Three Sermons from the Sessorian Codex

1. Warning Against Distorting Christ's Command

It is the saving precept of Jesus Christ: "Sell all that you possess, and give alms". The faithfulness of the Lord's teaching is plain, which not only commanded that it be sold, but also enjoined what should be done with what was sold. But this faithfulness wicked teachers darken with frivolous and futile words; whom the Apostle Paul, in words not of the flesh but of something prior—divine words—condemned beforehand as adulterers, saying: "Adulterating the word of God". And again: "Do you not know that whoever corrupts the temple of God, God will destroy him?" And that which Christ, rebuking the Pharisees in the Gospel, recalled, saying: "You have rejected the commandments of God, that you may establish your traditions".

2. Against Excuses for Keeping Possessions

Possession, they say, is not to be sold, but retained; and from its revenues works of mercy are to be celebrated. Why do you cover, under the garment of a work of mercy, the burning greed and desire of having and retaining possession? Why do you overshadow the disgrace of your impiety under the veil of piety? Why do you snatch away from believers, by subtle persuasion, the Lord's precept, so splendid in its very purity? Why, by a feigned and simulated discourse, do you deny to the religious the heavenly command? Why, by serpentine counsel, do you close paradise to God's little servants, you who, not entering yourself, also hide the keys of the heavenly kingdoms from those who wish to enter? You are not wiser than Christ, nor greater, who commanded that it be done; nor better than the Apostle Paul, who accomplished it.

He, as soon as he was illumined by grace, did not yield to flesh and blood in trembling sufferings; he did not go up to Jerusalem to obtain counsel from the Apostles who had gone before him, since he had been instructed in all the heralding of the faith by a divine and heavenly discourse; he did not seek Cilicia, his own city, to receive his paternal inheritance, which he had abandoned for Christ's sake to the poor; nor did he defend the very nobility of the Roman lineage from which he had drawn the origin of his blood, which he knew to have been disgraced by the Lord's passion: but through the region of Arabia, he brought that venerable name, which he had pursued with injury, which he had assailed with eloquence and the envy of the Pharisees, as saving and divine, by faithful proclamation, to all mortals.

Who then is shown, in his deeds, to be like Paul, endowed with manifold triumphs, who stripped himself of all the chains and pomps of the world, and shall rightly be called God's servant; who, despite envious detractors, persevered steadfastly in fulfilling the precepts of the Lord Christ, who said: "Sell all that you possess, and give alms"; "and behold, all things are clean to you".

3. Faithfulness in Worldly Wealth and Its Reward

In the precept the sale is commanded, and concerning what is sold, the distribution is required. To the devoted, purification of mind is promised; to those cleansed of filth, the heavenly kingdom is prepared. I ask, what more do you seek, or what is left, except that, if the servants do not do what is commanded, God should do what he threatens? He also said: "If you have not been faithful with unrighteous mammon, who will give you what is true? And if you have not been faithful with what belongs to another, who will entrust you with what is your own?" "And these shall go into everlasting burning; but the righteous into life everlasting".

1. Charity Above All Spiritual Gifts

Having gone through and examined the gifts of perfection, let us proceed, as we promised, to the greater and more eminent proclamations of the Apostle; who recalled that neither knowledge of the mystery, nor loftiness of eloquence, nor the generous piety of mercy, nor the sublime merit of faith, nor the brave and undaunted constancy of martyrdom can be of profit, if brotherly and sincere charity be lacking. For what does it profit that you nourish at expense one whom you destroy by the sword? Or what benefit is it to him whom you cherish with whatever nourishment, if you pursue him with a robber's hatred? He lacks all offices of piety, who, kindled with the flames of hatred, persecutes in his brother a grace either bestowed by divine aid, or won by the labors of fasting, or by the assiduity of prayers, or by the persistence of vigils, and by every kind of virtue.

