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Yet you do give, and you give more than others; you give to the needy man what others cannot bestow; you give to the needy man that, after which he can no longer be in want; you give to the needy man what even the rich long to receive; you give to the needy man what those who possess this silver and gold know not how to confer, because avarice hinders them; you give to the needy man whereby you make him richer than the rich. You have stirred up my soul, I long for this gift of yours. Speak, I pray, what you give. Do not keep me long in suspense; I desire to ask, if you will quickly pay. But you have paid quickly: you did not put off the needy, you did not despise the prayer of the poor man, you did not make him despair any longer, you did not go up to the temple empty-handed, saying: Silver and gold I have not. Those alone do not go up with full hands who possess gold and silver:
the poor man also went up, not empty-handed; he also went up not empty-handed, because he had no gold and silver. Let us hear what this poor man gives. But what I have, he says, that I give you. In the name of Jesus of Nazareth, rise up and walk. O poverty to be desired, O destitution that is richer! He was lame to whom the rich gave; one poor man gave, and at once he who was lame was made whole. The just man therefore has what he may lend, he has also silver that he may lend: he lends his words. This is the just man's silver; for the words of the Lord are chaste words, silver tried in the fire, proved of the earth, refined sevenfold. This he lends who receives the Law, who meditates on the Law, who practises the Law: this Peter lent, this Paul lent.
To whom it is said that they should go to the men of the nations: to Peter, to Cornelius the centurion, to whom it is said: Rise and go, doubting nothing, for I have sent them. And he rose and went. And below he said: Can we forbid water, that these should not be baptized who have received the Holy Spirit? And he ordered them to be baptized — that is, You shall lend to the nations, that you may forgive sins, take away debts; but you yourself shall not borrow; for the sinner borrows and does not repay his sins, because he is a sinner. To Paul it is said: You shall lend to the nations — he who was sent to the nations; to John it is said: You shall lend to the nations; to James it is said... — to whom it was said: Go, baptize the nations. To the people of the fathers it is said:
If you keep the commandments, you shall be blessed and shall lend the word to the nations. Finally, that this is not said of money the following words signify: You shall be ruler over many nations, but over you no one shall rule. The Lord your God shall set you as the head and not as the tail, and you shall then be above and not beneath, if you hearken to the voice of the Lord your God. And it follows: But if you will not hear, cursed shall you be in the city and cursed shall you be in the field. And below: Cursed the offspring of your womb. It is not money assuredly that makes one blessed, but the knowledge of God, the preaching of the word, if we lend out the grace of the Lord, if we confer the oracles of the Lord upon the needy, if we observe the heavenly commandments. And conversely it does not bring a curse if there is no money to lend out;
but if zeal is wanting, if the observance of the heavenly statutes is wanting, you shall be cursed. Finally, the mystery of the Church is plainly expressed. For first He said to the disciple of the Law: If you hear the Law and keep it, you shall lend to the nations. And this was done by our fathers. Moses lent to the nations, who won over proselytes; Joshua lent; Gideon lent; Samuel, David, Solomon, Elijah, Elisha lent, and if anyone wished to know the word, he went to them: the queen of the south came to hear the wisdom of Solomon. When the people of the Jews began not to keep the Law, the strangers began — that is, those born of the people — the loan.
Those who believed in the Lord, who is our food, lent the interpretation of the Scriptures to that ancient people. Timothy, sprung from a Greek father, lent the word to the Jews when he had received the priesthood; and to this day we priests in the Church lend the word to the Jews who have passed over from the synagogue to the Church; we lend both the new and the old money. For what they once had they have no longer; they have eyes and see not, they have ears and hear not, they have money and have it not, because they know not its use, they know not its value, they have not recognized its image and its form. For if they had recognized it, they would never have denied the Author of that money, saying: We will not have this man to reign over us.
