But that which He willed should be born through you for the benefit of many, you reserve for yourself alone—nay, you even take it away from yourself; for you would keep it more truly for yourself if you shared it with others. For the fruits of good deeds return upon those very ones who bestowed them, and the grace of generosity comes back to its author. Indeed it is written, 'Sow for yourselves unto righteousness.' Be a spiritual farmer; sow what may profit you. A good sowing is in the heart of widows. If the earth returns to you fruits more abundant than it received, how much more will the recompense of mercy repay you many times over what you have given! Moreover, O man, do you not know that the day of death may forestall the earth's yield, but mercy shuts out the onset of death?
Already they stand ready who demand back your soul, and do you still put off the fruits of your works? Do you still measure out long times for yourself to live? Fool, this night they require your soul of you. Well does He say 'this night.' By night the soul of the greedy man is demanded back: it begins in darkness and persists in darkness. For the greedy man it is always night; but day belongs to the righteous, to whom it is said, 'Truly, truly I say to you, today you shall be with Me in paradise.' But the fool is changed like the moon, while the righteous shall shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Rightly is he convicted of folly who has placed his hope in eating and drinking. And therefore the time of his death is pressed upon him, according to what is said by those very ones who are slaves to the belly, 'Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we shall die.'
Rightly is he called a fool who supplies bodily things to his soul, since he stores up what he knows not for whom he keeps it. And therefore it is said to him, 'The things you have prepared, whose shall they be?' Why do you daily measure and count and seal them up? Why do you weigh your gold and balance your silver? How much better it is to be a generous steward than an anxious guardian! How much would it profit you to be named the father of many orphans, rather than to have countless coins sealed up in a purse! For money is left behind here, but grace is carried with us to the Judge of our deserts. But perhaps you say what you commonly are wont to say: 'We ought not to give to one whom God has so cursed that He has willed him to be in want.' But the poor are not the cursed, since it is written:
'Blessed are the poor, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.' Not of the poor man, but of the rich, Scripture says, 'He who hoards up the price of grain shall be cursed.' Furthermore, do not inquire what each one deserves. Mercy is not wont to judge by merits, but to relieve necessities, to help the poor, not to scrutinize their righteousness; for it is written, 'Blessed is he who considers the needy and the poor.' Who is it that considers? He who has compassion on him, who recognizes him to be a partner of the same nature, who knows that the Lord made both the rich man and the poor man, who knows that he sanctifies his own fruits if he deals out from them some portion to the poor. Therefore, since you have the means to do good, do not delay, saying, 'Tomorrow I will give,' lest you lose the opportunity of giving.
Delay concerning another's deliverance is dangerous; it may happen that while you put it off, he dies. Rather run ahead before death, lest perchance greed should hinder you even tomorrow and your promises be cheated. But why should I say, why do you delay your generosity? Would that you did not hasten to plunder! Would that what you have coveted you did not extort! Would that you did not seek another's goods! Let pass what is denied you; bear patiently what is refused; do not listen to that Jezebel, who is greed, saying with a kind of overflow of vanity, 'I will give you the possession you desire.' You are sad, because you wish to consider the measure of justice, so as not to snatch another's goods; 'I have my own rights,' she says, 'I have my own laws. I will bring false accusation, to despoil; and so that the poor man's possession may be seized, his life shall be assailed.'
For what else is described in that history but the greed of the rich, which is an empty overflow, that snatches all things away after the manner of a torrent and carries off what will profit no use at all? This is Jezebel—not one, but manifold; not of one time, but of very many times. To all she speaks as she spoke to her husband Ahab: 'Arise, eat bread and come back to yourself. I will give you the vineyard of Naboth the Israelite.' And she wrote a letter in Ahab's name, and sealed it with his ring, and sent the letter to the elders and the freemen who dwelt with Naboth. And in the letter it was written:
'Proclaim a fast, and set Naboth as chief of the people, and set two men, sons of iniquity, opposite him, that they may bear false witness against him, saying, He blessed God and the king; and lead him out and stone him.' How plainly is the custom of the rich set forth! They are grieved if they do not snatch away what belongs to others; they renounce food, they fast—not to lessen sin, but to commit a crime. You may then see them assembling at the church, dutiful, humble, assiduous, that they may obtain the carrying out of their wickedness. But God says to them, 'This is not the fast I have chosen—not if you bend your neck like a hoop and strew ashes and sackcloth beneath you; not even thus shall you call a fast acceptable.'
