We should also know that the ten commandments of the law are also fulfilled by the two gospel precepts, love of God and love of neighbor. For the three commandments which were written on the first tablet pertain to the love of God, while on the second tablet seven commandments were inscribed, one of which is Honor your father and your mother. Doubtless all of the latter are recognized as pertaining to love of neighbor. The Lord said in the Gospel: On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets.^[1] Likewise we read what the apostle James said: But whoever offends in one point has become guilty in all.^[2] What does it mean to offend in one point and lose all, except to have fallen from the precept of charity and so to have offended in all the other commands? According to the apostle, without charity nothing in our virtues can be shown to avail at all.

Let [my opponents] insist, if they like, in contradiction to their own assertion, that worship of the one true God and the prohibition against idolatry is not to be preached to the unbaptized but to the already baptized. Do not, however, let them any longer say to those who are going to receive baptism that they need be instructed only on belief in God and after the reception of the sacrament they will be taught the manner of living required by the second precept on the love of neighbor. For both are contained in the law which the people received after the Red Sea, that is, after baptism. The commandments were not so distributed that before crossing the Red Sea the Jews were warned against idolatry and not until after their escape taught to honor father and mother, not to commit adultery, not to kill, and the remaining prescriptions for a rational and godly way of living.

In the first commandment of the Decalogue, just as the worship and service of the one Lord God is most clearly commanded, so for adoration and service to be shown by the faithful to any creature is most vehemently forbidden. For it is said there: I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me. If this is taken as spoken simultaneously by the Father and the Son, the Father and the Son are believed to be one Lord God. But if either the Father is believed to have said this without the Son or the Son without the Father, it is necessary that the Father or the Son be denied to be the Lord God. Concerning this he said, I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me.

Again, he who says you shall never worship a strange god forbids us to worship another god, and the strange god is so called in contradistinction to our own God. Who then is our own God? Clearly, the true God. And who is the strange god? Surely, he who is alien from the nature of the true God. If therefore our own God is the true God, and if, as the heretics say, the only-begotten God is not of the nature of the true God, he is a strange God and not our God.

[God] warns a man inclined to idolatry not to practice it. But when a man who is not so inclined but yet through cowardice, which he calls accommodation, pretends to worship idols as the masses do, he does not, it is true, worship idols, but he does bow before them. And I would say that they who abjure Christianity in the courtroom or even before they are brought there do not worship idols, but they do bow down before them; for they apply to inanimate and unheeding matter the name of the Lord God, namely God.

It is obvious that the Jews follow the law where God is represented as saying, You shall have none other gods but me; you shall not make for yourself an idol nor any likeness of anything in the heaven above and in the earth beneath and in the waters under the earth; you shall not bow down to them nor worship them. And they worship none other than the supreme God who made heaven and everything else. It is clear then that since those who live according to the law reverence him who made the heavens, they do not reverence the heavens together with God. Furthermore, none of those who serve the Mosaic law worship the angels in heaven. And in the same way that they do not worship the sun, moon and stars, the world of heaven, they avoid worshiping heaven and the angels in it.

Christians and Jews are led to avoid temples and altars and images by the command You shall fear the Lord your God and him only shall you serve. . . . And not only do they avoid them, but when necessary they readily come to the point of death to avoid defiling their conception of the God of the universe by any act of this kind contrary to his law.

When men try to seduce us to apostasy, it is useful to reflect upon what God wishes to teach us when he says, I am the Lord your God, jealous. In my view, just as the bridegroom who wishes to make his bride live chastely so as to give herself entirely to him and beware of any relationship whatever with any man other than her husband, pretends, though he be wise, to be jealous—he uses this pretense as a kind of antidote for his bride—so the Lawgiver, especially when he reveals himself as the firstborn of every creature,^[1] says to his bride, the soul, that he is a jealous God. In this way he keeps his followers from any fornication with demons and pretended gods.

Now Christ is especially jealous for the house of God in each of us, not wishing it to be a house of merchandise^[1] or that the house of prayer become a den of thieves,^[2] since he is Son of a jealous God. This is the case if we understand such words from the Scriptures in a reasonable manner, which were spoken metaphorically from the human viewpoint to set forth the fact that God wishes nothing alien to his will to be mingled with the soul of any, but especially with the soul of those who wish to receive [the teachings of the] most divine faith.

