For it is indeed a great thing, a great, a generous soul (like this)! How many have since believed, and none of them all has shone like him! What we want is earnestness, exceeding ardor, a soul ready to encounter death. Else is it not possible to attain unto the Kingdom, not being crucified. Let us not deceive ourselves. For if in war it is impossible to come off safe while living daintily, and trafficking, and huckstering and idling, much more in this war. Or think ye not that it is a war worse than all others?
(Infra, p. 204, note 1.) “For we wrestle not,” he says, “against flesh and blood.” Since even while taking our meals and walking, and bathing, the enemy is present with us, and knows no time of truce, except that of sleep only: nay, often even then he carries on the war, injecting into us unclean thoughts, and making us lewd by means of dreams. We watch not, we do not rouse ourselves up, do not look to the multitude of the forces opposed to us, do not reflect, that this very thing constitutes the greatest misfortune— that though surrounded by so great wars, we live daintily as in time of peace.
Believe me, worse than Paul suffered may have to be suffered now. Those enemies wounded him with stones: there is a wounding with words, even worse than stones. What then must we do? The same that he did: he did not hate those who cast stones at him, but after they had dragged him out, he entered again into their city, to be a benefactor to those who had done him such wrongs. If you also endurest him who harshly insults you, and has done you wrongs, then have you too been stoned.
Say not, “I have done him no injury.” For what injury had Paul done, that he should be stoned? He was announcing a Kingdom, he was bringing men away from error, and bringing them to God: benefits these, worthy of crowns, worthy of proclamation by voice of herald, worthy of a thousand good things— not of stones. And yet (far from resenting) he did just the contrary. For this is the splendid victory. “And they dragged him,” it says. These too they often drag: but be not thou angry; on the contrary, preach thou the word with gentleness.
Hath one insulted you? Hold your peace, and bless if you can, and thou also hast preached the word, hast given a lesson of gentleness, a lesson of meekness. I know that many do not so smart under wounds, as they do under the blow which is inflicted by words: as indeed the one wound the body receives the other the soul. But let us not smart, or rather feeling the smart let us endure. Do you not see the pugilists, how, with their heads sorely battered, they bite their teeth into their lips, and so bear their smarts kindly?
No need to grind the teeth, no need to bite (the lips). Remember your Master, and by the remembrance you have at once applied the remedy. Remember Paul: reflect that thou, the beaten hast conquered, and he the beater, is defeated; and by this have you cured the whole. It is the turning of the scale a moment and you have achieved the whole: be not hurried away, do not even move, you have extinguished the whole (fire). Great eloquence of persuasion there is in suffering anything for Christ: you preach not the word of faith, but you preach the word of patience (φιλοσοφίας).
But, you will say, the more he sees my gentleness, the more he sets upon me. Is it for this then that you are pained, that he increases your rewards the more? “But this is the way,” you say, “to make him unbearable.” This is mere pretext of your own littleness of mind: on the contrary, the other is the way to make him unbearable, namely, that you avenge yourself. If God had known, that through forbearance of revenge, the unjust became unbearable, He would not have done this Himself: on the contrary, He would have said, Avenge yourself: but He knew, that other than this is the more likely way to do good.
Make not thou a law contrary to God: do as He bids you. You are not kinder than He that made us. He has said, “Bear to be wronged:” you say, “I requite wrong for wrong, that he may not become unbearable.” Have you then more care for him than God has? Such talk is mere passion and ill temper, arrogance and setting up laws against God's laws. For even if the man were hurt (by our forbearance), would it not be our duty to obey? When God orders anything, let us not make a contrary law.
“A submissive answer,” we read, turns away wrath: not an answer of opposition. If it profits you, it profits him also: but if it hurts you who art to set him right, how much more will it hurt him? “Physician, heal yourself.” Hath one spoken ill of you? Commend him thou. Hath he reviled you? Praise him thou. Hath he plotted against you? Do him a kindness. Requite him with the contrary things, if at least thou at all carest for his salvation and wish not thou to revenge your own suffering.
And yet, you will say, though he has often met with long-suffering from me he has become worse. This is not your affair, but his. Will you learn what wrongs God suffered? They threw down His altars, and slew His prophets, yet He endured it all. Could He not have launched a thunderbolt from above? Nay, when He had sent His prophets, and they killed them, then He sent His Son, when they wrought greater impieties, then He sent them greater benefits. And thou too, if you see one exasperated, then yield the more: since this madness has greater need of soothing (παραμθίας).
The more grievous his abuse of you, the more meekness does he need from you: and even as a gale when it blows strong, then it requires yielding to, so also he who is in a passion. When the wild beast is most savage, then we all flee: so also should we flee from him that is angry. Think not that this is an honor to him: for is it an honor we show to the wild beast, and to madmen, when we turn aside out of their way? By no means it is a dishonor and a scorn: or rather not dishonor and scorn, but compassion and humanity.
Do you see not how the sailors, when the wind blows violently, take down their sails, that the vessel may not sink? How, when the horses have run away with the driver, he only leads them into the (open) plain, and does not pull against them that he may not voluntarily exhaust his strength? This do thou also. Wrath is afire, it is a quick flame needing fuel: do not supply food to the fire, and you have soon extinguished the evil. Anger has no power of itself; there must be another to feed it.
