Homilies 2.1–2.4

Homily 2. From the Gospel according to Luke, on the steward of unrighteousness. I have often told you in my discourses that a fabricated and false notion, once it has taken hold of people, multiplies sins and diminishes the good works that each of us ought to practise in our own way of life. It is this: to think that everything we have for the use of life we possess as lords and masters. Because of this assumption we fight fiercely for these things, make war, go to law, and cling to them to the utmost, as though they were our own special possessions. But the truth is not so; it is quite the opposite. For nothing of what we have received is ours; nor were we settled here as owners. As sojourners, newcomers and migrants, we are led where we do not wish and when we did not expect; and we are deprived of our property whenever the Lord pleases. That is why the affair of this perishable life is so easily changed: the man who is glorious today is pitiable tomorrow, deserving compassion and help; the man who is now prosperous and flourishing with the materials of wealth is shortly poor, without even bread at home to take for his life. And in this above all our God surpasses mortals: that he is always the same and remains unchanged, and possesses life, glory and power that cannot be taken away. Why, then, did I begin my discourse in this way? Perhaps it is already clear to those who have sense and love the word. The parable that Luke composed was read to us just now, in which he describes the steward of another's goods in distress and affliction, because, as a man of passions and extravagance, he heard from the master of the money and the property: “Give the account of your management, and depart; for I will not endure your luxuriating in my goods as if they were your own.” This is not an account of something that happened, but a fiction … training [us] in virtue. Know, then, each of you, that you are the manager of another's goods; cast out of your soul the pride of ownership, and take up the humble and reverent bearing of the accountable steward, always awaiting your lord and composing with fear the account for your defence. For you are a sojourner, … If you are in doubt about what is well known, learn from what happens, and be taught by the teacher who does not lie, experience. You have acquired an estate, either receiving it from your fathers or from … in memory, and count them all if you can; [turn] your mind to the time to come, and consider how many will be masters of it after you. Tell me, whose is the ownership, and to whom does it especially belong: to those who had it, to those who have it, or to those who will? For if someone were to gather them all together by some contrivance, the owners would be found to outnumber the clods. Or rather, if you want to see exactly what our life is like, remember whether, walking on a summer day, you have ever seen a tree leafy all round, spreading wide in breadth and length, able with its shade to serve as a house. Delighted with it, you went under it and stayed there as long as you could. But when you had to set out again, and were wishing to leave, another traveller arrived. You were loading your baggage, he was putting down his own, and he took over all your things at once: the bed of leaves, the fire, the shade of the tree, the water flowing by. He kept to his reclining, you to your walking. He too took his pleasure there, then left it; and … is divided and carried along … the short-lived lodging; and what had become everyone's belonged to the one real Lord. So too … vessels of every kind. Never yet … toward sufficiency … the materials from it, one after another, like clothes … of property … the tent, the silver carriage … ? For as the funeral bier [receives] now one and now another … For all these tend toward one end …

And so that you may learn exactly that [you are bound] by a master's laws and rules, by which you ought to set your life exactly right, consider first from yourself that both your body and your soul are subject on every side to the commands of virtue, and that you are not even master of yourself: you must manage your word, your deed, and every movement of your life. You received from the Creator a body composed of many parts and managed for the needs of life by five senses. Not even these are free and self-governing; each is the slave of laws. And the eye hears first: “Look at nature, and behold what it is good to see: the sun, lighting the whole world; the moon, brightening the gloom and darkness of night; the other stars, which supply us with no great or sufficient light of their own, but flash forth the beauty allotted to them. Behold the earth, [adorned] with plants and herbs of every kind … when it settles into clear calm. Use your sight for these and such things; but the other sights, which bring harm into the soul through the eyes, flee and run past, and put a covering over yourself so as not to see. For it is better to darken the sense when it supplies the cause of the works of darkness.” For this reason the Lord said to us yesterday through Matthew: “Everyone who looks at a woman to desire her has already committed adultery with her in his heart”; and it is better to cut the eye out when it looks at disorderly and harmful things. The hearing too [has] commands forbidding all [evil] listening. It