Homily on Not Clinging to Worldly Things

1I thought, beloved, that by pressing the sting of my words harder each time I would seem harsh to you—as though I were putting on a display of boldness that was excessive, and fitting neither for a stranger nor for a man caught up in similar accusations. But you have been stirred by my reproofs toward goodwill, and you have made the blows from my tongue into kindling for a greater longing. And that is no surprise, for you are wise in the things of the Spirit. “Reprove a wise man, and he will love you,” says Solomon somewhere in his words (Proverbs 9:8).

For this reason, brothers and sisters, I have come now to the same exhortation, wanting, as far as I am able, to draw you away from the nets of the devil. For the enemy of truth wages a great and varied war against us every day, beloved. And he wages it, as you know, by making our own desires into arrows against us, always drawing from us the strength to harm us. For since the Master bound most of that enemy’s power with unbreakable laws and did not permit him to rush in all at once and wipe out the race of the earth, the envious one now steals his victory over us from our own folly.

Just as wicked and greedy people—whose work and deliberate choice it is to grow rich from what belongs to others, but who lack the power to use open force—are accustomed to lie in wait along the roads; and if they see a spot beside them, either broken by deep ravines or shaded by a thick growth of trees, they sink down into it, cutting off the travelers’ view from afar with such screens, and then leap on them all at once, so that no one can see the snares of danger before falling into them—so too our hostile enemy from above runs beneath the shadows of worldly pleasures. These shadows grow along the road of this life, and they are terrible at hiding a robber and making the one who plots against us escape notice. From there he sows the traps of destruction for us unseen.

Therefore, if we want to run safely along the road of life that lies before us, and to present to Christ our soul and body together free from the shame of wounds, and to receive the crowns of victory, we must always keep the eyes of the soul awake and turning in every direction. We must be wary of everything pleasant and run past it at once, fixing our mind on nothing—not even if gold appears poured out before us, ready to come into the hands of anyone who wants it. For Scripture says, “If wealth flows in, do not set your heart on it” (Psalm 62:10). Not even if the earth sprouts every luxury and displays costly tents, for “our citizenship is in heaven, from which we also await a Savior, Christ” (Philippians 3:20). Not even if there are dances and revels and drunkenness and tables accompanied by flutes, for “vanity of vanities,” it says, “all things are vanity” (Ecclesiastes 1:2). Not even if beautiful bodies are held out to you, inhabited by wicked souls, for “flee from a woman’s face as from the face of a serpent,” says the Wise One (Sirach 21:2). Not even if there are powers and tyrannies and swarms of bodyguards or flatterers. Not even if there is a high and shining throne that has yoked nations and cities into willing slavery, for “all flesh is like grass, and all human glory like the flower of grass; the grass withers, and the flower falls” (Isaiah 40:6-7).

2Beneath all these things, however pleasant they seem, the common enemy lies hidden, waiting to see whether we will be baited by what we see, turn aside from the divine road, and lean toward his ambush. There is great reason to fear that we may run to these things without guarding ourselves, think that the enjoyment they give can do no harm, and swallow the hook of deceit concealed in the first taste. Then, partly willingly and partly against our will, we may be bound fast by them, and be dragged by pleasures to slip into that fearsome lodging of the robber, death. So it is necessary and profitable for everyone, brothers and sisters, to prepare ourselves like travelers or runners, to make our souls light in every way for this race, and to press on without turning back to the end of the road. Let no one suppose that I am inventing new terms because I have now called human life a road, since the prophet David also gave this name to life. At one point he says, “Blessed are those whose way is blameless, who walk in the law of the Lord” (Psalm 119:1). At another point he cries out to his Master, “Remove from me the way of falsehood, and be gracious to me by your law” (Psalm 119:29). And at another time, singing of God’s swift help against those who attack him and bringing it to the lyre with pleasure, he said, “For who is God except our God? The God who girds me with strength and made my way blameless” (Psalm 18:30-31). Everywhere he rightly considered that the time human beings spend on earth, whether admired or worthless, should be called by this name. For just as people who are completing a hurried journey move their feet forward, each step racing ahead of the other in a run, always making the foot previously planted on the ground second by the swift movement of the other, and so easily reach the end of the road, so those who have been brought into life by the Creator step immediately at the beginning onto the segments of time, always leaving behind the earlier segment for the later one, and arrive at the end of life. Or does it not seem to you as well that this present life is spread out like a continuous road, a journey divided by the stages of life as by stopping-places, giving to each person the birth-pangs of their mother as the beginning of the journey, and showing the tents of the tombs as the end of the race, and leading everyone to those tents, some more quickly and some more slowly, some traveling through all the intervals of time, and others not even lodging at the first stopping-places of life? Now the other roads, as many as lead from city to city, can be avoided, and the one who does not wish to travel them need not do so. But this road, even if we want to delay the race, surrounds us by force and drags those on it to the end appointed by the Master. And it is not possible, beloved, for the one who has once slipped out through the gate that leads into this life and set foot on this road not to come to its end. Each of us, after leaving our mother’s embrace, is immediately bound to the streams of time and swept along, always leaving behind the day we have lived and never able to return to yesterday, even if we wish to.