For charity without mercy is imperfect: because mercy is a limb of the body of charity; on the other hand, mercy without charity is nothing: because every limb dies which has been either torn away or cut off from the solid body. For charity is a kind of summit holding the citadel of all the members, to which all the offices of the virtues remain attached and connected; without which the reward of all good things either languishes or perishes, as the Apostle says: "If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And if I have prophecy, and know all mysteries, and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so that I can remove mountains, but have not charity, I am nothing. And if I bestow all my goods, and distribute all that I have to the poor, and if I deliver my body to be burned, so that I may glory, but have not charity, it profits me nothing".

2. Charity as the Foundation of All Virtue

Charity is the mother of all good things, the beginning of mercy, the origin of piety, the fount of kindness, the head of justice, the fulfilment of the law, the perfection of the commandments. Without this alone, all things either collapse enfeebled, or lack their kingdom. For to have prophetic understanding is nothing; and to know mysteries is a light thing; it is a small matter to put demons to flight; and to accomplish every kind of virtue, if charity be lacking, is empty. Whence the Lord Christ thus speaks: « Many will say to me in that day: Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name, and cast out demons in thy name, and done many mighty works in thy name?

Then will I say unto them: Depart from me, I never knew you, ye that work iniquity. » It is a work of iniquity for a man to wish to be preferred to a man, for brother to envy brother, for one to wish for himself what he does not wish for another; and though we have one common condition by nature, to wish one condition to be set above another.

3. Christ's Humility and the Will of the Father

Since the author of our salvation, conscious of the divinity proper to his own nature, showed himself mortal to all mortals, and offered himself as man to all men, and—what is greater—subjected condition to condition, and fitted the form of his body to the form of our body; so that by this mystery he might make loftiness equal to lowliness, and lowliness equal to loftiness; and that in this he might fulfil the will of the Father, he who said: « I came down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me. » And again: « The Son of man, he says, came not to be ministered unto, but to minister. » And readily he who, setting aside the loftiness of his majesty, took on the form of a servant, as the Apostle says: « Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant. » And that saying:

« Not every one that saith to me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven, but he that doeth the will of my Father, who is in heaven. »

4. The Will of God as Love of Neighbor

But we cannot do the will of the Father unless we first know what that will itself is. Now the will of God is, on the authority of the apostle Paul, « our sanctification; » of those whom, from every semblance of the ancient contagion, he has cleansed through the regeneration of the saving washing by this profession of ours, by which we believe that God came in the weakness of the flesh, by which we confess him born of a virgin, by which we do not deny that he was subject to a bodily condition, by which we extol Christ crucified, proclaim him buried, and raised by the glory of God.

Whence, since we see that so much has been conferred upon us from the mere profession of his sanctification alone; from this we may understand how great a reward can be conferred from the imitation and the accomplishment or knowledge of his will: concerning which the Apostle thus instructs us: « that ye may know what is the will of God, that which is good, and acceptable, and perfect. » The will of God is love of neighbour, brother, that you rejoice with your brother, that you envy not one better than yourself, that you set the lesser above yourself, that you admit no offense, that you forgive one admitted, that you go before those who honor you in doing them honor, that you outstrip those who love you in loving them, that you pray for enemies, that you feed adversaries, that you hate not persecutors.

Thus every virtue also becomes an ornament, a glory, faith, perfection, mercy, martyrdom, the body consumed by flames; thus we are made sons of God, when by our works we grow like the heavenly Father; thus we are joined to Christ by the right of inheritance, when we bestow good things upon both the good and the wicked, when we either forget an injury or dismiss from the heart one we had held onto, when by a still higher love we spend for friends not only our goods but our very selves; thus we shall abound in the Holy Spirit, whose we also are, if we fulfil with all gentleness the things that belong to kindness.

