Augustinus, In Joannis Evangelium tractatus LI-LXIV

of this in the depth of this work of the Lord, that, having confessed our sins to one another, we may pray for ourselves, just as Christ also intercedes for us (Rom. 8:34). Let us hear the Apostle James most plainly enjoining this very thing and saying, Confess your sins to one another, and pray for yourselves (Jas. 5:16). For to this too the Lord gave us an example. For if He who neither has, nor has had, nor will have any sin prays for our sins, how much more ought we to pray for one another for our own? And if He forgives us, He to whom we have nothing to forgive, how much more ought we to forgive one another, who are unable to live here without sin? For what does the Lord seem to signify in this depth of the sacrament, when He says, "For I have given you an example, that as I have done to you, so you also should do," except what the Apostle says most openly, "Forgiving one another, if anyone has a complaint against another, just as the Lord also has forgiven you, so you also" (Col. 3:13)? Let us therefore forgive one another our sins, and pray for one another for our sins, and so in a certain manner wash one another's feet. It is ours, by His gift, to render the ministry of charity and humility; it is His to hear us, and to cleanse us from all the defilement of sins through Christ and in Christ, so that what we forgive to others also, that is, what we loose on earth, may be loosed in heaven.

Tractate 59.

From where the Lord says, Amen, amen, I say to you, the servant is not greater than his lord, up to this, But he who receives Me receives Him Who sent Me. (John 13:16–20).

1. We have heard in the holy Gospel the Lord speaking and saying, "Amen, amen, I say to you, the servant is not greater than his lord, nor is an apostle greater than he who sent him: if you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them." He said this because He had washed the disciples' feet, a teacher of humility both by word and by example; but we shall be able, with His help, to discuss those things that need more laborious discussion if we do not linger over those that are plain. When, then, the Lord had said these things first, He added, "I do not speak of you all: I know whom I have chosen; but that the Scripture may be fulfilled, He who eats My bread will lift up his heel against Me." What else is this but, he will trample on Me? It is known of whom He speaks: that Judas, His betrayer, is touched upon. Therefore He had not chosen him, and so by this saying He separates him from those whom He chose. What, then, I say, He says, You will be blessed if you do them, I do not say of you all: there is among you one who will not be blessed, nor will do them. I know whom I have chosen. Whom, but those who will be blessed by doing what He commanded and showed was to be done, He Who is able to make them blessed? Judas the betrayer, He says, is not chosen. What, then, is it that He says in another place, Have I not chosen you twelve, and one of you is a devil (John 6:71)? Or was he too chosen for something, for which he was indeed necessary, but not for blessedness, of which He has just said, You will be blessed if you do them? This He does not say of all: for He knows whom to the fellowship of this blessedness

He has chosen. This man is not of those who were eating His bread in such a way as to lift up the heel against Him. They were eating the bread that was the Lord; he, the bread of the Lord against the Lord: they, life; he, punishment. "For he who eats unworthily," says the Apostle, "eats judgement to himself" (1 Cor. 11:29). "From now on," He says, "I tell you, before it comes to pass, so that when it has come to pass you may believe that I am": that is, I am He of whom that Scripture went before, where it is said, He who eats bread with Me will lift up the heel against Me.

2. Then He goes on and says: Amen, amen I say to you, he who receives anyone whom I send receives Me; and he who receives Me receives Him who sent Me. Did He wish it to be understood that there is as great a distance between the one whom He sends and Himself as between Himself and God the Father? If we take it in this way, we shall, after the manner of the Arians (which God forbid), be making some sort of steps. For they, when they hear or read these words of the Gospel, at once run to those steps of their dogma, by which they do not ascend to life but are cast headlong into death. For straightway they say: As far as the apostle of the Son is distant from the Son, although He said, He who receives anyone whom I send receives Me, so far also is the Son distant from the Father, although He said, And he who receives Me receives Him who sent Me. But if you say this, heretic, you have forgotten your steps. For if, on account of these words of the Lord, you distinguish the Son from the Father by as great an interval as that by which you distinguish the apostle from the Son, where are you going to put the Holy Spirit? Has it slipped your mind that you people are accustomed to put Him after the Son? He will therefore be between the apostle and the Son; and the Son will be much farther distant from the apostle than the Father from the Son. Or perhaps, so that this distinction may remain with equal intervals between the Son and the apostle and between the Father and the Son, the Holy Spirit will be equal to the Son? But you do not want this either. Where then are you going to put Him, if you place the Son beneath the Father with as great a separation as the apostle beneath the Son? Restrain, therefore, the boldness of your presumption; and in these words do not seek as great a distance between the Father and the Son as between the Son and the apostle. Hear rather the Son Himself saying, I and the Father are one (John 10:30). There the truth has left you no suspicion of any distance between the Begetter and the Only-begotten; there Christ has dashed your steps to pieces; there the rock has shattered your ladders.