'Not such a fast have I chosen,' says the Lord. 'But loose every bond of injustice, dissolve the obligations of violent dealings, release the broken into remission, and tear up every unjust contract. Break your bread to the hungry, and bring the needy who have no roof into your house. If you see one naked, clothe him, and you shall not despise the household of your own seed. Then shall your morning light break forth for you, and your healing shall speedily arise, and righteousness shall go before you, and the majesty of God shall surround you. Then you shall cry, and God shall hear you; while you are yet speaking, He shall say, Behold, I am here.' Do you hear, O rich man, what the Lord God says? And you come to the church not that you may bestow something on the poor, but that you may carry it off.
You fast, not that the cost of your banquet may profit the needy, but that you may gain spoil from the destitute. What do you want with a deed and a paper and a seal and a contract and a legal bond? Have you not heard, 'Loose every bond of injustice, dissolve the obligations of violent dealings, release the broken into remission, and tear up every unjust contract'? You offer me tablets; I recite to you the law of God. You write with ink; I rehearse to you the oracles of the prophets inscribed by the Spirit of God. You compose false testimonies; I demand the testimony of your own conscience, which you cannot escape or evade as your judge, whose witness you cannot refuse on that day when God shall reveal the secrets of men.
You say, 'I will tear down my granaries.' The Lord says, 'Rather let whatever is within the granary be assigned to the poor; let these storerooms profit the needy.' You say, 'I will build greater ones, and there I will gather all that has come to me.' The Lord says, 'Break your bread to the hungry.' You say, 'I will take away the poor man's house.' But the Lord says that you should bring the needy who have no roof into your house. How do you wish, O rich man, that God should hear you, when you think God ought not to be heard? If the will of the rich man is not gratified, a scene is staged, an injury to God is reckoned, if the rich man's petition is refused. 'He blessed God and the king,' she says—the two persons set as equal, that the affront might be equal. 'He blessed,' she says, 'God and the king.'
Lest the word 'cursed' should offend the rich man and he be wounded by the very sound of the term, the blessing is named in place of the curse. Two witnesses of iniquity are sought. With two witnesses Susanna was assailed; two witnesses also the synagogue found, to hurl false charges against Christ; with two witnesses the poor man is killed. So they led Naboth out and stoned him. Would that it had been permitted him at least to die among his own! Even his very burial the rich man begrudges the poor. 'And it came to pass,' it says, 'when Ahab heard that Naboth was dead, he rent his garments and covered himself with sackcloth. And it came to pass after these things that Ahab arose and went down to the vineyard of Naboth the Israelite to take possession of it.'
The rich grow angry and bring false accusations, that they may do harm, if they do not obtain what they have desired. But when by their slanders they have done harm, they pretend to grieve; sad, however, and as though mournful—not in heart but in countenance—they come forth to the place of the plundered possession and enjoy it by the wickedness of their oppression. By this the divine justice is stirred, and with deserved severity it condemns the greedy man, saying, 'You have killed and taken possession of the inheritance. Therefore in the place where dogs licked the blood of Naboth, in that very place shall dogs lick your blood, and harlots shall wash themselves in your blood.' How just, how severe a sentence—that the bitterness of death which he brought upon another, he himself should be forbidden to dissolve by the horror of his own death!