And he indeed, having received the kingdom, returning, ordered his servants to be called, to whom he had given the money, and he commended those who had lent the money; but to him who had kept the money idle, his lord answered: You knew that I am a harsh man; I take up what I did not lay down and reap what I did not sow. And why did you not put my money at the bank? And I, coming, would surely have demanded it with interest.
You have heard what is the money of the good lender, what money acquires good interest, what money does not bring infamy upon the lender, does not oppress the debtor, what money rust cannot cover over nor the moth penetrate, what money is not from an earthly treasure but from an eternal one, what money makes the receiver rich and yet diminishes nothing for the lender. This money bears interest, so that it yields not a hundredth part of what you have given, but a hundredfold fruit. Open wide, therefore, the bosom of your mind, that you may take in the amount of this money counted out to you; bend the gaze of your heart, that you may recognize the image and inscription of this money.
Shake out this money assuredly, the tablet upon the table of your soul, which should be stable in virtues; set it foursquare, store it in the treasure-house of your breast, from which the learned scribe brings forth things new and old. You see what sort of money this is, how it joins in itself names hateful to one another — creditor and debtor. I who was inveighing against lenders now call the debtor forth. I desire that you be lenders of this money, that those who would take a loan may of their own accord hasten to you, through which you may acquire not a coin but a kingdom, through which you may seek not curses but the grace of blessing. This money the people of the nations lends, who knew how to receive what was lent, who knew how to discern, who knew how to shake it out.
You refused, in need of the spiritual loan: you began to be in want. Of you therefore it was said by the Son of God: The sinner shall borrow and shall not repay. To you it is said: The stranger who is in you shall ascend above you, but you shall descend to the lowest. For he knows not the height who is ignorant of Christ; he is ever in hell who does not ascend to Christ; but on the height is the people that receives the word. This people has the whole patrimony of faith; concerning it the Law says: This man shall lend to you, but you shall not lend to him; this man shall be your head, but you shall be the tail — that is, he shall be first, you the last and the outcast. I will take away from Judea head and tail, beginning and end: the beginning is Christ, who, when asked who He was, answered: The Beginning, that which I also speak to you.
He calls Christ also the End; for He is the end of the Law unto righteousness for everyone who believes. Therefore he who does not believe unto righteousness has neither beginning nor end, but is himself his own end. We have learned the lawful loan; let us learn also the pledge, which the Law commands to be returned before sunset. What this is, hear the Apostle saying: God has given the pledge of the Spirit in our hearts. Now in three ways it is called a pledge (pignus), a thing entrusted (commendatum), and a thing deposited (depositum). They call a pledge that which is received in exchange for a borrowed sum; but a thing entrusted and deposited is what we have committed to someone for safekeeping. Whence the Apostle says: I know whom I have believed, and I am sure that He is able to guard what I have entrusted unto that day. He also taught what the deposit is, saying:
Guard the good deposit through the Holy Spirit, who dwells in us. Is the Spirit the guardian of silver and gold entrusted to Him, or is money guarded by the Holy Spirit? The spiritual pledge therefore is guarded by the Spirit, lest the birds of the air come and carry it off from our hearts. Let us ask, then, that Christ may guard this pledge in us, which He Himself gave, and may preserve His deposit and the thing entrusted; for He has received nothing from us, but He Himself has entrusted to us what was not ours. And therefore he suffers loss of his honour who violates another's deposit.
If we ought to violate a man's entrusted property by no fraud, how much more does it befit us to keep the divine and spiritual deposit in good faith, lest we incur grievous losses both of reputation and of advantage! This therefore is the pledge which the Law forbids to be taken in pledge and to be carried off by violence. For thus the Scripture has it: If your neighbour owes you any debt whatsoever, you shall not go into his house to take the pledge as security, and the man with whom your debt lies shall bring out the pledge to you outside. But if that man is poor, you shall not sleep upon his pledge, but you shall surely restore to him his pledge at sunset, and he shall sleep in his garment and shall bless you, and it shall be reckoned to you as mercy. And so you will say to me:
Behold, the Law forbade the pledge to be carried off, not to be received, and commanded it to be returned to the poor man, not to all. And concerning bodily pledges indeed Ezra also has sufficiently taught us, so that you lenders cannot now go against the declaration of your fathers. For when those who had lent and had taken others' pledges were commanded to restore them, they said: We restore them and seek nothing from them. Good fathers, who decreed that the pledges of the debtors should be returned; good lenders also, who answered that they would both return the pledges and not demand back the money they had given. And the sentence of your fathers' assessment binds you, and the declaration of the creditors.
