Augustine of Hippo

In his own words on 1 Kings

• 1 Kings 1:35

  Solomon, it will be remembered, succeeded to the throne during his father David's lifetime—a kind of succession unique among Jewish kings—for no other reason save to furnish further clear evidence that Solomon is not the man our prophecy proclaims. Nathan says to David, "And when your days shall be fulfilled and you shall sleep with your fathers, I will raise up your seed after you, which shall proceed out of your bowels, and I will establish his kingdom." In view of these words, how can anyone think that, because of the later verse, "He shall build a house to my name," Solomon is the subject of the prophecy and fail to realize that in view of the earlier words, "And when your days shall be fulfilled and you shall sleep with your fathers, I will raise up your seed after you," a different Peacemaker is promised—one to be raised up not before David's demise as Solomon was but afterwards? It makes no difference how long was the lapse of time before the destined coming of Jesus Christ. The thing that is beyond question is that he who was promised in such terms to king David was destined to come after his death, the very same who was to build a house for God such as we rejoice to see rising up today, a house not fashioned of timbers and stones but of human beings. It is these people, believers in Christ, whom Saint Paul addresses in these words: "Holy is the temple of God, and this temple you are."

  City of God 17.8

• 1 Kings 3:16-22

  Again, I see these two women in one house as representing two kinds of people in one church: one of them dominated by insincerity, the other ruled by charity. So we may regard these two kinds of people simply like two women, called love and insincerity. Insincerity, of course, deceitfully imitates love. That is why the apostle warns us against her when he says, "Let love be without insincerity." Although the two live in one house as long as that gospel net is in the sea, enclosing good and bad fish together until it is brought ashore, yet each is doing her own thing. They were both harlots, though, because everyone is converted to the grace of God from worldly desires, and nobody can properly boast about any prior justice and its merits. A harlot's committing fornication is her own doing; her having a son is God's. All human beings, after all, are fashioned by the one creator God. Nor it is surprising that God works well even in the sins of men and women. After all, even the crime of Judas the traitor was used by our Lord to achieve the salvation of the human race. But the difference is that when God brings something good out of anyone's sin, it is not usually something that the sinner wants. It is not only that when he sins he does not sin with the same intention as God's providence turning his sin to a just end—Judas, you see, did not betray Christ with the same intention as Christ had in allowing himself to be betrayed; it is also that when he realizes his sin has produced a better result that he never wanted to happen, it gives him more pain than pleasure. Suppose, for example, someone wants to give his enemy poison while he is sick, but he makes a mistake about the kind of medicine and gives him something beneficial instead, so that the sick person gets better through the kindness of God, who decided to turn his enemy's villainy to his advantage. But when the wicked person realizes that his own hand has restored the other to health, he suffers torments and frustration. But if a harlot is willing to have the child she has conceived and is not driven by lust or avaricious concern for her shameful earnings to take an abortifacient and eliminate what she has conceived from her womb, in case her fertility should interfere with her sinning, then the appetite that had been dissipated among a great many is now concentrated on the one gift of God and will no longer be called greed, but love. So the harlot's son is rightly understood as representing the sinner's grace; the new creature born of the old shame is the forgiveness of sins.

