Luke, XVII, 3-4. Sorry insults.

"If your brother sins against you, take him back. "

That he did well, after the torment of the rich in the tortures, to add the precept of granting pardon - to those of course who turn away from their misguidance - so that despair does not prevent anyone from being brought back his fault! And what measure, so that forgiveness is not painful nor indulgence laxity, that no one is struck by a harsh reprimand nor encouraged to sin by laissez-faire! In the same way, elsewhere: "If your brother has sinned against you, go and remonstrate with him, between you and him" (Matt. Xviii. 15); for a friendly remonstrance is more effective than a noisy accusation: this one inspires shame, it causes anger. It is better to reserve fear for the warning of being denounced. It is good, really, that the one who is taken back considers you as a friend rather than an enemy: one ranks more easily with the councils than one yields to hardness. So the Apostle: "Take him back, he says, like a brother" - so that he blushes - "do not look at him as an enemy" (II Thess., III, 15). For fear is a weak guardian of perseverance, but shame is a good master of duty: he who fears is repressed, uncorrected; modesty makes acting a nature. It is beautiful that he wrote: "If he sins against you"; for conditions are not equal if we sin against God or a man. And the Apostle, who is the true interpreter of the divine oracle: "The heretic," he says, "after a warning, avoid him" (Tit., III, 10), since the false belief does not It is not pardonable to the equal of a fault; and as often it is by ignorance that the mistake infiltrates, it prescribes to warn, in order to avoid obstinacy or correct the misstep.

 But what does it mean: "If he returns seven times to you, forgive him"? Is it a question of setting a figure for forgiveness? or if God rested on the seventh day of all his works, we are promised after the week of this world a lasting rest, where, as the evils of this world will go and cease, so will the rigor of the revenge will rest? Now there is a Sabbath not only among the days, but as to the months, and that is why the tenth day of the seventh month is the Sabbath of Sabbaths (Lev., XXIII, 15ffq); not only for months, but for years; and not only for the years, but even for the generations, at the end of this world: this is the great Sabbath, as there is in the Law the seventh week after which the Jubilee Year is celebrated. This is the mystery that the Lord wanted to reveal to us by saying, "Not only seven times, but even seventy-seven times." For in the seventh generation, as you find in Luke (III, 37), Enoch "was taken away, lest the wicked change his heart" (Sag., IV, 11), and the sting of the suffering made a truce for him; while in the seventy-seventh generation the Lord was born of Mary, took upon Himself the sins of the human race, granted the remission of all faults. So if in the literal sense you learn to forgive often, not to keep resentment? for there is nothing from which the one who is accustomed to forgive can be shocked? yet recognize the mystery. It is not in vain that one day of the Sabbath the Lord said to a woman, "You are delivered from your infirmity" (Lk, XIII, 12): he shows his people, who at his call should like this woman follow him, that by his coming He has forgiven sins. Thus Lamech is seventy-seven times condemned (Gen., IV, 24), because there is a more serious fault to avenge a crime by committing one. But the mysteries of baptism hand over the most enormous crimes. Learn how to forgive your insults, since Christ forgave his persecutors. And it is not without reason that he suffered on the great Sabbath (Matt., XXVII, 62, Lc, XXIII, 54), to appear on the Sabbath where death would be destroyed by Christ. That if the Jews celebrate the Sabbath to the point of considering a month and a whole year as Sabbath, how much more must we celebrate the resurrection of the Lord! So our elders have taught us to celebrate the fifty days of Pentecost, all of them as belonging to Easter, because the beginning of the eighth week is Pentecost. This is why the Apostle, as a disciple of Christ who knew the distinction of the times, wrote to the Corinthians in these terms: "I will perhaps stay with you for the winter" (I Cor., XVI, 6); and lower: "I will remain at Ephesus until Pentecost; for a great door is open to me "(Ib 8).

