Whoever Seeks God Will Find

Translated from the Sahidic Coptic (White Monastery codex CZ 129–137) by Claude, 2026-07-12. No published English translation known. A judgment sermon: the blood of the martyrs cries from Golgotha, the wicked are hauled before the tribunal of Christ-the-Sun, and Shenoute turns Ecclesiastes and the beatitudes against the lukewarm. uncertain renderings are flagged in the numbered footnotes; [...] gaps.

...the Ninevites — they will be destroyed. When they saw the sign¹ given through him, then our ways were set aside from us. But as for you — God came to you; he worked a power that had come to pass neither in Jonah's day nor in Solomon's, and not another single one of you within repented. This rebuke that shall come upon us belongs to certain men, who cast away the counsel² for their life at a time when they did not think to look upon any good thing. Now they have seen it — and the Lord has added this further charge against them: that they shall rise on the day of the judgment and condemn this generation.

What then shall they do, in the face of the rebuke of these multitudes of the Holy One who preached to us the ways of life and the works of salvation, and who gave their own blood for us after the likeness of God — Jesus, who gave his own for us? His is the whole judgment; his is the mouth of those who were promised that there would be given to them the one who is to lay down³ for them the reward⁴ promised them, that they should sit upon the thrones and judge the twelve tribes of Israel, and judge all flesh of the men who came to be upon the earth, and judge angels.

How will they judge them? They will judge them thus: Why did you help others⁵ at the hand of Satan in every evil, but yourself rushed the more headlong into evil, like birds down upon a snare — when you lusted after your neighbors' wives, and wrought wickedness with them, and raised up a war upon the earth in place of peace? And they will pass judgment upon us in turn, saying: Why did you not hearken to our words? You did not follow our works; you did not desire our ways. And I will say no more than these things — even this alone, that it has been said once and for all, from the patriarchs to the prophets and the apostles and all the saints, rebuking our shamelessness: God came to you; God cursed you⁶, and you did not take care to turn yourselves back from the works of the demons.

One and the same voice was cried out at the place of the Skull by a multitude of men, who had made themselves ready for the piercing⁷: Away with him, away with him, crucify him! One and the same voice shall come forth from his holy judgment-seat: Take them, take them! Take away the offscouring and the refuse! Take away the fish, the wicked, and the goats! Bind their hands and their feet, and cast them into hell. Punish them, punish them in that place — since they cried out once, Do not release this one, they whom Beliar the blind has made blind, and whose voices had strength. In what way, then, shall they not cry out, once and for all — the thousand thousands and the myriad myriads of archangels, and the whole multitude of his elect — Do not release these ones from their eternal punishment? And their voices shall have strength: Do not have mercy on these who are faithless toward you.

Do not concern yourself with those who have not known you — that you are God, and the Son of God. How was he seized? In an enmity of men who ran upon him in all their fury, with their swords and their clubs, as though dragging a robber before a governor — whereas we, when we are dragged along, are entreated with gentleness and with peace, to be taken to a banquet. And in what way shall they come to a soft repose — those who are to die faithless toward him? Or where shall they flee from the fury of the wrath of all his angels who shall rule, from one corner of the earth to the whole earth, on the day when he shall send them to gather in all the nations to his judgment-seat — the very one whom they dragged out to destroy in savagery? And there is no power that any meekness or gentleness born of wickedness or of envy should come to pass. In what way, then, shall they give drink⁸? — the destruction of soul and body, to those who denied Jesus. It is Christ who was patient upon the wood, while they hurled these wickednesses up at him, opening their mouths against him, giving their voices up over him like these lions and these bulls, with laughter and a great shout.

That we may hearken now to the words of the gospels, which are cried out to us in a voice of peace and of humility and of meekness — while he does all these things for them, and is not troubled; and they, not only were they troubled, but they fell backward, hurling their impiety⁹ down upon the earth. And they were fighting, threatening, striking at him — while he was not revealing all his divinity, that he might not destroy the earth in his wrath from that day on, on account of those who did evil to him. How is it, then, that his kingdom shall be the more filled with good men and just men, and with multitudes without sin, and sinners who all repented through the preaching of the gospel — but in the enmity and the hatred of the scribes and the Pharisees and the high priests and the elders and that whole people who did these things against him? Yet love overflowed, and the whole peace of his church and all his congregations; and again he will make his peace to increase upon us, and will set his love again within us, and we ourselves toward one another. He who sets his heart toward these words, that he renounce the devil, and that he forbid sin to his soul — that it destroy him not like a male swine, that it feed him not¹⁰ like a wild ass — is ignorant that there is more belonging to wisdom than to folly, just as there is more belonging to the light than to the darkness, says the Preacher [Ecclesiastes]. He who does not receive these words, and does not understand that a good thing is the seeing of the eyes — the more so, he who walks with his soul — nor perceives that the light is sweet: a good thing are our eyes that see the Christ. And again, there is more belonging to those who see the sun — which is he himself: Jesus, the Sun of righteousness. For there is no will belonging to the heavens that is greater than any will belonging to the world.

Perhaps there is some fool who will say, It is not poverty¹¹ that belongs to those who do the works of the flesh. Hear and see, that he whose hope is upon the Lord has said: In order that you not forsake the will of Jesus, follow your Lord and your God — because of the will of men; and in order that you not forsake purity, follow after — that is, virginity — because of some desire for marriage, when you do not know that you will fall by it; and in order that you not forsake the will of the works of the Spirit because of the works of the body that abound. He said, then: My soul did not desire to console itself; I remembered God, and I was gladdened. And you too, will you gladden yourself over works that shall bring you grief¹² as you do them, consoling yourself with men who are a reproach to God and to his laws? We cry out likewise: I have not sat in their council in mockery; I have not sat with a council of vanity¹³. I have hated the gathering of those who are wicked, and I will not sit with the impious. We too sit down with them, and we love them, and we are companions to them — behold, a consolation truly that is vanity! Behold, a companionship that makes the man an enemy to Jesus! For this is what we want: to console ourselves through Greek [pagan] men. If we would leave companions for ourselves, let us leave them for ourselves from among the godly men, and let us console one another with the consolation of which the saints spoke: that we console one another through the faith that is in us. Where are they, and where are we? While those who are faint of heart within will not say how many words there have been from yesterday to today, or how long it will remain¹⁴ — and why did we not say that we have grown long in our violence and our defilement and all our sins? — and that these peoples, hardly, who grew fat upon us, will scarcely be burnt up¹⁵ at last after all these words, like water spilled out, so that they shall pass away and be taken away in it. When we ourselves say, Let my soul receive honor in the Lord; let the meek hear and be glad: — magnify me¹⁶ with me¹⁷ in the Lord, and let us exalt his name together. Behold, I too will arise, says the one who has not sinned, that he keep himself yet again; and he in whom it is fixed, that he flee from it¹⁸ as it is being loosed from him through these words; and he who set it in his heart not to sin after he heard these words, that he not add to his doing. And all of us, if we set it in our heart not to sin from the day we heard these words, we believe, and we shall not be faithless — that Jesus will forgive us all the things we have done.