Many and great, dearly beloved brethren, are the divine benefits by which the lavish and abundant clemency of God the Father and of Christ both has worked and ever works unto our salvation: in that, to preserve and to give us life, the Father sent the Son, that He might be able to restore us; and in that the Son willed to be sent and to be called the Son of Man, that He might make us sons of God. He humbled Himself, that He might raise up the people which before lay prostrate; He was wounded, that He might heal our wounds; He served, that He might draw forth into liberty those who were in servitude; He endured to die, that He might set forth immortality to mortals. These are the many and great gifts of the divine mercy.
But further, how great is that providence and how vast that clemency, that by a saving plan provision is made for us, so that, by reserving him who has been redeemed, fuller care may be taken for man. For when the Lord at His coming had healed those wounds which Adam had borne, and had cured the ancient venoms of the serpent, He gave a law to the sound man and commanded that he sin no more, lest something more grievous should befall the one who sins. We were straitened and shut up within the narrow bounds of innocence's prescription. Nor would the weakness and frailty of human infirmity have anything it might do, unless again the divine mercy, coming to our aid, by showing the works of justice and mercy, should open a certain way of guarding our salvation, so that whatever defilements we afterward contract we may wash away by almsgiving.
The Holy Spirit speaks in the Scriptures and says: 'By almsgiving and faith sins are purged.' Not, indeed, those sins which had been contracted before: for those are purged by the blood and sanctification of Christ. Again it says anew: 'As water extinguishes fire, so almsgiving extinguishes sin.' Here also it is shown and proved that, as by the laver of saving water the fire of Gehenna is extinguished, so by alms and by just works the flame of sins is quenched. And because once in baptism remission of sins is given, constant and continual working, imitating the likeness of baptism, again bestows the indulgence of God. This too the Lord teaches in the Gospel.
For when His disciples were censured because they ate without first washing their hands, He answered and said: 'He that made that which is within made also that which is without. But give alms, and behold, all things are clean unto you'—teaching plainly and showing that not the hands are to be washed but the breast, and that defilements are to be removed from within rather than from without; that he who has cleansed that which is within has also cleansed that which is without, and that, the mind being cleansed, he has begun to be clean also in skin and in body. Furthermore, admonishing and showing whence we may be clean and purged, He added that alms are to be done.
The Merciful One admonishes mercy to be shown, and because He seeks to preserve those whom He redeemed at a great price, He teaches that those defiled after the grace of baptism can again be purged. Let us therefore acknowledge, dearly beloved brethren, the salutary gift of divine indulgence, and let us, who cannot be without some wound of conscience, cure our wounds by spiritual remedies for the cleansing and purging of our sins. Nor let any one so flatter himself with a pure and immaculate breast that, relying on his own innocence, he should think no medicine need be applied to his wounds, since it is written: 'Who shall boast that he has a chaste heart, or who shall boast that he is pure from sins?' And again John sets it down in his epistle and says:
'If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.' But if no one can be without sin, and whoever calls himself blameless is either proud or foolish, how necessary, how kindly is the divine clemency, which, since it knows that even to the healed certain wounds afterward remain, has given saving remedies for the curing and healing of the wounds anew! Finally, dearly beloved brethren, the divine admonition has never ceased nor been silent, but in the Holy Scriptures, both old and new, the people of God is always and everywhere stirred up to works of mercy; and, with the Holy Spirit singing and exhorting, every one who is instructed in the hope of the heavenly kingdom is bidden to do almsgiving.
God commands and enjoins Isaiah: 'Cry aloud,' He says, 'in strength, and spare not. Lift up your voice like a trumpet, and declare to My people their sins, and to the house of Jacob their crimes.' And when He had commanded that their sins be reproached to them, and had brought forth their crimes with the full force of His indignation, and had said that they could not make satisfaction for their sins even if they used prayers and supplications and fastings, nor could appease the wrath of God even if they rolled themselves in sackcloth and ashes—yet in the last part, showing that by alms alone God can be appeased, He added, saying: 'Break your bread to the hungry, and bring the needy without shelter into your house. If you see one naked, clothe him, and despise not the members of your own seed.'
