Moralia in Job 886

28. We lose temporal goods by hoarding them for ourselves, we keep them by bestowing them on the poor. — With which sentence the Psalmist, agreeing, says: 「All the foolish of heart were troubled; they have slept their sleep, and all the men of riches have found nothing in their hands」 (Psalm 76:5). For that the rich may find something in their hand after death, it is said to them before death in whose hands they should place their riches: 「Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of iniquity, that when you shall fail, they may receive you into everlasting dwellings」 (Luke 16:9). When the rich man shall sleep, he shall carry nothing with him. He would carry his goods with him when he died, if he had given them to himself while he lived at the voice of one asking. For all earthly things which we lose by keeping, we keep by giving;

and our patrimony, when retained, perishes; when bestowed, it remains. For we cannot long endure with our possessions, because either we desert them by dying, or they as it were desert us who live, by perishing. We must therefore act so that we may compel things absolutely destined to perish to pass over into a reward that does not perish. [Section 10.] 29. Death opens the sinner's eyes, so that he sees temporal goods fleeing from him, and punishment succeeding. — But it is greatly to be wondered at that it is said: 「When he shall sleep, he shall open his eyes, and shall find nothing.」 For in order that we may sleep, we close our eyes, and when awaking we open them.

But in this matter, because man consists of soul and body, when sleep is spoken of concerning the one thing, the wakefulness of the other is demonstrated; because when the body falls asleep in death, then the soul awakes in true knowledge. And so the rich man both sleeps and opens his eye, because when he dies in the flesh, his soul is compelled to see what it despised to foresee. Then indeed it awakes in true knowledge, then it perceives that to be nothing which it was holding. Then it finds itself empty, which was rejoicing that it was full of things beyond other men. He sleeps, and carries nothing away with him — nothing indeed of the things which he held. For the guilt of things is carried along together, although here all things, for which the guilt was perpetrated, are left behind.

Let him then now go, and swell up with goods received, and exalt himself above others, and glory that he has what his neighbour has not. The time will come when he shall awake, and then know how empty was that which he had held in sleep. For it often happens to a sleeping pauper that he sees himself rich through a dream, and lifts up his mind from those very things, and rejoices to have what he did not have, and now seeks to disdain those by whom he grieved to have been disdained. But suddenly awaking, let him grieve that he has awoken, who in the meantime held the image of riches even while sleeping. For at once he groans under the weight of poverty, and is pressed by the straits of his want; and so much the worse, by how much for a very brief time, and emptily, he was rich.

Even thus, assuredly, are the rich of this world, who swell up with goods received. They know not how to work well from their abundance; while sleeping they are rich, but awaking they find their poverty, because they carry nothing away with them to that judgement which shall abide; and by how much more loftily they are now for a brief time exalted, by so much more grievously do they groan against themselves in perpetuity. Let him say then: 「He shall open his eyes, and shall find nothing,」 because there he opens unto torments those whom here he held closed unto mercy. He opens his eyes, and finds not the fruit of piety, whom here he held closed. Late too do those open their eyes, who, as Wisdom attests, are reported as about to say in the time of their damnation:

「What hath pride profited us? or what advantage hath the boasting of riches brought us? All those things are passed away like a shadow, and like a messenger running before」 (Wisdom 5:8-9). They now, once lost, know that the things they had held were vile and fleeting, which, so long as they were present, seemed both great and abiding to their foolish hearts. Late did the rich man open his eyes (Luke 16:23), when he saw Lazarus resting, whom lying before his gate he had despised to see. He understood there what here he was unwilling to do; in his damnation he was compelled to recognize what it was that he had lost, when he did not acknowledge his neighbour in need. Concerning whom it is still further subjoined: