As often as this rich man comes into our midst—whom for so many ages, throughout the whole world, on every day, the cry of the divine voice accuses—so often is the deceitful allurement of riches put to flight, so often is the raging flame of covetous desires quenched, so often is the mad frenzy of avarice tamed. For thus today the Lord Jesus began: 'The field of a certain rich man brought forth abundant fruits; and he thought within himself, saying: What shall I do, since I have nowhere to gather my fruits? And he said, This will I do: I will pull down my barns and build greater ones, and there I will gather all that has grown for me and my goods; and I will say to my soul: Soul, you have many good things laid up for many years: rest, eat, drink, feast.'
'But God said to him: Fool, this night they demand your soul from you; and the things you have prepared, whose shall they be?' Wretched man, whom plenty made barren, whom abundance made anxious, whom affluence made inhuman, whom riches made a beggar! A human field sustained an inhuman master; and what the earth poured forth bountifully, he shut up and hoarded stingily—so that he became the keeper of others' goods who was unwilling to be the dispenser of his own: ungrateful to God, worthless to himself, an enemy of the poor, a mark among the rich, a prison of nature. 'The field of a certain rich man brought forth abundant fruits, and he thought within himself.' As though anyone could think outside himself—but 'within himself' this man thought, who, having admitted into his heart the counsel of impiety, left himself nothing of piety, nothing of mercy.
'He thought within himself, saying.' He made use of a worthy counselor, he who could have no solace of an evil mind, could have no colleague. 'And he thought within himself, saying.' The impious mind was contending with piety, and was suffering an inward war—he who had lost the peace and quiet of mercy. 'And he thought within himself, saying: What shall I do?' It is the voice of one questioning; and whom do you suppose this man was questioning? There was another in him, for into his inmost parts the devil had already settled as a possessor; and he who had entered into the heart of Judas held the secret of this man's mind. 'What shall I do, since I have nowhere?' You have heard how the rich man has nothing? Behold, he cries: 'I have nothing.' It is true, for he who always seeks does not always have;
and he has nowhere to gather, who seeks in such a way as to gather. But let us hear what the inward counselor answered him: 'I will pull down my barns.' Clearly he who lay hidden was made manifest, for the enemy always begins with destruction. He works, he works, that you may destroy what you have and not rebuild what you have coveted. Wretched rich man, ignorant of present things, you dispute most foolishly about things to come; how much better had you transferred present things to where the seat of the soul is! But now the chains of your barns have gripped the throats of the poor, bound the necks of the guests, crushed the bowels of the hungry:
whence the groans of the poor both go before you and follow you; the pallid faces of the guests accuse you; the weeping crowd of petitioners assails you—so that, condemned by the Judge above, you may receive your fill of punishments, you who by the bolts of your barns, by refusing to others, have shut yourself in. To the rich man thinking within himself, that One fittingly answered thus, who knows the thoughts of men, that they are vain (Ps. 94): 'Fool, this night they demand your soul from you; and the things you have prepared, whose shall they be?' Rightly 'fool,' because there all had been of the flesh, nothing of the heart. Rightly 'fool,' because for a soul soon to depart he was preparing long-lasting provisions. 'This night they demand your soul from you.'
