Augustine, Sermones 341-346 (Classis IV, de Diversis)

Sermon 344. On the love of God and the love of the world.

1. The struggle between the love of God and the love of the world. Two loves wrestle with each other in this life in every temptation, the love of the world and the love of God; and whichever of these two wins draws the lover there as if by a weight. For it is not by wings or feet but by affections that we come to God. And again, it is not by bodily knots and chains but by contrary affections that we cling to the earth. Christ came to change love, and to make of an earthly lover a lover of the heavenly life: He Who made us men was made man for our sake; and God took up man, so that He might make men gods. Here is the contest set before us, this wrestling with the flesh, this wrestling with the devil, this wrestling with the world. But let us trust, because He Who proclaimed this contest does not watch it without His help, nor does He urge us to presume upon our own strength. For whoever presumes upon his own strength, since he is certainly a man, presumes upon the strength of a man: and cursed is everyone who puts his hope in man (Jer. 17:5). Burning with the flame of this holy and devout love, the martyrs burned up the hay of the flesh by the strength of the mind; but they themselves, whole in spirit, came to Him by Whom they were set alight. Yet to the very flesh that showed this contempt due honour will be rendered in the resurrection of the dead. For this is why it is sown in dishonour, that it may rise again in glory.

2. God is to be loved above parents. To those kindled with this love, or rather so that they may be kindled, He says this: Whoever loves father or mother above Me is not worthy of Me: and whoever does not take up his cross and follow Me is not worthy of Me (Matt. 10:37–38). He did not take away the love of parents, of wife, of children, but set it in order: He did not say, Whoever loves; but, whoever loves above Me. This is what the Church says in the Song of Songs: He set charity in order in me (Song 2:4). Love your father, but not above the Lord: love the one who begot you, but not above the Creator. Your father begot you, but he did not himself form you: for who or what kind of person would be born to him, he did not know when he sowed the seed. Your father nourished you, but it was not from his own that the father provided bread for you when hungry. Finally, whatever your father keeps for you on earth, he departs so that you may succeed him; he will make room for your life by his death. But what God the Father keeps for you, He keeps with Himself; so that you may possess the inheritance together with the Father Himself, and not wait for Him as a successor waits for a predecessor, but cling to Him Who will remain for ever, yourself to remain in Him for ever. Love your father, then, but not above your God. Love your mother, but not above the Church, which begot you to eternal life. In short, from the love of parents themselves weigh how much you ought to love God and the Church. For if those who begot one destined to die are to be loved so much, with how much charity are those to be loved who begot one destined to come to eternity and to remain in eternity? Love your wife, love your children according to God, so that you may see to it that they worship God with you: when you are joined to Him, you will fear no separation. Therefore you ought not to love them more than God, for you love them altogether wrongly if you neglect

to lead [them] with you to God. Perhaps the hour of martyrdom will come. You wish to confess Christ. Having confessed, you will perhaps receive a punishment for a time, you will receive temporal death. Father, or wife, or son coax you not to die, and by coaxing they bring it about that you die. If they do not bring it about, then there will come into your mind: He who loves father, or mother, or wife, or sons above Me, is not worthy of Me.

3. Human affection to be overcome by the example of Christ. The human will in Christ shrinking from death. But carnal affection is swayed by the coaxings of one's own, and in a certain way human softness gives way. Draw in the folds of your flowing garment, gird yourself with virtue. Does love of the flesh torment you? Take up your cross, and follow the Lord. Even your Saviour Himself, though God in the flesh, though God with the flesh, nevertheless showed you human affection, where He says: Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me (Matt. 26:39). He knew that this cup could not pass; He had come to drink it. By will, not by necessity, was that cup to be drunk. He was almighty: had He wished, it would certainly have passed, because He is God with the Father, and He Himself and God the Father are one God. But from the form of a servant, from that which He took from you for you, He uttered the voice of a man, the voice of the flesh. He deigned to transfigure you in Himself, so that from Him you might speak weak things, so that in Him you might lay hold of strong things. He showed the will by which you could be tempted; and at once He taught which will, to which will, you ought to prefer. Father, He says, if it can be, let this cup pass from Me. This will is human; I bear a man, I speak from the form of a servant. Father, if it can be, let this cup pass. It is the voice of the flesh, not of the spirit; the voice of weakness, not of divinity. If it can be, let this cup pass. That is the will of which it is also said to Peter: But when you have grown old, another will gird you, and take you up, and carry you where you do not wish (John 21:18). Whence then did the martyrs too conquer? Because they set the will of the spirit before the will of the flesh. They loved this life, and they weighed it. From this they considered how much the eternal life ought to be loved, if this perishing one is so loved. One who is going to die does not wish to die; and yet he will of necessity be dying, though continually unwilling to die. You achieve nothing by not wishing to die, you effect nothing, you extort nothing: you have no power of removing the necessity of death. What you fear will come, though you are unwilling; what you put off will be present, though you refuse. For you take pains to put off death; surely not to take it away? If then among the lovers of this life such pains are taken over putting off death, how much labour should be given to taking it away? You certainly do not wish to die. Change your love, and a death is shown to you, not one which will be present though you are unwilling, but one which, if you so wish, will not be.

