Homilies on the First Epistle of John by St. Augustine

Author:St. Augustine
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Religion, Classics, Patristics, Christianity
ISBN: 9781565482890
Publisher: New City Press
Published: 2011-03-04T05:00:00+00:00

Seventh Homily

1. This world is to all the faithful who are seeking their homeland what the desert was to the people of Israel. They were indeed wandering the whole time and in search of their homeland, but, since God was leading them, they couldn’t go astray.1 God’s command was their way. For when they went around for forty years, the journey itself is made up of very few stages,2 and this is known to all. They experienced delays because they were being exercised, not because they were being forsaken. What God promises us, then, is an ineffable sweetness and a good, as scripture says, and you have often heard us referring to what the eye has not seen nor the ear heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man (1 Cor 2:9). We are being exercised by temporal labors, however, and we are being educated by the trials of the present life. But, if you don’t want to die of thirst in this desert, drink charity. This is the fountain that the Lord wanted to set there, lest we grow weary on the way, and we shall drink of it more abundantly when we come to our homeland.

A little while ago the gospel was read. What else should I say of the words with which the reading concluded except that you heard about charity? For we have established a contract with our God in the Prayer that, if we want him to forgive our sins, we should also forgive the sins that have been committed against us.3 But there is no forgiveness apart from charity. Remove charity from the heart and it holds onto hatred and cannot forgive. Let charity be there and it forgives with a sense of security and is not made narrow. See if this entire epistle, which we have undertaken to preach on, commends anything else than this one charity itself. Nor is there reason to fear that, by mentioning it often, it may become distasteful. For what is loved if charity becomes distasteful? Since4 it is by charity that other things are loved well, how ought it to be loved itself? It is something, then, which must never forsake our heart, nor should it forsake our mouth.

2. Little children, he says, you are already from God, and you have conquered him (4:4). Whom but the Antichrist? For he had said previously, Everyone who dissolves Jesus Christ and denies that he has come in the flesh is not from God (4:3).5 If you recall, we have explained that all those who violate charity deny that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh.6 For, apart from charity, it wasn’t necessary for Jesus to come. For it is that charity which is commended to us which he himself also commends in the gospel: Greater love than this no one can have than to lay down his life for his friends (Jn 15:13). How could the Son of God lay down his life for us if he

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