To those skilled in battles the military trumpet sounds forth discipline; to the unskilled it gives only a terrifying blare; so that, as the mistress of wars, it gives strength to its own and dread to the enemies. He who fights without the trumpet is no soldier: he is carried by fury, not by battle; he acts not by valor but by peril; he seeks to perish, not to conquer. We have said this, that the soldier of Christ may understand why the heavenly song has been provided. Set in the field of the world, we sustain the fight against the devil and against the vices. As often, therefore, as the prophetic blast thunders to us, so often does it render us wary in peace, brave in the battle-line, and unconquered in the fight. For today the blessed Psalmist calls us by a cry to heavenly understanding: 'Blessed is he who understands concerning the needy and the poor' (Psalm
40:2). And what is the understanding, where is the professed poverty? It is the force of understanding, if it searches the inward parts, if it detects hidden things, if it lays bare what is covered. But things placed before the eyes, exposed in public, forced upon the senses — this is not to understand, but to see. One naked in the cold, wasting with hunger, dry with thirst, trembling with weariness, ghastly from want — what labor is it to understand that he is needy? And if there is no labor of understanding, whence comes the fruit of understanding? Let us pray, brethren, that he himself may grant us to understand the things to be understood, he who shows himself thus to be understood in the poor.
That he himself who covers heaven should be naked in the poor man, that the fullness of all things should hunger in the hungry, that the fount of founts should thirst in the thirsty — how is it not a great thing to understand this? How is it not a blessed thing to understand that poverty is spacious for him for whom heaven is too narrow; that he who enriches the world should be in want in the needy; that the giver of all should seek a morsel of bread, a cup of water; that God, out of love for the poor, should so abase himself, that he is not merely present to the poor man, but is himself the poor man? To whomever God has granted to see this, he indeed sees. But how he has either poured the poor man into himself, or poured himself into the poor man, let him now tell us himself: 'I was hungry,' he says, 'and you gave me to eat.' He did not say, 'the poor man was hungry, and you gave him to eat';
but 'I was hungry, and you gave me to eat' (Matthew 25:35). He proclaims as given to himself what the poor man received; he says that he eats what the poor man ate; what the poor man drinks, he testifies was poured into himself. O what the love of the poor accomplishes! God glories in heaven for that whereof the poor man blushes on earth, and he reckons it to his own honor that which is counted an injury to the poor man. It would have sufficed to say, 'you gave me to eat, you gave me drink'; but he prefaces it: 'I was hungry, I was thirsty,' because small would have been his love for the poor had he taken up the poor man without also taking up the sufferings of the poor: and truly, genuine love is proved only by sufferings. True love has made his own even their narrow straits.
It is too much that the food of the poor man is savory to God, he who does not hunger for the goods of all creation, and yet prophesies that he is fattened on the poor man's fare in the kingdom of heaven, before all the angels, in the assembly of those who rise again. That Abel suffered (Genesis 4), that Noah preserved the world (Genesis 6), that Abraham received it by faith (Genesis 15), that Moses bore the law (Exodus 20), that Peter climbed the cross head-downward — God is silent, and this alone he proclaims, that the poor man ate. In heaven the provision of the hungry is reckoned first; the poor man's wages are handled first in heaven; the poor man's largesse is written first in the divine daybooks. Blessed is he whose name is read so often before God, as often as the account of the poor man is recited in heaven.
But let us hear also the fruit of this blessedness: 'In the evil day the Lord will deliver him.' He who knows that he must lead his life through the evils of the world, let him ever lead with him the help of almsgiving; let him call to his aid the throngs of the poor; let the generous dispenser overflow in the feeding of the poor; let him make frequent the poor man's gift, let him not tremble in bestowing; he to whom the sparing recipient stretches out his hand cannot fail; that treasure cannot be exhausted from which a coin suffices. 'In the evil day the Lord will deliver him.' In the evil day God the Deliverer will stand by him, who delivered the poor man from evils. In his straits God will hear him crying, who heard the poor man when he cried.
He shall not see the evil day, who made the poor man have good days. He shall see the evil day, who enters the day of judgment without the advocacy of poverty: In vain do sins accuse him whom the poor man excuses. He cannot be excused whom the hunger of the poor man has accused. 'The Lord,' he says, 'preserve him and give him life.' He did not say, 'preserves and gives life,' but said, 'may he preserve and give life.' He said it so that this might be the voice not of one announcing, but of one entreating. He who heard the needy man entreating, behold, has heard the Church throughout the whole world thus entreating for him: 'The Lord preserve him and give him life.' 'Preserve him,' lest he be seized for punishment; 'give him life,' that he may rise from the dead and receive life. 'And let him not deliver him into the hand of his enemy.' Whose enemy? Surely the devil's:
he himself is the prince of enmities; he despises enemies, who has trampled upon the very author of enmities. 'But the Lord help him upon the bed of his sorrow.' The prophet pursues all the miseries of human frailty. 'But the Lord help him upon the bed of his sorrow.' What is the bed of our sorrow, but our body? In which the soul lies, and lies grieving, and grieves, because, longing to seek heaven again, it is pressed down by the earth of the body. 'You have turned over his whole couch in his infirmity.' He does not turn over the just man on his couch, nor the unjust; but the Lord turns over the couch for the sick. It is therefore the flesh which is turned over and turns. It is itself, then, that which is tossed about in adversity, and tosses about in prosperity.
The Lord therefore turns over our couch, when he turns our adversities into prosperities: and because upon the bed of sorrow, that is, upon the bed of the body, the sick soul was tossing, the very one who was tossing cries out: 'I said, Lord, have mercy on me; heal my soul, for I have sinned against you.' Because through the consent of the flesh it feels that the soul has contracted a languor, it implores that the soul may be healed: and it asks for mercy with confidence, because it showed mercy toward the poor man. Blessed is he who, by lending to the poor man, has furnished that very Judge as his debtor.