Chained to Your Money

So why do you congratulate yourself on these empty, silly ideas, as though it were fear and worry about the future that kept you from doing good? Why do you set out in front of you the shadows and omens of an excuse that is worth nothing? Admit the truth instead. Since you cannot deceive those who know, bring out what is secret and hidden in your mind. A barren gloom has laid siege to your mind. The light of truth has gone out of it, and the deep, thick dark of greed has blinded your heart of flesh. You are your money’s prisoner and its slave. You are tied up in the chains and shackles of craving, and you, whom Christ once set loose, are back in irons. You hold on to money that does not hold on to you. You pile up an inherited estate that weighs you down with its own weight, and you do not remember what God answered the rich man who was boasting, in his foolish delight, over the size of his overflowing harvest: [a]

“You fool, this night your soul is demanded of you. Then whose will those things be that you have got ready?”

Why keep watch over your riches all alone? Why heap up the burden of an estate for your own punishment, so that the richer you are in this world, the poorer you become toward God? Divide your income with the Lord your God. Split your profits with Christ. Make Christ a partner in your property here on earth, so that he may make you a fellow heir with him in his kingdom in heaven.

You are wrong, and you are being fooled, whoever you are who think yourself rich in this world. Listen to the voice of your Lord in the Revelation, rebuking men of your kind with a just reproach: “You say, ‘I am rich, and I have grown wealthy, and I need nothing’ — and you do not know that you are wretched and pitiable and poor and blind and naked. I advise you to buy from me gold refined in the fire, so that you may be rich; and white clothing, so that you may be dressed and the shame of your nakedness may not show; and to anoint your eyes with eye-salve, so that you may see.” [d]

So you who are rich and well off, buy gold refined by fire from Christ, so that you may be pure gold with your filth burned out of you as if by fire, once you have been cleaned by almsgiving and by doing what is right. Buy yourself white clothing, so that you who were naked in Adam, a frightful and unseemly sight, may be dressed in the white garment of Christ. And you who are a wealthy and well-to-do lady in Christ’s church, put ointment on your eyes — not the devil’s eye-paint, but Christ’s eye-salve — so that you may be able to come to the sight of God, having won his favor by good works and by the way you live.

But you who are like this cannot do the church’s work. For your eyes are overcast with a black gloom and shadowed in night, and they do not see the needy and the poor. You are wealthy and rich — and do you imagine you are celebrating the Lord’s service, when you give no thought at all to the offering? You come to the Lord’s service without a sacrifice of your own, and then take a share of the sacrifice the poor man brought. [i]

Look at the widow in the Gospel, who remembered the commands of heaven and did good even in the hardship and pinch of poverty, dropping two small coins — all she had — into the treasury. The Lord watched her and saw her. He judged her act not by its size but by what she meant by it; he weighed not how much she gave but out of how much. And he answered and said, “Truly I tell you, that widow has put more than all of them into the offerings of God. For all of these have put into the offerings of God out of what they had to spare; but she, out of her want, has put in the whole of her living.”

What a greatly blessed and glorious woman, who earned praise from the voice of the Judge before the day of judgment ever came! Let the rich be ashamed of their barrenness and their unbelief. The widow — a widow with nothing to live on — turns out to be rich in works. And though everything that is given is given for widows and orphans, here the one who ought to have been receiving is the one who gives. From that we can see what punishment is waiting for the barren rich man, when by this very example even the poor are obliged to work at doing good. And so that we may understand that such labor is given to God, and that whoever does it earns a good standing with the Lord, Christ calls these gifts “the offerings of God,” and points out that the widow dropped two small coins into the offerings of God — so that it may be all the clearer that whoever pities the poor is lending to God.

And do not let this thought hold a Christian back from good and righteous work either, dear brothers: that a man might be excused for his children’s sake. When we spend on the things of the spirit we ought to be thinking of Christ, who has said that he is the one receiving it. We are not to put our fellow servants ahead of the Lord, but the Lord ahead of our children — since he himself teaches us and warns us: “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.” [l]

The same sort of thing is written in Deuteronomy, to strengthen faith and the love of God: “Those who say to their father and mother, ‘I do not know you,’ and did not acknowledge their own children — these have kept your words and guarded your covenant.” For if we love God with our whole heart, we must not put either parents or children ahead of God. John lays this down too, in his letter: that the love of God is not in people we see refusing to work for the poor. “Whoever,” he says, “has this world’s goods and sees his brother in need and closes his heart against him — how does the love of God live in him?” For if by giving to the poor we are lending to God, and if what is given to the least is given to Christ, then there is no ground for anyone to prefer earthly things to heavenly, or to count human things before divine.

Take the widow in the third book of Kings. In the drought and famine she had used up everything, and out of the little flour and oil that was left she had made a cake in the ashes; she was about to eat it and then die, she and her children. Elijah came and asked that something be given him to eat first, and that she and her children should eat what was left. She did not hesitate to obey. Even in her hunger and poverty the mother did not put her children ahead of Elijah. In God’s sight a thing was done that pleases God: what was asked for was handed over at once, and generously. It was not a portion out of plenty but the whole out of very little, and someone else was fed before her own hungry children. In her want and need she did not think of food before mercy — so that in an act that saved her, life in the flesh was thought little of and the soul was kept safe in the spirit. [n]

So Elijah, standing as a figure of Christ and showing that Christ in his mercy gives each person their return, answered and said: “This is what the Lord says: the jar of flour will not run out, and the flask of oil will not go down, until the day the Lord sends rain on the earth.”

