Sermones Tres

Sermons of Saint Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, Three Sermons. Sermon One. On the Perfect. I. The heavenly precept of our Lord Jesus Christ leaves nothing uncertain or perplexed by obscurity: the disposition of possessions is openly commanded, and the bestowal of the price is not concealed. "Sell," he says, "all that you possess, and give alms." He does not permit those occupied with heavenly duties to be entangled by the care and trouble of worldly possession; and he absolves those already near to God by the very profession of devotion, or rather joined to Christ by the sincerity of their mind, from the care and anxiety of secular possession; he snatches from the world every sum of your work and every movement of your thought, which he has deigned to assign to heaven. Hence it is that he openly commands: "Do not think, saying, 'What shall we eat, or what shall we wear?' And do not think about tomorrow." So that what he had commanded might be easily fulfilled, with all the anxieties of thought removed: "Sell," he says, "all that you possess, and give alms." He cut off every excuse of cunning cupidity, who ordered that nothing be left to think about for the morrow, who commanded that the entire quantity of substance be bestowed.

II. But let us go back over what was set forth, to be examined by our discussion. "Do not," He says, "think, saying: What shall we eat, or what shall we wear? For these are things the nations seek. But your heavenly Father knows that you are in need of all these things" (Ibid. 32). The thought of distrust kills the faith of the divine profession in you: and while you fear that something may be lacking on the next day, you necessarily doubt the promises; then you withdraw your hand from just works; and so, held back by a weak thought, you desist from good work, and by desisting from good work, you lose the name of religion and of the divine, and you, compared to unbelieving pagans by the faithlessness of your own weakness, incur the detestable name of unbelief and the label of foolishness of the gentiles. For it is the part of Christians to ask for the future with the most faithful hope, and of pagans to seek the present with desperate faithlessness, as Christ says: "Do not think, saying: What shall we eat, or what shall we wear? For these are things the nations seek." And He added: "Your heavenly Father knows beforehand that you are in need of all these things.

III. The divine word has reminded us that the necessities of our condition cannot be hidden from the heavenly Father, and that by His providence and care all things are provided for us, if we, clinging to the works of justice and detained by the search for the heavenly kingdom, are pricked by no anxiety over present hardships, saying: "Seek first the kingdom of God and justice; and all things will be added for you" (Ibid. 33). It makes those devoted to the duties of justice and piety, and occupied with heavenly exercises, safe and secure in all things: so that you may not be called away from the knowledge of the Father, nor distracted from the knowledge of the Only-begotten, nor desist from the gift and profession of the Holy Spirit; nor stray from meditation on the precept, nor from the hope of the promise, nor from the faith of what is believed, nor from the love of neighbor, nor from the perfection of the commandment, concerning which Moses (Deut. vi, 6, 8) warns, that it should always sit in our heart, always stand before our sight, and through meditation be bound to all our limbs and always cling to our senses. Concerning this David says: "Your justifications will always be singable to me, O Lord" (Ps. cxvii, 54). And again: "His will was in the law of the Lord, and in His law he will meditate day and night" (Ps. 1, 2). And elsewhere it is written: "Let this book of the law not depart from your hand; and you will meditate in it day and night" (Josh. 1, 8).

Similarly, the Apostle exhorts and advises, writing to Timothy: “Meditate on these things, so that your progress may be evident to all” (1 Tim. 4:13). IV. The will of a religious man, bound by heavenly laws and occupied day and night with meditations on divine justification, has no vacant time in which to think of the world, to care for possessions, to adorn urban estates, to cultivate the discipline of rural life, to calculate expenses, or to examine outlays. For if he seizes upon the one, he abandons the other, according to what the Lord’s word promised: “No one who puts his hand to the plow” (that is, to heavenly work and to the sign of the Lord’s cross), “looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God” (Luke 9:62). For one cannot accomplish both, which are inimical to each other in reason, diverse in truth, and rival in will. For the one thinks of the world, the other longs for heaven; the one insists on worldly accounts, the other is free for divine prayers and meditations. Finally, to confirm my words by deeds and to strengthen the assertion of my speech by works, I shall use an example.

