Sermones Quatuor

SERMON ONE. On the Gospel where the blessed Peter endured a storm at sea in a ship. Matt. 14, etc. When a swallow trains her chicks for the art of flying, she lets them go a little way in the air, but she herself is near them, lest they fall by trembling, still weak in flight. So too our savior Jesus Christ sent out his disciples, like tender chicks from quiet little nests, to be tested on the sea waves. But when the sea storm began to disturb the wings of their devotion, and the windy tempest to scatter them, he who commands the wind is powerful enough to follow by ship. He made for himself a most powerful one-footed vehicle, a singular chariot, a wondrous pavement composed by his own footsteps, not adorned with marbles but painted with waves, not with stones but with plants. He does not withdraw far who has piously sent them ahead. They walked alone and not alone, to be tempted, tested, visited. A subtle thief and burglar finds an opportunity, who stirs up the storm, who does not love tranquility; and as if the master were absent, he tempts the disciples, inflates the winds, stirs up the sea, and does not see the helmsman following. A shipwreck, argued without cause, befalls the servants in the master’s absence, but the ship is held by piety. Meanwhile they stretch out their hands, pour forth tears, lower the sails; the ropes and cables creak, so that Peter may be loosed and the devil bound. Whereupon they cry out, “Lord, are you not our savior? You sent us ahead, and you abandoned us. Behold the shipwrecker, where are you, most powerful helmsman?

Behold the storm, where is your piety? Behold the sea barks, where are you, Lamb of God, who took away the sins of the world? Immediately the Lord arrives, smiling with kindness at his tender chicks. The stormy winds having been scattered, he comes powerfully, calls gently, and wisely refreshes his own. They see and are troubled, who were troubled by not seeing—indescribable, my brothers! Everywhere there is fear, either from danger or from the miracle. But he who calmed the storm took away their fear. "Do not be afraid," he says, "it is I." Great consolation comes to them from the interpretation of the Lord's person. "Lord," they cry, "we are safe if you are here; we do not fear if you are here." And Peter says: "I can do what you do, if you are here; but prove to me truly that you are here; and bid me come upon the waters, if you are here. Lord, I have spoken to you: without you I have not presumed; if you command, I have spoken; but if you help, I have spoken what I said. If you do not help, do not command; but if you help, deign to command, and bid me come to you upon the waters." And the Lord in reply: "Come to me, if you presume upon me." The Lord, cheerful and with a joyful countenance, favoring, awaiting his fisherman, his confessor, his presumptuous one, his leader, his great companion, and the first carbuncle, the precious stone, not waiting far off but near, out of piety.

So then the sea steals away from the trembling Peter. The sea sensed that faith was failing in Peter, and began to bark with a greater tongue of its waves. What had been made firm was loosened, because the foundation of faith was loosened. Like wax melted by the gentle sun, so the wave began to soften and slacken. Peter felt the rock of the sea now tottering, weak and flowing away: and with his steps sinking and his limbs trembling, his palms outstretched, he cries out and says: "Help me, Lord, and have mercy on me. I am always afraid without you, and I presumed to come to you in the little boat and upon the wave. Why should I be taken from you? Help me, call me back to the ship, come up with me, I will come with you." The Lord of hosts with us, our supporter, the God of Jacob, lifted Peter up, steadied him, made him walk without fear, refreshed the trembling disciples, calmed the storm, steered the little ship. May He calm His own bride, our mother, the Church; and amid this storm may we always have as our helmsman the one whom Peter had as his defender! Amen.

SERMON II. How Much Fasting Avails. Moses fasted for forty days and forty nights—unless you prefer "agitated" or something else—in the desert, that he might merit receiving the Lord's law. Fasts obtained what a full belly despaired of. Finally, see, dearest brothers, what there is between fasting and fullness, between an empty stomach and a lung seething with feasts. Moses, because he fasted, saw the Lord; and the people, because they ate and drank, fashioned idols. Why do I speak of Moses and the Israelite multitude? The very prince of our race, Adam, as long as he did not eat, was in paradise; as soon as he ate, he was cast out of paradise. He who in God's paradise had been a virgin, cast out of paradise, knew his wife: for lasciviousness is always joined to fullness; limbs of fatness and limbs of luxury are near to each other; in accordance with the order of the limbs, the order of vices is chosen.