  SERMON 10.5

• 1 Kings 3:16-22

  Now let the other one claim that the gospel is hers, as being owed to her and produced through her. For that is what they were saying to the Gentiles in this dispute, those of the Jews who, while clinging to the letter of the law, dared to call themselves Christians. They were saying that the gospel had come as something owed to them for their justice. But it was not theirs, because they did not know how to grasp its spirit. So they even had the audacity to contend that they were to be called Christians, boasting in someone else's name like that woman claiming a son she had not borne; and this though by excluding a spiritual understanding from the works of the law they had as it were drained the soul out of the body of their works, and while smothering the live spirit of prophecy had remained attached to their material keeping of the law, which lacked all life, that is to say, spiritual understanding. They wanted to foist all this on the Gentiles too, and take from them, like the living child, the name of Christian. In refuting them, the apostle went so far as to say that the more they claim Christian grace as their due and boast that it is theirs as though by right of the works of the law, the less it really belongs to them. "For to one who works," he says, "his wages are not reckoned as a grace or favor but as his due. But to one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the wicked, it is faith that is reckoned as justice." And therefore he does not count among their number those of the Jews who had believed rightly and were holding fast to a living spiritual grace. He says this remnant of the Jewish people were saved, when the majority of them had gone to perdition. "So therefore at the present time also," he says, "a remnant has been saved, chosen by grace. But if it is by grace, it is no longer as a result of works; otherwise grace would no longer be grace." So those are excluded from grace who claim the prize of the gospel is theirs by right, owed and given them for their works. This is like the synagogue claiming, "It is my son." But [the synagogue] was lying. It too, you see, had received him, but by sleeping on him, that is, by being proud in its own conceits, it had killed him. But now this other mother was awake and understood that it was not through her own merits, since she is a harlot, but through God's grace that she had been granted a son, namely, the work of evangelical faith, which she longed to nurse in the bosom of her heart. So that while one was using another person's son to acquire human respectability, this one was preserving a true love for her own.

  SERMON 10.3

• 1 Kings 3:16-22

  The first idea that occurs to me on consideration is that the two women are the synagogue and the church. For the synagogue is convicted of having killed Christ her son, born of the Jews according to the flesh, in her sleep; that is, by following the light of this present life and not perceiving the revelation of trust in the sayings of the Lord. That is why it is written, "Rise, sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will enlighten you." That they were two and that they were alone, living in one house, may be taken to mean, without being far-fetched, that besides the circumcision and the uncircumcision there is no other kind of religion to be found in this world. So under the person of one woman you can include the race of circumcised men bound by the worship and the law of one God, while under the person of the other woman you can comprehend all the uncircumcised Gentiles given over to the worship of idols.But they were both harlots. Well, the apostles say that Jews and Greeks are all under sin. Every soul that forsakes eternal truth for base earthly pleasures is whoring away from the Lord. Now about the church that comes from the whoredom of the Gentiles, it is clear that it did not kill Christ.… Pay attention to the Gospel and listen to what the Lord says: "Whoever does the will of my Father, this is my mother and brother and sister." So when did this one sleep, not indeed to smother her child in sleep but at least so that the dead one could be substituted and the living one taken away from her? Does it perhaps mean this, that the very sacrament of circumcision which had remained dead among the Jews because their view of it was wholly carnal and literal—that this lifeless sacrament of circumcision some Jews wished to foist like a lifeless body on the Gentiles who had believed in Christ, as it says in the Acts of the Apostles, telling them that they could not be saved unless they had themselves circumcised? They were foisting this on those ignorant of the law, as though they were substituting the dead child in the darkness of the night. But that argument would have no chance of success except where the sleep of folly had stolen over some part of the church of the Gentiles. From this sleep the apostle seems to be shaking her when he exclaims, "O foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you?" And a little later: "Are you such fools," he says, "that after beginning with the spirit you now end with the flesh?" as though he were saying, "Are you such fools, that after first having a living spiritual work, you lose it and go on to accept someone else's dead one?" Indeed, the same apostle says elsewhere, "The spirit is life because of justice." And in another place, "To be wise according to the flesh is death." At these and similar words, then, that mother wakes up, and early morning dawns on her when the obscurity of the law is lit up by the word of God, that is, by Christ who was rising like the sun, that is, was speaking in Paul. He lit up this darkness when he said, "Tell me, you who wish to be under the law, have you not heard the law? For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by a slave woman and one by a free woman. But the one by the slave woman was born according to the flesh, the one by the free woman through a promise; which is all an allegory. For these are the two Testaments, one from Mount Sinai, bringing forth into slavery, which is Hagar (for Sinai is a mountain in Arabia), and she corresponds to the present Jerusalem, because she is in slavery with her children. But the Jerusalem above is free." No wonder, then, if on account of dead works the dead child belongs to the Jerusalem below, while on account of spiritual ones the living child belongs to the Jerusalem above. After all, hell is sown below, where the dead belong; and heaven above, where the living belong. Enlightened in this way, as by the coming of daybreak, the church has an understanding of spiritual grace and thrusts away from it the carnal accomplishments of the law, like the other woman's dead child. Instead [the church] claims for itself a living faith—since "the just person lives by faith"—which it has acquired in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit; that is why it recognizes with certainty the son as three days old and does not allow him to be snatched away.

