“he entered again into Capernaum,” and so forth. The Savior of all, God, traverses all things with saving steps. At one time in the desert, at another in the city, now by the sea, he bestows upon the crowds the teaching of heaven and the gifts of mighty works. Now he prays alone upon the mountain; now he assists those laboring on the sea, lest they perish. Everywhere he dispenses the gifts of salvation, in order to show that every rank and condition belongs to his grace.
According to the mystical understanding, however, after performing the miracle in the city he withdrew into the desert, and there he graciously received the crowds who came to him with kindly mercy, in order to show that he prefers a life of quiet, removed from worldly cares, and that for the sake of this desire he applies himself to the care of healing, even while avoiding those who seek him, since he did not wish to enter openly into the city. Allegorically, however, he taught that Truth does not grant an open manifestation of itself to minds burdened by fleshly concerns, but rather pours out more abundantly the light of his gifts upon those whom he sees to be detached from the enticements of temporal things. Yet because heavenly mercy does not abandon even the carnal, but grants them also the grace of his visitation—by which they too may become spiritual—the Lord returns from the desert into the city, speaks the word to many who gather there, and by healing the paralytic provides many with an occasion for interior healing, which consists in faith.
That while the Lord was teaching so many gathered in the house that there was no room, not even at the door, properly signifies our salvation, we who have come to the faith from the Gentiles. For while the Lord was preaching in Judea, we were not yet able to enter in order to hear. Yet even to us, though standing outside, he caused the words of his teaching to reach us, since he himself gathered us through the mouths of holy preachers, and although we were found outside the synagogue in which he himself was preaching, he made us sharers in his Gospel.
“And they came bringing to him a paralytic, who was carried by four.”
The healing of this paralytic signifies the salvation of the soul which, after long inactivity caused by fleshly enticement, longs for Christ. Such a soul first of all needs ministers who may lift it up and bring it to Christ—that is, good teachers who suggest hope of healing and the help of intercession. They are rightly said to be four, either because all the strength of preaching and all doctrine is established by the four holy books of the Gospel, or because there are four virtues by which the confidence of the soul is raised to merit salvation. Concerning these it is said in praise of eternal Wisdom: “For she teaches sobriety and wisdom and justice and virtue, than which nothing is more profitable to men in life” (Wisdom 8). Some call these by different names: prudence, fortitude, temperance, and justice.
“And since they could not bring him in because of the crowd, they uncovered the roof where he was.”
They desire to bring the paralytic to Christ, but the intervening crowd blocks them from every side. So too the soul, often after the sluggishness of an infirm body, coming to its senses toward God and desiring to be renewed by the remedy of heavenly grace, is delayed by the obstacle of old habits. Often even amid the sweetness of secret prayer and what seems like gentle conversation with the Lord, a crowd of thoughts intrudes and blocks the vision of the mind, so that Christ cannot be seen.
What then must be done? Certainly one must not remain below, outside, where the crowds rage, but must ascend to the roof of the house in which Christ teaches—that is, one must desire the loftiness of Sacred Scripture, and meditate on the law of the Lord day and night with the Psalmist. “How shall a young man correct his way? By keeping your words,” he says (Psalm 118 [119]).
“And when they had opened it, they let down the pallet on which the paralytic lay.”
When the roof is opened, the sick man is lowered before Jesus, because when the mysteries of Scripture are laid open, one comes to the knowledge of Christ—that is, one descends in faith to his humility. And it is well that the house of Jesus is said, according to another Evangelist, to have been covered with tiles, because under the contemptible covering of the letter there is found the power of divine spiritual grace that opens it. For the removal of the tiles in the house of Jesus is the opening of the spiritual sense and of heavenly mysteries within the lowliness of the letter.
That the infirm man is lowered with the pallet signifies that Christ must be known by man as he is constituted in this flesh.
“But when Jesus saw their faith…”
The Lord, about to cure the man of paralysis, first loosens the bonds of sins, in order to show that he had been condemned to the dissolution of his limbs because of the dissolution caused by sins, and that unless these were forgiven, the members could not be healed. Thus it is said also to that paralytic who for a long time had waited in vain for the movement of the water by the Pool of Bethesda: “Behold, you are made whole; sin no more, lest something worse befall you” (John 5:14).
“Son,” he says, “your sins are forgiven you.”
O wondrous humility! He calls “son” one who was despised and weak and dissolved in all his joints, whom the priests would not have deigned even to touch. Or rightly is he called “son,” because his sins are forgiven him. One must observe how much one’s own faith avails before God: so much did the faith of others avail that the whole man at once—outwardly and inwardly—rose up already saved, and by the merit of some the faults of others were loosed.
