An Exhortation to Penance

Yet you, dearest ones, remember what has been laid down by the Lord: Rebuke a wise man, and he will love you; but a fool, and he will hate you. And again: Those whom I love, I rebuke and chastise. And therefore believe the winning and careful diligence of this work of mine, undertaken by myself, your brother and priest, according to the will of the Lord, to be love rather than rigor, following it lovingly, not resisting it obstinately. Moreover let no one suppose that this discourse concerning the institution of Penitence has been ordained for penitents alone; lest on this account whoever is placed outside this rank should disdain, as though directed at others, whatever things shall be said, since the discipline of the whole Church is marked by this, as it were, clasp—since provision must be made both for catechumens, that they may not pass into this state, and for the faithful, that they may not return to it; while the penitents themselves must labor that they may quickly arrive at the fruit of this work.

This order, however, of my discourses will be kept. First, that I set forth concerning the measure of crimes, lest anyone suppose that upon absolutely all sins the same supreme peril has been laid. Then I will speak of those faithful who, blushing at their own remedy, are wrongly modest, and, with body defiled and mind polluted, communicate: most timid in the sight of men, but most shameless before the Lord, they contaminate with profane hands and polluted mouth the altar which even the saints and angels must fear. Third, there will be a discourse concerning those who, their crimes having been confessed and openly laid bare, either know not or refuse the remedies of penance and the very acts of administering exomologesis. Lastly, we shall strive to show most clearly what punishment awaits those who either do not perform penance, or even neglect it, and so die in their wound and swelling; and again what crown, what reward, awaits those who cleanse the stains of conscience by right and orderly confession.

First then, as we have said, let us take up again the matter of the measure of sinners, diligently inquiring what are sins, what are crimes: lest anyone suppose that, on account of the innumerable failings from whose deceptions no one is free, I bind the whole race of men under an undiscriminating law of doing penance. Among Moses and the ancients, even those guilty of the smallest sin, and of a mere farthing's fault (so to speak), were tossed about in the same tide of misfortune. Both those who had violated the sabbaths, and those who had touched unclean things, and those who had presumed forbidden food, and those who murmured, and those who entered the temple of the great King with a garment stained or with a wall breached, and those liable to this who had touched the altars with the hand or contacted them with a garment—so that it would have been quicker to ascend into heaven, or better to die, than to keep all these observances.

From all these, therefore, and from many carnal vices besides, so that each might arrive more quickly at his destined goal, the blood of the Lord has set us free, redeemed from the servitude of the law and emancipated into the liberty of faith. And therefore the Apostle Paul says: But you have been called unto liberty. This is that liberty: that we are not bound by all the things by which the ancients were held; but, the whole forest (so to speak) of transgressions having been given up, and the indulgence of remedies appointed, we have been shut up to a few and necessary things—things which it would be very easy for believers both to keep and to guard against: so that he who, ungrateful for so great a gift, should not keep even these few things, would not undeservedly be refused deliverance from hell. Let us see, then, what these are.

After the Lord's passion, the Apostles, having treated and discussed all matters, delivered a letter to be carried to those who had believed out of the Gentiles. The substance of this letter was as follows: The apostles and elder brethren, to the brethren who are at Antioch, and Syria, and Cilicia, who are of the Gentiles, greeting. Forasmuch as we have heard that certain who went out from us have troubled you with words. And again below: For it seemed good to the Holy Spirit, and to us, to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things: that you abstain from things offered to idols, and from blood, and from fornication; from which if you keep yourselves, you shall do well. Farewell. This is the whole conclusion of the New Testament. The Holy Spirit, despised in many things, has bequeathed to us these on the condition of capital peril.

The rest of sins are healed by the compensation of better works: but these three crimes, like the breath of some basilisk, like a cup of poison, like a deadly arrow, are to be feared: for they know how not merely to injure the soul, but to cut it off. Thus stinginess will be redeemed by kindness; abuse will be made up for by satisfaction; sadness by cheerfulness; harshness by gentleness; gravity by lightness, or the reverse; dishonesty by honesty; and whatever things are corrected and improved by their opposites. But what shall the despiser of God do? What shall the murderer do? What remedy shall the fornicator take up? Can the deserter reconcile the Lord whom he has deserted? Or can he who has shed another's blood preserve his own? Or can he restore the temple of God, who has violated it by fornication? These are capital sins, brethren; these are mortal.

Now hear John, and take courage, if you can: If any man, he says, see his brother sin a sin which is not unto death, let him ask, and life shall be given him for those who sin not unto death. There is a sin unto death: I do not say that one should pray for that.

But if it please you, hear also separately concerning each. To Moses, entreating on behalf of the blaspheming people, God speaks thus: If any man, He says, has sinned against Me, I will blot him out of My book. And concerning the murderer, the Lord judges thus: If any man, He says, has killed by the sword, by the sword he shall die. And concerning the fornicator the Apostle says: Do not violate, he says, the temple of God, which you are: but he who shall violate the temple of God, him shall God destroy. These things, dear brethren, are written, and cut into everlasting monuments; written and engraved, I do not say on wax and paper and bronze or with a reed pen, but in the book of the living God. Heaven and earth shall pass away; one jot, He says, or one tittle shall not pass, till all be fulfilled. What then? Must one die? Many have fallen into these sins even in mind. Many are guilty of blood, many enslaved to idols, many adulterers.

I add too, that not only are hands punished for homicide, but every plan also which has driven another's soul into death; nor only those who have burned incense on profane tables, but every lust whatsoever wandering outside the marriage bed and lawful embraces is bound by the guilt of death. Whosoever after the faith has done these things shall not see the face of God. I would despair of those guilty of such crimes. What have I done to you? Was it not in your power that it not be done? Did no one warn you? Did no one foretell it? Did the Church keep silent? Did the Gospels say nothing? Did the Apostles threaten nothing? Did the priest ask nothing? Why do you seek late comforts? It was fitting then, when it was allowed. This is a hard saying; but those who call you happy lead you into error, and disturb the paths of your feet. He points out the way of crime to the innocent, who flatters the guilty after their crimes.

Then (someone will say) are we to perish? And where is the merciful God, who has not made death, nor rejoices in the destruction of the living? Shall we die in our sins? And what will you do, priest? With what compensations will you make up for so many losses to the Church? Receive the remedy, if you have begun to despair; if you acknowledge yourselves wretched, if you fear. He who is overly confident is unworthy. Upon whom (says the Lord) shall I look, but upon him that is humble and quiet, and that trembles at my words?

You, therefore, brothers, I appeal to first, who having committed crimes refuse penance: you, I say, timid after your shamelessness, modest after your sins, who are not ashamed to sin and are ashamed to confess: who, with an evil conscience, touch the holy things of God, and do not fear the altar of the Lord: who approach to the hands of the priest, who in the sight of angels come forward under the confidence of innocence: who mock the patience of God; who, as though to a God who is silent, as if He knew nothing, bring your polluted soul and profane body. Hear what the Lord has done; then afterwards, what He has said.

When the people of the Hebrews were bringing back the Ark of the Lord to Jerusalem, from the house of Aminadab among the Israelites; Uzzah, who without a scrutinized conscience had touched the side of the Ark, was slain; and yet he had approached it not in order to take anything from it, but in order to steady the calf that was slipping toward a fall. So great was the care of divine reverence, that it would not tolerate even bold hands offered for help. The same Lord cries out and says: Every clean person shall eat the flesh, and whatever soul shall touch the flesh of the peace-offering, and there is uncleanness upon him, that soul shall perish from among the people. Are these things ancient, and do they not happen now? What then? Has God ceased to care for us; or has He withdrawn beyond the sight of the world, and does He no longer look upon anyone from heaven? Or is His patience ignorance? Far from it, you will say.

He sees, then, what we do, but He waits and endures, and grants time for penance, and grants it to His Christ that He may delay, lest those whom He has redeemed should quickly perish. Understand well, you sinner: you are watched by the Lord, you can appease Him if you will.

