Augustinus, In Joannis Evangelium tractatus VII-XII

will, not of condition, but of power.

13. What then, brothers, since we have answered both these and those, shall we say nothing of what the waterpots mean, what the water turned into wine, what the steward of the feast, what the bridegroom, what the mother of Jesus in the mystery, what the wedding itself? All these things must be said, but you are not to be overburdened. I wished indeed, in the name of Christ, yesterday also, the day on which a sermon is customarily owed to your Charity, to treat this with you, but I was not permitted, certain necessities standing in the way. If then it pleases your Holiness, let us put off until tomorrow that which pertains to the mystery of this deed, and let us not overburden both your weakness and ours. There are perhaps many today who have gathered on account of the solemnity of the day, not for the sake of hearing a sermon. Let those who come tomorrow come intending to listen; so that we neither defraud the eager nor weigh down the fastidious.

Tractate IX. On the same reading of the Gospel. What mystery there is in the miracle performed at the wedding at Cana of Galilee. Chapter 2, verses 1-11.

1. May the Lord our God be present, that He may grant us to render what we have promised. For yesterday, if your Holiness remembers, since we were shut out by the shortness of time from completing the sermon we had begun, we deferred to today, so that those things which in this deed of the Gospel reading had been mystically set in sacraments might be opened up with His help. There is therefore no need now to linger longer in commending the miracle of God. For He is God Who throughout the whole creation performs daily miracles, which have become cheap to men not through their easiness but through their constancy: but the rare things which were done by the same Lord, that is, by the Word incarnate for our sake, have brought greater astonishment to men: not because they were greater than those which He does daily in creation, but because those which happen daily are carried on as if by a natural course, whereas these are seen by the eyes of men as displayed by the efficacy of a power present, as it were. We said, as you remember: one dead man rose again, and men were amazed; while every day those who did not exist are born, and no one marvels. So who would not marvel at water turned into wine, when God does this every year in the vines? But since all the things which the Lord Jesus did avail not only to stir up our hearts by miracles, but also to build them up in the teaching of the faith, we ought to search out what all those things mean, that is, what they signify. For the significations of all these, as you recall, we deferred to today.

2. That the Lord, when invited, came to the wedding, even setting aside the mystical signification, He wished to confirm that He Himself made marriage. For there were to be those of whom the Apostle spoke, forbidding to marry (1 Tim. 4:3), and saying that marriage was an evil, and that the devil had made it: whereas the same Lord says in the Gospel, when asked whether it is lawful for a man to put away his wife for any cause whatever, that it is not lawful except for the cause of fornication. In which answer, if you remember, He says this: What God has joined together, let man not separate (Matt. 19:3–6).

And those who are well instructed in the catholic faith know that God made marriage, and that just as union is from God, so divorce is from the devil. But it is lawful to put away a wife in the case of fornication for this reason: that she herself first refused to be a wife, since she did not keep conjugal faith with her husband. Nor are those women who vow virginity to God without marriage, although they hold a higher degree of honour and holiness in the Church: for they too belong to the marriage together with the whole Church, in which marriage the bridegroom is Christ. And for this reason, therefore, the Lord, being invited, came to the marriage, that conjugal chastity might be strengthened, and that the sacrament of marriage might be shown: because the bridegroom of that marriage too represented the person of the Lord, to whom it was said, You have kept the good wine until now. For Christ has kept the good wine until now, that is, His Gospel.

3. Now then let us begin to uncover the hidden things of the sacraments themselves, so far as He grants in whose name we made you the promise. There was prophecy in ancient times, and no times have ceased from the dispensation of prophecy: but that prophecy, when Christ was not understood in it, was water. For in water wine in a certain manner lies hidden. The Apostle tells us what we are to understand in this water: "Until this present day," he says, "as long as Moses is read, the same veil is laid upon their heart; which is not revealed, because in Christ it is made void. And when you have passed over," he says, "to the Lord, the veil shall be taken away" (2 Cor. 3:14–16). By the veil he means the covering of prophecy, so that it was not understood. The veil is removed when you have passed over to the Lord: so folly is removed when you have passed over to the Lord, and what was water becomes wine for you. Read all the prophetic books without understanding Christ, and what will you find so insipid and tasteless? Understand Christ there, and what you read not only has savour but even inebriates; changing your mind from the body, so that, forgetting the things that are behind, you may stretch forth to those that are before (Phil. 3:13).