“Now there were some of the scribes sitting there and reasoning in their hearts…”
The scribes speak truly in saying that no one can forgive sins except God. Through those also to whom he grants the power of forgiving, it is God who forgives. Therefore Christ is proved truly to be God, since he can forgive sins as God. They bear witness to God, but err by denying the person of Christ. Thus the Jews err who believe that God can forgive sins, yet do not believe that Jesus is the Christ. Far more madly do the Arians err, who, though compelled by words not to dare deny that Jesus Christ can forgive sins, do not fear to deny that he is God.
But he himself, desiring the faithless and manifesting himself to be God both by knowledge of hidden things and by the power of works, immediately adds: “And Jesus, knowing in his spirit that they were thinking thus among themselves, said to them, ‘Why do you think these things in your hearts?’”
He shows himself to be God, who can know the secrets of the heart. And in a certain way, while silent, he speaks: by the same majesty and power by which I perceive your thoughts, I can also forgive sins to men. From what you see, understand what the paralytic receives.
“Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Rise, take up your pallet and walk’?”
Between saying and doing there is a great distance. Whether sins were forgiven to the paralytic only the one who forgave knew. But “Rise and walk” could be verified both by the one who rose and by those who saw him rising. Therefore a bodily sign is performed so that the spiritual may be proved, although it belongs to the same power to remove the defects of both body and soul.
From this we are given understanding that bodily weaknesses often occur because of sins. And therefore sins are perhaps first forgiven, so that, when the causes of weakness are removed, health may be restored. Yet there are five kinds of causes for which we are afflicted by bodily sufferings in this life.
Sometimes it is for the increase of merits, through patience, that the righteous are burdened with bodily infirmity, as the blessed patriarchs Job and Tobias, and innumerable martyrs in both Testaments. Sometimes it is for the guarding of virtues already received, lest they perish through the temptation of pride, as the Apostle Paul, to whom, lest he be exalted by the greatness of revelations, there was given a thorn in the flesh, an angel of Satan to buffet him. Sometimes it is for understanding and correcting our sins, as Mary the sister of Aaron, who in the desert was struck with leprosy because of rash and proud words. Or as the paralytic of whom we speak, who could not be cured of infirmity unless his sins were first forgiven. Sometimes it is for the glory of God who saves, either by himself or through his servants, as the man born blind in the Gospel, who neither sinned nor did his parents, but that the works of God might be manifested in him; or as Lazarus, whose sickness was not unto death but for the glory of God, that the Son of God might be glorified through it. Or sometimes it is for the beginning of eternal damnation, which is proper to the reprobate, as Antiochus and Herod, who in their time opposed God, and by the miseries of present afflictions showed to all that they were to suffer eternal torments in Gehenna. To these applies the word of the prophet: “Break them with a double destruction.”
Therefore it is necessary that in all the adversities we suffer temporally we give thanks to the Lord with humility, and conscious of our infirmity, rejoice in the remedies granted to us. It is necessary that, returning to our conscience, we carefully examine both our works and our thoughts, and whatever we discover we have sinned, we cleanse by worthy correction; and whatever of those things which we thought we had done rightly we find to have perished in us through the vice of pride, we correct also by humble satisfaction. For this is often for us the cause of scourges. On the other hand, for the innocent and just to be scourged for the increase of rewards belongs to the perfect and is a special gift of the saints; but to be driven by temporal blows toward eternal torments is the punishment of the reprobate.
“But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority…”
If he is God, according to the Psalmist, who “as far as the east is from the west has removed our iniquities from us,” and if the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins, then he himself is both God and Son of Man: so that Christ as man may forgive sins by his power, and Christ as God may die for sinners by the frailty of his humanity.
Spiritually, to rise up is for the soul, which lay sick, to be drawn away from carnal desires. To take up the pallet is to discipline even the flesh itself by the reins of continence, and to lift it from earthly delights in hope of heavenly rewards. And after taking up the pallet, to go home is to return to paradise—that true home which first received man, lost not by right but by fraud, and finally restored through him who owed nothing to the deceitful enemy.
In another sense, the healed man who carries his pallet home signifies that one who has received forgiveness of sins brings back even the body itself to interior communion with the soul, so that afterward he may commit nothing for which he would again be justly struck.
“And immediately he rose, and taking up his pallet went out before them all, so that all were amazed and glorified God, saying, ‘We have never seen anything like this.’”
How marvelous is the power of might, where with no delay of time salvation swiftly accompanies the command of the Savior! Those who were present rightly turn their astonishment, struck as by arrows, into praise of so great a majesty.
