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Let us understand what those things are which sully a man, and when we have understood let us shun them. In the church we see a certain habit prevailing amongst the majority of men—how they are eager to come in with spotless clothes and clean hands, whilst they do not trouble themselves about how they are to offer up a pure heart to God. I say this, not forbidding men to wash their hands or their mouths; my wish, however, is that they should wash them in the right way, not with water alone, but rather with virtues. For slandering, blasphemy, foul language, bad words, laughter at low jokes, are the mouth’s defilement. If, then, you perceive that you are not dwelling on any of these things, nor guilty of this uncleanness, approach with good heart; if, on the contrary, you have laid yourself open to these numerous stains, why are you so foolish as to rinse your tongue with water whilst you carry in it this pernicious and destructive impurity? Tell me, now, if you had dirt or dung in your hands, would you dare to utter a prayer? Certainly not. Yet one is not at all harmful, and the other is perdition. How comes it that you are particular in things of no consequence, and negligent about the prohibited ones? ‘What, then,’ you ask, ‘are we not to go on praying?’ Certainly you are, but not in this filthy condition, nor with this dirt upon you. ‘What am I to do,’ you ask, ‘if I fall by accident?’ Then, purify yourself. How, and in what manner? Be in mourning and groaning, give alms, apologise to the man you have insulted, and reconcile him to yourself by these things; purify your tongue in order that you may incite the less the anger of God. For if anyone with his hands full of mud were to grasp your feet in supplication, not only would you not listen to him, but you would kick him away; how, then, are you so bold as to approach God in this way? The tongue of those who pray is a hand, and through it we touch the knees of God.[6] Therefore do not defile that tongue, lest He should say to you, And when you multiply your prayer I will not hear. For, in the hand of the tongue are life and death; and, again, By thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned. Therefore guard the tongue more carefully than the pupil of the eye. The tongue is the horse of a king. If you put a bridle upon him and teach him to walk at a measured pace, the king will rest and lean upon him; but if you allow him to be at large unbridled, and to be unmanageable, he becomes the vehicle of the devil and his angels.... Dishonour not the tongue, for how will it pray for you when it has lost its proper confidence? Adorn it rather with mildness and humility; make it worthy of the God Whom you are invoking; fill it with words of kindness and much almsgiving. For there is an alms which is to be given by words: The good word is better than the gift; and, again, Answer the poor man in mildness and gentleness. And make the rest of your time profitable by dwelling on the divine laws. Let all thy conversation be on the law of the Most High. Thus adorning ourselves, let us go forth to the King and fall at His feet, not with the body only, but with our mind. Let us consider Whom we go to, for what purpose, and what it is we wish to accomplish. We go to that God from Whom the seraphim turned away their gaze, unable to bear His splendour, on Whom the earth trembles to look. We go to God, Who is in the region of light inaccessible. And we are going to Him in order to escape hell, for the remission of our sins, to deliver ourselves from those overwhelming penalties, for the winning of heaven and the goods which are there.
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Golden Vessels and Golden Hearts.
(Homilies on St. Matthew, l., p. 62.)
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Let us then, too, touch the hem of His garment, or rather, if we please, we have Himself whole and entire. For His body too is now put before us, not His garment only, but His very body, not to be merely touched, but to be eaten and taken away. Let us therefore approach with faith, each one with his own infirmity. For if those who touched the hem of His garment drew forth so much strength, how much more those who possess the whole of Him? Approaching with faith is not only taking what is there before us, but touching with a pure heart, and being so disposed as if we were going to meet Christ Himself. What matters it if you hear no voice? You see Him before you, or rather you do hear a voice, that of Himself speaking through the Evangelists. Believe, therefore, that even now there is that banquet at which He Himself sat. Nor is this banquet different from that; nor is ours the work of a man, and that the work of God, but God is the worker now as He was then. When, then, you see the priest offering it to you, think that it is not the priest who is doing this, but that it is the hand of Christ which is presenting it. Just as, when he baptises, it is not he who is baptising you, but it is God Who is holding your head with an invisible power, and neither angel nor archangel nor anyone else whatsoever presumes to approach and touch you; so it is now. For whenever God generates, it is His gift alone. Do you not know how those who adopt sons in this world do not entrust their adoption to servants, but appear themselves in the court? In like manner God has not entrusted His gift to angels, but He is Himself present, commanding, and saying, You shall call no man your father upon earth, not wishing you to dishonour your natural parents, but that before all the rest you may prefer Him Who created you, and Who wrote your name amongst His children. For He Who gives more, that is, Who gives Himself, will all the more certainly not disdain to make over His body to you. Let us then, both priests and laity, consider what that is of which we have been made worthy; let us consider and be in awe. He gave us to be filled with His sacred flesh, and placed before us Himself offered up in sacrifice. Now, what will our excuse be, if feeding on such food we commit such sins; when we eat the Lamb and are become wolves; when we eat the sheep and ravage like lions? For this mystery obliges us to purify ourselves not only from robbery but from the merest enmity. This mystery is indeed a mystery of peace; it cannot be conciliated with a struggle for money. For if He did not spare Himself for our sakes, what should we deserve for hoarding up money and neglecting our soul, on which account He did not spare Himself? God indeed bound the Jews to a remembrance of their domestic blessings every year at the feasts, but you He has bound to a daily remembrance, so to say, through these mysteries. Be not, then, ashamed of the cross, for these are our august things, these are our mysteries, we are adorned with this gift, and it is our beauty. Even when I say that He stretched the firmament overhead, and unfolded earth and sea, that He sent forth prophets and angels, I speak of nothing equal to this. This is the fountain-head