5. The Spirit of Gentleness in Elijah and David

Hence the Lord Christ admonished the Apostles as they hastened to avenge the inhospitable Samaritans, saying: « Know ye not of what spirit ye are? » namely, of gentleness: which is alien to all disturbances, which is shaken by no injury, which is free from every perturbation, which, supported by tranquillity, kind, gentle, and pleasant; which spirit Elijah beheld the third time, as Scripture says: « Go forth tomorrow, and stand before the presence of the Lord: and behold the Lord will pass by: and behold a great spirit, strong, breaking mountains, and crushing rocks before the face of the Lord: and the Lord was not in that spirit, and after the spirit an earthquake: and the Lord was not in the earthquake, and after the earthquake a fire: and the Lord was not in the fire, and after the fire a voice of a gentle breeze: and in it was the Lord ».

But what Elijah deserved to see under a mystery, the prophet Isaiah openly recognized by the Lord's revelation. « Upon whom, he says, shall I rest, but upon the humble, and the meek, and him that trembleth at my words? » So too that Samuel, that illustrious priest Samuel, by the Lord's command rejected and set aside the most splendid brothers, alike in form, equal in stature, not unequal in strength, and by the Lord's command anointed king their brother David, subject in humility, weak in gentleness, and milder in the spirit of tranquillity; wherefore he himself, praying, said: « Remember, O Lord, David, and all his meekness ». This election of God has always remained and remains, that he assails and casts down the proud, and cherishes and exalts the humble. This exaltation cannot exist without humiliation, nor election without reprobation, nor calling without discernment. And therefore, when the weak and the despised and the lowest are loved, the things that are highest and greatest are rejected; for to God great things are weak, and weak things are great.

The apostle Paul taught this, who showed that the calling of believers descends from this election. « Behold, he says, your calling, brethren; that not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble: but the foolish things of the world hath God chosen, that he may confound the wise; and the weak things of the world hath God chosen, that he may confound the mighty; and the base things of this world and the things that are contemptible hath God chosen, which are not (that is, contemptible), that he might destroy the things that are (namely, the contemptible): that no flesh should glory in his sight ».

6. Glorying Only in the Cross of Christ

Therefore let those who glory in the flesh glory in the world, let those who glory in man glory in the flesh, who are exalted by the honors of the world, who are puffed up by riches, who are proud of noble birth. « But God forbid that we should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ: through whom we ourselves are crucified to the world, and the world is crucified unto us »; whose pomps and desires we already then abandoned and cast away, when by a better course we made our passage to heaven; as the admonition of John, that teacher of the heavenly life, expressed for us the form and image of living: « Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world.

If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him: because all that is in the world is the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the ambition of the age: which is not of the Father, but of the lust of the age ».

7. The World's Hatred of Christ's Followers

He who hates the world does not fear the world's hatreds: for he himself, by his own hatred, has provoked the world to hate him; and therefore it is not right either to fear or to shudder at its hatreds, if it strives to make you pay for what it has found you to have preferred over itself. So this worldly hatred, by whose detractions we are torn, by whose blasphemies we are mocked, is not new nor sudden; for we are not ignorant that it was long ago brought against the Lord Christ and his apostles, as the Evangelist says: « If they have called the master of the house Beelzebub, how much more shall they call them of his household? » And « If the world hate you, know ye that it hated me before you. » So too the Apostle says: « We are made a spectacle unto this world, and to angels, and to men; » that is, to the Gentiles, and to false brethren, who under the name of religion transfigure themselves into angels of light.

Finally he plainly embraces this both above and below. « Already, he says, ye are full, ye are become rich: ye reign without us: and I would to God ye did reign, that we also might reign with you. » And below: « We are fools for Christ's sake, but ye are wise in Christ; we are weak, but ye are strong. Even unto this present hour we both hunger, and are naked, and are buffeted, and are unsettled (that is, we do not resist, or do not defend ourselves), and labor, working with our own hands: being reviled, we bless: being persecuted, we suffer it: being blasphemed, we entreat: we are made as the filth of this world, the offscouring of all things. » This is apostolic teaching, this is the mystery of God and of Christ, this is the heavenly conversation, this is the spiritual profession; this the world does not receive; this hypocrisy rejects, as the Apostle says: « The natural man perceiveth not the things that are of the Spirit of God: for it is foolishness unto him. »