“And he went out again to the sea, and all the crowd came to him, and he taught them.”
In Capernaum the Lord had commended the heavenly power of teaching by the healing of the paralytic. Then he went out to the sea, so that he might not only instruct human life in the way of truth, but also preach the Gospel of the kingdom to the inhabitants of the sea, and teach them to overcome the shifting waves of fleeting things by the firmness of faith. Finally, he teaches there a great crowd that comes to him. There he calls the tax collector from the toll booth and makes him an apostle and evangelist. There he renders many sinners, corrected through repentance, worthy of his own table and of the mysteries of his secrets, and draws them away from the swelling waves of deceptive desires to the solidity of a quiet life, which consists in the hope of heavenly goods.
For it follows: “And as he passed by, he saw Levi the son of Alphaeus…”
At the toll booth he speaks of administration and management, for τέλος (tax) in Greek is called vectigal in Latin. This same Levi, who is Matthew, Luke and Mark did not wish to name by his evangelist’s name out of modesty. But Matthew himself, according to the saying “the just man is the accuser of himself at the beginning of his speech,” calls himself Matthew and a tax collector, in order to show readers that no one who has been converted ought to despair of salvation, since he himself was suddenly changed from tax collector to apostle, from toll officer to evangelist.
“And rising, he followed him.”
In the Gospel of Luke it is written more fully: “And leaving everything behind, he rose and followed him” (Luke 5). Matthew therefore, understanding what it truly means to follow the Lord, follows him leaving everything behind. For to follow is to imitate. And therefore, so that he might pursue the poor Christ not so much by bodily steps as by affection, he left behind what was his own, he who used to seize what belonged to others. And giving us a perfect model of renunciation of the world, he not only abandoned the profits of taxation but also despised the danger that could arise from the rulers of the world, since he left the accounts of the taxes incomplete and unsettled. For he was so driven by the desire of following the Lord that he reserved for himself absolutely no regard or thought for this life.
Indeed, the Lord himself, who outwardly called him by human speech to follow, inwardly inflamed him by divine inspiration to follow at once, and invisibly taught him how he should follow. For this reason he rightly became, through obedience, a faithful steward of his Lord’s talents, while despising human affairs and abandoning them.
And it came to pass, when he reclined at table in his house, many tax collectors …”
The evangelist Luke writes that Levi made for him a great banquet in his house, which fittingly corresponds to the figures of the mysteries. For whoever receives Christ within the inner dwelling is nourished with the greatest delights of overflowing spiritual pleasures. And so the Lord willingly enters in and reclines in the affection of the one who has believed. This is the spiritual banquet of good works, at which the rich people lack nothing and the poor are fed.
Tax collectors, moreover—as their very name proves—are those who exact public revenues, whether those who lease tax-farming contracts of the treasury or of public property, or even those who pursue the profits of this world through business dealings; all are counted under the same designation. Seeing, therefore, that a tax collector had found a place of repentance after turning from sins to better things, they themselves also do not despair of salvation. Nor do tax collectors come to Jesus while remaining in their former vices, like the Pharisees and scribes who murmured, but rather they come doing penance, as the subsequent words of the evangelist indicate when he says: “For there were many who followed him.”
Now the Lord went to the banquets of sinners so that he might have an opportunity to teach and might offer spiritual food to those inviting him. Indeed, although the evangelists frequently describe him as going to banquets, nothing else is reported except what he did there and what he taught, so that both the humility of the Lord in going to sinners and the power of his teaching in the conversion of penitents might be shown.
“And the scribes and Pharisees, seeing that he was eating with sinners …”
If by the calling and election of Matthew the faith of the Gentiles is expressed—who formerly gaped after worldly gain, but now are refreshed with the Lord at the banquets of charity and good works with devoted zeal—then assuredly the arrogance of the scribes and Pharisees signifies the envy of the Jews, by which they are tormented over the salvation of the Gentiles. To them he himself says: “Amen I say to you, tax collectors and prostitutes will go before you into the kingdom of God.”
When Jesus heard this, he said to them: “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” He rebukes the scribes and Pharisees, who, thinking themselves righteous, shunned the company of sinners. He calls himself a physician, who by a wondrous method of healing was wounded for our iniquities, and by whose bruises we are healed (Isaiah 53). He calls “healthy” and “righteous” those who, ignorant of God’s righteousness and wishing to establish their own, are not subject to the righteousness of God (Romans 10), who presume upon the Law and do not seek the grace of the Gospel. But he calls “sick” and “sinners” those who, overcome by awareness of their own frailty and seeing that they cannot be justified by the Law, submit the necks of their hearts in repentance to the grace of Christ.
