Luke, XII, 1-7. Sparrows and trust, etc.

"Are not we selling five sparrows for two aces? And not one of them is forgotten by the Lord. The very hair of your head is all counted. Do not be afraid, you are worth more than a quantity of sparrows. "

The Savior has introduced here a very beautiful passage on the guard of sincerity and zeal for the faith, so that we do not go, in the manner of perfidious Jews, to hide one thing in our heart, to pretend another by our speech, since at the end of time our secret thoughts, accusing us or even pleading for

we (Rom., II, 15), will reveal the intimate of our souls. Is it greater encouragement to sincerity than to let everyone know that there can be no retreat for deception? But since two causes engender bad faith, which is born or of a malice or an accidental fear of fear, fear that the terror and the terror of the power does not force someone to deny the God that he recognizes in his heart, It adds by the way that only the punishment of the soul is redoubtable, that corporal punishment is not to be feared - death is the term of nature, not a punishment - and therefore death ends to bodily torment, while the punishment of the soul is eternal; and that it is necessary to fear God alone, against the power of which nature does not prescribe, this same nature being submitted to Him; as for death, it is not frightening, since immortality will compensate for it with usury. The Lord had inspired a disposition of sincerity. He had raised the energy of the soul. Only confidence hesitated. He fortified it by humble examples; for if God is not forgetful of sparrows, how could He be men? Now, if the majesty of God is so great and so eternal that a sparrow, or the number of our hair, is not exempt from the knowledge of God, what indignity to believe that the Lord ignores or disdains the hearts of the faithful. who knows the most humble things! Someone may say, how did the Apostle say,

"Does God worry about oxen? (I Cor., IX, 9) while an ox is certainly more expensive than a passerine. But something else is worry, something else knowledge. Moreover, the number of the hair intervenes not for counting them, but for the facility to know them: for God does not apply his care to count them in a careful watch; but, knowing all things, all things are counted for him. It is fair to say, counted, because we count on what we want to keep. Here, however, we can penetrate the secret of a spiritual sense, especially since it seems absurd to compare men with sparrows rather than men. These five sparrows, indeed, seem to be the five senses of the body: touch, smell, taste, sight, hearing. If, in the manner of sparrows, they scour the dirt of the garbage of the earth and seek their food in uncultivated and smelly places, retained in the nets of their faults they can not resume their flight towards the fruits of the high works20, which are the feast of souls. Seductive voluptuousness has its manner of net, which encloses the steps of our souls with its stitches; if the flame, the vigor, and the purity of our nature are dulled by terrestrial and material sensibility, it sells us at the price of the luxury of this world, and puts us in the auction of vices. There is also a market of our faults: thus, captured by the bait of divers pleasures, we are either sold to sin or redeemed from sin. Christ redeems us, the adversary sells us: one puts on sale for death, the other buys to save. So Matthew was right to write: two sparrows (X, 29), to signify the body and the soul: for if the flesh itself, docile to the law of God and disengaging itself from the law from sin, takes the nature of the soul by the purity of the senses, it ascends to heaven by spiritual wings. We thus learn that the faculty of flying has been given to us by nature, delighted by pleasure, which appeases the soul by the bait of evil, and reduces it to the heavy nature of the body. And He rightly said that none of them fall without the will of God: for what falls goes to the earth, and what is stolen is carried to the top of immortality. And so that no one was uncertain about what Matthew said, Luke clearly explained it: the will of God is his knowledge. No one indeed falls by the will of God; but he who is carried away by the weight of his faults can not hide himself from God. For Job, too, is tempted by his will: He has given you an adversary, but He has offered you a reward. And do not belittle your weakness; because you have the image, you have received a bulwark. So well, and it is to your advantage and salutary to know that without the permission of God the devil can not harm; so you will not fear the power of the devil rather than the displeasure of divinity. Now there is no doubt that the soul is compared to the sparrow, since you have read: "Our soul, like a sparrow, has been torn from the net of hunters" (Ps. 123, 7); and elsewhere: "How do you say to my soul, flee to the mountains like the sparrow" (Psalm 10: 2)? The man himself, we read, is also compared to the sparrow, for it is written, "To me I am like the lonely sparrow on the house" (Ps. is constituted by the union of two sparrows in one, that is to say by the assembly of two wings agreeing in the agility of the spiritual substance. There is therefore the good sparrow, able by nature to fly.

