Augustinus, In Joannis Evangelium tractatus XIII-XIX

before it, and He was made man in it. He Who was made man in it, He the Most High founded it (Ps. 86:5), not the most lowly. He was made man in it as the most lowly, because the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us; He the Most High founded it, because in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God: all things were made through Him (John 1:1, 3, 14). Since, then, He founded this homeland, let Him have honour here. The homeland in which He was begotten rejected Him; let the homeland which He begot anew receive Him.

Tractate 17.

From what is written, After these things there was a feast day of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem, as far as this, The Jews sought to kill Him, because He not only broke the sabbath, but also called God His Father, making Himself equal to God. Chap. 5, vv. 1-18.

1. A miracle done by God ought not to be a wonder: for it would be a wonder if a man had done it. We ought rather to rejoice than to wonder that our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ was made man, more than that God did divine things among men. For it counts for more towards our salvation that He was made [man] for the sake of men than that He did [things] among men; and it counts for more that He healed the vices of souls than that He healed the infirmities of bodies that were going to die. But because the soul itself did not know Him by Whom it was to be healed, and had eyes in the flesh with which it might see bodily deeds, but did not yet have sound [eyes] in the heart with which it might know the hidden God, He did what it could see, so that it might be healed in that with which it could not see. He entered the place where a great multitude of the sick lay, of the blind, the lame, the withered; and though He was the physician both of souls and of bodies, and One Who had come to heal all the souls of those who would believe, from those sick He chose one to heal, so as to signify unity. If with an ordinary heart, and as it were with human grasp and understanding, we consider Him in the doing, then as regards power He accomplished nothing great, and as regards kindness He did little. So many lay there, and one was cured, though He could have raised up all with one word. What then is to be understood, except that that power and that goodness were concerned more with what souls might understand in His deeds for eternal salvation than with what bodies might earn for temporal health? For the true health of bodies which is awaited from the Lord will be at the end, in the resurrection of the dead: then what lives will not die; then what is healed will not fall sick; then what is satisfied will not hunger or thirst; then what is renewed will not grow old. But now, in those deeds of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, both the opened eyes of the blind were closed by death, and the contracted limbs of the paralytics were loosed by death, and whatever was healed temporally in mortal limbs failed at the end; but the soul which believed made the passage to eternal life. To the soul, therefore, that was going to believe, whose

sins He had come to forgive, to heal whose infirmities He had humbled Himself, He gave a great sign concerning this sick man who was healed. Of this thing and of this sign I shall speak the deep mystery as well as I can, so far as the Lord deigns to grant it, while you pay attention and help our weakness by praying. But whatever I cannot do, He Himself will supply in you, by Whose help I do what I can.

2. Concerning this pool, which was surrounded by five porches, in which lay a great multitude of the sick, I remember that we have often treated; and I am going to speak of a matter which many will recognize along with me rather than learn for the first time. But it is not beside the point to repeat even things already known, so that those who did not know may be instructed, and those who knew may be confirmed. Accordingly, as things known, they are to be touched on briefly, not pressed home at idle length. That pool and that water seem to me to have signified the people of the Jews. For that peoples are signified by the name of waters, the Apocalypse of John plainly shows us: where, when many waters were shown to him and he had asked what they were, he received the answer that they were peoples (Rev. 17:15). That water, then, that is, that people, was enclosed by the five books of Moses as by five porches. But those books exposed the sick, they did not heal them. For the Law convicted sinners, it did not absolve them. Therefore the letter without grace made men guilty, and grace set them free when they confessed. For this is what the Apostle says: For if a law had been given that could give life, justice would be wholly from the Law. Why then was the Law given? He goes on and says: But Scripture has shut up all things under sin, so that the promise by faith of Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe (Gal. 3:21–22). What could be plainer? Have not these words explained to us both the five porches and the multitude of the sick? The five porches are the Law. Why did the five porches not heal the sick? Because if a law had been given that could give life, justice would be wholly from the Law. Why then did they hold those whom they did not heal? Because Scripture has shut up all things under sin, so that the promise by faith of Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe.

