Tractates on the Gospel of John
212 ST. AUGUSTINE when they were troublesome to me, I put on haircloth, and I humbled my soul with fasting"?^ There is one who hears; do not hesitate to pray. But he who hears remains within. Do not direct your eyes to some mountain; do not lift up your face to the stars or to the sun or the moon. Do not think you are being heard then, when you pray by the sea. Rather, abhor such prayers. Only cleanse the chamber of your heart; where you are, wherever you pray, he who hears is within, within in the secret place which [the Psalmist] calls his bosom when he says, "and my prayer will be turned in my bosom." ^ He who hears you is not outside you. Go not far off, and lift not yourself up, as if you might reach him with your hands. Rather, if you lift yourself up, you will fall; if you humble yourself, he will draw near. This Lord, our God, the Word of God, the Word made flesh, the Son of the Father, the Son of God, the Son of man, exalted that he might create us, humbled that he might re-create us, walking among men, suffering what is human, concealing what is divine.
2. "He went down," as the Evangelist says, "to Capharnaum, he and his mother and his brothers and his disciples. And they stayed there not many days." Look, he has a mother, he has brothers, he has disciples also. Whence the mother, thence the brothers. For our Scripture regularly calls brothers not only those who are born from the same man and woman, or from the same womb, or from the same father although from different mothers, or even from the same degree, as either paternal or maternal cousins; not only these does our Scripture admit to call brothers. As it speaks, so must it be understood.
(2) [Scripture] has its own language; whoever doesn't know this language is upset and says, "How are they brothers to the Lord? For Mary didn't bear again, did she?" Far from it. The dignity of virgins (virginum)^ began with her. That woman
7. Cf. Ps 34.13. 8. Ibid. 9. Augustine here explains a particular usage in Latin translations of Scripture which differs from general usage. In precise Latin usage femina is the general term for a woman, a person of the feminine gender, mulier desig-