Homilies on the Gospel of St. Matthew

⁶ Yes, says he, because the one is worthless, but the other kind and gentle. What do you say? Do you call your brother worthless, who art commanded not to call him so much as Raca? And are you not ashamed, neither do you blush, at exposing your brother, your fellow member, him that has shared in the same birth with you, that has partaken of the same table?

But if you have any brother after the flesh, if he should perpetrate ten thousand evil deeds, you labor to conceal him, and accountest yourself also to partake of the shame, when he is disgraced; but as to your spiritual brother, when you ought to free him from calumny, thou dost rather encompass him with ten thousand charges against him?

“Why he is worthless and insufferable,” you may say. Nay then for this reason become his friend, that you may put an end to his being such a one, that you may convert him, that you may lead him back to virtue.— “But he obeys not,” you will say, “neither does he bear advice.”— Whence do you know it? What, have you admonished him, and attempted to amend him?— “I have admonished him often,” you will say. How many times?— Oftentimes, both once, and a second time.— Oh! Is this often? Why, if you had done this throughout all the time, ought thou to grow weary, and to give it up? Do you see not how God is always admonishing us, by the prophets, by the apostles, by the evangelists? What then? Have we performed all? And have we been obedient in all things? By no means. Did He then cease admonishing? Did He hold His peace? Does He not say each day, “You cannot serve God, and mammon” and with many, the superfluity and the tyranny of wealth yet increases? Does He not cry aloud each day, “Forgive, and you shall have forgiveness,” and we become wild beasts more and more? Does He not continually admonish to restrain desire, and to keep the mastery over wicked lust, and many wallow worse than swine in this sin? But nevertheless, He ceases not speaking.

Wherefore then do we not consider these things with ourselves, and say that even with us God reasons, and abstains not from doing this, although we disobey Him in many things?

Therefore He said that, “Few are the saved.” For if virtue in ourselves suffices not for our salvation, but we must take with us others too when we depart; when we have saved neither ourselves, nor others, what shall we suffer? Whence shall we have any more a hope of salvation?

But why do I blame for these things, when not even of them that dwell with us do we take any account, of wife, and children, and servants, but we have care of one thing instead of another, like drunken men, that our servants may be more in number, and may serve us with much diligence, and that our children may receive from us a large inheritance, and that our wife may have ornaments of gold, and costly garments, and wealth; and we care not at all for themselves, but for the things that belong to them. For neither do we care for our own wife, nor provide for her, but for the things that belong to the wife; neither for the child, but for the things of the child.

And we do the same as if any one seeing a house in a bad state, and the walls giving way, were to neglect to raise up these, and to make up great fences round it without; or when a body was diseased, were not to take care of this, but were to weave for it gilded garments; or when the mistress was ill, were to give heed to the maidservants, and the looms, and the vessels in the house, and mind other things, leaving her to lie and moan.

For this is done even now, and when our soul is in evil and wretched case, and angry, and reviling, and lusting wrongly, and full of vainglory, and at strife, and dragged down to the earth, and torn by so many wild beasts, we neglect to drive away the passions from her, and are careful about house and servants. And while if a bear has escaped by stealth, we shut up our houses, and run along by the narrow passages, so as not to fall in with the wild beast; now while not one wild beast, but many such thoughts are tearing in pieces the soul, we have not so much as a feeling of it. And in the city we take so much care, as to shut up the wild beasts in solitary places and in cages, and neither at the senate house of the city, nor at the courts of justice, nor at the king's palace, but far off somewhere at a distance do we keep them chained; but in the case of the soul, where the senate house is, where the King's palace, where the court of justice is, the wild beasts are let loose, crying and making a tumult about the mind itself and the royal throne. Therefore all things are turned upside down, and all is full of disturbance, the things within, the things without, and we are in nothing different from a city thrown into confusion from being overrun by barbarians; and what takes place in us is as though a serpent were setting on a brood of sparrows, and the sparrows, with their feeble cries, were flying about every way affrighted, and full of trouble, without having any place whither to go and end their consternation.