On the Work of Monks

Holy brother Aurelius, I ought to obey your command the more devoutly, the more clearly it has appeared to me who it was that commanded through you. For our Lord Jesus Christ, dwelling in your inner self and inspiring in you the concern of fatherly and brotherly love, took up your will and your tongue into his own work and commanded me through you to write something to you on this: whether our sons and brothers the monks who neglect to obey the blessed apostle Paul when he says, "If anyone is unwilling to work, let him not eat," should be allowed this license. May he himself, then, also be with me, so that I may obey in such a way that I understand, from the very usefulness of the fruitful labor, that by his gift I am obeying him.

First, then, we must see what the men of that profession who are unwilling to work say; then, if we find that they do not think rightly, we must argue against them for their correction and to fulfil the duty of our episcopate. "The apostle," they say, "did not give his command about this bodily work in which either farmers or craftsmen labor when he said, 'If anyone is unwilling to work, let him not eat.' For he could not be contrary to the gospel, where the Lord himself says: 'Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious for your life, what you will eat, nor for your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the sky: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not worth much more than they? And which of you by being anxious can add one cubit to his stature? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin. But I tell you that not even Solomon in all his glory was clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more you, O you of little faith! Do not be anxious, then, saying, What shall we eat, or what shall we drink, or with what shall we be clothed? For the gentiles seek all these things. But your Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. Do not be anxious, then, about tomorrow; for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.' See," they say, "here the Lord commands us to be without care about our food and covering. How then could the apostle think against the Lord, so as to instruct us that we ought to be so anxious about what we eat and drink and with what we are to be clothed that he would even load us with the crafts, cares, and labors of workmen? Therefore in what he says, 'If anyone is unwilling to work, let him not eat,'" they say, "we should understand spiritual works, of which it is said in another place: 'To each as the Lord gave. I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth'; and a little after: 'Each will receive his own reward according to his own labor. For we are God's fellow workers; you are God's field, God's building. According to the grace that was given to me, like a wise master builder I laid a foundation.' So, just as the apostle works by planting, watering, building, and laying a foundation, so 'if anyone is unwilling to work, let him not eat.' For what does it profit to eat spiritually, that is, to be fed with the word of God, if one does not work from it the building up of others? Just as, what did it profit that lazy servant to receive the talent and hide it, and not to work gain for his master? Was it not so that it might be taken from him at the end and he himself thrown into the outer darkness? So," they say, "we too do: we read with the brothers who come to us wearied from the heat of the world, so that with us they may rest in the word of God and in prayers, psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. We speak to them, console them, exhort them, building up in them whatever we see to be lacking in their life, according to their rank. If we did not do such works, we would take even the spiritual food from the Lord at our peril; for this is what the apostle said: 'If anyone is unwilling to work, let him not eat.'" So these men think they are obeying the apostolic and gospel sentence, since they believe both that the gospel commanded that the bodily and temporal needs of this life should not be cared for, and that the apostle said about spiritual work and food, "If anyone is unwilling to work, let him not eat."

They do not notice that if someone else were to say that the Lord, speaking in parables and similitudes, warned his servants about spiritual food and covering, so that they should not be anxious about it (as he says: "When they drag you before courts, do not think what you will say; for it will be given you in that hour what to say; for it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father who speaks in you"; for the word of wisdom is spiritual, and he did not want them to think about it, promising that it would be supplied to them without their being anxious about it), but that the apostle, discoursing more openly now in the apostolic manner, and speaking literally rather than figuratively, as many things, indeed nearly all, stand in the apostolic letters, said literally about bodily work and food, "If anyone is unwilling to work, neither let him eat," then their view would be made doubtful for them, unless, considering the other words of the Lord, they found something by which to prove that he had spoken of not caring for bodily food and clothing when he said, "Do not be anxious about what you eat and what you drink, and with what you are clothed"; for example, if they noticed what he says, "For the gentiles seek all these things"; for there he shows that he spoke of those bodily and temporal things themselves. So if the apostle had said only this on the subject, "If anyone is unwilling to work, neither let him eat," these words could be turned to another meaning; but since in many other places of his letters he teaches most plainly what he thinks on this, they labor in vain to draw a fog over themselves and others, so that they are unwilling not only to do what that love usefully admonishes, but even to understand it themselves or let others understand it, not fearing what is written: "He was unwilling to understand, so as to do well."