There is, however, also another pledge, which the spiritual Law forbids to be carried off, and if it has been given, commands to be returned before sunset — a pledge which the man who is a debtor returns and which he himself has brought forth. Now everyone is a debtor who hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it. The evil one comes and snatches away what was sown in his heart. Do not, therefore, enter into his house to take that pledge. For woe to him who shall cause one of these little ones to stumble! If by his own folly he has lost his pledge, you shall have no guilt. But if he is poor, return the pledge before sunset; and the pledge is a garment. If he seems to himself rich, he deceives himself, if he has handed over his pledge:
But if he is poor, who has not the riches of the Spirit, return to him his garment before sunset. If a bodily pledge were in question, it would assuredly rather have to be returned in the daytime, lest the shame of the naked body be exposed by the daylight; for darkness does not betray the naked. And if this consideration moved Him, that the poor man might have nothing wherewith to cover himself while sleeping, He would surely have said that either a coverlet or a cloak should be returned. But now, by saying 'garment,' He rather signifies the tunic with which we are clothed and covered. Return therefore to the poor man his tunic, that he may sleep in it by night. Does He not seem to you to signify that poor man who, when bidden to set out with one tunic, is told not to ask for another, sent by Christ to preach the Gospel?
For he himself is poor in spirit, who is able to sleep; for to one sated with riches there is none to let him sleep. For the poor man sleeps the sleep of the resurrection, which the rich man cannot sleep, because he is suffocated by riches and pleasures. He sleeps the rest of Christ, who says: I slept and took my rest and rose again. This is that tunic woven from above, with which Christ was clothed, which those soldiers could not tear, whom you recognize. For none of them tears Christ's garment, but divides it, as it is written: They divided my garments among themselves, and upon my vesture they cast lots.
The evangelists divided among themselves His garments, and upon His vesture — that is, upon the preaching of the Gospel, with which the Lord Jesus is clothed even to this day — they cast lots; that lot, assuredly, which fell upon Matthias, that he might be joined to the number of the apostles as the twelfth, the name of the traitor being excluded. And well is it said of the evangelists that they cast lots; for the lot, as it were, hangs upon a divine determination. And therefore, since they spoke not by their own power, nor all of them all the same things, but very many said different things which another had not said, we recognize that the grace of the Holy Spirit, as it were by lot, bestowed upon them those things which each should speak concerning the works of the Lord Jesus, so that they might divide among themselves, to be described according to His will, the deeds done by Him.
There is also that tunic which the Apostle points out, saying: Put on the Lord Jesus. This is the tunic which covers our unseemly parts and clothes them in Christ with more abundant comeliness. We put on the bowels of mercy in Christ, we put on the glory of the cross, which is to the Jews a stumbling-block, to the Greeks foolishness. They blush who think it a thing to blush at; but as for us, God forbid that we should glory save in the cross of the Lord Jesus. These ignoble parts of ours have more abundant honour, because through the Lord's passion an eternal kingdom is prepared for us; for the more one has sinned, the more he loves.
Let us therefore be buried together with the Lord Jesus, that we may be counted worthy to be partakers of His resurrection; let us strip off the old man with his deeds, let us put on the new, in whom is the remission of sins. A good cloak therefore and a good garment is the word of God. With this clothing the sons of Noah covered their father's shame, taking the garment upon their shoulders and walking backwards, lest they should see their father's nakedness — that is, his bodily parts, which have a certain shame of human generation. And therefore he who wished to look upon them, being of a meaner mind, received a fitting recompense, that he should be made a servant — for everyone who commits sin is the servant of sin — whence that one remained among earthly things.