God looks upon the poor man left unburied, and therefore He decrees that the rich man should lie unburied—so that he who thought there was no need to spare even the dead might himself, though dead, pay the misery of his iniquity. And so his corpse, drenched in the gore of its own wound, in the very semblance of a funeral betrayed the cruelty of his life. When the poor man endured these things, the rich man was being convicted; when the rich man underwent them, the poor man was being avenged. But what does it mean that harlots washed in his blood—unless perhaps it was so that a certain harlotry might be shown to have lain in that savagery, that the king's treachery or his bloody luxury might be exposed; he who was so given to luxury that he craved a vegetable, so bloodthirsty that for a vegetable's sake he killed a man? A worthy penalty consumes the greedy man, a penalty worthy of greed.
Finally, Jezebel herself the dogs and the birds of heaven devoured, that it might be shown that the burial of the rich man becomes the prey of spiritual wickedness. Flee therefore, O rich man, from such an end. But you will flee such an end, if you flee such an outrage. Be not Ahab, so as to covet your neighbor's possession. Let not that deadly greed, Jezebel, dwell with you, who persuades you to bloody deeds, who does not call back your desires but drives them on, who makes you even more wretched once you have possessed what you desired, who makes you naked even when you have become rich. For everyone who has abundance judges himself the poorer, because he thinks whatever is possessed by others is lacking to himself. He is in want of the whole world whose desires the world cannot contain;
but to him who is faithful, the whole world is a wealth of riches. He flees from the whole world who, considering his own conscience, fears to be caught out. And so Ahab said to Elijah—according to the history; but according to the hidden meaning, the rich man says to the poor man—'Have you found me, O my enemy?' How wretched the conscience that grieved at being betrayed! And Elijah said to him, 'I have found you, because you have done evil in the sight of the Lord.' That man was a king, Ahab king of Samaria; Elijah was poor and in need of bread, who would have lacked the substance of his food had not the ravens supplied him nourishment. So cast down was the conscience of the sinner that it was not lifted up even by the pride of royal power.
And so, as though vile and degenerate, 'You have found me, my enemy,' he says, 'and have caught in me the things I believed were hidden. None of the secrets of my mind escape you; you have found me, my wounds lie open to you, my captivity is at hand.' The sinner is found out when his iniquity is exposed; but the just man says, 'You have tried me with fire, and no iniquity was found in me.' Adam, when he was hiding, was found; but of Moses no burial place at all was found. Ahab was found, Elijah not found; and the wisdom of God said, 'The wicked shall seek me and shall not find me.' Hence also in the Gospel Jesus was sought and not found. Guilt therefore betrays its own author. Hence also the Tishbite says:
'I have found you, because you have done evil in the sight of the Lord,' for the Lord hands over those guilty of sin; but the innocent He does not deliver into the power of their enemies. Thus Saul was seeking holy David and could not find him; but holy David found king Saul, whom he was not seeking, since the Lord delivered him into his power. Wealth therefore is captive, poverty is free. You are slaves, O rich—and a wretched servitude indeed—you who are slaves to error, slaves to desire, slaves to greed, which cannot be satisfied. It is a kind of insatiable whirlpool, more rapacious as it swallows what is poured in, and after the manner of a well it is fouled when it overflows with mire, gnawing at earth that will profit it nothing. By this example too it is fitting that you be warned.
For a well, if you draw nothing from it, is easily corrupted by sluggish idleness and degenerate stagnation; but when worked, it grows bright to the sight and sweet to the taste. So too a heap of riches piled up is sandy: by use it is beautiful, but by idleness it is held useless. Draw off, then, something from this well. Burning fire water will quench, and almsgiving will resist sins; but standing water quickly breeds worms. Let not your treasure stand still, nor your fire. It will stand in you, unless you turn it away by the works of your compassion. Consider, O rich man, in how great fires you are. Yours is the voice that says, 'Father Abraham, tell Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue.'