For you there is no excuse. He is possessed with madness, and knows not what he does; but when thou, seeing what he is, fallest into the same evils, and art not brought to your right senses by the sight, what excuse can there be for you? If coming to a feast thou see at the very outset of the feast some one drunken and acting unseemly, would not he, who after seeing him makes himself drunk, be much more inexcusable? Just so it is here. Do we think it any excuse to say, I was not the first to begin?
This is against us, that even the sight of the other in that condition did not bring us to our right senses. It is just as if one should say, “I did not murder him first.” For this very thing makes you deserving of punishment, that even upon the warning of such a spectacle thou did not restrain yourself. If you should see the drunken man in the act of vomiting, retching, bursting, his eyes strained, filling the table with his filthiness, everybody hurrying out of his way, and then should fall into the same state yourself, would you not be more hateful?
Like him is he that is in a passion: more than he who vomits, he has his veins distended, his eyes inflamed, his bowels racked; he vomits forth words far more filthy than that food; all crude what he utters, nothing duly digested, for his passion will not let it be. But as in that case excess of fumes (χυμων), making an uproar in the stomach, often rejects all its contents; so here, excess of heat, making a tumult in the soul suffers him not to conceal what it were right to leave unsaid, but things fit and unfit to be spoken, he says all alike, not putting the hearers but himself to shame.
As then we get out of the way of those that vomit, so let us from those who are angry. Let us cast dust upon their vomit: By doing what? By holding our peace: let us call the dogs to eat up the vomit. I know that you are disgusted at hearing this: but I wish you to feel this same disgust when you see these things take place, and not to be pleased at the thing. The abusive man is filthier than the dog that returns to its own vomit. For if indeed having vomited once he were done with it, he would not be like that dog: but if he vomits the same things again, it is plain that he does so from having eaten the same again.
What then is more abominable than such an one? What filthier than that mouth which chews such food? And yet this is a work of nature, but the other not or rather both the one and the other are contrary to nature. How? Since it is not according to nature to be causelessly abusive, but against nature: he speaks nothing then like a man, but part as beast, part as madman. As then the disease of the body is contrary to nature, so also is this. And to show that it is contrary to nature, if he shall continue in it, he will perish little by little: but if he continue in that which is natural, he will not perish.
I had rather sit at table with a man who eats dirt, than with one who speaks such words. See ye not the swine devouring dung? So also do these. For what is more stinking than the words which abusive men utter? It is their study to speak nothing wholesome, nothing pure, but whatever is base, whatever is unseemly, that they study both to do and say: and what is worse, they think to disgrace others, while they in fact are disgracing themselves. For that it is themselves they disgrace is plain.
For, leaving out of the question those who speak lies (in their railings), say it be some notorious harlot, or even from the stage some other (abandoned creature), and let that person be having a fight with some other person: then let the latter cast this up to the former (what she or he is), and the former retort upon the latter the same reproach: which of them is most damaged by the words? For the former is but called what in fact he or she is, which is not the case with the other: so that the first gets nothing more in the way of shame (than there was before), while to the other there accrues a great accession of disgrace.
But again, let there be some hidden actions (mod. text εἰργασμένα “which have been done”), and let only the person abusing know of them: then, holding his peace until now, let him openly parade (ἐ κπομπευέτω) the reproach: even so, he himself is more disgraced than the other. How? By making himself the herald of the wickedness, so getting for himself either the imputation of not being privy to any such thing, or the character of one not fit to be trusted.
And you shall see all men immediately accuse him: “If indeed he had been privy to a murder being done, he ought to have revealed it all:” and so they regard him with aversion as not human even, they hate him, they say he is a wild beast, fierce and cruel: while the other they pardon much rather than him. For we do not so much hate those that have wounds, as those that compel one to uncover and show them. Thus that man has not only disgraced the other, but himself as well and his hearers, and the common nature of men: he has wounded the hearer, done no good.
For this reason Paul says: “If there be any word that is good for edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers.” Let us get a tongue speaking only good things, that we may be lovely and amiable. But indeed, everything has come to that pitch of wickedness, that many boast of the very things, for which they should hide their faces. For the threats of the many are of this kind: “you can not bear my tongue,” say they. Words, these, worthy only of a woman, of an abandoned drunken old hag, one of those that are dragged (to punishment) in the forum, a procuress.
Nothing more shameful than these words, nothing more unmanly, more womanlike, than to have your strength in the tongue, and to think great things of yourself because you can rail, just like the fellows in processions, like the buffoons, parasites, and flatterers. Swine they are rather than men, who pride themselves upon this. Whereas you should (sooner) have buried yourself, and if another gave you this character, should recoil from the charge as odious and unmanly, instead of that you have made yourself the herald of (your own) disgrace (ὓ βρεων).
But you will not be able to hurt him you speak ill of. Wherefore I beseech you, considering how the wickedness has come to such a height, that many boast of it, let us return to our senses, let us recover those who are thus mad, let us take away these councils out of the city, let us make our tongue gracious, let us rid it of all evil speaking, that being clean from sins, we may be able to draw down upon us the good-will from above, and to have mercy vouchsafed unto us from God, through the grace and compassion of His only-begotten Son, with Whom to the Father, together with the Holy Spirit, be glory, might, honor, now and ever, world without end. Amen.
Source: Homilies on Acts (New Advent)