Blessed by Choice, Not Necessity

Our holy Savior applied poverty and wealth, and terms like them, both to spiritual things and to things we can see and touch. When he said, “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake,” he was plainly teaching us to look, in every circumstance, for the witness: the man who, if he is poor for righteousness’ sake, bears witness that the righteousness he loves is a good thing, and who, if he “hungers and thirsts for righteousness’ sake,” testifies that righteousness is the best thing. In the same way the man who weeps and mourns for righteousness’ sake testifies of the best law that it is beautiful. So, just like “those who are persecuted,” “those who hunger and thirst” for righteousness’ sake are called blessed by the One who approves a genuine desire — a desire not even starvation can put a stop to. And if they hunger after righteousness itself, they are blessed. “And blessed are the poor,” whether “in spirit” or in their circumstances — that is, if it is for righteousness’ sake. It is not the poor as such that he calls blessed, but those who have wanted to become poor for righteousness’ sake: those who have thought little of this world’s honors in order to reach what is good. And the same goes for those who through purity have become beautiful in body and in character, and for those who are wellborn and honorable, men who through righteousness have reached the standing of adopted sons, and who therefore “have received power to become children of God,” and “to tread on snakes and scorpions,” and to rule over demons and the enemy’s forces. In short, the Lord’s discipline draws the soul gladly away from the body, even if it has to tear itself loose in going. “For the one who loves his life will lose it, and the one who loses his life will find it” — if only we join what is mortal in us to the immortality of God. It is God’s will that we come to the knowledge of God, and that knowledge is the sharing out of immortality. So the man who, taking the word of repentance to heart, recognizes that his life is sinful will lose it — lose it out of the sin it is being torn away from; and in losing it he will find it, by the obedience that comes back to life for faith and dies to sin. This, then, is what it means “to find one’s life”: to know yourself. [a]

The Stoics say that the turning that leads to divine things is brought about by a change, the soul being changed into wisdom. And Plato speaks of “the soul taking a turn toward what is better, and a change from a kind of day that is really night.” The philosophers also allow the good man a reasoned departure from life when someone strips him of the power to act, so that no hope of acting is left him. And the judge who forces us to deny the one we love is, in my view, showing which man is God’s friend and which is not. In a case like that there is no room left even to weigh which one prefers, a man’s threats or the love of God. And keeping away from evil acts somehow works to lessen and at last put out the inclinations toward them: their energy is destroyed by having nothing to do. This is the point of “Sell what you have and give to the poor, and come, follow me” — that is, follow what the Lord says. Some say that by “what you have” he meant the things in the soul that are not of a kind with it, though how those get handed over to the poor they cannot say. For God gives out to everyone according to what they deserve, and his distribution is righteous. So think little of the possessions God assigns you, and be generous with them; do what I am telling you. Hurry on to the ascent of the Spirit, not only counted righteous by keeping away from what is evil, but brought to completion besides by doing good as the Lord did. In this case he convicted the man who boasted of having carried out every requirement of the law: he did not love his neighbor. And it is by doing good that love announces itself — the love which, on the ascending scale of true knowledge, is Lord of the sabbath. So in my view we must come to the word of salvation neither out of fear of punishment nor for the promise of a gift, but for the sake of the good itself. Those who do so stand at the right hand of the sanctuary. But those who reckon that by giving away what perishes they will get immortality in exchange are the ones the parable of the two brothers calls “hired men.” And does this not throw some light on the phrase “in the likeness and the image” — that some live according to the likeness of Christ, while those standing on the left live according to their image? There are, then, two things that come out of the truth, with one root lying under both; but the choosing is not equal in the two, or rather the difference that lies in the choosing is not equal. Choosing by way of imitation differs, as it seems to me, from the choice of the man who chooses with knowledge, as a thing set on fire differs from a thing merely lit up. Israel, then, is the light of the likeness that Scripture speaks of. But the image is another thing altogether. What does the parable of Lazarus mean, in showing the picture of the rich man and the poor man? And what of the saying, “No one can serve two masters, God and Mammon?” — the Lord’s name for the love of money. The greedy men who were invited, for instance, did not answer the invitation to the supper, not because they owned property but because of their excessive attachment to what they owned. “The foxes,” then, “have holes.” He gave the name foxes to the evil, earthbound men who busy themselves with the wealth that is mined and dug out of the ground. So too of Herod: “Go and tell that fox, Look — I drive out demons and work cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I am brought to completion.” And he applied the name “birds of the sky” to those marked off from the other birds — the truly pure, the ones with the power to fly up to the knowledge of the heavenly Word. For not wealth only, but honor too, and marriage, and poverty, bring ten thousand cares on the man who is not fit for them. And those cares are what he pointed to in the parable of the seed sown four ways, when he said that “the seed of the word which fell among the thorns” and the hedgerows was choked by them and could bear no fruit.

