The Wound Must Be Opened

But, they say, the tortures came later, and terrible suffering was hanging over anyone who held out. A man may complain about tortures if tortures actually beat him; a man may plead his suffering if suffering actually defeated him. Someone like that may ask for pardon, and say: “I did want to fight bravely. I remembered my oath, and I took up the weapons of devotion and faith. But while I was struggling in the fight, one torture after another and pain that would not end wore me down. My mind stood firm, my faith held, my soul struggled a long time and did not give way under the pain. Then the judge began again at his cruelest, and by now I was worn out: the whips were tearing me, the clubs were beating me, the rack was pulling me apart, the claw was digging into me, the fire was roasting me. My flesh deserted me in the struggle; the weakness of my body gave way. It was not my mind that yielded in the suffering — it was my body.” A plea like that can readily win forgiveness. An excuse of that kind can move pity. That is how the Lord once forgave Castus and Aemilius. Beaten in the first encounter, they were made victors in the second. Men who had once given way to the flames became stronger than the flames, and in the very thing that had beaten them they won. They begged for pity not on their tears but on their wounds, and not with a pitiful voice only, but with a torn and suffering body. Blood ran where weeping should have been; and instead of tears, their half-burned insides poured out. [a]

But what wounds can these people show, the ones who were beaten? What gashes, what opened-up organs, what tortured limbs — in a case where it was not faith that fell in the fight, but faithlessness that got in ahead of the fight? And a man cannot plead that he was forced into the crime when he committed it of his own free will. I do not say this to make my brothers’ cases heavier. I say it to push them toward the prayer that makes amends. For as it is written: “Those who call you happy lead you astray, and ruin the paths your feet walk on.” A man who soothes a sinner with flattery is handing him the spur to sin; he does not hold the wrongdoing down, he feeds it. But the man whose counsel is braver, who corrects his brother at the same time as he teaches him, drives him on toward salvation. The Lord says, “All those I love, I rebuke and discipline.” So the Lord’s priest too must not mislead people by giving way to them and deceiving them; he must supply the remedies that make them well. It is a clumsy doctor who handles the swollen edges of a wound with a gentle hand, and by keeping the poison shut up deep inside the body only makes it worse. The wound has to be opened and cut, and healed by the stronger treatment of cutting the rotten parts away. The sick man may cry out, may shout, may complain, because he cannot bear the pain; but afterwards, when he feels that he is cured, he will be grateful. [e]

And now, dearest brothers, a new kind of ruin has appeared. As if the storm of persecution had not raged enough, something has been piled on top of it under the name of mercy: a mischief that deceives, a disaster with a pleasant face. Against the force of the good news, against the law of the Lord and God, some people have been rash enough to loosen communion for the careless — an empty, false peace, dangerous to the ones who give it and worth nothing to the ones who take it. They do not look for the patience that health requires, or for the real medicine that comes of making amends. Repentance is driven out of their hearts, and the memory of a very grave and extreme sin is taken away. The wounds of the dying are covered up, and the deadly stroke planted deep in the hidden organs is hidden under a pretended grief. Back from the devil’s altars they come up to what is holy to the Lord, with filthy hands that still stink of it, still all but breathing out the disease-carrying meat of the idols; with the crime still on their breath, reeking of a contact that kills, they force their way in on the body of the Lord — and this though the sacred scripture stands in their way and cries out: “Anyone who is clean may eat the meat; but any person who eats the meat of the saving sacrifice, which belongs to the Lord, while his uncleanness is on him, that person will be cut off from his people.” The apostle bears witness too, and says: “You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons; you cannot share in the Lord’s table and the table of demons.” And he threatens the stubborn and the perverse, and warns them: “Whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord unworthily is guilty of the body and blood of the Lord.” [i]

All these warnings are laughed at and despised. Before the sin has been paid for, before the crime has been confessed, before the conscience has been cleansed by the offering and by the priest’s hand, before the offense given to an angry and threatening Lord has been settled, violence is done to his body and his blood — and they sin against their Lord now, with hand and mouth, worse than when they denied him. They think that this thing certain men are peddling with lying words is peace. It is not peace but war, and a man cut off from the good news is not joined to the church. Why do they call an injury a kindness? Why do they give godlessness the name of godliness? Why do they keep people who ought to be weeping without a break and begging their Lord from the grief of repentance, and make a show of receiving them into communion? For the lapsed this is what hail is to a crop, what the storm-star is to trees, what a killing plague is to herds, what a raging gale is to ships. They take away the comfort of a hope that lasts forever; they tear the tree up by the roots; with words that carry the plague they creep on toward a deadly infection; they drive the ship onto the rocks so that it never makes harbor. Giving way so easily does not grant peace, it takes peace away; it does not give communion, it blocks the way to salvation. This is a second persecution and a second testing, the sly enemy’s next attack on the lapsed. He goes at them by a hidden rot: to hush their lament, to silence their grief, to let the memory of their sin fade, to hold down the groaning of their hearts, to dry up the weeping of their eyes — so that a long and full repentance never begs off a Lord so seriously offended, though it is written: “Remember where you have fallen from, and repent.” [m]