3. What then was happening, that in that water, when it was troubled, those were healed who could not be healed in the porches? For suddenly the water was seen to be troubled, and he by whom it was troubled was not seen. You may believe that this used to happen by angelic power, yet not without some mystery being signified. After the water was troubled, one who was able cast himself in, and he alone was healed: after him, whoever cast himself in would do so in vain. What then does this mean, except that the one Christ came to the people of the Jews; and by doing great things, by teaching useful things, He troubled sinners, He troubled the water by His presence, and stirred it up towards His passion? But He troubled it while hidden. For if they had known, they would never have crucified the Lord of glory (1 Cor. 2:8). To go down, then, into the troubled water is to believe humbly in the Lord's passion. There one was healed, signifying unity; afterwards whoever came was not healed: because whoever is outside unity will not be able to be healed.

4. Let us see, then, what He meant to signify in that

one, whom He Himself also, preserving the mystery of unity, as I said before, deigned to heal, one out of so many sick. He found in his years a certain number of sickness: He had been thirty-eight years in his infirmity. How this number pertains more to sickness than to health must be explained a little more carefully. I want you attentive; the Lord will be present, that I may speak fittingly and that you may hear sufficiently. The number forty, made sacred, is commended to us as a certain perfection. I think this is known to your Charity: the divine Scriptures testify to it very often. Fasting is consecrated by this number: you know it well. For Moses fasted forty days (Exod. 34:28), and Elijah as many (1 Kgs. 19:8), and our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ Himself fulfilled this number of fasting (Matt. 4:2). By Moses the Law is signified, by Elijah the Prophets are signified, by the Lord the Gospel is signified. Therefore the three appeared on that mountain where He showed Himself to the disciples in the brightness of His countenance and of His raiment. For He appeared in the middle between Moses and Elijah (Matt. 17:1–3), as though the Gospel had testimony from the Law and the Prophets (Rom. 3:21). Whether, then, in the Law, or in the Prophets, or in the Gospel, the number forty is commended to us in fasting. But the great and general fast is to abstain from iniquities and from the unlawful pleasures of the world, which is the perfect fast: that, denying ungodliness and worldly desires, we may live soberly, and justly, and piously in this world. What reward does the Apostle add to this fast? He goes on and says: Awaiting that blessed hope, and the manifestation of the glory of the blessed God and of our Saviour Jesus Christ (Titus 2:12–13). In this world, then, we celebrate as it were a Quadragesima of abstinence, when we live well, when we abstain from iniquities and from unlawful pleasures. But because this abstinence will not be without reward, we await that blessed hope, and the revelation of the glory of the great God and of our Saviour Jesus Christ. In that hope, when out of hope the thing itself has come to be, we shall receive the reward, a denarius. For this very reward is paid to the labourers working in the vineyard according to the Gospel (Matt. 20:9–10), which I believe you remember: for not everything needs to be recounted, as though to the untaught and unskilled. The denarius, then, which took its name from the number ten, is paid, and joined to forty it becomes fifty: whence with labour we celebrate the Quadragesima before Easter, but with joy, as having received the reward, the Quinquagesima after Easter. For to this, as it were, saving labour of good work, which pertains to the number forty, is added the denarius of rest and happiness, that it may become fifty.

5. The Lord Jesus Himself signified this much more openly, when after the resurrection He spent forty days on earth with His disciples (Acts 1:3); but on the fortieth day, when He had ascended into heaven, after ten days had passed He sent the reward of the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:1–4). These things were signified, and by certain significations the realities themselves were anticipated.

We are fed by significations, so that by persevering we may be able to arrive at the realities themselves. For we are labourers, and we are still labouring in the vineyard: when the day is finished and the work is finished, the wage will be paid. But what labourer perseveres until he receives the wage, unless he is fed while he labours? For you too, will you give your labourer only his wage? Will you not also bring him something with which to restore his strength in his labour? You certainly feed the man to whom you are going to give a wage. So too the Lord feeds us as we labour in these significations of the Scriptures. For if this joy of understanding the mysteries is taken away from us, we fail in our labour, and there will be no one who arrives at the wage.