Fittingly 'this night,' since he who fled the light of mercy had sold himself into the darkness of avarice, saying: 'Eat, drink, feast.' And that those who drink are sons of the night, not of the day, the Apostle thus declares: 'And those who are drunk are drunk in the night' (1 Thess. 5). He is borne through the darkness, taken up through the shadows, who committed and stored the support of his life within the cloisters of his barns. 'They demand your soul from you.' Why did he not say 'he who had given it demands it back,' but 'they demand'? Because the God of the saints demands the souls of the saints and leads them back; but the ministers of hell demand and drag away the souls of the impious. 'And he thought within himself, saying: What shall I do, since I have nowhere to gather my fruits? And he said: This will I do;'
'I will pull down my barns and build greater ones, and there I will gather all that has grown for me and my goods; and I will say to my soul: Soul, you have many good things laid up for many years: eat, drink, feast. But God said to him: Fool, this night they demand your soul; and the things you have prepared, whose shall they be?' Hence this rich man was so forestalled that he lost the things thought of rather than the things prepared; and there was fulfilled that word of the prophet: 'His spirit shall go forth, and he shall return into his earth; in that day all their thoughts shall perish' (Ps. 146). This man thought of what he might leave behind him, not of what he might send on before him; whence, according to the Apostle: 'They became vain in their thoughts, and their foolish heart was darkened;'
'while professing themselves to be wise, they became fools' (Rom. 1). To whom it is said 'fool,' and, roused from the sleep of the present life, in that perpetuity he finds nothing in his hands; as the Psalmist said: 'They have slept their sleep, and all the men of riches have found nothing in their hands' (Ps. 75). Watch, therefore, rich man, in good work; sleep in the evil one; so that your hand may not be empty toward the poor, that it may always be full for you. For as much as the rich man lavishly pours out, so much does he lavishly overflow in his substance. Be rich, then, in mercy, if you wish always to be rich: and then your barns shall be greater, then full, if they be not emptied by generosity, shut up by covetousness.
Today the care of Christ has given a wondrous proof of divine power, has laid bare the cunning of diabolical fraud, and has set free a woman wounded with a long and hidden hurt; as the Evangelist says: 'Jesus was teaching in the synagogue on the Sabbath, and there was a woman who had a spirit of infirmity for eighteen years, and she was bent over and could not at all look upward. When Jesus saw her, he called her and said to her: Woman, you are loosed from your infirmity. And he laid his hands upon her, and immediately she was made straight and glorified God' (Luke 13). She had a spirit of infirmity, and she was bent over:
the wound was open, but the author of the wound was not open; all saw the languor, but they did not see the cause of the languor. The punishment was in plain view, but in the very punishment the executioner lay hidden and shut in; the body was seen bent, but the weight of the bent body was not seen; in the midst of her fellow-citizens the woman carried her enemy, but the citizens did not see the enemy so as to drive him out. The craft of the most wicked spirit was believed to be a necessity of the body, so that being crafty beforehand he might hold captive by guile her whom he could not hold by strength. The devil would be nothing, if men were more solicitous and more cautious. Or by what did he ever prevail over man, if not by craft, lying, snares, fraud, guile, wickedness, the service of vices, the fury of crimes?
He always explores the wills of men, and good wills indeed he flees; but he seconds evil wills, that he may be a minister of crimes, a pander of misdeeds, himself a parasite of vices. And because he cannot do it by power, he lords it over the basest minds with the basest servitude. Thus by a lie he deceived Eve (Gen. 3), thus by covetousness he ensnared Judas (Mark 14), thus by envy he blinded the Jews (Mark 15), thus by error he clouded the Gentiles with idols, thus he confounds peoples with the pomp of things, thus he seized the little ones with vanity that they might not be soberly wise. Finally, let us hear what he contrived concerning the present woman. 'And behold,' it says, 'a woman who had a spirit of infirmity for eighteen years, and she was bent over and could not at all look upward.'
You see that this woman, pressed down, sighed under the burden of the most wicked spirit, who always presses men down with the burdens of sins and bends them toward the earth, that they may not see heaven, may not savor the things above, may not gaze upon God, may not return through their own Author to their own freedom; but with head bent down, eyes cast low, face fallen, they are held captive under the yoke of the ancient enemy. Thus was that publican pressed down, who could not lift his eyes to heaven, but smote his breast, conscious of sin; and because there was no place for denial, he sought a place for mercy, saying: 'God, be merciful to me a sinner' (Luke 18). Enduring this, the most blessed prophet thus sang:
'My iniquities have gone over my head, and like a heavy burden have weighed heavily upon me' (Ps. 38). And to disclose the author of his work, he elsewhere thus declares: 'The crown of the hair of those who walk on in their sins' (Ps. 68). For those who do not resist their sins, but walk on in them, upon these the devil both rides and runs even to the crown of the head; so that those who go to evil by their own zeal may be led to worse by the devil's impulse—the Apostle saying: 'As though led along, you were led' (1 Cor. 12). But let us search out what abides in this history of spiritual understanding. 'And behold, a woman who had a spirit of infirmity for eighteen years, and she was bent over and could not at all look upward.'
