92. And if it is a grave sin that you cannot wash away with the tears of your repentance, let the mother Church weep for you, who intervenes as a widowed mother for each one as if for a single son; she sympathizes with a spiritual sorrow of nature when she sees her children urged towards death by deadly vices. We are her own flesh and blood; for there are also spiritual organs, which Paul says he has, saying: So, brother, let me have joy of you in the Lord: refresh my bowels in the Lord (Philem. 20). Therefore, we are the organs of the Church; since we are the members of its body, of its flesh, and of its bones. Let the pious mother grieve, let the crowd assist: not only the crowd, but also let the good parent grieve with compassion. Now you will rise from the dead, now you will be freed from the tomb: your funeral attendants will stand, you will begin to speak the words of life, everyone will fear; for many will be corrected by the example of one. They will also praise God, who has granted us such remedies to avoid death.
(Vers. 19.)
(Verse 19.) And John summoned two of his disciples and sent them to Jesus, saying, 'Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?'
93. The understanding is not simple in simple words; otherwise, the present conflicts with the past. For how can John, whom he knew in the past by the revelation of God the Father, not know him here? How can he recognize someone there whom he did not know before, and not recognize someone here whom he already knew? 'I did not know him,' he says, 'but the one who sent me to baptize told me: 'On whomever you see the Spirit descending' (John 1:33).' And he believed what was said, and recognized what was shown, and worshipped what was baptized, and prophesied about what was coming. Finally, he said, 'I saw and testified that this is the chosen one of God' (Ibid., 34). So, how could such a great prophet be mistaken, that he would not believe that the one about whom he had said, 'Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world' (Ibid., 29), was still the Son of God? For it is either insolence to attribute divinity to someone you do not know, or it is perfidy to doubt the Son of God. Therefore, there is no suspicion of such a great error falling upon that Prophet.
Therefore, if the form of simple intelligence conflicts, we should seek a spiritual figure. And because we have already said above (in Luke, chapter 3) that John is a type of the Law, which was a precursor of Christ, it is right that the Law, which held captive the hearts of the faithless as if in eternal prisons, was physically enclosed, with its fertile entrails of punishments and doors of madness restrained, would not be able to bring about the complete fulfillment of the testimony of the Lord's dispensation without the consent of the Gospel. Indeed, the Law prophesied the grace of baptism through the cloud and the sea in Exodus; it foreshadowed spiritual food in the lamb (Exodus 12:3); it designated an everlasting fountain in the rock (Exodus 17:6); it revealed the forgiveness of sins in Leviticus (Leviticus 25:10); it announced the kingdom of heaven in the Psalms; it most clearly declared the promised land in Joshua.
95. All these things are in agreement with the testimony of John as well: but nevertheless, they are suppressed by the tyrannical powers of this world, so that the light of the Lord's resurrection may not be shed abroad. Therefore John sends his disciples to Christ, so that they may attain the fullness of knowledge; for Christ is the fulfillment of the Law: so that, since often words are empty without actions, and faith is more fully shown by the witness of deeds than by promises of words, which were then wavering in the hearts of the Jews as if sealed up by the Law, it might be revealed by the very spectacle of the Lord's cross and the full testimony of his resurrection.
96. And perhaps these disciples are two peoples, one of whom believed from the Jews, the other from the Gentiles, who believed because they heard. Therefore, they wanted to see because of that: But blessed are your eyes that see, and your ears that hear (Matt. 13:16) . But we also saw in John: we perceived with our own eyes in the apostles: and we examined with our own hands the fingers of Thomas. For what was from the beginning, what we heard, and what we saw, we perceived with our own eyes, and our hands examined the Word of life, and life appeared (1 John 1:1-2) . When did he appear? When did we see. He did not appear like this before he was seen. Thanks therefore to the Lord, who was crucified for our faith, was crucified for our desires. My mind is fixed on that crucifix.