6. How, then, is the work perfected by the number forty? Perhaps for this reason: the Law was given in ten commandments, and the Law was to be preached throughout the whole world. This whole world is described in four parts, East and West, South and North, and so ten multiplied by four comes to forty. Or because the Law is fulfilled through the Gospel, which has four books; for in the Gospel it is said, I have not come to abolish the Law, but to fulfil it (Matt. 5:17). So whether for that reason or for this one, or for some other, more probable reason that is hidden from us but not hidden from the more learned, it is nevertheless certain that the number forty signifies a certain perfection in good works. Good works are exercised above all in a certain abstinence from the unlawful desires of the world, that is, in a general fast. Hear also the Apostle saying, The fullness of the Law is charity (Rom. 13:10). Where does charity come from? Through the grace of God, through the Holy Spirit. For we would not have it from ourselves, as though we made it for ourselves. It is the gift of God, and a great gift: Because the charity of God, he says, has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit, Who has been given to us (Rom. 5:5). Charity, therefore, fulfils the Law, and it has been said most truly, The fullness of the Law is charity. Let us seek this charity, and how it is commended by the Lord. Remember what I proposed: I want to explain the number of thirty-eight years in that sick man, and why that number, the thirty-eighth, belongs to sickness rather than to health. So, as I was saying, charity fulfils the Law. The number forty belongs to the fullness of the Law in all works, but in charity two commandments are commended to us. Pay attention, I beseech you, and fix in your memory what I am saying. Do not be despisers of the word, lest your soul become a path where the seeds that are thrown do not sprout: And the birds of the sky, he says, will come and gather them up (Mark 4:4). Take it in, and store it away in your hearts. The commandments of charity commended by the Lord are two: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind; and, You shall love your neighbour as yourself. On these two commandments the whole Law and the Prophets depend (Matt. 22:37–40). Rightly too did that widow cast all her means, two mites, into the gifts of God (Luke 21:2–4); rightly too, for that sick man, by robbers

wounded man, the innkeeper received two coins with which he might be healed (Luke 10:35): rightly did Jesus spend two days among the Samaritans, that He might strengthen them in charity (John 4:40). So when something good is signified by this number two, it is above all twofold charity that is commended. If, then, the number forty holds the perfection of the Law, and the Law is not fulfilled except in the twin precept of charity, why do you wonder that he was sick who lacked two of forty?

7. Let us see, then, now by what mystery this sick man is cured by the Lord. For the Lord Himself came, the teacher of charity, full of charity, shortening, as was foretold of Him, the word upon the earth (Isa. 10:23, and 28:22; Rom. 9:28): and He showed that on two precepts of charity hang the Law and the Prophets. On these, then, Moses hung with his forty, on these Elijah with his; this number the Lord brought in His testimony. This sick man is cured by the Lord present; but first, what does He say to him? Do you wish to be made whole? He answered that he had no man by whom he might be put into the pool. Truly a man was necessary to him for health, but that man Who is also God. For there is one God, and one mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus (1 Tim. 2:5). The man, then, Who was necessary came: why should health be deferred? Rise, He says, take up your bed, and walk. He said three things, Rise, take up your bed, and walk. But Rise was not the command of a work, but the working of health. To the healed man, however, He commanded two things, Take up your bed, and walk. I ask you, why would Walk not have sufficed? Or at any rate, why would Rise not have sufficed? For when he had risen healed, he would not have remained in the place. Would he not have risen for this, that he might go away? It moves me, therefore, also that He commanded two things, Who found him lying two short: for, as it were, by ordering two certain things He filled up what was lacking.

8. How, then, may we find in these two commands of the Lord those two precepts of charity signified? Take up, He says, your bed, and walk. What those two precepts are, brethren, recall with me. For they ought to be very well known, and not only come to mind when they are mentioned by us, but they ought never to be erased from your hearts. Always and altogether bear in mind that God and neighbour are to be loved: God with the whole heart, with the whole soul, and with the whole mind; and the neighbour as oneself. These are always to be thought on, these meditated, these retained, these done, these fulfilled. The love of God is first in the order of commanding; but the love of neighbour is first in the order of doing. For He Who would command you this love in two precepts would not commend to you first the neighbour and afterwards God, but first God, afterwards the neighbour. But you, because you do not yet see God, by loving your neighbour merit to see Him; by loving your neighbour you cleanse the eye for seeing God, as John plainly says, If you do not love the brother whom you see, how will you be able to love God Whom you do not see (1 John 4:20)? Behold, it is said to you, Love God. If you say to me, Show me Him Whom I am to love, what shall I answer, except what John himself says, No one has ever seen God (John 1:18)? And lest you

