Cyprian of Carthage, Treatises Treatise 8

Countless and tremendous are the divine benefits through which the rich and abundant clemency of God the Father and Christ has worked and continues to work for our salvation. The Father sent the Son to preserve and give us life so that He might restore us, and the Son willed to be sent and to become the Son of Man so that He might make us sons of God. He humbled Himself to raise up the people who lay prostrate; He was wounded to heal our wounds; He became a servant to lead servants into freedom; He endured death to offer immortality to mortals. These are many and great gifts of divine mercy. But consider further: what kind of providence, how great a clemency, plans for us with a saving purpose so that the redeemed person might be more fully provided for? When the Lord came, He healed the wounds Adam bore and cured the ancient venom of the serpent. He gave a law to the healed and commanded them not to sin again, lest something worse befall the sinner. We were confined, shut in by a narrow prescription of innocence. Human frailty and weakness would have had no recourse unless divine pity came to our aid once more, displaying works of justice and mercy and opening a way to safeguard salvation, so that we might wash away whatever filth we contract afterwards through alms. The Holy Spirit speaks in the divine Scriptures and says: "Sins are purified by alms and faith" — not the sins contracted before, for those are purified by the blood and sanctification of Christ. He says again: "Just as water extinguishes fire, so alms extinguishes sin." Here it is shown and proven that, just as the fire of Gehenna is quenched by the bath of saving water, so the flame of sins is calmed by alms and just works. Because the remission of sins is given once in Baptism, a constant and daily practice that imitates Baptism again obtains God's indulgence. The Lord teaches this also in the Gospel. When His disciples were rebuked for eating without washing their hands, He answered: "The One who made the inside also made the outside. But give alms, and behold, everything is clean for you" (Luke 11:41). He was teaching and showing that it is not the hands that need washing, but the heart, and that the filth inside rather than outside must be removed; the one who purifies the inside also purifies the outside, and with a cleansed mind he begins to be clean in skin and body as well. Furthermore, warning us and showing from what source we can be clean and purified, He added that alms must be given. The Merciful One teaches and urges us to practice mercy; because He seeks to save those He redeemed at a great price, He teaches that those stained after the grace of Baptism can be purified again. Let us therefore recognize, dear brothers, the wholesome gift of divine indulgence, and let us cure our wounds with spiritual remedies so that we may be cleansed and purified from our sins, since we cannot exist without some wound of conscience. No one should flatter himself about having a pure and spotless heart, trusting his own innocence to think medicine need not be applied to wounds, since it is written: "Who can boast of having a chaste heart, or who can boast of being free from sins?" And again John says in his Epistle: "If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us." If no one can be without sin, and whoever claims to be blameless is either proud or foolish, how necessary and kind is divine clemency, which knows that the healed do not lack subsequent wounds and has given remedies to heal and save those wounds again! Finally, dear brothers, the divine admonition has never ceased or fallen silent, so that in the holy Scriptures, both old and new, the people of God might always and everywhere be urged to works of mercy; and with the Holy Spirit singing and exhorting, whoever is instructed in the hope of the heavenly kingdom is commanded to give alms. God commands and orders Isaiah: "Cry out with strength, do not hold back; lift up your voice like a trumpet, and declare to my people their sins and to the house of Jacob their wicked deeds" (Isaiah 58:1). When He had commanded that their sins be rebuked and their wicked deeds laid bare with full indignation, and had said they could not satisfy for their sins even with prayers, supplications, and fasts, nor placate God's wrath even by wearing sackcloth and ashes, yet in the final passage He showed that God can be appeased only by alms, adding: "Break your bread for the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; if you see the naked, clothe him, and do not hide from your own flesh" (Isaiah 58:7). Then your light will break forth like the dawn, your healing will spring up quickly, your righteousness will go before you, and the glory of the Lord will be your rear guard. Then you will call, and the Lord will answer; you will cry for help, and He will say: Here I am (Isaiah 58:8-9).