3But we take pleasure in being carried forward, and we rejoice at changing stages of life as if we were gaining something. We count it a blessing when a boy becomes a man, and a man becomes an old man. Yet we do not realize that each time we lose as much of life as we have lived, and we do not notice that our life is being spent. We are always measuring it by what has run past and flowed away, but we never stop to think that it is uncertain how much time the One who sent us out on this journey will choose to grant for the race, or when He will open the gates of entry for each of the runners. We do not consider that we must be ready every day for our departure from here, waiting with fixed eyes for the Master's signal. For He says, "Let your loins be girded and your lamps burning, and be like people waiting for their master to return from the wedding feast, so that when he comes and knocks, they may open to him at once" (Luke 12:35-36).

Nor do we want to examine carefully which loads are light for such a race, able to move away together with those who gathered them and to make our life there joyful, becoming the true possessions of their owners; and which loads are heavy, burdensome, nailed to the earth, not made by nature to belong to human beings at all, and not permitted to follow their owners through that narrow gate. But the things we should have gathered, we have left behind; the things we ought to despise, those we gather. The things that can be united to us and truly become an ornament fitted to soul and body—to these we pay no attention. But the things that remain forever alien, imprinting on us only shame—these we try to heap up, laboring in vain and toiling at a toil like someone who deceives himself by choosing to draw water into a pierced jar.

For I think this is known even to all infants: none of the pleasant things in life, over which most people have gone mad, is truly ours or is made by nature to become ours. Rather, they appear equally alien to all—both to those who seem to enjoy them and to those who never come near them. Even if some people gather boundless gold in this life, it does not remain their own forever. Either it slips away while they are still living, pressing in on them from every side and flowing off to those who are stronger, or it abandons them when they have already come to death, refusing to depart together with those who acquired it.

Those who are dragged by the one who forcibly separates souls from this wretched flesh toward the necessary road keep turning back again and again to their possessions, weeping over the sweat they poured out for them from youth. But the wealth looks toward other hands, having smeared on its owners only the toil of gathering it and the charge of greed. Nor if someone acquires ten thousand acres of land, magnificent houses, herds of every kind of animal, and wraps himself in all power among men, does he enjoy them forever. He is called by their name for a little while, and then he will yield his prosperity to others again, going down under a small patch of earth himself. Often, even before the grave and before his departure from here, he will see his good fortune passing over to others—perhaps even to his enemies.

4Or do we not know how many fields, how many houses, how many nations and cities took on the names of other masters while those who acquired them were still alive? And how those who once were slaves climbed onto the throne of rule, while those called lords and masters were content to stand among the governed, and bowed down to their own slaves, as if in a turn of the dice their affairs had suddenly been reversed?

As for the things devised for our eating and drinking, and all that wealth in its insolence has contrived beyond need for the service of the thankless belly that holds nothing back—when could they ever be ours, even if they are poured in continually? They deposit only a small pleasure in the taste as they pass, and immediately we are disgusted with them as troublesome and superfluous, and we eagerly cast them out, as if, should they linger in the inward parts, we would be in the greatest danger for our very life. At any rate, surfeit has brought death to many, and has become the provider of no longer enjoying anything at all.