 There is also the bad sparrow, who has lost the habit of stealing by the fault of the earthly taint: such are the sparrows who sell two aces. Sometimes they sell an ace, sometimes double (see Matt, X, 29, Lc, XII, 6). How little are the sins worth! for death is common, virtue has price. The adversary in fact exposes us for sale as captive slaves and puts us at a low price; but the Lord has treated us as beautiful servants, whom he has made in his image and likeness, and, enjoying his work as a connoisseur, redeemed us at great expense, as the holy Apostle says:

"You have been paid dearly" (I Cor. VI, 20). Yes Dear ; we have not calculated in money, but in blood: for Christ died for us; He liberated us with his precious blood, as St. Peter again reminds us, when he writes to us in his epistle: "It was not by silver or perishable gold that you were redeemed from vain. the existence which your fathers bequeathed to you, but by a precious blood, being that of the unblemished and undefiled Lamb, Christ Jesus "(I Peter, I, 18); yes, precious, since it is the blood of an unblemished body, since it is the blood of the Son of God, who has redeemed us not only from the curse of the Law (Gal., III, 13), but still of the definite death of impiety.

So, in short, the meaning is this: if the Lord has provided humble birds and unfaithful men either by raising the sun or by fertilizing the earth, if He grants to all the benefit of His mercy, we do not would doubt that the consideration of the merits of the faithful will be powerful in his eyes. He has admirably built and honed our faith, and furnished to this very faith the foundation of virtues: for if faith is the stimulant of virtue, virtue makes the solidity of faith.

Luke, XII, 10-12. Sin against the Spirit.

"Whosoever shall speak a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him; but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven. "

We certainly hear through the Son of Man Christ, who was begotten of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin, for his only author on earth is the Virgin. Would the Holy Spirit be greater than Christ, so that those who sin against Christ will obtain forgiveness, while those who miss the Holy Spirit do not deserve to obtain forgiveness? But where there is unity of power, there is no question of comparing, there is no discussion of greatness, since the Lord is great and his greatness can have no limit (Ps 144, 3 ). If, then, as we believe, there is unity in the Trinity, there is no more distinction of grandeur than there is a distinction of activity. The following shows this: because, having said elsewhere: "The Father gives you what you must say" (Matt., X, 19ff), He added: "For the Holy Spirit will give you on the hour what to say. If therefore the activity is one, one too is the offense. But back to our subject. Some believe that they must hear the same Christ by the Son of Man as by the Holy Spirit, subject to the distinction of persons and the unity of substance, because the one Christ, God and man, is also spirit, as it is written, "The spirit that precedes us is Christ the Lord" (Lam. IV, 20). He is also holy: for just as the Father is God and the Son Lord, and the Father Lord and the Son God, so is the Father holy, and the Son holy, and the Holy Spirit. Thus the cherubim and the seraphim cry, without wearied their voices: "Holy, holy, holy" (Is., VI, 3), to signify the Trinity by the triple resumption of this invocation. So if Christ is one and the other, what difference is there? Is it not a question of letting us know that we are not allowed to deny the divinity of Christ? In the time of persecution we are asked, if not to deny that Christ is God? So whoever does not confess that God is in Christ, and that Christ is of God and in God, does not obtain forgiveness. But also "every spirit that does not confess that Christ came in the flesh, is not of God" (I Jn, IV, 2 ssq.): For to deny his humanity is to deny his divinity, since Christ is God in man, and man in God. Many, however, prefer to say that the unforgivable blasphemy consists in saying that Christ drives out demons from Beelzebub, not by virtue of divine power.

Luke, XII, 13-34. Detachment of wealth.

"And some of the crowd said, Master, tell my brother to share the inheritance with me. But He said to him, "Man, who made me judge or dispatcher among you? "