The holy Elijah, to whom the elements were subservient, who had closed the heavens for three years and six months, at whose voice a heavenly fire descended, when Jezebel wished to kill him, and he lay weary under a shady tree in the wilderness, an angel was sent to him and commanded that he take a little bread and water; for he was about to set out through the desert to Mount Sinai after a fast of forty days. Could not the omnipotent Lord, who had made heaven and earth, whose entire creation is, have sent honey through the angel, or wines, or seasoned foods, or sea delicacies, or the dainties of birds? But He knew that His prophet could not otherwise overcome the temptations of the devil unless he were disciplined by fasts. Food cast us out of paradise, dearest brothers; let hunger lead us back. Daniel, that knower of future things, and the most manifest preacher of the Lord's coming and of the overthrow of Jerusalem, was called a man of desires for this reason: because he did not eat the bread of desire and did not drink the drink of lust; for he desired Christ more than feasts. John, the forerunner of the Lord, was nourished on locusts in the wilderness, not on the flesh of animals or the dainties of birds. He could, of course, have provided himself with the delights of fish along the streams of the Jordan, but, about to preach penance, he had to teach the doctrine of austerity and fasting more by his own example than by his voice.

When in the Gospel a certain man possessed by a demon was brought before the Lord, whom the apostles were unable to cleanse, they asked and heard: "This kind is not cast out except by prayers and fasts." See, brothers, how great is the power of fasts, that fasts are able to accomplish what the apostles could not. Let old things be dismissed; let each one consider himself and weigh how great is the difference in praying between an empty stomach and a full one, between a ruddy face and pale lips, between a sober mouth and lips loosened by gluttony, between a mind oppressed by feasts and one vigilant in the leanness of fasting. I do not speak of doubled and multiplied fasts, I do not speak of weeks, but let us at least pass single days without the luxury of foods. Let baths, wines, and delicacies cease; not that we judge the creature of God to be condemned, but because we who have lived for ourselves the whole year, let us at least for a few days be able to live for God, with the help of Him who with the Father and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns for ever and ever. Amen.

SERMON III. On the Gospel where the Lord made water into wine, John, chapter 2. The wedding at which Christ was both giver and guest; giver, that is, in origin, guest made in kind, so that he who at the beginning of the new union had granted that man be born from man, would himself deign to be born from a virgin.... Our ears, now struck from the sounding of the Gospel, have resounded: "On the third day," it says, "a wedding took place at Cana in Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there; and Jesus was invited with his disciples to the wedding." If the hidden foulness of the Manichaeans' voluptuous and shameful depravity should inquire about marriage, "God," it says, "did not make marriage." If, then, God did not make marriage, how did Christ recline with his disciples, invited to the wedding? But let us now air the cloud of this dark mystery. "On the third day," it says, "a wedding took place at Cana in Galilee." Therefore, as the day of the Trinity shines over the darkness, with delights obscuring, Christ came to the wedding. At that time, the soul, which had already been rubbed by association with the mire, having changed its adulterous husband through the fornication of the pleasing apple, celebrates the wedding of a polluted union. Hear Paul, who again forges the bonds of this evil union: "I fear," he says, "that just as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, so your minds may be corrupted from the simplicity and chastity which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

While, therefore, in the instrument of one reclining, the devil and the soul were rioting, Jesus having been invited... while they failed from the wine of luxury. But that mother of Christ, who abhorred the pact of a criminal union, who remained a virgin not only in body but also in mind, was present invited, by condition of birth not by participation in crime, by the universality of being born not by the society of sinning, who would consent to Christ, not to the world, with joy. This mother of Christ, therefore, pitying the long labor of the world, she who knew she had drawn from the vine-shoot of faith a great... cluster, began to demand wine from her own offspring. But when she believed the angel, then she suggested for the world: then she began to plead the cause of the age, when she did not tremble at the message. Behold, the handmaid of the Lord, let it be done to me according to your word. Soon from the seed of the Holy Spirit, propagated in the virginal grove, the first vine blossomed, which, shaded by celestial coverts, puts forth leaves... and produced a hidden cluster. Salvation hung on the tip of faith, and the cluster swelled... Behold, afterwards from the womb of the matrix, the grape of divine offspring animated... was born. Christ, the true cluster, indeed contained within himself the wine of life... the press of the cross had been approached. His mother says: They have no wine. O most wise virgin! have you now merited to produce a sprouted offspring, and do you already seek to press the cluster? Indeed, it cannot be unless the shoot meets the shoot, and resists its own vine-shoot.

But he who plucked punishment from the wood must await remedy on the wood; and he who reaped the illicit fruit from the tree must await the cross, so that where he had drawn dryness, there he may receive the draught of salvation. "They have no wine," he says. Attend, O virgin, for a little while; let the Jew prepare the wood, let the nail descend into the cluster, and he will be able to have wine. Why do you run to the vat before the time, when Judas has not yet pressed his insolent heel upon the grape? For that Judas is the destroyer of the sacred vintage, who, having bargained for thirty pieces of silver, sold the cluster of the divine offspring to the Jews, to the impious. Concerning him it had already been sung in the Psalms: "For even the man of my peace, in whom I hoped, who ate my bread, has lifted up his heel against me." The certain day will come, O virgin, when your fruit will be pressed, and the sword will pass through your own soul, when it has been established concerning the hanging cluster which you had poured forth from the root.