And licentious beds, and profane embraces, and all the works of a raging and frenzied soul—are they not plainly and entirely a loss to nature, and a conspicuous harm, and rather an alienation and diminishment of what truly belongs to each person, as the body is diminished in its couplings and robbed of the most genuine and sustaining nourishment of its members? Therefore, for each of those who have wallowed in licentious beds, immediately after the act, when the sting of the flesh has withered away and the mind has come to the loathsome end of what it attempted, as if from drunkenness or some storm it finds leisure to consider where on earth it is, a violent regret for its lack of self-control enters in. For it perceives that the body has become weaker, sluggish for the work of necessary tasks, and altogether feeble.

This, then, is what the trainers understood when the law of self-control was written in the wrestling schools, keeping the bodies of the young men inviolate from pleasures, and not permitting them, while they were competing, even to glance at shining faces, if they wished to have their heads crowned—since lack of self-control brings laughter in the wrestling, not a crown.

These things, then, as entirely alien and superfluous, and unable to become the property of anyone, it is good to pass by with eyes shut. But of the things that are truly ours, we ought to take great forethought. What then is truly ours? The soul, by which we live, which is something fine and intellectual, and needs none of the things that weigh it down; and the body, the vehicle given to it for life by the Creator. For this is a human being: a mind bound in suitable and fitting flesh. This is fashioned in our mothers' wombs by the all-wise craftsman of all things. This the time of birth pangs leads into the light from those dark chambers. This was appointed to rule over the things on earth. For this, creation has been spread out as a training ground of virtue. For this, a law is laid down: to imitate the Maker as far as possible, and to sketch in outline on earth the good order of the heavens. This, when it is called from here, departs. This stands before the judgment seat of the God who sent it.

5This is what is set straight; this is what receives the recompense for those who have lived as citizens here. And you would find that the virtues also become our possessions when they are woven together with our nature by our own care. They are not willing to leave us while we labor on earth, unless we ourselves willingly drive them away by the inducements of worse things. They run ahead of us as we press on to the other world, they rank their possessor together with the angels, and they shine forever under the eyes of their Creator. But wealth, and power, and distinction, and luxury, and all that sort of crowd that grows daily from our own folly—these did not come forth with us into life, nor have they departed with anyone. What was said long ago by the righteous man stands fixed and prevails over every human being: “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will depart” (Job 1:21).

So the person who plans best will care for the soul as much as possible, and through everything will try to keep it pure and genuine. But if the flesh is wasting with hunger, or struggling against cold and heat, or pained by illnesses, or suffering something violent from others, he will make little account of it. In every hardship he will speak Paul’s words and say: “Even if our outer person is wasting away, yet our inner person is being renewed day by day” (2 Corinthians 4:16). And when he sees dangers coming that threaten his life, he will not appear afraid, but will say to himself with confidence: “We know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands” (2 Corinthians 5:1).

But if someone wishes to spare the body as well, as the one necessary possession of the soul and its fellow worker for living on earth, he will turn only a little attention to its needs—just enough to hold it together and keep it strong for the soul’s service through moderate care, but certainly not to allow it to leap about from being overfed. And if he ever sees it inflamed with desires for more than what is profitable, he will cry out to it, laying down Paul’s law: “We brought nothing into this world, and it is clear that we can carry nothing out. But if we have food and covering, with these we will be content” (1 Timothy 6:7-8).

For by chanting these words to it constantly and crying out, he will make it obedient to the rein and always light for the heavenly journey, and will gain it rather as a fellow worker for the things set before him. But if he allows it to run wild and to be filled with everything every day, like some untamed beast, he will later be dragged down with it by its violent pulls toward the earth, and will lie groaning to no profit. And when he is brought before the Master and asked for the fruit of the earthly journey that was given to him, and then cannot give it, he will lament at length and dwell in perpetual darkness, blaming luxury and its deception, by which he was robbed of the time of salvation—yet gaining nothing more from his tears. For “in the grave who will praise you?” says David (Psalm 6:5).

Let us flee, then, as quickly as possible, so that we do not willingly choke ourselves. But if someone was enticed long ago and heaped up the dust of wealth from injustice upon himself, and bound his mind with its cares, or attached to his nature a defilement of licentiousness that is hard to wash out, or filled himself with other accusations—let this person, while there is still time, before he comes to utter destruction, put off the greater part of his cargo. Before the vessel goes under the water, let him jettison the goods he gathered improperly, and let him imitate the workers of the sea.