wholly estranged from seeing God: God, he says, is love; and he who abides in love abides in God (1 John 4:16). Love your neighbour, then, and look within yourself at that from which you love your neighbour; there you will see God, as far as you are able. Begin, then, to love your neighbour. Break your bread to the hungry, and bring the needy without a roof into your house; if you see the naked, clothe him, and do not despise those of the household of your seed. But doing these things, what will you gain? Then shall your light break forth like the morning (Isa. 58:7–8). Your light is your God; morning to you, because He will come to you after the night of this world: for He neither rises nor sets, since He abides for ever. He will be morning to you as you return, Who had made a setting for you as you were perishing. Therefore, Take up your bed, He seems to me to have said, Love your neighbour.

9. But it is still closed, and needs exposition, as far as I judge, why the love of neighbour should be commended in the taking up of the bed: unless perhaps this offends us, that the neighbour is commended by means of a bed, a thing dull and senseless. Let the neighbour not be angry if he is commended to us by means of a thing that is without soul and without sense. The Lord Himself and our Saviour Jesus Christ was called the corner stone, that He might found the two in Himself (Eph. 2:14–20). He was called also the rock from which water flowed: And the rock was Christ (1 Cor. 10:4). What wonder, then, if Christ is a rock, and the neighbour wood? Yet not any wood whatever: just as that was not any rock whatever, but the one from which water had flowed for the thirsty; nor any stone whatever, but the corner stone, which joined in itself two walls coming from opposite directions. So too you are not to take the neighbour as any wood whatever, but as the bed. What, then, is in the bed, I beseech you? What, unless that the sick man was carried on a bed? But the healthy man carries the bed. What was said by the Apostle? Bear one another's burdens, and so you will fulfil the law of Christ (Gal. 6:2). The law of Christ, then, is love, and love is not fulfilled unless we bear one another's burdens. Forbearing one another in love, he says, eager to keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace (Eph. 4:2–3). When you were sick, your neighbour carried you; you have been made whole, carry your neighbour: Bear one another's burdens, and so you will fulfil the law of Christ. So you will fulfil, O man, what was lacking to you. Take up, then, your bed. But when you have taken it up, do not stay where you are; walk. By loving your neighbour, and by having care for your neighbour, you make your journey. Whither do you make your journey, if not to the Lord God, to Him Whom we ought to love with the whole heart, with the whole soul, with the whole mind? For we have not yet arrived at the Lord, but we have our neighbour with us. Carry, then, him with whom you walk, that you may arrive at Him with Whom you desire to abide. Take up, then, your bed, and walk.

10. He did this, and the Jews were scandalized. For they saw a man carrying his bed on the sabbath day, and they did not bring a false charge against the Lord for having made him whole on the sabbath, so that He could answer them that if the beast of any one of them had fallen into a well, he would surely pull it out on the sabbath day and save his beast (Luke 14:5): so they were not now reproaching

that on the sabbath day a man had been made whole, but that he was carrying his bed. If health was not to be put off, did the work also have to be commanded? It is not lawful for you, they say, to do what you are doing, to take up your bed. And he set the author of his health before the slanderers: He Who made me whole, he says, Himself said to me, Take up your bed and walk. Was I not to accept a command from Him from Whom I had received health? And they said: Who is that man who said to you, Take up your bed and walk?

11. But he who had been made whole did not know who it was from Whom he had heard this. But Jesus, when He had done this and given the command, had turned aside from him in the crowd. See how this too is fulfilled. We carry our neighbour and we walk towards God; but Him towards Whom we walk we do not yet see: that is why he too did not yet know Jesus. This mystery is commended to us, that we believe in Him Whom we do not yet see; and so that He may not be seen, He turns aside in the crowd. It is difficult to see Christ in a crowd: a certain solitude is necessary for our mind; it is by a certain solitude of attention that God is seen. A crowd has noise; this vision desires seclusion. Take up your bed: you who have been carried, carry your neighbour; and walk, so that you may arrive. Do not seek Jesus in the crowd; He is not as one of the crowd: He has gone ahead of the whole crowd. That great fish was the first to ascend from the sea, and He sits in the heavens interceding for us: as the great priest, He alone has entered into the inner part of the veil: the crowd stands outside. Walk, you who carry your neighbour, if you have learned to carry, you who used to be carried. In short, now you do not yet know Jesus, you do not yet see Jesus: what follows afterwards? Because he did not leave off taking up his bed and walking, Jesus afterwards saw him in the temple. In the crowd he did not see Him; in the temple he saw Him. The Lord Jesus indeed saw him both in the crowd and in the temple; but the sick man does not recognize Jesus in the crowd, in the temple he recognizes Him. So he arrived at the Lord; he saw Him in the temple, he saw Him in a consecrated place, in a holy place. And what does he hear from Him? See, now you have been made whole; do not sin, lest something worse befall you.

