Homilies 4.1–4.3

Homily 4. A discourse of accusation against the feast of the Kalends. Two feasts have coincided, yesterday and today, not in harmony and sisterly, but quite the opposite, hostile and contrary to each other. The one belongs to the rabble outside: it gathers much of mammon's silver and drags in its train all the other huckstering, vulgar and illiberal. The other belongs to the holy and true religion, teaching closeness to God and the virtue of a purified life. But since many, preferring the luxury and bustle that come from vanity, have stayed away from the assembly of the church, come, let us drive this foolish and harmful delight out of their souls by our discourse, as one drives out a frenzy that leads men to death while they laugh and play. At this moment I would gladly emulate Solomon's handling of his discourse. For he, counselling the young to keep themselves safe from the snares of licentiousness, … personifies licentiousness as a woman of ill repute, and by pillorying all her wickedness shows her deserving of hatred to those she entices. So I too, by showing the vanity of this human feast in my discourse, will try to turn its lovers away from their misguided zeal. The institution and the name of a public feast [require], first, that the purpose of the festival be evident; then, that the joy be common to all, not that one part rejoices while the rest spend the time in grief and dejection. That is the mark of war rather than of a feast, since the victors must parade in their victory and the defeated weep over their misfortune. But in the case of these days, first, the reason for which the festival is held is unclear. Many [myths] are told, each overturning the other, and none of them true. Next, I see few rejoicing and the many distressed, even if they overshadow their grief with a seemly appearance; and everything full of noise and confusion, and the crowd … [They say] it is a commemoration and the joy of the year. Joy, man? First, when I consider the form of the greeting, what it is like, and how suspicious and unfriendly! The salutation comes out of the lips in a feeble, thin voice; then follows a kiss, the prelude to taking; the mouth is kissed, but the coin is loved; the form is that of affection, the deed that of covetousness. But where pure and guileless friendship … Much gold, then, is carried about everywhere and given; but a just and seemly reason for the taking neither exists nor is given. It is not a wedding, that one might call it the generosity of a proud bridegroom. I cannot call the expense almsgiving; for no poor man is released from his misfortune. No one would call what happens a contract; for the crowd exchange nothing with one another. And to call it a gift is not right either, where compulsion is yoked to the giving. What, then, shall we call the feast, or what is spent on it? I do not find a name. Tell me, you who are so eager for it; give an account, as we do for the true festivals that are according to God. We celebrate the Nativity, because at this time God showed us the Theophany in the flesh. We keep the festival of Lights, because by the release of sins we are brought up, as from a dark prison of our former life, to the life that is full of light and owes no account. Again, we adorn ourselves and parade joyfully on the day of the Resurrection, for it signifies to us incorruption and our re-ordering to what is better. So we keep these feasts, and so the ones that follow; reason leads every human affair, and where cause and purpose are lacking, the thing is nonsense and babble. What absurdity! Everyone gaping, expecting something from one another. Those who give are grieved; those who receive do not keep it. For the gift passes on from one to another, and the man who received from his subordinate gives to the greater. The gold of this day is never at rest, like the ball of players … the new kind of gift-bearing and public service, with its inexorable levy of compulsion. For the greater and more glorious man presses, the lesser asks, and everyone moves step by step toward the laps of those above them. What happens at the confluence of waters can be seen now. For there a slender stream flows down and mingles with the larger one after it; that one is covered again by one that floods more; many slender streams gathered together become an addition to a neighbouring river; this in turn to another greater one, and one to another, until the last brings its water to anchor in the depth and breadth of the sea. This feast is falsely named and full of vexation; for going out is vexatious, and staying indoors is not free from annoyance.

