Cyprian of Carthage, Treatises Treatise 8

God the Father and Christ have poured out countless and magnificent blessings for our salvation, and they never stop working on our behalf. The Father sent the Son to preserve us and give us life, and the Son willingly came as a human being to make us children of God. He humbled himself to lift up a fallen people, bore wounds to heal ours, became a servant to lead slaves into freedom, and accepted death to grant immortality to mortals. These are great and numerous gifts of divine mercy. Yet beyond all this, what extraordinary providence and clemency look after our salvation, ensuring that the redeemed are more fully provided for? When the Lord came, he healed the wounds Adam had passed down and cured the ancient poison of the serpent. He gave a law to the restored and commanded them not to sin again, lest something worse befall the sinner. We found ourselves confined within a narrow prescription of innocence, and human frailty and weakness would have had no recourse unless divine compassion intervened once more. By revealing works of justice and mercy, God opened a way to safeguard our salvation, so that we might wash away the defilement we contract afterwards through almsgiving.

The Holy Spirit speaks in Scripture: "Sins are purified by alms and faith" (Prov 16:6). This does not refer to sins contracted before, for those are cleansed by the blood and sanctification of Christ. Again he says: "Just as water extinguishes fire, so alms extinguishes sin" (Sir 3:30). 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. Since the remission of sins is given once in Baptism, a constant and daily practice that imitates the likeness of Baptism obtains God's indulgence again. The Lord teaches this in the Gospel as well. 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 11:40-41). 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. Whoever has purified the inside has also repurified the outside, and with a purified mind, the skin and body also begin to be clean. Furthermore, by warning us and showing the source of our cleansing, he added that alms must be given. The Merciful One teaches and urges us to be merciful, and because he seeks to preserve 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. We who cannot exist without some wound of conscience must heal our wounds with spiritual remedies. No one should flatter himself about having a pure and spotless heart, so that, trusting in his own innocence, he thinks medicine unnecessary for his wounds. Scripture says, "Who will boast of having a clean heart? Or who will boast of being pure from sin?" (Prov 20:9). And again John writes in his Epistle: "If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us" (1 John 1:8). If no one can be without sin, and whoever claims to be blameless is either proud or foolish, how necessary and how kind is divine clemency! Knowing that even the healthy do not lack subsequent wounds, God provided remedies to heal and cure wounds again.

Finally, dear brothers, divine admonition has never ceased or fallen silent. In both the Old and New Testaments, the people of God are always and everywhere provoked to works of mercy. 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 through Isaiah: "Cry out with strength, do not hold back. Raise your voice like a trumpet, and declare to my people their sins and to the house of Jacob their transgressions" (Isaiah 58:1). After commanding that their sins be rebuked and their wicked deeds exposed with the full force of indignation, and after declaring that they could not atone for their offenses even with prayers, supplications, and fasts, nor appease God's wrath even by rolling in sackcloth and ashes, the prophet nonetheless shows in the final section that God can be placated only by alms. He adds: "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 yourself from your own flesh" (Isaiah 58:6-7). 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).