A Cinder in His Hands

That is enough about an infant who was not yet old enough to speak of the crime other people had committed against her. But there was a woman well on in years and of riper age who slipped in among us in secret while we were making the offering. What she took was not food but a sword against herself. It was as though she had swallowed some deadly poison down her throat and into her body: she began at once to be racked, and to stiffen in a seizure, suffering now not the misery of the persecution but the misery of her own crime. Shaking and trembling, she fell down. The crime her conscience had covered up did not go unpunished or stay hidden for long. She had fooled a human being; she found God taking vengeance. [a]

Another woman tried, with hands that were not fit for it, to open the box where the Lord’s holy thing was kept, and fire rose out of it and frightened her off from daring to touch it. And a man who was himself defiled dared to take his share, in secret, along with the rest, of the offering the priest had made. He could not eat the Lord’s holy thing, or even hold it: when he opened his hands he found he was holding a cinder. One man’s case showed plainly that the Lord withdraws when he is denied, and that what is received does nothing for the salvation of a man who does not deserve it. The holiness leaves, and the grace that saves is turned into a cinder.

How many there are, every day, who do not repent, who make no confession of what their own conscience knows, and who are filled with unclean spirits! How many are shaken by fits of madness into the loss of their minds and their wits! There is no need to go through the deaths one by one. Across all the many falls happening in the world, the punishment of their sins is as varied as the crowd of sinners is large. Let each man consider not what somebody else has suffered but what he himself deserves to suffer. And let nobody think he has got away with it because his punishment is slow in coming. He ought to fear it all the more, since the anger of God the judge has kept it back for himself.

And they should not flatter themselves that they need repent any the less — the men who have not stained their hands with the loathsome sacrifices but have stained their conscience with certificates. The declaration of a man who denies is a Christian’s own testimony that he is disowning what he had been. He says he has done what somebody else actually did. And though it is written, “You cannot serve two masters,” he has served an earthly master by obeying his edict; he has been more obedient to human authority than to God. It makes no difference whether he published what he did with less disgrace, or less guilt, in the eyes of men. [e]

However that may be, he will not be able to escape and dodge God his judge, since the Holy Spirit says in the Psalms: “Your eyes saw my substance while it was still unfinished, and in your book all people will be written.” And again: “Man looks on the outward appearance, but God looks on the heart.” The Lord himself also warns us in advance and prepares us, saying: “And all the churches will know that I am the one who searches minds and hearts.” He looks into what is hidden and secret; he takes account of things that are covered up. Nobody can slip past the eyes of the Lord, who says: “I am a God who is near, and not a God far off. If a man hides himself in secret places, will I not see him? Do I not fill heaven and earth?” He sees the heart and mind of every person. He will judge not only our deeds but even our words and our thoughts. He looks into the minds and the wills and the ideas of everyone, in the very hiding places of a heart that is still shut.

And how much greater in faith and better in their fear are those who, though bound by no crime of sacrifice to idols and no crime of a certificate, still confess the very thing to God’s priests, with grief and with plainness, because they have even thought about doing it. They make the honest admission, put down the weight on their minds, and look for the medicine that heals even small and moderate wounds, knowing it is written, “God is not mocked.” God cannot be mocked, or fooled, or tricked by any clever deception. In fact a man sins the more if he thinks God is like a man and believes he can dodge the penalty for his crime by never openly admitting his crime. Christ says in his commands: “Whoever is ashamed of me, of him the Son of Man will be ashamed.” And does a man think he is a Christian when he is ashamed or afraid to be a Christian? How can he be one with Christ when he blushes, or is frightened, to belong to Christ? [i]

He will certainly have sinned less by not looking at the idols, by not profaning the holiness of the faith under the eyes of a crowd standing round and jeering, by not polluting his hands with the deadly sacrifices, and by not defiling his lips with the wicked food. It helps him this far: the fault is less, not that the conscience is clean. He can come to pardon for his crime more easily; he is not free of the crime. So let him not stop carrying his repentance through and begging for the Lord’s mercy, or what looks smaller in the quality of the fault will be made larger by his neglecting to make amends.