For the beggars and the conjurors of the dance-floor divide themselves into troops and bands and pester every house. Ostensibly they wish well and applaud, but they stay at the doors more doggedly than tax-collectors, until the man besieged inside is worn out and throws them the silver he has, and what he does not possess. Approaching the doors in turn, they succeed one another, and until late evening there is no respite from the evil: band follows band, shout follows shout, loss follows loss … This finest of feasts becomes for people a cause of loans, and loans at interest, a starting point of poverty and the beginning of misfortunes. And if someone, because his rank gives him no credit, cannot find even a lender, he is dragged off like one who has defaulted on the imperial taxes; he weeps like a man whose goods are confiscated, laments like one who has fallen among robbers, is put under guard and flogged. And if there is some little thing in the house for the support of his wife and his wretched children, he throws this away, and sits starving with his whole family at the bright feast. A new law of bad custom: to keep a festival of unpleasantness and want … This day teaches even little children, simple and guileless, to love money, and gets them ready to go from house to house bringing novel gifts, fruits studded with silver. The gift is given to receive double in return; and from here huckstering and illiberality begin to be stamped on the tender minds of the young. And the sacred and excellent farmers, how this day treats them! It makes the city a place to flee and not to set foot in; they run from it more than hares from nets. For those who are found are flogged, abused by drunkards, and lose what they have in their hands, though they live in peace and toil. Our best providers are filled with insult: harmless creatures, the simple images of God, the faithful servants of our life, free men as they are. So it is with the officials, so with the poor, so with children, so with country people: some toil, some grumble, some learn what it is better not to know. Let us consider also how the armed soldiers benefit from this feast. In money … the provisioning for war. In manners and character they are harmed. For they learn illiberality, the practices of stage-players, dissoluteness and softness of character, and mockery of the laws and of the authority of which they were appointed guardians. They mock and ridicule the highest office, mounting a chariot as if on a stage, and publicly doing the things that were invented for buffoonery. And these are the more decent parts of the procession. How could one describe the rest? Does not the champion, lion-hearted in spirit, who once armed is a marvel to his own people and a terror to the enemy, uncover himself and turn into a woman? He lets his tunic down to his ankles, winds the girdle round his breast, wears a woman's shoe, and puts on his head the knot of hair that is the custom for women; he carries the distaff full of wool, and with his right hand, which once bore the trophy, draws down the thread; and changing the tone of his soul, he speaks in a shriller, womanish voice. These are the good things of the festival; these are the benefits of the public feast today … And those who have mounted to the summit of human dignities, the much-talked-of consuls, … in vanity, to the unfruitfulness of righteousness and the fruit of sin; whose folly is as conspicuous as their throne is high. Having administered many human thrones and the greatest offices of the empire, they take most of their wealth unsparingly from every source: some appropriated the pay of poor soldiers, others often sold justice and truth, others drained untold wealth from the imperial treasuries, and [thought] no gain unseemly, none unjust; and provoking God they now preside, and soon they will be distributing gold to charioteers and flute-players … and to prostitutes, who offer for sale … and to the wild beasts themselves. For it is plain that gold feeds even the beasts, buying meat for some and barley-cake for others. All these things they throw away …

… blindness! God promises to write the names of those who feed the poor in living books, immortal and incorruptible, which the moth does not destroy and time does not erase; and you do not love those letters, nor take any account of the blessed promise, nor seek to be inscribed in God's memory? For that is the living book. But you set great store on being written down by notaries, talked about by slave-buyers, and applauded by common flatterers: a bad judge of the use of things, a senseless assessor of what is to your advantage. Give to the maimed poor man, and not to the dissolute musician; rather than to the prostitute, give to … and the hateful, shameless harp-girl; rather than to the show, give to the orphan; pay off a poor man's debt, and you will see a glory that lasts for ever. You empty a heap of purses for unseemly play and disorderly laughter, not knowing how many tears of the poor you are giving away, the tears from which your wealth was gathered: how many were bound, how many flogged, how many came near the noose and halter, so that dancers might receive [it] today. And what is the end? Vanity. After all, a small tomb; a garment worth a few obols wrapping the poor body; oblivion soon after, the inevitable work of time, [covering] all that was striven for; and on top of it the judgment of God, and of the evil … Where are the consuls? Count up those of yesterday and the day before. Was not one beheaded like a criminal, falling victim to the sudden rush of an armed crowd, and paraded more after his death than when, carried in his chair, he prided himself on his rank? Did not another, who obtained this same honour after a military command, perish miserably in the farthest parts of Egypt and Libya, fleeing the penalty of his condemnation, and then die in the sands, since the whole country through which he fled was waterless and uninhabited? What shall we say of the one who, once a general and consul, now lives in the same way in the land of Colchis, kept alive by the kindness of the barbarians there? And that former prefect, invincible, as he thought, and lion-like in mind, what an overthrow of his life overtook him! First he saw his own son beheaded; then he himself received the sentence of death, and when the rope had already been brought to his mouth, the emperor's clemency stopped the executioner from acting. The old man lived a little longer in pains and misfortunes, and, lingering in the sense of his evils, departed this life in dishonour, finding this end to his great consulship. And last year's consul, how he planned things greater than the giants … desired women and men; he acquired land, more than one could easily say; and he was buried in as much as the one who pitied him gave him. Is it not, then, as the wise Ecclesiastes says, all such things: “Vanity of vanities”, and …