of all good, that He did not spare His only Son in order to save alienated servants. Therefore, let neither Judas nor Simon approach this table, for avarice destroyed both one and the other. Let us avoid this abyss, and think not that it is sufficient for our salvation, if, after stripping widows and orphans, we offer a cup of gold and precious stones for this table. If you wish to show honour to the sacrifice, offer your soul for whose sake it was sacrificed. Make this golden, for if it should be inferior to lead and potsherd, what is the gain of the vessel being of gold? Then, do not let us be concerned only about how we are to offer a vessel of gold, but let it be also a vessel of honest labours, for that which is without avarice is more precious than gold. The church is neither a gold nor a silver-smith’s shop, but an assembly of angels, therefore souls are what we want, and these things are acceptable to God through souls. The table which He then used was not of silver, nor was the chalice a golden one out of which Christ gave His own blood to His disciples; but all those things were sacred and terrible, since He filled them with the Spirit. Would you honour the body of Christ? Leave Him not naked, nor honour Him there with silk coverings, passing Him by outside in cold and nakedness. He who said, This is My body, ratifying the deed by His word, said likewise, You saw Me in want and did not feed Me, and, again, Inasmuch as you did not do it for one of the least of these, you did it not for Me. For the former does not require the giving of garments but a pure heart, whereas the latter demands great attention. Let us, then, learn to be wise and to honour Christ as He Himself wishes, for to Him Who is honoured, that honour is the sweetest which He chooses for Himself, not that which may be according to our judgment. Since Peter, too, thought to honour Him by forbidding Him to wash his feet, he was not showing honour, but the reverse. So in your case do you honour Him with the honour which He Himself laid down, by giving your riches to the poor. God has no need of golden vessels, but of golden hearts.
True Almsgiving.
(Homilies on St. Paul’s Second Epistle to the Corinthians, xvi., vol. iii., p. 182.)
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Charity is, indeed, a great thing, and a gift of God, and when it is rightly ordered, likens us to God Himself as far as that is possible; for it is charity which makes the man. Some one, at least, wishing to characterise man, did it in these words: Man is great, and the merciful man is honourable. Kindness is better than raising up the dead. For it is a much greater thing to feed Christ in His hunger than to raise the dead in the name of Jesus. By feeding Christ you confer a benefit upon Him; in the other case He is benefiting you. And the reward is for doing, not for receiving. As to the signs, you are under an obligation to God, but with regard to the almsgiving, you put God under an obligation to you. It is an alms when you give willingly, generously, thinking that you are rather taking than giving; when you give as if you were receiving something, as gaining rather than losing, otherwise there would be no thanks in it. He who helps his neighbour should be in gladness, not in gloom. In truth, is it not foolish that in removing the despondency of another you yourself should be despondent? You will not suffer it to be a real alms. If you are sad because you are taking away another man’s sadness, you are giving a proof of extreme unkindness and inhumanity; it is better to leave it undone than to do it in this way. Why are you sad at all? Is it for fear of diminishing your money? If this is your motive, then do not give; if you are not encouraged by the thought that it will be made up to you over and above in heaven, do not put out your hand in alms-giving. Perhaps you look for a compensation in this world. What is the good of this? Let your alms be alms and not traffic. Now, many have received their due here on earth, yet not so that they will be on this account much better than those who have not; these have been a few of the weaker, since they did not go vigorously after the things above. And like greedy and common people, slaves of their belly, who, called to a royal table, and not waiting for the right time, do as children do, spoil their own mirth by snatching up and satiating themselves with inferior food: so, indeed, is it that they who seek and receive temporal good things lessen the reward above. Again, in lending your money, you become desirous of securing the capital after a time, or, perhaps, of not spending it, so that you may lay up more for the future, whereas in this case you demand it at once, although you are not always to be here, but for ever there. Nor are you to be judged here, but to give an account there. Supposing that a man prepared houses for you where you did not mean to stay, you would view his act as a penalty; and would you wish to grow rich in a place from which you may be called away before the evening? Know you not that we are spending our time in a foreign land, like sojourners and strangers, and that sojourners may be cast out when they are not thinking of it or expecting it. And this is our case. So it is that we leave behind us whatever we may have busied ourselves with on earth. Our Master does not allow us to take our labours with us, whether it is that we build houses, or buy estates, or slaves, or furniture, or anything else of the kind. Not only He does not allow us to go away with them, but He refuses you a reward for them. He told you beforehand that you should not build or spend with the property of others, but with your own. Why, then, leaving your own, do you labour with what is not yours, and squander it so that you will lose both your labour and your reward, and endure the extremity of punishment? Do not so act, I beseech you; but, as we are sojourners by nature, let us become so by choice, so that we may not be aliens there, rejected without honour. If we wish to be citizens in this world we shall be so neither here nor there, but if we remain sojourners, and spend our time after the fashion of sojourners, we shall receive the assurance of being citizens both here and there. For the just man, even with nothing, will be as free on earth with the common property of all as if it were his own, and when he departs hence to heaven he will look upon the eternal dwelling-places; he will neither suffer any unpleasantness in this world, nor will any man be able to make him a sojourner, who has the whole world for his city; and in taking possession of his country, he will, moreover, receive true riches. In order, then, that we may gain both the things of time and the things of eternity, let us use present goods in the right way. Thus we shall become citizens of heaven, and enjoy much consolation. May this be the portion of us all, through the love and mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ, to Whom, with the Father and the Holy Ghost, be glory and power for ever. Amen.