First, then, we must show that the blessed apostle Paul wished the servants of God to do bodily works, which would have their end in a great spiritual reward, to this purpose: that they might need no one for their food and covering, but provide these for themselves with their own hands; and then show that those gospel precepts, by which some foster not only their laziness but also their arrogance, are not contrary to the apostolic precept and example. Let us see, then, from what the apostle came to say, "If anyone is unwilling to work, neither let him eat," and what he joins to it afterward, so that the meaning may appear declared from the very context of the reading. "We charge you, brothers," he says, "in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, to withdraw yourselves from every brother who walks in disorder and not according to the tradition that they received from us. For you yourselves know how you ought to imitate us, because we were not disorderly among you, nor did we eat bread from anyone for nothing, but in labor and toil we worked night and day, so as not to burden any of you; not because we did not have the right, but to give ourselves as a pattern to you, that you might imitate us. For even when we were with you, we commanded you this: that if anyone is unwilling to work, neither let him eat. For we have heard that some among you are walking in disorder, doing no work but being busybodies. Now such people we command and beseech in the Lord Jesus Christ that they work in quietness and eat their own bread." What can be said to this, since, so that afterward no one might be allowed to interpret this according to his own will rather than according to love, he taught by his own example what he commanded? For the Lord had established for him, as an apostle, a preacher of the gospel, a soldier of Christ, a planter of the vineyard, a shepherd of the flock, that he should live by the gospel; and yet he himself did not exact the pay owed him, so as to give himself as a pattern to those who desired to exact what was not owed. As he says to the Corinthians: "Who ever serves as a soldier at his own expense? Who plants a vineyard and does not eat of its fruit? Who tends a flock and does not get some of the milk of the flock?" So he refused to accept what was owed him, so that by his example those might be restrained who, though not so appointed in the church, thought such things were owed to them. For what does he mean when he says, "Nor did we eat bread from anyone for nothing, but in labor and toil we worked night and day, so as not to burden any of you; not because we did not have the right, but to give ourselves as a pattern to you, that you might imitate us"? Let those, then, to whom he commanded this hear it, that is, those who do not have this right that he had, of working only spiritually and eating bread without bodily labor; and as he says, "We command and beseech in Christ that they work in quietness and eat their own bread," let them not dispute against the most manifest words of the apostle; for this too belongs to the quietness with which they ought to work and eat their own bread.

I would consider and treat these words still more closely and carefully if I did not have other passages in his letters that are much more manifest, by comparison with which these too are made more clearly manifest, and which would suffice even if these did not exist. For writing to the Corinthians on this same matter he says: "Am I not free? Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Christ Jesus our Lord? Are you not my work in the Lord? If I am not an apostle to others, yet I am to you; for you are the seal of my apostleship in the Lord. This is my defense to those who question me. Do we not have the right to eat and drink? Do we not have the right to take about with us a sister, a woman, as do the other apostles and the brothers of the Lord and Cephas?" See how he first shows what is permitted him, and that it is permitted because he is an apostle. For he began from this: "Am I not free? Am I not an apostle?" And he proves that he is an apostle by saying, "Have I not seen Christ Jesus our Lord? Are you not my work in the Lord?" Having proved this, he shows that what is permitted to the other apostles is permitted to him, namely, not to work with his hands but to live by the gospel, as the Lord established, which he showed most plainly in what follows. For this is why faithful women who had earthly means went with them and ministered to them from their means, so that they would lack none of the things that belong to the sustenance of this life. Blessed Paul shows that this is indeed permitted to him, as the other apostles also did, but afterward mentions that he did not wish to use that right. Some, not understanding this, when he said, "Do we not have the right to take about with us a sister, a woman?", interpreted it not as "a sister, a woman" but as "a wife." They were misled by the ambiguity of the Greek word, since both "wife" and "woman" are said in Greek by the same word; although the apostle so put it that they should not have been misled, because he did not say only "a woman" but "a sister, a woman," nor did he say "to marry" (ducendi) but "to take about" (circumducendi). Other interpreters, however, were not misled by this ambiguity, and translated "woman," not "wife."