  SERMON 10.2

• 1 Kings 3:25-27

  But there is no greater proof of charity in Christ's church than when the very honor that seems so important among people is despised, in order to prevent the limbs of the infant being cut in two and Christian infirmity being torn to shreds by the break of unity. The apostle says that he had shown himself like a mother to the little ones among whom he had done the good work of the gospel, not he but the grace of God in him. That harlot could call nothing her own except her sins, whereas the gift of fertility she had from God. And the Lord says beautifully about a harlot, "She to whom much is forgiven loves much." So the apostle Paul says, "I became a little one among you, like a wet-nurse fondling her children." But when it comes to the danger of the little one being cut in two, when Insincerity claims for herself a spurious dignity of motherhood and is prepared to break up unity, the mother despises her proper dignity provided she may see her son whole and preserve him alive; she is afraid that if she insists too obstinately on the dignity due to her motherhood, she may give Insincerity a chance to divide the feeble limbs with the sword of schism. So indeed let mother Charity say, "Give her the boy." "Whether in pretense or in truth, let Christ be preached." In Moses Charity exclaims, "Lord, either pardon them or blot me out of your book." But in the Pharisees Insincerity speaks: "If we let him go, the Romans will come and take away our nation and place." It was not the reality of justice that they wished to have but its name, and they desired to hold on dishonestly to the honor owed to just men and women. And yet Insincerity reigning in them was permitted to sit in Moses' seat, and so the Lord could say, "Do what they say, but do not do what they do;" and so while enjoying a spurious honor they would still nurture the little ones and the weak on the truth of the Scriptures. Insincerity, you see, has her own proper crime—smothering with the weight of her slumbers the new creature she had received through the grace of God pardoning her, but the milk of faith which she has is not hers. Because even after the death of the child, who represents the new life of being born again, Insincerity now set in her bad ways still retains in her memory, as in her breasts, Christian doctrine and the words of faith, which are handed on to all who come to the church. From this milk even the spurious mother could give suck of the true faith to the infant being suckled. For that reason the true mother is without anxiety when her baby is being nurtured even by the insincere on the milk of the divine Scriptures of the Catholic faith, when unity is saved and division prevented, and Charity is approved by the judge's final sentence, which represents Christ's last judgment. Since, in order to save her baby and uphold unity, she was prepared to concede the dignity of motherhood even to Insincerity, for holding on to love and embracing the grace of life she will enjoy the everlasting reward of a devoted mother.

  SERMON 10.8

• 1 Kings 3:25-27

  As for the royal judgment between the two of them, it simply admonishes us to fight for the truth and to drive hypocrisy away from the spiritual gift of the church like a spurious mother from another woman's living son and not to let her control the grace granted to others when she could not take care of her own. But let us do this, defending and fighting for the truth without running the risk of division. That decision of the judge, when he ordered the baby to be cut in two, is not meant as a breach of unity but as a test of charity. The name Solomon means peaceable. So a peaceable king does not tear limbs apart that contain the spirit of life in unity and concord. But his threat discovers the true mother, and his judgment sets aside the spurious one. So then, if it comes to this sort of crisis and trial, to prevent the unity of Christian grace from being torn apart, we are taught to say, "Give her the child, only let him live." The true mother, you see, is not concerned about the honor of motherhood but about the well-being of her son. Wherever he may be, his mother's true love will make him more her possession than that of the false claimant.