Let no one take this garment from the poor man; or if he has taken it, let not the sun set upon the despoiled man, but let him restore it first, lest the sin of the poor man be charged to the lender, and he begin to labour not only under his own sin but also under another's. Let this pledge be returned in this night of the world; let him be clothed with this garment in these shadows of the world. This pledge is of that lot which is the Lord's, not of the opposite one. For we read of two lots in Leviticus, of which it is said: One you shall make for the Lord, the other for the one to be sent away. The one to be sent away has sent his lot over to the lenders; the servants of the Lord are in the lot of Christ.
Aaron, set in this lot, shut out the calamity of the opposite lot, when, standing between the two parts of the people, by his intervention he did not permit death to creep from the dead into the lot of the living, namely of his own body. The good pledge of this lot is the cloak of the word. Let no one take from you this tunic, O debtors; pawn this tunic to no one, if you wish never to endure disgrace, so that you may sleep among the holy lots like Aaron, may sleep between the two Testaments, may sleep the sleep of the resurrection, and may be able to restore yourselves. This is the garment which, even if you have pawned it, holy Solomon in the Proverbs urges should be recovered, saying: Take away your garment; for the insolent man passes by.
The garment of wisdom is from those vestments which Wisdom made for herself from fine linen and purple — that is, the garment of faith consists of the preaching of heavenly things and of the blood of the Lord's passion: by the fine linen are figured the things of heaven, by the appearance of purple is declared the mystery of the sacred blood, by which the heavenly kingdom is conferred. Finally, the foregoing words indicate that the garment of wisdom is signified; for he premised, saying: Be wise, O son, that your heart may rejoice; and two verses below he says: But the imprudent, coming upon them, pay a penalty. Take away your garment.
Take it away, therefore, lest you incur the penalty of imprudence, lest that most wicked common lender, recognizing you stripped of your own garment, try to lay bare the confusion of your reproach and persuade you to cover yourself with leaves and, seeing yourself naked, to fear to come into the sight of God. Make restitution, He says, to your neighbour in time, restrain your word and deal faithfully with him, and at every time you will find what is necessary for you. Innocence does not love to defend itself with many words. Susanna had no need of vocal assertion: she restrained her word toward the Lord and at once deserved to obtain the testimony of her own chastity. The elders spoke much, who laboured to overlay the truth with the false colour of words, but not the daughter of Judah.
She kept silence before men, she spoke to God. Among the people that defence of womanly virtue was a thing to blush at, and while modesty is defended, shamelessness was being put forward. She restrained her word, saying to the Lord: You know that they have spoken falsely concerning me. And the Lord stirred up the spirit of the boy Daniel as the avenger of chastity. Restrain your word, therefore, so that the repayment may answer to the creditor, not the tongue; or, mystically: restrain your word, that is, bring it to completion; for the Lord will make a word that completes and shortens upon the earth — that is, let the sum, abridged by many reckonings, be settled with you.
Subtract what has been paid out in various expenses, that you may keep safe what remains, just as the Lord, out of the many dispensations of the Jews, out of that long reckoning of sins, at length completed and shortened, that a remnant might be saved through the election of grace and be preserved unto a seed, through whom He might raise up again the synagogue's half-dead hope. How unseemly it is that, in return for a benefit, you should repay trouble to him who helped you! When you have defrauded the man to whom you owe a debt, afterward, in your time of need, you will not find a creditor. How unworthy it is that, when you cannot sustain your own livelihood, when as yet you owe nothing, you should think that you can sustain both your livelihood and a debt. First consider whence you may discharge it, and so take a loan.