12. Then he, after he had seen Jesus and had recognized Jesus as the author of his health, was not slow in proclaiming the good news of Him Whom he had seen: He went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus Who had made him whole. He was announcing, and they were raving: he was proclaiming his salvation, they were not seeking their own salvation.

13. The Jews persecuted the Lord Jesus because He was doing these things on the sabbath. Let us hear, then, what the Lord now answered the Jews. Concerning men made whole on the sabbath, I have said what He is accustomed to answer: that they did not neglect their beasts on the sabbath, either in freeing them or in feeding them. Concerning the carried bed, what did He answer? A manifest bodily work had been done before the eyes of the Jews: not the health of the body, but an exertion of the body, which did not seem as necessary as health. So let the Lord say openly that the mystery of the sabbath, and the sign of observing one day, was given to the Jews for a time, but that the very fulfilment of the mystery had come in Him. My Father, He says, until now

works, and I work. He sent a great tumult among them; at the coming of the Lord the water is troubled, but He Who troubles it lies hidden. Yet one great sick man is to be healed by the troubled water, the whole world by the Lord's suffering.

14. Let us see, then, the answer of the Truth: My Father works until now, and I work. Did Scripture, then, speak falsely in saying that God rested from all His works on the seventh day (Gen. 2:2)? And does the Lord Jesus speak against this Scripture ministered through Moses, when He Himself says to the Jews, If you believed Moses, you would believe Me also: for he wrote of Me (John 5:46)? See, then, whether Moses did not wish to signify something by saying that God rested on the seventh day. For God had not grown weary by working His creation, and needed rest as a man does. How could He have grown weary Who had made it by a word? Yet this too is true, that God rested from His works on the seventh day; and this is true which Jesus says, My Father works until now. But who could explain in words, a man to men, a weak man to the weak, an unlearned man to those desiring to learn, and one who, if perhaps he understands something, is unable to bring it forth and explain it to men who perhaps grasp with difficulty, even if what is grasped could be explained? Who, I say, my brothers, could explain in words how God both works while at rest, and rests while working? I beseech you to put this off until you have made progress; for this vision seeks the temple of God, it seeks a holy place: carry your neighbour and walk; there you will see Him, where you will not seek the words of men.

15. This perhaps we are better able to say: that also in the fact that God rested on the seventh day, He signified by a great sacrament our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ Himself, Who spoke these things and said, My Father works until now, and I work. For the Lord Jesus too is assuredly God. For He is the Word of God, and you have heard that in the beginning was the Word; and not just any word, but the Word was God, and all things were made through Him (John 1:1, 3): perhaps it was signified that He would rest on the seventh day from all His works. For read the Gospel, and see how great things Jesus worked. He worked our salvation on the cross, so that all the things foretold by the Prophets might be fulfilled in Him: He was crowned with thorns, He was hung on the wood; He said, I thirst, He received vinegar on a sponge, so that what was said might be fulfilled, And in My thirst they gave Me vinegar to drink (Ps. 68:22). But when all His works were fulfilled, on the sixth day of the week, with head bowed, He gave up His spirit, and in the tomb on the sabbath He rested from all His works (John 19). Therefore it is as if He were saying to the Jews, Why do you expect that I should not work on the sabbath? The day of the sabbath was enjoined on you to signify Me. You pay heed to the works of God; I was there when they were done, through Me all things were made, I know: My Father works until now. The Father worked light; but He spoke, that light might be made (Gen. 1:3): if He spoke, He worked by the Word; I was His Word, I am: through Me the world was made in those works, through Me the world is ruled in these works. My Father both worked then when He made the world, and works until now when He rules the world: therefore through Me also He made it when