  SERMON 10.4

• 1 Kings 3:25-27

  The lesson to be read at Vespers, dearly beloved, concerns the two harlots who came for the decision of Solomon; one of them, who was not only dissolute but also cruel and wicked, shouted to the king that he should command the infant to be cut in two. Now, if you willingly listen, we would like to mention to the ears of your charity what the holy Fathers have explained about the matter. The woman who cried out that the boy should be kept whole represented a type of the Catholic church; the other cruel and impious woman who shouted that the boy should be divided signified the Arian heresy. The Catholic church like a most devoted mother exclaims to all heretics: Do not make Christ less than the Father; do not divide his unity; do not divide the one God in various degrees and fashion, as it were, idols of the pagans in your hearts. Keep him with you entirely; if you want to have peace, do not divide his unity. Indeed, if you have the whole, everything remains yours. So great is the omnipotence of God that all possess him entire, and each one possesses all of him. However, the impious, cruel heresy exclaims, "No, but divide him." What does this mean, divide him, except that the Son is not equal to the Father? If a person takes equality from the Son, he denies that the Father is good and omnipotent. If God the Father could beget a Son like himself but would not, he is not good; if he would but could not, he is not almighty. Be assured, brothers, that none of the Arians can answer this statement; but whenever they are limited by the truest reason, like a slippery snake they take refuge in some sort of clever and involved inquiries.

  SERMON 123.1

• 1 Kings 11:1-2

  [God] promised that something everlasting would spring from David's seed. Then Solomon was born, and he became a man of such profound wisdom that everyone supposed God's promise concerning David's offspring had been fulfilled in him. But no, Solomon fell and so made room for people to stretch their hope toward Christ. God can neither be deceived nor deceive us, so we can be certain that he did not ground his promise in Solomon, for he knew Solomon would fall. The divine purpose was that after Solomon's fall you would look to God and earnestly press him for what he had promised.Did you lie, then, Lord? Do you go back on your promises? Do you fail to deliver what you swore to give? Perhaps God will counter you by saying, "I did swear, and I did promise, but that man did not persevere." But how can that be the answer? Did you not foresee, O Lord God, that he would not persevere? Of course you foresaw it. Why, then, did you promise me something that would last forever and attach that promise to someone who would not persevere? You said to me, " 'If his children forsake my law and do not walk according to my ordinances, if they break my commandments and violate my covenant,' nevertheless my promise shall endure, and my oath shall be fulfilled. 'Once I have sworn in my holiness,'4 within myself." In that most secret place you swore it, in the fountain from which the prophets drank, those prophets who belched out for us the words, "Once have I sworn in my holiness, and I will not lie to David." Make good your oath then, and deliver what you promised. I was stripped away from David of old, lest in that David we should hope for its fulfillment, and so that you can say to us, "Keep hoping for what I promised." Even David himself was aware of this. Consider what he says: "Yet you, you yourself, have rejected him to nothing." So what has become of your promise? "You have put off your Anointed." The speaker has doleful things to relate, but by these very words he cheers us, because he is implying, "What you promised stands absolutely firm, O God, for you have not taken your Anointed right away from us, but only put him off."

  EXPOSITION 2 OF PSALM 88.6-7

• 1 Kings 11:1-2

  However, in [David's] son Solomon libido was not a passing guest; it reigned as a king. Scripture does not pass this over in silence but blames him as a lover of women. His beginnings were redolent with the desire for wisdom; when he had obtained it through spiritual love, he lost it through carnal love.