If you are carrying a divine book in your hands, and with your eyes tracing the letters, reading, and commending the divine precepts to your mind through the reasoning of the book, and the tablets of a financial account or of a purchased estate are perhaps handed to you, it is necessary that you cast aside the book of divine law which you were holding in your hands, so that you may take up and read through the writings of worldly accounts. And thus it happens that, preferring worldly accounts to divine books, you become a despiser of the precept which is repeatedly urged: that the book should not be absent from your hands, nor its meditation cease from your heart. And therefore the Lord in the Gospel, wishing to provide for those who are perfect and consummate, decreed that all they possessed should be sold and spent, so that by no reasoning could they be torn from his love or called away from meditation. Hence it is that he forbade even the necessity of mortals—that is, clothing, food, and drink—to be considered, and promised that all things would be provided by him for those who accomplish everything; so that by no necessity, as has often been said, would you be hindered from the commerce of divine work; so that no sterility of the year would trouble you; no scarcity of crops and dryness of the fields, nor the failing fruits of olives and vines would torment you; nor the losses of dying flocks would shake you.

Let devotion remain free and unshaken, so that, possessed by love of itself and of the Lord Christ, it may resound with hymns, be free for prayers, persist in fasts and vigils, and fittingly and appropriately break forth into that prophetic canticle: “The fig tree will not bear fruit; there will be no produce in the vineyards; the work of the olive will prove false; the fields will not provide food; the sheep will lack pasture; and there will be no cattle in the stalls. But I will exult in the Lord, and rejoice in God my Savior.” He who, having cast off the burdens of worldly possessions, has rather bestowed them upon the poverty of his brothers, is always glad and rejoices in the Lord, and is not constrained by impending or present plagues. The exaction of tribute does not drive him with necessity; the squalid fields of his estate, the orchards disfigured by the abandonment of cultivation, do not trouble him; he is not disturbed by the savage destruction of hail, nor by the abundance of rains suspended by long serenity, nor by the frequent devastation of storms; the collapse of roofs, the condition of sick and dying neighbors, the flight of slaves, theft—none of these torments him with anxiety.

In your own [keeping] are all things that have been transferred to heaven; they are disturbed by no slander, assailed by no lawsuit, lost by no worldly loss—those things that have been sent ahead to heaven, that are preserved with God as guardian, as the Lord Jesus Christ says: "Do not store up treasures for yourselves on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves dig up and steal. But store up for yourselves in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not dig up and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also" (Matt. 6:19–21). By the example of this precept, the apostle Paul admonishes the most blessed Timothy, instructing the rich of this world: that they not be puffed up by worldly pomp, but rather take hold of the height of Christian humility; that they not be deceived by the fleeting hope of worldly riches, but be clothed in the everlasting promises of divine rewards. "Command the rich of this world," he says, "not to be proud, nor to place their hope in the uncertain fortunes of riches, but in the living God, who provides us with all things to enjoy abundantly; let them do good, let them be rich in good works, let them give freely, let them share, let them store up for themselves a good foundation for the future, so that they may grasp the true life" (cf. 1 Tim. 6:17–19).

SERMON II. Against those who say that possessions should not be sold, but that mercy should be shown from the proceeds. I. The salutary precept of Jesus Christ is: "Sell everything that you possess, and give alms" (Luke 12:33). The faith of the Lord and Teacher is clear, which not only ordered that they be sold, but also commanded what should be done with the proceeds. But depraved teachers obscure this faith with frivolous and empty words; these the Apostle Paul already condemned as adulterers of divine words—not of the flesh, but what is worse—saying: "Adulterating the word of God" (2 Cor. 2:17). And again: "Do you not know that whoever corrupts the temple of God, God will destroy him?" (1 Cor. 3:17). And that which Christ in the Gospel recalled while rebuking the Pharisees, saying: "You reject the commandments of God in order to establish your own traditions" (Mark 7:9).

