馬太福音講道集 第 78 章 第 2/2 段

For 'thy prayers,' it says, 'and thine alms are come up for a memorial before God.'

And not prayer only, but fasting also draws its sinews from this same source.

If you fast without almsgiving, the deed is not even reckoned as a fast;

rather, such a one is worse than the man who stuffs himself and is drunken—and worse by just so much as cruelty is more grievous than self-indulgence.

And why do I speak of fasting? For even if you are chaste, even if you keep your virginity, you stand outside the bridal chamber if you have no mercy.

And yet what is equal to virginity, which not even under the New Covenant was brought under the constraint of law, by reason of its surpassing excellence? Nevertheless it is cast out, whenever it lacks mercy.

But if virgins are cast out because they did not possess this with the fitting abundance, who will be able to obtain any pardon without it? There is no one; rather, he who has it not must utterly perish.

For if in the affairs of this life no one lives for himself alone, but the craftsman, the soldier, the farmer, and the merchant all contribute toward the common good and the benefit of their neighbour,

how much more ought this to be done in things spiritual!

For this above all is truly to live;

since he who lives for himself alone, and despises all others, is superfluous, and is not even a man, nor of our race.

'What then,' one says, 'if I neglect my own concerns

while seeking after the things of others?' It is not possible for one who seeks the things of others to neglect his own.

For he who seeks the things of others grieves no one, but has mercy on all, and benefits them to the utmost of his power;

he will plunder no one, defraud no one, will not steal, will not bear false witness;

he will abstain from all vice, lay hold of all virtue, and will pray on behalf of his enemies, and will do good to those who plot against him;

and he will neither revile anyone, nor speak evil, even if he hears himself abused ten thousand times, but will say with the apostle:

'Who is weak, and I am not weak? who is made to stumble, and I am not inflamed?' But in looking after our own affairs, the things of others do not by any means follow.

Being persuaded then by all these things, that it is not possible to be saved unless one looks to the common good, and beholding this man who was cut asunder, and the one who

buried his talent, let us choose this way, that we too may obtain eternal life;

which may it be granted to us all to attain, by the grace and lovingkindness of our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom be glory unto the ages of ages.