Augustinus, In Joannis Evangelium tractatus LXXXV-CII

yet let us not be sorrowful without joy in the travail of this desire, but, as the Apostle says, Rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation (Rom. 12:12); for the woman in labour herself, to whom we have been compared, rejoices more over the offspring soon to come than she is sorrowful over the present pain. But let this be the end of this sermon: for the words that follow hold a most troublesome question, and they are not to be compressed into brevity, so that they may be explained more fittingly, if the Lord wills.

Tractate 102. On what the Lord says, Amen, amen I say to you, if you ask the Father anything in My name, He will give it to you; up to this, Again I leave the world, and go to the Father. Chap. 16, vv. 23-28.

1. These words of the Lord are now to be treated: Amen, amen I say to you, if you ask the Father anything in My name, He will give it to you. It has already been said in the earlier parts of this discourse of the Lord, on account of those who ask certain things of the Father in Christ's name and do not receive them, that whatever is asked contrary to the plan of salvation is not asked in the name of the Saviour (above, Tract. 73). For it is not the sound of the letters and syllables, but what the sound itself signifies, and what is rightly and truly understood by that sound, that He is to be taken to mean when He says, in My name. Hence whoever thinks of Christ what ought not to be thought of the only Son of God does not ask in His name, even if he does not leave Christ unspoken in letters and syllables; since he asks in the name of the one whom he has in mind when he asks. But whoever thinks of Him what ought to be thought, he asks in His name; and he receives what he asks, if he does not ask against his own everlasting salvation. And he receives it when he ought to receive it. For some things are not refused, but are deferred so that they may be given at a fitting time. Thus indeed is what He says, He will give it to you, to be understood, so that those benefits may be known to be signified by these words which properly pertain to those who ask. For all the saints are heard on their own behalf, but they are not heard on behalf of all, whether friends or enemies of theirs, or any others whatever: for it is not said in just any way, He will give; but, He will give to you.

2. Until now, He says, you have not asked anything in My name. Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full. This which He calls full joy is assuredly not carnal but spiritual joy: and when it is so great that nothing further is to be added to it, then without doubt it will be full. Whatever therefore is asked that pertains to attaining this joy is to be asked in the name of Christ, if we understand divine grace, if we truly seek the blessed life. But whatever else is asked, nothing is asked: not because it is no thing at all, but because in comparison with so great a thing whatever else is desired is nothing. For neither is man altogether no thing, of whom the Apostle says: He who thinks himself to be something, when he is nothing (Gal. 6:3). For in comparison with the spiritual man, who knows that by the grace of God he is what he is, whoever presumes vain things is nothing. Thus too, then, can it rightly be understood, Amen, amen I say to you, if you ask the Father anything in My name, He will give it to you; that what He says, anything, may be understood not as whatever one pleases, but as something which, in comparison with the blessed life, is not

nothing. And what follows, Until now you have not asked anything in My name, can be understood in two ways: either because you have not asked in My name, a name which you have not known as it is to be known; or you have not asked anything, since in comparison with the thing which you ought to have asked, what you have asked is to be counted as nothing. So, in order that they may ask in His name not for nothing but for full joy (since if they ask for anything else, that anything is nothing), He exhorts them, saying, Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full: that is, ask for this in My name, that your joy may be full, and you will receive. For the divine mercy will by no means defraud His saints who persevere in asking of this good.

3. These things, He says, I have spoken to you in proverbs: the hour is coming when I shall no longer speak to you in proverbs, but shall announce to you openly about My Father. I could say that the hour of which He speaks must be understood as the world to come, where we shall see openly, which is what blessed Paul calls face to face; so that what He says, These things I have spoken to you in proverbs, would be what was said by the same apostle, We see now through a mirror in an enigma (1 Cor. 13:12); and I shall announce to you, because the Father will be seen through the Son, according to what He says elsewhere, Nor does anyone know the Father except the Son, and he to whom the Son has willed to reveal [Him] (Matt. 11:27). But what follows seems to stand in the way of this sense: On that day you will ask in My name. For in the world to come, when we have arrived at the kingdom, where we shall be like Him, since we shall see Him as He is (1 John 3:2), what shall we ask for, when our desire will be satisfied with good things (Ps. 102:5)? Hence it is also said in another psalm: I shall be satisfied when Thy glory is made manifest (Ps. 16:15). For asking belongs to some need, which will be none there, where this satiety will be.