Thus he passes the winter among the Corinthians, whose errors anguished him, waited for the coldness of their zeal for the worship of God; he celebrates Pentecost with the Ephesians, gives them the mysteries, rests his heart, because he sees them burning with the ardor of faith. So during these fifty days the Church ignores fasting, like Sunday, the day of the resurrection of the Lord; and these days are all like Sunday. There will be another Sunday, when the body of the Lord will be resurrected. Paul knew him, who said: "You are the body of Christ, and members of his members" (I Cor., XII, 27). This body of the Lord and the bones of his bones will be attached to their heads: but "the head of the church is Christ" (Ephesians 5: 23). Then the fast will end, because in the endless enjoyment will disappear fatigue, worry, weariness. Then death will be destroyed, because "ultimately death will be destroyed" (I Cor., XV, 26). For if it was wanting for Enoch and did not happen for him, it was not destroyed, for he was taken away to escape him. Christ was slain to destroy it; so was it said, by the way, "Where is your victory? where is your sting, death? "(I Cor. XV, 55)? So at this resurrection the Christ will be resurrected, so to speak, again, in his body. Thus "blessed who will share in the first resurrection" (Rev., XX, 6). In the same way that Christ is the firstfruits of the dead (I Cor., XV, 20), so too the first-fruits of the risen ones of the Church are his saints. This mystery, Pierre could not know it; perhaps he knew Enoch's; yet who can embrace in his human intelligence a mystery hidden in God? May the Lord come in my soul, in my understanding, and submit it to me, so that once my mind is subdued, I will say, "I will not fear misfortunes, since you are with me" (Ps. 22.4).

Luke, XVII, 5-6. Effectiveness of faith.

"If you had faith as big as a mustard seed, you would say to this tree, this mulberry tree: tear yourself away and throw yourself into the sea; and he would listen to you. "

From the mustard seed we spoke above (VII, 176 ssq.); now it is mulberry that must be treated. I read: a tree; I do not believe, however, that it is a tree: for what reason, what profit for us, that a tree, made to give fruit to the toilers who toil, is uprooted and thrown into the sea? Doubtless we believe it possible, by virtue of faith, that insensible nature obey perceptible orders; yet what does this species of tree mean? I read, it is true: "I was a shepherd of goats, grazing blackberries" (Amos, VII, 14), and I think the Prophet wanted to mark us that he was from the flock of sinners, sinner him himself, and withdrew from it. It is also fitting that, in order to prophesy to the nations, he sought fruits on the bushes, drew his food from the bushes. He was going to settle the Gentiles' dark and smelly flocks, the peoples of the nations, into the pastures of his writings, where they would fatten with spiritual nourishment, while he would draw from the sinner converted the spiritual milk. But, as in another book of the Gospels (Matth., XVII, 19) is spoken of a mountain - whose bare silhouette, deprived of fertile vineyards and olive trees, barren in harvests, conducive to the dens of animals, troubled by the incursions of wild beasts, seems to translate the haughty elevation of the evil spirit (II Cor., X, 15), as it is written: "I speak to you, corrupt mountain, who corrupts the whole earth (Jer., LI, 25) - there is reason to believe that in this passage again we are shown faith expelling the foul spirit. Especially as the nature of the tree fits with this opinion: because its fruit is white at first in its flower, then once formed blushes, maturing becomes black. The devil too, fallen from his prevarication of the white flower of the angelic nature and the scarlet of his power, took the horrible blackness and odor of sin. See the One who says to the mulberry tree: "Rip yourself and throw yourself into the sea": when He hunts a Legion of a man, He allows him to pass into pigs, who, carried away by the diabolical impulse, have drowned in the sea (Lc, VIII, 30 ssq.). This passage is therefore an exhortation to the faith; in the moral sense he teaches us that even what is most solid can be destroyed by faith. But from faith come charity, from charity hope, and they come back to one another as by a sacred circle.

Luke, XVII, 7-10. "Useless servants."

The following shows that no one should boast of his works, since it is in justice that we owe the Lord our service. For if you do not say to a servant who has plowed or grazed the sheep, go on (here), put yourself at the table - where you hear that no one sits down if he does not pass first: Moses first began to move to see the great vision (Ex., III, 3) - so if you not only do not say to your servant: sit down to table, but you claim from him another service and do not 'Do not thank it, so the Lord does not admit that you are giving Him a single work or work; for as long as we live, we must always work. Recognize, therefore, that you are a servant of many services. Do not worry about being called a child of God - you must recognize grace, but without forgetting nature - do not boast if you have served well: you had to do it. The sun does its work, the moon obeys, the angels do their service; the instrument chosen by the Lord for the Gentiles says, "I am not worthy to be called an apostle, because I have persecuted the church of God" (I Cor., XV, 9); and in another place, after having shown that he is not aware of any fault, he adds: "But I am not justified for that reason" (I Cor., IV, 4). So we, too, do not pretend to be praised for ourselves; do not anticipate the judgment of God; let us not prevent the judge's judgment, but reserve it for his time, for his judge.

 After which the ungrateful are taken again (Lk, XVII, 11ff), and in this way we finally arrive at the discourse on the coming judgment.