Although making a variety of suppositions about him, we all know something of God but do not all know what he is, for few indeed and fewer (if I may say so) than few are they who grasp his holiness in all things. Thus we are rightly taught to pray that our concept of God may be hallowed among us. Thus we shall see his holiness in creating, in providing, in judging, in choosing and abandoning, in accepting and rejecting, in rewarding and punishing each one according to his merits.

In these activities and others like them is found, so I may say, the stamp of the personal character of God, that which in my opinion is called in Scripture the name of God. So in Exodus: You shall not take the name of your God in vain.

Here too the Lord himself teaches in the passage before us about another Lord. For he says, I am the Lord thy God, and adds, You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain. The second Lord is here mystically instructing his servant about the Father, that is to say, the God of the universe. And you could find many other similar instances occurring in Holy Scripture, in which God speaks as if in a second voice about another. The Lord himself speaks as if about another.

The second commandment: You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain; for whoever takes the name of the Lord his God in vain will not be purified. The name of the Lord our God Jesus Christ is Truth: he himself said, I am the truth.^[1] So truth purifies; futility defiles. And because whoever speaks the truth speaks from what is God’s—for whoever speaks falsehood speaks from what is his own^[2]—to speak the truth is to speak reasonably, whereas to speak futility is to make a noise rather than to speak. Rightly, because the second commandment means love of the truth, the opposite of that is love of futility.

You are told Do not take the name of the Lord your God in vain; do not regard Christ as a creature because for your sake he put on the creature. And you, you despise him who is equal to the Father and one with the Father.

The third commandment: Remember the sabbath day to sanctify it. This third commandment imposes a regular periodical holiday—quietness of heart, tranquility of mind, the product of a good conscience. Here is sanctification, because here is the Spirit of God. Well, here is what a true holiday, that is to say, quietness and rest, means Upon whom, he says, shall my spirit rest? Upon one who is humble and quiet and trembles at my words.^[1] So unquiet people are those who recoil from the Holy Spirit, loving quarrels, spreading slanders, keener on argument than on truth, and so in their restlessness they do not allow the quietness of the spiritual sabbath to enter into themselves.

We are not ordered to keep the sabbath day by a literal corporal abstinence from work, as the Jews observe it—and, indeed, that observance of theirs, because it is so commanded, is considered ludicrous unless it signifies some other spiritual rest. From this we understand that all the truths which are expressed figuratively in the Scriptures are appropriately designed to arouse love. By love we attain to rest. The only commandment that is given figuratively is the one by which rest is enjoined. Rest is universally loved but found pure and entire in God alone.

However, the Lord’s day was not made known to Jews but to Christians by the resurrection of the Lord, and from that event it began to acquire its solemnity. Doubtless the souls of all the saints prior to the resurrection of the body enjoy repose, but they do not possess that activity which gives power to risen bodies.

But the rite of the sabbath was taught to our ancient fathers which we Christians observe spiritually so that we abstain from all servile work, that is, from all sin (for the Lord says, Everyone who commits a sin is a slave of sin),^[1] and we have rest in our hearts, that is, spiritual tranquility. And, however we try in this world, we shall nevertheless not arrive at that perfect rest except when we have departed this life.

To teach a Christian anything about the observance of the sabbath would seem to be rather superfluous. On the contrary, not only is it not superfluous, but it is in fact basic, bedrock doctrine, because it is a shadow of things to come.^[1] The people, you see, are forbidden to perform servile works on the sabbath. Now are we, I ask you, not forbidden to perform servile works? Listen to the Lord: Everyone who commits sin is the slave of sin.^[1] And yet to celebrate the sabbath is to hope to receive from God this very thing, of not committing sin. That’s why it is written, God rested on the seventh day from all his works.^[2] God rested; God enables you to rest. For God himself to rest, well when did he tire himself out working, seeing that he created all things with a word? ^[3]

The third precept is Remember to keep holy the sabbath day. In this third commandment is suggested a certain idea of freedom, a repose of the heart or tranquility of the mind which a good conscience effects. Indeed, sanctification is there because the Spirit of God dwells there. Now look at the freedom or repose; our Lord says, Upon whom shall I rest but upon the man who is humble and peaceable, and who trembles at my words?^[1] Therefore restless souls turn away from the Holy Ghost. Lovers of strife, authors of calumnies, devotees of quarrels rather than of charity, by their uneasiness they do not admit to themselves the repose of a spiritual sabbath. Men do not observe a spiritual sabbath unless they devote themselves to earthly occupations so moderately that they still engage in reading and prayer, at least frequently, if not always. As that apostle says, Be diligent in reading and in teaching;^[2] and again, Pray without ceasing.^[3] Men of this kind honor the sabbath in a spiritual manner.