But let that be ancient, that it was not lawful for the unclean to approach the table of God: unroll the Apostles, and know the new dispensation. In the First to the Corinthians, Paul has set down this: Whosoever, he says, shall eat, or drink the cup of the Lord unworthily, shall be guilty of the Body and Blood of the Lord. And again below: For he that eats and drinks unworthily, eats and drinks judgment to himself, not discerning the body of the Lord; Therefore, he says, among you many are weak and sick, and many sleep. For if we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged; but when we are judged, we are corrected by the Lord, that we may not be condemned with this world. Have you trembled, or not? He shall be guilty, he says, of the body and blood of the Lord. Could the one guilty of a human life not be absolved; and the violator of the Lord's body escape?

He that eats and drinks unworthily, he says, eats and drinks judgment to himself. Awake, sinner; fear the judgment already present in your inmost parts, if you have done any such thing. Therefore, he says, among you many are weak and sick, and many sleep. Now if anyone does not fear future things, let him at least dread present sickness and present death. When we are judged, he says, we are corrected by the Lord, that we may not be condemned with this world.

Rejoice, sinner, if in this world you are cut off by death, or worn away by sickness, that you may not be punished after this world. Understand how great a crime is committed by him who comes unworthy to the altar; for whom it is reckoned as a remedy, when he either labors under diseases or is dissolved by death.

But if your own soul is cheap to you, spare the people, spare the priests. The Apostle cries out: A little leaven leavens the whole lump. What will you do, on whose account the whole lump is corrupted, on whose account the whole brotherhood is going to suffer? Will you live on, guilty of so many souls? Will you be excused when the innocent charge their communion to your account, when the Church calls you the author of her own ruin? Behold again the Apostle to the priest: Lay hands on no one hastily, nor be a partaker of other men's sins. What will you do, you who deceive the priest? Who either mislead him while he is ignorant, or, though he knows in part, confound him by the difficulty of testing you? I ask you therefore, brethren, even for the sake of my own peril, by that Lord whom hidden things do not deceive, cease to cover over a wounded conscience.

Prudent sick men do not fear their physicians, not even when they are about to cut and to cauterize the hidden parts of the body. We remember certain persons who, not blushing even at the remote and modest parts of the members, have endured the knife and the cautery, and even that most biting harshness of powders. And how great a thing is that which men have accomplished? Shall the sinner be afraid? Shall the sinner blush to purchase everlasting life at the price of a present shame? And shall he, from the Lord who offers His hands, withdraw wounds badly covered? And has he anything in which to blush, who has wounded the Lord? Or is it better for Him to perish thus, that you, timid through shame, may die without shame, giving no place to shame, gaining more from His loss for whom it is better to perish for your sake? But if you blush before the eyes of the brethren, do not fear those who share in your falls.

No body rejoices in the affliction of its own members; it grieves together, and labors together toward the remedy. In one and another, the Church is present; and in the Church, indeed, Christ. And therefore he who does not conceal his sins from the brethren, aided by the tears of the Church, is absolved by the prayers of Christ.

Now let my discourse be directed to those who, well and wisely confessing their wounds under the name of penitence, yet know neither what penitence is, nor what is the medicine of wounds; and who are like those who indeed open up their sores and swellings, and confess even while the physicians sit by, but, once advised, neglect what must be applied, and loathe what must be drunk. Which is as if someone should say: Behold, I am sick, behold, I am wounded, but I do not wish to be cured. Disease is added to the cause, and wound is joined to wound, and all contrary things are applied, pernicious things are drunk. With this evil especially does this brotherhood labor, adding new sins on top of old offenses. Therefore it has broken out the more grievously into vice, and is now tormented by a most pernicious wasting. What then shall I now do, I, the priest who am compelled to heal? It is late for such a case.

