7 Let us at length keep our hands to ourselves, or rather, let us not keep them, but stretch them out honorably, not for grasping, but for almsgiving. Let us not have our hand unfruitful nor withered; for the hand which does not alms is withered; and that which is also grasping, is polluted and unclean.
Let no one eat with such hands; for this is an insult to those invited. For, tell me, if a man when he had made us lie down on tapestry and a soft couch and linen interwoven with gold, in a great and splendid house, and had set by us a great multitude of attendants, and had prepared a tray of silver and gold, and filled it with many dainties of great cost and of all sorts, then urged us to eat, provided we would only endure his besmearing his hands with mire or with human ordure, and so sitting down to meat with us— would any man endure this infliction? Would he not rather have considered it an insult? Indeed I think he would, and would have gone straightway off. But now in fact, you see not hands filled with what is indeed filth, but even the very food, and yet thou dost not go off, nor flee, nor find fault. Nay, if he be a person in authority, thou even accountest it a grand affair, and destroyest your own soul, in eating such things. For covetousness is worse than any mire; for it pollutes, not the body but the soul, and makes it hard to be washed. Thou therefore, though you see him that sits at meat defiled with this filth both on his hands and his face, and his house filled with it, nay and his table also full of it (for dung, or if there be anything more unclean than that, it is not so unclean and polluted as those viands), do you feel as if forsooth thou were highly honored, and as if you were going to enjoy yourself?
And do you not fear Paul who allows us to go without restraint to the Tables of the heathen if we wish, but not even if we wish to those of the covetous? For, “if any man who is called a Brother”, he says, meaning here by Brother every one who is a believer simply, not him who leads a solitary life. For what is it which makes brotherhood? The Washing of regeneration; the being enabled to call God our Father. So that he that is a Monk, if he be a Catechumen, is not a Brother, but the believer though he be in the world, is a Brother. “If any man,” says he, “that is called a Brother.” For at that time there was not even a trace of any one leading a Monastic life, but this blessed [Apostle] addressed all his discourse to persons in the world. “If any man,” he says, “that is called a Brother, be a fornicator, or covetous or a drunkard, with such an one, no not to eat.” But not so with respect to the heathen: but “If any of them that believe not,” meaning the heathen, “bid you and you be disposed to go, whatsoever is set before you eat.”
Source: Homilies on the Epistle to the Hebrews (New Advent)