All this passage is ordered to the acceptance of suffering to confess the Lord, either by contempt for death, or by hope of reward, or under the threat of lasting punishment, to which it will never be granted. And as it often happens that it is greed that tempts virtue, so too is the commandment and example to suppress it, when the Lord says, "Who made me judge or dispatcher among you? He has the object of discarding the earthly, having descended for the divine things; and He does not deign to be judge of disputes and arbiter of riches, having to judge the living and the dead and to decide on the merits. It is therefore necessary to consider not what you ask, but which you solicit, and not to believe that a mind applied to great things can be unduly annoyed. It is therefore not without reason that this brother, who claimed to occupy perishable goods the dispenser of heavenly goods, is rejected, whereas among brothers it is not through the intermediary of a judge, but at the affection to mediate and distribute the patrimony. Besides, it is the heritage of immortality, not money, that we must seek: for it is useless to amass wealth without knowing whether it will be used: such as the one whose granaries filled with crispness under the new harvest and who prepared stores for this abundance of crops, without knowing for whom he was gathering (Ps. 38, 7). For we leave in the world all that is in the world, and we see all that we amass for our heirs escape; we do not have what we can not carry with us. Only virtue accompanies the deceased, only mercy follows us, who, leading us and preceding the abodes of heaven, acquires to the dead, at the price of a mean money, the eternal tabernacles: witnesses the precepts of the Lord, who tells us: "Make friends with the riches of iniquity, that they may welcome you into everlasting tabernacles" (Lk 16: 9). This, then, is a good and salutary precept, capable of animating the misers themselves to take care to exchange the perishable for the eternal, the terrestrial for the divine. But as devotion is often hindered by the weakness of faith, and when giving up one's heritage one is held back by the preoccupation with living, the Lord adds these words: "Do not worry about your life eating. nor for your body of clothing. Life is more than food, and the body is clothing. Nothing in reality is better done to give confidence to those who believe that God can grant everything, that this breath of air prolonging the vital union of the soul and body associates and spouses, without work on our part and the resource of healthful food is scarce only when the supreme day of death has arrived. Then, since the soul is clothed with the body's envelope, and the body animated by the energy of the soul, it is absurd to believe that the means of living will be lacking, when we have the permanent reality of life . "Consider," he says, "the birds of the sky. "

Great example, for sure, and worthy of being imitated by faith. For if the birds of the sky, who in no way exercise agriculture, who do not reap the copious harvests, receive without fault from the divine providence their food, we must really see in avarice the cause of our poverty. . For if they have in abundance the resources of a pasture that does not come from their work, it is because they do not know how to claim as special property the fruits given to them for the food of all, instead of lost the commons by claiming properties; nothing is the property of any one, since nothing is durable, and there is no assured provision when the outcome is uncertain. Why consider wealth as yours, when God wanted you to live it with other animals? The birds of the sky do not claim anything for them especially, and that is why they ignore the food shortage, not knowing how to envy others. "Consider the lilies as they grow up"; and, lower down: "But if the grass, which is there today and is thrown into the fire tomorrow, is so clothed by God ..." Good word and good human: by the comparison of the flower and grass, the Lord's speech has invited us to trust that God will grant us His mercy: according to the letter, because we can not add anything to the size of our body, that is, in the spiritual sense, because we can not go beyond the measure of our size without the favor of God. What is there, indeed, as much to persuade as to see even those without reason so well clothed by the providence of God that they lack nothing that embellishes and adorns them? All the more must you believe that the reasonable man, if he relies upon God for all his needs and does not give up trust by daring to doubt, can never fail, rightly counting on divine favor. However, it is necessary to examine all this more thoroughly: for it does not seem indifferent that the flower is compared to the man himself, or even placed almost above the men personified by Solomon, who had the privilege of building a temple to the Lord. according to appearances, or, according to the mystery, to represent the Church of Christ. It does not therefore seem out of place to think that the brilliant color represents the glory of the angels of heaven; they are really the flowers of this world, because the world is adorned with their brightness, and they spread the good odor of sanctification. With their help, we can say, "We are the good odor of Christ among those who are saved" (II Cor., II, 15).

