Augustinus, In Joannis Evangelium tractatus LI-LXIV

as signifying the reward of the Redeemer! For He said, What you do, do more quickly, not so much raging for the destruction of the faithless one as hastening towards the salvation of the faithful; for He was delivered up for our offences (Rom. 4:25), and He loved the Church, and delivered Himself up for her (Eph. 5:25). Whence the Apostle also says of himself: Who loved me, and delivered Himself up for me (Gal. 2:20). Unless, therefore, Christ were delivering Himself up, no one would be delivering up Christ. What does Judas have, except sin? For in delivering up Christ he did not have in mind our salvation, for the sake of which Christ was delivered up, but he had in mind the profit of money, and found the loss of his soul. He received the reward which he wanted, but there was given to him, unwilling, the one which he deserved. Judas delivered up Christ, Christ delivered up Himself: the one was transacting the business of his sale, the other that of our redemption. What you do, do more quickly, not because you are able, but because He wills it Who is able to do all.

5. Now no one of those reclining knew to what purpose He had said this to him. For some thought, because Judas had the money-bags, that Jesus was saying to him, Buy the things which we need for the feast day; or that he should give something to the needy. The Lord, then, also had money-bags, and, keeping what was offered by the faithful, He distributed both to the needs of His own and to other needy people. Then for the first time the pattern of the Church's money was instituted, whereby we might understand that His precept that one must not take thought for the morrow (Matt. 6:34) was not given to this end, that no money should be kept by the saints, but that God should not be served for the sake of it, and that justice should not be abandoned through fear of want. For the Apostle also, providing for the future, says: If any of the faithful has widows, let him give to them sufficiently, so that the Church may not be burdened, in order that it may suffice for those who are truly widows (1 Tim. 5:16).

6. When, therefore, he had received the morsel, he went out immediately. And it was night. And he himself who went out was night. When, therefore, the night had gone out, Jesus said: Now is the Son of Man glorified. Day, then, poured forth the word to day, that is, Christ to the faithful disciples, that they might hear Him and love Him by following; and night to night announced knowledge (Ps. 18:3), that is, Judas to the unbelieving Jews, that they might come to Him and seize Him by pursuing. But from here on a more attentive hearer is demanded for the discourse of the Lord which was delivered to the godly before He was held fast by the ungodly; and therefore the expounder ought not to rush into it, but rather to defer it.

Tractate 63.

On what the Lord says, Now is the Son of Man glorified, as far as, And immediately He will glorify Him. Chapter 13, verses 31-32.

1. Let us direct the gaze of the mind, and with the Lord's help let us seek God. It is the voice of a divine song, Seek God, and your soul shall live (Ps. 68:33). Let us seek Him to be found, let us seek Him once found. That He may be sought in order to be found, He is hidden; that He may be sought once found, He is immeasurable. Whence it is said elsewhere, Seek His face always (Ps. 104:4). For He satisfies the seeker in so far as he has capacity; and He makes the finder more capacious, so that he seeks again to be filled, when he has begun to hold more

It is not, then, said thus, Seek His face always, in the way it is said of certain people, Always learning, and never arriving at the knowledge of the truth (2 Tim. 3:7); but rather as that man says, When a man has finished, then he begins (Ecclus. 18:6); until we come to that life where we are so filled that we are not made more capacious, because we shall be so perfect that we no longer make progress. For then will be shown to us what suffices us. Here, however, let us always seek, and let the fruit of finding not be the end of searching. For it is not that we are not to seek always because we seek only here; rather, we say that here one must always seek for this reason, lest at some time we should think that here one must cease from searching. For those too of whom it is said, Always learning, and never arriving at the knowledge of the truth, are here indeed always learning; but when they have departed from this life, they will no longer be learners, but receivers of the reward of their error. For thus it is said, Always learning, and never arriving at the knowledge of the truth, as if it were said, Always walking, and never arriving at the way. But let us always walk in the way, until we come to where the way leads; let us nowhere remain in it, until it brings us through to where we may remain: and thus both by seeking we press on, and by finding we arrive at something, and by seeking and finding we pass on to what remains, until there is made there an end of seeking, where for perfection there remains no striving to make progress. May this preface, most beloved, have made your Charity attentive to this discourse of the Lord, which He held with the disciples before His passion: for it is deep, and assuredly where the expounder is to labour much, the hearer ought not to be slack.

