These are the reasons for which—not for the gratifying and fostering of pleasures, but for the gathering or supporting of the brethren—it is expedient that the resources of the Church be possessed: so that, with one man bearing the cares of all who live in his society, all who are under him may enjoy a fruitful leisure spiritually and in quiet. I added that adverb «spiritually,» since he who enjoys idle quiet, unless he has lived spiritually, lives after the manner of cattle. And therefore he whom no care of bodily necessity disturbs, no occupation of domestic anxiety unsettles, no litigant harasses, no slanderer agitates;
what else ought he to care for, being free from these vexations and the like, except how he may advance to better things, how he may diminish his vices by daily progress, increase his virtues, and possess spiritual goods in place of the carnal which he has despised? In these let him exercise himself, divinely aided, and let him always embrace and love them; and let him prefer them not only to all his other delights, but even to the very torments of his flesh? So that he who has left himself nothing that he might fear to lose, may hold fast, with such firmness of faith, those things for which he cast away all that he had, that, if it be necessary, he may gladly spend his body for them.
Accordingly, let him whom the ambition of possessing delights possess, with a mind set free, God, who possesses all things which He created, and in Him he will have whatever he holily desires to have. But since no one possesses God except him who is possessed by God, let him himself first be God's possession, and God will become for him possessor and portion. And what can be happier than he for whom his Creator becomes his wealth, and his very Divinity deigns to be his inheritance—if only he worship Him with holy works, he will receive all fruits from Him, in Him and from Him will live continually, and possess nothing earthly together with Him? For the Creator of all, to whom none of the things He has made can be made equal, does not deign to be possessed together with the things He has created.
In short, what does he seek beyond, for whom his Creator becomes all things? Or what suffices him, for whom He Himself does not suffice? This God he possessed, and by Him was possessed, who said in the Spirit: «The Lord is my portion; I have said that I would keep Thy law» (Ps. 118:57). And: «The Lord is the portion of my inheritance and of my cup» (Ps. 15:5). But God Himself too, when He says: «To the sons of Levi you shall not give a portion among their brethren; I the Lord am their portion» (Num. 18:23; Deut. 18:1), sufficiently shows that those who have despised the portion of an earthly inheritance deserve to possess God spiritually: enriched by whose gifts, they disdain all things that are reckoned splendid in this world;
and they covet to possess Him and to be possessed by Him, to enjoy Him alone, and to cling to Him inseparably. Whence it is given to understand that he who pursues and loves temporal goods, the perishing joys of the world, has not learned what and how great is the multitude of the divine sweetness. For who, to whom God deigns to be a possession, seeks anything else? Or who does not, for love of Him, despise all things that are thought great? Therefore he who wishes to possess God, let him renounce the world, that God may be for him a blessed possession. Nor does he renounce the world whom the ambition of earthly possession still delights; because so long as he does not relinquish his own, he serves the world, whose goods he retains; and surely one cannot serve the world and God at once;
and thus, for this reason, God willed His worshippers to renounce all those things for the sake of which the world is loved; that, with greed of the world shut out, the divine charity might be able to be increased or perfected in them. And therefore He ordained that the tithes and firstfruits of the crops, the firstborn and the sacrifices for sin, or the offerings which God commanded to be offered to Him, ought to be distributed to the priests and ministers; so that, the most devout people ministering the necessities of life, they themselves might minister with free minds to their Creator and Shepherd, and might progress in His worship without any bodily solicitude: lest, entangled in earthly occupations, they should not be able vigorously to keep the watches worthy of their office.
But now, in that the priests of the Christian era rather endure than care for the possessions of the Church, even in this they serve God: because if the things conferred on the Church are God's, he does God's work who, with the intention not of any greed but of most faithful stewardship, does not forsake the things consecrated to God. Wherefore the possessions which the priests receive as offered by the people are not to be believed to be reckoned among the things of the world, but of God.
For if the garments, and vessels, and the other things that were for the use of those ministering in the sacred rites were called holy, and could no longer be recalled to human uses, once consecrated to the divine ministries, how are not those things conferred on the Church to be believed sacred, which the priests use for necessities not, as with the goods of the world, luxuriously, but holily, as things consecrated to God: so that to all those who, out of love of perfection, place themselves under one head, and do not claim their own for themselves, the resources of the Church gathered for this very purpose may suffice; and whatever those freed from all occupations accomplish may become the fruit of him who, as one, is occupied on behalf of many;
and so that he who bears the cares of all who live under him may advance as his congregation advances: so that, just as his occupation has become the fruitful leisure of all his own, so the glorious perfection of all the disciples may be reckoned the honor and glory of the master.