Augustine, Sermones 388-395 (Classis V, Sermones dubii)

ancient enemy, that is, the devil, so that he might repent of his good work and by grumbling wipe out what he had rightly done by obeying, sent in a thief and took away the whole, from which only a little had been given to the poor. The devil was expecting the voice of one blaspheming; he found that of one praising: he was expecting a stumbling to take place; he found a strengthening. The enemy did indeed want this, that he should repent, and he did repent. But see of what. Wretch that I am, he says, who did not give everything! For what I have lost is what I did not give. For I did not put it there where the thief does not come]. Therefore if this is the counsel, etc.

Sermon 390. On giving alms, 3.

1. Almsgiving the companion of fasting in holy men. The counsel to send riches ahead into heaven. We wish, as far as the Lord grants, to exhort your Charity to the giving of alms, which are accustomed in holy and faithful men to be the companions of fasting, so that what is taken from the one who has may be added to the one who has not: so that, when to your own profit you defraud your soul, you may withdraw from the flesh what you may establish in heaven. For there you have your granary, there you have your keeper. For where men may most safely place what they love on earth, they hire for themselves the best-fortified places, and as far as they can they take pains to keep it for themselves where thieves cannot get at it. And though they wish this, and keep it so, when can it come about on earth? Perhaps the keeper himself will be the thief. The Lord Jesus Christ, attending to this, to what men want and what they attempt when they keep their goods on earth, gave counsel. Keep it in heaven, entrust it to Me. He, then, Who commanded you to give did not wish you to lose, but to move it. Let your property go before you, who are going to follow. What you do not send ahead to that place, where you will not be for long, you do not know who after you may possess what you have kept. Lift from here, then, what you love, lest by loving it here you cling, and by clinging you both lose and perish. Your Lord Himself is the keeper of you and of yours. If a close friend of yours, perhaps about keeping grain, were to give you counsel in your ignorance, that you should lift it from the lower places to the upper, where you would keep it better, would you not accept his counsel? Your Lord, then, gives you this: He wishes neither you nor what is yours to be spoiled. Put it here, if you do not wish to lose it. Do you wish to know what is going on? I know that no one can give better counsel about this building than He Who made it. You say, Where shall I store it? He answers, In heaven: for so He says, Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where the thief does not dig through, nor does the moth spoil: for where your treasure will be, there will be also the heart

of yours (Matt. 6:20–21). Take advice, since the option of so great a granary has been offered to you, from which no notice-board has been hung up against you, so that you might possess [it] in perpetuity.

2. Riches are raised into heaven by paying them out. Alms are a loan at interest with God. Perhaps you will ask how you may lift your property up there? Do not fret, nor in your thinking go looking for ladders or some contrivances. But as is usually done for citizens settled abroad, make a transfer. Many indeed do this: when they find reliable persons, they give readily. Your Lord Christ did [so], rich above, poor here. He hungers here: He asks a transfer of you; He will restore what is fair. Why then do you hesitate, why do you put off giving? Or is He not reliable to repay? Give to the poor, you will not lose, do not fear: you give to Him when you give to one of His least. Hear the Gospel. When those placed at the right hand were dismayed, after certain needs had been listed, saying, When did we see You in these things? the Lord answers, When you did it to one of My least, you did it to Me (Matt. 25:37–40). I, I say, received, when the poor man received: in him I hungered, in him I was filled. Give without anxiety: the Lord receives, the Lord asks. You would not have anything to give Him, unless you had first received it from Him. If you lent to men at interest, you would burden them: here there is no such one as is burdened by interest. If you want to be a lender at interest, be one with Me, God says to you; give to Me: I repay with interest. Now then raise yourself up; enlarge your avarice. For perhaps a single solidus you are going to receive not ten, not a hundred, not a thousand, not land, but heaven. If you gave a pound of bronze and received [a pound] of silver, or a pound of silver and received [a pound] of gold, you would rejoice at your good fortune. What you give will indeed be changed; not gold, not silver, but eternal life will become yours. It will be changed, because you will be changed. He who gave will become an angel. What he gave will become an angelic seat. There is no remedy that frees from death except almsgiving. It is difficult for any man whatever to lead this life without sins. Pay out, then, my brothers, distribute your goods: make for yourselves purses that do not grow old, a treasure that abides in heaven. Hear the Psalm: Although man walks in an image, yet he is troubled in vain; he stores up treasure, and does not know for whom he gathers it (Ps. 38:7). Give, and it will be given to you (Luke 6:38).