'Then shall your early light break forth, and your garments shall soon arise, and righteousness shall go before you, and the glory of God shall surround you. Then shall you cry out, and God shall hear you; while you are yet speaking, He shall say, Behold, I am here.' Remedies for propitiating God have been given by the words of God Himself; the divine teachings have shown what sinners ought to do—that God is to be satisfied by just works, that sins are to be purged by the merits of mercy. And in Solomon we read: 'Shut up alms in the heart of the poor man, and this shall make intercession for you against all evil.' And again: 'He that stops his ears that he hear not the weak, he also shall call upon God and there shall be none to hear him.'
For neither will he be able to merit the mercy of God who has not himself been merciful, nor will he obtain anything from the divine compassion in his prayers who has not been humane toward the prayer of the poor. This too the Holy Spirit declares and proves in the Psalms, saying: 'Blessed is he that considers the needy and the poor; in the evil day the Lord shall deliver him.' Mindful of these precepts, Daniel, when King Nebuchadnezzar was terrified and troubled by an adverse dream, gave a remedy for averting evils and obtaining divine aid, saying: 'Therefore, O king, let my counsel be acceptable to you, and redeem your sins by almsgiving and your iniquities by compassion on the poor, and God will be patient toward your sins.'
But the king, not obeying, suffered the adverse and hostile things which he had seen; which he could have escaped and avoided, had he redeemed his sins by almsgiving. The angel Raphael also testifies the like, and exhorts that alms be done willingly and bountifully, saying: 'Prayer is good with fasting and almsgiving, because almsgiving delivers from death, and itself purges sins.' He shows that our prayers and fastings avail less, unless they are aided by alms; that supplications alone are of little force for obtaining, unless they are filled out by the addition of deeds and works. The angel reveals and makes manifest and confirms that by alms our petitions are made effectual, that by alms life is redeemed from perils, that by alms souls are delivered from death.
Nor do we set these things forth thus, dearly beloved brethren, but that we may prove by the testimony of truth what the angel Raphael said. In the Acts of the Apostles the proof of the fact is set down, and that by alms souls are delivered not only from the second but from the first death is ascertained by the proof of a thing done and accomplished. Tabitha, much given to just works and to the bestowing of alms, when she had fallen ill and died, Peter was summoned to her lifeless corpse. When he had come briskly, with apostolic kindness, the widows stood around him weeping and beseeching, showing the cloaks and tunics and all those garments which they had before received, pleading not by their own voices on behalf of the deceased but by her own works.
Peter perceived that what was thus asked could be obtained, and that the aid of Christ would not be wanting to the entreating widows, since He Himself was clothed in the widows. And so, when he had prayed on bended knees and, as a fit advocate of the widows and the poor, had carried the prayers entrusted to him to the Lord, turning to the body which now lay washed upon the bier, he said: 'Tabitha, arise in the name of Jesus Christ.' Nor was He wanting to Peter, but at once brought aid, who in the Gospel had said that whatever should be asked in His name would be given. And so death is suspended, and the spirit is restored, and, while all marvel and are astonished, the body revived is animated again to this light of the world. So much did the merits of mercy avail; so much did just works prevail.
She who had bestowed on the laboring widows the means of living, merited to be recalled to life by the petition of the widows. And so in the Gospel the Lord, the teacher of our life and the master of eternal salvation, giving life to the believing people and taking thought for those quickened unto eternity, among His divine commands and heavenly precepts enjoins and commands nothing more frequently than that we be instant in giving alms, and that we should not brood over earthly possessions but rather lay up heavenly treasures. 'Sell,' He says, 'your goods and give alms'; and again: 'Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust corrupt, and where thieves dig through and steal.'
'But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust corrupts, and where thieves do not dig through. For where your treasure is, there also will your heart be.' And when, the law having been observed, He would show what is perfect and complete, 'If you will,' He says, 'be perfect, go and sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you shall have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me.' Likewise in another place He says that the merchant of heavenly grace and the purchaser of eternal salvation ought, all his goods being sold, to buy from the amount of his patrimony the precious pearl—that is, eternal life, precious by the blood of Christ. 'The kingdom of heaven,' He says, 'is like to a man that is a merchant seeking goodly pearls.'
'But when he had found a precious pearl, he went and sold all that he had and bought it.' Finally, He says that those also are the sons of Abraham whom He perceives to be laborers in helping and feeding the poor. For when Zacchaeus had said: 'Behold, the half of my substance I give to the needy, and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I restore fourfold,' Jesus answered: 'Because salvation has this day been wrought for this house, since he also is a son of Abraham.' For if Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him for righteousness, surely he who, according to the precept of God, does almsgiving believes God: and he who has the truth of faith keeps the fear of God; and he who keeps the fear of God thinks upon God in showing compassion on the poor.