ought to be open when it hears anything good, and to convey through itself to the soul the perception of profitable words. But if a companion of vice, a pest and a corrupter, comes near it and is about to pour in the filth of sin, it must flee him as a venomous beast. Let the tongue too be sober, along with the mouth; let it speak what is right and abstain from what is forbidden: …, slanders, unjust accusation, evil-speaking against the brothers, blasphemy against God; let it utter whatever is well spoken, whatever is godly, whatever gives counsel for good deeds; and let every man say the words of the holy psalmist: “I said, I will guard my ways, so as not to sin with my tongue”; and “With their tongues they deceived”; and “All day your tongue devised injustice; like a sharpened razor you worked deceit.” … the mouth … of what is profitable. Let the nose too be sober, not always smelling out luxury, nor drawing up to the head the fragrant vapours of costly perfumes; for Isaiah too is a severe accuser of such people. Let the hand also remember the commandments, so that it does not touch everything without restraint. Let it stretch out to almsgiving, not to robbery; let it keep its own and not gather what belongs to others; let it touch sluggish and afflicted bodies in kindly visiting, not bodies swelling with vigour and always given over to sexual immorality. The discourse has shown us that we are not even masters of ourselves, but stewards. For everything subject to laws and commands is the slave and subject of the lawgiver. And if the parts of our body are not free in their authority, but are regulated in their activities by the master's will, how could anyone say that he holds anything else without having to give account? He cannot, O man. You are a slave, and your things belong to the Lord; for a slave has no property of his own. You were brought naked into this light; you received what you have by the law of your Lord: either inheriting from your father, since God so ordained (“For parents,” it says, “will divide spoils for their children”), or acquiring prosperity from marriage (and marriage and what goes with it are ordained by God), or from trade, farming, and the other occasions, with God working along with you in them. See, then: it has been shown that you received what is not yours. Let us see, then, what you were commanded, and how you were to manage these things. “Give to the hungry, clothe the naked, tend the afflicted, do not overlook the destitute man thrown down at the crossroads. Do not be anxious for yourself, nor take thought how you will live tomorrow. And if you do these things,” it says, “you will be honoured by the lawgiver; but if you disobey the command, you will be punished bitterly.” I do not see in these the marks of a man who is his own master, or who lives with authority; on the contrary, the many continuous commands show me a man strongly ruled, accountable to a master's laws, and required to render the prescribed way of life as a debt. But we, how thoughtlessly we live! [Neglecting] the wretched and …, feeding a crowd of profligate flatterers, scattering our wealth on clubs, fighters and wild beasts, and sparing nothing we have on horse-breeding,

… spending our prosperity on ruinous things. We suffer something empty and close to madness. Where the expense brings countless profit and immortal salvation, we hold on to our silver fiercely, so that not even a few obols fall from our hand; but where the outlay is for sins and the cause of countless punishments, and of the punishment by fire itself, of our own accord we open all the doors and let our wealth flow out. This mind is not that of slaves awaiting their lord, but of profligate young men, revellers, and the licentious. If you wish, my hearer, to see the fear of a steward who manages what was entrusted to him with sober reverence, open the book of David; look for the words in which the man, inquiring into the appointed time of his end, says to God: “Make known to me, Lord, my end, and what is the number of my days, so that I may know what I lack.” Do you see how in these words, as in a picture, the disposition of the one praying is seen? He is fearful, he foresees the future, he awaits the judgment, he searches out the appointed time, so that the signal for departure may not find him unprepared; and by reckoning he tries to see what is lacking in his sojourning, so that he may hasten to make it up before the one who leads him out arrives. Truly the death of each of us is a picture of the steward, if we compare the details with one another: what the dying man suffers, and what the man thrown out of his stewardship endures. For the dying man hands over the management to others just as the steward hands over the keys: the one is thrown out of a field, the other out of the whole world as if out of a single estate. The steward departs grieving over his own labours, such as vineyards, gardens, houses; what, then, do you think the dying man suffers? Does he not lament his possessions? Does he not look around pitiably at his house, torn from it against his will after such attachment, far from his treasures and storerooms? And when he arrives at the place allotted to him, he hears: “Render the account of your stewardship; show how you obeyed the commandments, how you were disposed toward