II. "It is not," they say, "to be sold, but to be retained; and from its revenues works of mercy are to be performed." Why do you conceal under the garment of a work of mercy the ardor and greed for possessing and retaining property? Why do you overshadow the disgrace of your impiety with the cloak of piety? Why do you snatch away the Lord's precept, bright in its own purity, from believers by subtle persuasion? Why do you deny the heavenly command to the religious with a feigned and simulated discourse? Why do you, with serpentine counsel, close off paradise to the servants of God—you who do not enter yourself, but also hide the keys of the heavenly kingdoms from those who wish to enter? You are not wiser than Christ, nor greater, who commanded it to be done; you are not better than the Apostle Paul, who carried it out.

Who, soon enlightened by grace, did not yield to flesh and blood in trembling passions; he did not go up to Jerusalem to seek counsel from the preceding Apostles, whom divine and heavenly discourse had already instructed in all the proclamations of faith; he did not seek Cilicia, his own city, to receive the paternal inheritance which he had abandoned for Christ to the poor; he did not defend even the nobility of the Roman race, from which he derived his bloodline, which he knew had been stripped away by the Lord's passion: but through the region of Arabia, he brought that venerable name, which persecution had attacked with injury, which the eloquence and envy of the Pharisees had assailed, as salutary and divine by faithful proclamation to all mortals. Who, therefore, is proven similar in deeds to Paul, endowed with manifold triumphs; who has freed himself from all the bonds and pomps of the world, and will rightly be called a servant of God; who, despite envious detractors, persistently insists on fulfilling the Lord Christ's precepts, who said: "Sell everything you possess, and give alms (Luke 12:33); and behold, all things are clean for you (Ibid. 11:41).

III. In the commandment, a distraction is ordered, and from the distraction, a dispensation is exacted. Purification of the mind is promised to the devout, and once the filth is cleansed, the heavenly kingdom is prepared. I ask, what more do you seek, or what is left, except that if the servants who do not do what is commanded, God does what He threatens? Who also said: "If in unjust mammon you were not faithful, which is true, who will give to us? And if in the alien you were not faithful, which is yours, who will believe you?" And they add to this for burning in eternal fire; but for eternal life. SERMON III. ON CHARITY. From the teaching of Saint Paul the Apostle against the wicked, who envy the good. I. Having completed and examined the duties of perfection, let us proceed to the greater and more eminent proclamations of the Apostle, as we promised; who recalled that neither knowledge of the mystery, nor height of eloquence, nor generous piety of mercy, nor sublime merit of faith, nor strong and intrepid constancy of martyrdom can be of use, if fraternal and sincere charity is lacking. For what profit is it to nourish someone at great expense, if you kill him with the sword? Or what does it help to sustain someone with any kind of food, if you pursue him with the hatred of a stepfather?

He lacks all duties of piety who, kindled by the flames of hatred, persecutes in a brother the grace either conferred by divine aid, or acquired by the labors of fasts, by the assiduity of prayers, by the constancy of vigils, and by every kind of virtue. For charity without mercy is imperfect, because mercy is a member of the body of charity; on the other hand, mercy without charity is nothing, because every member that has been either torn away or cut off from a solid body dies. For charity is a kind of summit holding the citadel of all members, to which all the duties of the virtues, once incorporated and connected, endure; without it, the reward of all goods either languishes or perishes, as the Apostle says: "If I speak with the tongues of men and of Angels, but do not have charity, I am one thing like a sounding brass or a clashing cymbal. And if I have prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge: and if I have all faith, so that I might move mountains, but do not have charity, I am nothing. And if I give away all my possessions, and distribute all my goods to the poor, and if I deliver my body to be burned, so that I might boast, but do not have charity, it profits me nothing" (1 Cor. 13:1-3).