Whoever thinks that it could not have been done by the apostles that women of holy life went about with them wherever they preached the gospel, to minister necessities to them from their own means, let him listen to the gospel and learn how they did this by the example of the Lord himself. For our Lord, compassionate to the weaker in the manner of his mercy, though angels could have ministered to him, also had a purse into which money was put, which was surely contributed by good believers as necessary for their food. He entrusted that purse to Judas, so that we might learn to tolerate even thieves in the church, if we cannot avoid them; for he took away what was put in, as is written of him. And he willed that women should follow him to prepare and minister necessities, showing what was owed to evangelists and ministers of God, as to soldiers, by the peoples of God, as by provincials; so that, if anyone did not wish to use what was owed him, as the apostle Paul did not wish, he might spend more on the church, not exacting the pay owed him but getting his daily food from his own labors. For the innkeeper to whom that wounded man was brought had heard: "Whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I return." So the apostle Paul spent more, who, as he himself testifies, served as a soldier at his own expense. For it is written in the gospel: "And afterward he went on through city and village, preaching and bringing the good news of the kingdom of God, and the twelve with him, and some women who had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities: Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, and Joanna the wife of Chuza, Herod's steward, and Susanna, and many others, who ministered to them from their means." The apostles imitated this example of the Lord in receiving the food owed them, of which the same Lord speaks most plainly. "Go," he says, "preach, saying, The kingdom of heaven has drawn near. Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out demons. Freely you have received, freely give. Do not possess gold or silver or money in your belts, no bag for the road, nor two tunics, nor sandals, nor a staff; for the worker is worthy of his food." See, here the Lord established what the same apostle mentions. For he told them not to carry all those things so that, where there was need, they might receive from those to whom they announced the kingdom of God.

But lest anyone think that this was granted only to the twelve, see what Luke also narrates. "After this," he says, "the Lord appointed seventy-two others also and sent them two by two before his face into every city and place where he himself was going to come. And he said to them: The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few; ask the Lord of the harvest, then, to send out workers into his harvest. Go; behold, I send you as lambs among wolves. Do not carry a purse, nor a bag, nor sandals, and greet no one on the road. Whatever house you enter, first say, Peace to this house. And if a son of peace is there, your peace will rest upon him; but if not, it will return to you. And remain in the same house, eating and drinking what they have; for the worker is worthy of his wages." Here it appears that these were not commands but permissions, so that whoever wished to use what was permitted him by the Lord's appointment might use it; but if anyone did not wish to use it, he would not act against a command, but would give up his own right, living more mercifully and more laboriously in the gospel, in which he would be unwilling to receive even the wages owed him. Otherwise the apostle acted against the Lord's command, who, after showing that it was permitted him, at once added: "But I have not used this right."

