Augustine, Sermones 330-335 (Classis III, de Sanctis)

Sermon 330. On the Birthday of the Martyrs.

1. The opening of the sermon. The solemnity of the blessed martyrs and the expectation of Your Holiness demand a sermon from us. For we understand that we ought to discourse on what befits this day. This you wish, this we wish: may He bring it about in Whose hand are both we and our words; may He Who has granted the will give the ability. For it was in this that the martyrs burned: for, set on fire by love of things invisible, they despised things visible. What did he love in himself who despised even himself, so as not to lose himself? For they were temples of God, and they felt the true God dwelling in them; therefore they did not worship false gods. They had heard, they had thirstily drunk in, they had committed to the inmost marrow of the heart, and had in a certain way taken into their very vitals what the Lord said, If anyone wishes to come after Me? let him deny himself. Let him deny, He says, himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me (Matt. 16:24). On this I wish to say something, and your attentiveness alarms me, your prayer bids me.

2. How a disciple of Christ ought to deny himself. What is it, I ask you, If anyone wishes to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me? We understand what Let him take up his cross is: let him bear his tribulation; for take up means carry, endure. Let him patiently, He says, accept all that he suffers for My sake. And let him follow Me. Where? Where we know He went after the resurrection. For He ascended into heaven, and sits at the right hand of the Father. There He has placed us too. Meanwhile let hope go before, so that the reality may follow. How hope ought to go before, those know who hear, Lift up the heart. It remains, however, to inquire, as far as the Lord helps, and to examine, and, with Him opening, to enter, and, with Him giving, to find, and to set before you what we have been able to find: what it is that He says, Let him deny himself. How does he who loves himself deny himself? This is indeed a question of reason, but of human [reason]: a man says to me, How does he who loves himself deny himself? But God says to man, Let him deny himself, if he loves himself. For by loving himself he loses himself; by denying himself he finds himself. He who loves, He says, his soul will lose it (John 12:25). He Who knows what He commands has commanded, since He Who knows how to instruct knows how to counsel, and He Who deigned to create knows how to restore. He who loves, let him lose. It is a sorrowful thing to lose what you love. But sometimes the farmer too loses what he sows. He brings it out, scatters it, throws it away, buries it. Why are you surprised? That despiser and loser is a greedy reaper. What has come of it, winter and summer have proved; the joy of the one reaping shows you the plan of the one sowing.

Therefore he who loves his soul will lose it. Let him who seeks fruit in it sow it. This, then, is [the meaning]: let him deny himself, lest by loving it perversely he lose himself.

3. Perverse love of self is more truly contempt of self. Love of money [reaches] as far as contempt of the soul. For there is no one who does not love himself; but right love is to be sought, perverse love avoided. For whoever, having abandoned God, has loved himself, and has abandoned God by loving himself, does not remain even in himself, but goes out even from himself. He goes out an exile from his own heart, despising the things within, loving the things without. What have I said? Do not all who do evil things despise their own conscience? But whoever has blushed before his own conscience sets a limit to his iniquity. Therefore, because he despised God so as to love himself, by loving outside what he himself is not, he despised himself as well. See, hear the Apostle bearing witness to this meaning: In the last days, he says, perilous times will be at hand. What are the perilous times? Men will be lovers of themselves. This is the head of evil. Let us see, then, whether they remain at least in themselves by loving themselves; let us see, let us hear what follows: Men, he says, will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money (2 Tim. 3:1–2). Where are you who loved yourself? Surely you are outside. I ask you, are you money? Surely you who, having neglected God, loved yourself, by loving money have deserted even yourself. First you deserted, afterwards you lost. For the love of money brought it about that you lost yourself. You lie for the sake of money: The mouth that lies kills the soul (Wis. 1:11). Behold, while you seek money, you have lost your soul. Bring out the balance of truth, not of greed: bring out the scales, but of truth, not of greed; bring them out, I beseech you, and put money in one part, the soul in the other. Already you are weighing, and out of greed you apply fraudulent fingers; you want the part that holds the money to sink. Put it down, do not weigh: you want to commit fraud against yourself; I see what you are doing. You want to prefer money to your soul; to lie for the sake of the one, to lose the other. Put it down, let God weigh; He Who knows not how to be deceived, nor how to deceive, let Him weigh. Behold, He weighs; see Him weighing, hear Him announcing: What does it profit a man, if he gains the whole world? It is a divine voice, it is the voice of one who weighs and does not deceive; of one who announces, of one who admonishes. You were putting money in one part, and your soul in the other; see where you have put the money. What does He Who weighs reply? You have put money: What does it profit a man, if he gains the whole world, but suffers the loss of his own soul (Matt. 16:26)? You wanted to weigh your soul against gain: weigh it against the world. You wanted to lose it, so that the earth might be acquired by you: this has more weight than heaven and earth. But you do this because, by forsaking God and loving yourself, you have gone out even from yourself; and now other things, which are outside, you value more than yourself. Return to yourself: but again, when you have returned to yourself, [turn] upwards, do not remain in yourself. First return to yourself from the things that are outside, and then give yourself back to Him Who made you, and sought you when you were lost, and found you when you were a fugitive, and turned you back to Himself when you were turned away. Return, then, to yourself, and go to Him Who made you. Imitate that son