3. But now that the heretics' false charge has been refuted, in what way are we to take these words of the Lord, He who receives anyone whom I send receives Me; and he who receives Me receives Him who sent Me? For if we choose to understand that it was said, He who receives Me receives Him who sent Me, because the Father and the Son are of one nature, it will seem to follow, by the rule of the same words, in which it is said, He who receives anyone whom I send receives Me, that the Son and the apostle are of one nature. This too could indeed be understood not unfittingly, since that giant who exulted to run the way (Ps. 18:6) is of twofold substance: for the Word was made flesh (John 1:14), that is, God was made man. Accordingly He could seem to have spoken thus: He who receives anyone whom I send receives Me according to the man; and he who

receives Me according to God receives Him Who sent Me. But when He said these things, it was not the unity of nature that was being commended by Him; rather, in the one who is sent, the authority of the sender was being commended. So then let each one receive him who has been sent in such a way that in him he looks to Him Who sent. If, therefore, you look to Christ in Peter, you will find the teacher of the disciple; but if you look to the Father in the Son, you will find the Begetter of the Only-begotten: and so in the one who is sent you receive, without any error, the sender. The things that follow in the Gospel are not to be compressed into the shortness of the time. And therefore, dearly beloved, let this sermon, like the food of holy sheep, be taken wholesomely if it is enough; if it is scanty, let it be chewed over with longing.

Tractate 60. On the passage, "When Jesus had said these things, He was troubled in spirit." Chapter 13, verse 21.

1. No small question, brothers, is set before us from the Gospel of blessed John, where he says: "When Jesus had said these things, He was troubled in spirit, and He testified and said: Amen, amen I say to you, that one of you will betray me." Was Jesus troubled on this account, not in the flesh but in spirit, because He was about to say, "One of you will betray me"? Did this then come into His mind for the first time, or was it then for the first time suddenly revealed to Him, and did the sudden novelty of so great an evil trouble Him? Was He not speaking of this a little before, saying, "He who eats bread with me will lift up his heel against me"? Had He not also already said earlier, "And you are clean, but not all"? Whereupon the Evangelist added, "For He knew who it was who would betray Him" (John 13:18, 10, 11): whom He had already indicated even before, saying, "Have I not chosen you twelve, and one of you is a devil" (John 6:71)? What is it, then, that He was now troubled in spirit, when He testified and said: "Amen, amen I say to you, that one of you will betray me"? Was it because He was now about to point him out, so that he should not lie hidden among the rest but be singled out from the rest, that He was therefore troubled in spirit? Or was it because the betrayer himself was now about to go out to bring the Jews, to whom the Lord was to be betrayed by him, that the imminent passion troubled Him, and the danger close at hand, and the hand of the betrayer hanging over Him, whose mind had been known beforehand? For this, that Jesus was troubled in spirit, is of the same kind as that also which He says, "Now my soul is troubled; and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour; but for this reason I came to this hour" (John 12:27). As, therefore, His soul was troubled then, as the hour of the passion drew near, so also now, as Judas was about to go out and to come back, and as so great a crime of the betrayer drew near, He was troubled in spirit.

2. He was troubled, therefore, Who had the power of laying down His life and had the power of taking it up again (John 10:18). So vast a power is troubled, the firmness of the rock is troubled: or rather, is it our weakness that is troubled in Him? So it is indeed: let servants believe nothing unworthy of their Lord, but let them recognize themselves as members in their head. He Who died for us, the very same was troubled for us. He, then, Who died by His power, was troubled by His power: He Who transfigured the body of our

lowliness conformed to the body of His glory (Phil. 3:21), transfigured also in Himself the affection of our weakness, suffering with us by the affection of His soul. Therefore, when the great, strong, sure, unconquered One is troubled, let us not fear for Him as though He were failing; He is not perishing, but seeking us. Us, I say, us altogether He seeks in this way: let us see our very selves in His perturbation, so that when we are troubled we may not perish by despair. When He is troubled Who would not be troubled unless He willed it, He consoles the one who is troubled even unwillingly.

3. Let the arguments of the philosophers perish, who deny that perturbations of minds befall the wise man. God has made foolish the wisdom of this world (1 Cor. 1:20); and the Lord knows the thoughts of men, that they are vain (Ps. 93:11). Let the Christian mind plainly be troubled, not by misery but by mercy: let it fear lest men be lost to Christ, be saddened when someone is lost to Christ; let it desire that men be gained for Christ, rejoice when men are gained for Christ; let it fear also for itself lest it be lost to Christ, be saddened that it is sojourning away from Christ; let it desire to reign with Christ, rejoice while it hopes that it will reign with Christ. These certainly are the four that they call perturbations: fear and sadness, love and gladness. Let Christian minds have them for just causes, and let there be no assent to the error of the Stoic philosophers or of any like them: who indeed, just as they reckon vanity to be truth, so they account numbness to be soundness; not knowing that the mind of a man, like a limb of the body, is sick the more desperately when it has lost even the sense of pain.

4. But someone says: Ought the mind of a Christian to be troubled even when death is impending? For where then is what the Apostle says, that he has a desire to be dissolved and to be with Christ (Phil. 1:23), if what he desires can trouble him when it has come? It is easy indeed for those men to answer this, who call even gladness itself a perturbation. For what if he is troubled when death is imminent precisely because he is glad when death is imminent? But this, they say, ought to be called joy, not gladness. What is this, but to feel the same things and to wish to change the names of things? But let us attune our hearing to the sacred Scriptures, and rather solve this question according to them, with the Lord's help: and let us not, because it is written, When Jesus had said these things, He was troubled in spirit, say that He was troubled with gladness; lest He Himself refute us by His own words where He says, My soul is sad even unto death (Matt. 26:38). Something of the same kind is to be understood here too, when, His betrayer being then about to go out alone and presently to return with his companions, Jesus was troubled in spirit.

5. Most steadfast indeed are those Christians, if there are any, who are in no way troubled when death is imminent: but are they more steadfast than Christ? What utter madman would say this? What then does it mean that He was troubled, except that He consoled the weak in His body, that is, in His Church, by the voluntary likeness of His own weakness: so that if any of His own are still, when death is imminent, troubled