Homily 7 — John 1, verse 9

“That was the true Light, which gives light to everyone who comes into the world.” [a]

My dearly beloved children, there is a reason we serve you the thoughts drawn from the Scriptures a portion at a time, instead of pouring everything out to you at once: it makes it easy for you to hold on to each thing as it is set before you in turn. It is the same in building. A builder who lays more stones on before the first ones have settled puts up a wall that is rotten through and easily knocked down. But one who waits for the mortar to harden first, and then adds the rest little by little, finishes the whole house solidly and makes it strong — not a house that lasts only a short time or easily falls to pieces. We imitate these builders, and we build up your souls the same way. For we are afraid that while the first foundation is still freshly laid, adding the thoughts that come next might damage what went before, because the mind is not able to take them all in at once.

What, then, has been read to us today? “That was the true Light, which gives light to everyone who comes into the world.” A little earlier, speaking of John, the evangelist said that he came “to bear witness to that Light,” and that he was sent in these days of ours. Someone hearing this might, because the witness had come so recently, form a similar suspicion about the one he witnessed to. To prevent that, the evangelist has lifted our thoughts up and carried them to that existence which is before every beginning, and which has neither end nor start.

But someone says: “How is it possible for him to be a Son and still have this kind of existence?” We are speaking of God, and you ask how? Aren’t you afraid? Don’t you shudder? Yet if someone asked you, “How will our souls and bodies have endless life in the world to come?” you would laugh at the question, on the ground that it is not for the human mind to search into such things, and that a person ought simply to believe and not pry into the matter, since he has proof enough of what was said in the power of the one who said it. And if we say that he who created our souls and bodies, and who surpasses all created things beyond comparison, is without beginning, will you demand that we tell you “How?” Who would call that the act of a well-ordered soul, or of sound reason?

You have heard, “That was the true Light.” Why are you straining, rashly and in vain, to get beyond this Life that has no limit by the force of your reasoning? You cannot do it. Why look for what cannot be looked for? Why pry into what cannot be grasped? Why search what cannot be searched out? Try looking straight at the very source of the sun’s rays. You cannot. Yet you are not annoyed or impatient at your weakness. How, then, have you become so daring and headlong in greater matters? John, the son of thunder, who sounds the trumpet of the Spirit, heard the word “was” from the Spirit and asked nothing further. And are you, who have no share in his grace and speak from your own miserable reasonings, eager to go beyond the measure of his knowledge? For that very reason you will never be able even to reach the measure of his knowledge.

For this is the devil’s trick. He leads those who listen to him away from the limits God has set, as though toward much greater things. But once he has lured us with these hopes and thrown us out of God’s grace, he not only gives us nothing more — how could he, being the devil? — but does not even let us go back to where we were before, where we lived safe and secure. Instead he leads us around in every direction, wandering, with no ground to stand on. That is how he got the first man God made banished from his home in Paradise. He puffed him up with the expectation of greater knowledge and honor, and drove him out of what he already held securely. The man did not become like a god, as the devil had promised him; he even fell under the rule of death. He gained nothing more by eating from the tree, and through hoping for greater knowledge he lost no small part of the knowledge he had. For then the sense of shame came over him, and the wish to hide because he was naked — he who before the deception had been above all such shame. And this very seeing himself naked, and the need from then on for clothes to cover him, and many other weaknesses, became natural to him from that time forward.

So that this will not happen to us, let us obey God, keep to his commandments, and not busy ourselves with anything beyond them, so that we are not thrown out of the good things already given us. This is what has happened to the people we are speaking of. By trying to find a beginning for the Life that has no beginning, they lost what they could have kept. They did not find what they were looking for — that is impossible — and they fell away from the true faith about the only Son.

So let us not move the eternal boundary stones our fathers set, but let us always give way to the laws of the Spirit. When we hear “That was the true Light,” let us look for nothing further, for it is not possible to go beyond this saying. If his birth had been like a man’s, there would have had to be an interval between the one who begets and the one who is begotten. But since it happened in a way that is beyond words and fitting for God, give up the “before” and the “after.” These are names for points in time, and the Son is the Creator even of all the ages.