8. The Fruits of the Spirit and Works of the Flesh

The fruits of the Spirit, however, are those which the Apostle enumerates, saying: « Charity, joy, peace, patience, goodness, gentleness, faith, mildness, continence, chastity. » And that of which the same Apostle admonished the Church of the Ephesians in his letter: « Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption. » Now the Spirit is grieved by contrary desires, that is, by the works of the flesh, which among other hidden things are these: « Enmities, contentions, emulations, indignations, provocations, wraths, strifes, dissensions, sects, envies, drunkenness, revellings (that is, gluttonies). » By these works, indeed, the Spirit is grieved, is offended; he forsakes and withdraws, as Solomon says: « For the holy Spirit of discipline will flee from the deceitful. »

9. The Spirit's Dove and the Putting Away of Bitterness

« Grieve not, says the apostle Paul, the Holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption. » The day of redemption is that in which, redeemed by the gift of saving indulgence, we are freed from the sentence of death; in which we put off the old man with his deeds, and put on the new, which is created according to God in good works.

For on that day we are also sealed with the Holy Spirit, when we are perfected by all the sacraments, as the Evangelist says: « And Jesus, when he was baptized, went up straightway out of the water: and lo, the heavens were opened unto him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending from heaven like a dove, coming upon him. » The dove is innocent in simplicity, or simple in innocence, not violent in outcry, not savage in fury, not irascible in manner, not hostile with the bitterness of gall: and therefore, the same Spirit having descended in its likeness and been received, the Apostle added, saying: « Let all bitterness, and wrath, and indignation, and clamor, and blasphemy, be put away from you. » Bitterness is to conceive enmities, to belch out hatreds, to vomit forth poisons, to detract from one's neighbors, to sow deadly seeds, as it is written in Deuteronomy: « Our enemies are senseless.

Their vine is of the vineyard of Sodom, and their branches are of Gomorrah: their grapes are grapes of gall, and their cluster is one of bitterness. Their wine is the wrath of dragons, and the incurable fury of asps. » And David: « Their throat is an open sepulchre, with their tongues they have dealt deceitfully, whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness. » Wrath, he says, wrath is to envy one better off, to detract from the fortunate, to groan at a neighbor's advancement; wherefore the Prophet thus says: « The sinner shall see, and be angry, he shall gnash with his teeth, and pine away. » Indignation, he says, indignation is to bear it ill that one lower be made equal in the gift of grace to one higher, or be preferred by degree of gift; whereas the Apostle says to the Galatians: « There is neither bond nor free: there is neither male nor female; for ye are all one in Christ Jesus. »

10. Isaiah's Peaceable Kingdom Fulfilled in Christ

The most blessed Paul teaches in nearly all his epistles that men called to the faith out of every nation, rank, nobility, age, or sex have been made one in Christ; by the sacrament of whose passion the principality of the world was dishonored, nobility disfigured, loftiness cast down, humility exalted, the depressed lifted up, filth purified, the fallen raised up, and the dead made alive.

So in Isaiah the trenches of the valleys are filled, the heights of the mountains are humbled; so the crooked things are made straight, and the rough places made smooth: so the slopes of all the hills, balanced in equality, are brought down into the level plain of the fields; so the cedars of Lebanon are made slender, and the young shoots of the vine-branches grow strong and fat; so the ferocity of lions, made tame, is joined to the ox, and, disdaining the fatness of flesh, feeds on straw with the ox: so the wolf, having laid aside its rage, feeds with the lambs in the pastures of the fields: so the bear agrees with the calf, and the kid with the leopard: so infants put their hands into the dens of asps, and are not harmed: so the diversity of the human race (for surely God's concern is not for oxen) is brought back into one: so the diversity of birth is made to agree in unity: so rival conditions are made equal; while they die by baptism to the birth of the world, and by grace are born to nobility for heaven, as the prophet Isaiah says: "Behold now the Lord, the Ruler, the Lord of Hosts, shall trouble the glorious ones with might, and they that are proud shall be crushed with reproach, and shall be humbled, and the lofty shall fall by the sword.