For he works in God because he believes, because he knows that the things foretold by the words of God are true and that the Scripture cannot lie—that unfruitful trees, that is, barren men, are cut down and cast into the fire, and that the merciful are called to the kingdom. He who in another place also calls the fruitful faithful laborers, but to the unfruitful and barren denies faith, saying: 'If you have not been faithful in the unjust mammon, who will entrust to you that which is true? And if you have not been faithful in that which is another's, who will give you that which is your own?' But you fear and dread, lest, if you begin to work much, your patrimony being exhausted by lavish working, you may perchance be reduced to want: be in this regard undismayed, be secure.
That cannot be exhausted from which expenditure is made for the uses of Christ, whence a heavenly work is performed. Nor do I pledge this to you of my own, but I promise it from the faith of the Holy Scriptures and the authority of the divine promise. The Holy Spirit speaks through Solomon and says: 'He that gives to the poor shall never want; but he that turns away his eye shall be in great penury'—showing that the merciful and those who work cannot be in want, but rather that the sparing and barren come afterward to indigence. Likewise the blessed apostle Paul, full of the grace of the Lord's inspiration: 'He that ministers seed to the sower,' he says, 'will both supply bread to eat, and will multiply your seed sown, and will increase the growths of the fruits of your righteousness, that you may be enriched in all things.'
And again: 'The administration of this service shall not only supply those things that are lacking to the saints, but shall also abound through much giving of thanks to the Lord': because, while thanksgiving is directed to God for our alms and works by the prayer of the poor, the substance of the worker is heaped up by the recompense of God. And the Lord in the Gospel, even then considering the hearts of men of this kind, and with prescient voice denouncing the perfidious and unbelieving, testifies and says: 'Do not think, saying, What shall we eat, or what shall we drink, or wherewith shall we be clothed? For after all these things do the nations seek. For your Father knows that you have need of all these things. Seek first the kingdom and the righteousness of God, and all these things shall be added unto you.'
He says that all things are added and granted to those who seek the kingdom and righteousness of God: for the Lord says that, when the day of judgment comes, those are admitted to receive the kingdom who have worked in His Church. You fear lest your patrimony perchance fail, if you begin to work bountifully from it; and you do not know, wretched man, that while you fear lest your household substance fail, life itself and salvation fail; and while you take heed lest anything be diminished of your goods, you do not perceive that you yourself are diminished, being a lover of mammon rather than of your own soul; and while you fear lest you lose your patrimony for your own sake, you yourself perish for the sake of your patrimony. And therefore the apostle well cries out and says: 'We brought nothing into this world, neither indeed can we carry anything out.'
Having therefore sustenance and covering, let us be content with these. But those who wish to become rich fall into temptation and a snare and into many harmful desires, which plunge a man into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is the root of all evils; and certain men, reaching after it, have made shipwreck of their faith and entangled themselves in many sorrows. Do you fear that your patrimony may perhaps fail, if you begin to give generously out of it? Yet when has it ever come to pass that subsistence could be lacking to the righteous, since it is written: 'The Lord will not slay the soul of the righteous with famine'? Elijah in the wilderness is fed by ministering ravens, and to Daniel, shut up in the lions' den as prey by the king's command, a meal is divinely furnished.
And do you fear lest food should fail you who labour and seek to merit the Lord, when in the Gospel He Himself, to rebuke those whose mind is doubtful and whose faith is small, bears witness and says: 'Behold the birds of the air, for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns, and your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of much more value than they?' God feeds the birds, and to the sparrows their daily food is supplied; and to those who have no perception of any divine thing neither drink nor food is wanting: shall you, a Christian, you a servant of God, you who are given to good works, you, His own dear one, think that anything will fail you? Unless perhaps you suppose that he who feeds Christ is not himself fed by Christ, or that earthly things will be lacking to those to whom heavenly and divine things are granted.
Whence comes this unbelieving thought, whence this impious and sacrilegious meditation? What is a faithless heart doing in the house of faith? Why is one who does not believe Christ at all called and named a Christian? The name of Pharisee suits you better. For when the Lord in the Gospel was discoursing about almsgiving, and was faithfully and wholesomely admonishing us to make ourselves friends out of our earthly gains by provident action, friends who should afterward receive us into the eternal dwellings, the Scripture added after these words, saying: 'Now the Pharisees, who were most covetous, heard all these things, and they mocked.'
