All you that have received this forgiveness, all you to whom it has been vouchsafed to attain unto faith, learn, I beseech you, the greatness of the Gift, and study not to be insolent to your Benefactor. For we obtained forgiveness, not that we should become worse, but to make us far better and more excellent. Let none say that God is the cause of our evil doings, in that He did not punish, nor take vengeance. If (as it is said) a ruler having taken a murderer, lets him go, say, is he (not) judged to be the cause of the murders afterwards committed?
See then, how we expose God to the tongues of the wicked. For what do they not say, what leave unuttered? “(God) Himself,” say they, “allowed them; for he ought to have punished them as they deserved, not to honor them, nor crown them, nor admit them to the foremost privileges, but to punish and take vengeance upon them: but he that, instead of this, honors them, has made them to be such as they are.” Do not, I beseech and implore you, do not let any man utter such speech as far as we are concerned.
Better to be buried ten thousand times over, than that God through us should be so spoken of! The Jews, we read, said to (Christ) Himself, “Thou that destroyest the Temple, and in three days buildest it up, come down from the Cross”: and again, “If Thou be the Son of God:” but the reproaches here are more grievous than those, that through us He should be called a teacher of wickedness! Let us cause the very opposite to be said, by having our conversation worthy of Him that calls us, and (worthily) approaching to the baptism of adoption.
For great indeed is the might of baptism (φωτίσματου): it makes them quite other men than they were, that partake of the gift; it does not let the men be men (and nothing more). Make thou the Gentile (τὸν ῞Ελληνα), to believe that great is the might of the Spirit, that it has new-moulded, that it has fashioned you anew. Why do you wait for the last gasp, like a runaway slave, like a malefactor, as though it were not your duty to live unto God? Why do you stand affected to Him, as if you had in Him a ruthless, cruel Master?
What can be more heartless (ψυχρότερον), what more miserable, than those who make that the time to receive baptism? God made you a friend, and vouchsafed you all His good things, that you may act the part of a friend. Suppose you had done some man the greatest of wrongs, had insulted him, and brought upon him disgraces without end, suppose you had fallen into the hands of the person wronged, and he, in return for all this, had honored you, made you partaker of all that he had, and in the assembly of his friends, of those in whose presence he was insulted, had crowned you, and declared that he would hold you as his own begotten son, and then straightway had died: say, would you not have bewailed him?
Would you not have deemed his death a calamity? Would you not have said, Would that he were alive, that I might have it in my power to make the fit return, that I might requite him, that I might show myself not base to my benefactor? So then, where it is but man, this is how you would act; and where it is God, are you eager to be gone, that you may not requite your benefactor for so great gifts? Nay rather, choose the time for coming to Him so that you shall have it in your power to requite Him like for like.
True, say you, but I cannot keep (the gift). Has God commanded impossibilities? Hence it is that all is clean reversed, hence that, all the world over, every thing is marred— because nobody makes it his mark to live after God. Thus those who are yet Catechumens, because they make this their object, (how they may defer baptism to the last,) give themselves no concern about leading an upright life: and those who have been baptized (φωτισθεντες), whether it be because they received it as children, or whether it be that having received it in sickness, and afterwards recovered (ἀ νενεγκόντες), they had no hearty desire to live on (to the glory of God), so it is, that neither do these make an earnest business of it: nay, even such as received it in health, have little enough to show of any good impression, and warmly affected for the time, these also presently let the fire go out.
Why do you flee? Why do you tremble? What is it you are afraid of? You do not mean to say that you are not permitted to follow your business? I do not part you from your wife! No, it is from fornication that I bar you. I do not debar you from the enjoyment of your wealth? No, but from covetousness and rapacity. I do not oblige you to empty out all your coffers? No, but to give some small matter according to your means to them that lack, your superfluities to their need, and not even this unrewarded.
We do not urge you to fast? We do but forbid you to besot yourselves with drunkenness and gormandizing. The things we would retrench are but the very things which bring you disgrace; things which even here, on this side of hell-fire, you yourselves confess to be things to be shunned and hated. We do not forbid you to be glad and to rejoice? Nay, only rejoice not with a disgraceful and unbecoming merriment. What is it you dread, why are you afraid, why do you tremble? Where marriage is, where enjoyment of wealth, where food in moderation, what matter of sin is there in these things?
And yet, they that are without enjoin the opposites to these, and are obeyed. For they demand not according to your means, but they say, You must give thus much: and if you allege poverty, they will make no account of that. Not so Christ: Give, says He, of what you have, and I inscribe you in the first rank. Again those say, If you will distinguish yourself, forsake father, mother, kindred, friends, and keep close attendance on the Palace, laboring, toiling, slaving, distracted, suffering miseries without number.
Not so Christ; but keep thou, says He, at home with your wife, with your children, and as for your daily occupations reform and regulate them on the plan of leading a peaceable life, free from cares and from perils. True, say you, but the other promises wealth. Aye, but Christ a kingdom, and more, He promises wealth also with it. For, “Seek ye,” says He, “the kingdom of Heaven, and all these things shall be added unto you”: throwing in, by way of additional boon, what the other holds out as the main thing: and the Psalmist says, he has “never seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging their bread.” Let us set about practising virtue, let us make a beginning; let us only lay hold on it, and you shall see what the good will be.
For surely in these (worldly) objects you do not succeed so without labor, that you should be so faint-hearted for these (higher) objects— that you should say, Those are to be had without labor, these only with toil. Nay,— what need to tell you what is the true state of the case?— those are had only with greater labor. Let us not recoil from the Divine Mysteries, I beseech you. Look not at this, that one who was baptized before you, has turned out ill, and has fallen from his hope: since among soldiers also we see some not doing their duty by the service, while we see others distinguishing themselves, and we do not look only at the idle ones, but we emulate these, the men who are successful. But besides, consider how many, after their baptism, have of men become angels!
Source: Homilies on Acts (New Advent)