From those [things] which have hitherto been expounded, many [lessons] can well be gathered; but I will point [my] finger at a few. And first, indeed, the Apostles praise her faith — but not [it] alone, but [faith] made pregnant and animated by good work: St. Paul, Heb. 11 v. 31: “By faith,” he says, “Rahab the harlot did not perish with the unbelieving, receiving the spies in peace.” St. James ch. 2 v. 25: “Was not Rahab the harlot justified by works, receiving the messengers and casting [them] out by another way?” St. Chrysostom, homily 2 on the Epistle to the Romans, before the Moral [portion]: “By faith Rahab the harlot, having received the scouts from her [i.e. the city], did not perish together with the unbelieving, nor said she to herself: How could these, since they are captives, fugitives, exiles, and lead the life of wanderers, force us — the lords of the city, of the ramparts, and of the towers — subdued under their power? For if she had said this to herself, she would have destroyed both herself and them together. Which very [thing] their elders did, who were then saved. For those [elders], forsooth — since, when they saw great and enormous men, [they set about] to dispute the manner of victory — all perished, with no war, no battle-line drawn up. You see how great a ruin unbelief [is], [and] how great a wall the same faith is? For [unbelief] cast down many thousands; but [faith] not only preserved a harlot woman, but even made [her] the protectress [προστάτιν, prostatin] of so great a people.”
Peter Damian bk. 6 epist. 5: “Rahab, because she hid the spies of Israel from the face of the raging tyrant, escaped the swords of the Jericho[ite] slaughter; and a gentile brothel was translated into the fellowship of the Israelites, while she furnished, to their messengers, the means [argument] of a life-saving flight.” And this Calvin too confesses, saying (fol. 11): “Whoever shall prudently weigh all the circumstances will easily judge [that] she was endowed with a living faith”; and, [on] the following page, he acknowledges [that] her faith was implicit — and ineptly subjoins: “I admit [it] was only a germ of piety, which was not yet sufficient for eternal salvation.” But what more was required? Does not whoever has a living faith have charity, have the grace of God, [and] is [he not] a son of God, whom an eternal inheritance awaits? Then the Apostles teach us, by name, that very duty of hospitality — [under the person] of these same [messengers] interpreted — of which [in] Heb. 13 v. 2: “And do not forget hospitality. By this some have lain hidden, [and], receiving Angels into hospitality.” And although this is most truly understood of Abraham and Lot — who, beyond all their own opinion, and quite unknowing, were held worthy by God to receive Angels into hospitality, Genes. 18 & 19 — it can nonetheless in some way be understood of our Rahab too: if, namely, we say that the King’s fury, the eyes of the guards, and the ruin and burning of the falling city lay hidden from her, and thus she escaped. For the Greek word for “to lie hidden [latere]” can be so taken; and these spies are called by St. James, in the cited place, ἄγγελοι [angeloi, “messengers/angels”]. Now the change and repentance of her from her former lascivious life — does it not exhibit to us another Magdalene of the Old Testament? Not ill did Cicero, in the oration for Caelius, and Athenaeus bk. 13, say [that] both those men and those women who emerge from allurements of this kind [are] the greater in virtue and advanced in every duty—
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—[the greater] afterward. “Amen I say to you,” says the Lord, Matth. 21 v. 31, “that publicans and harlots go before you into the kingdom of God.” By all means St. Ephrem is to be read, [in his] sermon On penitence, Tom. 1 fol. 158; [and] St. Chrysostom, hom. 5 On penitence. And [Rahab is] so much the worthier of imitation, by how much sooner she came to her senses. For she was, as [was] said above, younger in age still — whereas certain stolid [men], unmindful of the future or of chances or of punishments, wish to wait for gray hairs and old-womanish wrinkles [before] they come to their senses; to whom I should greatly advise [that] they not think [it] a burden to read and weigh St. Chrysostom’s homily 22 on 2 Corinthians. For the Church, too, on the fifth Sunday of the month of August, lect. 4, reads and weighs her [Rahab] at Matins as sacrosanct. But also prudence shines forth in Rahab not small: while from past [things] she so dexterously gathers the future, and providently discerns and embraces what is to be salutarily done by her; while too she so cleverly covers her guests, dismisses [them] from the city, and abroad helps [them] as much as she can — by good counsel, namely, and (as I think) by food for the journey. Now taciturnity and silence is a rare thing in a woman, and therefore excellent — [a thing] which, as the Philosopher [Aristotle] says (Politics 1 ch. last), procures her great praise. But Rahab most zealously kept the secret which was committed to her by the spies, and most zealously brought [it] about that her own [people] too kept [it]. In these [things] her charity and love too is to be praised — [she] who did not wish [her family] without a share in the safety [she had] found; but rather solicitous, almost, about them than about herself (as [in] quest. 18 we saw), she at once stipulated their life and fortunes from the spies: “That you save,” she says, “my father and mother, my brothers and sisters, and all [things] that are theirs.” O how gladly, if she could, would she have saved the whole fatherland and all the citizens!
Let us too pray for other holy spies — Angels, Apostles, and other heaven-dwellers — through whom, as the true ministers of Joshua [Jesus], safety is obtained and covenanted for us: that, if we have kinsfolk bound by heresy or by the chains of certain sins, and liable to eternal death, they be freed and translated into the Catholic Church of God and [into its] safe asylum. “Rouse up,” says St. Augustine, on Psalm 33, “love in yourselves, brothers, and cry to each one of you, and say: Magnify the Lord with me. Let this fervour be in us. Why are these [words] recited and expounded to us? If you love God, seize all who are joined to you to the love of God, and all who are in your house. If the body of CHRIST — that is, the unity of the Church — is loved by you, seize them to the enjoying [of it], and say: Magnify the Lord with me. And let us exalt his name together [in idipsum]. What is ‘let us exalt his name together’? This is: into one. For many manuscripts have thus: ‘Magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt his name into one’; whether it be said ‘together’ or ‘into one,’ this same [thing] is said. Therefore seize whom you can — by exhorting, by carrying, by asking, by disputing, by rendering a reason [account], with meekness, with gentleness. Seize [them] to love: that, if they magnify the Lord, they may magnify [him] into one.” See St. Prosper bk. 3 On the contemplative life ch. 22. St. Ambrose, sermon 80: “Let us offer the faith [to] our little household, that whoever is faithful may receive [it], lest perhaps the reckoning of their safety be sought—”
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—[lest] the reckoning of their safety be sought from us, because their life hangs on our judgment. And [in] Ps. 37 [38]: “Rahab the harlot, that foreigner of the [worldly] age, nonetheless judged [that] her soul was to be redeemed not only by the contempt of all [things] which she had, but even by the peril of [her] life — [she] who denied the spies of Jesus [Joshua] son of Nun to her own citizens seeking [them], and preferred to hide the enemies of [her] fatherland (yet the legates of the faith) rather than betray [them]. Neither the threat of the citizens, nor the perils of the wars, nor the burnings of [her] fatherland, nor the dangers of her own [people] terrified her. Learn, O man, learn, O Christian, how you ought to follow the true JESUS — when a woman despised all her own [things], and followed JESUS in figure, on account of the likeness of the name.”