Homily 59 — John 9, verse 34, to 10, verse 13

“And they cast him out. And Jesus heard that they had cast him out; and when he had found him, he said to him, ‘Do you believe in the Son of God?’ He answered and said, ‘Who is he, Lord, that I may believe in him?’” And the rest of the passage. [a]

Those who suffer anything terrible and are insulted for the sake of the truth and of confessing Christ are the ones who are honored most. For just as the one who loses his possessions for Christ’s sake is the very one who most truly finds them, and the one who hates his own life is the very one who most truly loves it, so too the one who is insulted is the one who is most honored. That is what happened in the case of the blind man. The Jews cast him out of the temple, and the Lord of the temple found him. He was cut off from that company of public pests, and he met the Fountain of salvation. He was dishonored by those who dishonored Christ, and he was honored by the Lord of the angels. Such are the prizes of truth. So it is with us too: if we leave our possessions in this world, we find confidence in the next; if we give to the afflicted here, we will have rest in heaven; if we are insulted for God’s sake, we are honored both here and there.

When they had cast him out of the temple, Jesus found him. The evangelist shows that he came for the purpose of meeting him. And notice how he rewards him: with the greatest of all blessings. He made himself known to a man who did not know him before, and enrolled him in the company of his own disciples. Notice too how exactly the evangelist describes what happened. When Christ had said, “Do you believe in the Son of God?” the man replied, “Lord, who is he?” For he did not yet know him, although he had been healed, because he had been blind before he came to his benefactor, and after the cure he was being harried by those dogs. So, like a judge at the games, Christ receives the champion who had toiled hard and won the crown.

And what does he say? “Do you believe in the Son of God?” What is this? After so much arguing against the Jews, after so many words, he asks him, “Do you believe?” He did not say it out of ignorance. He wanted to make himself known, and to show that he valued the man’s faith highly. He says: “This great crowd has insulted me, but I take no account of them. One thing I care about: that you should believe. For one who does the will of God is better than ten thousand lawbreakers.” “Do you believe in the Son of God?” He asks this as one who had been there and who approved of what the man had said. And first he brought him to long for him. For he did not say outright, “Believe,” but put it as a question. What did the man say, then? “Lord, who is he, that I may believe in him?” These are the words of a soul that longs and searches. He does not know the one in whose defense he had said so much, so that you may learn his love of the truth. For he had not yet seen him.

Verse 37: “Jesus said to him, ‘You have both seen him, and it is he who is speaking with you.’”

He did not say, “I am he,” but still spoke in a veiled and reserved way: “You have both seen him.” This was still uncertain, so he adds more clearly, “It is he who is speaking with you.”

Verse 38: “He said, ‘Lord, I believe’; and he worshiped him.” He did it at once.

Christ did not say, “I am the one who healed you, who told you, ‘Go, wash in Siloam.’” He kept silent on all these points and says, “Do you believe in the Son of God?” And then the man, showing his great earnestness, worshiped at once. Few of those who were healed had done this: the lepers, for instance, and a few others. By this act he declared Christ’s divine power. For so that no one would think that what he had said was mere words, he added the deed as well. When he had worshiped, Christ said:

Verse 39: “For judgment I have come into the world, that those who do not see may see, and that those who see may be made blind.”

Paul says the same: “What shall we say, then? That the Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness, have attained righteousness, the righteousness that is by the faith of Jesus; but Israel, who pursued the law of righteousness, has not attained to the law of righteousness” (Romans 9, verses 30 and 31). By saying, “For judgment I have come into this world,” he both made the man stronger in his faith and roused those who were following him; for the Pharisees were following him. And he said “For judgment” to point to a heavier punishment. He was showing that those who had passed sentence on him had received sentence against themselves, and that those who had condemned him as a sinner were themselves the ones condemned. In this passage he speaks of two recoveries of sight and two kinds of blindness: one of the senses, the other spiritual.

Verse 40: “Some of those who were following him said to him, ‘Are we also blind?’”

Just as in another place they said, “We have never been slaves to anyone,” and, “We were not born of sexual immorality” (John 8, verses 33 and 41), so now they gape at material things alone, and are ashamed of this kind of blindness. Then, to show that it would have been better for them to be blind than seeing, he says:

Verse 41: “If you were blind, you would have no sin.”

Since they thought the misfortune something to be ashamed of, he turns it back on their own heads, telling them that “this very thing would have made your punishment more bearable.” So he cuts away their human thoughts on every side and leads them to a lofty and wonderful idea.