Such men we now see to be certain ones in the Church, whose ears are stopped up and whose hearts are blinded, admitting no light from spiritual and salutary counsels; of whom it ought not to surprise us that they despise the servant in his discourses, when from such men we see the Lord Himself to be despised. Why do you applaud yourself with these foolish and silly thoughts, as though by fear and anxiety for the future you were held back from good works? Why do you put forward shadows and certain illusions of an empty excuse? Confess rather what is true, and since, knowing it, you cannot deceive, bring forth the secret and hidden things of your mind. The darkness of barrenness has besieged your soul, and, the light of truth withdrawing thence, the deep and profound gloom of avarice has blinded your carnal breast.
You are the captive and slave of your money; you are bound with the chains and fetters of covetousness, and you whom Christ had once loosed are bound anew. You keep money which, kept, does not keep you; you heap up a patrimony which burdens you with its own weight; nor do you remember what God answered to the rich man who in foolish exultation boasted of his abundant store of overflowing crops: 'Fool,' He said, 'this night your soul is required of you. The things therefore which you have prepared, whose shall they be?' Why do you brood alone over your riches? Why do you pile up the burden of patrimony to your own punishment, so that the richer you are toward the world, the poorer you become toward God?
Divide your revenues with your God, share your fruits with Christ, make Christ a partner of your earthly possessions, that He too may make you a co-heir of the heavenly kingdoms. You err and are deceived, whoever you are that believe yourself rich in this world. Hear in the Apocalypse the voice of your Lord rebuking men of this kind with just reproofs. 'You say,' He says, 'I am rich and have grown wealthy and have need of nothing; and you do not know that you are wretched and poor and blind and naked. I counsel you to buy of Me gold tried by fire, that you may be rich; and a white garment, that you may be clothed and the shame of your nakedness may not appear in you; and anoint your eyes with eye-salve, that you may see.'
You therefore who are wealthy and rich, buy for yourself from Christ gold tried by fire, that, your filth being as it were burned away by fire, you may be pure gold, if by almsgiving and righteous action you are cleansed. Buy for yourself a white garment, that you who according to Adam were naked and shuddered, deformed before, may be clothed in the white raiment of Christ. And you who are a wealthy and rich matron, anoint your eyes not with the devil's antimony but with Christ's eye-salve, that you may be able to attain to the sight of God, while you merit God by both your character and your works. But you who are such cannot even labour in the Church: for eyes overspread with blackness, covered with darkness and night, do not see the needy and the poor.
Wealthy and rich, you believe you are celebrating the Lord's feast, you who pay no regard at all to the offering-box, you who come into the Lord's house without a sacrifice, you who take a portion of the sacrifice which the poor man has offered? Look in the Gospel at the widow who is mindful of the heavenly precepts, working amid the very pressures and straits of want, casting into the treasury the two mites that were all she had; whom, when the Lord noticed and saw, weighing and considering her work not from her patrimony but from her mind, not how much but out of how much she had given, He answered and said: 'Verily I say to you, that this widow has put in more than all into the gifts of God. For all these have put into the gifts of God out of that which abounded to them.'
But she of her want cast in all the living that she had. A most blessed and glorious woman, who even before the day of judgment deserved to be praised by the voice of the Judge. Let the rich be ashamed of their barrenness and their misfortune. A widow and a needy one is found at the work; and although all that is given is bestowed upon orphans and widows, she gives who ought rather to receive, that we may know what punishment awaits the barren rich man, since by this example even the poor ought to labour.
And that we may understand that these works are given to God, and that whoever does them merits God, Christ calls it the gifts of God and signifies that the widow cast two farthings into the gifts of God, so that it may be more and more manifest that he who has mercy on the poor lends to God. But neither, dearly beloved brethren, let this consideration restrain and recall a Christian from good and righteous works, that anyone should suppose he may be excused by reason of his children; since in spiritual expenditures we ought to think of Christ, who has professed that He Himself receives, and ought to prefer not our fellow-servants but our Lord to our children, He Himself instructing and admonishing:
'He who loves father or mother above Me is not worthy of Me, and he who loves son or daughter above Me is not worthy of Me.' Likewise in Deuteronomy, for the strengthening of faith and the love of God, like things are written. 'Those,' He says, 'who say to father and mother: I have not known you, and have not acknowledged their own sons, these have kept Your precepts and observed Your covenant.' For if we love God with our whole heart, we ought to prefer neither parents nor children to God. This also John in his epistle lays down, that the love of God is not in those whom we see unwilling to work for the poor. 'He who has,' he says, 'the substance of this world, and sees his brother in need, and shuts up his bowels of compassion, how does the love of God abide in him?'