4. Therefore prophecy from ancient times, from when the succession of those born in the human race began to run at all, was not silent about Christ: but it was hidden there; for it was still water. Whence do we prove that in all former times up to the age in which the Lord came, prophecy about Him was not lacking? From the Lord Himself saying so. For when He had risen from the dead, He found the disciples doubting about Him whom they had followed. For they had seen Him dead, and did not hope that He would rise again, and all their hope collapsed. Whence did that praised thief merit to be in paradise on that very day? Because, fixed on the cross, he then confessed Christ (Luke 23:40–43), when the disciples doubted about Him. So He found them wavering, and in a manner reproaching themselves that they had hoped for redemption in Him. Yet they grieved that He had been slain without fault, because they knew Him to be innocent. And this they themselves after the resurrection,

said, when He had found some of them sad on the way: "Are You the only one staying as a stranger in Jerusalem, and have You not known the things that have been done in it in these days? And He said to them: What things? And they said: About Jesus of Nazareth, Who was a man, a prophet, mighty in deeds and words in the sight of God and of all the people; how the priests and our rulers handed Him over to the condemnation of death, and fixed Him to the cross. But we were hoping that it was He Who would redeem Israel; and now today the third day is passing since these things were done." When one of the two whom He found on the way, going to a nearby village, had said these and other things, He Himself answered and said: "O senseless and slow of heart to believe in all that the Prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary that Christ should suffer all these things, and enter into His glory? And beginning from Moses and all the Prophets, He was interpreting to them in all the Scriptures the things that were about Himself." Likewise in another place, when He also willed to be handled by the hands of the disciples, so that they might believe that He had risen in the body: "These are," He said, "the words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things must be fulfilled which are written in the Law of Moses, and in the Prophets, and in the Psalms concerning Me. Then He opened their understanding, that they might understand the Scriptures, and He said to them: For thus it is written, that Christ should suffer, and rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem."

5. When these things from the Gospel, which are certainly plain, have been understood, all those mysteries which lie hidden in this miracle of the Lord will be laid open. See what He says: that the things written about Him had to be fulfilled in Christ. Where are they written? In the Law, He says, and the Prophets, and the Psalms. He passed over nothing of the old Scriptures. That was the water; and therefore they were called senseless by the Lord, because to them it still tasted of water, not of wine. But how did He make wine from the water? When He opened their understanding, and expounded the Scriptures to them, beginning from Moses through all the Prophets. Hence, now inebriated, they said: Was not our heart burning on the way, when He was opening the Scriptures to us? (Luke 24:13–47). For they understood Christ in those Books in which they had not known Him. So our Lord Jesus Christ changed water into wine, and that has taste which had no taste, that inebriates which did not inebriate. For if He had ordered the water to be poured out from there, and had thus Himself put in wine from the hidden recesses of creation, from which He also made bread when He fed so many thousands (for five loaves did not hold the filling of five thousand men, nor even twelve full baskets (Matt. 14:17–21), but the omnipotence of the Lord was as it were a fountain of bread), so He could also have poured in wine when the water had been poured out: but if He had done this, He would have seemed to disapprove of the old Scriptures. But when He turns the water itself into wine, He shows us that the old Scripture too is from Him: for at His command the water-jars were filled. That Scripture too is indeed from the Lord; but it has no taste, if

Christ is not understood there.

6. But attend to what He Himself says: The things that are written in the Law, and in the Prophets, and in the Psalms concerning Me. Now we know from what times the Law tells its story, that is, from the beginning of the world: In the beginning God made heaven and earth (Gen. 1:1). From then up to this time in which we are now living is the sixth age, as you have often heard and know. For the first age is reckoned from Adam up to Noah; the second from Noah up to Abraham; and, as Matthew the Evangelist follows and distinguishes them in order, the third from Abraham up to David; the fourth from David up to the transmigration into Babylon; the fifth from the transmigration into Babylon up to John the Baptist (Matt. 1:17); the sixth from then up to the end of the world. For this reason too God made man in His own image on the sixth day (Gen. 1:27): because in this sixth age the reforming of our mind according to the image of Him Who created us is made manifest through the Gospel (Col. 3:10); and the water is changed into wine, so that we may now taste Christ made manifest in the Law and the Prophets. That is why there were six water-jars there, which He ordered to be filled with water. So those six water-jars signify six ages, in which prophecy was not lacking. Those six times, then, divided and distinguished as if by joints, would be like empty vessels unless they were filled by Christ. What did I say? Times that would run on emptily, unless the Lord Jesus were preached in them. The prophecies have been filled, the water-jars are full; but in order that the water may be changed into wine, Christ is to be understood in that whole prophecy.

