Item: How the suffering of Christ is to be considered.*)
1 Cor. 11, 23-34.
I have received it from the Lord, which I have given you. For the Lord Jesus, on the night that he was betrayed, took bread, and gave thanks, and brake it, and said, Take, eat; this is my body which is broken for you: this do in remembrance of me. The same also the cup, after supper, saying, This cup is the new testament in my blood: as often as ye drink it, do it in remembrance of me. For as often as ye eat of this bread, and drink of this cup, ye shall proclaim the death of the Lord, until he come. Whosoever therefore shall eat of this bread, or drink of this cup of the Lord, unworthily, is guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of this bread, and drink of this cup. For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily eateth and drinketh judgment to himself, that he may not discern the body of the Lord. For this reason there are also so many weak and sick among you, and a good portion sleep. For if we judge ourselves, we shall not be judged. But when we are judged, we are chastened of the Lord, lest we be condemned with the world. Therefore, my dear brethren, when ye come together to eat, wait one for another. But if any man hunger, let him eat at home, lest ye come together to eat. The rest I will arrange when I come.
(1) How not only useful and fruitful, but also necessary is the instruction to prepare oneself worthily to receive the most highly venerable sacrament of the blood and flesh of Christ, our dear Lord and Savior, can be clearly and actually seen from the fact that all our salvation and blessedness rests in this sacrament. For Christ, our dear Lord, according to the holy apostle and evangelist St. John, said: "He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. He who eats me will live because of me. He who eats this bread will live forever.
*Fourteen printings and six Latin translations appeared in the years 1518 to 1520. We follow with the Erlangen edition a print of the year 1519. - Cf. A. I 260; Leipz. A. XII, 465; Erl. A. 16, 18. A Latin translation is found Opp. var. arg. ad ref. hist. pert. Edit. Erl. II, 313 ff. D. Red.
Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye shall not have life in you. He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath everlasting life; and I will raise him up again at the last day." Which words of God should move all Christian people to read this translated sermon diligently and often and to keep to it.
(2) For the first, it is necessary that man confess and repent of all sins that are public mortal sins. For no one can know secret sins, as in the 19th Psalm, v. 13: "Who understands sin?
3) Secondly, among all mortal sins, man must especially put away envy, displeasure, malice, and all bitterness against man. For no other sin is so repugnant to this sacrament, and
than disunity and discord, for it is repugnant to the name and deed of this sacrament. For this sacrament is called communion, that is, fellowship. The action of this sacrament is unity of heart, as there is only one faith, one baptism, one Lord, one hope, Eph. 4:5, 6, and all things are one and common; which is also shown in the form of this sacrament, in which many grains, after losing their distinction, become one bread, just as many grapes, after losing their distinction, become wine.
4 Thirdly, since the holy scripture says: He is a fool who trusts in his heart; and there is no man, as St. Augustine says, who does not have a culprit. This is said so much that there is no man who does not know, or perceive, or know some things, or even the least thing in other men, which he dislikes: therefore man must despair of his diligence and doings, so that he cannot put away the bitterness of his heart against all men. Therefore, as Christ, our dear Lord, advised, Matth. 6, 6, man should go into his chamber, ask the heavenly Father not to remember his ignorance, and by His grace work and do that which man is not able to attain by his ability, that is, to give him a loving and brotherly heart.
(5) This is a distant preparation, which every man must have if he wants to go to confession or receive any other sacrament. Therefore, a man who wants to go to the reverend Sacrament must offer to God Almighty an empty, empty and hungry soul, that is, he must confess himself full of many evils, vices, sins and sicknesses of the soul; as man is in truth, even if he does not feel it. For as St. Augustine says, this food hates nothing so much as a full, full and weary stomach, and seeks nothing so diligently as a hungry and thirsty soul. As the Lord Himself says in Matt. 5:6, "Blessed are those who hunger for righteousness, for they will be filled and satisfied." Thus also says the Mother of God, Luc. 1, 53:
"He hath filled the hungry with good things, and left the rich empty and without. In the 107th Psalm, v. 9, it says: "He has satisfied the empty soul and filled the hungry soul with goods. And these goods are not other goods than those which the holy apostle St. Paul describes to the Galatians in the 5th chapter. V. 22. to the Galatians: "The fruits of the Spirit are love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness, goodness, meekness, faith, longsuffering, temperance, purity, and chastity." If you find yourself lacking in these fruits, and you sigh and desire to obtain them, go safely and freely to the reverend Sacrament; for you will find the same goods in no other place than in this Sacrament.
(6) Therefore, the best skill is when a man is the most skillful; and again, a man is never more unskillful for the sacrament than when he is the most skillful. Which, then, is to be understood: If a man feels himself to be completely wretched, poor and in need of grace, in the same and thus he is susceptible to the grace of God and is most skilful for it. Man should also be more afraid than of death and hell, so that he never goes to the sacrament with this opinion, so that he thinks he is worthy and thus wants to bring God a pure heart, which a man should rather seek and attain in the sacrament. For this is a strong and inseparable saying of our Savior, Matth. 9, 12: "The healthy do not need a physician, but only the sick. For just as he did not come in time past to require the righteous, so also he does not come now to require the righteous, but the unrighteous and sinners, to repentance. For this reason, repentance is more worthily performed and spent after than before the sacrament. He is your God, and has no need of your goods, but is lenient toward you, and comes to you with the intention of giving you his goods.
(7) It is also a great and harmful error for a man to go to the sacrament with this confidence that he has confessed.
and that he no longer has any mortal sin on him, and that he has said his prayer beforehand and used other preparations. For those who go to the sacrament in such an opinion all eat and drink judgment and sentence. For they all do not become worthy and pure by the means touched, but by the same confidence of purity they become much more impure and stained. Men are not made clean by any other means than by faith, as follows.
(8) Fifthly, let a man take care to go to the sacrament with a perfect or possible faith, and be most confident that he will obtain grace thereby. For a man obtains as much as he believes he will obtain. As Christ says in Matt. 21:22: "All things whatsoever ye shall prayerfully desire, believing that ye shall obtain them, ye shall obtain them." He also goes on to say, "Be it done unto you according as you have believed." For if a man went to the reverend Sacrament without this faith, he would receive judgment and death. So also in all the other sacraments, if they are received without faith, there is nothing but a pretense and mockery, which is terrible.
(9) Therefore faith alone is the highest and closest preparation, and this also makes a man truly pure and worthy. For faith does not rely on our works or our abilities, but on the purest, kindest and strongest word of Christ, our dear Lord and Savior, who said Matt. 11:28: "All you who labor and are burdened, come to me, and I will refresh you and give you joy"; and again Matt. 5:6: "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. For faith, which justifies, makes pure and worthy, and as Acts 15:9, by faith makes their hearts pure.
(10) Whether your repentance be true or false, take the greatest care that you go to the sacrament trusting in the touching words of Christ our dear Lord. For if you thus
you will be enlightened, and your face will not be shamed and disgraced. Thou shalt not make the blessed Mother of God a liar in any way: for she hath said, Luc. 1:53, "The Lord hath filled the hungry with good things." Rather, you should not punish God Himself with lies, for He has promised Matth. 11, 28: "All you who labor and are burdened, come to Me, and I will feed you and give you joy." But then a man is lying to God if he does not believe that he will keep what he promises, 1 John 5:10. Therefore unbelief is the greatest sin and blasphemy against divine truth.
(11) Sixthly, if a man feels that he is not offering a living, hungry and meager soul to God, nor is he going to the sacrament with sufficient faith, or is able to do so sufficiently (as a man will feel in truth when he will examine and feel himself), then he should not be ashamed or afraid, as the holy apostles did, thus asking Luc. 17, 5: "O Lord, increase our faith"; and as the father of the possessed man said in the 9th chapter of St. Marci v. 24: "O Lord, come to the aid of my unbelief." Then the man shall go into his closet and pray to the heavenly Father thus: My Lord Jesus Christ, behold my wretchedness, misery and poverty; I am scanty and poor, and yet so disgusted with this thy medicine, that I long not even for the riches of thy grace. Therefore, O my Lord, kindle in me the desire of thy mercies and the faith of thy promise, that I may not offend thee, my most pious and most gracious God, by my perverse unbelief and slothfulness. And with such confidence in the divine mercy, and in the fear of himself and of his own impiety and unworthiness, man shall go to the Sacrament.
12 Now it behooves us to explain these words of St. Paul in the 1st epistle to those of Corinth in the 11th chapter: "But let a man examine himself, and so let him be convinced of the truth.
eat the bread" etc. For many may think that St. Paul's opinion was that we should not go to the reverend Sacrament sooner, because we have found ourselves worthy and clean from all sins. Therefore, the same people cause themselves anguish and torment and torment of conscience by investigating, repenting, and confessing not only the daily sins, but also those that are not sins. And when they have done this, which is a frightening, hopeful depth of confession, they go to the Sacrament without worry, and have no concern nor thought for their faith. For they want to come to the Sacrament righteous and worthy and like God; as Lucifer did: if they should be willing to become righteous and worthy of God and to come again. Therefore St. Paul wrote touching words against those who divided Christ into many sects, and some of Paul, and some of Cephae, and some of Apollo, and some of Christ; as it is written in the 1st Epistle of St. Paul to the Corinthians in chapter 3, v. 4. For this reason they judged, spurned and condemned one another. Likewise, when they received the sacrament, they hurried one over the other, and those who came first ate the bread and drank up the wine, so that those who followed and those who came after them found nothing; as clearly appears and is evident from St. Paul's text and St. Ambrose's glosses, which St. Paul punishes, saying that they eat the sacrament unworthily. It was also St. Paul's opinion that people should examine, judge and condemn themselves and not other people. For discord and dissension make men most unworthy and guilty of the body of the Lord.
13 And that this was St. Paul's opinion appears and is clear from the following words of St. Paul, also in the same epistle. For he says 1 Cor. 11, 33: "Therefore, dear brethren, when you come together to eat, wait for one another, lest you come together for judgment"; item v. 31: "If we judged ourselves, we would undoubtedly not be judged by God.
Judges"; item v. 29: "Not judging the body of the Lord." As if he wanted to say: You go to the sacrament as if the corpse of the Lord were nothing more worthy and better than the natural bread. It is true that St. Paul's words may also be heard of the test by which man investigates, considers and overcomes his sin; but the test is not sufficient; it serves only the senseless, unreasonable and coarse people who despise this highly venerable Sacrament.
14 For it is not enough that thou shouldest examine and consider how wicked thou hast been, unless thou rather consider and consider how godly thou desirest to become. For if St. Paul had meant that we should examine ourselves until we became worthy, he would have committed us to an impossible thing, depriving all men also of the holy, most worthy Sacrament. St. Paul would also have spoken against himself in many places, as he writes Rom, 5, 18. 19. that all men are sinners, who must be justified by faith alone. For one who goes to the sacrament would have to be quite sure that he is without all mortal sin, if he did not want to take the judgment. But it is impossible for a man to be sure of this from himself and his ability; as it says in the 19th Psalm v. 13: "Who understands sin?" And Jeremiah says Cap. 17:9, 10: "The heart of man is perverse, wicked, and unsearchable; who shall search it out? I, the Lord, who search out the kidneys and hearts."
(15) Therefore assurance stands only on the solid and unconfirmed rock, 1 Cor. 10:4, that is, on Christ our Lord and his word. Therefore the true and constant test is, when a man finds himself vain, empty, and empty, and without the weight of salvation, blessedness, and righteousness, and laden with many evil desires. And when a man finds himself in this state, he should fervently and diligently desire the grace and mercy of God, and have no doubt that he will obtain it. Thus St. Gregory punishes the
St. Peter, that he should have called the Lord away from him, because he was a sinner; Luc. 5, 8. He thus says: If you know yourself to be a sinner, you must not drive the Lord away from you, but rather ask him to come to you. And St. Ambrose says: "Because I sin daily, I must go to the sacrament daily. There was also a pious father of old who advised not to abstain from the Sacrament, lest man should thereby become distant from God. For we should not fear that the Lord has given us poison, which, when he establishes and administers this most reverend Sacrament, indicates that he allows himself to be the last and greatest memorial of his love for sinners.
16) Seventhly, if a man is so weak in faith that even the remedies he has tried help him little, or if he cannot have them, he should reach for the last remedy of the sick, and let himself be carried as a child in the arms and bosom of the holy mother, the holy Christian church, together with the bedridden *) in the bed, so that the Lord may least regard their faith, Matth. 9, 2, because his faith is null and void. This is that a man, in the faith either of the whole Christian church, or of a pious Christian man, known to him, goes to the sacrament, and boldly says to the Lord Jesus: "Behold, my dear Lord Jesus Christ, I am sorry that I am so weak and sick that I do not have such a pure trust because of your inestimable love for us: Therefore, my dear Lord, accept me in the faith of the whole Christian Church, or else this or that man; for as it may be with me, I must be obedient to thy Church, which calls me to go to the Sacrament; and though I bring nothing else, yet I come to the Sacrament in such obedience.