6Those sailors, you see, if they happen to be carrying even some necessary cargo on board and a boiling swell rises against them from the open sea and threatens to sink the ship, weighed down as it is by its load, throw off most of the weight as fast as they can. They pour their merchandise into the sea without mercy, so as to raise the ship above the waves and, if possible, bring only their souls and bodies safely out of danger. How much more, then, should we plan and do these very things! For whatever those men throw overboard they lose at once, and from then on the force of poverty closes in on them. But the more of our wicked cargo we pour out, the more and better wealth we will heap up for our souls. Fornication and all such things, once thrown off, are destroyed and pass into nothingness, dissolved by tears. But holiness and righteousness pass over into the place of those very things—light possessions that no waves can cover. Money, however, when thrown out well, is not lost to those who throw it out and cast it away. Rather, as if transferred into other, safer ships—the stomachs of the poor—it is preserved and arrives first at the harbor, and it is kept for those who throw it out as an ornament, not a danger. Let us then, beloved, plan something philanthropic for ourselves, and if we truly want to make the burden of our abundance our own gain, let us distribute it among many who will carry it joyfully and lock it away in the bosom of the Master, in treasuries that cannot be plundered—where moth does not destroy, and thieves do not break in and steal (Matthew 6:20). Let us give our wealth permission to overflow toward those in need. Let us not run past the Lazaruses who even now lie before our eyes, nor begrudge them the crumbs from our table that would satisfy them. Let us not imitate that savage rich man and go over with him into the same flame of hell. For then we will beg Abraham at length, and beg at length each of those who lived well, but our shouting will gain us nothing. “A brother cannot redeem; can a man redeem?” (Psalm 48:8 (49:7)). Each of those people will cry out to us and say: “Do not seek the mercy you yourself ignored when others needed it. Do not expect to receive such great things, you who spared the lesser ones. Enjoy what you gathered in life. Weep now, since you did not pity your brother when you saw him weeping then.” These things they will say to us, and justly. But I am afraid they may hurl even harsher words at us, because, as you know, we surpass that rich man in wickedness. For not sparing our wealth at all, we run past our brothers thrown on the ground, and while keeping our abundance for our children or other relatives, we shut our ears to those in need. Instead, we transfer our spending to worse things and make our love of honor a whetstone of wickedness for those who practice it. For how many women or how many men of certain people stand around the table! Some charm the host with shameful words, others kindle the fire of self-indulgence with indecent glances and gestures, others want to produce laughter for the one who invited them by mocking one another, and still others deceive him with false praises.

7And they do not gain only the brilliant feasting itself. They also go away with their hands filled with costly gifts, and they learn from us that it is more profitable to pursue such things and practice them, rather than the virtues. But if a poor man should stand before us, barely able to speak from hunger, we turn away from the one of the same race, we loathe him, we run off in haste, as if afraid that by walking too slowly we might share in his very misfortune. And if he should bow his head to the ground, ashamed of his calamity, we say he is a worker of hypocrisy. But if he should look at us boldly because of the heavy goad of hunger, we call him shameless and violent. And if he happens to be covered with sound clothing someone has given him, we drive him away as insatiable, and we swear that he pretends poverty. But if he is covered with rotten rags, we chase him off again as stinking. And neither by mixing the name of his Creator into his supplications, nor by constantly adjuring us that we may not fall into such sufferings, can he bend our merciless choice. For these reasons I suspect the fire of hell will be heavier for us than it was for that rich man. Now if the occasion allowed and sufficient strength were present, I would have gone through everything concerning that man, as the Book has shown, and paid you the full work of my words. But now it is time to release you who are weary. And you yourselves, if we have omitted anything through weakness of thought and tongue, fashion it for yourselves and apply it like medicines to the wounds of your souls. For give an opportunity to a wise man, and he will be wiser, says the Scripture (Proverbs 9:9). And God is able to make every grace abound to you, so that, always having all sufficiency in everything, you may abound in every good work (2 Corinthians 9:8). But now, as you see, the word has already been brought down to harbor for us, and some brothers are leading it back again to the course of counsel, bidding us not to pass over what was wondrously done yesterday by the Master, nor to keep silent about the trophy that the Savior set up against the devil's madness, but to give you an occasion for the leaping of hymns. For again, as you know, the devil displayed his own madness against us, and arming himself with a flame of fire, he marched against the folds of the church. But again our common mother conquered, and turned the enemy's device back upon him, and nothing remained to him except to make his hatred public. Grace blew against the enemy's blasts. The temple remained untouched. The storm brought by the enemy was not strong enough to shake the rock on which Christ built the sheepfold of his own flock. He who long ago quenched the furnace in Babylon was stationed with us now as well (Daniel 3:49-50). How do you think the devil groans today, not having enjoyed the attempt on which he had set his desire? For the hostile one kindled a pyre next to the church, to damage our prosperity. And the flame, fanned from every side by his violent blasts, poured over what lay beneath it and fed on the air nearby, compelled to touch the sacred precincts and dragging us down into a share of the calamity. But the Savior made it flow back upon the one who kindled it, and commanded his madness to contract again upon himself.