7. What, then, is meant by They held two or three measures apiece? This expression above all commends a mystery to us. For by measures (metretae) he means certain measures, as if he were saying urns, amphorae, or anything of that kind. Metreta is the name of a measure, and this measure took its name from measuring. For the Greeks call a measure metron; hence they are called metretae. So they held two or three measures apiece. What do we say, brethren? If he had said only three, our mind would run to nothing but the mystery of the Trinity. But perhaps not even so ought we to turn our understanding away from it at once, because he said two or three: for when the Father and the Son are named, the Holy Spirit must consequently be understood as well. For the Holy Spirit is not the Spirit of the Father only, or the Spirit of the Son only, but the Spirit of the Father and of the Son. For it is written: If anyone loves the world, the Spirit of the Father is not in him (1 John 2:15); it is likewise written: But whoever does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not His (Rom. 8:9). Yet it is the same Spirit of the Father and of the Son. So when the Father and the Son are named, the Holy Spirit too is understood, because He is the Spirit of the Father and of the Son. When, then, the Father and the Son are named, it is as if two measures were named; but when the Holy Spirit is understood there, three measures. That is why it was not said, some holding two measures, others three; but that the six water-jars themselves held two or three measures apiece. As if he were saying: Both when I say two, I wish the Spirit of the Father and of the Son to be understood with them; and when I say three, I declare the Trinity itself more plainly.

8. Whoever, therefore, names the Father and the Son ought to understand there, as it were, the mutual charity of the Father and the Son, which is the Holy Spirit. For perhaps the Scriptures, when examined (and I do not say this as though I could teach it today, or as though nothing else could be found), but yet perhaps the Scriptures, when searched, indicate that the Holy Spirit is charity. And do not think charity is cheap. Yet how is it cheap, when all things that are said not to be cheap are said to be dear? If, then, things that are not cheap are dear, what is dearer than charity itself? And charity is so commended by the Apostle that he says: "I show you a more surpassing way. If I speak with the tongues of men and of Angels, but have not charity, I have become sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal; and if I know all mysteries and all knowledge, and have all prophecy and all faith, so that I remove mountains, but have not charity, I am nothing; and if I distribute all my goods to the poor, and hand over my body to be burned, but have not charity, it profits me nothing" (1 Cor. 12:31, 13:1–3). How great, then, is charity, which if it is lacking, all else is possessed in vain; if it is present, all things are rightly possessed? Yet the apostle Paul, praising charity most copiously and most richly, said less of it than what the apostle John, whose Gospel this is, said briefly. For he did not hesitate to say, God is charity (1 John 4:16). It is also written, Because the charity of God is poured forth in our hearts through the Holy Spirit Who has been given to us (Rom. 5:5). Who, then, would name the Father and the Son and not understand there the charity of the Father and the Son? When one begins to have it, he will have the Holy Spirit; if he does not have it, he will be without the Holy Spirit. And just as your body, if it is without the spirit, which is your soul, is dead, so your soul, if it is without the Holy Spirit, that is, without charity, will be reckoned dead. Therefore the water-pots held two measures apiece, because in the prophecy of all the ages the Father and the Son are proclaimed; but the Holy Spirit is there also, and for that reason it was added, or three apiece. I and the Father, He says, are one (John 10:30); but far be it that the Holy Spirit should be absent where we hear, I and the Father are one. Yet because He named the Father and the Son, let the water-pots hold two measures apiece; but hear, or three apiece: Go, baptize the nations in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit (Matt. 28:19). And so, in that they are said to hold two apiece, the Trinity is not expressed but understood; but in that they are said to hold or three apiece, the Trinity is also expressed.