Who is this woman, whose very times of infirmity are described? Who is this, whom a burning languor thus strove not to bear up from the earth, but to bend down toward it? Who is she? She who is now the mother of the saints, the holy Church of holy sons—whom, as the Apostle says, 'the spirit of this air, the spirit of distrust, the spirit of error' (Eph. 6) vexed with spiritual harm, and thus with diverse weights bent her prone and cast her down to the earth, so that she was never raised up in gaze toward heaven. But how is it that she who bears the type of the Church is found thus bent over in the Synagogue? How is it? Because, while she flees the sacrileges of the Gentiles and turns aside from the burdens of idols, she incurs heavier ones and carries the weights of the Synagogue—the Lord confirming it, when he says:
'Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, who bind heavy burdens and lay them upon men's shoulders (Luke 11), but you yourselves are unwilling to move them with even your least finger' (Matt. 23:4). Whence also the blessed Peter: 'Now therefore, why do you tempt God,' he says, 'to put a yoke upon the necks of the disciples, which neither we nor our fathers were able to bear?' (Acts 15). This is why Christ, desiring to lighten men of these burdens, cries out: 'Come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will refresh you: take my yoke upon you, for it is sweet' (Matt. 11). When he says 'all,' he calls both the Jews assuredly, and the Gentiles. But why is the sickness of this woman drawn out through eighteen years?
Because, unless the ten-fold of the Law and the eight-fold had come to grace, never would the holy Church, never would this woman, have attained to the fullness of time, to the day of salvation, to the acceptable time, to the presence of her own Savior. And that this woman bore the figure of the Church, the very manner of her healing assigns. 'He called her to himself,' it says, 'and laid his hands upon her.' He knows full well how always to heal the Church, who has deserved to become a Christian, and who daily beholds Christians being made. For that the Gentile, bent over by sin, may be raised up toward heaven, first, by the laying on of hands, the wicked spirit is put to flight from the Gentile.
For he who had put demons to flight by a word alone, and had healed all infirmities by a command alone—why does he lay his hands upon this woman? Why in her case does he alter the order of healing, unless because even then in one he heals all; nay, because he does not receive the Church until he has cleansed her from the devil by the laying on of his hands and made her Christian; and further, that by the sacrament of the present cure he might form and establish the care of Christians to be made?
But the ruler of the synagogue is indignant that Christ heals on the Sabbath, and today too the Jew is racked with the fury of zeal at the Church's healing, while with an earthly understanding he twists heavenly meanings, and supposes the Sabbath consecrated to beasts of burden, not to men—he who hastens to run to an imperiled ox or ass on the Sabbath, yet grants nothing of piety, nothing of compassion, to a dying man on the Sabbath. And this the senseless one does, so that in his breast he may violate the Sabbath, and in man may violate holiness itself: and thus he prescribes to God by God's own law; and by keeping the Sabbath, he thus renders back to God the Sabbath which God mercifully granted to the Jew for earthly labor and the work of the flesh. 'And they were turned into a crooked bow' (Ps.
77), who thus twist back against the Lord of the Law the most upright precepts of the Law. O Jew, who wouldest cease from human concerns even for one day, on the Sabbath, but not from the healing care of your own salvation—something is lacking. And you, O Christian, keep the Lord's day for the Lord, if you wish to see that day of the Lord, if you wish to possess through the Lord whatever is the Lord's.