Let no one fool himself; let no one be taken in. The Lord alone can show mercy. Only he can grant pardon for sins committed against himself — he who carried our sins, who grieved for us, whom God handed over for our sins. A man cannot be greater than God. A servant cannot cancel or waive, by being lenient, what was done against the Lord in a graver crime; or the lapsed man will have this added to his sin as well, for not knowing what is declared: “Cursed is the man who puts his hope in man.” It is the Lord who must be asked. It is the Lord who must be won over by our amends — the Lord who said that he will deny the one who denies him, and who alone has received all judgment from his Father. We do believe that what the martyrs have earned and what righteous people have done count for much with the Judge. But that will be when the day of judgment comes, when this life and this world are finished and his people stand before the judgment seat of Christ. [r]

But if anyone, in far too much of a hurry, rashly supposes that he can grant everyone forgiveness of sins, or dares to cancel the Lord’s own instructions, he does the lapsed no good at all — he does them harm. Not to have respected his judgment is to have stirred up his anger; it is to think that God’s mercy need not be asked for first, and, in contempt of the Lord, to take his power for granted. Under God’s altar the souls of the slaughtered martyrs cry out with a loud voice: “How long, Lord, holy and true, before you judge and avenge our blood on those who live on the earth?” And they are told to rest, and to go on waiting patiently. Does anyone imagine, then, that over against the Judge a man can carry enough weight for a general remission and pardon of sins, or that he can shelter other people before he himself has been avenged? The martyrs order something to be done. Very well — but only if the thing is just and lawful; only if God’s priest can do it without setting himself against the Lord himself; only if the man who obeys can give way easily and without strain; only if the man who asks is asking with reverent restraint. The martyrs order something to be done. But if what they order is not written in the law of the Lord, we have to know first that they have obtained from God what they ask, and only then do what they command. For what a man has taken it on himself to promise is not always to be taken as granted on the spot by God’s own majesty. [u]

Moses too begged for the sins of the people, and when he had asked pardon for those sinners, he did not get it. “I beg you, Lord — this people has sinned a great sin, and they have made themselves gods of gold. And now, if you will forgive their sin, forgive it; but if not, wipe me out of the book you have written.” And the Lord said to Moses, “Whoever has sinned against me, him I will wipe out of my book.” This was the friend of God, the man who had often spoken with the Lord face to face, and he could not obtain what he asked, and could not soften an angry God’s wrath by his pleading. God praises Jeremiah, and declares: “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you; and before you came out of the womb I set you apart, and I appointed you a prophet to the nations.” And to the same man, when he had begged and prayed again and again for the sins of the people, he says: “Do not pray for this people, and do not lift up a cry or a prayer for them; for I will not listen to them at the time when they call on me, at the time of their trouble.” But who was more righteous than Noah — the one man found righteous on the earth when the earth was filled with sins? Who was more glorious than Daniel? Who was stronger in enduring martyrdom, steadier in faith, happier in the regard God showed him — a man who so many times both won when he was in the fight and went on living after he had won? Was anyone quicker at good works than Job, braver under testing, more patient in suffering, more submissive in his fear of God, truer in his faith? And yet God said that he would not grant their request if they were to ask. When the prophet Ezekiel pleaded for the sin of the people, he said: “Whatever land sins against me by breaking faith badly, I will stretch out my hand over it, and break its staff of bread, and send famine on it, and cut off man and beast from it. Even if those three men, Noah, Daniel, and Job, were in it, they would deliver neither sons nor daughters; only they themselves would be delivered.” So it is not the asker’s own verdict that settles everything he asks for; it lies in the free choice of the one who gives. Human judgment cannot claim or seize anything for itself unless God’s own decision approves it. [w]

In the good news the Lord speaks and says, “Whoever confesses me before men, I too will confess him before my Father who is in heaven; but whoever denies me, I too will deny him.” If he does not deny the one who denies, then he does not confess the one who confesses either. The good news cannot hold firm in one part and wobble in another. Either both stand, or both lose the force of truth. If people who deny will not be guilty of a crime, then people who confess will not receive the reward of courage either. And again, if faith that has won is crowned, faithlessness that has been beaten must of necessity be punished. So either the martyrs can do nothing, if the good news can be broken; or, if the good news cannot be broken, then they can do nothing against the good news, since it is on account of the good news that they became martyrs. Let no one, dearest brothers, let no one run down the dignity of the martyrs; let no one cheapen their glories and their crowns. The strength of their unspoiled faith stands sound, and a man whose hope and faith and courage and glory are all in Christ cannot say or do anything against Christ. Men who have themselves carried out God’s command cannot be the warrant for overseers doing anything against God’s command. Is anyone greater than God, or kinder than God’s own goodness, that he should want undone what God has allowed to be done, or should think, as if God had too little power to guard his church, that we could be kept safe by his help? [aa]