In keeping with her faith in that promise of God, what she had given was multiplied and heaped up for the widow. Her righteous acts and the credit of her mercy took on growth and increase, and the jars of flour and oil were filled. The mother did not take from her children what she gave to Elijah; rather, what she did kindly and faithfully she bestowed on her children. And she did not yet know Christ. She had not yet heard his commands. She was not paying back food and drink for his blood as one bought back by his cross and his suffering. From this you can see how badly a man sins in the church who preserves his wealth, preferring himself and his children to Christ, and does not share a large estate with the poverty of the needy.

And then, you say, there are a great many children at home, and the number of your children keeps you from giving yourself freely to good works. In fact that is all the more reason to work at them, since you are the father of many pledges. There are more people for whom you must plead with the Lord. There are many whose sins have to be redeemed, many whose consciences have to be cleansed, many whose souls have to be set free. In this worldly life, feeding and raising children costs more the more of them there are; in the spiritual life of heaven it is the same — the more children you have, the greater your outlay of labor ought to be. So Job offered many sacrifices for his children: as many victims given to God as there were pledges in his house. And since there could not fail to be sins committed each day in God’s sight, daily sacrifices were needed to wash those sins away. Holy Scripture proves it: “Job, a true and righteous man, had seven sons and three daughters, and he cleansed them, offering victims to God for them according to their number, and for their sins one calf.” So if you truly love your children, if you show them the full sweetness of a father’s love, you ought to be all the more generous in giving, so that by your righteous works you may commend your children to God. [p]

And do not think that the father of your children is a man who is changeable and frail. Get hold of the one who is the everlasting and unchanging Father of the children of the spirit. Make over to him the wealth you are saving up for your heirs. Let him be your children’s guardian; let him be their trustee; let him be their protector, by his divine majesty, against every injury this world can do. The state does not seize property entrusted to God; the treasury does not lay hands on it; no false charge in court can overturn it. An inheritance kept under God’s guardianship is placed in safety. [r]

This is providing for your dear pledges for the time to come. This is looking after your future heirs with a father’s love, according to the faith of Holy Scripture, which says: “I have been young, and now I am old, and I have not seen the righteous man abandoned, nor his offspring begging bread. All day long he is merciful and lends, and his offspring is blessed.” And again: “The man who walks blameless in his integrity will leave blessed children after him.” So you are an unjust and treacherous father unless you faithfully see to your children — unless you look ahead to keep them in the faith and in true devotion. You who take more care for their estate on earth than for their estate in heaven, who would rather commend your children to the devil than to Christ, are sinning twice over and allowing a double crime: you fail to provide your children with the help of God their Father, and you teach your children to love their property more than Christ.

Be the kind of father to your children that Tobit was. Give your pledges useful, saving instructions, the way he gave them to his son. Command your children what he commanded his son as well, when he said: “And now, my son, I command you: serve God in truth, and do what pleases him; and command your sons to practice righteousness and almsgiving, and to remember God and bless his name always.” [s]

And again: “All the days of your life, dearest son, keep God in mind, and do not be willing to break his commands. Do what is right all the days of your life, and do not be willing to walk in the way of wrongdoing; because if you deal truly, there will be regard for your works. Give alms out of what you have, and do not turn your face away from any poor man. Then it will happen that God’s face will not be turned away from you either. As you have, my son, so do. If what you have is plentiful, give the more alms out of it. If you have little, share out of that little. And do not be afraid when you give alms, for you are storing up a good reward for yourself against the day of need — because alms rescue from death and do not let a person come into Gehenna. Alms are a good gift to everyone who gives them, in the sight of the most high God.”

What sort of gift is this, dear brothers, whose staging is celebrated in the sight of God? At a pagan’s public show it counts as something great and splendid to have proconsuls or emperors in the seats, and the preparation and display run higher among the givers because they want to please the upper ranks. How much more glorious and greater, then, to have God and Christ as the spectators of the gift! How much more lavish the preparation should be, and the outlay more open-handed, when the powers of heaven gather for the spectacle, when all the angels come together — where what is sought for the giver is not a four-horse chariot or a consulship, but eternal life is what is given; where it is not the crowd’s empty, fleeting favor that is grabbed at, but the lasting reward of the kingdom of heaven that is received. [u]

And to shame the lazy and the barren all the more — those whose greed for money makes them do nothing about the fruit of their own salvation — and to make the flush of dishonor and disgrace strike harder on their sordid consciences, let each of them set before his eyes the devil with his servants, that is, with the people of ruin and death, springing out into the middle and challenging the people of Christ to a contest of comparison, with Christ himself present and judging. Let him say: “For the ones you see here with me I took no blows, I bore no floggings, I endured no cross, I shed no blood, I did not buy my household back at the price of my suffering and my blood. And I do not promise them a kingdom in heaven either, or call them back to paradise with immortality restored to them. And yet the gifts they get up for me — how costly! how large! procured with what enormous and wearisome labor! and that with the most extravagant productions, mortgaging or selling what they own to pay for the gift! And unless the display comes up to the mark, they are thrown out with jeers and hissing, and sometimes the fury of the crowd all but stones them. Show me, Christ, such givers as these of yours — those rich men, those men flush with piled-up wealth — and whether in the church where you preside and watch they stage a gift of that kind, having mortgaged or scattered their riches, or rather transferred them, by trading their possessions for something better, into treasures in heaven. At those spectacles of mine, perishing and earthly as they are, no one is fed, no one is clothed, no one is kept alive by the comfort of any food or drink. Everything is being thrown away between the madness of the man who puts on the show and the mistake of the man who watches it, in a wasteful and foolish emptiness of pleasures that cheat. In your poor, you are the one clothed and fed. You promise eternal life to those who labor for you — and yet your people are scarcely made equal to mine, who are perishing, though yours are honored by you with divine wages and heavenly rewards.” [v]