Therefore, those who study the Old Testament now, before they are acquainted with the Gospel, and read certain traces of the Lord's body, think that He is about to come, and they inquire whether He Himself is Christ the Son of God, who is to come. And when they read the passages where He spoke with Abraham (Gen. 18:20ff. and 22:1), or when He showed himself as the leader of the heavenly army (Jos. 5:14), they say, for sure: Are you the one who is to come, or shall we expect another? But when they come to the Gospel, and know that the blind are enlightened, the lame walk, the deaf hear, the lepers are cleansed, the dead are raised, then they say: We have seen him, and with our own eyes we have beheld him, and we have inserted our fingers into the wounds of his nails. For it seems to us that we have seen whom we have read about, that we have looked upon him hanging, and, with the Spirit of the Church searching, have felt his wounds; for if demons are cast out by the finger of God, faith is also found by the finger of the Church. Perhaps, in a certain part of the operation of our body, we all seem to have investigated the sequence of the Lord's Passion; for faith reaches from a few to many. Therefore, the law announces the coming of Christ: the scripture of the Gospel confirms that he has come.
98. Moreover, some also understand about John himself in this way: that he was such a great prophet that he recognized and announced the future remission of sins, but not as someone who doubted, but rather as a devout prophet who believed that he would come, but did not believe that he would die. Therefore, he doubted not in terms of faith, but in terms of piety. Peter also doubted, saying: 'Be merciful to yourself, Lord, this will not happen' (Matthew 16:22). He, the leader of faith (to whom Christ had not yet called himself the Son of God, yet he believed in him regarding the death of Christ), did not believe in Christ. The feeling of piety is not a lapse in devotion. Finally, elsewhere he refuses to have his feet washed where he does not recognize the mystery, while burdened with the duty to the Lord (John 13:8). Therefore, the holy ones did not believe in Christ about to die: For what no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived, God has prepared these for those who love him (1 Corinthians 2:9). Therefore, the lapse of love does not hinder the faith of the religious.
99. Finally, the Lord, knowing that no one can fully believe without the Gospel; because as faith begins from the old Testament, so it is fulfilled in the new: when asked about himself, he did not sign with words but with deeds.
(Vers. 22.)
(Verse 22.) Go, he says, and report to John what you have heard and seen. The blind see, the lame walk, the deaf hear, the lepers are cleansed, the dead are raised, the poor have the good news preached to them.
Certainly a full testimony by which the Prophet recognized the Lord; for it was prophesied about him, not about another: because the Lord gives food to the hungry, the Lord lifts up the oppressed, the Lord sets free the prisoners, the Lord enlightens the blind, the Lord loves the righteous, the Lord watches over strangers, he will take care of the orphan and the widow, and he will exterminate the way of sinners (Psalm 145:8-9). He who does these things, says the Prophet, will reign forever (Psalm 145:10). Therefore, these are not the signs of human, but of divine power: to open the darkness of perpetual night for the blind, to heal the wounds of eyes with poured light, to insinuate sound into the ears of the deaf, to rejoin loosened and broken limbs with firm joints, and to recall the dead back to the light with a renewed vigor for living.
101. These things happened before the Gospel, either rarely or not at all. Tobias received his sight (Tob. 11:12), he is one example; and yet it was an angel who provided the remedy, not a man. Elijah raised the dead: he, however, prayed and wept (3 Kings 17:20); Jesus commanded. Elisha cleansed the leper (4 Kings 5:14); yet there the authority of the command did not prevail, but it was a figure of the mystery. The flour did not run out for the hungry widow, multiplying itself according to the prophet's instructions (3 Kings 17:16); but that same flour, or rather the same species of the sacrament, was also preserved as a prefiguration. But still, those are small examples of the testimony of the Lord: the fullness of faith, the crucifixion of the Lord, his death, and burial. And so, after saying those things, she added:
(Vers. 23.)
(Verse 23) Blessed, he said, is the one who has not been scandalized by me.