But let us return to the order and consider carefully the whole passage of the letter. "Do we not have the right," he says, "to eat and drink? Do we not have the right to take about with us a sister, a woman?" What right did he mean, except the one the Lord gave to those whom he sent to preach the kingdom of heaven, saying, "Eat what they have; for the worker is worthy of his wages," and setting forth himself as an example of the same right, to whom most faithful women ministered such necessities from their means? But the apostle Paul did more, in bringing in his fellow apostles as proof of this right permitted by the Lord. For he did not add in reproach, "as do the other apostles and the brothers of the Lord and Cephas," but to show from this that he had been unwilling to accept what was proved permissible for him to accept by the practice of his other fellow soldiers too. "Or is it only I and Barnabas who do not have the right not to work?" See, he has removed all doubt even from the slowest hearts, so that they may understand what working he speaks of. For why does he say, "Or is it only I and Barnabas who do not have the right not to work?", except because all the evangelists and ministers of the word of God had received from the Lord the right not to work with their hands but to live by the gospel, working only spiritual things in preaching the kingdom of heaven and building up the peace of the church? For no one can say that the apostle said of spiritual working itself, "Or is it only I and Barnabas who do not have the right not to work?" For all of them had this right not to work. Let him who tries to distort and pervert the apostolic precepts to his own view say, then, let him say if he dares, that all the evangelists had received from the Lord the right not to preach the gospel. But if this is most absurd and insane to say, why are they unwilling to understand what is plain to all, that they had indeed received the right not to work, but not to do the bodily works by which they might get their food, because the worker is worthy of his food and of his wages, as the gospel says? So it was not only Paul and Barnabas who did not have the right not to work, but all alike had this right, which these two did not use, spending more on the church, as they judged suitable for the weak in the places where they preached. And therefore, so as not to seem to have reproached his fellow apostles, he goes on to say: "Who ever serves as a soldier at his own expense? Who plants a vineyard and does not eat of its fruit? Who tends a flock and does not get some of the milk of the flock? Do I say these things as a man, or does not the law also say them? For in the law of Moses it is written: You shall not muzzle the ox that treads out the grain. Is it for oxen that God cares? Or does he say it entirely for our sake? For it was written for our sake, because he who plows ought to plow in hope, and he who threshes in hope of sharing." By these words the apostle Paul indicates clearly enough that his fellow apostles did not claim anything beyond what was owed them in not working bodily to get the necessities of this life, but that, as the Lord established, living by the gospel, they ate bread without charge from those to whom they preached grace without charge. For they received their pay like soldiers, and freely plucked what they needed from the fruit of the vineyard planted by them; they drank of the milk of the flock that they tended; and they took food from the threshing floor on which they threshed.

He then connects the rest more openly and removes all the windings of doubt altogether. "If we have sown spiritual things for you," he says, "is it a great thing if we reap your carnal things?" What are the spiritual things he sowed, if not the word and the ministry of the sacrament of the kingdom of heaven? And what are the carnal things that he says he may reap, if not these temporal things granted for the life and needs of the flesh? But he makes it plain that he did not seek or accept these things owed him from them, lest he give any hindrance to the gospel of Christ. What remains, then, but that we understand that he worked for his food with bodily work, with his bodily and visible hands? For if he sought food and covering from spiritual work, that is, by receiving them from those whom he was building up in the gospel, he would not go on to say: "If others share in this right over you, do not we still more? But we have not used this right, but we endure all things, so as not to give any hindrance to the gospel of Christ." What right does he say he did not use, if not the one he had over them, received from the Lord, to reap their carnal things for the food of this life that is lived in the flesh? Others too shared in this right, who did not first announce the gospel to them but came afterward to their church preaching the same thing. So when he had said, "If we have sown spiritual things for you, is it a great thing if we reap your carnal things?", he added, "If others share in this right over you, do not we still more?" And when he had shown what right they had, he said, "But we have not used this right, but we endure all things, so as not to give any hindrance to the gospel of Christ." Let these people say, then, how the apostle had carnal food from spiritual work, when he himself plainly says that he did not use this right. But if he did not have carnal food from spiritual work, it remains that he had it from bodily work, and that he says of this, "Nor did we eat bread from anyone for nothing, but in labor and toil we worked night and day, so as not to burden any of you; not because we did not have the right, but to give ourselves as a pattern to you, that you might imitate us." "We endure all things," he says, "so as not to give any hindrance to the gospel of Christ."