  CHRISTIAN INSTRUCTION 3.21.31

• 1 Kings 11:7-8

  Solomon was in his time David's son, a great man, through whom many holy precepts and healthful admonitions and divine mysteries have been wrought by the Holy Spirit in the Scriptures. Solomon himself was a lover of women and was rejected by God: and this lust was so great a snare to him that he was induced by women even to sacrifice to idols, as Scripture witnesses concerning him. But if, by his fall, what was delivered through him were blotted out, it would be judged that he had himself delivered these precepts and not that they were delivered through him. The mercy of God, therefore, and his Spirit, excellently wrought that whatever of good was declared through Solomon, might be attributed to God; and the man's sin, to the man. What marvel that Solomon fell among God's people? Did not Adam fall in paradise? Did not an angel fall from heaven and become the devil? We are thereby taught that no hope must be placed in any human being.

  EXPOSITIONS OF THE PSALMS 127.1

• 1 Kings 12:15

  Who can help but tremble at the thought of these judgments of God whereby he accomplishes whatever he pleases even in the hearts of wicked people, while yet rendering to each according to his merits? Solomon's son, Rehoboam, rejected the salutary counsel of the elders, not to deal harshly with the people, and yielded to the words of men of his own age by replying with threats to those who should have been given a gentle reply. And how did this come about, except by his own will? But as a result of it, the ten tribes of Israel withdrew from him and set up for themselves another king, Jeroboam, that the will of God, who had been angered, might be accomplished, as he had also foretold that it would come to pass. For what does the Scripture say? "And the king condescended not to the people, for the Lord was turned away from him to make good his word, which he had spoken though Ahias, the Silonite, to Jeroboam the son of Nabat." All this was certainly done by human will, but in such a way that the "turning way" came from the Lord.

  ON GRACE AND FREE WILL 21.42

• 1 Kings 12:28

  For all that, King Jeroboam of Israel, who had proof that God was true, when he got the kingdom God had promised, was so warped in mind as not to believe in him. Actually, he feared that if he came to God's temple in Jerusalem (as all Jews without exception were bound by divine ordinance to do for the offering of sacrifices), his subjects might be alienated from his allegiance and reattached to David's blood successors as the royal dynasty. With this in mind, he established idolatry in his own kingdom and, with shocking impiety, tricked God's people into joining him in the worship of idols. Even so, God did not entirely give up sending prophets to reprimand the king, and his successors who continued his idolatry and the people themselves. For it was in Israel that there appeared Elijah and his disciple, Elisha, both magnificent prophets and wonder workers as well.

  City of God 17.22

• 1 Kings 13:22

  Yet from that love of the human heart, because of which "no one ever hated his own flesh," if people believe that anything would be lacking to their bodies after death that in their own people or country the solemnity of burial demands, they become sad ..., and before death they fear for their bodies that which has no effect on them after death. Thus we read in the book of Kings that God through a prophet threatens another prophet who transgressed his word, that his body should not be returned to the sepulcher of his ancestors. Scripture records it in these words: "Thus says the Lord: Because you have not been obedient to the Lord and have not kept the commandment that the Lord your God commanded you, and [you] have returned and eaten bread and drunk water in the place where he commanded you that you should not eat bread or drink water, your dead shall not be brought in the sepulcher of your ancestors." If we consider the extent of this punishment according to the Evangelist, where we learn that after the body has been slain there is no occasion to fear that the lifeless members will suffer, it should not be called punishment. But, if we consider it in relation to the love of a person for his own flesh, then he might have been frightened and saddened while living at what he was not to feel when dead. This, then, was the nature of the punishment: The soul grieved that something would happen to its body, although, when it did happen, the soul did not grieve. Only to this extent did the Lord wish to punish his servant, for it was not from his own obstinacy that he refused to carry out the command, but, because of the deceit of another person who was deceiving him, he thought he obeyed when he did not obey.

  On the Care of the Dead 7.9

• 1 Kings 13:24-28

  It is not to be imagined that one has been so annihilated by the teeth of a beast that his soul has then been snatched away to infernal punishment, since the same lion who killed his very body guarded it. Even the beast of burden on which the man had been riding was unhurt and with great courage stood in the presence of the wild beast at the destruction of his master. By this miraculous sign it is made clear that the man of God was corrected temporarily even at the point of death rather than that he was punished after death. On this subject the apostle Paul, when he had made mention of certain unpleasant infirmities and death experienced by many, said, "But if we judged ourselves, we should not thus be judged by the Lord. But when we are judged, we are being chastised by the Lord, that we may not be condemned with the world."