Unless, of course, all this was done without God’s knowing, or all of it happened without his allowing it — though the holy scriptures teach the unteachable and remind the forgetful, where they say: “Who gave Jacob over as plunder, and Israel to those who made spoil of him? Was it not the Lord, against whom they sinned, and would not walk in his ways, and were not obedient to his law? And he poured out on them the fury of his anger.” And elsewhere they testify and say: “Is the Lord’s hand too short to save, or his ear too heavy to hear? No — your own wrongdoing separates you from your God, and because of your sins he has hidden his face from you, so as not to have mercy.” Let us think instead about our own offenses. Let us turn over what we have done and the secrets of our minds. Let us weigh what our conscience deserves. Let it come home to our hearts that we have not walked in the Lord’s ways, that we have thrown God’s law aside, that we have never been willing to keep his commands and his saving counsel. [ad]

What good can you credit to a man like that? What fear can you suppose he ever had, or what faith — a man whom neither fear could set straight nor persecution itself could change? His stiff, high-held neck does not bend even after the fall; his swollen, arrogant spirit is not broken even after the defeat. Flat on the ground, he threatens the people still standing; wounded, he threatens the unhurt. And because he is not allowed to take the body of the Lord straight away into his filthy hands, the sacrilegious man is furious with the priests. And — what wild madness this is, you raving man — you are angry with the one who is trying to turn God’s anger away from you. You threaten the man who is begging God’s mercy on your behalf, who feels the wound that you cannot feel yourself, who sheds tears for you that you have perhaps never shed. You are making your crime heavier and worse; and while you yourself will not be appeased toward God’s ministers and priests, do you imagine that the Lord can be appeased about you? [ae]

Take in what we say instead; let it in. Why do your deaf ears not hear the healthy instructions we are warning you with? Why do your blind eyes not see the road of repentance we are pointing to? Why does your struck and estranged mind not take in the living remedies that we both learn and teach from the scriptures of heaven? Or if some who do not believe have little faith in what is to come, let them be terrified by what is here now. Look at the punishments we are watching fall on people who denied. Look at the wretched deaths of theirs that we are mourning. Not even here can they go unpunished, though the day of punishment has not yet arrived. Some are punished in the meantime so that others may be set straight. The torments of a few are an example to everyone.

One of the men who went up to the Capitol of his own free will to make his denial lost the power of speech after he had denied Christ. The punishment began at the point where the crime had begun, so that now he could not even ask: he had no words left to beg for mercy with. Another, a woman, was at the baths — for this was all that was needed to finish off her crime and her ruin, that she went straight to the baths the moment she had lost the grace of the washing that gives life. There, unclean as she was, an unclean spirit seized her, and she tore with her teeth the tongue with which she had either eaten or spoken so impiously. Once the wicked food had been taken, the madness of her mouth was armed against itself. She was her own executioner, and she did not go on living long afterwards: racked with pain in her stomach and bowels, she died. [af]

Hear what happened when I was there myself and saw it. Some parents who happened to be getting away, and were not careful enough in their terror, left a small daughter in the care of a wet-nurse. The nurse handed the abandoned child over to the magistrates. In front of the idol, where the crowd was flocking, they gave her — since she was too young to eat meat — bread soaked in wine; and the wine was what was left over from what those who had already destroyed themselves had poured out in sacrifice. Later the mother recovered her child. But the girl could no more speak of the crime that had been committed, or point to it, than she had been able to understand it or prevent it in the first place. So it happened without anyone knowing: the mother brought her in while we were making the offering. And the girl, in among the holy ones, could not bear our prayers and petitions. One moment she was shaking with sobs; the next she was thrown about like a wave of the sea by the violence going on in her mind. As if a torturer were forcing it out of her, the soul of that small child confessed, by the only signs she had, that she knew what had been done. But when the service was over and the deacon began to hold out the cup to those present, and when, as the others took it, her turn came, the little child — by an instinct that came from God’s own majesty — turned her face away, shut her mouth with resisting lips, and refused the cup. Still the deacon insisted, and though she fought him, poured some of the cup of the sacred rite into her. Then came sobbing and vomiting. The thanksgiving could not stay in a body and a mouth that had been profaned; the drink made holy in the Lord’s blood burst back out of the defiled stomach. So great is the Lord’s power, so great is his majesty. The secrets of the dark were laid open under his light, and not even hidden crimes got past God’s priest. [ah]