Luke xvii, 20-37. The last times.

"At that time, he who is on his roof and has his furniture in the house should not come down to take them away; likewise whoever will be in the fields will not have to retrace his steps. Remember Lot's wife. "

Asked by the disciples about the time when the Kingdom of God will come, the Lord says, "The Kingdom of God is within you. Yes, by the reality of grace, not by the servitude of sin. So who wants to be free must be a servant in the Lord (see I Cor., VII, 22): because to the extent that we share in servitude, we also share in the Kingdom. He says, "The Kingdom of God is within you. When will he come, He did not want to say it; but He said that the day of judgment will come, so as to inspire all terror of the judgment that threatens, without reassuring by his adjournment. And so as not to seem to distress the disciples by refusing them anything, He says in another book: "As for the day and the hour, no one knows them, not even the angels of heaven, not even the Son" (Matth XXIV, 36). He did say the Son, without specifying (for the Son of Man is at the same time the Son of God), so as to make us think that he has rather spoken of the Son of man: for He knows the end times not by his human nature, but by his divine nature. It is not, however, contrary to the faith to hear it from the Son of God. What has the Father, so good, been able to hide from the Son, to whom He has given everything (Jn, III, 35)? and how did he not give him the knowledge of the moment, having given the power even to judge (Ib., V, 22)? How else can the Son ignore what the Father knows, while the Son is in the Father (Ib., Xiv. 11) and the Spirit searches the very depths of God (I Cor., II, 10) while the Son himself is the depth of the treasures of wisdom and divine knowledge (Rom., XVII, 33)? But He has shown in another passage why He did not want to say it: "It is not your place," said He, "to know the times and years with which the Father has reserved his power" (Act. 1.7). Do you see what is happening by denying that the Trinity has a unique power? That there is something unknown to the Son. Why would the Father hide Him from His own Son? It is out of jealousy that we do not want to make known to others what we know, or for fear of being betrayed; but we can not suspect either the Father of jealousy or the Son of betraying. They therefore have only one knowledge, since they have only the same power. As well, if he knows the signs of the coming judgment, He undoubtedly knows the deadline. What could ignore the One who shines like lightning, since light, Son of God, He illuminates the intimate of the heavenly mystery? "At that time," he says, "so He knows the time too; but He knows it for Him, for me He does not know it. And He rightly asserts that the cause of the flood, fire, and judgment comes from our sins: for God did not create evil, but it was our merits that were procured. Because "they ate and drank, took a wife and married".