“But now you say, ‘We see.’”

As he says in that other place, “of whom you said that he was your God” (John 8, verse 54), so here too: “Now you say that you see, but you do not see.” He shows that what they thought a great thing to boast of brought punishment on them. He had also comforted the man blind from birth about his former disability, and then he speaks about their blindness. For he directs his whole speech to this end, so that they may not say: “We did not refuse to come to you because of our blindness. We turn away and avoid you as a deceiver.”

And it is not without reason that the evangelist has mentioned that those of the Pharisees who were with him heard these things and said, “Are we blind also?” It is to remind you that these were the men who first withdrew from him and then stoned him. They were people who followed him superficially and easily switched to the opposite opinion. [f]

How, then, does he prove that he is not a deceiver but a shepherd? By setting out the distinguishing marks both of the shepherd and of the deceiver and plunderer, and by giving them the chance, from these, to search out the truth of the matter. And first he shows who is a deceiver and a plunderer, describing him from the Scriptures, and saying:

Chapter 10, verse 1: “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever does not enter the sheepfold by the door, but climbs up some other way, that one is a thief and a robber.”

Notice the marks of a robber. First, he does not enter openly. Second, he does not enter according to the Scriptures; that is what “not by the door” means. Here, too, he is referring both to those who had come before him and to those who would come after him: Antichrist and the false Christs, Judas and Theudas, and any others of that kind there have been. And he rightly calls the Scriptures “a door,” for they bring us to God and open the knowledge of God to us. They make us sheep, they guard the sheep, and they do not let the wolves come in after them. For Scripture, like a strong door, bars the way against the heretics. It keeps us safe in everything we desire and does not let us wander; and if we do not unbar it ourselves, we will not easily be overcome by our enemies. By it we can recognize everyone, both those who are shepherds and those who are not.

But what is “into the sheepfold”? It refers to the sheep and the care of them. For the one who does not use the Scriptures but “climbs up some other way” (that is, who cuts out for himself another, unaccustomed way), “that one is a thief.”

Do you see from this too that Christ is in agreement with the Father, since he brings forward the Scriptures? That is also why he said to the Jews, “Search the Scriptures” (John 5, verse 39). He brought forward Moses and called him and all the prophets as witnesses. “All who hear the prophets,” he says, “will come to me”; and, “If you had believed Moses, you would have believed me.” But here he has put the same thing in a figure. And by saying, “climbs up some other way,” he was alluding to the scribes, because they taught human doctrines as commandments and broke the law (Matthew 15, verse 9). He reproached them for this, saying, “None of you keeps the law” (John 7, verse 19). He was right to say “climbs up” and not “enters,” since climbing is what a thief does, one who means to get over a wall and does everything at his own risk.

Have you seen how he has sketched the robber? Now look at the character of the shepherd. What is it?

Verses 2 to 4: “Whoever enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep. The doorkeeper opens to him, and the sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own by name. And when he has brought them out, he goes ahead of them.”

He has set down the marks of the shepherd and of the evildoer. Now let us see how he has fitted what follows to them. “To him,” he says, “the doorkeeper opens.” He keeps up the metaphor to make what he says more forceful. But if you want to examine the parable word by word, nothing prevents you from taking Moses to be the doorkeeper, since the oracles of God were entrusted to him. [i]

“Whose voice the sheep hear, and he calls his own by name.” They kept saying everywhere that he was a deceiver, and they backed this up with their own unbelief, saying, “Has any of the rulers believed in him?” (John 7, verse 48). So he shows that they had no right to call him a plunderer and deceiver because those people did not believe. Rather, because they paid him no attention, they were shut out even from the ranks of the sheep. For if it is a shepherd’s part to enter by the usual door, and he entered by it, then all who followed him might be sheep. But those who tore themselves away did no harm to the Shepherd’s reputation; they cast themselves out of the family of the sheep.

And if further on he says that he is “the door,” we must not be troubled again. He also calls himself “Shepherd” and “Sheep,” and in different ways sets forth the different parts of his plan of salvation. When he brings us to the Father, he calls himself “a door”; when he takes care of us, “a shepherd.” And he calls himself a shepherd so that you will not suppose that bringing us to the Father is his only work.