Nevertheless, if there is any one of you who can endure to be cut and burned, I can still act. Behold the prophetic scalpel: Turn, he says, to the Lord your God, and at the same time, with fasting, and weeping, and mourning, rend your hearts. Do not fear this cutting, my dearest ones. David endured it; he lay in filthy ashes, made hideous besides by a bristling sackcloth. He who once was accustomed to jewels and purples covered his soul in fasting: he whom seas, whom forests, whom rivers served, and the earth bringing forth promised riches; drenched with tears he wore out those eyes with which he had seen the glory of God, and confessed himself unhappy and wretched, the father of Mary, even the ruler of the Jewish empire. That Babylonian king, forsaken, works out an exomologesis, and is wasted away by a seven-year squalor.

In him the manes of lions, unkempt locks and barbarous horror grow harsh; and his hands, bristling with long crooked nails, falsely imitate eagles, when, in the manner of an ox, he ate hay, a ruminator of pale herbs. Yet this punishment commends him to God, and restores him once more to his kingdom. Whom men shuddered at, God received, made happy by that very calamity of ill-treatment. Behold the cutting which I promised: whoever shall be able to endure it, will be healed.

I will apply yet further the fires of the apostolic cautery: let us see whether you can bear it. I have judged, he says, when you are gathered together, and my spirit, in the power of the Lord Jesus Christ, to deliver such a man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord. What say you, penitents? Where is the destruction of your flesh? Or is it that even in penitence itself you always go about more sumptuously, stuffed with banqueting, sleek from the baths, adorned with garments? Behold, I see someone at one time frugal, at another poor, at another squalid in a cheap tunic: now he is well-groomed and wealthy and comely, as if he charged it to God that he could not serve Him, and refreshes his dying soul with the pleasure of the limbs.

It is well that we are of moderate means; otherwise we too would do what shames not certain men and women who are more elegant, to be covered with marbles, weighed down with gold, to flow with silk, to redden with scarlet. If any rust-colored powder should gleam upon the brow, or any feigned brightness should glow upon the cheeks, or any forced blush should sweat upon the lips—these perhaps you do not have. Yet you do not lack garden retreats or seaside withdrawals, and more exquisite wine, and more sumptuous banquets, and the refinement of old age. Do you act thus, believe thus—when will you live rightly? I can no longer bear it, brethren. Daniel with his companions, covered with sackcloth and ashes, bloodless even with fasting, says this: We have sinned, we have committed crime, we have acted impiously, we have transgressed Thy precepts and judgments. Likewise of Azarias the divine Scripture says: Standing, Azarias prayed, and opening his mouth he made an exomologesis to God together with his companions.

David himself says: I will wash my bed every single night, I will water my couch with tears. But we, what such thing, what similar thing do we do? I do not speak of those things which we heap up into a pile, by trading, by trafficking, by plundering; hunting gains abroad, lusts within; doing nothing simply, giving nothing to the poor, forgiving nothing to the brethren. Not even these things which can be seen even by the priest, and praised with the bishop as witness; not even these do we keep daily—to weep in the sight of the Church, to mourn a wasted life with sordid garment, to fast, to pray, to prostrate oneself: if someone should call one to the bath, to refuse delights; if someone should invite one to a banquet, to say: These things are for the happy, I have sinned against the Lord, and I am in peril of perishing forever: what are banquets to me, who have wounded the Lord?

Moreover, to hold the hands of the poor, to entreat widows, to prostrate oneself before the presbyters, to beseech the Church that intercedes, to try all things before you perish.

I know that certain of your brothers and sisters wrap their breasts in haircloth, lie upon ashes, meditate on long fasts; and perhaps they have not sinned such sins. Why should I speak of the brethren? Wild goats, as they say, know their own remedies: for I hear that, pierced through by poisoned arrows, they roam the Dictaean glades, until, having cropped the stalk of the dittany, by the venomous juice of that healing herb they shake the darts loose from their bodies. We do not repel the fiery darts of the devil by any juice of penitence, by any herb of exomologesis. The swallow knows how to give sight to her blinded chicks by her chelidonia: shall we, having lost the eyes of the mind, not be cured by any root of ill-treatment? Behold, man, unlike neither the wild goats nor the swallow, envies his own blindness and grief. Consider now, brethren, what we promised at the outset: what fruit these works bring; or, on the contrary, what end follows.