'I receive,' he says, 'the fruits of my fields.' But those who do not have abundance for their own use, how will they have abundance for the increase of a contracted loan? 'But I sell my possession.' And whence then the fruits which you may use for your expenses? A loan is not paid off with its own money, but is increased: by counting it is heaped up and grows. Then do you not consider the humiliation and shame of the one who asks? Until you receive, you kiss the hands of the proud lender, you humble your voice lest the louder sound of your voice offend his ear, lest more people hear you entreating. Poverty has no crime; there is no infamy in want; but to owe is a thing of shame, not to repay a thing of shamelessness. You will ask for a postponement when you begin to be pressed at the time of the prescribed payment:
in place of money you will bring vexations, you will make excuses about the time, you will pile up pretexts, and when you have promised the whole, lest you should seem to defraud altogether, you will scarcely repay the half. Out of a friend you will make an enemy; in return for honour you will give back insult, in return for blessing a curse. Consider how these things injure your reputation, recognize how they differ from a good man. Therefore, while you are free from bonds, draw yourself back, call yourself back from the yoke and burden of servitude. You are rich: do not take a loan. You are poor: do not take a loan. You are rich: you suffer no necessity of asking. You are poor: consider the difficulty of repaying. Wealth is diminished by interest, poverty is not lifted up by interest; for never is evil corrected by evil, nor is a wound healed by a wound, but it is aggravated by the ulcer.
See to this, lest, while you seek money, you put in pledge your mill or the upper millstone. The mill is that by which fine flour is made, by which two women grind the fine flour — one who is taken, and another who is left. Perhaps she is taken who always grinds the word of God, that she may have fine flour, makes spiritual meal, purges out the old leaven, that there may be a new lump, guards her mill, interprets the Scriptures, keeps for herself the upper millstone; but she is left who pawns her mill. When she has ground something perfunctorily, she pawns the stone which is upon the mill. What this stone is, I ask. I have read: The stone which the builders rejected, this has become the head of the corner. Why upon the mill?
Because He Himself is the one who helps those who grind; He Himself is the one who says: Search the Scriptures, in which you think you have eternal life. Do not, O lender, pawn this upper millstone, lest you fall upon it; for everyone who falls upon this stone shall be shattered, but on whomever it falls it shall grind him to powder. Nor shall you take a widow's pledge. Both are grievous, even according to the letter, that you should take from the needy the means and instrument of living, or take away a widow's pledge; but more grievous if you should hold back the word from the soul which is a widow of the word, so that you bring upon it the barrenness of widowhood. And that you may know that I urge these things with a loving affection, that you may know that it is lawful and good also to lend, I will show you what lender you ought to imitate.
Two debtors, He says, owed to one lender; one owed five hundred denarii, the other fifty. Since they had not wherewith to repay, he forgave them both. Which therefore loves him more? Simon the Pharisee answering said: I suppose that he to whom he forgave more. And his judgement was praised, the Lord saying: You have judged rightly. The Pharisee judged rightly, who thought wrongly, supposing that the Lord was rather ignorant of the woman's sins than forgiving them. But his judgement is praised, so that every excuse may be taken from him. More was remitted to the Church, which is gathered from the people of the nations, since she owed more; but she also paid more — not to one exacting, but to one forgiving.
She gave water for the feet of Christ, because she cleansed her own sins; she kissed His feet, bearing the tokens of peace; she poured oil upon His feet — mercy — by bestowing it herself upon the poor (for these are the feet of Christ; for in these Christ walks more innocently) — and she wiped them with the hairs of her head; for Christ is humbled to by whoever has the affection of humility. And therefore He says: Her many sins are forgiven, because she has loved much. Mark that the Lord both imparts mercy as one liberal, and dispenses judgement with compassion. He first forgave through grace, but He knew to whom He would forgive. The Jew has nothing wherewith to excuse himself. To me as to a sinner He forgave more; to him as to an ungrateful one He granted less.