I beg you, dearest brothers, that each man confess his own sin while the man who has sinned is still in this world, while his confession can be received, while the amends made and the forgiveness given through the priests are welcome before the Lord. Let us turn to the Lord with our whole heart, and, putting our repentance for our sin into words with real grief, let us beg God’s mercy. Let our soul lie low before him. Let our mourning make amends to him. Let all our hope lean on him. He himself tells us how we ought to ask. “Turn to me with all your heart, and with fasting at the same time, and with weeping, and with mourning; and tear your hearts, not your clothes.” Let us go back to the Lord with our whole heart. Let us calm his anger and his indignation with fasting, with weeping, with mourning, just as he himself tells us to. [k]

Do we believe that a man is grieving with his whole heart, that he is begging the Lord with fasting and weeping and mourning, when from the first day of his sin he goes daily to the baths among the women? When he feeds at rich dinners, swells out with heavier delicacies, belches up his indigestion the next day, and shares out none of his food and drink to relieve the need of the poor? How does a man mourn his own death when he walks with a cheerful, happy step? And though it is written, “You shall not spoil the shape of your beard,” he plucks his beard out and dresses his hair. Is he really studying to please somebody now, when he displeases God? [m]

Or is she groaning and lamenting, the woman who has time to put on expensive clothes and no time to think about the robe of Christ that she has lost — time to take up costly ornaments and richly worked necklaces, and none to weep over the loss of the divine and heavenly ornament? You may dress yourself in imported cloth and silk gowns: you are naked. You may load yourself past all measure with pearls and gems and gold: without the adornment of Christ you are ugly. And you who dye your hair — stop, at least now, in the middle of your sorrows. And you who paint the rims of your eyes with a line of black powder drawn around them — wash your eyes now, at least, with tears.

If you had lost one of the friends you loved, to the death that comes to everyone, you would groan bitterly and weep with a ruined face, with changed clothes, with uncombed hair, with a clouded face, with a downcast look; you would show every sign of grief. You poor wretch, you have lost your soul. Dead here in spirit, you go on living to yourself; you walk about, and you have begun to carry your own death around with you. And do you not moan bitterly? Do you not groan without stopping? Do you not hide yourself, either for shame at your sin or to keep your mourning going? Look — these are still worse wounds of sinning. Look — these are the greater crimes: to have sinned and not make amends, to have committed the crimes and not weep for the crimes.

Ananias, Azarias, and Misael, those famous and noble young men, did not stop making open confession to God even in the flames and the heat of a raging furnace. They had a good conscience, and they had often deserved well of the Lord by the obedience of their faith and their fear; and still they did not stop holding on to their humility and making amends to the Lord, even in the middle of the glorious martyrdoms their courage won. The sacred Scripture says: “Azarias stood up and prayed, and, opening his mouth, made confession before God together with his companions, in the middle of the fire.” [o]

Daniel too — after all the grace of his faith and his innocence, after the Lord had come down to him again and again over his virtues and his praises — works harder still by fasting to deserve well of God, wraps himself in sackcloth and ashes, and makes his confession in sorrow, saying: “O Lord God, great and strong and terrible, keeping your covenant and your mercy for those who love you and keep your commands: we have sinned, we have done wrong, we have acted wickedly. We have broken your commands and turned away from them and from your judgments; and we have not listened to the words of your servants the prophets, which they spoke in your name to our kings and to all the nations and to all the earth. O Lord, righteousness belongs to you, but to us shame.”

These things were done by meek, simple, innocent men, who were deserving well of the majesty of God. And now the men who have denied the Lord refuse to make amends to the Lord and to plead with him. Brothers, I ask you: give in to the remedies that will make you well. Obey better advice. Put your tears together with our tears, join your groans to ours. We are begging you so that we may beg God for you. We turn our very prayers toward you first — the prayers with which we pray to God for you, that he would pity you. Repent, and repent fully; prove the sorrow of a mind that grieves and mourns. [q]

And do not let yourselves be moved by the reckless mistake, or the empty daze, of certain people who are caught up in so serious a crime and yet are struck with blindness of mind, so that they neither understand their sins nor lament them. That is the heavier visitation of an angry God, as it is written: “And God gave them the spirit of deadness.” And again: “They did not receive the love of the truth, so that they might be saved. And for this reason God will send them the working of error, so that they will believe a lie; so that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but took pleasure in unrighteousness.” [r]

Pleasing themselves in unrighteousness, and mad with the estrangement of a hardened mind, they look down on the Lord’s commands, neglect the medicine for their wound, and will not repent. They were thoughtless before their sin was admitted, and after their sin they are stubborn. They were not steady before, and they are not suppliants now. When they ought to have stood firm, they fell; when they ought to fall down and lie flat before God, they think they are standing firm. They have taken peace for themselves on their own initiative, when nobody granted it. Led astray by false promises, and linked to apostates and unbelievers, they take hold of error instead of truth. They treat a communion as valid with people who are not in communion. They believe men against God, when they did not believe God against men.