Under the law the people were ordered to work for six days and to rest on the seventh, [and] to plow and reap for six years and desist during the seventh,^[1] because the Lord completed the creation of the world in six days and desisted from his work on the seventh.^[2] Mystically speaking, we are counseled by all this that those who in this age (which is comprised of six periods), devote themselves to good works for the Lord’s sake, are in future led by the Lord to a sabbath, that is, to eternal rest.

When he speaks to us of another commandment, not known to us by the dictate of conscience, he not only prohibits but also adds the reason. When, for instance, he gave the commandment respecting the sabbath, On the seventh day you shall do no work, he subjoined also the reason for this cessation. What was this? Because on the seventh day God rested from all his works which he had begun to make. And again, Because you were a servant in the land of Egypt.^[1] For what purpose then, I ask, did he add a reason respecting the sabbath but did no such thing in regard to murder? Because this commandment was not one of the leading ones. It was not one of those which were accurately defined in our conscience but a kind of partial and temporary one. And for this reason it was later experienced. Homilies

And God said, Honor your father and your mother, teaching that the child should pay the honor which is due to his parents. Of this honor to parents one part was to share with them the necessaries of life, such as food and clothing, and if there was any other thing in which it was possible for them to show favor toward their own parents.

And again, who would deny that the command which says, Honor your father and your mother, that it may be well with you, is useful quite apart from any spiritual interpretation and that it ought certainly to be observed, especially when we remember that the apostle Paul has quoted it in the same words?^[1]

The formation of the children is then the prerogative of the parents. Therefore honor your father, that he may bless you. Let the godly man honor his father out of gratitude and the ingrate do so on account of fear. Even if the father is poor and does not have plenty of resources to leave to his sons, still he has the heritage of his final blessing with which he may bestow the wealth of sanctification on his descendants. And it is a far greater thing to be blessed than it is to be rich.

[The Lord] declares that [this commandment] is to be interpreted not of mere words, which while offering an empty show of regard may still leave a parent’s wants unrelieved, but by the actual provision of the necessaries of life. The Lord commanded that poor parents should be supported by their children and that these should pay them back when old for those benefits which they had themselves received in their childhood.

It’s your parents you see when you first open your eyes, and it is their friendship that lays down the first strands of this life. If anyone fails to honor his parents, is there anyone he will spare?

So if you are afraid your son won’t take care of you once he has his hands on the money, you are in fact making filial piety a commodity for sale, not a quality to be loved. How much better a poor man’s son, the son, for instance, of an old man in the direst poverty, who expects nothing from his father because he hasn’t got anything he can leave him but who all the same supports his father with his labor and the sweat of his brow. Sometimes, of course, the children of rich people too take the fear of God seriously, and that’s why they show consideration to their parents, not because they expect something from them but because they are their parents who brought them into the world and brought them up, and God gave a commandment which says Honor your father and your mother. But where the reward is there for all to see, the genuineness of their sentiments is not so obvious.

How was it then when he said, You shall not kill, that he did not add, because murder is a wicked thing? The reason was that conscience had already taught this beforehand. He speaks thus, as if to those who know and understand the point.

What about the prohibition, ‘You shall not kill,’ which is also there? If killing is evil in every respect, how will the just who, in obedience to a law, have killed many, be excused from this charge? The answer to this question is that he does not kill who is the executor of a just command.

It is significant that in Holy Scripture no passage can be found enjoining or permitting suicide either in order to hasten our entry into immortality or to void or avoid temporal evils. God’s command, You shall not kill, is to be taken as forbidding self-destruction, especially as it does not add your neighbor, as it does when it forbids false witness, You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.

Therefore whatsoever things God commands (and one of these is You shall not commit adultery) and whatsoever things are not positively ordered but are strongly advised as good spiritual counsel (and one of these is, It is a good thing for a man to not touch a woman)^[1]—all of these imperatives are rightly obeyed only when they are measured by the standard of our love of God and our love of our neighbor in God.

It is written in the law, You shall not commit fornication. This is required in a beneficial way according to the simple sound of the letter by the person who is still entangled in the passions of fleshly impurity. It is necessarily observed in spiritual fashion, however, by one who has already left behind this filthy behavior and impure disposition, so that he also rejects not only all idolatrous ceremonies but also every superstition of the Gentiles and the observance of auguries and omens and of all signs and days and times. And he is certainly not engaged in the divination of particular words or names, which befouls the wholesomeness of our faith.