And he comes back again and in every way, again and again, commends what is permitted him and yet he does not do. "Do you not know," he says, "that those who work in the temple eat what is from the temple? That those who serve the altar share with the altar? So too the Lord ordained that those who proclaim the gospel should live by the gospel; but I have used none of these things." What is plainer than this? What clearer? I fear that perhaps, when I discuss it wishing to expound it, what shines and cries out of itself may become obscure. For those who do not understand these words, or pretend not to understand them, will understand mine much less, or confess that they understand them; unless perhaps they understand ours quickly because they are allowed to mock them once understood, whereas the same is not allowed with the apostle's words. Therefore, where they cannot interpret them otherwise according to their own view, they answer that even clear and manifest things are obscure and uncertain, because they do not dare to say they are crooked and perverse. The man of God cries out, "The Lord ordained that those who proclaim the gospel should live by the gospel; but I have used none of these things," and flesh and blood tries to twist what is straight, to close what is open, to cloud what is clear. "He did spiritual work," they say, "and lived by it." If so, he lived by the gospel. Why then does he say, "The Lord ordained that those who proclaim the gospel should live by the gospel; but I have used none of these things"? Or if they want to interpret this very word "live" here as referring to the spiritual life, then the apostle had no hope toward God, since he did not live by the gospel, because he said, "I have used none of these things." Therefore, so that he might have a sure hope of eternal life, the apostle certainly lived spiritually by the gospel. So when he says, "But I have used none of these things," he without doubt makes us understand, concerning this life that is lived in the flesh, that he said the Lord ordained that those who proclaim the gospel should live by the gospel, that is, should get through this life, which needs food and covering, by the gospel; as he said above of his fellow apostles, and as the Lord himself says, "The worker is worthy of his food," and, "The worker is worthy of his wages." This food, then, and these wages owed to evangelists for sustaining this life, the apostle did not accept from those to whom he preached the gospel, saying truly, "But I have used none of these things."

And he goes on and adds, lest anyone perhaps think that he did not accept it because they had not given it: "But I have not written these things so that they may be done so in my case; for it is better for me to die than that anyone should make my glory empty." What glory? What else but the glory he wished to have with God, in Christ, having compassion on the weak, as he is about to say most plainly. "For if I preach the gospel," he says, "I have no glory; for necessity lies upon me," that is, the necessity of sustaining this life. "For woe to me," he says, "if I do not preach the gospel," that is, it will be to my own hurt if I do not preach the gospel, because I shall be tormented by hunger and shall have nothing to live on. For he goes on to say: "For if I do this willingly, I have a reward." He says he does it willingly if he does it compelled by no necessity of supporting this life, and that for this he has a reward, surely the reward of eternal glory with God. "But if unwillingly," he says, "a stewardship has been entrusted to me"; that is, if I am compelled unwillingly to preach the gospel by the necessity of getting through this life, a stewardship has been entrusted to me, so that by my stewardship, because I preach Christ, because I preach the truth, even if by way of pretext, even if seeking my own things, even if compelled by the necessity of earthly gain, others may profit, but I myself may not have that glorious and eternal reward with God. "What then," he says, "will my reward be?" He said it as a question; therefore the reading must be held in suspense until he answers. To make this easier to understand, let us, as it were, question him: "What then will your reward be, apostle, when you do not accept this earthly reward, owed even to good evangelists who do not preach for its sake, but who take it as following and offered by the Lord's ordinance? What then will your reward be?" See what he answers. "That in preaching the gospel," he says, "I may present the gospel free of charge," that is, so that the gospel may not be costly to believers, lest they think it is preached to them so that the evangelists may seem to be selling it, as it were. And yet he comes back again and again to show what is permitted him by the Lord's right and what he himself does not do: "so as not to abuse my right in the gospel."