Not being hindered by any solicitude, not being agitated by any necessity to work, they retain in them the benefit of the divine liberality and the gifts of the heavenly nature. So it is with good reason that Solomon is shown to us, here clothed with his glory, elsewhere (Matt., VI, 29) covered, because he covered in a way the weakness of his bodily nature by the force of the the soul, and clothed her with the splendor of her works: instead of the angels, whose nature, which is nearer to God, remains free from all bodily suffering, no matter how great a man may be, they are justly favored by reason of our infirmity. Then, then, that by the resurrection men will be like angels in heaven, the Lord, citing the example of the angels, commanded us to hope for the enrichment of the heavenly glory, He who granted it to them also until this mortality is absorbed by life; for "this corruption must be made incorruptible, and this mortality be immortality" (I Cor. Many consider this comparison particularly happy, in view of the nature of the flower and the manners of the plant in question. Lilies do not need to be cared for and grown every year; there is no similarity between the harvesting of other fruits and the production of this flower: work does not come back every season to the concern of farmers. Whatever the drought of the country, all that develops is impelled to flourish by the native virtue of a sap which comes from them and always remains in them. So when you see the stem of the adult leaves withered, the nature of the flower is yet vivid: its greenness is hidden, not dead; but as soon as she is awakened by the caresses of spring, she resumes the garment of the buds, the hair of the flower, or the adornment of the lily. As we remember to have treated elsewhere this passage more along, it will suffice to have touched it, not to return on the same things. I am pleased to note that lilies are not born on steep mountains or in uncultivated forests, but in gardens. For there are fruit gardens, those of various virtues; as it is written: "It is a walled garden that my sister and wife: an enclosed garden, a sealed fountain" (Cant., IV, 12); for where there is purity, chastity, religion, the assured silences of retreat, where there is the light of the angels, there are the violets of the confessors, the lilies of the virgins, the roses of the martyrs. And no one must find it inappropriate for the lilies to be compared to the angels, since Christ himself recalls that he is a lily: "I am, he says, the flower of the field and the lily of the valleys" (Cant., II, 1). And it is a lily that Christ; for where is the blood of the martyrs, there is the Christ, who is the slender, unblemished, innocent flower, which does not wound by the sharpness of the thorns, but shines with a flourishing of beauty. For the roses have thorns, because the martyrs have their torments; but the intangible divinity has no thorns, having not felt the torments. If, therefore, the lilies, or the angels, are clothed beyond all human beauty, we must not despair of the mercy of God upon us also, since the Lord promises us, by the grace of the resurrection, an appearance similar to that of the angels. In this place He seems to touch on this question, which the Apostle has not omitted: the people here below ask how the dead are raised (I Cor. XV, 35) and with what body they come back. For, saying, "Seek the Kingdom of God, and all this will be given to you in addition," He shows that grace will not fail believers for the present or the future, provided that, desiring the Divine, they do not seek the terrestrial. To trouble oneself with food really befits men who serve the Kingdom. The King knows how to feed, feed, clothe his house; so he said, "Throw in God your concern, and it is He who will feed you" (Ps 54, 23).

"I came to set the earth on fire, and what is my will, if not

that finally it lights up? I must be baptized with a baptism, and what is my torment as long as it is not accomplished! "

Higher up, He has kept us vigilant, waiting at all times for the coming of the Lord Savior, lest by slackening, by negligence, by differing from day to day his work, such, preceded by the day of the future judgment or by his own death, lose the reward of his management. It was addressed to all, in the form of a general precept; but the theme of the following comparison seems to be proposed to the bishops, that is to say, to the bishops, to let them know that they will have to undergo a severe punishment later, if, occupied with the pleasures of the century, they neglected to govern the house of the Lord and the people entrusted to them. But as the profit is thin, and the merit is low, when it is the fear of the punishment which prevents from going astray, since the charity and the love have a superior dignity, the Lord sharpens our zeal to deserve its favor and we are inflamed with the desire to acquire God, saying, "I have come to set fire to the earth," not certainly the fire that consumes the goods, but the one that produces the good will, which makes the vases of and from the house of the Lord, consuming the hay and the straw (I Cor. iii. 12ff.), devouring all the gangue of the age, amassed by worldly pleasure, the work of the flesh that is to perish; this divine fire, which set the flame on the bones of the prophets, as Jeremiah the saint says: "It has become like a burning fire that burns in my bones" (Jer. XX, 9). For there is a fire from the Lord, of which it has been said, "A fire shall burn before him" (Ps 96: 3). The Lord is also a fire, as He Himself says: "I am the fire that burns without consuming" (Ex., III, 2, XXIV, 17, Deut, IV, 24, Hebrews, XII, 29): for the fire of the Lord is the eternal light; it is to this fire that the lamps of which He said above are lighted: "Let your loins be girded, and your lamps burning. Because the days of this life are night, a lamp is necessary. This fire, Ammaus23 and Cleopas testify that the Lord put them in them also, when they say: "Did not we have a burning heart on the road when it revealed to us the Scriptures" (Lk. 32)? They have thus taught with evidentness what is the action of this fire, which enlightens the intimate of the heart. For this reason perhaps the Lord will come into the fire (see Is., LXVI, 15; 16): to consume all the vices at the moment of the resurrection, to fill by his presence the desires of each one, and to project the light on merits and mysteries.