“And the sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep, and leads them out, and goes ahead of them.” Shepherds, in fact, do the opposite: they follow behind them. But he does otherwise, to show that he will lead everyone to the truth. So too when he sent out the sheep, he sent them not out of the wolves’ way but “in the midst of wolves” (Matthew 10, verse 16). For this way of keeping sheep is far more wonderful than ours. He seems to me also to be alluding to the blind man. For he “called” him too, and “led” him “out” from the midst of the Jews; and the man heard “his voice” and “knew” it.

Verse 5: “And they will not follow a stranger, for they do not know the voice of strangers.”

Here he is certainly speaking of Theudas and Judas (for “all who believed them,” Scripture says, “were scattered,” Acts 5, verse 36), or of the false Christs who would deceive people after that time. So that no one would say he was one of these, he sets himself apart from them in many ways. The first difference he sets down is his teaching from the Scriptures: he led people to himself by means of them, but the others did not draw people after them from the Scriptures. The second is the obedience of the sheep: they all believed in him, not only while he lived but after he had died; the others they quickly left. With these we may name a third difference, and no small one. They did everything as rebels and to stir up revolts. But he kept himself so far from any such suspicion that when they wanted to make him king, he fled; and when they asked, “Is it lawful to pay tax to Caesar?” he told them to pay it, and he himself paid the didrachma (Matthew 17, verse 27).

Besides this, he came to save the sheep, “that they might have life, and have it more abundantly” (verse 10); but the others robbed them even of this present life. They betrayed those entrusted to them and fled; but he stood his ground so nobly that he even gave up his life. They suffered what they suffered unwillingly, under compulsion, and wanting to escape; but he endured everything willingly and by choice.

Verse 6: “Jesus spoke this parable to them, but they did not understand what the things were that he was saying to them.”

Why did he speak obscurely? Because he wanted to make them more attentive. Once he had done this, he removes the obscurity, saying:

Verse 9: “I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will go in and out and find pasture.”

It is as if he had said, “He will be in safety and security.” (By “pasture” he means here his nourishing and feeding of the sheep, and his power and lordship.) That is, “he will remain inside, and no one will drive him out.” This is what happened in the case of the apostles, who came in and went out securely, as men who had become masters of the whole world, and no one could cast them out.

Verse 8: “All who came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not hear them.”

He is not speaking here of the prophets, as the heretics claim. For all who believed in Christ also heard the prophets and were persuaded by them. He is speaking of Theudas and Judas and the other stirrers of sedition. Besides, he says, “the sheep did not hear them,” as praise of the sheep. Now nowhere is he seen praising those who refused to listen to the prophets; on the contrary, he reproaches and accuses them fiercely. So it is clear that “did not hear” refers to those leaders of sedition.

Verse 10: “The thief comes only to steal and to kill and to destroy.”

This is what happened then, when all their followers were killed and perished.

“But I have come that they might have life, and that they might have more.” And what, tell me, is “more” than life? The kingdom of heaven. But he does not say this yet; he dwells on the word “life,” which was familiar to them.

Verse 11: “I am the good shepherd.”

Here he next speaks about his suffering, showing that it would be for the salvation of the world, and that he did not come to it unwillingly. Then he again mentions the character of the shepherd and of the hired hand.

“For the shepherd lays down his life.”

Verse 12: “But he who is a hired hand and not a shepherd, who does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming, and leaves the sheep and runs away, and the wolf comes and snatches them.”

Here he declares himself to be Master just as the Father is, since he is the Shepherd and the sheep are his. Do you see how he speaks in a loftier tone in his parables, where the sense is veiled, and gives his hearers no open handle to seize? What does this hired hand do, then? He “sees the wolf coming, and leaves the sheep, and the wolf comes and scatters them.” That is what those false teachers did; but he did the opposite. For when he was arrested, he said, “Let these men go their way,” so that the saying might be fulfilled that not one of them was lost (John 18, verses 8 and 9).

Here too we may suspect that a spiritual wolf is meant; for Christ did not allow him either to come and seize the sheep. But he is not only a wolf; he is also a lion. “For our adversary the devil,” Scripture says, “walks about like a roaring lion” (First Peter 5, verse 8). He is also a serpent and a dragon; for it says, “Tread on serpents and scorpions” (Luke 10, verse 19).