To you, then, accrues whatever you have bestowed on the needy; to you grows whatever you have diminished. You feed yourself with that food which you have given to the poor, since he who has mercy on the poor is himself fed, and the fruit is already in these things. Mercy is sown on earth, it sprouts in heaven; it is planted in the poor man, it springs up with God. 'Say not,' says God, 'Tomorrow I will give.' He who does not allow you to say 'Tomorrow I will give,' how should He allow you to say 'I will not give'? You do not bestow on the poor from your own, but you repay from His own; for what is common, given for the use of all, you alone usurp. The earth belongs to all, not to the rich; yet fewer are those who do not use their own than those who do. You repay a debt, then; you do not bestow what is not owed. And therefore Scripture says to you:
'Bow down your soul to the poor man, and pay back your debt, and answer peaceably in gentleness.' For why do you grow proud, O rich man? Why do you say to the poor, 'Touch me not'? Were you not conceived in the womb and born from the womb, just as the poor man was born? Why do you boast of the lineage of your nobility? You are wont to recount even the origins of your dogs as of the rich, and to proclaim the pedigree of your horses as of consuls. 'That one was begotten of that father and brought forth of that mother; that one glories in such a grandsire; that one exalts himself with his great-grandfathers.' But none of this helps the runner; the palm is not given to nobility but to the race. The vanquished is the more disfigured, in whom even his nobility is endangered.
Beware therefore, O rich man, lest the merits of your forebears blush in you—lest perchance it be said even to them, 'Why did you rear such a one? Why did you choose such a one for your heir?' The heir's merit lies not in gilded ceilings nor in disks of porphyry. That praise belongs not to men but to metals, in which men are punished. Through the needy gold is sought, and to the needy it is denied. They labor to seek; they labor to find what they know not how to keep. Yet I marvel why you, the rich, think yourselves to be boasted of for it, since gold is rather the material of offense than a grace meriting commendation; for gold too is a wood of stumbling, and woe to those who pursue it.
Indeed, blessed is the rich man who is found without blemish, who has not gone after gold nor hoped in treasures of money. But as though he could not be found, one desires that such a man be pointed out to him. 'Who is he?' it says, 'and we will praise him; for he has done what we ought rather to admire as something novel than to recognize as something common.' And so he who could be proved in riches—he is truly perfect and worthy of glory. 'Who is he,' it says, 'who could transgress and has not transgressed, and could do evil and has not done it?' Gold, therefore, in which is so great an enticement to error, commends itself to you not so much by its own grace as by men's punishment. Or do spacious halls exalt you, which ought rather to prick your conscience, because, while they take in crowds, they shut out the voice of the poor?
Although it profits nothing for that voice to be heard, which even when heard profits nothing. Furthermore, does not your very hall of shame admonish you—you who by building wish to surpass your own riches, yet do not outdo them? You clothe walls, you strip men bare. A naked man cries out before your house, and you neglect him; a naked man cries out, and you are anxious with what marbles you may clothe your pavements. The poor man seeks money and has none; a man begs for bread, and your horse champs gold beneath his teeth. But costly ornaments delight you, while others have no grain. How great, O rich man, a judgment you take upon yourself! The people hunger, and you lock up your granaries; the people lament, and you turn over your gem.
Unhappy man, in whose power it lies to defend the souls of so many from death, and yet there is no will to do it! The gem of your ring could have saved the life of a whole people. Hear plainly what kind of acclamation befits a rich man. 'I delivered,' he says, 'the poor man from the hand of the mighty, and the orphan who had no helper I helped. The blessing of him that was perishing came upon me, and the mouth of the widow blessed me. I put on righteousness; I was an eye to the blind and a foot to the lame; I was a father to the weak.' And further below: 'Before my doors no stranger lodged, but my door was open to everyone who came. And if I have sinned unwittingly, I did not hide my fault, nor did I stand in awe of the multitude of the people so as not to declare it in their presence. If I have suffered the weak to go forth from my door with empty bosom...'