 Such is the condescension of the Lord that he testifies to having at heart to spread in us the devotion, to complete in us the perfection, and to hasten for us his Passion. Having no pain in Him, yet He was anguished with our troubles, and at the moment of death let us see a sadness which he had not conceived for fear of his death, but because of the delay of our redemption, as it is written, "What is my anguish until it is fulfilled! Certainly He who is distressed to the point of completion is assured of fulfillment. But still elsewhere: "My soul," says He, "is sad until death" (Matt. Xxvi. 38). It is not because of death, but until death, that the Lord is sad, being affected by the conditions of bodily sensibility, not by the terror of death. For having taken a body He had to undergo all that belongs to the body, to be hungry and thirsty, to be anguished and sad; but the divinity can not be modified by these impressions. At the same time He shows that in the struggle with suffering, bodily death is deliverance from torture, not paroxysm of pain.

Luke, XII, 51-53. Division about the gospel.

"Do you believe that I came to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you; but the separation. For now in the same house five people will be divided, three taking sides against two, and two against three. The father will be opposed to the son, and the son to the father; mother to daughter, and daughter to mother; the mother-in-law to her daughter-in-law, and the daughter-in-law to her mother-in-law. "

In almost all passages of the Gospel the spiritual sense intervenes. Yet it is now especially, not to be put off by the harshness of the simplistic explanation, that there is reason to associate spiritual depth with the web of meaning; all the more so because holy religion, by the humanity of its teachings and its amiable examples of affection, gently inclines the very exiles of the faith to bear it with the least respect; by the prior education of the faith she tames and dispels hardened prejudices, and brings the captive minds of error to the discipline of faith, when she has been able to win them by goodness.

When indeed weak hearts can not grasp the depths of faith, what is commanded makes one judge of what to worship; the righteousness of the righteous, the sanctity of the saint testify how good is the Author of their goodness. When then the Lord has gathered in one and the same recommendation reverence towards God and the benefit of kindness, saying, "You will love the Lord your God" and "you will love your neighbor", will we believe it changed to the point of to abolish the bases of relations, to oppose the feelings of affection between them? Will we believe that he commanded the disunity between his dear sons? How, then, is He "our peace, who has brought the two together in one" (Ephesians II, 14)? How He says He himself: "I give you my peace, I leave you my peace" (Jn, XIV, 27), if he came to separate the fathers from their sons, the sons of their fathers, by dissolving their connections ? How is one "cursed if one does not honor one's father" (Deut., XXVII, 16), religious if one abandons it? But if we take care that the affair of religion comes in the first place, that of piety25 second, we will judge that this very question becomes clear: you must in fact pass the human after the divine. For if we have to give homework to the parents, how much more to the father of the parents, to whom you must be grateful to your parents themselves? Or, if they do not recognize their Father at all, how will you recognize them? He does not therefore say that we must renounce the objects of affection, but prefer God to all. Besides, you find in another book, "Who loves his father or his mother more than me, is not worthy of me" (Matt. X. 37). It is forbidden for you not to love your parents, but to prefer them to God: for the relations of nature are blessings of the Lord, and no one should love the benefit received more than God, who preserves the benefit received from Him.

So even in the literal sense, those who understand with piety are not devoid of a religious explanation. But here is what to make us think that we must seek a deeper meaning; because He added:

"From now on in the same house five will be divided: three will take sides against two, and two against three. What are these five then, when six people are then named: father and son, mother and daughter, mother-in-law and daughter-in-law? It is true that one can identify mother and mother-in-law, because the one who is the mother of a son is the mother-in-law of his wife, so that even literally the number is not incorrectly calculated. And it is clear that faith is not captive of ties of nature, since, even in the duties of piety, one is free by faith. Moreover, it does not seem superfluous to resolve this meaning by mystical interpretation. The unique house is man in his unity: for each is a dwelling place, or of God, or of the devil. Thus the spiritual dwelling is the spiritual man, as we read in the Epistle of Peter: "And you, as living stones, are spiritually dwelling for a holy priesthood" (I Peter, II, 5). In this house so two are opposed to three, three to two. Two, we often read that it is the soul and the body; and if two agree on earth (Matt. xviii. 19), of the two he made one (Ephes. II, 14). And elsewhere: "I chasten my body and the contrains to serve" (I Cor., IX, 27); another is what serves, other than the one to whom one is subjected. Having recognized both, let's also recognize the three: it's easy to understand from these two. For the soul in the body has three dispositions, one reasonable, another concupiscible, the third irascible: in other words? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?,? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?,? ? ? ? ? ?. There will be no opposition of two against two, but of two against three, and of three against two; because, thanks to the coming of Christ, the man, who was deprived of reason, became reasonable. Previously we were like animals that ignore reason; we were carnal, we were earthly, according to the sentence: "You are earth, and to the earth you will go" (Gen., III, 19). The Son of God has come, He has sent His Spirit into our hearts (Gal. Iv. 6), we have become the sons of the Spirit. We can say that in this house are five others, namely smell, touch, taste, sight, hearing. If, therefore, by reason of what we hear or read, the senses of sight and hearing, we cut off the superfluous pleasures of the body, which are engendered by taste, touch, and smell, we Let us oppose two to three: for the mind is not made to be caught by the bait of vices, but to tend to virtue by tearing itself from the caresses of pleasure. There is therefore no agreement of all to precipitate in misguidance, but opposition and separation of the desires of the heart and the duties of virtue. Or, if we hear it from the five senses of the body, then the vices and sins of the body stand apart. Perhaps also the five are those who, in the Gospel (Lk. XVI, 23 ff.), Are called his brothers by the rich party-boy who is shown to be tortured in hell, and implores that we warn them to renounce delights in this century, so that their virtuous efforts may find rest after this century. One can also consider the body and the soul, separated from the sense of smell, touch and the taste of lust, opposing in the same house the vices that assail them, the body and the soul submitting to the law from God, departing from the law of sin. Although their disagreement became nature by the prevarication of the first man, so that they never got along in a common effort towards virtue, however, the cross of the Lord having removed enmities as the law of precepts (Ephes II, 14-16), they came together and joined in concord, after Christ our peace, descending from heaven, "united the two in one, and destroyed the wall of enmities that separated them, abolishing in his flesh the law of the ordinances and the prescriptions, to make of them one new man, making peace and reconciling the one and the other in the same body with God "(Ib). What are these two, if not the inside on the one hand, the outside on the other? One concerns the vigor of the soul, the other relates to bodily sensibility: although they agree in the inseparable unison of their feelings, when the flesh, subject to its superior, obeys his orders salutary. It is not that she takes the nature of the soul, whose subtlety penetrates matter; but, renouncing the delights, purified of all defilement of vices, she enters the way of a celestial life by the love of obedience; it no longer resists, as formerly, the law of the soul, but, delivered, by the law of the soul and by the Spirit of life, from the law of sin, the flesh becomes the complement of the soul: she is no longer the matchmaker of vices, but the imitator and the next of virtue. So also the soul does not lend itself to the bait of the body and does not succumb to the charm of the carnal pleasures, but pure and free from the servitudes of this world, it wins and attracts the bodily senses to its own pleasures, so that the a habit of hearing and reading the nourishment of an increase of virtue and the satisfaction of the spiritual food whose intimate vigor will make it ignore hunger. In fact, wisdom is the nourishment of the soul: an admirable feast of sweetness, which does not weigh down the limbs and is not transformed into ignominy, but into adornment of nature. Then the quagmire of passions changes into a temple of God, and the receptacle of vices begins to be the sanctuary of virtues. This is what happens when the flesh, returning to its naturalness, recognizes that which nourishes its vigor, and, renouncing the temerity of pride, marries the judgment of the soul which rules it. Such was her state when she received the retreats of paradise for abode, before, spoiled by the venom of the fatal snake, she knew no sacrilegious hunger, and did not go beyond, in her desire to eat, to the remembrance of the divine precepts which remained attached to the senses of the soul. It is from there, we are revealed, that sin has come, whose body and soul are like parents, the bodily nature being tempted, the soul having a morbid compassion for it. If it had curbed the greed of the body, the source of sin would have been dried up at its very birth; the body made it pass into the soul as if by an act of virility: the soul was impregnated with it, its very vigor was corrupted, and, weighed down by this foreign burden, she bore it. For violent and strong sex is carried away by the powerful impulse of virile passion; the other applies to keeping a gentle attitude rather than a violent one. It is therefore through them that the movement of various desires has grown. But as soon as it returns to itself, the soul is seized with shame by its hideous posterity, denies its degenerate heirs, renounces passions, takes abhorrence of sin. The flesh itself, crushed under the debt of hard work and exhausted by the duration of its lamentable misfortune, when she groaned to be pierced by the lusts she herself bore, as by the world's thickets is anxious to deprive the old man of evading herself, so as not to be, like an improvident mother, betrayed by her posterity ready to perish. In the same way, the unreasonable movement of lusts, attracting it by the lures of pleasure as well as by the beauty of a certain appearance, is as united as it is to live in society; likewise voluptuousness, a sort of mother-in-law of the body and soul, marries the movement of perverse lust.