For if God lends Himself by the alms given to the poor, and when it is given to the least it is given to Christ, there is no reason why anyone should prefer earthly things to heavenly, or set human things before divine. So that widow in the third book of Kings, when in drought and famine, all things being consumed, she had made an ash-baked loaf of the little meal and oil that was left over, of which when it was eaten she was about to die with her children, Elijah came upon her and asked that it be given first to himself to eat, and then that she and her sons should feed on what remained. Nor did she hesitate to comply, nor did the mother prefer her children in hunger and want.
Rather, that which pleases God is done in the sight of God: what was asked is offered readily and willingly, and not a portion out of abundance but the whole out of a little is given; and while her children hunger, another is first fed, and in penury and famine food is not thought of before mercy—so that, while in a salutary work life is despised after the flesh, the soul may be spiritually preserved. Elijah therefore, bearing the type of Christ and showing that He repays each one in turn for mercy's sake, answered and said: 'Thus says the Lord: The vessel of meal shall not fail, nor shall the cruse of oil be diminished, until the day in which the Lord shall give rain upon the earth.'
According to the faith of the divine promise, the things which the widow had bestowed were multiplied and heaped up; and her vessels of meal and oil were filled, taking growth and increase by her righteous works and the merits of mercy. Nor did the mother take away from her children what she gave to Elijah, but rather she bestowed upon her children that which she did kindly and piously. And she did not yet know Christ, she had not yet heard His precepts; not redeemed by His cross and passion, she was repaying food and drink for His blood—so that from this it may appear how greatly he sins in the Church who, preferring himself and his children to Christ, keeps his riches and does not share his abundant patrimony with the poverty of the needy.
But indeed there are many children in the house, and the multitude of your sons holds you back from devoting yourself liberally to good works. Yet for this very reason you ought to work the more, in that you are the father of many pledges. There are more for whom you should entreat the Lord; the offenses of many are to be redeemed, the consciences of many to be cleansed, the souls of many to be set free. As in this worldly life, in feeding and sustaining your offspring, the greater the number the greater also the expense, so also in the spiritual and heavenly life, the more plentiful the store of offspring, the greater ought the outlay of works to be. Thus Job offered numerous sacrifices for his children, and as great as was the number of pledges in his house, so great a number of victims was given to God.
And because it cannot be but that daily something is sinned in the sight of God, daily sacrifices were not lacking by which sins might be wiped away. Scripture proves it, saying: 'Job, a true and righteous man, had seven sons and three daughters, and he purified them, offering for them sacrifices to God according to their number, and for their sins one calf.' If therefore you truly love your children, if you show them the full and paternal sweetness of love, you ought to work the more, that by righteous action you may commend your children to God. Nor think you that father for your children who is both temporary and frail, but provide that One who is the eternal and steadfast Father of spiritual children. To Him assign your means which you are keeping for your heirs:
let Him be the guardian of your children, let Him be their curator, let Him by divine majesty be their protector against all worldly wrongs. A patrimony entrusted to God neither the state seizes, nor the treasury invades, nor any forensic calumny overturns. That inheritance is placed in safety which is kept with God as its keeper. This is to provide for one's dear pledges for the future, this is to take counsel for future heirs with paternal piety, according to the faith of holy Scripture which says: 'I have been young and now am old, and I have not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed seeking bread. All the day he has mercy and lends, and his seed shall be in blessing.' And again: 'He who conducts himself without reproach in righteousness shall leave blessed children behind.'
