For an introduction to St. John and this text, as well as Part I of the text, see my previous post here: https://thesaurostesekklesias.blogspot.com/2024/01/st-john-of-avila-sermon-651-on.html
What Bush Is This, Which
Burns and Is Not Consumed?
Who
will speak?
Who will speak the powerful deeds of the Lord (Ps
106:2)? Who will
understand His mercies? Have you encountered any book in which you
have read the mercies of God? Have you seen
a book which tells them?
Moses
wandered, pasturing his herd, and set it there in the deepest part of
the desert, and, wandering, he, very careless, saw a bramble which
burned and was not consumed; he was frightened at how it burned and
was not consumed. “Certainly, I have to go there and see this
great marvel.” Is there not more, Moses? Is there not more? He
goes there, and, as soon as he draws near, he finds that God was in
the bramble. See, through your life, he who saw God in the bramble,
and [God]
spoke to him from there: “Moses, do not come here; you
are coming very close; see
how
the earth where you are is holy.” Is there nothing more except
coming to see? “Unshod yourself.” Was he holier by becoming
unshod? “Unshod yourself, do not bring your sense, nor your
reason, nor your force, nor your knowledge; set
aside what avails
nothing;
you have need of another spirit, another force, another
understanding: unshod yourself; you are nothing, you avail nothing;
did you think that there would not be more? Glean that you are near
God, near Him
at Whose Majesty the angels tremble.” God speaks from the bramble:
Ego sum Deus
Abraham, Deus Isaac, Deus Jacob [I am the God of Abraham, the God of
Isaac, the God of Jacob]
(Ex 3:6). “Marvelous God, and you are in the bramble? What does
Your Majesty command?” “I have ears to hear and eyes to see the
pains which My people suffer: I have heard the voices which they make
to Me in Egypt: I have seen their affliction, and, come what may, I
have descended here to free them. Glean that I command you to go to
Pharaoh, and tell him this, and this on My behalf.” Admirable is
the vision, certainly, but marvelous is its completion. Who will
understand the mercies of the Lord (Ps
107:43)? Who His
counsel? What is this? What is this? If we enter into the desert,
if we take our sheep to the most secret [place],
if we retreat to the deepest interior of our hearts, we will see the
vision of God, that He is near, that He burns and is not consumed,
that our eyes see a pregnant maiden; God is in her, and she is not
consumed; she is pregnant and a maiden:
if we do not approach to see this mystery, they will say that we go
about like fools; remove your reasons and natures, unshod yourselves
of your shoes of animal leather, set
aside the knowledge
and understanding of flesh: Go
forth, daughters of Sion, and you will see King Solomon crowned with
the crown, with which his mother crowned him on the day of his
betrothal
(Sgs 3:11). Let us ask our Lady for the grace to know how to
receive, and to delight in, and to understand something of this
mystery.
Do
not come with a profane and dishonest heart: denude your reason, come
with feet unshod, untrusting in yourself, separated from yourself,
closer to and asking help from God. What is this? Approach a
little: what does this Maiden have? What fire is this which she has
within her? They will respond to you: “Not an angel nor an angel,
but the Lord Himself Who is in her.”
“I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, God of Jacob.” O
blessed be You, Lord, and glorified forever, and may the angels adore
and revere
You forever! What does the great God do, enclosed in a maiden? The
name of the city of God: Dominus
ibidem [the Lord is
there]
(Ez 48:35):
the name of the Son of the Virgin and of God: Emmanuel
(Is
7:14). You
call the city, you come to the Virgin thinking that there is nothing
more; God will respond to you in her: “Behold.” What are You
doing, Lord, here, in a maiden? “I saw the work and pains of My
people, and the labors and anguishes which they suffer, and I have
descended to free them Myself.” O marvelous God! Men
and the Prophets, give voices, so
that He Who is to
come would come already!
The
world was captive to
the power of the demon, and in great anguish; great were the forces
of the demon, and great sorrow was it to see what sin worked in the
hearts of men, with efficacy. “There is no other remedy,” says
God, “I know what My people suffer, I know their anguishes, I have
had compassion on men, on the Holy Fathers in limbo, on
the seats which are to be repaired: I have descended and come to free
them.” O, glorified be You, Lord, Who comes from one to the other!