Now, since he did this out of compassion for the weakness of men, let us hear what follows. "For though I am free from all," he says, "I have made myself the slave of all, that I might win more: to those who are under the law as under the law, though I myself am not under the law, that I might win those who were under the law; to those who are without law as without law, though I am not without the law of God but am in the law of Christ, that I might win those who are without law." This he did not by the cunning of pretense but by the mercy of compassion; that is, not as if to pretend to be a Jew, as some have thought, because he observed the old legal rites at Jerusalem. For he did this according to his free and open judgment, in which he says: "Was anyone called circumcised? Let him not draw on the foreskin"; that is, let him not live as if he had drawn on the foreskin and covered what he had laid bare, as he says in another place: "Your circumcision has become uncircumcision." According to this judgment of his, then, in which he says, "Was anyone called circumcised? Let him not draw on the foreskin. Was anyone called in uncircumcision? Let him not be circumcised," he did those things which he was thought to have feigned by people who did not understand and paid too little attention; for he was a Jew and was called circumcised; he did not wish to draw on the foreskin, that is, he did not wish to live as if he were not circumcised. For this was already in his power. And he was not under the law as those were who performed it in a slavish way, but yet he was in the law of God and of Christ. For that law was not one law and the law of God another, as the lost Manichaeans are wont to say. Otherwise, if he is to be thought to have pretended when he did those things, he also pretended to be a pagan and sacrificed to idols, since he says that he became to those who are without law as without law; by whom he certainly means only the gentiles, whom we call pagans. So it is one thing to be under the law, another to be in the law, another to be without law. Under the law are carnal Jews; in the law, spiritual people, both Jews and Christians, so that the former kept that ancestral custom but did not impose unaccustomed burdens on the gentiles who believed; and so those were circumcised; without law are the gentiles who have not yet believed, to whom the apostle nevertheless testifies that he accommodated himself through merciful compassion, not through shifty pretense; that is, so as to help the carnal Jew or pagan in the way he would have wished to be helped himself, if he were such, bearing their weakness in the likeness of compassion, not deceiving them in the fiction of a lie; as he at once goes on to say: "To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak." For he was speaking from this point, so as to say all those other things too. So, just as his becoming weak to the weak was not a lie, neither were the other things above. For what weakness does he say he had toward the weak, if not that of having compassion on them to such a degree that, lest he seem a seller of the gospel and hinder the course of the word of God among the ignorant by falling under evil suspicion, he was unwilling to accept what was owed him by the Lord's right? If he had wished to accept it, he would certainly not have lied, because it was truly owed; and because he did not wish to, he certainly did not lie. For he did not say that it was not owed him, but showed that it was owed, and professed that he had not used what was owed and did not wish to use it at all, becoming weak by the very fact that he was unwilling to use his right; clothed, that is, with so merciful an affection that he thought how he would wish to be dealt with if he too were so weak that he could suspect those by whom the gospel was preached to him, if he saw them receiving expenses, of running a market for merchandise.

Of this weakness of his he says in another place: "We became little ones in your midst, as if a nurse were cherishing her children." For the context of the reading shows this. "For we never," he says, "came with words of flattery, as you know, nor with a pretext for greed, God is witness; nor seeking glory from men, either from you or from others, though we could have been a burden to you as apostles of Christ; but we became little ones in your midst, as if a nurse were cherishing her children." So what he says to the Corinthians, that he had the right of his apostleship, as the other apostles also had, a right he testifies he did not use, he says also in this place to the Thessalonians: "though we could have been a burden to you as apostles of Christ," according to what the Lord says: "The worker is worthy of his wages." For what he put above shows that he says it on this account: "nor with a pretext for greed, God is witness." For through what was owed by the Lord's right to good evangelists, who did not preach for this reason but sought the kingdom of God so that all these things might be added to them, others found a pretext; of whom the same apostle says: "For such men do not serve God but their own belly." The apostle wished to cut off this pretext from them, so that he gave up even what was justly owed him. He himself shows this openly in the second letter to the Corinthians, saying that his needs were supplied by other churches. For he had come, as it appears, into such want that necessities were sent to him from distant churches, while he nevertheless accepted nothing of the kind from those among whom he was. "Did I commit a sin," he says, "in humbling myself so that you might be exalted, because I preached the gospel of God to you free of charge? I robbed other churches, taking pay from them for your service; and when I was with you and was in want, I was a burden to no one. For what I lacked the brothers who came from Macedonia supplied, and in everything I kept myself from being burdensome to you, and will keep so. As the truth of Christ is in me, this boasting of mine will not be silenced in the regions of Achaia. Why? Because I do not love you? God knows. But what I do and will do is to cut off the pretext of those who want a pretext, so that in what they boast of they may be found as we are." By this pretext, then, which he says here he wants to cut off, he wanted to be understood what he says there: "nor with a pretext for greed, God is witness." And what he said here, "in humbling myself so that you might be exalted," he said in the first letter to the same Corinthians, "To the weak I became weak," and to the Thessalonians, "I became a little one in your midst, as if a nurse were cherishing her children." Therefore attend to what follows. "So," he says, "longing for you, we were pleased to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own souls, because you had become very dear to us. For you remember, brothers, our labor and hardship; working night and day, so as not to burden any of you." This, then, is what he said above: "though we could have been a burden to you as apostles of Christ." For he did this trembling, as with a father's and a mother's heart, at the dangers of the weak, lest, stirred by false suspicions, they should hate the gospel as something for sale. So too he says the same in the Acts of the Apostles, when he had sent from Miletus to Ephesus and called the presbyters of the church from there, to whom he said, among many things: "I coveted no one's silver or gold or clothing. You yourselves know that these hands served my needs and the needs of those who were with me. I have shown you in all things that by so laboring we must help the weak, remembering also the words of the Lord Jesus, that he himself said: It is more blessed to give than to receive."