2. What, then, does the Lord say after Judas went out, to do the more quickly what he was going to do, that is, to betray the Lord? What does the day say, when the night had gone out? What does the Redeemer say, when the seller had gone out? Now, He says, the Son of man is glorified. Why now? Is it because he who is to betray Him has gone out, because those who are to seize and kill Him are at hand? Is He now glorified, then, because He is near to being humbled still further: He over Whom it now hangs that He be bound, be judged, be condemned, be mocked, be crucified, be put to death? Is this glorification, or rather humiliation? When He was working miracles, did not this John nevertheless say of Him, The Spirit had not been given, because Jesus had not yet been glorified (John 7:39)? Was He then not yet glorified when He raised the dead, and is He now glorified when He was drawing near to the dead? Was He not yet glorified when doing divine things, and is He glorified when about to suffer human things? It would be strange if that divine Teacher was signifying and teaching this by these words. The saying of the Most High must be searched out more deeply, Who manifests Himself somewhat so that we may find, and again hides Himself so that we may search, and that from things found we may lean, as it were by steps, towards things to be found. I see here something which prefigures something great. Judas went out, and Jesus was glorified; the son of perdition went out, and the Son of man was glorified. For he had gone out on whose account it had been said to them, And you are clean, but not all (ibid. 13:10). So when the unclean one went out, all the clean remained, and with their Cleanser

they remained. Something of this kind will happen when this world, conquered by Christ, has passed away, and no one among the people of Christ will remain unclean; when, the tares having been separated from the wheat, the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father (Matt. 13:43). Foreseeing that this was to come, and testifying that it was now signified, when Judas departed, as though the tares had been separated, and the holy apostles remained, as though the wheat, the Lord said: Now is the Son of Man glorified: as if He were saying, Behold, in that glorification of Mine, what will be, where none of the wicked will be, where none of the good perishes. Yet it was not said thus, Now is the glorification of the Son of Man signified; but it was said, Now is the Son of Man glorified: just as it was not said, The rock signified Christ; but, The rock was Christ (1 Cor. 10:4). Nor was it said, The good seed signified the sons of the kingdom, or, the tares signified the sons of the evil one; but it was said, The good seed, these are the sons of the kingdom; but the tares, the sons of the evil one (Matt. 13:38). As Scripture, then, is accustomed to speak, calling the things that signify by the names of those that are signified, so the Lord spoke when He said, Now is the Son of Man glorified: after the most wicked one had been separated from there and the saints remained with Him, His glorification was signified, when, the unrighteous having been separated, He will remain in eternity with the saints.

3. But when He had said, Now is the Son of Man glorified, He added, And God is glorified in Him. For this itself is the glorification of the Son of Man, that God is glorified in Him. For if He is glorified not in Himself, but God is glorified in Him, then God glorifies Him in Himself. Then, as though explaining these things, He adds and says: If God is glorified in Him, God will also glorify Him in Himself. That is, If God is glorified in Him, because He came not to do His own will but the will of Him Who sent Him; God will also glorify Him in Himself, so that the human nature in which He is son of man, which was taken up by the eternal Word, may also be endowed with immortal eternity. And immediately, He says, He will glorify Him. Foretelling, that is, by this declaration His own resurrection, not, like ours, at the end of the age, but about to come immediately. For this is the glorification of which the Evangelist had already spoken, as I recalled a little earlier, that the Spirit had not yet been given in that new manner to those to whom, believing after the resurrection, He was to be given in that manner, because Jesus had not yet been glorified: that is, mortality had not yet been clothed with immortality, and temporal weakness had not yet been changed into eternal power. It can also seem to have been said of that glorification, Now is the Son of Man glorified; so that what He says, now, may be believed to refer not to the imminent passion but to the near resurrection, as though what was already so very close to coming had been done. Today let these things suffice for your Charity; when the Lord grants it, we shall discuss what follows.

Tractate 64. On what the Lord says, Little children, yet a little while I am with you: you will seek Me, and as I said to the Jews,

where I am going, you cannot come; and to you I say now. Chap. 13, v. 33.