Get away from men like that as far as you can. Avoid, with the caution that keeps a man well, the people who stick close to their dangerous company. Their word eats away like a cancer; their talk creeps forward like an infection; their harmful, poisoned persuasion kills worse than the persecution itself. In a case like that the only thing left is the repentance that can make amends. But those who take away repentance for a crime shut the road to making amends. And so it happens that, while a false safety is either promised or trusted through the recklessness of some, the hope of real safety is taken away. [u]

But you, dearest brothers, whose fear toward God is ready, and whose minds — set in the middle of the fall — still remember their own misery: look into your sins with repentance and grief. Acknowledge the very serious sin on your conscience. Open the eyes of your heart to understand your sin, neither despairing of the Lord’s mercy nor claiming his pardon on the spot. In the same measure that God is always indulgent and good with the affection of a Father, he is to be dreaded with the majesty of a judge. As we have sinned greatly, so let us lament greatly. A deep wound must not go without long and careful treatment; let the repentance not be less than the sin. [v]

Do you think the Lord can be calmed quickly, when you denied him with faithless words, when you preferred your worldly property to him, when you violated his temple with a sacrilegious touch? Do you think he will have mercy on you easily, when you declared that he was not your God? You must pray harder and plead harder. You must spend the day in grief and wear out the nights in watching and weeping. You must fill your whole time with sorrowful mourning. Lying stretched on the ground, you must cling to the ashes, wrapped about with sackcloth and dirt. After losing the clothing of Christ, you must be willing now to have no clothing at all. After the devil’s food, you must choose fasting instead. Be busy with righteous works, which purge sins away; give often to the poor, by which souls are set free from death.

Let Christ receive what the enemy took from you. Your property should not be held now, or loved now — the property by which you were both deceived and beaten. Wealth must be avoided like an enemy, run from like a robber, dreaded by its owners like a sword and like poison. Whatever is left should serve this one purpose only: that by it the crime and the fault may be bought back. Let good works be done without delay, and on a large scale. Let your whole estate be laid out on the healing of your wound. Let us lend our wealth and our means to the Lord, who is going to judge us. That is how faith flourished in the time of the apostles; that is how the first people of believers kept Christ’s commands. They were quick, they were generous, they gave everything they had for the apostles to distribute — and they were not buying back sins of this kind.

If a man prays with his whole heart, if he groans with the true laments and tears of repentance, if he tips the Lord toward pardoning his sin by righteous and unbroken works, then the one who put his mercy into these words may pity such men: “When you turn and lament, then you will be saved, and you will know where you have been.” And again: “I take no pleasure in the death of the one who dies, says the Lord, but that he should turn back and live.” And Joel the prophet announces the Lord’s mercy in the Lord’s own warning, when he says: “Turn to the Lord your God, for he is merciful and gracious, and patient, and full of mercy, and he relents about the harm he has inflicted.” [y]

He can show mercy. He can turn his own judgment back. He can mercifully pardon the sinner who repents, who labors, who begs. He can count as effective whatever has been asked for men like these by the martyrs, or done for them by the priests. And if anyone moves him further still by his own amends, if he calms his anger, if he calms the wrath of an indignant God by righteous pleading, then God hands him weapons again for the beaten man to be armed with, and restores and steadies the strength that gives his refreshed faith new vigor. The soldier will look for his contest again. He will fight the battle over. He will challenge the enemy — and indeed, by the very suffering he went through, he is made braver for the fight. The man who has made his amends to God this way, who has taken in more courage and more faith out of the very grief of his fall — by repenting for what he did, by shame for his sin — will be heard and helped by the Lord. He will make the church glad that he lately made sad. He will now deserve of the Lord not only pardon, but a crown.