To delicate sinners who do not do penance, the Spirit of the Lord threatens and says: They received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved: and therefore God shall send them the working of error, that they should believe a lie, that all may be judged who believed not the truth, but took pleasure in unrighteousness. Likewise the Apocalypse speaks thus of the harlot: In as much as she glorified herself and lived deliciously, so much give her of torment and sorrow. And the Apostle Paul: Knowest thou not that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance? But thou, after thy hardness, treasurest up unto thyself wrath against the day of wrath, and revelation of the righteous judgment of God. Fear, therefore, dearly beloved, the just judgments; abandon error, condemn delights; the final time hastens even now: Tartarus and Gehenna open their loosened bosoms to the impious. After the timely punishments of souls, an everlasting punishment is also kept in store for bodies restored to life.

Let no one think the liver of Tityus and the vulture of the poets exhaust the matter. That eternal fire itself renews for itself the material of regrowing bodies. Attend, if you do not believe: the rush of waters which rages amid fires will be renewed by the very torment that feeds it. If you shrink back from the torment of exomologesis, remember the Gehenna which exomologesis will extinguish for you. Estimate its force even from things present; certain of its smoking vents cook down the greatest mountains with subterranean fires. Sicilian Etna and Campanian Vesuvius seethe with unwearied globes of flame; and, to prove to us the perpetuity of judgment, they burst apart, they are consumed, and yet are not ended by any ages. Attend in the Gospel to the rich man, still laboring only in the torments of his soul. What, then, will be that punishment for bodies about to return? What gnashing of teeth will be in it? What weeping of eyes?

Remember, brethren, that among the dead there is no exomologesis; nor will penitence then be able to be granted, the time for penitence being spent. Hasten, while you are in life, while you are making the journey with your adversary. Behold, we fear worldly fires, and dread the claws of executioners: compare with these the everlasting hands of tormentors, and the tips of flames that die in no age. I beg you by the faith of the Church, brethren; by my own anxiety, I entreat and beseech you by the souls of all in common: let it not shame you in this work; let it not weary you to seize as soon as possible the fitting remedies of salvation, to cast down the soul with sorrows, to wrap the body in sackcloth, to pour ashes upon it, to be worn away with fasting, to be consumed with grief, to be aided by the prayers of many. In as much as you have not spared your own punishment, in so much will God spare you.

For He is mild and patient, and of much mercy, and one who bends back the sentence pronounced against wickedness. Behold, I promise, I pledge, that if you return to your Father with true satisfaction, erring no further, adding nothing to your former sins, saying also something humble and tearful—We have sinned in Thy sight, Father; we are no longer worthy to be called sons—at once that unclean beast will depart from you, and the unseemly food of husks; at once, as you return, the robe will clothe you, and the ring will honor you, and the father's embrace will receive you again. Behold, He Himself speaks: I desire not the death of the sinner, but rather that he should return and live. And again: Shall not he that falleth, He says, rise again; and he that hath turned away, shall he not be converted? And the Apostle says: God is able to make him stand. The Apocalypse also threatens the seven churches unless they do penance.

Nor indeed would it threaten those not repenting, unless it forgave those who repent. God Himself also says: Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen, and do penance. And again: When thou hast turned and groaned, then thou shalt be saved, and shalt know where thou hast been. And let no one despair so far, from the vileness of a sinning soul, as to believe himself no longer necessary to God. The Lord wills that none of us perish: even the small and the least are sought after. If you do not believe, look: behold in the Gospel the coin is sought, and, once found, is shown to the neighbors. The little sheep, to be carried back upon shoulders offered beneath it, is no burden to the shepherd. Over one sinner doing penance the angels in heaven rejoice, and the heavenly choir exults. Hark, you sinner, do not cease to entreat: you see where there is joy over your return. Amen.