Yet He knew that the one, as ungrateful, could not pay back what he had received, and that the Church, mindful of grace, would pay the more, the more she had merited. You have therefore a lender whom you may follow, if you wish to be honoured with praise, if you wish not to be such as may be censured by us. For we do not disparage the person, but avarice. Nor has it escaped me that some have said, when two days before this our discourse had pricked their feeling: 'What did the bishop mean to treat against lenders, as though some new thing had been committed, as though even our predecessors had not done this, as though lending were not an old practice?' It is true, nor do I deny it; but the fault too is old.
For sin came at last from Adam; from him came guilt, since from him came Eve also; from him came transgression, since from him came the human condition as well. But for this reason Christ came: to abolish what had grown old, to establish what was new, and to renew by grace what guilt had made old. For this reason He offered Himself to the Passion, that He might renew all men in spirit and set them free. The devil, however, deceived Eve in order to supplant the man and to put the inheritance in pledge. What do moneylenders do? They deceive their debtors and bind their guarantors. But Tobias did not demand a pledge nor require a surety. One must therefore make haste, lest you go seeking a guarantor and bind him under your own name. Behold, another enemy is being prepared; for when you have nothing wherewith to pay the debt, he will be held liable in your place.
You will be found in this matter a deceiver and a cheat, for you have deceived a friend. He will be stripped bare, he will be led into chains in your stead, and you will suffer him to become a harsher exactor than the creditor himself, one who will plead: 'Press your fellow citizen, the man for whom you went surety.' So it will come about that you yourself begin to be ungrateful, and overlook that which is written: 'Forget not the kindness of your surety, for he gave his own good life for you.' You will be forced to say -- (for who was asking you to give your pledge? For unless you had given your word, I would not have taken the money. I took adulterated money; he gave me bronze mixed with gold: would that you had not offered yourself! Perhaps the creditor suborned you, or you suborned him.)
Therefore beware lest you bind yourself to another man's debt, lest you be said to have sold even this, lest -- if a debtor should give you something out of friendship's custom, as a token of gratitude -- you seem to have bought it. Or if you wish to intervene, if you are moved by a friend's entreaty and prayers, and you blush to refuse, then intervene in such a way that, if he should prove unequal to discharging the debt, you may know it is to be paid out of your own means. Approach this matter prepared. For you have read: 'Be not surety beyond your strength; but if you have gone surety, take thought as one who must repay.' And further on: 'Receive your neighbour according to your strength, and take heed to yourself lest you fall' -- that is, lest you bind yourself with a greater sum of debt than the resources of your means can bear and discharge. For if you hand over what you have, you have lost your wealth, but you have not lost your faith.
You do not feel any loss to your reputation; you have redeemed a friend without any deceit on your part. Elsewhere too the Proverbs of Solomon admonish you of this, saying: 'In going surety, go surety for your friends, even as one who binds himself a sponsor for his friends.' But if you do not have the means, hear what Solomon says: 'Do not give yourself in surety, ashamed before any man's person; for if you have not the means to pay, he will take away the bedding from beneath your sides.' Therefore the good lender wins favour, but the wicked one a curse. Yet holy Tobias, not content with so great bounds of his virtues, knew that wages were to be paid even to a hired servant. He offered up to the half, and deservedly found an angel for his hired man.
And how do you know but that perhaps you may be defrauding some righteous man of his wages, or worse, an infirm one -- for 'woe to him who shall cause one of these little ones to stumble!' -- how do you know whether there be not an angel in him? For we ought not to doubt that an angel can be in a hired servant, since Christ Himself can be there, who is accustomed to be even in the least. Render therefore to the hireling his wage, and do not defraud him of the wage of his labour, for you too are a hireling of Christ, and He has hired you for His vineyard, and for you a heavenly wage is laid up. Do not therefore injure the servant who works in truth, nor the hireling who gives his life, do not despise the needy man who plies his life with his own labour and sustains it by his wages.