Sermon 391. To the young.

1. No age is free from temptation. Not [even] childhood. My sermon is to you, O young men, flower of life, danger of the mind. Every time indeed, and every age in which this corruptible flesh is carried, cannot be free from temptations. And each good man wrestles in the contest, lest he be overcome by the adversary, and lives amid dangers, for as long as he contends with him, as in some sandy stadium, so in this mortality. For as soon as a man is born into the world, he enters a life full of misery, like a prophet of his future toil, with the proclamation of a tearful voice; even if not yet in his own mind, yet in the mind of his parents or of any men,

in whose hands its infirmity lies to be nourished, it can already be tempted and be carried off by the devil's snares, either through the bindings of accursed remedies, or through the sacrilegious rites of the Gentiles, or, if perhaps death presses, through neglect of the renunciation in saving Baptism. And, to sum up briefly, that age is tempted when it is loved by its own in the world and neglected in Christ. For it draws with it the offshoot of death, and is rooted in that wound of sin which was inflicted by the venomous tooth of the serpent on the first man, from whom we have drawn the origin of corruption. Hence holy Job says that no one is clean, that is, from the filth of sin, not even an infant whose life upon the earth is of one day (Job 14:4, LXX). But why should I speak of one already born, when David cries out with mournful voice and says, In iniquities was I conceived, and in sins did my mother conceive me (Ps. 50:7)? For the Baptisms of newly born little ones could seem superfluous, unless all were dying in Adam, and original sin ran through the parents' bowels as far as the fruit of offspring along the path of mortality: since the almighty Lord both forms the mortal creature by the law of His order, and the best Father supplies the immortality of renewal by the grace of mercy.

2. Nor old age. But if not even the infancy of mortal man is free from temptations, because of the bond of corruption, what shall I say of the other ages? Is old age perhaps exempt, and in flesh already near to a corpse have the blood and limbs grown cold to unlawful concupiscence, and has the matter of temptation withered away from a body already weary and almost dead? On the contrary, in wicked old men there is for the most part so great a whirlpool of greed and so insatiable a gulf of belly and gullet, that with as much prudence as good old men are made serene, with so much drunkenness are these buried: as if their dry bowels, drained of moisture, were bent for this purpose, that they must be watered with a flood of drunkenness to restore their former vigour. What of avarice, which is the root of all evils: does it not, in cold old men, burn the more fervently to acquire, the sooner it is to leave behind what it acquires? A wondrous madness indeed. For it hastens to load itself with heavier expenses when it has already arrived where it was heading.

3. Youth is assailed more strongly. If then the age of childhood and of old age is not free from temptations, of which the one, that is, childhood, has scarcely yet entered this life, the other is already leaving it; and the one a little before did not exist, the other a little after will not exist: what is to be thought, what is to be said of the ardour of youthful age, which, set in the middle between both, has already withdrawn from the infirmity of childhood and has not yet arrived at the torpor of old age? This age is shaken by more and greater storms of temptations; this is overwhelmed by the more frequent onset of the waves of the overflowing world. It presumes on its strength, it boasts of the dignity of its beauty, it either longs or rejoices to shine forth in the pomp of temporal things. And so to youth whatever truth has commanded is a poison of evils, whatever the devil has suggested is food: but the bitterness of justice is the medicine for the ulcer of that age; whereas the sweetness of injustice is the mousetrap of rashness. To this belongs what is written, Sweeter are the wounds of a friend than the willing kisses of an enemy (Prov. 27:6); and that which David says, The just man shall correct me in mercy, and shall rebuke me; but let not the oil of the sinner fatten my head (Ps. 140:5). Let truth burn, and yet heal: for the oil of the sinner, the adulation of the flatterer, soothes, but deceives. For there pride is soothed; but life slips away. For the Prophet speaks in the person of one who already seeks a physician, who bears the hand of the one healing him even with bitterness of pain, who desires his sickness to be healed rather than praised. But dangerous is the ulcer of youth, which catches fire with desires, swells with hope, wastes away with pleasures. But that hope belongs to the despairing, a hope of things that will perish, which does not release the wretched soul's affection but inflates it, and makes it unable to bear the touch of truth; so that, despairing even of its own immortality,

