Cyprian of Carthage, Treatises Treatise 8

Many and great are the divine benefits by which the Father and Christ have worked, and continue to work, for our salvation. The Father sent the Son to preserve us and give us life, and the Son chose to be sent and to become the Son of Man so that He might make us sons of God. He humbled Himself in order to raise up the people who lay prostrate; He was wounded in order to heal our wounds; He took the form of a servant in order to lead servants into freedom; He endured death in order to bestow immortality on mortals. These are many and great gifts of divine mercy.

But consider further: what kind of providence, and how great a clemency, provides us with a plan of salvation so that the redeemed person may be more fully cared for? When the Lord came, He healed the wounds Adam had borne 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 were confined, shut up in a narrow prescription of innocence. Human frailty and weakness would have had no recourse unless divine pity came to our aid once more. By displaying works of justice and mercy, God opened a way to preserve our salvation, so that we might wash away whatever filth we contract afterward through alms.

The Holy Spirit speaks in the divine Scriptures and says: "Sins are purged by alms and by faith" (cf. Prov. 16:6). Not the sins contracted before, for those are purged by the blood and sanctification of Christ. Again He says: "Just as water extinguishes fire, so almsgiving extinguishes sin" (Sir. 3:30). Here it is also 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. Because the remission of sins is given once in Baptism, a constant and continual operation that imitates Baptism obtains God's indulgence again.

The Lord teaches this in the Gospel as well. When His disciples were denounced for eating without first 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 must be removed rather than the outside. The One who purifies the inside also purifies the outside, and with a purified mind, the skin and body also begin to be clean. Furthermore, warning us and showing from what source we can be clean and purified, He added that alms must be given. The Merciful One teaches and urges us to practice mercy, and because He seeks to preserve those He redeemed at a great price, He teaches that those who have been defiled after the grace of Baptism can be purified once more.

Let us therefore recognize, dearest brothers, the wholesome gift of divine indulgence. Since we cannot exist without some wound of conscience, let us cure our wounds with spiritual remedies. Let no one flatter himself on the purity of his heart, trusting in his own innocence to decide that medicine need not be applied to his wounds. For it is written: "Who can boast, 'My heart is pure; I am clean from my sin'?" (Prov. 20:9). And again John says 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 kind is divine clemency! Knowing that the healed still bear some wounds afterward, God has given remedies to heal and save those wounds again.

Finally, dearest brothers, divine admonition has never ceased or been silent. In the holy Scriptures, both Old and New, the people of God are always and everywhere urged 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; lift up your voice like a trumpet, and declare to My people their transgression, to the house of Jacob their sins" (Isaiah 58:1). When He had commanded that their sins be reproached to them, and their wicked deeds be proclaimed with a full impulse of indignation, and had said that they could not satisfy for their offenses even with prayers, supplications, and fasts, nor appease God's wrath even by lying in sackcloth and ashes, nonetheless, in the final passage He showed that God can be appeased only by alms. He added: "Share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, cover him, and do not hide yourself from your own flesh" (Isaiah 58:7). Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, your healing shall spring up quickly, your righteousness shall go before you, and the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard. Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer; you shall cry, and He will say, 'Here I am' (Isaiah 58:8–9).