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SERMON 163 Where It Says: “Do not be anxious about your life, about what you are to eat”1 lessed are those who have listened to the Lord’s words today such that his words have penetrated their hearts! Blessed are those whose minds are advanced to faith by so great and so lofty a promise from the Savior! Blessed are those who have been freed from the difficult worries of the present by believing the heavenly injunctions! For indeed the Lord today is issuing a summons to his disciples, or rather to all who hear him, with the following words: Do not be anxious about your life, about what you are to eat, nor about your body, about what you are to wear, because your life is more than food, and your body is more than clothing (Lk 12.22–23). 2. Who, then, is so hostile to his own good, who is so inimical to his own good pleasure, as to despise blessings that have been prepared voluntarily from heaven, and to long for things that are acquired by struggles and pains in this world? It is a very degenerate spirit, a mind that is entirely slavish, that would search carefully for cooks’ creations, the foul things that come out of a kitchen, and day-old food with its horrible stench, when a meal fit for a king is always ready to be served to him. Therefore, O man, do not wear yourself out trying to provide for yourself what is worthless, do not strain yourself over attempting to gain what is going to perish, since God is at hand everywhere and at all times to put together a meal for you. What king does not furnish the provisions owed to his soldiers ? What master does not serve the rations due those who are loyal to him? What father does not give bread to his children ?2 Therefore, if God is our King, Master, and Father, what 292 1. Lk 12.22. 2. See Mt 7.9. will he ever refuse us? The soldier who serves at his own expense detracts from the king, the servant who lives off his own means finds fault with his master, the son who is anxious to provide for himself is a reproach to his father while he is still alive. Therefore, O man, do not desire to dishonor God by engaging in such thinking about your own needs; with the justice of a King, with the zealous concern of a Master, and with the love of a Father he has taken all of your anxiety into himself, and has poured out in return his concern when he says: “Do not be anxious about what you are to eat.” 3. But perhaps that unique food that rained down sweet as honey frightens you off because of the example of the Jews who found it nauseating, and you do not believe that it is God’s will that the flesh which has congealed out of a variety of fluids be satisfied with manna alone.3 You say: “Just as God willed that the body consist of a diversity of members, so too did he will and ordain that it be nourished by various kinds of food.” O man, this is a needless worry that is troubling you. For all creation hastens to come together at the meal served by the Creator . Therefore, if the uniqueness and lack of variety of the food in the era of the Law frightens you off, let the abundance of the heavenly Banquet in the Gospel era appeal to you and stir up your taste buds; it serves on one platter every kind of creature for Peter to eat.4 For whatever Noah, the transporter of a new world, preserved to generate life for that world,5 whatever flies and is borne along through the air, whatever is born to live on earth, and whatever exists and moves within the waters, all of this is slaughtered and offered from heaven to form the one dinner of Peter.6 4. Therefore, O man, if you want to take and eat everything SERMON 163 293 3. See Ex 16.4 and 31; Nm 11.6 and 21.5. 4. See Acts 10.9–16. 5. See Gn 9.1–3. 6. For references to other patristic writers who make a similar parallel between Noah and Simon Peter, see H. Rahner, “Navicula Petri,” ZKTh 69 (1947): 17, and idem...

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