Cyprian & Lactantius · a new plain-English translation from the original language
Do we imagine that she laments with her whole heart, that she implores the Lord with fasting, weeping, and beating of the breast, when from the very day of her offense she frequents the baths daily, when, fed on lavish banquets and swollen with a still richer diet, she belches up her surfeit the next day, and shares neither food nor drink with the poor in their need? She who steps forth cheerful and gay — is that how she mourns her own death? And though it is written, "You shall not mar the shape of your beard," she plucks her eyebrows and adorns her face. Does she now labor to please anyone, she who displeases God? Or does that woman groan and grieve who has leisure to put on costly garments, who never stops to think that Christ's own garment is what she threw away, yet takes up precious ornaments and wrought necklaces, and does not weep over the loss of the divine and heavenly adornment? Though you clothe yourself in foreign attire and silken robes, you are naked; though you deck yourself with gold and pearls and gems, without the beauty of Christ you are deformed. And you who dye your hair — stop now, even amid your sorrows; and you who trace the lines around your eyes with black powder — wash your eyes now with tears instead. If you had lost someone dear to you to death, you would groan in grief and weep; with your face untended, your garments changed, your hair neglected, your countenance clouded, your face downcast, you would show every sign of mourning. But you, wretched woman, have lost your own soul; you have begun to live on here though spiritually dead, and, still walking about, to carry your own corpse — and yet you do not grieve bitterly, you do not groan continually, you do not hide yourself either in shame at your offense or in unbroken lamentation? See here wounds still worse than sin itself: to have sinned greater sins and not make amends, to have transgressed and not weep over the transgression.
This is what Ananias, Azariah, and Mishael did — illustrious and noble boys — in order to render confession to God, and they did not cease even amid the flames and the raging fire of the furnace. Though well aware of their own innocence, and though they had often earned the Lord's favor by their obedient faith and reverence, they did not, even in the midst of that glorious martyrdom of their own virtue, stop holding to humility and making satisfaction to God. As the divine Scripture tells it: Azariah stood, prayed, opened his mouth, and, joined by his fellows there amid the blaze, confessed to God. Daniel too, after the manifold grace granted to his faith and innocence, after the Lord's favor toward his virtues and praises so often renewed, still strove to earn God's favor by fasting; he rolled in sackcloth and ashes, making confession in grief and saying: Lord God, great and mighty and to be feared, who keep covenant and mercy with those who love you and keep your commands, we have sinned, we have committed wickedness, we have been impious, we have transgressed and abandoned your precepts and your judgments, we did not listen to your servants the prophets, who in your name addressed our kings, every nation, and the whole earth alike. To you, Lord, belongs righteousness, but to us confusion of face.
These things the meek, the simple, the innocent did, in order to win the favor of God's majesty — yet these very people, who denied the Lord himself, will not even offer him satisfaction or pray to him now! I beg you, brothers, submit to remedies that will save you, obey the better counsels, join your tears to ours, unite your groans with our groaning. We ask you so that we may be able to ask the Lord on your behalf; we turn to you first with the very prayers by which we beg God to have mercy on you. Do full penance, prove the depth of a grieving and lamenting spirit!
Nor should some people's reckless error or empty stupor move you, people who, though held fast in so grave a crime, have been struck with such blindness of soul that they neither understand their offenses nor mourn them. This is the greater blow of an angry God, as Scripture has it: "And God gave them a spirit of stupor"; and elsewhere: "They refused the love of truth, and so were not saved." And for this reason God sends upon them a working of error, that they may believe a lie, so that all may be judged who did not believe the truth but took pleasure in unrighteousness. Taking unjust pleasure in themselves, and deranged by the estrangement of a stupefied mind, they scorn the Lord's commands, neglect the healing of their wound, refuse to do penance. Reckless before the crime was committed, obstinate after it, neither steady beforehand nor humbled afterward — when they ought to have stood firm, they fell; and now, when they ought to fall down and prostrate themselves before God, they imagine themselves standing. They have seized peace for themselves though no one granted it, deceived by a false promise; joined to apostates and traitors, they take up error in place of truth, they count as valid a communion with those who are not in communion, they put their trust in men against God — men who did not put their trust in God against other men.
