Blessed are they whose hearts today's hearing of the Lord's discourse has penetrated. Blessed are they whose minds so great and so mighty a promise of the Savior has advanced unto faith. Blessed are they who, by the sternness of the heavenly commandments, have been released from the harsh cares of present things. For with such a voice today does the Lord address His disciples, nay rather all His hearers: 'Be not solicitous for your life, what you shall eat, nor for your body, what you shall put on. The life is more than the food, and the body more than the raiment' (Luke 12). Who is so envious of his own goods, who so hostile to his own delights, as to despise things spontaneous and prepared from heaven, and to covet things acquired by worldly labors and sorrows?
Too degenerate a soul, wholly servile a mind, is that which seeks out the blasts of cooks, the filth of the kitchen, viands reeking with yesterday's horror, for whom a royal preparation continually waits and stands ready. Do not therefore, O man, groan in providing for empty things, do not toil in preparing perishable things, because God the Provider always and everywhere assists at your meal. What king does not procure the due provision for devoted soldiers? What master does not minister this food to faithful servants? What father does not give bread to his sons? If, therefore, God is to us both King and Lord and Father, what will He deny? The soldier who serves at his own pay disparages the king; the servant who lives at his own expense accuses his master; the son anxious for himself blames his surviving father.
Do not therefore, O man, expose God by thinking thus concerning yourself—He who, by the justice of a King, by the zeal of a Lord, and by the affection of a Begetter, has taken upon Himself all your solicitude, and has poured back the care, saying: 'Be not solicitous for your life, what you shall eat.' But perhaps the honeyed shower and the singular food deters you by the example of Jewish disgust, and you do not believe that flesh, compacted of a variety of humors, can be filled by manna alone according to His will: you say, 'God, as He willed the body to consist of diverse members, so willed and commanded it to be nourished by varied dishes.' Superfluous, O man, is this fear that agitates you: for the whole creation runs together and flies to the Creator's table.
Wherefore, if the singularity and scantiness of legal food frights you, let the outpouring of the heavenly, evangelical banquet invite and provoke you, which sets before Peter, about to eat, upon a single dish all the kinds of creation (Acts 10). For whatever Noah, the ferryman of the new age, keeps as seed for the age; whatever flies and is borne in the air; whatever is begotten and lives on the earth; whatever is in the waters and moves—all this is slaughtered from heaven upon Peter's single dish, and is set forth for the supper. If, therefore, you wish, O man, to receive and eat all things, disdain to provide cheap larders for yourself. And we indeed strive to prove to you, who ponder heavenly things by great examples, that carnal things will not be lacking:
But God, for the tokens of His majesty, sends the one who doubts of His promises back to cheap and lowly examples, that by such an examination He may refute you, whom He has not drawn by so great an imitation. 'Consider,' He says, 'the ravens, that they neither sow nor reap, which have no storeroom nor barn, and God feeds them: how much more are you of value than they?' Deservedly He sends the doubting, faithless one to a bird—a friend of war, a companion of fury, insatiate of blood, and raging with the sword upon the very dead more grievously. For when the sword has ceased, that most wicked executioner ravages against the lifeless body, tears it, scatters it, strews it, lest peaceful and merciful burial commend any remnant of the corpse to rest.
And so the Lord by such an example aggravates the madness of the doubter, who thinks that God will deny to pious sons what He supplies to impious birds; and they suppose that to those who leave for His sake fatherland, home, parents, children, spouses, the supports of sustenance will not be given—they suppose this of Him who has granted the newborn to grow, who has set the bound to the increase of the body. O wretched one, O most worthy of utter unhappiness, to whom, when a kingdom is given, sighs for bread; when eternity is bestowed, weeps for drink; when he is clothed with the glory of immortality, laments for the body's raiment. Conscious of his innate unhappiness, he does not believe himself to become happy; and, nourished in earthly dust, he doubts that he will be an inhabitant of heaven. Fittingly therefore did the Lord add what follows:
'But which of you by taking thought can add to his stature one cubit?' The innermost searcher lays open the thoughts of human minds; for every man, while he covets the beauty of his own body, wishes himself to be tall: but a man can think this, though a man cannot obtain it by himself; he arrives at it by believing, yet cannot arrive at it by thinking. Hence it is that the Lord, conscious of human desire, has stretched man toward the form of Christ, that in the measure of Christ he might be adorned with all comeliness, who in his own shortness was misshapen, to his own shame; whence He well subjoined: 'If then you are not able to do even that which is least, why are you solicitous for the rest?'
That is to say: Why, O man, do you presume upon greater things by thought, who despair of lesser things through faith? What is less than raiment, what is greater than the increase of the body? I believe therefore that the raiment of your body can be furnished you by God, from whom faith promises you back the increases of the body. Yet, because God so loves the human race that He straightway consoles with fatherly caress and soothes the very ones whom by the right of a Ruler He rebukes—those whom He seemed to have exasperated by comparison with a most foul bird, He now leads back to the example of a fragrant and exceedingly beautiful flower. 'Consider,' He says, 'the lilies, how they grow; they labor not, neither do they spin. But I say to you, that not even Solomon in all his glory was arrayed as one of these:'
O how greatly does heavenly compassion lower itself for the love of man! For He who was able to confirm His precepts by His authority alone, insinuates and builds up everything with the whole labor of a teacher; and He who was sufficient to place the term of His promise in the sole faith of that promise, leads His hearers to faith by the example of the promise's persuader; He confirms the doubtful by comparison, He exalts the lily by the example of Solomon: because, as the Lord Himself testifies, among all the kings of the world Solomon shone forth beauteous with singular glory and unique adornment, and the lily surpasses and excels all the flowers of the earth in grace; and the lily so far surpasses every plant as it is agreed that the king excels all in beauty, glory, and everything.
Nor need the beauty of the lily be described by us at greater length, whose prerogative the Lord's testimony renders singular: those things must indeed be repeated which the Lord commended by a doubled example for the strengthening of our faith; because the Christian, certain concerning life, concerning the kingdom, concerning immortality, ought not to be driven by the necessity of food and clothing, when he sees that God today has bestowed such glory of raiment upon a plant born today and to perish tomorrow. But just as by that dryness, as they are consigned to the fire of the oven, so by the fires of death, so by the fires of Gehenna, are those destined who doubt that present things are furnished them by God, though they already perceive future things bestowed upon them. 'And you, seek not what you shall eat, or what you shall drink; and be not lifted up on high;'
'for all these things do the nations of the world seek after. But your Father knows that you have need of these things. Yet rather seek the kingdom of God, and all these things shall be added unto you.' When He calls Himself our Father, He proves that His pious care for us is not lacking; when He bids us seek the heavenly kingdom, He shows that all things are to be subjoined; He indicates that whatever heavenly furnishing demands will be present for us.