9. But there is also another interpretation that must not be passed over, and I will state it: let each choose what pleases him; we do not withhold what is suggested to us. For it is the Lord's table, and the servant ought not to defraud the guests, especially when they are so hungry that your eagerness is evident. The prophecy which has been dispensed from ancient times pertains to the salvation of all nations. Moses indeed was sent to the people of Israel alone, and to that people alone was the Law given through him, and the Prophets themselves were from that

people, and the very division of the times was marked out according to that same people; hence too the water-jars are said to be according to the purification of the Jews: but yet that this prophecy was also announced to the other nations is manifest; since Christ was hidden in it, He in Whom all nations are blessed, as was promised to Abraham when the Lord said, In your seed shall all nations be blessed (Gen. 22:18). But it was not yet understood, because the water had not yet been turned into wine. Therefore the prophecy was dispensed to all nations. And that this may stand out more delightfully, let us recall, as time allows, some things about the several ages, as about the several water-jars.

10. At the very beginning Adam and Eve were the parents of all nations, not only of the Jews; and whatever was figured in Adam concerning Christ pertained in every way to all nations, whose salvation is in Christ. What then should I say above all about the water of the first water-jar, if not what the Apostle says about Adam and Eve? For no one will say that I have understood wrongly, when I put forward an understanding not my own, but the Apostle's. How great a mystery concerning Christ, then, does that one thing contain which the Apostle recalls, saying, And the two shall be in one flesh: this is a great sacrament (Eph. 5:31–32)? And lest anyone should understand this greatness of the sacrament in each and every man who has a wife, But I, he says, speak in Christ and in the Church. What is this great sacrament, The two shall be in one flesh? When the Scripture of Genesis was speaking about Adam and Eve, whence it came to these words, Therefore a man shall leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and the two shall be in one flesh (Gen. 2:24). If then Christ cleaved to the Church, so that the two should be in one flesh, how did He leave the Father? how His mother? He left the Father because, though He was in the form of God, He did not think it robbery to be equal with God, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant (Phil. 2:6–7). For this is [what is meant by] He left the Father: not that He deserted and withdrew from the Father, but that He did not appear to men in that form in which He is equal to the Father. How did He leave His mother? By leaving the synagogue of the Jews, from which He was born according to the flesh; and by cleaving to the Church, which He gathered from all nations. Therefore the first water-jar too held a prophecy concerning Christ: but when these things which I speak were not preached among the peoples, it was still water; it had not yet been changed into wine. And since the Lord has enlightened us through the Apostle, to show us what we should seek there in that one sentence, The two shall be in one flesh; a great sacrament in Christ and in the Church; we may now seek Christ everywhere, and drink wine from all the water-jars. Adam sleeps that Eve may be made: Christ dies that the Church may be made. From the side of the sleeping Adam Eve is made (Gen. 2:21): the side of the dead Christ is struck with a lance (John 19:34), that the sacraments may flow forth by which the Church is to be formed. To whom would it not be evident that in those deeds of that time things to come were figured, since the Apostle says that Adam himself is the form of Him Who was to come? Who is, he says, the form of Him Who was to come (Rom. 5:14). All things were prefigured

mystically. For God truly was not unable to draw out a rib from him while awake and to form the woman. Or perhaps, so that his side should not hurt when the rib was taken out, it was for this reason necessary that he should sleep? Who is there who sleeps so soundly that his bones are pulled out of him without his waking? Or was it that because God was pulling it out, the man therefore did not feel it? Then He could also have pulled it out without pain from a man awake, He Who was able to do so from a man asleep. But beyond doubt the first water-jar was being filled: the prophecy of that time concerning this future time was being dispensed.

11. Christ was also prefigured in Noah, and the whole world in that ark. For why were all the animals shut up in the ark (Gen. 7:7–9), unless that all nations might be signified? For God did not lack the power to create every kind of animal anew. For when all things were not, did He not say, Let the earth bring forth, and the earth brought forth (Gen. 1:24)? So from that source whence He made them then, from that He might have made them again; by a word He made them, by a word He might have made them again: unless it was because He was commending a mystery, and was filling the second water-jar of the prophetic dispensation, so that through wood the figure of the whole world might be set free; because on wood the life of the whole world was to be fixed?

12. Now in the third water-jar, to Abraham himself, as I have already mentioned, it was said, In your seed shall all nations be blessed. And who would not see Whose figure his only son bore, who was carrying the wood for himself to the sacrifice at which he himself was being led to be offered? For the Lord carried His cross, as the Gospel says (John 19:17). Let it suffice to have mentioned this concerning the third water-jar.