  On the Care of the Dead 7.9

• 1 Kings 13:31

  Well did the man who had deceived the man of God bury him with honor in his own tomb and give orders that he himself should be buried next to his bones, hoping thus to spare his own bones. He knew that the time would come according to the prophecy of that man of God when Josiah, king of the Jews, would dig up in the land the bones of many dead and with them defile the sacrilegious altars that had been set up for graven images. He spared that tomb where the prophet lay who more than three hundred years before had predicted these things. And because of him the burying place of the man who deceived him was not violated. By that love because of which no one ever hated his own flesh, he provided for his own corpse, while he had slain his soul by deceit. From this fact, then, because each one naturally loves his own flesh, it was punishment for him to learn that he would not be in the tomb of his fathers. So he took care that his bones be spared by burying them next to him whose tomb no one would violate.

  On the Care of the Dead 7.9

• 1 Kings 15:12-13

  Look for a little at those books on the Republic from which you drew that ideal of the most devoted citizen: that there should be no limit or legitimate restriction on his service. Look, I beg you, and notice with what high praise frugality and temperance are there spoken of, as well as fidelity to the marriage bond, and chaste, honorable and upright conduct. When a state excels in these, it can truly be said to bloom. But in churches in growing numbers all over the world, as in holy gatherings of peoples, these principles are taught and learned; above all, the devotion by which the true and truth-giving God is worshiped, who not only commands these principles to be kept but also gives them fulfillment. It is by these that the human mind is prepared and made fit for the divine society and for its habitation in the eternal heavenly country. Hence he has foretold that the images of the many false gods would be overturned and has commanded them to be overturned.

  LETTER 91

• 1 Kings 17:6

  Blessed Elijah typified our Lord and Savior. Just as Elijah suffered persecution by the Jews, so our Lord, the true Elijah, was condemned and despised by the Jews. Elijah left his own people, and Christ deserted the synagogue; Elijah departed into the wilderness, and Christ came into the world. Elijah was fed in the desert by ministering ravens, while Christ was refreshed in the desert of this world by the faith of the Gentiles. Truly, those ravens that took care of blessed Elijah at the Lord's bidding prefigured the Gentiles, for on this account it is said concerning the church of the Gentiles, "I am dark and beautiful, O daughter of Jerusalem." Why is the church dark and beautiful? It is dark by nature, beautiful by grace. Why dark? "Indeed, in guilt I was born, and in sin my mother conceived me." Why beautiful? "Cleanse me of sin with hyssop, that I may be purified; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow." Why dark? The apostle says, "I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind and making me prisoner to the law of sin." Why beautiful? "Who will deliver me from the body of this death? The grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord." Truly, the church of the Gentiles was like a raven, when it despised the living and before receiving grace served idols as dead bodies.

  SERMON 124.1

• 1 Kings 17:9

  After this, Elijah was commanded to set out for Zarephath of the Sidonians, in order that he might be fed there by a widow. Thus, the Lord spoke to him, "Go to Zarephath of the Sidonians: I have commanded a widow there to feed you." How and by whom did God command the widow, since there was almost no other prophet at that time except blessed Elijah, with whom God spoke quite plainly? Although the sons of some of the prophets lived at that time, they feared the persecution of Jezebel so much that they could scarcely escape even when hidden. "I have commanded a widow," said the Lord. How does the Lord command, except by inspiring what is good through his grace within a soul? Thus, God speaks within every person who performs a good work, and for this reason no one should glory in himself but in the Lord. Were there not many widows in Judea at that time? Why was it that no Jewish widow merited to offer food to blessed Elijah, and he was sent to a Gentile woman to be fed? That widow to whom the prophet was sent typified the church, just as the ravens that ministered to Elijah prefigured the Gentiles. Thus, Elijah came to the widow because Christ was to come to the church.