1. We must take note, dearly beloved, of the ordered connection of the Lord's words. For when He had said above, after Judas had gone out and had been separated even from that bodily companionship of the saints, Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in Him (which He said either signifying the future kingdom, when the wicked will be separated from the good, or because His resurrection was then about to take place, that is, was not to be deferred, as ours is deferred to the end of the world), and had then added, If God is glorified in Him, God also will glorify Him in Himself, and will glorify Him at once, by which He testified without any ambiguity to His resurrection soon to come, He went on and said, Little children, yet a little while I am with you. So that they should not think that God would glorify Him in such a way that He would no longer be joined to them in that companionship which is on earth, He says, Yet a little while I am with you, as if He were saying, I shall indeed be glorified at once by the resurrection; yet I shall not at once ascend into heaven, but yet a little while I am with you. For as it is written in the Acts of the Apostles, He spent forty days with them after the resurrection, going in and going out, eating and drinking (Acts 1:3): not indeed having the want that comes of hunger and thirst, but by these very things making known the reality of the flesh, which no longer had the necessity of taking food and drink, but the power to do so. Did He then signify these forty days by saying, Yet a little while I am with you, or something else? For it can also be understood thus: Yet a little while I am with you, [meaning] Still, like you, I myself too am in this weakness of the flesh, that is, until He should die and rise again: for after He had risen, He was indeed with them for forty days, as has been said, by the showing of bodily presence; but He was not with them in the fellowship of human weakness.

2. There is also another divine presence, unknown to mortal senses, of which He likewise says, Behold, I am with you even to the consummation of the world (Matt. 28:20). This certainly is not, Yet a little while I am with you: for it is not a little while until the consummation of the world. Or if this too is a little while (for time flies, and in the eyes of God a thousand years are as one day, or as a watch in the night [Ps. 89:4], yet we must not believe that He meant to signify this now, since He went on to add, You will seek Me, and as I said to the Jews, where I am going, you cannot come. Surely after this little while in which I am with you, You will seek Me, and where I am going, you cannot come. Will they be unable, after the consummation of the world, to come where He Himself is going? And where then is what He is about to say a little later in this same discourse: Father, I will that where I am, they also may be with Me (John 17:24)? So it was not of that presence of His with His own, by which He is with them until the consummation of the world, that He was speaking now when He said, Yet a little while I am with you; but either of the mortal weakness in which He was with them until His passion, or of the bodily presence in which

He was going to be with them until His ascension. Whichever of these one chooses, he is not quarrelling with the faith.

3. But lest this sense seem to anyone to depart from the truth, by which we say that the Lord, in saying, Yet a little while I am with you, could have signified the fellowship of mortal flesh in which He was with the disciples up to His passion, let him attend to His words after the resurrection in another evangelist, where He says, These things I spoke to you while I was still with you (Luke 24:44): as though He were not then with them, while they stood by Him together, saw Him, touched Him, and spoke with Him. What then is, while I was still with you, unless it is, while I was still in mortal flesh, in which you also are? For then indeed He had been raised in the same flesh; but He was no longer with them in the same mortality. Wherefore, just as there, already clothed in the immortality of the flesh, He truly says, while I was still with you, where we can understand nothing else than, while I was still with you in the mortality of the flesh, so here too He is understood not absurdly to have said, Yet a little while I am with you, as if He were saying, Yet a little while I am mortal, as you are. Let us therefore look at what follows.

4. You will seek Me, and as I said to the Jews, Where I am going, you cannot come, so I say to you now. That is, now you cannot. But when He said this to the Jews, He did not add now. These, then, could not at that time come where He was going, but they could afterwards: for this He says most plainly a little later to the apostle Peter. For when he had said, Lord, where art Thou going? He answered him, Where I am going, you cannot follow Me now; but you shall follow afterwards (John 13:36). But what this means is not to be passed over carelessly. For where could the disciples not follow the Lord then, but could afterwards? If we say, to death: what time is found for a man once born in which he is not fit to die, since such is the lot of men in a corruptible body that in it life is not easier than death? It was not, then, that they were still less fit to follow the Lord to death, but they were less fit to follow the Lord to the life that has no death. For thither was the Lord going, that, rising from the dead, He might die no more, and death might no longer have dominion over Him (Rom. 6:9). For how were they already to follow the Lord who was about to die for righteousness, being not yet ripe for martyrdom? Or how were they already to follow the Lord who was about to go to the immortality of the flesh, they who were to die at whatever time, but to rise again at the end of the world? Or how were they already to follow the Lord who was about to go to the bosom of the Father, and yet not to leave them, whence also He did not withdraw when He had come to them, since no one can be in that happiness unless he is perfect in charity? And therefore, teaching how they might become fit to go where He was going before them, He says, A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another (John 13:34). These are the steps by which Christ is to be followed: but a fuller discourse about these must be put off to another time.