13. And concerning David, what shall I say, that his prophecy pertained to all nations, when we have just heard the Psalm, and it is hard for any psalm to be recited in which this does not sound forth? But certainly, as I said, we have just sung, Arise, O God, judge the earth; for Thou shalt inherit among all nations (Ps. 81:8). And therefore the Donatists are as men cast out of the wedding: like that man who did not have a wedding garment, was invited and came, but was cast out from the number of those called, because he did not have a garment for the glory of the bridegroom; for he who seeks his own glory, not Christ's, does not have the wedding garment: for they will not be in accord with the voice of him who was the friend of the bridegroom and said, This is He Who baptizes (John 1:33). And not undeservedly was this thrown up as a rebuke to him who did not have a wedding garment, that which he was not: Friend, why have you come here? And as he was struck dumb (Matt. 22:11–13), so also are these. For what does the din of the mouth profit when the heart is dumb? For they know inwardly, within themselves, that they have nothing to say. Inwardly they have been struck dumb, outwardly they make a din. They hear, whether they will or not, that it is sung even among themselves, Arise, O God, judge the earth; for Thou shalt inherit among all nations: and by not being in communion with all nations, what else do they recognize but that they have been disinherited?

14. As to what I was saying, then, brethren, that the prophecy pertains to all nations: for I wish to show another sense in what was said, Holding two or three measures apiece: to all nations, I say, the prophecy pertains; we have just recalled it shown in

Adam, who is the form of the one to come. Now who does not know that from him all the nations arose, and that in his name, by its four letters, the four parts of the world are indicated through their Greek names? For if East, West, North and South are named in Greek, as Holy Scripture mentions them in very many places, you find Adam at the heads of the words: for the four aforesaid parts of the world are called in Greek anatolē, dysis, arktos, mesēmbria. If you write these four names one beneath another like four lines, Adam is read at their heads. This was prefigured in Noah by means of the ark, in which were all the animals, which signified all the nations; this in Abraham, to whom it was said more openly, In your seed all nations shall be blessed; this in David, from whose Psalms, to pass over other things, we have just sung, Arise, O God, judge the earth; for Thou shalt inherit among all nations. For to what God is it said, Arise, if not to Him who slept? Arise, O God, judge the earth. As if it were said, Thou hast slept, judged by the earth; arise, that Thou mayest judge the earth. And to what does that prophecy refer, For Thou shalt inherit among all nations?

15. Now in the fifth age, as in the fifth water-jar, Daniel saw a stone cut from a mountain without hands, and that it broke all the kingdoms of the earth; and that that stone grew and became a great mountain, so that it filled the whole face of the earth (Dan. 2:34–35). What could be plainer, my brothers? A stone is cut from a mountain: He is the stone which the builders rejected, and He has become the head of the corner (Ps. 117:22). From what mountain is it cut, if not from the kingdom of the Jews, from which our Lord Jesus Christ was born according to the flesh? And it is cut without hands, without human work, because He came forth from a virgin without the embrace of marriage. That mountain from which it was cut had not filled the whole face of the earth: for the kingdom of the Jews had not held all the nations. But the kingdom of Christ, we see, occupies the whole world.

16. Now to the sixth age belongs John the Baptist, than whom none greater has arisen among those born of women: of whom it was said, More than a prophet (Matt. 11:11, 9). How does he too show that Christ was sent to all nations? When the Jews came to him to be baptized, and so that they should not be proud of the name of Abraham, he said, Brood of vipers, who showed you how to flee from the wrath to come? Bear therefore fruit worthy of repentance; that is, be humble: for he was speaking to the proud. And whence were they proud? From their descent according to the flesh, not from the fruit of imitating their father Abraham. What does he say to them? Do not say, We have Abraham as father: for God is able from these stones to raise up sons to Abraham (Matt. 3:9). Calling all the nations stones, not on account of firmness, as He was called the stone which the builders rejected, but on account of the dullness and hardness of folly, because they had become like those whom they worshipped: for they worshipped senseless images, being equally senseless. Whence senseless? Because in the Psalm it is said, Let those who make them become like them, and all who trust in them (Ps. 113:8). Therefore when they have begun