Here perhaps someone may say: "If the apostle worked at bodily work to sustain this life, what was that work, and when did he have time both to work and to preach the gospel?" To him I answer: suppose I do not know; still, that he worked bodily and lived in the flesh from it, not using the right the Lord had given the apostles, that in proclaiming the gospel he should live by the gospel, the things said above testify without any doubt. For it is not said in one place or briefly, so that it could be turned and twisted to another meaning by the evasion of anyone, however cunning. Since, then, the opposition of those who contradict is crushed by such great and frequent weights of so great an authority, why do they ask me what work he did or when he did it? One thing I know: that he did not commit thefts, nor was he a burglar or a robber, nor a charioteer or a hunter or an actor, nor a man of shameful gain; but he did innocently and honestly the things that are suited to human uses, as are the works of carpenters, builders, shoemakers, farmers, and the like. For honor itself does not censure what is censured by the pride of those who love to be called honorable but do not love to be so. The apostle, then, would not disdain either to undertake some farm work or to be engaged in the labor of craftsmen. For he who says, "Give no offense to Jews or to Greeks or to the church of God," I do not know whom he could have regarded in this matter. If they say the Jews: the patriarchs fed flocks. If the Greeks, whom we also call pagans: they had even shoemaker philosophers whom they greatly honored. If the church of God: that righteous man, chosen as witness to a virginity in marriage that would always remain, to whom the virgin Mary, who bore Christ, was betrothed, was a carpenter. Whatever of these works, then, men do with innocence and without fraud is good. For the apostle himself also guards against anyone slipping into evil works from the necessity of sustaining life. "Let him who stole," he says, "steal no longer; but rather let him labor with his hands at what is good, so that he may have something to give to him who has need." This, then, is enough to know: that in bodily work too the apostle did what was good.

But when he used to work, that is, in what spaces of time, so as not to be hindered from preaching the gospel, who could discover? Certainly he did not keep silent that he worked in hours of both day and night. But these people who, as if very busy and occupied, inquire about the time of his working, what do they do? Have they themselves filled the lands with the gospel from Jerusalem round about as far as Illyricum? Or have they undertaken whatever barbarian nations still remain to be visited and filled with the peace of the church? We know them to be gathered in a kind of holy society in the greatest leisure. The apostle did a wonderful thing, who, in truth, amid such great anxiety for all the churches, both those already spread and those yet to be spread, which belonged to his care and labor, also worked with his hands; yet for that reason, when he was with the Corinthians and was in want, he was indeed a burden to none of those among whom he was, but what he lacked the brothers who came from Macedonia supplied.