Flee such people as much as you can, and by wholesome caution avoid clinging contact with them. Their talk creeps like a cancer, their conversation spreads like a contagion, their harmful and poisonous persuasion kills all the more through the very persecution it inflicts. There, where the true way remains, penance still avails to make satisfaction. But those who take away penance for a crime close off the path of satisfaction. So it happens that while, through the recklessness of some, a false salvation is either promised or believed, the hope of true salvation is taken away.
But you, brothers, whose fear of the Lord is prompt, and whose mind, though set down in ruin, is nonetheless mindful of its own wrong — look closely at your sins with penitence and grief, acknowledge the heavy charge weighing on your conscience, let the eyes of your heart be opened so your offense is understood, never giving up hope in the Lord's mercy, yet never presuming pardon is owed you either. As much as God is indulgent and good in the tenderness of a father, so much is he to be feared in the majesty of a judge. As greatly as we have sinned, so greatly let us mourn. Let not a careful and long remedy be wanting for so deep a wound; let the penance not be less than the crime. Do you suppose that God can be quickly appeased, whom you renounced with treacherous words, whom you preferred your estate over, whose temple you violated with sacrilegious contact? Do you think he will easily have mercy on you, you who said you did not belong to him? One must pray more earnestly and beg, spend the day in mourning, pass the nights in vigils and weeping, fill all one's time with tearful lamentations, lie prostrate clinging to the ground and ashes, roll about in sackcloth and squalor, after losing the garment of Christ wish for no other clothing, after the devil's food prefer fasting, devote oneself to righteous works by which sins are cleansed, press on constantly with almsgiving, by which souls are freed from death. Let Christ receive what the enemy was carrying off; that estate by which one was both deceived and conquered ought no longer to be kept or loved. It is a thing to be shunned as an enemy, fled as a robber, feared as a sword and as poison to those who possess it. It will profit only so far as what remains is used to redeem the crime and the guilt. Let the work be done without delay and generously; let one's whole fortune be spent on healing the wound; let the Lord, who is to judge us, be the one to whom our wealth and resources are lent. Thus faith flourished under the apostles, thus the first believing people kept Christ's commands: they were ready, they were generous. They gave the whole to be distributed by the apostles, and they were not then buying back offenses such as these.
If someone prays with his whole heart, if he groans with true laments and tears of penance, if he bends the Lord toward pardon for his offense by righteous and unceasing works, God can have mercy on such a one — he who has himself declared his mercy, saying: "Once you turn back and groan, salvation will follow, and you will know the place from which you came," and elsewhere: "It is not death for the dying man that I want, declares the Lord; rather, let him turn back and live." And the prophet Joel, prompted by the Lord himself, declares the Lord's tenderness: "Turn back," he says, "toward your God the Lord, since mercy, kindness, patience, and abundant compassion belong to him," and one who will bend his sentence back from the harm he had decreed. He can grant pardon, he can turn back his own sentence. To one who does penance, who labors, who prays, he can graciously forgive; he can credit as accepted whatever the martyrs have asked and the priests have done on behalf of such people. And indeed, if someone moves him further still by his own acts of satisfaction, if by just entreaty he appeases his anger, the offense of his indignation, God gives back again the weapons with which the conquered may be armed anew, he restores and strengthens the powers by which renewed faith may be quickened. The soldier will renew his fight, will re-enter the battle line, will challenge the enemy, made all the stronger for combat through his suffering. Whoever thus makes satisfaction to God, whoever through penance for his deed, through shame at his offense, conceives from the very grief of his fall a greater store of virtue and faith, being heard and helped by the Lord, will make joyful the Church he had lately grieved, and will merit not only God's pardon but also the crown.