“And the disciples of John …”
Some relate that the evangelist means the Pharisees themselves and the disciples of John pressed the Lord with this question. Yet the evangelical wording seems to indicate that certain others, moved by concern for this matter, posed the question to him. From this it must be gathered that the question was raised against the Lord by many—by the Pharisees, by the disciples of John, and by the guests or others whoever they were—asking why the disciples of John and the Pharisees fast, but the disciples of the Savior do not fast.
Mystically, however, it may be explained thus: the disciples of John and of the Pharisees fast, but those of Christ do not fast, because everyone who either boasts in the works of the Law without faith, or—what is more serious—follows the traditions of men, or even hears the proclamation of Christ only with bodily ears and not with the faith of the heart, abstains from spiritual goods and wastes away with a fasting heart. But whoever is incorporated into the members of Christ by faithful love cannot fast, since he feeds on Christ’s flesh and blood.
In another sense, John drank neither wine nor strong drink, while the Lord eats and drinks with tax collectors and sinners. Abstinence increases merit for one whose natural powers are weak; but the Lord, who by nature has the power to forgive sins, why should he avoid those whom he could make purer than the abstinent? Yet Christ also fasted, lest you avoid the command; and he ate with sinners, so that you might see grace and recognize authority.
“And Jesus said to them: Can the sons of the wedding feast fast while the bridegroom is with them?”
As long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast. But the days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast on that day. In Matthew it is written: “Can the sons of the bridegroom mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them?” (Matthew 9). Therefore Christ is the bridegroom and the Church is the bride, from whom the apostles were begotten in a spiritual marriage. They cannot mourn or fast so long as they see the bridegroom in the bridal chamber and know the bridegroom to be with the bride. But when the wedding has passed and the time of the Passion and Resurrection has come, then the sons of the bridegroom will fast.
According to moral interpretation, as long as the bridegroom is with us and we are in him, we can neither fast nor mourn. But when he withdraws from us because of sins and is removed, then fasting must be prescribed and mourning undertaken.
“No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment …”
When the Lord was asked why his disciples did not fast, he replied that those who are still fleshly and not yet firmly grounded in faith in his Passion and Resurrection cannot endure stricter commands of fasting and continence, lest by excessive austerity they also lose even the belief they seemed to possess. Therefore he calls the disciples old garments, to which a new patch is inappropriately sewn—that is, some part of teaching pertaining to the discipline of the new life. For if this is done, the teaching itself is in some way torn, since the part pertaining to fasting from foods is inopportunely delivered, whereas the teaching itself instructs in a general fast—not only from desire for food, but from every delight of temporal pleasures.
This “patch,” that is, some part of teaching concerning food, ought not be imposed upon men still devoted to old habits, because both a tearing seems to occur and it does not suit the old condition. What we do outwardly and what we display before men must correspond inwardly.
“And no one puts new wine into old wineskins …”
He also compares these same persons to old wineskins, which he says are more easily burst by new wine—that is, by spiritual precepts—than able to contain it. But they were already becoming new wineskins after the Lord’s Ascension, when they were renewed by prayer and hope through desire for his consolation. For then they received the Holy Spirit, and being filled, spoke in all tongues, concerning whom the Jews, though ignorant, yet truly testified, saying: “These men are full of new wine” (Acts 2).
For new wine had now come into new wineskins—that is, the fervor of the Holy Spirit had filled hearts made new. In another sense, a teacher must beware lest he entrust the secrets of new mysteries to souls not yet renewed but still persisting in the oldness of malice.
If someone asks what mystically distinguishes new wine from a new garment, it is clear: by wine we are inwardly refreshed and made glad; by a garment we are clothed outwardly. Since both pertain to the signification of spiritual life, the garment signifies good works, while the new wine signifies the fervor of faith, hope, and charity, by which our inner senses are renewed before the face of our Creator.
“And it came to pass again on the Sabbaths …”
We read further that many were coming and going, and they did not even have time to eat, and therefore they were hungry. That they rub the ears of grain with their hands and relieve hunger indicates a life of austerity, seeking not prepared banquets but simple food.
But the Pharisees said to him: “Behold, why do your disciples do on the Sabbath what is not lawful?” Note that the first apostles of the Savior overturn the literal observance of the Sabbath against the Ebionites, who, while receiving the other apostles, reject Paul as a transgressor of the Law.
The disciples pass through the grainfields—those fields of which the Lord said: “Lift up your eyes and see the regions, for they are white already for harvest” (John 4). Teachers, when they seek to form others in the faith of truth, examine with pious solicitude how and in what order each person may be drawn to salvation. Thus they are understood to hunger for salvation rather than bread, just as the first harvester himself once hungered, and yet, when the desired food was offered him, he heard: “Rise, Peter, kill and eat” (Acts 10).
