the church, who communicate at the altar, who loudly praise the bishop or the
210 SAINT A UGUST1NE - SERMONS
There are bad Christians in the Church of this present age
2. Don't be surprised, either, at how many bad Christians there are, who fill the church, who communicate at the altar, who loudly praise the bishop or the priest when he preaches about good morals; who fulfill what the one who gathers us together foretold in the psalm: I announced, and I spoke; they have multiplied above number (Ps 40:5).4 They can be with us in the Church of this time; but in that Church which will come into being after the resurrection, they will be unable to be gathered in with the saints.
The Church of this time, you see, is compared to a threshing-floor, having on it grain mixed with chaff, having bad members mixed with good; after the judgment it will have all the good members, without any bad ones. This thresh¬ ing-floor holds the harvest sown by the apostles, watered by the teachers who followed them up till the present time, subjected to no little threshing under persecution by its enemies; but, the only stage remaining, not yet cleansed by the winnowing from above. However, the one is coming, about whom you have given back the article of the creed, From there he is going to come to judge the living and the dead; and, as the gospel states, He will have a winnowing fan in his hand, and will cleanse his threshing-floor; and he will gather his wheat together into the granary, while the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire (Lk 3:17).
You older faithful, you listen too to what I'm saying. Any of you who are grain, rejoice with trembling,5 and stay where you are, and don't leave the threshing-floor. Don't attempt, on your own judgment, to shake yourselves free, as it were, from the chaff; because if you want to separate yourself now from the chaff, you won't be able to stay on the threshing-floor.6 And when that one comes who distinguishes infallibly between grain and chaff, he won't carry up to the granary anything he doesn't find on the threshing-floor. So it will be no good at that time for grains to boast about the ears of wheat they come from, if they have left the threshing-floor. That granary will be filled and closed. Any¬ thing left outside will be gutted by fire.
So then, dearly beloved, if you are good, you must put up with the bad; if you are bad, you must imitate the good. The fact is, on this threshing-floor grains can degenerate into chaff, and again grains can be resurrected from chaff. This sort of thing happens every day, my dear brothers and sisters; this life is full of both painful and pleasant surprises. Every day people who seemed to be good fall away and perish; and again, ones who seemed to be bad are converted and live. God, you see, does not desire the death of the wicked, but only that they may turn back and live (Ez 18:23).
Listen to me, grains; listen to me, those of you who are what I desire you to be. Don't let the mixture of husks depress you; they won't be with you forever. How much, anyway, is this pile of husks that is covering us? Thank God, it's very light. We only have to be grains, and however big it is, it won't crush us. God, after all, is faithful, and he will not permit us to be tempted or tried beyond our capacity, but with the trial will also provide a way out, so that we can endure (1 Cor 10:13).