the younger; because perhaps you are he. I speak to the people, not to one man; although all may hear me, I speak not to one, but to the human race. Return therefore, be that younger son, who, living prodigally on his substance, scattered and lost it and fell into want, fed swine, and, worn out by hunger, breathed again and recalled his father to memory. And what does the Gospel say of him? And having returned to himself. He who had abandoned even himself, having returned to himself: let us see whether he remained in himself. Having returned to himself he said, I will rise. So he had fallen. I will rise, he says, and go to my father. Behold, now he who has found himself denies himself. How does he deny himself? Hear: And I will say to him, I have sinned, he says, against heaven and before you. He denies himself. I am no longer worthy to be called your son (Luke 15:11–19). Behold what the holy martyrs did. They despised the things that were outside; all the allurements of this world, all its errors and terrors, whatever pleased, whatever terrified, all of it they despised, all of it they trod underfoot. They came also to themselves, and they paid attention to themselves; they found themselves in themselves, they were displeasing to themselves: they ran to Him by Whom they might be formed, in Whom they might come to life again, in Whom they might remain, in Whom there might perish what they had begun to be through their own selves, and there might remain what He Himself had established in them. This is to deny oneself.

4. Peter's fear on hearing of the future passion of Christ. What it is to deny oneself. This the apostle Peter could not yet grasp, when to our Lord Jesus Christ, foretelling His passion, he said: Far be it from You, Lord, this shall not happen. He feared lest Life should die. Just now, when the holy Gospel was being read, you heard what blessed Peter answered to the Saviour as He foretold His passion for us, and in a certain manner promised it. The captive was contradicting the Redeemer. What are you doing, Apostle? How can you contradict? How can you say, This shall not happen? Is the Lord then not to suffer? The word of the cross is a scandal to you: to those who are perishing it is foolishness. You are to be redeemed, and you contradict the merchant? Let Him suffer: He knows what He is doing, He knows why He has come, He knows how to seek you, He knows how to find you. Do not teach your master; seek from His side your price. Listen rather to Him correcting you: do not you wish to correct; it is perverse, it is preposterous. Hear what He says: Go behind me. And because He said it, I say it; I will not keep silent the word of the Lord, nor do I offer insult to the Apostle. The Lord Christ says, Go behind me, Satan (Matt. 16:22–23). Why Satan? Because you wish to go before me. Do you not wish to be Satan? Go behind me. For if you go behind me, you follow me: if you follow me, you will take up your cross, and you will not be my counsellor, but my disciple. For why were you terrified when the Lord foretold His death? Why were you terrified, unless because you too feared to die? By fearing to die, you did not deny yourself; by loving yourself wrongly, you denied Him. But afterwards the blessed apostle Peter, after he had three times denied the Lord, blotted out that fault by weeping: strengthened by the Lord's rising again, built up, he died for Him Whom, fearing to die, he had denied; by confessing he found death, but by finding death he laid hold of life. And behold, now Peter does not die; there has passed away

all fear, no more tears for him, all things have gone away, he remains blessed with Christ. For he has trampled underfoot all the enticements from outside, the threats and the terrors: he has denied himself, taken up his cross, and followed the Lord. Hear also the apostle Paul denying himself: "Far be it from me," he says, "to glory, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through Whom the world is crucified to me, and I to the world" (Gal. 6:14). Hear him further denying himself: "I live," he says, "not I." An open denial of himself: but now there follows a glorious confession of Christ: "but Christ lives in me" (Gal. 2:20). What then is "Deny yourself"? Do not yourself live in yourself. What is "Do not yourself live in yourself"? Do not do your own will, but the will of Him Who dwells in you.

Sermon 331. On the Birthday of the Martyrs.