4. Death twofold, the first and the second. The first death to be undergone of necessity by all, the other prepared for the wicked alone. From temporal death a man redeems himself with money; from eternal death, with righteousness. The blood of Christ shed for our redemption. See then whether love has awakened somewhat in your heart, whether a spark has flashed out from the ashes of the flesh, whether it has gained some strength in your heart, such that by the wind of temptation it is not only not extinguished but even kindled more vehemently: if you do not burn like tow, such that

you are extinguished by one light breath; but you burn like oak, you burn like a coal, so that by a breath you are rather stirred up: see two deaths, one temporal, and the same the first; the other everlasting, and the same the second. The first death is prepared for all: the second for the wicked alone, the impious, the unbelieving, the blasphemers, and whatever else is opposed to sound doctrine. Attend, set before yourself these two deaths. If it can be done, you do not wish to suffer either. I know, you love to live, you do not wish to die; and you would like to pass from this life into another life in such a way that you would not rise again as one dead, but would be changed for the better while alive. This you would like; this human affection holds; this the soul itself somehow holds in its will and desire. Since by loving life it hates death: and since it does not hate its own flesh, it does not wish to happen to it what it hates. For no one ever hated his own flesh (Eph. 5:29). This affection the Apostle shows, where he says: We have a dwelling from God, a house not made by hand, eternal in the heavens. For in this we groan, desiring to be clothed over with our habitation which is from heaven. In which we do not wish, he says, to be stripped, but to be clothed over, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. You do not wish to be stripped: but you must be stripped. Yet you must act so that, stripped through death of the fleshly tunic, you may be found clothed with the breastplate of faith. For this he adds as he goes on: If indeed we are found clothed, not naked (2 Cor. 5:1–4). For the first death is going to strip you of the flesh, to be laid aside for the meantime, and to be taken back in its own time. This, whether you will or not. For you will not rise again because you wish it; nor, if you do not wish it, will you not rise again; nor, if you do not believe in the resurrection, will you for that reason not rise again. What is needed is rather that you act so that, since you are going to rise again whether you will or not, you may rise again in such a way as to have what you wish. For the Lord Jesus Himself said: The hour is coming, when all who are in the tombs will hear His voice, and will come forth, whether they be good, or whether they be bad; all who are in the tombs will hear His voice, and will come forth, and will be sent out from their hiding places. No creature will hold a dead man under the voice of the living Creator. All, He says, who are in the tombs will hear His voice, and will come forth. In saying All, He made as it were a confusion and an intermingling. But hear the distinction, hear also the separation: those who have done good things, He says, to the resurrection of life; those who have done evil things, to the resurrection of judgement (John 5:28–29). This judgement, to undergo which the impious will rise again, is called the second death. Why then, Christian, do you fear that first one? It will come even against your will, and it will be present even though you refuse. You ransom yourself, perhaps, from the barbarians, so as not to be killed: you ransom yourself at a great price, you do not spare your goods at all, and you strip your children; and once ransomed you will die tomorrow. You must be ransomed from the devil, who drags you with him to the second death, where the impious placed on the left will hear, Go, accursed ones, into the eternal fire, which has been prepared for the devil and his angels (Matt. 25:41). From that second death you must be ransomed. You will answer, With what? Do not seek goats and bulls: do not, finally, ransack your strongbox, and say in your mind, To ransom myself from the barbarians I had money: to ransom yourself from the second death, have justice. The barbarian himself could take your money from you beforehand, and afterwards lead you captive,

so that there would be nothing with which you could redeem yourself, since he who had possessed you too would be possessing all your goods: justice you do not lose against your will; it remains in the inmost treasury of the heart; hold it fast, possess it, by it you are redeemed from the second death. If you do not want it, it will not be, for this reason: because that by which you will redeem yourself from this death will be there, if you want it. The will obtains justice from the Lord, and drinks it as from its own fountain. And no one is forbidden to approach this fountain, if he approaches worthily. Lastly, consider your help. Your silver redeemed you from the barbarians, your money redeemed you from the first death: the blood of your Lord redeemed you from the second death. He had blood with which to redeem us; and for this He took blood, that there might be blood which He could pour out for our redemption. The blood of your Lord, if you will, was given for you: if you refuse to be [so], it was not given for you. For perhaps you say: My God had blood with which to redeem me: but now that He has suffered, He has given it all; what has remained to Him that He might give for me too? This is the great thing, that He gave once, and gave for all. The blood of Christ is salvation to the willing, punishment to the unwilling. Why then do you, who do not want to die, hesitate to be freed rather from the second death? From it you are freed, if you are willing to take up your cross and follow the Lord; because He carried His own, and sought a servant.

