When God changed the Lord into a father, he willed to reign by love rather than by power, and preferred to be loved rather than to be feared: whence with fatherly affection he admonished, lest anything of our most righteous labour should be lost to us. The evangelist thus says: 'When you fast, be not as the hypocrites, sad; for they disfigure their faces, that they may appear unto men to fast. Amen I say to you, they have received their reward' (Matthew 6:16). Hypocrisy is a subtle evil, a secret poison, a hidden venom, the counterfeit of virtues, the moth of holiness. All adverse things strive with their own forces, fight with their own arms, assail openly;
whence also they are guarded against as easily as they are seen. But hypocrisy, secure, dissembles; it deceives in prosperity, it lies with subtlety, and with cruel art it lops off the virtues with the sword of virtues: it slays fasting by fasting, it empties prayer by prayer, it lays low mercy by compassion. Hypocrisy, akin to a fever, offers heat in a cold cup. What dropsy is to bodies, that is hypocrisy to souls: dropsy thirsts by drinking, hypocrisy, drunken, thirsts. 'For they disfigure their faces, that they may appear unto men to fast.' Hypocrisy, while it desires to captivate the eyes, is itself made captive by the eyes. 'For they disfigure their faces.' And if they disfigure their faces, what ornament of the body will remain? Truly, as the Lord said:
'If the light that is in thee be darkness, how great shall that darkness be' (Matthew 6:23)? Hypocrite, though thy face be unkempt, thy skin neglected, thy countenance sad, thine aspect disfigured, neither hast thou found praise from men, and before God thou hast lost the fruit of thy fasting. Hypocrite, thou hast toiled with fastings, that the labour of thy fasting might not profit thee. Hypocrite, thou hast entered the surges of abstinence, hast climbed the waves of continence, hast swum the sea of fasting; and in the very harbour of fasting thou hast made shipwreck: because thou hast not bought what is thine, but hast trafficked in vanity, thou who out of what was entrusted by God hast transacted human business. Hence it is that thou art to render an account to God, thou who from men hast received the usury of wretched praise.
Brethren, the poison must be fled, the pestilence must be shunned, which creates diseases out of remedies, works languor out of medicine, turns holiness into crime, makes guilt out of appeasement, generates peril out of propitiation. He who has fled hypocrisy conquers; he who has fallen into it falls. Let us flee hypocrisy, let us flee, brethren: let our fasting be of simplicity, let it be holy from innocence, pure from purity, sincere from sincerity, hidden from men, unknown to the devil, known to God. He who hides not his treasure, betrays it; virtues betrayed will not remain. Virtues, as it were, desert their betrayers: thus they insist on guarding their own guardians. Therefore let fasting, which against the vices is the first virtue for us, be placed in the citadel of the heart:
because, with it presiding in the inner parts, the vices will not be able to shake us in the outer. This Christ, that the Christian might be able to have it, exhorts when he says: 'But thou, when thou fastest, anoint thy head, and wash thy face, that thou appear not to men to fast, but to thy Father who is in secret; and thy Father who seeth in secret will repay thee.' When he says, 'Anoint thy head, and wash thy face': the earnest master enjoins not that the hair of the head should overflow with alluring ointment, nor does he wish the face to shine with the accustomed washing; but under the guise of one dining he wishes the fasting of the Christian to be concealed, because he wishes not the Christian to lay claim to fasting with contrived mournfulness. But let us return to what we began.
'Anoint your head, and wash your face, that you may not appear to men to be fasting, but to your Father, who is in secret.' Thus He does not indulge a sensual appearance, but excludes the countenance that is feigned: a face cast down with grief courts reputation, it does not profess a voluntary fast. If a man wills to fast, why is he sad? If he wills it not, why does he go hungry? Deservedly he lives under total punishment who makes for himself a vice out of virtue, a lie out of truth, a loss out of reward, a sin out of forgiveness. If the farmer has not driven in the ploughshare, if he has not dug the furrow deep, if he has not cut away the briars, if he has not rooted up the weeds, if he has not laid the seed in safety, he deceives himself, not the earth; nor does he do harm to the earth, but he wins no fruit for himself.
and so he empties himself, so he deceives himself, so he wars against himself, who with a lying hand deceives the earth. What will he do? What will he have? What will he find, who deceives God by a hunger of the flesh while hypocrisy runs riot? Since we have made mention of the farmer, let him know that he sustains his toil in vain, that he shall have nothing, who presses the plough of fasting, and cuts away the weeds of gluttony, and roots up the briars of luxury, yet casts no seeds of mercy. This the Lord willed to make plain, who, teaching about fasting, at once added these words: 'Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where rust and moth consume, and where thieves dig through and steal. But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither rust nor moth consumes, and where thieves do not dig through nor steal.'
What is so fatherly? What comes so from love? What counsel so provident from charity? He wills that nothing of yours should perish, who wills your goods to be laid up in the heavenly treasuries. How securely he sleeps who has been counted worthy to have God as the keeper of his own! How free he is from cares, how he lays aside his anguish, how untroubled he is, how void of a servant's pride, who commits his own to the Father to be kept! How the Father's affection preserves what a servant's fear cannot so preserve: the Father, when He gives His own to His sons, does not diminish what has been entrusted to Him by His sons. He knows not what a father is, he knows not that he is a son, who does not trust the Father. Locks do not shut out the moth, but shut it in; and things stored up breed the moth, they do not drive it off; they nourish rust, they do not avoid it; for what is born of the thing itself cannot be avoided.
Where there is need, thieves cannot be lacking. He therefore who lays up his goods among moths, rust, and thieves, does not lay them up but casts them away. Just as the moth is born of the garment, the rust of the metal, thieves of necessity, so avarice is born of riches, cupidity of gain, and from possessing is acquired the fever of possessing. He therefore who wills to conquer avarice, let him lend out his riches abroad, not store them up. Let us send our treasures ahead, brethren, into heaven; let the poor be our carriers, who in their own bosom can bear what is ours to the realms above. Let no one doubt the honesty of these bearers: this is your own conveyance, by which our goods are carried to God, with God as surety; to whom belong all honor and glory, power and dominion, and thanksgiving, unto all ages of ages. Amen.