He also recalled that the bond he held of his debtor he gave back torn up, without recovery of the debt. For why should I unfold even those things—that he says he wept over every sick man and groaned, when he saw a man in necessity and himself in good things, but that the days of evils were then more truly his own, when he perceived himself to have abundance and others to be in want? If he says this, who never made the widow's eye to waste away, who never ate his bread alone and did not give to the orphan,
whom from his youth he nourished, fed, and reared with a parent's affection, who never despised the naked, who covered the dying, who warmed the shoulders of the weak with the fleeces of his own sheep, who did not oppress the orphan, who never delighted in riches, who never rejoiced at the downfall of his enemies—if one who did these things began to be in want from the heights of riches, if from so great a patrimony he carried back nothing but the fruit of mercy alone, what is to become of you, who know not how to use your patrimony, who amid the heights of riches endure days of beggary, because you give to none and relieve none? You are therefore the guardian, not the lord, of your means, you who bury gold in the earth. You are surely its servant, not its master. But where your treasure is, there is your heart also.
So you have buried your heart in the earth with that gold. Rather, sell the gold and buy salvation; sell the precious stone and buy the kingdom of God; sell the field and redeem for yourself eternal life. I urge true things, because I build up the words of truth. 'If you wish to be perfect,' He says, 'sell all whatever you have and give to the poor, and you shall have treasure in heaven.' And do not be saddened when you hear this, lest it be said to you too, 'How hard shall they who have money enter into the kingdom of God!' Rather, when you read these things, consider that death can snatch these from you, that a superior power can take them away; and further, that you are asked for small things in exchange for great, perishable for eternal, treasures of money for treasures of grace. These corrupt, those abide. Consider that you do not possess these alone.
The moth possesses it with you, the rust possesses it, which consumes money. These partners greed has given you. But see what debtors grace gives you: 'The lips of the righteous shall bless him who is generous with bread, and the testimony of his goodness shall stand.' It makes God the Father your debtor, who, for the gift by which the poor man was helped, pays interest as the debtor of a good creditor. It makes the Son your debtor, who says, 'I was hungry and you gave me to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me to drink, I was a stranger and you took me in, naked and you covered me.' For what has been bestowed on each of the least, He says was bestowed on Himself. You know not, O man, how to build up riches. If you wish to be rich, be poor to the world, that you may be rich to God.
He who is rich in faith is rich toward God; he who is rich in mercy is rich toward God; he who is rich in simplicity is rich toward God; the rich in wisdom, the rich in knowledge are rich toward God. There are those who abound in poverty and those who are in want amid riches. The poor abound, whose deep poverty has abounded in the riches of their own simplicity; but the rich have been in want and have hungered. For not idly is it written, 'The poor of the rich shall be made rulers, and their own servants shall lend to their masters,' because the rich and the masters sow superfluous and evil things, from which they gather no fruit, but reap thorns. And therefore the rich shall be made subject to the poor, and masters shall lend spiritual things from their servants—just as the rich man begged that poor Lazarus might lend him a drop of water.
You too, O rich man, can fulfill this saying. Be generous to the poor man, and you have lent to the Lord; for he who is generous to the poor lends to God. Beautifully does holy David, in the seventy-fifth psalm, singing a hymn to God written 'unto the Assyrian'—that is, against the Assyrian of spiritual wickedness, the empty and vain prince of this world—begin thus: 'God is known in Judah.' That is, not among the rich, not among the noble and the powerful, but in a soul that confesses Him God is known. 'And in Israel,' he says, 'great is His name'—not among princes and consuls, but in him who sees God; for he himself is Israel, in whom a deep faith was able to attain to the knowledge of God.
'And His place,' he says, 'was made in peace,' where a tranquil disposition is tossed by no waves of diverse desires, troubled by no storms of greed, set ablaze by no fires of riches to be sought. He it is who gazes upon eternal things and dwells in Zion, shattering all the instruments of spiritual wars, breaking the bows by which the devil, aiming his fiery darts, is wont to brand grievous passions upon the breasts of men. But those darts cannot harm the just man, to whom God is light, and who is so far from the horror of murky shadows that the adversary can have no place in him—he who is wont to pour himself even into princes.