The law suppressed physical sins, but our Redeemer condemned even unlawful thoughts.^[1] And so if they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they believe one who rises from the dead.^[2] When will those who neglect to fulfill the less important commandments of the law be strong enough to obey our Savior’s more demanding precepts? This much is clear: anyone whose sayings they decline to fulfill, they have refused to believe.

In the Decalogue itself it is written, You shall not bear false witness, in which classification every lie is embraced, for whoever pronounces any statement gives testimony to his own mind. If anyone should argue that not every lie should be called false witness, what will he answer to this statement which is also in the sacred Scriptures: The mouth that belies, kills the soul?^[1] If anyone should think that this passage can be interpreted to except certain lies, he may read in another passage: You will destroy all that speak a lie.^[2] In this connection, our divine Lord said with his own lips, Let your speech be ‘yes, yes’; ‘no, no’; and whatever is more comes from the evil one.^[3] Hence the apostle too, when he directs that the old man should be put off, under which term all sins are understood, goes on to explain his remark and specifically says, Therefore put away lying and speak the truth.^[4]

The law says to you, for example, You shall not bear false witness.^[1] If you know what the truth of the evidence is, you have light in your mind. But if you are overcome by greed for sordid gain and decide in your heart of hearts to bear false witness for the sake of it, then you are already beginning to be tossed about by the storm in the absence of Christ. You are being heaved up and down by the waves of your avarice, you are being endangered by the tempest of your desires, and with Christ apparently absent, you are on the verge of sinking.

Love of money then is an old, an ancient vice, which showed itself even at the declaration of the divine law; for a law was given to check it.

The law said, You shall not covet, in order that, when we find ourselves lying in this diseased state, we might seek the medicine of grace. By that commandment [we might] know both in what direction our endeavors should aim as we advance in our present mortal condition and to what a height it is possible to reach in the future immortality. For unless perfection could somewhere be attained, this commandment would never have been given to us.

There you are then, the law tells you you shall not covet. You know the law which says, You shall not covet. Covetousness surges up in you, which you didn’t know. It was there inside, you see, but it wasn’t known. You started to make an effort to overcome what was inside, and what was hidden came to light. Proud fellow, through the law you have been made into a transgressor. Acknowledge grace, and become a singer of praise.

Even a lion can be shooed off its prey by the terrifying threat of arms and weapons and the crowd of people perhaps surrounding it or coming to attack it; and yet the lion comes, the lion returns. It hasn’t seized its prey; it hasn’t either laid aside its evil intention. If that’s what you’re like, your justice is still the sort by which you take care not to get tortured. What’s so great about being afraid of punishment? Who isn’t afraid of it?

What is the accomplishing of good except the cessation and end of evil? But what is the cessation of evil except what the law says, You shall not lust?^[1] To lust not at all is the accomplishing of good because it is the cessation of evil. He said this: To accomplish good is not there for me, because he was unable to bring it about that he did not lust. He only brought it about that he reined in lust, that he did not consent to lust and that he did not offer his members to lust for its service.

To save me from saying a lot, among other commandments it contains You shall not covet your neighbor’s property. Don’t covet; don’t go up and down in front of that country house belonging to someone else and sigh because it’s such a fine one. Do not covet your neighbor’s property. The Lord’s is the earth and its fullness.^[1] What haven’t you acquired, if you have got hold of God? So don’t covet your neighbor’s property.

Old Testament law forbids anyone to lust after another man’s wife, but it does not decree punishment for the king who commands his soldiers to perform dangerous feats or who desires a drink of water. We all know that David was pricked by lust and desired another man’s wife and took her.^[1] The blows his sin deserved followed, and he made amends for the evil he had done by tears of repentance.

And the second commandment of the teaching: You shall not commit murder, you shall not commit adultery [Ex 20:13–14], you shall not commit pederasty, you shall not commit fornication, you shall not steal [Ex 20:15], you shall not practice magic, you shall not practice witchcraft, you shall not murder a child by abortion nor kill what is begotten. You shall not covet the things of your neighbor [Ex 20:17], you shall not forswear yourself [Mt 5:34], you shall not bear false witness [Ex 20:16].

The way of light, then, is as follows. If anyone desires to travel to the appointed place, he must be zealous in his works. The knowledge, therefore, that is given to us to walk in this way, is the following. . . . You shall not slay the child by procuring abortion; nor shall you destroy it after it is born.