your fellow slaves, whether kindly and humanely, or on the contrary harshly and tyrannically, beating, buffeting, depriving them of the allowance of mercy.” If he can make the master gracious, showing himself a good slave, it would be well with him; but if the opposite, there are no longer iron fetters, but unquenchable fire and eternal darkness … of teeth, which the Gospel has plainly foretold to us. If, then, you will never be thrown out of the things here as belonging to another, live luxuriously in the world and let pleasure run unhindered through every sense. But if these things will come to an end, and we shall not enjoy them long, let us fear, brothers, our departure from here, and let us live in the time of our sojourning as the Lord commanded. Let us not be led away as prisoners with debts, but let us travel as free men, bringing a conscience that can speak boldly, and carrying the books of our life's conduct beyond reproach. … that man whose land bore well. For when his crops were plentiful the man planned nothing good, but opening the desire of his belly and the broad, unbounded lap of his greed, he allotted everything to his own enjoyment, saying: “I will pull down my barns and build bigger ones, and I will say to my soul: You have many good things laid up; rest, eat, drink, be merry.” And while he was still speaking, the one who leads away stood by him; a fearful … came, to drag him out of his stewardship. And what was the profit of his pleasure-loving plan? These things were written vividly for our admonition. And what does the experience of life show? Does it not cry out these things every day through deeds, showing us the man healthy at midday dead before the evening star rises; the man strong in the evening not reaching the morning light; and another ending his life in the middle of eating? Who is so foolish as not to see how every day, one at one time and another at another, we are removed from the stewardship here? But the good and faithful servant, confident in his own management, is of the same mind as Paul. For Paul, though the Lord was not pressing him, hastened toward him, longed for his departure, and willingly begged off his stewardship, saying at one point: “Wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from the body of this death?”

and again: “For me it is good to depart and be with Christ.” But the man of earthly mind, and of … at his departure, like this man of the parable: “What shall I do, since my lord is taking the stewardship away from me? I am not strong enough to dig; I am ashamed to beg.” This is the grief of a lazy and pleasure-loving man. For to lament at leaving proves attachment to the place and mourning for the passionate enjoyments of the flesh; and to be unable to work is a charge against an idle and slack life. If he had been in the habit of industry, he would not have been afraid of digging. And if we take the parable allegorically, toward its spiritual sense, after our departure from here there is neither [a time] for … nor a time for begging. For this reason let no one say, “I am not strong enough to dig”; for even if he can, no one allows it. This life holds the farming of the commandments; the life to come, the enjoyment. So if you have done no work here, the vineyards have been left behind, and you are needlessly concerned about digging; nor will you profit yourself at all by begging. A clear example of this has been handed down to us, that of the foolish virgins, who, finding themselves without oil, shamelessly asked the wise ones for it; but they gained nothing and were turned away empty-handed. The passage shows that at the coming of the bridegroom no one uses another's oil, that is, another's good deeds for his own enjoyment. For each has put on his own way of life like a garment, whether bright and precious, or shabby and like a beggar's cloak. It cannot be taken off, nor exchanged for another, nor can anyone at the time of judgment beautify and adorn himself with one that is borrowed or lent. Each remains what he is in truth, whether poor in good things or rich. So much for this. But what shall we say about the remission of debts which the steward of unrighteousness devised, procuring for himself among his fellow slaves a consolation for his troubles? For it is not easy … What occurred to me after much consideration is this. All of us who [look to] the future … or forgiving, procure profit for ourselves [from what is another's]. By what is another's I mean what is the Master's; for nothing is ours, but all things are possessions of his ownership. Whenever, then, someone who perceives his end and his departure from here lightens the burden of his sins by good deeds, either forgiving debtors their debts or supplying the needy from his abundance, he gives what is the Master's and acquires many friends, who will testify to his goodness before the Judge and by their testimony prepare for him a lodging of refreshment. Those who have been treated well are called witnesses before the Judge, not as instructing him with words, as if he did not know, but because what was done for them delivers the sinners from punishment. Just as the blood of Abel was said to cry out to God, so also the good deed will be said to bear witness for the one who did it, in Christ Jesus our Lord, to whom be glory to the ages of ages. Amen.