It is not a question of condemning the marriage, any more than the food is condemned, the one providing the replacement, the latter to the nature? otherwise it is only necessary to leave this world (I Cor., V, 10); ? but in all things is necessary measure, and all that is excessive comes from the evil (Matt., V, 37). That one agrees from time to time to go to prayer (I Cor., VII, 5); let there be, among the solicitations of the world and the weight of intemperance, some pious sobriety, a truce of chastity. Then, then, that the good ones necessarily suffer because of the wicked to have heart and soul broken in this world, to receive a reward more abundant in the other, they are provided with remedies: "Let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. What is this Judea? For I know another Judah according to the spirit, not according to the letter: "God is known in Judea" (Ps 75, 2). And what are these mountains able to withstand the shaking of the coming judgment, while it is written, "The trembling will take hold of the mountains" (Is., LXIV, 1, 3)? "Heaven and earth will pass" (Lk. XXI, 33): how could part of the earth be unharmed, or could it protect me, not saving itself? Where shall I hide myself from Him who moves the depths of the sea (Ps. 64: 8)? "If I ascend to heaven, He is there; if I go down to hell, He is there "(Psalm 138: 8). One can not escape the One who is everywhere, but appease him. So the day of judgment is here. If you do not want to be surprised, fear every day, run away every day. You ask where to flee? "Climb the mountain, you who give good news to Zion" (Is., XL, 9), in order to be raised on the summit of eminent merits; for "God is God of the mountains, and not of the valleys" (I Kings, XX, 28). Go up to the place where Christ sits at the right hand of God, whose "foundations are on the holy mountains" (Ps. 86: 1), and "the mountains surround" (Psalm 124: 2). Your mountain is Paul; your mountain is Peter: on their faith put the steps of your soul. When one is established in the law of God and the inheritance of faith, the day of judgment does not come to chastise, but to glorify. If anyone stands on the roof, in other words has already climbed the top of his house and the summit of eminent virtues, that he does not fall back on the works of the earth and this world. For I know a roof where Rahab, that courtesan as to the figure, the Church as to mystery, united by the community of mysteries to the peoples of Gentility, hides the explorers sent by Jesus (Jos., II, 1); if they had gone down to the bottom of the house, they would have been killed by the emissaries who had been sent to seize them. The roof, therefore, is the function of the summit of the spirit, the summit of the soul, which shelters the helpless weakness of the body. It makes me still think that, if it is holy, the paralytic that four young people have sent down by the roof (Mc, II, 3 ssq.), Is that with the help of the four virtues of prudence, strength, temperance, and justice, he humbled himself at the feet of Christ in a manner so to speak. For nothing is higher than humility; being superior, she does not know how to exalt herself, because no one is aiming for what he knows to be below him. But since we are in judgment, do not stay away from the roof, lest by wanting to take away the furniture that is in the house, we are not caught. It is not in all houses that there are furniture of gold and silver: in most they are of wood (see II Tim., II, 20). In the same way all the houses are not furnished, for there are voids; the Prophet knew them, who said, "What does it take you now to go up to the empty houses? The city is full of clamours "(Is., XXII, 1 ssq.); and he adds, "Your leaders have all fled"; they have all been wounded in your enclosure, and they have fallen from faith to false faith. Sabellius was wounded, wounded Valentin, wounded Arius: it is that they found themselves in an empty house. Do you want to live in a furnished house? Follow Peter, while hungry he climbs to the top of the house (Act., X, 9). There he knew the mystery of the formation of the Church, and that he should not judge the people of Gentility impure, since faith could cleanse him from all defilement. As for the vases, they are made of clay; therefore the body is a vessel: so beware of abandoning for the desire of the body the higher searches of the mind. If Pierre could not grasp the mystery while he was down, how would you grasp it? He seized him, because he went up to proclaim the Lord (see Is., XL, 9), without fear of suffering in his body. So "if you're on the roof, do not go down; and if you are in the fields, do not go back on your steps. " How would I understand the field, if Jesus Himself did not teach me, saying, "If, having put his hand to the plow, we look back, we are not made for the Kingdom from heaven "(Lc, IX, 62)? The idler sits on the farm, the worker sows in the fields; the cripple is by the fireside, the brave with the plow. The smell of the field is good, for the smell of Jacob is the smell of a full field (Gen., XXVII, 27): the field is filled with flowers, filled with various products. So plow your field, if you want to end in the Kingdom of God. May the fruitful harvest of good merit flourish for you. May there be "an abundant vine on the walls of your house, and young olive trees around your table" (Psalm 127: 3). Now conscious of its fertility, sown with the word of God, cultivated by spiritual care, may your soul say to Christ, "Come, my brother, let us go out into the fields" (Cant., VII, 11), and let him answer. "I entered my garden, my sister and my wife; I have harvested my myrrh "(Ib., V, 1). Is it better harvested than that of faith, which reaps the fruits of the resurrection, 39 that watered the source of endless joy? If, therefore, you are forbidden to look back, still more is it forbidden to return to take your tunic: for you have learned that if you are asked for your tunic, you must also give up the mantle (Matt. 40); thus, being on the way to the Kingdom of God, do not seek fortune and heritage. I know in Scripture another tunic, about which the Apostle exhorts us to strip the old man with his activities to put on the new (Col., III, 9), and not to seek the tunic of our mistake of the past. This is what makes such a saying: "I left my tunic for the night, how will I take it again" (Cant., V, 3)? For you must not only give up sins, but also erase all memories of your past activity. Paul, forgetting the past (Phil. III, 13), has stripped himself of the fault without omitting repentance. That's why the Lord says, "Remember Lot's wife. For having looked back, she lost the privilege of her nature; because behind, it is Satan (cf Mc, VIII, 33), back it is Sodom. Therefore avoid intemperance, avoid debauchery. And to make you see that not everyone can flee to the mountain, remember that he who has not returned to his old attractions? because he had first chosen Sodom? fled because he arrived at the mountain; the other, who was weaker, having looked behind her, could not reach with the help and support of her husband to the mountain, but remained.