5. How much eternal life is to be loved, when temporal life is loved so much. Against those who through love of temporal life lose eternal life. Surely, my brothers, those who love temporal life in this way are urging you most strongly to love eternal life, are they not? How much do men do, that they may live a few days? Who will be able to count up the efforts and strivings of all who want to live and after a little while die? How much do they do for those few days themselves? What do we do as much for eternal life? What shall I say, for redeeming a few days, and those on earth? For I say a few days, if the one set free grows old; I say a few days, if the one set free as a boy has become decrepit. I do not say that, redeemed today, he will perhaps die tomorrow. See, for an uncertainty, for the sake of those few uncertain days, how much they do! what things they devise! If through bodily illness they come into a physician's hands, and all hope of health is given up by those who examine them and pronounce on them; if some physician is promised who is able to free even one given up for lost, how much is promised! how much is given, entirely for an uncertainty! That one may live a little, that is given up by which one lives. And again, if someone has fallen into the hands of an enemy or a robber, so that he may not be killed, so that he may be redeemed, even if it is a father who has been detained, the sons run, and spend what he was going to leave them, to redeem one whom they might [soon] carry out to burial. What canvassing! what prayers! what efforts! who could set this out? And yet I want to say something more serious, and, were it not done, more incredible. For what am I saying, that men give money in order to live, that they leave nothing for themselves? To live a little while for a few days, and those uncertain, to live with fear, to live with toil, how much do they spend! how much do they give! Woe to the human race! I have said that in order to live they spend that by which they live: hear what is worse, what is more serious, what is more wicked, what is, as I said, incredible, were it not done. That they may be allowed to live a little while, they give even that by which they could live for ever. Hear what I have said,

and understand. For it is still closed, and yet it moves many, to whom the Lord has already opened it when it was closed. Leave aside those who give and lose that by which they can live, so that they may be granted to live a little while. Attend to those who lose that by which they can live for ever, so that they may be granted to live a little while. What is this? It is called faith, it is called piety: all this is like money, by which eternal life is acquired. The enemy will come at you from the side, terrifying you, and he will not say to you, Give me your money, that you may live; but he will say to you, Deny Christ, that you may live. If you do this, so that you may be allowed to live a little while, you will lose that by which you could live for ever. Is this loving life, you who feared death? Good man, why did you fear death, except by loving life? Christ is life. Why do you seek a small life, so as to lose the secure one? Or perhaps you did not lose faith, but had none to lose? Hold fast, then, to that by which you may live for ever. Consider your neighbour, how much he does that he may live a little. Consider also him who denied Christ, how great an evil he did for the sake of a few days of life. And will you not despise those few days of life, so that you may die on no day, and live in an everlasting day, be protected by your Redeemer, be made equal to the Angels in the eternal kingdom? What did you love? what did you lose? You did not take up your cross in order to follow the Lord.

6. To lose the soul, that the soul may be found. See how prudent He wishes you to be, He who said to you: Take up your cross, and follow Me. Whoever finds, He says, his soul will lose it; and whoever loses it for My sake will find it (Matt. 10:38–39). Whoever finds it will lose it; whoever loses it will find it. That you may lose it, the first thing is that you find it; and when you have lost it, the last thing is that you find it again. There are two findings: in the middle is that by which a single loss passes. No one can lose his soul for Christ's sake unless he has first found it; and no one can find his soul in Christ unless he has first lost it. Find, that you may lose; lose, that you may find. How are you first to find it, so that you may have something to lose? When you consider yourself as in part mortal, when you consider Him who made you, and by breathing into you created a soul for you, and you see that you owe it to Him who gave it, that it must be returned to Him who lent it, that it must be kept by Him who established it, you have found your soul, finding it in faith. For you believed this, and you found your soul. For you were lost before you believed. You found your soul: for you had been dead in unbelief, you came to life again in faith. You are such a one of whom it could be said, He was dead, and has come to life again; he had perished, and is found (Luke 15:32). Therefore you have found your soul in the faith of truth, if you have come to life again from the death of unbelief. That is, you have found your soul. Lose it, and let your soul be seed for you. For the farmer too, by threshing and winnowing, finds the wheat, and again by sowing loses the wheat. It is found on the threshing-floor, what had perished in the sowing. That perishes in the sowing which is to be found in the harvest. Whoever, therefore, finds his soul will lose it. He who toils to gather, why is he slow to sow?

7. For whose sake we are commanded to lose the soul. See, however, where you find it, and why you lose it. For whence would you have found it,