There is a wondrous harmony of sacrament here: there, animals sent from heaven are commanded to be slain and eaten; here, with the Lord walking with them, the disciples are said to have plucked consecrated ears and, according to other evangelists, rubbed them with their hands and eaten them.
This corresponds to what the Apostle says: “Put to death your members which are upon the earth … and put off the old man with his deeds” (Colossians 3). For one does not otherwise pass into the body of Christ, nor does one feed the teacher with the fruits of progress, unless—having renounced old desires—one has been made new by the new commandment of love.
To pluck the ears is to draw men out from earthly intentions in which they had fixed, as it were, the root of their minds. To rub them with the hands is to strip away even the husks of carnal desire by the exercise of virtues. To eat the grain is to incorporate each person, cleansed from the filth of vices, into the members of the Church through the mouths of preachers.
It is well that the disciples are said to have gone before the Lord, for the teacher’s word must go first, and then the following grace of heavenly visitation enlightens the hearer’s heart. They do this on the Sabbath, because the saints labor in preaching for the hope of future rest, and equally exhort their hearers not to persist in superfluous worldly business for love of the age, but to toil in good works for eternal rest.
They walk through the grainfields with the Lord when those who strive to obey divine commands delight in carefully meditating on sacred Scripture. They hunger among the fields when, while passing through the sacred words by reading, they desire to find the bread of life—that is, they seek to reach those words by which they may inflame within themselves a greater love for him. And this on the Sabbath, when they rejoice to be free from turbulent thoughts and to see how sweet the Lord is and how blessed is the man who hopes in him (Psalm 34).
They pluck ears as they chance upon them, and turn them over in their hands, crushing and cleansing them until they reach nourishment—Scriptural testimonies which, taken up by reading and meditation, they scrutinize until they find and draw out the marrow of love hidden within. As the nourishing grain is often veiled by the roughness of the husk, so often under what seems mere literal utility are hidden the gifts of divine love that feed the hungry and thirsty souls of the faithful with the delights of interior sweetness.
But this refreshment of minds displeases foolish defenders of the Sabbath, yet is approved by the Lord of the Sabbath. For those who follow only the surface of the letter neither know true refreshment of minds nor know how to reach the interior rest of souls. Hence their rashness is rightly confounded by the voice of Truth when he adds:
“Have you never read …”
To refute the slander of the Pharisees, he recalls the ancient history of David, who, fleeing Saul, came to Nob and was received by the priest Ahimelech, and asked for bread (1 Samuel 21). When there was no common bread, the priest gave him the consecrated loaves, which were lawful to eat only for priests and Levites. He asked only whether the young men were clean from women, and when David answered that they had been so from yesterday and the day before, he did not hesitate to give the loaves—judging it better, as the prophet says, “I desire mercy and not sacrifice” (Hosea 6), to free men from danger of hunger than to offer sacrifice to God. For the sacrifice pleasing to God is the salvation of men.
The Lord therefore argues: if David, though holy, and Ahimelech, though priest, are not reproved by you, though both transgressed the command of the Law with reasonable excuse and hunger was the cause, why do you not approve the same hunger in the apostles which you approve in others?
That the Lord calls Abiathar “high priest” instead of Ahimelech contains no contradiction. Both were present when David came and received the bread—Ahimelech the high priest and Abiathar his son. After Ahimelech was killed by Saul along with the priests of his house, Abiathar fled to David and became his companion throughout the exile. Later, during David’s reign, he himself attained the high priesthood and surpassed his father in distinction; therefore the Lord rightly makes mention of him as high priest even while his father was still alive.
“And he said to them: The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath.”
Greater care must be given to human health and life than to the observance of the Sabbath. For the Sabbath was commanded to be kept in such a way that if necessity arose, one who violated it would not be guilty. Thus circumcision was not forbidden because it was necessary. Joshua also marched around the walls of Jericho on the Sabbath, and the Maccabees fought when attacked on the Sabbath.
Therefore what was not lawful in the Law became lawful for the hungry disciples by necessity of hunger. The same applies today in lawful fasts: if someone breaks a fast because of illness, he is in no way held guilty.
“The Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.”
If David the king is excusable for eating priestly food, and if, as another evangelist recounts, priests violate the Sabbath through temple ministry and are guiltless, how much more the Son of Man, who is both true King and true Priest, and therefore Lord of the Sabbath, is not bound by guilt for plucking ears of grain on the Sabbath.
CONTINUE
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