"That night, there will be two people in the same bed: one will be taken, and the other left. "

He said well: the night; for the Antichrist is the hour of darkness, seeing that he casts darkness in the hearts of men, affirming that he is the Christ, while the false prophets arise to affirm that Jesus lives in the desert, in order to deceive by the misguidance of uncertain opinions, sometimes that he is inside, in order to be seized upon hearing his eminent power. But Christ, like a lightning flash, spreads throughout the world the sparks of his light; so he does not wander in the wilderness, is he not shut up in any place; for "I fill heaven and earth, saith the Lord" (Jer. XXIII, 24); but He shines with His bright radiance, so that on this night we may see the glory of the resurrection. What does this saying mean: "On two in the same bed, on two who will grind, on two in the fields, one will be taken and the other left"? Would it be unjust for God, so that like-minded people, living together, without difference as to the value of their deeds, should be distinguished in rewarding their merits? It is not so; but to the actions of man is their reward. The merits of men are not equalized by their common life, for the father stands up against the son and the son against the father (Lk, XII, 53) by religious zeal. All of them do not realize what they are doing, but "he who persevered to the end will be saved" (Matt. X, 22). At this final moment the Lord examines not the external service, but the interior disposition; for if you make the right offering without just sharing, your sacrifice is not acceptable to God (Gen., IV, 7). So from the same bed (for there is a bed of human infirmity, since it is written, "You have turned his bed into his infirmity" (Ps. 40: 4)) one is left, the other taken. He who is caught is taken away from Christ in the air (I Thess., IV, 16), the one who is left, reprobate. "Two are to grind at the mess. The meaning is, it seems, figurative of those who seek their food in secret, and from within produce it in the day. However, we must find what mold these women. Is it not what we read in Isaiah, "If you bring me the flour of flour, it is in vain" (Is., I, 13)? Thus the flour of flour would be the offering of those who have grinded. Let's examine those who mold, what they mold, what is the mess. And maybe this world is the trouble. I would rather see there an allusion to the figure of the human body, where our soul is shut up as in the prison of the body, to produce, if it has concern for the good, the heavenly bread (cf Jn, VI, 51). In this mess, therefore, either the Synagogue or the soul in prey to sin grinds a wheat wet and spoiled by too much moisture, and can not separate the inside from the outside: so it will be abandoned, because his flour will have displeased. On the other hand, the Holy Church, or the soul which is not stained and soiled with any fault, grinds a grain dried in the heat of the eternal sun, which God has clothed as He willed (Le, XII, 28 ), and that the angels purified from every stain of impurity; and, offering to God of the heart of humanity a good flour, she makes the libation of her sacrifice acceptable. And there will not be only two millers, but two workers in the same field: one will be taken, good sower who will not have sown on the roads, but in plowed land and cultivated (Lc, VIII, 5 ssq .), so that the earth multiplies the grain buried by humility, and not scattered by the boasting; but let the sower of the tares, from which they draw unacceptable flour. What are these different cultivators, we can discover if we take care how the Apostle said that there are in us two vows, that is to say two spirits (Rom, VII, 23): perhaps in the sense that one belongs to the external man who corrupts himself (II Cor., IV, 16), the other on the inside, which is renewed by mysteries. And perhaps the worst, in that one who rises "from a vain swelling in the spirit of his flesh and does not cling to his head" (Col., II, 18ffq), is it that it departs from the practice of the salutary precepts of Our Lord Jesus Christ: for He is the head of all (Col., II, 10), as the Creator of all. The other, much better, is one who loves humility, seeks wisdom, does not forget mercy; he is the good sower, because "he sowed, given to the poor: his righteousness remains forever" (Psalm 111: 9). He is therefore spiritual, the other is carnal. For if the words of the Apostle make us grasp that the seducer who exalts and puffs in his heart is swollen by the spirit of the flesh, we also show that the holy man is renewed by the spirit of the soul, since the same says, "renew yourselves in the spirit of your soul" (Eph. iv, 23). He thus shows that there are two spirits, one who becomes the spirit of the flesh succumbing to sin, the other who, united to the Spirit, disavows the defilements of the flesh. And there are not only two spirits, but two laws in us. Both of them were exposed to us by the Apostle, when he said, "I take pleasure in the law of God as to the inner man, but I see another law in my members, which fights against the law of my spirit and imprison me in the law of sin which is in my members "(Rom., VII, 22 ff.). There is therefore a law of the inner man, and one of it also for the outside: one which forbids sin, the other which advises it; one who condemns error, the other who inspires it; one that strengthens the soul, the other that tempts it. There are even two more powerful laws in us, one of God, the other of sin, according to the same master, who said, "So it is the same self that serves by the Spirit the law of God, by the flesh the law of sin "(Rom., VII, 25). And this shows that if you say: the spirit, in short, you oppose it to the flesh: for by saying that it serves the law of God by the spirit, Paul undoubtedly shows that the spirit by itself is good as long as he is not conquered by the flesh, and created in such a way that he resists error; thus, when he is conquered, he is the spirit of the flesh: his fall, he owes it not to his nature, but to the flesh, and his defeat makes him pass, so to speak, under the name and property of his triumphant ; but his nature opposes him to the flesh. In short, by the Spirit we serve God, by the flesh sin; and the mind will only find it better to co-operate with the Holy Ghost so as not to interrupt its religious service. Such, then, are the workmen of our field: one produces the good fruit by his diligence, the other loses it by his carelessness, and the legislator calls it blood: "The soul of all flesh," he says, " his blood "(Lev. XVII, 14); to which many also relate the words: "You shall not eat the flesh in his blood" (Gen., IX, 4), so as not to take the pleasures of the body, bloodied by the wounds of the soul, as a repair rather than a bloody grievance? we who must nourish the word of God. He is therefore a food that feeds, he is a food of blood: just as, indeed, the flesh of the Lord is really food, so his blood is really our drink (Jn, VI, 56). So let us prepare with our works a good food for the Lord, lest on his return, if he finds no more fruit than on the fig tree (Matt., XXI, 19), left fasted by the sterility of our merits He does not withdraw the design of his tenderness, and say to this soul, that He will have found fruitless and soiled with blood: "Never, ever, will any fruit be born of you! So "the soul of all flesh is his blood. There is also a more excellent soul, of which God said, "All souls are mine; as the soul of the father, the soul of the son is mine also "(Ez., XVIII, 4). And we do not forget the interpretation of the two peoples. According to her, in this world, which is very often compared to a field, there are two peoples, that of the believers and the other, who do not grow; they will be paid for their merits, and therefore he who has faith will be taken, the other, who does not have faith, will be left behind. As for the two millennia, these are the two souls, or even the Church and the Synagogue: for ordinarily there is no single, but multiple, figuration in the divine Scriptures, so that a single word contains several realities. Thus the spirit of the flesh, and the soul of the flesh, and the synagogue gather the wheat and mold the flour which are offered in vain; but the spirit that is united to the soul, and the soul that receives salvation, or the Church of God, reap and mold the spiritual flour of the true Law: that which is still made the bread of proposal that only eat the priests, to whom it is prescribed to eat a purer bread (Lev., XXIV, 5 sec.), obviously He who came down from heaven. Now we are all, if our merits lend themselves to it, the priests of justice, consecrated by the anointing of gladness (Ps. 44, 8) for the kingship and the priesthood. Let us therefore work and cultivate our field while we are employed in the office of this culture, in order to have, in the Jerusalem from above, where the true observance of the Law is practiced, the flour made of our sheaves? those who are happy to have been able to gather, in order to come, to come while joyful in carrying their sheaves (Ps. 125, 6). These, then, are the spiritual fruits, and the happy harvest of true labor, which no superfluous rain can soothe. The fruit of the flesh, on the other hand, is subject to corruption; also who has sown the carnal, will reap the carnal (Gal., VI, 8). As for the field, what shall I say, since it is obviously the work of the farmer that makes his value or depreciates it?