And near that place I saw another strait place into which the gore and the filth of those who were being punished ran down and became a lake: and there sat women having the gore up to their necks, and over against them sat many children who were born to them out of due time, crying; and there came forth from them sparks of fire that smote the women in the eyes: and these were the accursed who conceived and caused abortion.

What man of sound mind, therefore, will affirm, while such is our character, that we are murderers? . . . [W]hen we say that those women who use drugs to bring on abortion commit murder, and will have to give an account to God for the abortion, on what principle should we commit murder? For it does not belong to the same person to regard the very fetus in the womb as a created being, and therefore an object of God’s care, and when it has passed into life, to kill it; and not to expose an infant, because those who expose them are chargeable with child murder, and on the other hand, when it has been reared to destroy it.

In our case, murder being forbidden, we may not destroy even the fetus in the womb, while the human being derives blood from other parts of the body for its sustenance. To hinder a birth is merely a speedier mankilling; nor does it matter whether you take away a life that is born, or destroy one that is coming to the birth. That is a man that is going to be one; you have the fruit already in its seed.

[A]mong surgeons’ tools there is a certain instrument formed with a nicely adjusted flexible frame for opening the uterus and keeping it open; it is further furnished with an annular blade, by means of which the limbs within the womb are dissected with anxious but unfaltering care; its last appendage being a blunted or covered hook, with which the entire fetus is extracted by a violent delivery. There is also a copper needle or spike, by which the actual death is managed in this furtive robbery of life: from its infanticide function, they give it the name of embruosphaktê , the slayer of the infant, which was of course alive. Such apparatus was possessed both by Hippocrates, and Asclepiades, and Erasistratus, and Herophilus, that dissector of adults, and the milder Soranus himself, who all knew well enough that a living being had been conceived, and pitied this most luckless infant state, which had first to be put to death, to escape being tortured alive.

Now we allow that life begins with conception, because we contend that the soul also begins from conception; life taking its commencement at the same moment and place that the soul does.

There are some women who, by drinking medical preparations, extinguish the source of the future man in their bowels, and thus commit a parricide before they bring forth. And these things assuredly come down from the teaching of your gods. . . . To us it is not lawful either to see or to hear of homicide.

[W]omen, reputed believers, began to resort to drugs to produce sterility, and to gird themselves round, so to expel what was being conceived on account of their not wishing to have a child either by a slave or any paltry fellow, for the sake of their family and excessive wealth. Behold, into how great impiety that lawless one has proceeded, by committing adultery and murder at the same time!

For when God forbids us to kill, he not only prohibits us from open violence, which is not even allowed by the public laws, but he warns us against the commission of those things esteemed lawful among men. . . . Therefore let no one imagine that this is allowed, to strangle newborn children, which is the greatest impiety; for God breathes into their souls for life, and not for death. But men, that there may be no crime with which they may not pollute their hands, deprive souls as yet innocent and simple of the light that they themselves have not given.

Can any one, indeed, expect that they would abstain from the blood of others who do not abstain from their own? But these are without any controversy wicked and unjust.

Concerning women who commit fornication, and destroy what they have conceived, or who are employed in making drugs for abortion, a former decree excluded them until the hour of death, and to this some have assented. Nevertheless, being desirous to use somewhat greater leniency, we have ordained that they fulfill ten years [of penance], according to the prescribed degrees.

The woman who purposely destroys her unborn child is guilty of murder. With us there is no nice enquiry as to its being formed or unformed. In this case it is not only the being about to be born who is vindicated, but the woman in her attack upon herself; because in most cases women who make such attempts die. The destruction of the embryo is an additional crime, a second murder, at all events if it is done with intent. The punishment, however, of these women should not be for life, but for the term of ten years. And let their treatment depend not on mere lapse of time, but on the character of their repentance.

Women also who administer drugs to cause abortion, as well as those who take poisons to destroy unborn children, are murderesses.

I cannot bring myself to speak of the many virgins who fall every day and are lost to the bosom of the Church, their mother. . . . Some go so far as to take potions, that they may ensure barrenness, and thus murder human beings almost before their conception. Some, when they find themselves with child through their sin, use drugs to procure abortion, and when (as often happens) they die with their offspring, they enter the lower world laden with the guilt not only of adultery against Christ but also of suicide and child murder.

