Homilies on First Corinthians

¹⁰ What then ought we to do? Say you. To cease from this savage practice: and to convince all that are in need that by doing these things they will gain nothing, but if they modestly approach they shall find your liberality great. Let them be once aware of this, even though they be of all men most miserable, they will never choose to punish themselves so severely, I pledge myself; nay, they will even give you thanks for delivering them both from the mockery and the pain of that way of life. But as it is, for charioteers you would let out even your own children, and for dancers you would throw away your very souls, while for Christ an hungered you spare not the smallest portion of your substance. But if you give a little silver, you think as much of it as if you had laid out all you have, not knowing that not the giving but the giving liberally, this is true almsgiving. Wherefore also it is not those simply who give whom the prophet proclaims and calls happy, but those who bestow liberally. For he does not say simply, He has given, but what? “he has dispersed abroad, he has given to the poor.” For what profit is it, when out of it you give as it were a glass of water out of the sea, and even a widow's magnanimity is beyond your emulation? And how will you say, “Pity me, O Lord, according to your great pity, and according to the multitude of your mercies blot out my transgression,” yourself not pitying according to any great pity, nay, haply not according to any little. For I am greatly ashamed, I own, when I see many of the rich riding upon their golden-bitted chargers with a train of domestics clad in gold, and having couches of silver and other and more pomp, and yet when there is need to give to a poor man, becoming more beggarly than the very poorest.

11. But what is their constant talk? “He has,” they say, “the common church-allowance.” And what is that to you? For you will not be saved because I give; nor if the Church bestow have you blotted out your own sins. For this cause do you not give, because the Church ought to give to the needy? Because the priests pray, will you never pray yourself? And because others fast, will you be continually drunken? Do you not know that God enacted not almsgiving so much for the sake of the poor as for the sake of the persons themselves who bestow?

But do you suspect the priest? Why this thing itself, to begin with, is a grievous sin. However, I will not examine the matter too nicely. Do thou it all in your own person, and so shall you reap a double reward. Since in fact, what we say in behalf of almsgiving, we say not, that you should offer to us, but that you should yourself minister by your own hands. For if you bring your alms to me, perhaps you may even be led captive by vain-glory, and oftentimes likewise you shall go away offended through suspicion of something evil: but if you do all things by yourselves, you shall both be rid of offenses and of unreasonable suspicion, and greater is your reward. Not therefore to compel you to bring your money hither, do I say these things; nor from indignation on account of the priests being ill-reported of. For if one must be indignant and grieve, for you should be our grief, who say this ill. Since to them who are spoken ill of falsely and vainly the reward is greater, but to the speakers the condemnation and punishment is heavier. I say not these things therefore in their behalf, but in solicitude and care for you. For what marvel is it if some in our generation are suspected, when in the case of those holy men who imitated the angels, who possessed nothing of their own, I mean the Apostles, there was a murmuring in the ministration to the widows that the poor were overlooked? When “not one said that anything of the things he possessed was his own, but they had all things common?”

Let us not then put forward these pretexts, nor account it an excuse that the Church is wealthy. But when you see the greatness of her substance, bear in mind also the crowds of poor who are on her list, the multitudes of her sick, her occasions of endless expenses. Investigate, scrutinize, there is none to forbid, nay, they are even ready to give you an account. But I wish to go much farther. Namely, when we have given in our accounts and proved that our expenditure is no less than our income, nay, sometimes more, I would gladly ask you this further question: When we depart hence and shall hear Christ saying, “You saw me hungry, and gave me no meat; naked, and you clothed me not;” what shall we say? What apology shall we make? Shall we bring forward such and such a person who disobeyed these commands? Or some of the priests who were suspected? “Nay, what is this to you? For I accuse you,” says He, “of those things wherein you have yourself sinned. And the apology for these would be, to have washed away your own offenses, not to point to others whose errors have been the same as yours.”

In fact, the Church through your meanness is compelled to have such property as it has now. Since, if men did all things according to the laws, its revenue should have been your good will, which were both a secure chest and an inexhaustible treasury. But now when you lay up for yourselves treasures upon the earth and shut up all things in your own stores, while the Church is compelled to be at charges with bands of widows, choirs of virgins, sojournings of strangers, distresses of foreigners, the misfortunes of prisoners, the necessities of the sick and maimed, and other such like causes, what must be done? Turn away from all these, and block up so many ports? Who then could endure the shipwrecks that would ensue; the weepings, the lamentations, the wailings which would reach us from every quarter?

Let us not then speak at random what comes into our mind. For now, as I have just said, we are really prepared to render up our accounts to you. But even if it were the reverse, and you had corrupt teachers plundering and grasping at every thing, not even so were their wickedness an apology for you. For the Lover of mankind and All-wise, the Only-Begotten Son of God, seeing all things, and knowing the chance that in so great length of time and in so vast a world there would be many corrupt priests; lest the carelessness of those under their rule should increase through their neglect, removing every excuse for indifference; “In Moses' seat,” says He, “sit the Scribes and the Pharisees; all things, therefore, whatsoever they bid you, these do ye, but do not ye after their works:” implying, that even if you have a bad teacher, this will not avail you, should you not attend to the things which are spoken. For not from what your teacher has done but from what you have heard and disobeyed, from that, I say, does God pass his sentence upon you. So that if you do the things commanded, you shall then stand with much boldness: but if you disobey the things spoken, even though you should show ten thousand corrupt priests, this will not plead for you at all. Since Judas also was an apostle, but nevertheless this shall never be any apology for the sacrilegious and covetous. Nor will any be able when accused to say, “Why the Apostle was a thief and sacrilegious, and a traitor;” yea, this very thing shall most of all be our punishment and condemnation that not even by the evils of others were we corrected. For this cause also these things were written that we might shun all emulation of such things.