"And they said, Where, Lord? Thus spoke the disciples. But the Lord, having warned them where to flee, where to dwell, and what to beware of, summed up the whole thing in a general indication, saying, "Where shall be the body, there will gather the eagles. Thus let us first conjecture who the eagles are, in order to specify what the body is. The souls of the just are compared to the eagles: they go up to the heights, abandon the shallows, they reach, it is said, at an advanced age; so David says to his soul, "Your youth shall be renewed like that of the eagle" (Psalm 102: 5). If therefore we have identified the eagles, we can no longer have any doubt for the body, especially remembering that Joseph received from Pilate the body (Jn, XIX, 38). Do you not see the eagles around the body: Mary of Cleophas and Mary Magdalene and Mary Mother of the Lord and the group of Apostles surrounding the tomb of the Lord? Do you not see the eagles around the body, when with the spiritual clouds will come the Son of man, and "all eyes will see him, and those who pierced him" (Rev. I, 7) ? 56. There is also a body of which it has been said, "My flesh is truly food, and my blood is truly drink" (Jn, VI, 56). Around this body are the eagles, flying around with the wings of the spirit. Around this body are still the eagles who believe that Jesus came into the flesh, since "every spirit that professes that Jesus Christ came in the flesh, is of God" (I Jn, IV, 2). Where then there is faith, there lies the mystery, there the home of holiness. It is also a body that the Church: in it the grace of baptism gives us spiritual renewal, and the old age in its decline takes again an age and a new life.