So, I beg you, let us stay in the pasture under this Shepherd. And we will stay there if we obey him, if we hear his voice, if we do not follow a stranger. And what is his voice? “Blessed are the poor in spirit; blessed are the pure in heart; blessed are the merciful” (Matthew 5, verses 3, 8 and 7). If we do this, we will stay under the Shepherd, and the wolf will not be able to get in; or if he does come against us, he will do it to his own harm. For we have a Shepherd who loves us so much that he gave even his life for us. Since, then, he is both powerful and loves us, what is there to keep us from being saved? Nothing, unless we ourselves rebel against him. [o]

And how can we rebel? Hear him saying, “You cannot serve two masters, God and mammon” (Matthew 6, verse 24). If, then, we serve God, we will not submit to the tyranny of mammon. And truly the desire for riches is more bitter than any tyranny. It brings no pleasure, but worries and envy and plotting and hatred and false accusations, and ten thousand hindrances to virtue: laziness, loose living, greediness, drunkenness. These make even free men slaves. No, worse than slaves bought with money: slaves not to men, but to the most grievous of the passions and diseases of the soul. A man like that dares many things that displease God and people, dreading that someone may take this mastery away from him.

O bitter slavery and devilish tyranny! For this is the most grievous thing of all: that when we are tangled in such evils, we are pleased with them and hug our chains. We live in a prison full of darkness and refuse to come out into the light; we rivet the evil onto ourselves and rejoice in our disease. So we cannot be freed, but are worse off than those who work the mines: we endure the labor and the misery but do not enjoy the fruit. And what is truly worse than all, if anyone wants to free us from this bitter captivity, we do not allow it, but are even annoyed and displeased. In this we are no better off than madmen. Or rather, we are far more wretched than any of them, since we are not even willing to be delivered from our madness.

What? Was it for this, my friend, that you were brought into the world? Was it for this that you were made a human being, to work in these mines and gather gold? God did not create you in his image for this, but so that you might please him, gain the things to come, and join the choir of angels. Why, then, do you banish yourself from such a kinship, and thrust yourself into the depths of dishonor and meanness?

The one who was born of the same birth pangs as you (the spiritual birth pangs, I mean) is perishing of hunger, and you are bursting with fullness. Your brother goes about with his body bare, and you provide clothes even for your clothes, heaping up all this clothing for the worms. How much better it would have been to put them on the bodies of the poor! Then they would have remained undestroyed; they would have freed you from all worry and won you the life to come. If you do not want them to be moth-eaten, give them to the poor. These are the people who know how to shake out these garments well. The body of Christ is more precious and more secure than your chest. It not only keeps the clothes safe and preserves them from being eaten away; it even makes them brighter. Often the chest is carried off along with the clothes and causes you the heaviest loss; but not even death can harm this storehouse. With it we need no doors or bolts, no servants keeping watch, no other such protection. Our possessions are safe from every treacherous attack and are kept under guard, as we may suppose things laid up in heaven would be; for that place is out of reach of all wickedness.

We never stop saying these things to you, and you hear them and are not persuaded. The reason is that our souls are mean, gaping at the earth, groveling on the ground. Or rather, far be it from me to condemn all of you of wickedness, as though all were incurably sick. For even if those who are drunk with riches stop their ears against my words, those who live in poverty will be able to see clearly what I am saying.

Someone says: “But what has this to do with the poor? They have no gold, or any such garments.” No, but they have bread and cold water. They have two obols. They have feet to visit the sick. They have a tongue and speech to comfort the bedridden. They have a house and a roof to take in the stranger. We do not demand so many talents of gold from the poor; these we ask from the rich. But if a man is poor and comes to the doors of others, our Lord is not ashamed to accept even an obol, and he will say that he has received more from that giver than from those who put in much.

How many of those who stand here now would like to have been born in that time when Christ went about the earth in the flesh, so as to have talked with him and eaten at his table? Look, this can be done now. We can invite him to a meal even more than they could then, and feast with him, and to greater profit. For of those who feasted with him then, many were even lost, like Judas and others like him. But everyone who invites him into his house now, and shares table and roof with him, will enjoy a great blessing. “Come,” it says, “you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food; I was thirsty and you gave me drink; I was a stranger and you took me in; sick, and you visited me; I was in prison and you came to me” (Matthew 25, verses 34 to 36).

So that we may hear these words, let us clothe the naked, take in the stranger, feed the hungry, give the thirsty a drink; let us visit the sick and look in on the one in prison, so that we may have confidence and obtain forgiveness of our sins, and share in those good things that are beyond both speech and thought. May we all obtain them, through the grace and love for humankind of our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory and the might forever. Amen.