But someone says: “Then he is not his Father, but his brother.” Why must that follow, I ask you? If we had said that the Father and the Son sprang from some other root, you might have had a point. But we shun that ungodliness. We say that the Father, besides being without beginning, is also unbegotten, while the Son, though without beginning, is begotten of the Father. So what need is there for that unholy claim to be brought in as a consequence of this idea? None at all. [h]

For he is a radiance, and a radiance is contained in the very idea of the nature whose radiance it is. That is why Paul has called him this: so that you will imagine no interval between the Father and the Son (Hebrews 1, verse 3). So this word makes that point plain. But the next part of the text he quotes corrects a mistaken opinion that might take hold of simple people. For the apostle is saying: do not suppose, because you have heard that he is a radiance, that he has no person of his own. That is ungodly; it belongs to the madness of the Sabellians and of the followers of Marcellus. We do not say that. We say that he also exists as his own person. And that is why, after calling him “radiance,” Paul added that he is “the exact imprint of his person” (Hebrews 1, verse 3): to make plain that he is a person in his own right, and that he belongs to the same essence of which he is the exact imprint.

For, as I said before, a single expression is not enough to set before people the teachings about God. We need to bring many together and choose from each what is fitting. That is how we will be able to speak of his glory worthily — worthily, I mean, as far as our power goes. For if anyone thinks he can speak words that match what God truly deserves, and is eager to do so, claiming that he knows God as God knows himself, he is the one most ignorant of God.

Knowing this, then, let us hold steadfastly to what “those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word have handed down to us” (Luke 1, verse 2). And let us not pry beyond it. Two evils attend those who are sick with this disease of curiosity: they wear themselves out in vain looking for what cannot be found, and they provoke God by trying to overturn the boundaries he has set. How angry that makes him, you already know; you do not need to learn it from us. So let us keep clear of their madness and tremble at his words, so that he may keep building us up. “For on whom will I look,” he says, “but on the lowly and quiet, and the one who fears my words?” (Isaiah 66, verse 2, in the Greek Old Testament). So let us leave this destructive curiosity behind and bruise our hearts. Let us mourn for our sins, as Christ commanded. Let our hearts be pierced over our wrongdoing. Let us count up precisely all the wicked things we have dared to do in the past, and let us work hard to wipe them away in every way we can.

Now God has opened many ways to us for this. For he says, “Tell your sins first, so that you may be shown to be in the right” (Isaiah 43, verse 26). And again: “I said, I have declared my wrongdoing to you, and you have taken away the unrighteousness of my heart” (Psalm 32, verse 5, in the Greek Old Testament). For constantly accusing ourselves and remembering our sins does a great deal to make them smaller. But there is another way more powerful than this: to hold a grudge against no one who has wronged us, and to forgive the offenses of all who have offended against us. Do you want to learn a third? Listen to Daniel, who says, “Redeem your sins by almsgiving, and your wrongdoing by showing mercy to the poor” (Daniel 4, verse 27, in the Greek Old Testament). And there is yet another: constancy in prayer, and persevering in the intercessions offered to God (First Timothy 2, verse 1). In the same way fasting brings us some comfort, and no small one, and release from the sins we have committed, provided it goes together with kindness to others; and it quenches the fierceness of God’s anger. For “water will quench a blazing fire, and by almsgiving sins are purged away” (Sirach 3, verse 30).

So let us travel all these roads. If we give ourselves wholly to these occupations and spend our time on them, we will not only wash away our past sins but gain very great profit for the future. For we will not give the devil the chance to attack us through idleness, whether by lazy living or by harmful curiosity. It is by these means, among others, and as a result of them, that he leads us into foolish questions and harmful disputes, when he sees us at leisure and idle and taking no thought for living well. But let us block this approach against him. Let us keep watch, let us be sober, so that by toiling a little in this short time we may obtain the eternal good things in endless ages, by the grace and love for humankind of our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom and with whom be glory to the Father and the Holy Spirit, forever and ever. Amen.