I beseech you, flee fornication. . . . Why sow where the ground makes it its job to destroy the fruit? Where there are many efforts at abortion? Where there is murder before the birth? For even the harlot you do not let continue a mere harlot, but make her a murderess also. You see how drunkenness leads to whoredom, whoredom to adultery, adultery to murder, or rather to something even worse than murder. For I have no name to give it, since it does not take away the thing born, but prevents its being born. Why then do you abuse the gift of God, and fight with his laws, and follow after what is a curse as if it were a blessing, and make the chamber of procreation a chamber for murder, and arm the woman that was given for childbearing into slaughter? For with a view to drawing more money by being agreeable and an object of longing to her lovers, even this she will do, heaping upon your head a great pile of fire. For even if the daring deed be hers, yet the cause of it is yours.

You shall not use magic. You shall not use witchcraft; for he says, “You shall not suffer a witch to live.” You shall not slay your child by causing abortion, nor kill what is begotten; for “everything that is shaped, and has received a soul from God, if it be slain, shall be avenged, as being unjustly destroyed”.

And that you may learn that we know this from the first, the lawgiver, when he afterwards gave laws, and said, “You shall not kill” [Ex 20:13], did not add, “since murder is an evil thing,” but simply said, “You shall not kill”; for he merely prohibited the sin, without teaching. How was it then when he said, “You shall not kill,” that he did not add, “because murder is a wicked thing.” The reason was that conscience had taught this beforehand; and he speaks thus to those who know and understand the point. This is why when he speaks to us of another commandment, not known to us by the dictates of conscience, he not only prohibits, but adds the reason. When, for instance, he gave the commandment respecting the Sabbath, “On the seventh day you shall do no work”; he gave the reason for this cessation. “Because on the seventh day God rested from all his works which he had begun to make” [Ex 20:10]. And again; “Because thou were a servant in the land of Egypt” [Dt 21:18]. For what purpose, then, did he add a reason respecting the Sabbath, but did no such thing in regard to murder? Because this commandment was not one of the leading ones. It was not one of those that were accurately defined by our conscience, but a kind of partial and temporary one; and for this reason it was abolished afterwards. But those that are necessary and uphold our life are the following: “You shall not kill. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal.” On this account he adds no reason in this case, nor enters into any instruction on the matter, but is content with the bare prohibition.

Well, now, I should like to be told what is in these Ten Commandments, except the observance of the Sabbath, that ought not to be kept by a Christian—whether it prohibit the making and worshipping of idols and of any other gods than the one true God, or the taking of God’s name in vain; or prescribe honor to parents; or give warning against fornication, murder, theft, false witness, adultery, or coveting other men’s property? Which of these commandments would anyone say that the Christian ought not to keep? Is it possible to contend that it is not the law that was written on those two tablets that the apostle describes as “the letter that kills,” but the law of circumcision and the other sacred rites that are now abolished?

But notice how it happened there and how it happened here. There, the people stood a long way off; there was an atmosphere of dread, not of love. I mean, they were so terrified that they said to Moses, Speak to us yourself, and do not let the Lord speak to us, lest we die. So God came down, as it is written, on Sinai in fire; but he was terrifying the people who stood a long way off, and writing with his finger on stone,^[1] not on the heart.

Here, however, when the Holy Spirit came, the faithful were gathered together as one; and he didn’t terrify them on a mountain but came in to them in a house. There came a sudden sound, indeed, from heaven, as of a fierce squall rushing upon them; it made a noise, but nobody panicked. You have heard the sound, now see the fire too, because each was there on the mountain also, both fire and sound; but there, there was smoke as well, here, though, the fire was clear. There appeared to them, Scripture says, you see, divided tongues, as of fire. Terrifying them from a long way off? Far from it. Because it settled upon each one of them, and they began to talk in languages, as the Spirit gave them utterance.^[2] Hear a person speaking a language, and understand the Spirit writing not on stone but on the heart.

For he says, If you will make an altar, you shall make it of earth. It does not say make one but if you will make. It does not impose a necessity but gives leave to their own free liberty. For God does not stand in need of sacrifices, being by nature above all want.

To make an altar of earth for the Lord is to place our hope in the incarnation of the Mediator. Our gift is accepted by God when, on this altar, our humility rests whatever it does upon faith in the Lord’s incarnation. We place the gift we offer on an altar made of earth if we base all our actions on faith in the Lord’s incarnation.

Unity knows no number, equality allows no scale. As Scripture says, You shall not go up by steps to my altar.