4. It remains, therefore, as far as I am able to understand, that Jesus be understood to have promised that He would make His disciples, from carnal or animal men, spiritual ones; not yet such as we shall be when we shall have even a spiritual body, but such as he was who said, "We speak wisdom among the perfect" (1 Cor. 2:6); and, "I could not speak to you as to spiritual men, but as to carnal" (ibid. 3:1); and, "We have not received the spirit of this world, but the Spirit which is from God, that we may know the things that have been given to us by God; which things we also speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, comparing spiritual things with spiritual. But the animal man does not perceive the things that are of the Spirit of God." So the animal man, not perceiving the things that are of the Spirit of God, hears whatever he hears about the nature of God in such a way that he cannot think of anything other than a body, however very large or immense, however bright and beautiful, yet still a body: therefore whatever sayings of wisdom concern the incorporeal and immutable substance are proverbs to him; not that he reckons them as proverbs, but because he thinks in the way of those who are accustomed to hear proverbs and not understand them. But when the spiritual man

has begun to judge all things, while he himself is judged by no one (1 Cor. 2:12–15), even though in this life he still sees as through a mirror and in part, nevertheless perceives, not by any sense of the body, not by any imaginary thought which takes in or fashions likenesses of bodies of whatever kind, but by the most certain understanding of the mind, that God is not a body but spirit: the Son thus announcing plainly of the Father, that He too who announces is seen to be of the same substance. Then those who ask, ask in His name; for they understand that in the sound of His name there is nothing other than the very thing which is called by this name, and they do not, through vanity or weakness of mind, fashion for themselves the Father as it were in one place, and in another the Son standing before the Father and asking for us, the bulks of the two each occupying their own spaces, and the Word making words for us to Him Whose Word He is, with an interval set between the mouth of the speaker and the ears of the hearer; and other such things as animal men, who are likewise carnal, fabricate for themselves in their hearts. For whatever of this kind occurs, out of the habit of bodies, to spiritual men thinking about God, they drive away from their inner eyes by denying and rejecting it, like troublesome flies; and they rest in the purity of that light by whose witness and judgement they prove these very images of bodies, rushing in upon their inner gaze, to be altogether false. These are able in some measure to think of our Lord Jesus Christ as interceding with the Father for us in so far as He is man, but in so far as He is God, as hearing us together with the Father. This I think He signified where He says, And I do not say to you that I will ask the Father concerning you. For only the spiritual eye of the mind rises to the contemplation of this, how the Son does not ask the Father, but the Father and the Son together hear those who ask.

5. For the Father Himself, He says, loves you, because you have loved Me. Does He therefore love because we love; or rather, is it because He loves that we therefore love? Let the same evangelist himself answer from his Epistle: We love, he says, because He first loved us (1 John 4:10). From this, then, it came about that we loved, because we were loved. Loving God is wholly a gift of God. He Who, not being loved, loved, Himself granted that He should be loved. We were loved while displeasing, so that there might be in us that by which we should please. For we would not love the Son unless we loved the Father also. The Father loves us because we love the Son, since we have received from the Father and the Son that we should love both the Father and the Son: for the Spirit of both pours out charity in our hearts (Rom. 5:5), through which Spirit we love both the Father and the Son, and which Spirit we love together with the Father and the Son. Our devout love, then, with which we worship God, God made, and He saw that it is good; that is precisely why He Himself loved what He made. But He would not make in us that which He should love, unless He loved us before He made it.

6. And you have believed, He says, that I came forth from God. I came forth from the Father and have come into the world: again I leave the world, and I go to the Father. Plainly we have believed. For it ought not to seem incredible that, in coming to the world,

He went out from the Father in such a way as not to desert the Father; and so He goes to the Father, having left the world, so as not to desert the world. For He went out from the Father because He is from the Father; He came into the world because He showed to the world His body, which He took from the Virgin. He left the world by bodily departure, He went on to the Father by the ascension of the man, and He did not desert the world in the governance of His presence.