  SERMON 124.2

• 1 Kings 17:10-12

  Let us further see where blessed Elijah found that widow, dearly beloved. She had gone out to get water and to pick up sticks of wood. Let us now consider what the water and the wood signify. We know that both are very pleasing and necessary for the church, as it is written: "He is like a tree planted near running water." In the wood is shown the mystery of the cross, in the water the sacrament of baptism. Therefore, she had gone out to gather two sticks of wood, for thus she replied to blessed Elijah when he asked her for food: "As the Lord lives, I have nothing but a handful of meal and a little oil in a cruse; and behold, I am going out to gather two sticks that I may make food for me and my son … and we will eat it and die." The widow typified the church, as I said above; the widow's son prefigured the Christian people. Thus, when Elijah came, the widow went out to gather two sticks of wood. Notice, brothers, that she did not say three or four, nor only one stick; but she wanted to gather two sticks. She was gathering two sticks of wood because she received Christ in the type of Elijah; she wanted to pick up those two pieces because she desired to recognize the mystery of the cross. Truly, the cross of our Lord and Savior was prepared from two pieces of wood, and so that widow was gathering two sticks because the church would believe in him who hung on two pieces of wood. For this reason that widow said, "I am gathering two sticks that I may make food for me and my son, and we will eat it and die." It is true, beloved; no one will merit to believe in Christ crucified unless he dies to this world. For if a person wishes to eat the body of Christ worthily, he must die to the past and live for the future.

  SERMON 124.3

• 1 Kings 17:21

  As we mentioned, that widow prefigured the church, and her son was a type of the Gentiles. The son of the widow lay dead because the son of the church, that is, the Gentiles, was dead because of many sins and offenses. At the prayer of Elijah, the widow's son was revived; at the coming of Christ, the church's son or the Christian people were brought back from the prison of death. Elijah bent down in prayer, and the widow's son was revived; Christ sank down in his passion, and the Christian people were brought back to life. Why blessed Elijah bent down three times to arouse the boy I believe that the understanding of your charity has grasped even before I say it. In the fact that he bowed three times is shown the mystery of the Trinity. Not only the Father without the Son, nor the Father and Son without the Holy Spirit, but the whole Trinity restored the widow's son or the Gentiles to life. Moreover, this is further demonstrated in the sacrament of baptism, for the old person is plunged in the water three times, in order that the new person may merit to rise.

  SERMON 124.4

• 1 Kings 18:44

  After this blessed Elijah presented himself to the king, "went up to Mount Carmel and put his head between his knees," praying the Lord to send rain on the earth. "And he said to his servant, 'Look toward the sea.' " When the boy reported that he saw nothing at all, he told him, "Go and look seven times." The seventh time he returned and said, " 'I see a little cloud rising out of the sea like a person's foot.' And suddenly the heavens grew dark, and there fell a great rain." For this reason, as we said, Elijah prefigured our Lord and Savior. Elijah prayed and offered sacrifice; Christ offered himself as a spotless sacrifice for the whole world. Elijah prayed for rain to come on the earth; Christ prayed that divine grace might come down into the hearts of humankind. When Elijah told his servant, "Go and look seven times," he signified the sevenfold grace of the Holy Spirit that was to be given to the church. When he declared that he saw a little cloud rising out of the sea, it prefigured the body of Christ, which was to be born in the sea of this world. Therefore, lest anyone doubt, he said that the cloud had the foot of a person who said, "Who do people say the Son of man is?" After three years and six months, rain came down from heaven at the prayer of Elijah, because at the coming of our Lord and Savior the rain of the word of God happily watered the whole world during the three years and six months in which he deigned to preach. Just as at the coming of Elijah all the priests of the idols were killed and destroyed, so at the advent of the true Elijah, our Lord Jesus Christ, the wicked observances of the pagans were destroyed.

  SERMON 124.5