Charity is the mother of all goods, the beginning of mercy, the origin of piety, the fountain of kindness, the head of justice, the fulfillment of the law, the perfection of precepts. Without this one thing, all things are either weakened and collapse, or lack sovereignty. For to have prophetic understanding is nothing; to know mysteries is trivial; to put demons to flight is bread; and to complete all kinds of virtues, if charity is absent, is empty. Hence the Lord Christ says: "Many say to me on that day: 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name cast out demons, and in your name perform great deeds?' Then I will say to them: 'Depart from me, I do not know you, who work iniquity.'" The work of iniquity is to wish one man to be preferred to another, to envy a brother toward a brother, not to wish for another what one wishes for oneself; and although we have one natural condition, to wish to set one condition before another.

III. When the author of our salvation, conscious of the proper nature of divinity, showed himself mortal to all mortals, and offered himself as a man to all men, and—what is greater—subjected condition to condition, adapting the form of his body to the form of our body, so that by this sacrament he might equalize height with humility and humility with height; and so that in this he might fulfill his Father’s will, who said: “I did not come down from heaven to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me” (John 6:38). And again: “The Son of Man,” he says, “came not to be served, but to serve” (Matthew 20:28). And easily, having set aside the height of majesty, he took on the form of servitude, as the Apostle says: “Who, though he was in the form of God, did not think it a usurpation to be equal to God, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant” (Philippians 2:6-7). And this: “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ enters the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father, who is in heaven” (Matthew 7:21).

IV. But we cannot do the will of the Father before we first know what that will itself is. The will of God, therefore, according to the Apostle Paul, is "our sanctification" (1 Thess. 4:3); whom he has cleansed from every face of ancient contagion through the regeneration of the saving bath by this our profession, by which we believe that God came in the weakness of the flesh, by which we confess that he was born of a virgin, by which we do not deny that he was subject to condition, by which we exalt Christ crucified, proclaim him buried, and raised by the glory of God. Hence, when we see that so much has been conferred upon us from the profession of his sanctification alone, from this we can understand how much will be able to be conferred of rewards from his imitation and from the will accomplished or known: concerning which the Apostle teaches us thus: "that you may know what the will of God is, what is good, and what is pleasing, and perfect" (Rom. 12:2). The will of God is love of neighbor, brother, that you may rejoice with your brother, that you may not envy a better man, that you may prefer an inferior to yourself, that you may not admit offense, that you may remit an admitted offense, that you may precede with honor those who honor you, that you may anticipate with love those who love you, that you may pray for enemies, that you may feed adversaries, that you may not hate those who persecute you (Rom. 12, following).

Thus every virtue becomes a grace, an adornment, faith, perfection, mercy, martyrdom, a body consumed by flames; thus we become sons of God when we imitate the heavenly Father by our works (Rom. 8:16-17); thus we are joined to Christ by hereditary right when we bestow good things upon both the good and the evil, when we either forget an injury or release from the heart a resentment long held, when with a higher love we risk not only our possessions but even ourselves for our friends; thus we shall abound in the Holy Spirit, whose we are, if we fulfill everything that pertains to gentleness and kindness. V. Hence the Lord Christ, when the Apostles were hastening to avenge the inhospitable Samaritans, said, restraining them: "Do you not know of what spirit you are?" (Luke 9:55) — assuredly of gentleness: one who is a stranger to all disturbances, who is shaken by no injury, who is at peace from all agitations, who is founded on tranquility, mild, kind, gentle, and calm; whom Elias saw in the third place, as Scripture says: "Go out tomorrow and stand before the face of the Lord; and behold, the Lord passed by, and behold, a great and mighty wind, shattering mountains and crushing rocks before the Lord; and the Lord was not in that wind; and after the wind, an earthquake; and the Lord was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake, fire; and the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire, a still small breeze; and in that was the Lord" (3 Kings 19:11-12).