(17) Man should also firmly believe that he did not go to the sacrament unworthily. For there is no doubt that God does not accept the obedience that
*) Eislebenr edition: Gichtbrüchigen. D. Red.
The faith of the Christian church will be accepted as if obedience had been shown to it. It is therefore impossible for the faith of the Christian church to corrupt you, any more than for a young child to be baptized and saved by the merit of a foreign faith.
18 Thus, when St. Bernard once had a brother who was so fearful and so sure of himself that he did not want to say mass, he said to him, "Brother, go in my name and say mass in my faith. He said to him, "Brother, go in my name and say mass in my faith," whereupon the brother said mass and was freed from the weakness of his conscience. All this is almost good, salutary and necessary to know.)
19. For the consciences of Christian men have commonly been led into this fear by some fearful preaching, that they have made of Christ Moses, of grace the law, and of the medicine poison, in that they think that Christ is more of an estimator than a giver, more of a revenger than an atoning mediator or atonement-maker, more of a destroyer than a beatific; So that the glory and honor of his name, which is Jesus Christ, that is, the Beatific and Anointed One, is in our hearts alone with mere syllables. Therefore, not all men must be threatened with the terrible judgment, but only the hard-hearted and senseless men. But to the fearful and narrow-minded people one should hold out the promise of kind mercy. For many a remedy serves against many a disease.
(20) Eighthly, every man, when he goes to the reverend sacrament, should not omit it, but with all diligence contemplate the passion of Christ, our dear Lord and Savior. For what good would it be if you prepared and sent yourself worthily, and did not fulfill and do that for which you had prepared and sent yourself? For the Lord has commanded that this sacrament be used for the sole purpose of remembering him. Therefore, this sacrament should be interrupted when
that Christ, our dear Lord, should not be remembered. For the Lord thus says, "As often as ye do these things, ye shall do them in remembrance of me." So St. Paul says: "As often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you will proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes." For this reason, the Christian Church has established that the Holy Gospel should always be read under the office of the Holy Mass.
How the suffering of Christ is to be contemplated.
(21) Man must not weep for Christ in his suffering, but rather for himself in Christ. The suffering of Christ, as the holy father Augustine speaks, is not only an example for us to follow in his footsteps and crucify in ourselves the earthly limbs; but it is also for us a sacrament or conditional sign that Christ, through his temporal suffering, has overcome and crucified our spiritual, eternal suffering of the old man.
22 Therefore, if you wish to hear, read, or contemplate the suffering of Christ fruitfully, you must take such an affection or sensation of the same suffering upon yourself, as if you were suffering it yourself in and with Christ. As when you hear that Christ is scourged, beaten etc., consider that in it is meant how you become spiritual and are scourged etc. And as it grieves thee in thine heart, if thou be a right-minded man, to be thus spiritually tormented by sin, death, and the evil spirit: so much and more it grieves Christ in his suffering for thy sake. You suffer because of merit; Christ suffers innocently for your sake, and bears on the cross not his sin but your sin. Thus the thief confesses the suffering of Christ on the cross. So you also learn from the bodily suffering.
Suffering of Christ recognize your spiritual and yourself. Christ took on the person of our sinner in suffering. Therefore we should appear before God in our hearts as He would appear before men on our behalf; and as He mourned on our behalf, so we should mourn for ourselves over Him. When he said to the women Luc. 23, 28: "You daughters of Jerusalem should not weep over me, but over yourselves and your children" etc.
Therefore, he who does not recognize and find himself in the suffering of Christ does not understand it sufficiently, and has communion with Christ in vain and in vain, if he does not learn to have communion with himself from the suffering of Christ. Therefore Christ weeps, laments and suffers for you, so that you may learn to weep for your own suffering and misery before God. For if you know yourself to be a child of death before God, you shall weep for good until you are eternally redeemed.
If you were to recognize your misery in the suffering of Christ, it would be easy for you to be humble, meek, and contemptuous of the world. etc. You would also gladly follow Christ in all his suffering. For who would not weep when he sees his misery so great that an eternal, infinite, innocent person suffers for it? It is frightening and cruel to hear from our part, and it would be no wonder that someone would even despair when he heeds such great misery; if, on the other hand, the great mercy of God in Christ did not comfort him, so that in God no one may doubt his salvation. For if God gave His Son for us, He has also given us all things in Him, Romans 8:32. Therefore, if you suffer in your conscience accusation before God, torment and death, weep and know that it is all deserved, and look to Christ, who suffers it all innocently and undeservedly; of this alone comfort yourself.