8The enemy prepared the bow of his plot, but he was prevented from releasing the arrow. Or rather, he did release it, but it has been turned back upon his own head. He himself now tastes those bitter tears he had prepared for us. So let us, brothers and sisters, make the wound heavier for the hostile one; let us increase his grief. How this is to be done, I will tell you, and you will carry it out. There are some who were snatched away from the fire's power by the Creator, and who have no remaining means of livelihood left to them, but escaped the danger with only soul and body. Let all of us, then, who have remained untouched by the experience of hardships, set before them our own abundance as a common store. Let us embrace the brothers and sisters who barely survived, and let each of us say to each of them: 'He was dead, and has come back to life; he was lost, and has been found' (Luke 15:24). And let us cover the body that belongs to our own kin. Let us oppose the hostile one's assaults with our own consolation, so that even when he harms us he may seem to have harmed nothing great, and when he makes war he may show no one defeated, and when he strips away the abundance of our brothers and sisters he may be shown defeated by our generosity.

But you who escaped the danger, brothers and sisters, do not be overly distressed by the evils that have happened, and do not let your minds be shaken. Instead, shake off the mist of grief and strengthen your souls with more courageous reasoning, and make what has happened an occasion for crowns. For if you remain unshaken, you will be shown more approved in faith, shining forth from the fire like noble gold, and you will increase the shame of the hostile one all the more, since he could not move even a tear from you through the things he plotted. Remind yourselves of Job's endurance. Say to yourselves what he said: 'The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; as it seemed good to the Lord, so it has happened' (Job 1:21). And let no one be persuaded by what he has suffered to reason and say that no providence orders our affairs, and let no one accuse the stewardship and judgment of the Master. Instead, let him look to that athlete and make him his counselor toward what is better. Let him reckon up all the contests in order, in which that man excelled, and how many arrows he was struck with by the devil without receiving a mortal wound. For the devil stripped away his prosperity in his household, but he planned to bury him under the successive reports of evils. For while the first messenger was still announcing one disaster, another messenger came, bringing the gloom of worse events. The terrors were joined one to another, and the disasters rivaled the onrush of waves; before the first tear had ceased, the occasion for another was brought forward. But the righteous man stood like a breakwater, receiving the assaults of the storm, turning the force of the waves into foam, and he sent forth the grateful voice to the Master: 'The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; as it seemed good to the Lord, so it has happened' (Job 1:21). And he considered none of the things that happened worthy of tears. But when someone came announcing that a violent wind had struck the chamber of gladness while his sons and daughters were feasting, then alone he tore his garment, showing the sympathy of nature and testifying by what he did that he was a tenderly loving father.