You are therefore a prevaricator and a betrayer as a father, unless you faithfully take counsel for your children, unless you provide for their preservation with religious and true piety. Why do you strive after an earthly rather than a heavenly patrimony? Do you prefer to commend your children to the devil rather than to Christ? You offend twice and commit a twin and double crime: both that you do not prepare for your children the help of God the Father, and that you teach your children to love their patrimony more than Christ. Be rather to your children such a father as Tobit was. Give to your pledges useful and salutary precepts such as he gave to his son; charge your children with that which he also charged, saying:
'And now, son, I charge you: serve God in truth and do before Him what pleases Him, and charge your children to do righteousness and almsdeeds, and to be mindful of God and to bless His name at all times.' And again: 'All the days of your life, son, keep God in mind, and do not transgress His precepts. Do righteousness all the days of your life, and do not walk in the way of iniquity; for if you act out of truth, there will be regard for your works. Of your substance do almsgiving, and turn not your face away from any poor man. So shall it come to pass that the face of God shall not be turned away from you. As you have, son, so do: if you have abundant substance, do the more almsgiving out of it.'
'If you have little, even of that little impart. And do not be afraid when you give alms: you lay up for yourself a good reward against the day of necessity, because almsgiving delivers from death and does not suffer one to go into darkness. Almsgiving is a good gift for all who do it before the most high God.' What a gift it is, dearly beloved brethren, whose performance is celebrated with God looking on.
If at a gentile's show it seems grand and glorious to have proconsuls or emperors present, and the preparation and expense among those who give the games is the greater that they may please the great, how much more illustrious and greater is the glory of the show to have God and Christ as spectators! How much more lavish here ought the preparation to be and more abundant the expense, where there gather for the spectacle the powers of the heavens, where all the angels assemble, where for the giver of the games not a four-horse chariot or a consulship is sought, but eternal life is granted; nor is the empty and temporary favour of the crowd grasped after, but the perpetual reward of the heavenly kingdom is received.
And that the lazy and the barren, and those who out of love of money do nothing toward the fruit of salvation, may be the more ashamed; that the blush may the more strike their conscience, soiled with disgrace and baseness, let each one set before his eyes the devil leaping forth into the midst with his servants—that is, with the people of perdition and death—and challenging the people of Christ, with Christ Himself present and judging, by the test of comparison, saying: 'I, for these whom you see with me, neither received blows nor endured scourges nor bore a cross nor shed my blood, nor did I redeem my household with the price of passion and gore; but neither do I promise them the heavenly kingdom, nor do I recall them once more to paradise with immortality restored.
And what gifts they procure for me—how costly, how grand, sought with excessive and long labour, with most sumptuous preparations—by pledging or selling their possessions for the procuring of the show! And unless the performance turns out honourable, they are cast out with reproaches and hissings, and sometimes by the popular fury are almost stoned. Show me such givers of games as these of Yours, O Christ! Those rich men, those abounding in copious wealth—do they, with You presiding and looking on in the Church, give such a show, their possessions pledged or sold, nay rather transferred for the better into heavenly treasures by changed possession? In these gifts of mine, fleeting and earthly, no one is fed, no one is clothed, no one is sustained with the solace of any food or drink.
All things perish amid the frenzy of the one giving and the error of the one watching, in the prodigal and foolish vanity of frustrating pleasures. There, in Your poor ones, You Yourself are clothed and fed; You promise eternal life to those who labour: and my men, with their perishing, are scarcely made equal to Yours, who by You are honoured with divine wages and heavenly rewards.' What shall we answer to these things, dearly beloved brethren? By what reasoning do we defend the sacrilegious barrenness and the minds of the rich, covered as it were with the night of darkness; by what excuse do we cleanse them? We who are less than the servants of the devil, in that we do not repay Christ even in small things in return for the price of His passion and blood.
He gave us precepts, He instructed us what His servants ought to do; promising a reward to those who labour and threatening punishment to the barren, He has pronounced His sentence, He has foretold what He is about to judge. What excuse can there be for one who holds back, what defense for the barren? Except that, the servant not doing what is commanded, the Lord will do what He threatens. He who also says: 'When the Son of Man shall come in His glory, and all the angels with Him, then shall He sit upon the throne of His glory, and before Him shall be gathered all nations; and He shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats; and He shall set the sheep on His right hand, but the goats on the left. Then shall the King say to those who are on His right hand:'
'Come, blessed of My Father, receive the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave Me to eat, I was thirsty and you gave Me drink, I was a stranger and you took Me in, naked and you covered Me, I was sick and you visited Me, I was in prison and you came to Me.' Then shall the righteous answer Him, saying: 'Lord, when did we see You hungry and feed You, thirsty and give You drink? When did we see You a stranger and take You in, naked and clothe You? And when did we see You sick or in prison, and came to You?' Then shall the King answer and say to them: 'Verily I say to you, inasmuch as you did it to one of these My brethren the least, you did it to Me.' Then shall He say to those who are on the left:
'Depart from Me, you cursed, into the eternal fire which My Father has prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave Me not to eat, I was thirsty and you gave Me no drink, I was a stranger and you took Me not in, naked and you clothed Me not, sick and in prison and you visited Me not.' Then shall they also answer, saying: 'Lord, when did we see You hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to You?' And He shall answer them: 'Verily I say to you, inasmuch as you did it not to one of these least, neither did you do it to Me.' And these shall go away into eternal fire, but the righteous into life eternal. What greater thing could Christ proclaim to us?