But this which the prophet Elijah merited to see through the sacrament, the prophet Isaiah openly recognized with the Lord revealing it. "Upon whom," he says, "shall I rest, except upon the humble, and the meek, and the one trembling at my words?" (Isaiah 66:2). So also Samuel—that illustrious priest, that Samuel—rejects and casts out those most renowned brothers, alike in appearance, equal in stature, not unequal in virtue, by the Lord's command, and anoints David, their brother, humble in submission, weak in meekness, and gentler in spirit of tranquility, as king by the Lord's command; whence he himself, praying, says: "Remember, O Lord, David, all his gentleness" (Psalm 131:1). This election of God has always remained and remains, that He attacks and oppresses the proud, and fosters and exalts the humble. This exaltation cannot be without humiliation, nor election without rejection, nor calling without discrimination. And therefore, when the weak and despised and lowly are loved, the high and great are rejected; for to God the great are weak, and the weak are great.

The apostle Paul taught this, who demonstrated that the calling of believers descends from this election: "Behold," he says, "your calling, brothers; because not many are wise according to the flesh, not many are strong, not many are noble: but God chose the foolish things of the world, to confound the wise; and God chose the weak things of the world, to confound the strong; and God chose the base and contemptible things of the world, which are not (indeed contemptible), so that He might destroy those things which are (namely, contemptible): so that no flesh may glory in His sight." VI. Therefore, let those glory in the world who glory in the flesh, let those glory in the flesh who glory in man, who are puffed up by the honors of the world, who are inflated by riches, who are proud of nobility. "But let it be far from us to glory, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ: through which we ourselves have been crucified to the world, and the world has been crucified in us.

whose pomps and pleasures we have already then renounced and cast aside, when with a better purpose we made the crossing to heaven (??); just as John’s (??) admonition, the teacher of heavenly life, has set forth for us the form and image of living: “Do not love the world, nor those things which are in the world. If anyone has loved the world, the Father’s love is not in him (??): because everything that is in the world is the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the ambition of the world: which is not from the Father, but from the lust of the world (??) ((??) John 2:15, 16).” VII. He who hates the world does not fear the hatreds of the world: for he himself, by his own hatred, has provoked the world to hatred of him; and therefore it is not right either to fear or to shrink from its hatreds, if it strives to attach to you those things which you have proved you have first bestowed upon it (??). And so that worldly hatred, by whose slanders we are torn, by whose (??) blasphemies we are mocked, is neither new nor sudden; which we know was long ago inflicted upon the Lord Christ (??) and upon his apostles, as the Evangelist says: “If they called the father of the household Beelzebub (??), how much more his household servants (??) (Matthew 10:25)?” And “If the world hates you, know that it first held me in hatred (??) (John 15:18).” Thus also the Apostle says: “We have become a spectacle to this world, and to angels, and to men (??) (1 Cor.

(IV, 9); that is, to the Gentiles and to false brothers, who under the name of religion disguise themselves as angels of light. Finally, he has clearly embraced this both above and below. "Now," he says, "you are sated, you have become; you reign without us; and would that you reigned, so that we might also reign with you" (Ibid., 8). And below: "We are fools for Christ, but you are prudent in Christ; we are weak, you are strong. Up to this hour we both hunger and are naked, and we are beaten, and we are unstable (that is, we do not resist, or we do not defend ourselves), and we labor working with our hands; we are cursed, and we bless; we suffer persecution, and we endure it; blasphemed, we pray; we have become like the offscourings of the world, the peripsema of all" (Ibid., 10, 11, 12, 13). This is apostolic doctrine, this is the mystery of God and Christ, this is heavenly conduct, this is spiritual profession; this the world does not receive; this hypocrisy rejects, as the Apostle says: "The natural man does not perceive what is of the Spirit of God; for it is foolishness to him" (I Cor. II, 14).