So we must learn how to make use of everything that happens, in order that by a good life lived with knowledge we may be trained for the condition of eternal life. For it says, “I saw the wicked lifted high and towering like the cedars of Lebanon; and I passed by,” says the Scripture, “and look — he was gone; and I looked for him, and his place could not be found. Keep innocence and look to uprightness, for there is a remnant for the man of peace.” That is the sort of man he will be who believes without pretense with his whole heart and is at rest in his whole soul. “For the other people honor me with their lips, but their heart is far from the Lord.” “They bless with their mouth, but they curse in their heart.” “They loved him with their mouth and lied to him with their tongue; their heart was not right with him, and they were not faithful to his covenant.” So “let the lying lips be struck dumb, and let the Lord destroy the boastful tongue — those who say, We will make our tongue great; our lips are our own; who is lord over us? Because of the affliction of the poor and the groaning of the needy, now I will arise, says the Lord. I will set him in safety; I will speak out openly in his case.” For Christ belongs to the lowly, to those who do not raise themselves up against his flock. “So do not store up treasures for yourselves on earth, where moth and rust destroy and thieves break in and steal,” says the Lord — reproaching the greedy, perhaps, and perhaps also those who are simply anxious and full of cares, and those who pamper their bodies as well. For love affairs, and diseases, and evil thoughts “break in” upon the mind and upon the whole person. But our true treasure is where whatever is akin to our mind is, since that is what grants the power of sharing righteousness with others. It shows that we must hand back to the habit of our old way of life whatever we gained by it, and take refuge with God, begging for mercy. He himself is truly “the purse that does not wear out,” the provisions for eternal life, “the treasure in heaven that does not fail.” “For I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy,” says the Lord. And they say these things to those who want to become poor for righteousness’ sake. For they have heard in the commandment that “the broad and wide way leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it.” The statement is made about nothing else than debauchery, and love of women, and love of glory, and ambition, and passions like them. For so he says, “Fool, this night your soul will be demanded back from you; and the things you have made ready, whose will they be?” And the command is put in these very words: “Watch out, then, for greed. For a man’s life does not consist in the abundance of the things he owns. What good will it do a man if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?” “That is why I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat, or about your body, what you will put on. For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing.” And again, “Your Father knows that you need all these things.” “But seek first the kingdom of heaven and its righteousness” — for these are the great things — and the things that are small and belong to this life “will be added to you.” Is he not plainly urging us, then, to follow the life of true knowledge, and telling us to seek the truth in word and in deed? So Christ, who trains the soul, counts a man rich not by his gifts but by his choice. That is why the story goes that Zacchaeus — or, as some have it, Matthew — the chief tax collector, on hearing that the Lord had thought it worth coming to him, said, “Lord, if I have taken anything from anyone by false accusation, I am paying it back four times over,” at which the Savior said, “The Son of Man, in coming today, has found what was lost.” Again, when he saw the rich putting into the treasury according to their wealth, and the widow putting in two lepta, he said that the widow had put in more than all of them, “for they gave out of their abundance, but she out of her want.” And because he brought everything to bear on the discipline of the soul, he said, “Blessed are the gentle, for they will inherit the earth.” And the gentle are those who have put down the war in the soul — the war of unbelief, the war of anger and of lust, and of the other forms that come under them. And he praises those who are gentle by choice, not by necessity. For with the Lord there are both rewards and “many dwelling places,” matching the lives people have lived. “Whoever receives a prophet in a prophet’s name,” he says, “will receive a prophet’s reward; and whoever receives a righteous man in a righteous man’s name will receive a righteous man’s reward; and whoever receives one of the least of these my disciples will not lose his reward.” And again, he indicated the differences of virtue according to merit, and the noble rewards, by the unequal number of hours; and by the equal pay given to each of the workers — that is, salvation, which the denarius stands for — he indicated the evenness of justice; while the difference between those who were called he showed by their working for unequal lengths of time. They will work, then, in keeping with the dwelling places they have been counted worthy of as rewards, being fellow workers in the administration and service that cannot be put into words. “Those, then,” says Plato, “who seem to be called to a holy life are the ones who, set free and released from those earthly places as from prisons, have reached the pure dwelling place on high.” And he says the same thing again in clearer terms: “Those who have been sufficiently purged of these things by philosophy live entirely without bodies for all time to come, although they are wrapped in certain shapes, some of air and others of fire.” And he adds, “And they reach dwellings fairer than these, which it is not easy to describe, nor is there time enough now.”