He sent Moses over there so that His people would be freed by him
from their captivity by Pharaoh, and God remained Himself without
costing Himself anything: is He here in
the same way? No.
Descendi ut
liberarem populum meum [I descended so that I might liberate My
people] (Ex 3:8).
“I descended to liberate My people.” What will it cost You?
When Moses liberated Your
people, You
threw many plagues at Pharaoh: You
throw dog flies at him, then frogs, then other things which give them
great pain and labor: but what must it cost You?
What thing is this, Lord? Propter
nos homines, et
propter nostram salutem descendit de cœlis, et
incarnatus
est de Spiritu Sancto ex Maria Virgine, et
homo factus est [For us men, and
for our salvation, He descended from the heavens, and
He was
incarnate of the Holy Spirit from Mary the Virgin, and
became man].
Men, there is a reason to no longer have a heart of stones instead
of flesh (Ez 36:26),
since the Word of God is become flesh for us men, and for our
salvation. God incarnated and became man: over there He remains in
the bramble, and they do not touch Him;
here, He descends from the heavens, and has become man.
There
Is No More; It Was a Marriage For Love
What
does God have [in
common] with man?
Join those extremes for me.
Give
me the desire today (if
it were not [already] with him who knows so much)
to say to Him: “Lord, do You know what You are doing?” What
thing is
higher than God? What thing lower than man? God and man! Since
Adam sinned, “man” is a name of dishonor, since man and sinner
are one and the same thing. And when Saint Paul wants to rebuke
someone, he calls him “man”:
Non ne homines
estis [Are you not men]?
(1 Cor 3:4). And the Psalmist: Ut
sciant gentes, quoniam homines sunt [That the nations may know that
they are men] (Ps
9:20). May they know that they are men, that they are sinners, and
miserable. Who could ever think such
a thing? That heaven
is
with the
ground? That the high is
with the low? That the rich is
with the poor? That the pure is
with the dirty? That the gold is
with the mud of man? What is this, Lord, that you have so truly
joined with man? Erunt
duo in carne una
[The two will be
one flesh] (Mk
10:8). What is it to become man? He becomes man, and He does not
leave off being God; two natures and one person; in such a manner
that He is called God, God man, and man God, and that which is said
of the one, is said of the other. They are married. O
mira Dei usque ad hominem exinanitio! O mira hominis usque ad Deum
exaltatio! [O marvelous
emptying of God towards man! O marvelous
exaltation of man towards God!]
God descends unto becoming man, and raises man towards God: how low,
and how high!
So
that you might know
how much God and His goodness can do, God is abased to become man, as
far as joining with humanity, and [as
far as] giving it the
hypostasis
and personality of God, and there are not two hypostaseis,
but two natures joined, human and divine nature; and the human is
impersonal, it is hypostasized
and joined to the divine Word, not two persons, but one, in
order to make
you understand that
the goodness of God could, without any reward, raise that humanity to
hypostasize
it in God, and to adorn it with so many excellences and graces; and
that He Who had goodness for this, will have it to raise you yourself
from the dung, so that you might
be a son of God by
participation; that He did this for this [reason],
so that you would see
in the head that which was to pass in the members. That, as He thus
came to it without rewards, so He will come to you yourself without
yours: Præclarissimum
nobis proponitur exemplar prædestinationis nostræ Dominus Jesus
[The Lord Jesus is proposed to us as a clearest exemplar of our
predestination].
The example of predestination—if you are predestined, if God calls
you—is
justifying and saving, because it is predestined by grace.