They have no wine," he says. And Jesus: "What is it to me and to you, woman? My hour has not yet come." ... Indeed, it is the hour not of fate but of vow, not of imposed necessity but of expended will ... not by which he was compelled to die, but by which he deigned to die for the world. "What is it to me and to you, woman?" Have you forgotten your mother? ... Do you discern your power? ... There is no commonality between you and your mother? Or ... your eyes ought ... majesty? Do you designate yourself the Creator? Or do you believe ... now I have spoken ... to drive away the creator by instinct ... the most nefarious things perished ... the work while with ... you performed a trick. Here Christ elevated his divinity above his mother. He did not deny his mother, nor did he deny that he was born from flesh, but he subjected his mother to his own majesty. And therefore he says: "What is it to me and to you, woman? My hour has not yet come." For in the miracle, the deity is proclaimed higher than the mother; but in the hour, the commonality of death is intimated. Meanwhile, Christ flavors the tasteless draughts: a tasteless liquid was poured into the water-jars, and intoxicating rivers were drawn from them. What is this so sudden transformation? In water, wine is born; in the wave, flavor secretly arises; sweetness sprouts in the wines, and nowhere does the vine bear fruit; no grape is pressed, and wines ferment without the vine-shoot.

O the beauty of the great miracle! The powers of the divine precept are grafted in, and fruit is born in water. Christ did in water what at a certain time he does in the vine. For who else marries the root from the rain? Who else binds the starry shoots through the hidden fibers of the veins? Who fattens the swelling clusters and, as it were, the gemmed tips, if not he who calls forth and multiplies all things? so that what is constricted in the seed is spread out in the sprout, and what lies hidden in the grain grows wild in the leaf. Meanwhile the Church, which at the table of the world lay polluted with a foreign husband, is suddenly rewarded by Christ with blows. The wedding passes over to Christ. For he who avoided, he himself endowed. Christ seized the banquet, and the Church changed her bridegroom. Christ fed, and the enemy was shut out. He mixed a draught of his own blood, and took a wife. "I have fitted you," says the apostle, "to present a chaste virgin to one husband, Christ." Behold, she who was once fertile is now beautiful, formerly an adulteress now a matron, she stands at the right hand of God in gilded attire, clad all around with variety, purified through water, purpled through blood, whitened through the resurrection of the Lord, variegated with precious gems of grace: and as Scripture said, her eyes are tawny from wine, and her teeth are whiter than milk. Let us therefore drink his wine along with his milk, if we wish both to grow beautiful in faith, to grow white in virtue, and to shine in the adornment of holy Church.

Take another great mystery from a small one. Once, even a Jew had no wine at his own banquet, because he did not receive the gift of the consecrated blood; and while he was wedded to the law, he found nothing at all to drink. Christ came, changed the law into grace—the former being a puffer-up, the latter a helper. He poured the cup of blood into the law, and by dying made a banquet. The master of the feast—that is, the Lord of the world—tasted the water turned into wine and says: Every man first sets out good wine, and when men have become drunk, the inferior sort; but you have kept the good wine until now. For the holy law, as a holy and just commandment, is good; but the law and the prophets prophesied up to John; and therefore, when the Lord came, the Mosaic wines failed, and the wines of blood flowed forth. The former received their end, the latter took their beginning. Finally, this is the beginning of the signs which Jesus performed when, slain, he fed the peoples, and, wounded, made a banquet from the wine of his own blood.

This grape cluster, sprung from the land of promise or from the sod of virginity, a Jew had once fixed upon a pole as if in a presage of the future cross, under which he would be bent, not from which he would be refreshed. For the psalm had already spoken of them: Let their eyes be darkened so that they may not see, and let their back be always bent. Therefore, two men carried the grape cluster, one in front and the other behind; the shoot of the vine-branch hung in the middle. The first signified the people of the Jews, the second designated the people of the Gentiles. The Jew indeed went before, but he turned his back against the grape cluster. The Gentile walked behind, but he attended to the grape cluster with the eyes of faith, because he believed in the one hanging. The Lord says of the Jews: They have turned their backs to me and not their faces. The first was turned away, the second was fed; the one panted under the burden of sin, the other drank from the air. Therefore, to the Jew the grape cluster was behind, to the Gentile it was before; for them at the end, for us at the beginning; it followed them to punishment, it invited us to food. And so they were dried up and withered, but we have eaten and drunk and been refreshed, through Jesus Christ himself, who lives with the Father and with the Holy Spirit, for ever and ever. Amen.

