, strike there, frighten there; let him not escape, let him not flee. But our net is life, provided that love is preserved. And do not consider how troublesome you are to him, but how beloved he is to you. What kind of piety is it, if you spare him and he dies? CHAPTER X. — 12. A similitude teaching that piety is to be shown, when obstinate heretics are not spared, lest they perish. Brothers, consider also this comparison and similitude: for one thing can have many similitudes. Men are born on such condition that every man wishes to be succeeded by his own children; and there is no one who does not either wish or hope for this order in his own house, that the begetters of children give way, and the begotten succeed.

Yet if an elderly father is ill—I do not say if it is a son who has a father living, whom he seeks as heir, whom he desires as successor, whom he has begotten precisely so that when that father dies he himself may live; I do not say this—if an elderly father is ill, one who is about to depart, already near death, already seeking the order of nature, already having nothing beyond what he hopes for; yet if he is ill, and his dutiful son is present with him, and the physician sees that he is weighed down by a lethal and harmful sleep, the son is patient with the father who is about to die, for the sake of those few days in which he can still live here; the son stands and attends to his father anxiously. And when he hears the physician saying, "This man may be lethargic, and may die from it if he is allowed to sleep; if you want him to live, he must not sleep"—that sleep, which is harmful and also sweet, oppresses him. The son, warned by the physician, stands anxiously, bothers his father, knocks; and if his knocking is overcome, he pinches; and if pinching does nothing, he pricks. Certainly he is troublesome to his father; and he would be impious if he were not troublesome. But the father, who delights in dying, rebuffs his troublesome son with a grim look and voice: "Leave me alone; why are you bothering me?" But the physician says that if you sleep, you will die. And the father says, "Leave me; I want to die." The old man says, "I want to die"; and the son would be impious if he did not say, "I do not want that." And that life is of course temporal; neither will the son who is troublesome in order to rouse him be perpetual in it, nor will the father who departs and passes away be succeeded.

Both pass through it, both fly through it temporally; and yet they are impious unless they consult for that temporal life itself, even when they are troublesome to one another. Therefore, do I see my brother weighed down by the sleep of a harmful habit, and do I not rouse him, because I fear being troublesome to one who sleeps and perishes? Far be it from me to do this, even if, with him alive, our inheritance were narrowed. But now, since that which we are to receive cannot be divided, since it cannot be narrowed when the possessor is multiplied, shall I not raise him up, even if troublesome, so that he may wake and, lacking the sleep of a very ancient error, rejoice with me in the inheritance of unity? I will certainly do it; if I am awake, I will do it: if I do not do it, then I am asleep. CHAPTER XI. — 13. Against heretics dividing the Church. Beloved, the Lord was appealed to by a certain man, while speaking to the crowds, and he said to Him: "Lord, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me." And the Lord: "Man, who appointed me a divider of inheritance between you?" (Luke 12:13-14). He certainly did not disdain to curb covetousness, but he did not wish to become a judge for division. But we, beloved, do not seek Him as a judge of such things, because our inheritance is not of that kind; with a clear brow, with a good conscience, let us appeal to our Lord, and let each one of us say to Him: "Lord, tell my brother, not to divide, but to hold the inheritance with me." For what do you wish to divide, brother? For what the Lord has left us cannot be divided.

For it is gold, that it may bring forth the balance of division? It is silver, it is money, it is slaves, it is cattle, it is trees, it is fields? For all these things can be divided. What cannot be divided is: "I give you my peace, I bequeath my peace to you" (John 14:27). Finally, even in these earthly inheritances, division makes things smaller: set two brothers under one father; whatever the father possesses belongs to both, the whole is his, and the whole is also his. Accordingly, if one is asked about his possessions, he answers thus: "Whose, for example, is that horse?" And if you say to one of them: "It is ours." "Whose is that estate, that slave?" In all things he answers: "It is ours." But if they divide, then a different answer is given. "Whose is that horse?" "Mine." "Whose is that one?" "My brother's." See what division has done for you. You have not gained one, but you have lost one. Therefore, if we had such an inheritance as could be divided, we still ought not to divide it, lest we diminish our riches. And certainly nothing is so improper for children as to wish to divide while their father is alive. Finally, if they attempt to do this, if they strive with lawsuits and contentions to claim their own shares for themselves, the old man cries out: "What are you doing? I am still alive. Wait a little for my death, then cut up my house." But we have God as our father: why do we go into division? why do we go into lawsuits? Let us certainly wait: if he can die, let us divide.