 As long as the unison of vices, an indivisible and inseparable agreement, persisted in the same house, there was no division. But when Christ brought to the earth the fire of which He would consume the faults of the flesh, or the sword, which signifies the cutting edge of the power that is exercised, and which "penetrates the intimacy of the spirit and the marrow." (Hebr., IV, 12), then flesh and soul, renewed by the mysteries of regeneration, forgetting what they were, beginning to be what they were not, separating from the company of the old vice so loved that he was until then, and break all connection with their prodigal posterity. Thus the parents are divided against the children, the movement of intemperance being denied by the temperance of the body and the soul avoiding the trade of the fault, while there is no room for this foreigner, coming from without, the voluptuousness . The children are also divided against the parents, when the inveterate vices are concealed from the senile censorship of the renewed man, and the young voluptuousness so far escapes the discipline of a serious house. And nothing forbids thinking that those too are separating who want to become better than their parents, especially since lower He said: "If one comes to me without hating father and mother, son, brothers and sisters, and even his life, one can not be my disciple "(Lk, XIV, 26). Thus, according to the obvious interpretation, the son who follows Christ has the advantage over the pagan parents: for religion prevails over the duties of affection.

 Other meaning, deeper. Sin is born of the flesh, and acts, so to speak, in the bosom of the flesh; which makes the Apostle say: "If I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but the sin that dwells in me" (Rom. VII, 20). When, shed for the life of this world, the blood of the Lord has exterminated the vices, there is a passage from disgrace to grace - for sin has overflowed so that grace is overabundant (Rom., V, 20) - and it turns out that repentance born of sin causes one to change one's life and to desire spiritual grace: thus that which was mortal to me will be my salvation (see Rom., VII, 10). So the sin, washed by the waters of the fountain, is separated from the flesh of which it was begotten, and, each desiring to repair his sin, the fault results in the zeal to be disciplined. In turn, the covetousness of evil things and that kind of passionate, burning desire is transposed by the word of God into the greed of charity and divine love; nature is the same, the conduct has changed; and this desire for body and soul gives a pleasure much preferable to the preceding one: that of celestial mysteries. For the mind is nourished by the knowledge of things, and transported to learn the promise of future goods, it disgusts the old works of the soul; for "the animal man does not understand what is the Spirit of God: for him it is madness; but the spiritual judge of all, and is judged by no one "(I Cor., II, 14ffq).

Luke, XII, 58-59.

"While you go with your opponent find the magistrate,

try to liberate yourself from him, lest he cause you to be condemned by the judge, and let the judge deliver you to the apparitor, and let him not put you in prison; I tell you, you will not leave until you have returned to the last specimen. "

Matthew also noted this; but one specifies, the other speaks in general. One thought that it was a question of bringing back peace between brothers in disagreement, the other of repentance and the amendment of all sin. Let's find out who the adversary is, who the magistrate is, who judges him, who the appariteur, what, in our opinion, is the money that must be paid under pain of being thrown into prison. But according to Matthew the adversary is the one with whom it seems that you have not agreed at all in this life, and who, before the judge to come of the dead and the living, will bring against you the accusation of a constant disagreement. According to Luke, on the contrary, our adversary is especially one who disposes of the bait for sins, in order to share his torment with those he associates with his misguidance.