And Lebanon shall fall together with the lofty ones." Frequently the divine word compares Mount Lebanon and the summits of its cedars to the worldly kingdom and its princes; which kingdom and its ministers the Lord Christ cast down and crushed by His passion. And lest the diversity of the passages should trouble us, the same prophet, pointing out the person of the Lord Christ Himself, who was to bring all these things to fulfillment, added, saying: "There shall come forth a rod out of the root of Jesse, and a flower shall rise up from his root." The root indeed signified the person of David, from whose seed Christ was born in the flesh, who, springing forth from the loins of his father Jesse, extended his carnal origin as far as the flower of the Lord's nativity.

Then he added further, saying: "The Spirit of God shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and godliness; the spirit of the holy fear of God shall fill him." And that he might show more openly that Christ was to be understood, he continues, saying: "He shall not judge according to glory, nor reprove according to eloquence; but he shall judge with humble judgment, and shall reprove the glorious ones of the earth, and shall smite the earth with the word of his mouth, and with the spirit through his lips shall slay the wicked"; namely by that word, and by the breath of his lips, with which he said: "The prince of this world (that is, its ruler) shall be cast out." Of whom again: "The prince of the world comes, and finds nothing in me." And that he might show forth the sacrament of the cross, he added, saying:

"And righteousness shall be the girdle of his loins, and truth shall be wrapped about his sides." "Then," he says, (that is, from that time) "the wolf shall feed with the lamb, and the leopard shall rest with the kid, and the calf, and the bull, and the lion shall feed together; and a little child shall lead them" (that is, the priest, either innocent by the smallness of his age, or supported by the purity of innocence, shall govern them). "And the ox and the bear shall feed together" (and their nation shall be one), "and the lion and the ox shall eat straw" (that is, dry food). And lest my interpretation be judged by careful hearers as presumptuous or rash, let me insert into my interpretations the argument of the apostle Paul, who says: "Strip off from yourselves the old man with his deeds, and put on the new, who is renewed in the knowledge of God according to the image of him who created him.

Where there is neither male nor female, Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, barbarian nor Scythian, slave nor free: but Christ is all, and in all." He clothes those stripped of the deeds of the old man with the manner of life of the new man, who is Christ; nor did he allow them to remain naked, but covered them with the garment of honorable conduct, and with the brightness of good works. "Put on," he says, "as the elect of God, and holy, hearts of mercy, kindness, humility, patience, gentleness, bearing with one another, and forgiving one another, if anyone has a complaint against another; even as the Lord has forgiven you, so also do you."

11. Heavenly Praise and the Bond of Charity

By God's granting, all things have been forgiven us; we shall remain unharmed if we too forgive the offenses of our brothers: if we are joined by the inseparable bond of charity: if we rejoice in mutual love through the gift of peace: if we build ourselves up with divine words: if we call ourselves to heavenly things with psalms: if we invite ourselves to things above with song: if all that we do in deed, all that we speak in word, all that we embrace in thought, we accomplish in the fear of God; giving thanks to the Father through the Son, praising God in Christ, and setting forth Christ in God, so that, being made like the heavenly ones to the heavenly, we may be like the spiritual ones to the spiritual.

Which work is nothing other than that they should together praise the glory of God with divine voice, as John says: "I saw and heard the voice of many round about the throne, and of the living creatures, and of the elders: and the number of them was ten thousand times ten thousand, saying with a loud voice: Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honor, and glory, and blessing. And every creature which is in heaven, and on the earth, and in the sea, and all that are in them." And again he warns: "The angels stood around the throne, and the elders, and the four living creatures: and they fell before the throne upon their faces, and worshiped God, saying: Blessing, and glory, and wisdom, and thanksgiving, and honor, and power, and might, be to our God for ever and ever. Amen."