Chapter I. — 1. To love and to lose one's soul is understood in two ways. By that trumpet of the Gospel, when the Lord says, "Whoever loves his soul will lose it; and whoever loses it for My sake will find it" (Matt. 10:39, and John 12:25), the martyrs were kindled to battle; and they conquered, because they relied not on themselves but on the Lord. "Whoever loves his soul will lose it." What was said, "Whoever loves his soul will lose it," can be understood in two ways. If you love it, you lose it. And in another way: Do not love it, lest you lose it. The former way has this sense: If you love it, lose it. If therefore you love it, if you love it, lose it. Sow it here, and you will reap it in heaven. If the farmer does not lose his wheat in the sowing, he does not love it in the harvest. The other way runs thus: Do not love it, lest you lose it. Those who are afraid to die seem to themselves to love their souls. If the martyrs had loved their souls in this way, without doubt they would have lost them. For what would it profit to keep one's soul in this life, and lose it in the life to come? what would it profit to keep one's soul on earth, and lose it in heaven? And what is it to keep it? for how long to keep it? What you keep perishes from you: if you lose it, you find it in yourself. Behold, the martyrs kept their souls. And how would they be martyrs, if they had kept them for ever? But look, if they had kept them, would they have lived on until today? If by denying Christ they had kept their souls in this life, would they not long ago have passed out of this life, and lost their souls all the same?

Chapter II. — But because they did not deny Christ, they passed from this world to the Father. They sought Christ by confessing; they held Him fast by dying. With great gain, therefore, they lost their souls: losing hay, earning a crown: earning, I say, a crown, and holding life without end.

2. It is not the penalty but the cause that makes a martyr. Those dying for Christ's sake took thought not for Christ but for themselves. In short, there comes to pass, indeed there has come to pass, in them what the Lord

subsequently added, And whoever loses his soul for My sake will find it. Whoever loses, He says, for My sake. The whole cause lies there. Whoever loses, not in just any manner, not for just any cause, but for My sake. For the martyrs had already said in prophecy, For Thy sake we are put to death all the day long (Ps. 43:22). Therefore it is not the penalty that makes a martyr, but the cause.

Chapter III. — When the Lord suffered, the cause distinguished three crosses. He was crucified between two robbers: on this side and on that, criminals were nailed up, in the middle He Himself. And as though that wood were a tribunal, He condemned the one who mocked, He crowned the one who confessed. What will He do when He comes to judge, if He could do this while being judged? Already, then, He was distinguishing the crosses. For if the penalty were asked about, Christ was like the robbers. But if anyone asks the cross why Christ was crucified, it answers us, For your sake. Let the martyrs too, then, say: And we have died for Thy sake. He for our sake, but we for His sake. But He for our sake, to confer a benefit on us; we, however, for His sake, not to bestow a benefit on Him. Accordingly provision has been made for us in both: both what flows from Him comes to us, and what is done for His sake returns to us. For He it is of Whom the soul that rejoices in the Lord says: I said to the Lord, Thou art my God; for Thou hast no need of my goods (Ps. 15:2). For what is "of my goods", except of those given by Thee? And how does He need any good, from Whom every good is given?

Chapter IV. — 3. The gifts of God are common to the good and the bad. Something proper is kept for the good. He gave us nature, that we might exist; He gave a soul, that we might live; He gave a mind, that we might understand; He gave nourishment, that we might sustain mortal life; He gave light from heaven, springs from the earth. But all these are gifts common to the good and the bad. If He gave these even to the bad, does He then keep nothing proper for the good? Plainly He does. And what is that which He keeps for the good? What eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has ascended into the heart of man. For what has ascended into the heart of man was below the heart of man: it ascended into the heart for this reason, that the heart into which it ascended is above it. What He keeps for the good, thither the heart ascends. Not what ascends into your heart, but that to which your heart ascends, this God keeps for you. Do not hear deafly, Lift up the heart. What, therefore, eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has ascended into the heart of man: eye has not seen, because it is not colour; ear has not heard, because it is not sound; nor has it ascended into the heart, because it is not an earthly thought. Understand it thus: What eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has ascended into the heart of man, which God has prepared for those who love Him (1 Cor. 2:9).

Chapter V. — 4. God Himself will be the reward of the good. Perhaps you will still ask me what this is. Ask Him Who has begun to dwell in you. Yet I too tell what I perceive about it. For this is what you are asking: what God keeps as proper to the good, if He bestows such great things on both the bad and the good. And when I said, What eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has ascended into the heart of man, there are not lacking those who say, What do you suppose it is? Behold what it is that God keeps for the good alone, whom nevertheless He Himself has made good