Indeed, the cross could also cause scandal to the chosen ones, but no testimony is greater to the divine person: there is nothing that seems more beyond human than to offer oneself entirely for the world; this is fully declared by the Lord alone. Finally, he was designated by John in this way: Behold the Lamb of God: behold him who takes away the sins of the world (John 1:29). But this is not answered to those two men, disciples of John, but to all of us; so that we may believe in Christ if the actions are consistent. For there will come someone who will claim this name for himself, whom you cannot distinguish from a human by mere designation; nevertheless, you can discern him by the consideration of his actions.
(Vers. 24.)
(Verse 24) What did you go out to the wilderness to see? A reed shaken by the wind?
103. When he had forewarned the disciples of John that they should believe in the Lord's cross, as they were returning, he turned to the crowds and began to provoke the poor to virtue; so that they, exalted in heart, unstable in mind, weak in counsel, might prefer things that are beautiful but fleeting to things that are useful and eternal. But instead they should take up the cross with a humble spirit rather than extol the decorations of this world; and as if they were blessed in their poverty, willingly exchange the life of the body for immortal glory. Therefore, it is not in vain that the persona of Saint John is praised here, who, disregarding idleness, did not change the form of justice for the fear of death, but rather preferred the love of life.
104. 'What,' he said, 'did you go out into the wilderness to see? The world seems to be compared to a desert, still uncultivated, still barren, still infertile, into which the Lord denies that we should go forth, so that we might consider the men inflated in mind and empty in internal virtue, and boasting with fragile worldly glory, as a certain example and image for us to imitate: those who are subject to the storms of this world, stirred by the unstable life, and rightly compared to a reed; in whom there is no fruit of solid righteousness; who, covered with lengthy robes, entangled with knots, resound with empty noise of their mouth, with no benefit to themselves, with frequent stumbling, internally empty, externally appearing beautiful.' We are reeds, rooted in no more stable nature. And if a light breeze of favorable success blows, we beat the nearby ones with a wandering motion: unable to support, eager to harm. Reeds love rivers, and we delight in the flowing and transient world.
However, if someone uproots this reed from the earth and plants it in the garden, and removes any excess, stripping off the old man with his actions, and tempers himself with the handwriting of a fast-writing scribe, it begins not to be a reed, but a pen, which imprints the precepts of celestial Scriptures in the depths of the mind, and inscribes them on the tablets of the heart. Concerning this pen, you have what is said: My tongue is the pen of a fast-writing scribe (Psalm 45:2), which some want to refer to Christ. Therefore, in one place both the word and the pen, and the scribe are read. The word, because it sprang forth from the mysterious birth of the Father: 'My heart hath uttered a good word' (Psalm xlv, 1). The pen, because the flesh of Christ expressed the line of paternal will, and fulfilled the divine commandments by the outpouring of sacred blood. The scribe, because with his pen he revealed to us the mysteries of the paternal disposition through a certain distinctness, either of the Old and New Testament, or of divinity and flesh.
106. Imitate this pen according to the temperament of your flesh. And dip your pen, that is, your flesh, not in ink, but in the spirit of the living God, so that what you write may be eternal. With such a pen, Paul wrote that letter, of which he said: 'You are our letter . . . written not with ink, but with the spirit of the living God' (2 Corinthians 3:2-3). Dip your flesh in the blood of Christ, as it is written: 'That your foot may be dipped in blood' (Psalm 68:24). And so, let the imprint of your soul and the step of your mind be marked with unwavering confession of the crucifixion of the Lord. Immerse your flesh in the blood of Christ, if you want to wash away vices, erase sins, and bear the death of Christ in your own flesh, as the Apostle says: Carrying about in the body the dying of Jesus Christ (II Cor. IV, 10). Do not be inclined towards earthly things, lest you break your reed. And therefore, concerning Christ, who had no need to bow to earthly things, it was prophesied: A bruised reed shall he not break (Isaiah XLII, 3); for he strengthened the flesh which sins had bruised, by the power of the resurrection. The good reed of the flesh of Christ, which nailed the head of the serpent of the devil, and the enticing baits of worldly desires to the gibbet of the cross.
(Vers. 24, 25.)
(Verse 24, 25.) But what did you go out into the wilderness to see? A reed shaken by the wind? What did you go out to see? A man dressed in soft clothing?