Tractates on the Gospel of John - Vol. 3

AFTER THE Lord Jesus Christ in the words of yesterday's reading encouraged his servants to follow him when he had predicted his passion in these words, "Unless the grain of wheat, falling into the earth, dies, it remains alone. But if it dies, it produces much fruit," ^1. wherein he stirred up those who wished to follow him to the kingdom of heaven to hate their life ^2. in this world if they were thinking of keeping it to eternal life, he again tempered his feeling to our weakness and he said—the point where today's reading begins—"My soul is troubled now." Why is your soul troubled, Lord? Surely you said a little before, "He who hates his life in this world keeps it to life eternal." ^3. Is your soul then loved in this world and for that reason is it troubled by the coming hour in which it is to go out of this world? Who would dare to assert this about the Lord's soul? But he has carried us over into himself; he, our head, has taken us into himself. He has taken on the emotional disposition of his members; and therefore his troubled state did not arise from someone else but, as was said about him when he raised up Lazarus, "He troubled himself." ^4. For it was necessary that the one mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus, ^5. as he stirred us to the highest things, so suffer with us also the lowest things. ^6.

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