Today
the Word is wedded with that holy soul and body. Wedded, Lord? For
this reason
He said [it],
so that
I would tell it to you if you did not know it: “wedded.” Take
that equality away
from me! Are there
those here who understand marriage? Take that equality away
from me in the manner
of lineage! Are they equal in one? What goes
from lineage to lineage? From knowledge to knowledge? From riches
to riches? A greatest difference, which all the angels are terrified
to hear of. Who sees God descend today and abase Himself? (I say
God abases Himself, not by changing place, but rather,
I mean to say, by
taking that humanity.) It was an unequal thing; but, to the end,
that soul and body were most clean and holy: Your love, Lord,
undergoes all of it, suffers all of it, enriches all of it in
exchange for performing mercies. O great good, O great honor! Do
you think that there is nothing else [to
do] except wedding
Yourself with that humanity? O my King, even the relatives of the
Spouse are very unequal, poor and disobedient! If one would come
from the Indies with much money, if they knew that he gave alms, what
would the poor relatives do in
order to demand it
and take it from him! Then see, Lord, that Your Spouse owes nothing,
never sinned, was most clean in her conception: then see how much we,
the relatives, owe, how weighted with debts we are, how infirm,
exiled, condemned to death, unraveled, and enemies of God, with a
thousand debts and traps, and all would be laid upon You. If You
were not, Lord, Who You are, I would tell You: “Lord, do You know
what You are doing? All the sins of men would be laid upon Your
shoulders: You would have to pay it, upon You would all fall, since
nothing would be remitted You.
“Do
You know with whom You are wedded? Do You not dishonor Yourself with
the relatives of the betrothed? Son of the Father, so rich in
heaven, do You come here, to earth, to wed Yourself, and to live
among so poor a people? If You were, Lord, some avaricious man whom
the needs
of others would not move, there would not be much in it; but, being
Yourself, Lord, so amorous, so merciful, and You Who gives Your
heartto
him whom You see in need,
how do You place Yourself among such poor men? What have You done?
That the needs
of all would be laid upon Your shoulders, and that which the other
sinned in his flesh, and that which the other sinned in his madness,
and the other in his adulterizing and in his blaspheming. What have
You done, Lord? I have to say it, Lord. Blessing the heavens
and the earth: I will do
it, since You love
the ugly, and he appears handsome to You.” There is nothing more;
it was a wedding for love, the Father well loved, so
that He gave even the
Son to us in such a
marriage: Sic
Deus dilexit mundum, ut Filium suum unigenitum daret [God so loved
the world, that He would give His only-begotten Son]
(Jn 3:16). The Father well loved us, the Son well loved us, He
Who consented to
such, the Holy Spirit well loved us, He
Who ordered such.
Why did the Father give Him? So that He would die and they would
skin Him, so that they would wed Him with the slave. Here I am, the
slave of the Lord. He who is born of a slave woman is a slave,
although He be the son of a free man, because birth follows the womb.
Is it not so? The Virgin calls herself a slave, and He Who is born
of her calls Himself a slave: O
Domine quia ego servus tuus sum, et
filius ancillæ tuæ [O Lord, for
I am Your servant, and
the son of Your handmaid]
(Ps 116:16). O Father, I am Your slave, and the son of Your slave!
You were a slave, Lord; who shackled You to that cross with nails?
The Son of God did
not come to be served, but to serve
(cf. Mt 20:28). You were a slave of men, since You served them, and
they want to thank You for it with hard pains.
O
blessed [be]
Your goodness,
and cursed our illness! That God would
send His Son to the
world to heal men! What was
it, Lord, which moved
You? Quæ te
vicit clementia, ut ferres nostra crimina ]What clemency conquered
You, that You would bear our crimes]?
Would it not be enough to send a Moses? Non
angelus, non legatus, ego feci, ego feram, ego portabo, ego salvabo
[Not an angel, not a legate, I Myself did,
I will bear, I will carry, I will save]
(cf. Is 63:9, 46:4).
“Hear Me, My people, those whom I bring, reared in My womb,”
says the Lord: “I did,
I will suffer you, I will carry you, I will save you, I will carry
you between My shoulders; because I made You, I will carry you, and I
will save you unto old age, unto your canes I will give you hope.”
Blessed be You, Lord,
since He Who made the vase came to solder it, and He in Whose mold it
was made, He Himself came to remedy and mold it! “I want to
descend,” says God—what was this? God guard
you with love! The Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit well
loved us. This matter is all love. You do not ask for equality, You
do not place Yourself in that work, You do not ask a reason for love:
it is love; will there be eyes to see this, that, because
of the grand love
which He had, He abased Himself and enclosed Himself in the womb of
the Virgin, determined to pay and suffer and die for men, and to pay
all his debts, even though it costs Him His life?