SERMON IV. On the Daily Mass. The assembly of your blessedness, dearest brothers, fills us with exceeding joy. But because the breast bound by the chains of the body trembles, I cannot say how much the splendor of your mind delights me to hear. Nevertheless, I approach, so that, with the earnest given by God shining more brightly, and with the pledge of the most splendid light gleaming, the sensation of my speaking quivers. I ask that you, my brothers, implant in your ears the duties of the priest, by which, through the bowels of mercy, he does not cease to bring forth hardship, as the apostle Paul says: “My little children, whom I bring forth again, until Christ is formed in you.” But the apostle says this to those who were held as new plants of faith and the first fruits of still raw belief in the heart. Truly, by the grace of God, because among you the prerogative of faith grows old in such a way that it is also new, therefore it holds novelty so that it may be old: for it is written: “Good wine grows old, and it will be drunk with sweetness.” Yet I could not conceal, and having been purged for a long time, I did not want to see what I would mourn, I did not want to see what I would grieve. I cry out because I am a shepherd, not a hireling, who, having seen the wolf, flees and abandons the sheep to perish. I cry out because I fear, I cry out because I grieve: for by crying out I both excuse myself and do not lose you. For if I were silent, I would neither excuse myself nor lose you.

For God says through the prophet Isaiah: "Cry out," He says, "in your strength, and spare not; like a trumpet, raise your voice, announce to my people their sins, and to the house of Jacob their crimes." For your devotion has grown so cold, brothers, that I both perceive it and fear it. That which the Lord says—that because crime abounds, the charity of many grows cold—I think is fulfilled in your devotion. For while you sit in your houses pursuing your own interests, you make the house of God deserted. And hear what divine indignation of this kind rebukes the minds of all through the prophet. Hear, Christian, what you should fear; hear, timid one, what you should beware of: Because His house is deserted, therefore the sky will withhold rains, and the earth will not yield its fruit, and I will bring the sword upon the works of men's hands, because God is not heard in the churches. Who, my brothers, intent on this, would not tremble in his innermost being? Who, struck by such threats, would not wither, when he hears the Lord so indignant because you make His house deserted, and the house of prayer is empty of a religious gathering? The street is full of people, and the church is silent. Certainly, prudent man, it is not said to you that you should gather at the house of God every hour. If in the mornings it is scarcely one hour, if on feast days it is scarcely two hours, behold, it is little that your Author demands of you. And do you not wish to be blessed?

Do you desire that heaven and earth, the sea, and all the elements serve you at all times, and yet you are unwilling to devote even one hour or two hours to the Lord’s devotion? Therefore let your laziness be chastised, so that the earth may not lose its produce. The sword will be brought upon the works of their hands, because God is not heard in the churches. Our laziness condemns us, my brothers. The Jew runs to the synagogue at dawn, the pagan hurries and keeps vigil at the temple, and the Christian neither keeps vigil nor hurries to the church. It is a great shame for Christians who are provoked to come to the house of God by the example and contemplation of those worse than them; so that the Jew in his sacrilegious observance is more diligent than the Christian in his religious devotion. The gentile keeps vigil at the profane idols, and the Christian neither keeps vigil nor hurries to the church for which Christ was crucified. Therefore God chastises the earth, so that the soil may receive discipline: so that man may be corrected, the earth... to say. You make my house deserted, and I will make your land deserted. You do not give me honor in coming to me, and I will cut short your labor: because he who honors me, He says, I also will honor him.

But perhaps you will say to me: I am rich, and I abound in all resources, I lack nothing; what can I ask for? Therefore, are you rich of yourself? Or were you born with riches? The more you are rich, the more you ought to hasten to him to whom the riches belong: for "mine," he says, "is the gold and silver, and I will give it to whomever I wish." Do you have what you did not receive? If, then, you received it, why do you boast as if you had not received it? Certainly, if you received it, you had nothing, because you came into this world naked from your mother’s womb, wrapped in rags, afflicted with extreme poverty, and, just as you were born, you will die. You have the blessed Job as a witness, saying: "Naked I came out of my mother’s womb, and naked I must go into the earth." You run to the house of the moneylender, you compose flattering words, and you do not run to the house of God, the gratuitous giver? What great laziness is in you, my brothers, that you are least vigilant in coming to the house of God? I say to you, whoever you are, lazy rustic: you are too lazy to come to the house of God, and are you not too lazy to cultivate your land? And unless from above rain is given to you, you will not be able to break the earth. Nothing of its own can it provide to you, unless it receives from above. For it is written: "From above it descends from the father of lights, with whom there is no change nor shadow of alteration." As it is also written in the Gospel: "Truly seek first the kingdom of God and justice, and all these things will be added to you." Therefore, my brothers, you ought to be vigilant for the church of God.

This is what God expects: that you confess to Him alone, and there will be no delay in your healing, for He seeks only your confession. The end.