9Yet even then he set a limit and a measure to his grief, and he adorned what was happening with those devout words. He said, 'The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; as it seemed good to the Lord, so it has happened' (Job 1:21). He was all but crying out: 'I was called a father for as long as the One who made me so willed. He has chosen to strip away the crown from my offspring again; I do not fight over what belongs to Him. Let the Master's will prevail. He is the fashioner of the race, and I am an instrument. Why should I, a servant, be pointlessly distressed and find fault with a verdict I cannot overturn?' With such words the righteous man was striking the devil down with darts. But when the enemy saw that he was victorious again and could not be shaken by any of these things, he brought the device of trial against his very flesh. He scourged his body with unspeakable blows and made springs of worms pour out from it. He brought the man down from the thrones of his kingdom and seated him on a dung heap. Yet even when struck by such sufferings, Job remained unmoved. While his body was being torn, he kept the treasure of his devotion inviolate in the hidden place of his soul. So the enemy, having nothing left to do, returned to the memory of his ancient plot. He dragged down the woman's mind into an impious and blasphemous resolve, and through her he tried to shake the athlete. She, despairing at the long duration, stood before the righteous man, bent down, striking her hands together at what she saw, reproaching him for the fruits of his devotion. She recounted the old prosperity of their household and pointed to the present evils—what a life he had received from what circumstances, and what reward he had received from the Master for his many sacrifices. She kept saying words worthy of women's faintheartedness, but capable of troubling any man and overturning even a noble mind: 'I wander about as a vagabond and a menial servant. I who was a queen am a slave, and I am forced to look to the hands of my own household servants. I who once fed many am now glad just to be fed from what belongs to others.' And she said that it would be good and useful to use impious words and cut himself off from the earth, sharpening the sword of the Creator's wrath, or, by enduring the horrors, to prolong the labor of the contest for himself and the woman who lived with him. But he was grieved by these words as by none of his earlier evils. His gaze filled with anger, and he turned to the woman as if to an enemy. What does he say? 'Why have you spoken like one of the foolish women? Put away your counsel, woman. How long will you insult the life we share by what you say? You have misrepresented my conduct in a way I never wished. You have slandered my life by what you have spoken. I now consider myself half guilty of impiety, since marriage made the two of us one body, and you have fallen into blasphemy. If we received good things from the Lord's hand, shall we not endure the bad?' (Job 2:10). Remember the good things that came to you before. Weigh the better things against the worse. No human being's life is entirely blessed.

10To do well at every moment belongs to God alone. But if you are pained by what is present, comfort yourself from what has gone before. Now you weep, but you laughed before; now you are poor, but you were rich before. You drank the clear stream of life, and now that you drink this muddy one, endure it. Even the currents of rivers do not appear pure throughout. And a river, as you know, is our life, flowing without pause and filled with wave upon wave. Part of it has already flowed past, part is still moving; part has just now sprung from its springs, and part is still to come; and we all hasten toward the common sea of death. “If we received good things from the Lord’s hand, shall we not endure the bad things?” (Job 2:10). Do we force the judge to supply us with the same kind of things forever? Do we teach the Master how our life ought to be conducted? He himself holds authority over his own verdicts. He orders our affairs as he wills. He is wise, and he measures out what is beneficial to his servants. Do not meddle with the Master’s judgment. Only love what is arranged by his wisdom. Whatever he gives you, receive it with pleasure. Show in your pains that you were also worthy of the gladness you had before. By saying these things, Job repelled this attack of the devil as well, and brought upon him the complete shame of defeat. What followed from this? The disease fled from him again, since it had approached in vain and accomplished nothing more. His flesh bloomed again into a second youth; his life flowered once more with all good things, and wealth flowed together from every side upon his house in double measure, so that he might have one portion as though he had lost nothing, and the other might be the reward of endurance for the righteous man. But why did he receive horses, mules, camels, sheep, farmland, and all the luxury of his possessions from the double portion, while the number of his children sprouted equal to those who had died? Because the irrational animals and all the wealth, being perishable, came to complete destruction; but the children, even though dead, were alive in the finest part of their nature. So when he was adorned again with other sons and daughters by the Creator, he had this possession as double as well. For the ones were present, giving their parents gladness in this life, while those who had gone before were waiting for the one who planted them; then all will stand around Job, when the judge of human life gathers the universal church; when the trumpet that signals the King’s arrival shouts more fiercely into the tombs and demands back the deposit of bodies. Then those who now seem to be dead will stand before the Maker of all things more quickly than the living. For this reason, I think, God measured out to him the rest of his wealth in double portion, but judged it right for him to be satisfied with children equal in number. Do you see how many good things the righteous Job gathered for himself from endurance? You too, then, if anything harsh has come near you from the fire kindled yesterday by the plot of the demons, endure it, and calm the grief of your suffering with better thoughts; and as it is written, “Cast your care upon the Lord, and he will nourish you” (Psalm 55:22 [LXX 54:23]). To him belongs glory forever and ever. Amen.