VIII. Now the fruits are of the Spirit, which the Apostle enumerates, saying: “Charity, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, faith, mildness, continence, chastity” (Gal. 5:22, 25). And that which the same Apostle warned in his letters to the Church of the Ephesians: “Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you are sealed on the day of redemption” (Eph. 4:30). But the Spirit is grieved by contrary desires, that is, by the works of the flesh, which among other hidden things are these: “Enmities, contentions, rivalries, indignations, provocations, angers, quarrels, dissensions, sects, envies, drunkennesses, carousings” (i.e., gluttonies) (Gal. 5:20, 21). For by these works the Spirit is grieved, offended; He departs and withdraws, as Solomon says: “For the Holy Spirit of discipline will flee from the wicked” (Prov. 22:5?).

IX. “Do not,” says the Apostle Paul, “grieve the Holy Spirit of God, in whom you were sealed on the day of redemption” (Eph. 4:30). The day of redemption is that on which, saluted by the gift of forgiveness, we are redeemed, freed from the sentence of death; on which we put off the old man with his deeds, and put on the new, who is created according to God in good works. For on that day we are also sealed to the Holy Spirit, when we are consummated with all the sacraments, as the Evangelist says: “And when Jesus was baptized, he immediately ascended from the water; and behold, the heavens were opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending from heaven like a dove, coming upon him” (Matt. 3:16). The dove is innocent simplicity or simple innocence, not violent with clamor, not ... not wrathful in character, not hostile with the bitterness of gall: and therefore, having received that same Spirit, who descended in its form, the Apostle added, saying: “Let all bitterness, and anger, and indignation, and clamor, and blasphemy be removed from you” (Eph. 4:31). Bitterness is to conceive enmities, to belch forth hatreds, to vomit poisons, to slander neighbors, to disseminate deadly things, as it is written in Deuteronomy: “Our senseless enemies.” Their vine is from the vine of Sodom, and their shoots from Gomorrah; their grape is the gall, and their cluster of bitterness.

The anger of dragons (??) their wine, and the fury of asps is incurable (??). (Deut. 32:31, 32, 33). And David: "Their throat is an open sepulchre, they acted deceitfully with their tongues, whose mouth is full of curse and bitterness (??)" (Ps. 13:3). Anger, he says, anger (??) to see a better man, to detract from the fortunate, to groan at the progress of a neighbor; whence the Prophet speaks thus: "The sinner (??) will see and will become angry, he will gnash his teeth, and will waste away (??)" (Ps. 111:10). Indignation, he says, indignation (??) and to bear indignantly (??) that an inferior (??) thing be made equal to a superior gift of grace, or be preferred in the grade of charism (??); when the Apostle (??) says to the Galatians: "There is neither slave nor free: there is no male, nor female; but all of you are one in Christ (??) Jesus (??)" (Gal. 3:28). X. The most blessed Paul teaches in almost all his epistles (??) that those called to the faith from every nation, rank, nobility, age, or sex (??) are made one in Christ; by whose sacrament of the passion (??) the world's prince (??) was dishonored, nobility disfigured, loftiness cast down, humility exalted, (??) (??) depressed, (??) purified, the fallen raised up, and the dead (??) made alive. Thus in Isaiah (Isa.

The valleys are filled, the heights of the mountains are laid low; thus crooked things are made straight, and rough things are made smooth; thus the produce of all is brought down to equality, balanced, and led into the plains of the fields; thus the cedars of Lebanon are thinned, and the shoots of the vine-stocks grow fat on the oaks; thus the fierceness of lions is tamed and joined to the ox, and, loathing the fat of flesh, it is fed with the straw of the ox; thus the wolf, having laid aside its rage, grazes the meadows of the fields with the lambs; thus the bear with the calf, and the kid with the leopard are in harmony (Ibid. xi, 6, 7); thus infants thrust their hands into the dens of asps, and they do not harm; thus the variety of the human race, because it does not pertain to God from the good, is reduced to one; thus the diversity of births is united in concord; thus rival conditions are made equal; while they die through baptism to the births of the world, and are born to nobility through grace for heaven, the prophet Isaiah teaching: "Behold now the ruler Lord Sabaoth will trouble the glorious with the green, and those who are proud will be crushed by insult, and they will be humbled, and the lofty will fall by the sword. Lebanon with its heights will fall" (Ibid. 33, 31). Frequently the divine word compares Mount Lebanon and its cedar tops to the worldly kingdom and its princes; which kingdom and its ministers the Lord Christ cast down and crushed by his passion.