it loves to say, it loves also those who say these things to it, Let us eat and drink; for tomorrow we shall die: but it hates to say and to hear, Be sober, you righteous, and do not sin (1 Cor. 15:32, 34). It loves the pernicious gentleness of an enemy, it hates the wholesome harshness of a physician. This perversity, this madness, is to be feared most of all in the age of youth.

4. The words of the luxurious. Cruelty follows softness. Hence is born that talk of men who flow away into shameful deeds, and from there grow cruel into crimes: For they said, reasoning with themselves not rightly, Short and wearisome is the time of our life, and there is no refreshment at the end of a man, and there is no one known to have returned from the underworld. And a little after: Come therefore, let us enjoy the good things that are, and let us use the creation swiftly as in youth. Let us fill ourselves with costly wine and ointments; and the rest, which are woven together in the same place, the words of exultant luxury, of men despairing of eternal life, and placing their hope, as if on the sand of a torrent, so in the temporal corruption of the flesh. But from this immoderation of lusts and of shameful deeds rotting with worms, see into what misdeeds and into what monstrous crimes one leaps. For, drained and overthrown by the corruptions of immoderate and base offences, while they hate the severity of the truth that contradicts them, Let us therefore oppress, they say, the poor just man, and let us not spare the widow, nor reverence the grey hairs of old men of many years. But let our strength be the law of justice; for what is weak is found useless. Let us therefore surround the just man, since he is useless to us, and is contrary to our works. Such things did the impiety of the Jews devise concerning our Lord Jesus Christ. This is found more manifestly in the words that follow: for a little after they say, He professes to have the knowledge of God, and names Himself Son of God. Then again a little after they say: Let us examine Him with insult and torment, that we may know His reverence. Let us condemn Him to a most shameful death; for there will be regard for Him from His words. But mark what sentence the Holy Spirit passes upon them, when He immediately adds: These things they thought, and they erred; for their own malice blinded them (Wis. 2). See, therefore, from what stain arise all the horrible misdeeds that are feared in wicked men. For what is softer than that luxury? what is harder than this cruelty? Long before they were saying, Let us enjoy the good things that are, and let us use the creation swiftly as in youth; and let not the flower of the time pass us by, and everywhere let us leave tokens of gladness: now they say, Let us oppress the poor man, let us not spare the widow, nor reverence the old man. Let us surround the just man, let us examine Him with insult and torment, let us condemn Him to a most shameful death. Fury follows wine, torments follow ointments, blood follows roses, anger follows gladness. By such men the Lord was bound, beaten, slain. Who, from blooming garlands, would have feared bloody chains? Who, from sweet cups, would have foreseen most savage pains? Who, from soft meadows, would have foreknown so dread a wood of the cross? And yet no age in that luxury, except youth, was compared to the flower of the time. For thus they said: Let us use the creation swiftly as in youth.

5. Let the young not be captivated by things of sense. Let them turn themselves to the love of wisdom. You therefore, O young men, we most especially admonish and exhort, that you be captivated by the beauty of true virtue. Let no earthly beauty, no glitter of metals, no pleasantness of groves, no purples of flowers, no adornment of the flesh, whether natural or applied, no sound of any strings and pipes whatever, no agreeableness of odours, no sweetness of tastes, no embraces, be compared for you with the beauty, the inspiration, the sweetness, the comforts of wisdom. For we forbid you the things that are basely loved, not love itself. Do you wish to love? Love wisdom, strive to attain to her. So that her gaze may not shudder at you, set yourselves in order in the inner man. As wanton eyes seek the adornments of the body, so she seeks those of the heart.