With good reason, then, “blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted” — for those who have repented of their old evil life will attain to the calling; that is what being comforted means. And there are two kinds of repentance. The commoner kind is fear over what has been done; the other, the rarer one, is the shame the spirit feels within itself, arising out of conscience. Whether here or elsewhere, then — for no place is empty of God’s kindness — he says again, “Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.” And mercy is not, as some of the philosophers have supposed, pain over other people’s misfortunes; it is rather something good, as the prophets say. For it is written, “I want mercy, and not sacrifice.” And by the merciful he means not only those who do acts of mercy, but those who want to do them and are not able — who do them so far as intention goes. For sometimes we want to show mercy by a gift of money or by our own effort, relieving someone in need, or looking after someone sick, or standing by someone in an emergency, and we are not able, whether from poverty or illness or old age (old age being a disease of nature), to carry out what we intended; we cannot bring the things we are pressed toward to the end we wanted. Those who have had the wish, and whose intention is the same, share in the same honor as those who had the ability, even though the others had the advantage in resources. And since there are two roads to the completion of salvation, works and knowledge, he called “the pure in heart blessed, for they will see God.” And if we really look at the truth of the matter, knowledge is the purification of the part of the soul that governs, and it is a good activity. Some things, then, are good in themselves, and others by sharing in what is good, as we say that good actions are good. But without the in-between things, which serve as the material, neither good nor bad actions come about — I mean things like life, and health, and the other necessities and circumstances. Those who reach the knowledge of God, he means, are pure as regards bodily lusts and pure as regards holy thoughts, when the governing part of the soul has nothing counterfeit in it to stand in the way of its power. So when the man who shares in this holy quality with true knowledge gives himself to contemplation, in pure communion with what is divine, he comes nearer to the condition in which nothing can move him — so as no longer to have understanding and to possess knowledge, but to be understanding and knowledge.

“Blessed, then, are the peacemakers” — those who have put down and tamed the law that wars against the mind’s own bent, the threats of anger, the bait of lust, and the other passions that make war on reason. Having lived in the knowledge both of good works and of true reason, they will be restored to adoption as sons, which is dearer still. It follows that the perfect peacemaking is the kind that keeps what is peaceful unchanged in every circumstance; that calls Providence holy and good; and that has its life in the knowledge of things divine and human, the knowledge by which it judges the opposites in the world to be the fairest harmony of creation. They too are peacemakers who teach people at war with sin’s schemes to take refuge in faith and peace. And it is the sum of all virtue, in my opinion, when the Lord teaches us that for love of God we must, with true knowledge, think nothing of death. “Blessed are those,” he says, “who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for they will be called sons of God.” Or, as some of those who transpose the Gospels put it, “Blessed are those who are persecuted by righteousness, for they will be perfect.” And, “Blessed are those who are persecuted for my sake, for they will have a place where they will not be persecuted.” And, “Blessed are you when men hate you, when they cut you off, when they cast out your name as evil, for the Son of Man’s sake” — provided we do not loathe our persecutors, and take the punishments at their hands without hating them, reckoning that we have been put to the test later than we were looking for, and knowing this as well: that every trial is an occasion for bearing witness.