And so that the diversity of those we have discussed might not disturb us, the same prophet, designating the person of the Lord Christ Himself, who was to accomplish all these things, added, saying: "A rod shall go forth from the root of Jesse, and a flower from its root shall ascend" (Isa. 11:1). The root certainly signified the person of David, from whose seed Christ was born in the flesh, who, bursting forth from the loins of his father Jesse, extended the origin up to the flower of the Lord's carnal nativity. Finally, he added thus, saying: "In him shall rest the Spirit of God, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and piety, the spirit of holy fear of God shall fill him" (Isa. 11:2-3). And to show more clearly that Christ ought to be understood, he continues, saying: "Not according to glory shall he judge, nor according to eloquence shall he refute; but he shall judge with humble judgment, and shall refute the glorious ones of the earth, and shall strike the earth with the word of his mouth, and with the spirit through his lips shall he slay the impious" (Isa. 11:4); namely, by that word and the breath of his lips, by which he said: "The principality of this world (that is, its dominion) shall be cast out" (John 12:31). Concerning which again: "The principality of the world comes, and will find nothing in me" (John 14:30). And to show the mystery of the cross, he added, saying: "And he shall be girded about the loins with justice, and his sides shall be veiled with truth" (Isa. 11:5).

Then," he says (that is, from that time), "the wolf shall graze with the lamb, and the leopard shall rest with the goat, and the calf, and the bull, and the lion shall feed together; and a little child shall lead them" (that is, a priest, either by the smallness of age innocent, or supported by the purity of innocence, shall govern them). "And the ox and the bear shall feed together (and their offspring shall be one), and the lion and the ox shall eat straw" (that is, dry foods). And lest my interpretation be judged presumptuous or rash by attentive hearers, I shall insert the Apostle Paul's discussion into my interpretations, saying: "Strip yourselves of the old man with his deeds, and put on the new man who is renewed in the knowledge of God according to the image of Him who created him. Where there is not male and female, Greek and Jew, circumcision and foreskin, barbarian and Scythian, slave and free: but all things and in all things Christ." He clothes those stripped of the deeds of the old man with the conversation of the new man, who is Christ; nor did he allow them to remain stripped, but covers them with the covering of honorable conversation and the brightness of good works. "Put on," he says, "as elect of God and saints, the bowels of mercy, kindness, humility, patience, modesty, bearing with one another, and forgiving yourselves, if anyone has a complaint against another, just as the Lord forgave you, so also do you.

By the gift of God, all things have been forgiven us; we shall remain unharmed if we also forgive the offenses of our brothers: if we are joined by an inseparable bond of the bonds of charity: if we rejoice in the gift of peace with mutual love: if we edify ourselves with divine utterances: if we summon ourselves to heavenly things with psalms: if we invite ourselves to the heights with hymns: if we complete all that we do in deed, all that we speak in word, all that we embrace in thought, in the fear of God; giving thanks to the Father through the Son, praising God in Christ, and preferring Christ in God, so that, compared to the heavenly, we may be like the heavenly, and compared to the spiritual, we may be like the spiritual. There is no other work than this, except that they praise the glory of God with a divine voice, as John says: "I saw and heard the voice of many around the throne, and of the animals, and of the elders: and the number was ten times a hundred thousand, saying with a loud voice: Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain, to receive power, and virtue, and riches, and patience, and honor, and fortitude, and glory, and benediction. And every creature which is in heaven, and on earth, and the sea, and all that are in them." And again he warns: "The angels stood around the throne, and the elders, and the four animals: and they fell down before the throne on their faces, and adored God, saying: Benediction, and glory, and wisdom, and thanksgiving, and honor, and power, and virtue to our God for ever and ever. Amen.

Here ends the sermon of Saint Ambrose.