How could He more strongly provoke the works of our righteousness and mercy than by saying that whatever is bestowed on the needy and the poor is bestowed on Himself, and by saying that He is offended unless it is bestowed on the needy and the poor—so that he who is not moved by regard for his brother in the Church may yet be moved by the contemplation of Christ, and he who does not think of his fellow-servant in toil and want may think of his Lord established in that very one whom he despises. And therefore, dearly beloved brethren, we whose fear toward God is ready and prone, who, the world being spurned and trampled underfoot, have our minds already raised to things above and divine—let us, with full faith, devout mind, and continual action, render obedient service in meriting the Lord. Let us give Christ earthly garments, that we may receive heavenly raiment.
Let us give worldly food and drink, that we may come with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob to the heavenly banquet. That we may not reap too little, let us sow much. While there is time, let us take counsel for our eternal security and salvation, as the apostle Paul admonishes and says: 'Therefore, while we have time, let us work that which is good toward all, but especially toward those who are of the household of faith. And in doing good let us not faint, for in due season we shall reap.' Let us consider, most beloved brethren, what the believing people did under the apostles, when amid the very beginnings the mind was vigorous with greater virtues, when the faith of believers still burned with the new ardour of faith.
They then sold their houses and lands, and willingly and liberally offered to the apostles the proceeds to be distributed to the poor; their earthly patrimony being sold and parted with, they transferred their estates thither where they might receive the fruits of an eternal possession, purchasing there homes where they might begin to dwell forever. Such then was their abundance in works as was their consent in love, as we read in the Acts of the Apostles: 'And the multitude of those who had believed acted with one soul and mind; nor was there any distinction among them, nor did they count anything of their goods as their own, but all things were common to them.' This is truly by spiritual birth to become a son of God; this is by the heavenly law to imitate the equity of God the Father.
For whatever is of God is common in our use, nor is anyone barred from His benefits and gifts, so that the whole human race may equally enjoy the divine goodness and bounty. Thus equally the day gives light, the sun radiates, the rain waters, the wind breathes; and for those who sleep the sleep is one, and the splendour of the stars and of the moon is common. By which example of equality, he who as a possessor on earth shares his revenues and fruits with the brotherhood, while in free bestowals he is common and just, is an imitator of God the Father.
What will be that glory of those who labour, dearly beloved brethren—how great and supreme the gladness—when the Lord shall begin to review His people, and, bestowing the promised rewards upon our merits and works, to grant heavenly things for earthly, eternal for temporal, great for small; to present us to the Father, to whom He has restored us by His sanctification; to bestow on us the eternity and immortality unto which He has renewed us by the quickening of His blood; to bring us back again to paradise; to open the kingdoms of heaven by the faith and truth of His promise! Let these things cleave firmly to our senses, let them be understood with full faith, let them be loved with the whole heart, let them be purchased by the magnanimity of unceasing works.
A noble and divine thing, dearly beloved brethren, is the work of salvation: a great comfort of believers, a wholesome safeguard of our security, a defense of hope, a protection of faith, a remedy for sin, a thing placed in the power of the one who does it, a thing both great and easy, a crown of peace without the peril of persecution, the true and greatest gift of God, necessary for the weak, glorious for the strong; by which the Christian, being helped, carries through spiritual grace, merits Christ the Judge, reckons God his debtor. To this palm of salutary works let us contend willingly and readily; let us all run in the contest of righteousness with God and Christ looking on; and we who have already begun to be greater than this age and world, let us slow our course by no covetousness of this age and world.
If the day either of our departure or of persecution shall find us unencumbered, swift, and running in this contest of work, the Lord will nowhere be lacking to our merits for reward: in peace He will give to the conquerors a white crown for their works; in persecution He will double it with a purple one for their passion.