As he poured himself into Judas the traitor, cutting down, as it were in a forest of trees, the gates of faith, that he might have entry into his heart and possess the tabernacle of the eternal name dedicated by the gift of the apostolate conferred upon him. So that wicked usurper cuts down the gates, to enter violently; but the Lord, as a loving master, illumines His little servants, and by their shining merits and the brightness of their virtues He lights up the darkness of this world. This grace, with God, those possess who are peaceable and meek, grounded in the sober tranquility of their mind; but the foolish in heart are troubled, and they are themselves the authors of their own agitation, because they are rolled about in the heat of their desires and toss upon a kind of surging sea. Who these are, he showed expressly by saying:
'all the men of riches.' 'All,' he said; he excepted none. And well did he call them 'men of riches,' not 'the riches of men,' to show that they are not the possessors of riches but are possessed by their own riches; for the possession ought to belong to the possessor, not the possessor to the possession. Whoever therefore does not use his patrimony as a possession, who knows not how to be generous to the poor and to dispense, he is the little slave, not the lord, of his means, because he guards another's goods like a servant and does not use his own as a master would. In such a disposition, then, we say that he is a man of riches, not the riches of the man.
For understanding is good to those who use it; but he who does not understand, that understanding certainly cannot claim grace for itself, and therefore, lulled by the sleep of drunkenness, he fell asleep. Men of this kind, then, sleep their own sleep—that is, their own sleep, not Christ's, do they sleep. And those who do not sleep the sleep of Christ do not have the rest of Christ; they do not rise with the resurrection of Christ, who says, 'I slept and rested and rose again, for the Lord shall sustain me.' In this world too they slumber who are deemed worthy of heavenly rebuke—they who have mounted horses they could not rein in. We read elsewhere, when the Church or the soul speaks, 'The chariot of Amminadab set me.'
If, then, the soul is a chariot, see whether the flesh be the horse, and the driver the vigor of the mind, which governs the flesh and curbs its motions, like certain horses, with the reins of prudence. They slumbered, then, who mounted the pleasures of the body, governing them with no control. Hence too he chose to call them 'riders' rather than 'horsemen' or 'drivers.' For the driver, with discipline and skill, drives the horses according to his own judgment, whether to urge them on as they run, or to turn back the untamed, or to recall the wearied, or to bring round the gentle according to his will. Hence, when Elijah was taken up and borne as it were to heaven on a chariot, Elisha cried out to him, 'Father, father, the driver of Israel and its horseman!'—that is:
'You who governed the Lord's people with good guidance, by the merit of your steadfastness received these chariots, these horses that run toward divine things, because the Lord approved you as a governor of human minds; and therefore, as a good charioteer, victor in the contest, you are crowned with an eternal reward.' In the prophet Habakkuk also it is read, said to the Lord Himself: 'You shall mount upon your horses, and your horsemanship is salvation'; for He drove His apostles, whom He directed through diverse regions, that they might preach the Gospel throughout the whole world. 'You shall mount,' it says, as the ruler of the horses, not as a mere rider. For the horseman also mounts, but to govern, not merely to sit, since the idle and slothful man cannot bring forth the advance of a drowsy mind. But of the horseman it is read:
'And the horseman shall fall backward, awaiting the salvation of the Lord.' For since no one is without a fall, even if someone as a horseman should fall and be bent down by some earthly vices, yet if he does not cast away the hope of rising again, relying on the divine mercy he attains to salvation. But of the rider there is a manifest sign that he is held blameworthy, when Moses himself says in the song of Exodus, 'The horse and the rider He cast into the sea.' And in Zechariah the Lord spoke, saying, 'I will strike every horse with madness, and its rider with folly.' He did not say only the horse, but also the rider, just as you have in Exodus too: 'the horse and the rider.'