 He seeks companions in sin, to denounce them as punishable. It is he whose Apostle Peter warns us to keep, when he says: "Our adversary the devil, like a rapacious and roaring lion, seeks to devour" (I Peter, V, 8). Our adversary, according to Matthew, is the whole practice of virtue, the words of the Apostles and the Prophets, which binds us to painful commandments and to the lessons of an austere life; it is good for us to get along with him and to imitate him by our works, lest our stubbornness be denounced as having broken with him. According to Luke, on the contrary, no one is our adversary more than our fall, which accuses us of the proofs of our life: not that the future judge needs the ministry of any accuser, but because before the witness of all things our activity accuses us, when it is foreign to the practice of virtue and apostolic precepts. Thus our adversary is all vicious habit, our adversary is passion; adversity greed, adversary any perversity, adversary any iniquitous thought, all the bad conscience finally, which troubles us here below and later will accuse and denounce us, as the Apostle testifies when he says: "Their conscience testifying to them and their thoughts blaming or defending one another "(Rom., II, 15). What if the conscience of each one denounces it, how much more is the result of our acts present before God! Translated into our body, it will be evaluated on the last day, and the intimate of our thoughts will be read in our hearts. So let us take care, while we are in the course of this life, to free ourselves from our evil activity as a bad opponent, lest going with the adversary to the magistrate, he condemns our misguidance on the way. So he says again, according to Matthew: "Agree with your adversary while you are with him on the way. The Greek said:? ? ? ? ? that is to say, benevolent: for if we free ourselves from the devil in this life, he will not be condemned because of us, and we will be removed from his bonds. It is for this reason that the seventy-ninth psalm bears the title: for the Assyrian28. It is indeed true that you take care of your adversary, and that you work for this Assyrian, in other words vain, if by freeing you from his traps you do him this service to make escape the punishment of your fall and your death. If you remain in his bonds, he will deliver you as guilty to the magistrate, accuser at the same time as a traitor. Who is the magistrate, except the One in whom all power resides and who claims for Him the supreme dignity of the complete and finished time, to whom the Holy Prophet hastens, leaning on the conscience of his good deeds and without fear of the adversary: "My soul," he says, "is thirsty for the living God; when will I come before the face of God "(Ps.41,3)? It is indeed this magistrate who will return the culprit to the judge, to Him, I say, to whom He has put power over the living and the dead. And He gave it by nature, not by grace: He did not receive it as not having it, but drew it from the substance of the Father when He was begotten. Here is the magistrate and the judge that shows you the one who showed the accuser; and it shows when He will be revealed: "In the day, is it said, where God will judge the secrets of men, according to my gospel, through our Lord Jesus Christ" (Rom., II, 16). This judge, therefore, is Jesus Christ, through whom are repeated secret faults and inflicted the punishment of evil deeds. You want to know that Christ is this judge who delivers to the executor and throws in prison? question him; or rather read what he says in the Gospel: "Take it and cast it into darkness outside" (Matt. xxxiii. 13). He also showed his executioners in another passage, where He says, "It will be the same at the end of time: the angels will come to separate the wicked from the righteous, and throw them into the blazing furnace. weeping and gnashing of teeth "(Matt, XIII, 49ffq). It remains to be seen now what the figure of the obole means. And it seems that the name of this familiar object expresses the mystery of a spiritual sense. Indeed, as one pays his debt by returning the money, and as the title to the interest is extinguished only when the whole amount of the capital is paid until the last denier, whatever the mode of payment, of it is by the compensation of charity and other works, or by some satisfaction, that the penalty of sin is extinguished. Nor is it without reason that he did not mention in this place, as elsewhere, two pieces of copper (Lc, XXI, 2), an ace (Matt., X, 29), nor a denier (Ib., XX, 2), but an obole; for the transfer of an obole29 is a kind of exchange, where one puts one thing in sign of the acquittal of another. Likewise here: either the wrong is redeemed at the price of charity, or the punishment diminished according to the appreciation of the wrong. Now it is the custom, as we remember, to give a bath to the baths: by presenting it, everyone obtains the faculty of bathing there; so, here, to be purified, because the sin of each is purified by the kind of transaction described above. On the other hand, the guilty person is tortured and tortured as long as he has not served the sentence of the error committed.

As for the Galileans, whose blood Pilate has mingled with their sacrifices, it seems that there is a figure against those who, under the impulse of the devil, do not offer their sacrifice with purity. Their prayer turns into sin (Psalm 108: 7), as it is written by the traitor Judas (see Acts 1:20), who thought to deliver the Lord's blood in the very midst of the sacrifice.