For he himself, on account of such needs of the saints, who, although they obey his precepts to work in quietness and eat their own bread, may yet for many reasons need some supplement of such support, after he had said, teaching and warning, "Now such people we command and beseech in the Lord Jesus Christ that they work in quietness and eat their own bread," foresaw that those who had the means to provide necessities for the servants of God might grow slack on this pretext, and at once added: "But you, brothers, do not grow weary in doing good." And when he wrote to Titus, saying, "Send Zenas the lawyer and Apollos on ahead with care, so that they lack nothing," to show from what source they ought to lack nothing, he at once added: "And let our people also learn to take the lead in good works for necessary uses, so that they may not be unfruitful." Timothy too, whom he calls his most true son, he knew to be weak in body, as he shows by warning him not to drink water but to use a little wine for his stomach and his frequent infirmities; because he could not labor at bodily work, lest perhaps, not wishing to be in want of daily food, he should seek some business for himself from those to whom he ministered the gospel, in which the attention of his mind would be entangled (for it is one thing to labor with the body with a free mind, as a craftsman does, if he is not fraudulent and greedy and eager for private gain; but it is another to occupy the mind itself with the cares of gathering money without bodily labor, as are merchants, or stewards, or contractors; for they preside by care, they do not work with their hands, and therefore they occupy their mind itself with anxiety about possessing): Timothy, then, lest he fall into such things, since he could not work with his hands because of the weakness of his body, he exhorts, warns, and consoles thus: "Labor," he says, "as a good soldier of Christ Jesus. No one serving as a soldier for God entangles himself in worldly affairs, so that he may please him who enlisted him. For one who competes in the games is not crowned unless he competes lawfully." Here, lest Timothy should suffer distress, saying, "I cannot dig, I am ashamed to beg," he added: "The farmer who labors ought to be the first to partake of the fruits," according to what he had said to the Corinthians: "Who ever serves as a soldier at his own expense? Who plants a vineyard and does not eat of its fruit? Who tends a flock and does not get some of the milk of the flock?" So he made the chaste evangelist secure, who did not preach the gospel in order to sell the gospel, but who yet could not provide the necessities of this life for himself with his own hands, so that he would understand that what he took as necessary for himself from those for whom he served as a soldier, as for provincials, and whom he cultivated like a vineyard or tended like a flock, was not begging but a right.

On account, then, of either these occupations of the servants of God or bodily infirmities, which cannot be wholly lacking, the apostle not only permits the needs of the saints to be supplied by good believers, but also most wholesomely exhorts it. For apart from that right which he says he himself did not use, which yet he commands believers to serve, saying, "Let him who is taught the word share in all good things with him who teaches him"; apart, then, from this right, which he often testifies that preachers of the word have over those to whom they preach, he also commands and exhorts that necessities be contributed by the churches of the gentiles to the saints who had sold all their goods and distributed them and lived at Jerusalem in a holy communion of life, calling nothing their own, who had all things in common, and one soul and heart toward God. Hence that saying to the Romans: "Now," he says, "I am going to Jerusalem to minister to the saints. For Macedonia and Achaia have been pleased to make some contribution for the poor among the saints who are at Jerusalem. For they were pleased to do it, and they are their debtors. For if the gentiles have shared in their spiritual things, they ought also to minister to them in carnal things." This is like what he says to the Corinthians: "If we have sown spiritual things for you, is it a great thing if we reap your carnal things?" Likewise in the second letter to the Corinthians: "We make known to you, brothers," he says, "the grace of God that has been given in the churches of Macedonia: that in a great trial of affliction the abundance of their joy and their deep poverty have abounded in the riches of their simplicity; for according to their means, I bear witness, and beyond their means, they were willing, begging us with many prayers for the grace and fellowship of the ministry that is done for the saints; and not as we had hoped, but they gave themselves first to the Lord and to us by the will of God, so that we urged Titus that, as he had begun, so he would also complete among you this grace too. But as you abound in everything, in faith and word and knowledge and all earnestness and in the love that is from us toward you, see that you abound in this grace also. I do not say this as a command, but proving by the earnestness of others the genuineness of your love too. For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that for your sake he became poor, though he was rich, so that by his poverty you might become rich. And in this I give counsel; for this profits you, who began a year ago not only to do but also to desire. Now, then, complete it in deed as well, so that as there is readiness of will, so there may be completion also out of what each has. For if the readiness is there, it is acceptable according to what one has, not according to what one does not have. For it is not that others should have relief and you distress, but for equality at this time, that your abundance may supply their want, so that their abundance may also supply your want, that there may be equality. As it is written: He who had much did not have too much, and he who had little did not lack. But thanks be to God, who put the same earnestness for you in the heart of Titus, for he accepted our appeal, and being more earnest he went out to you of his own accord. And we have sent with him the brother whose praise in the gospel is through all the churches; and not only that, but he has also been appointed by the churches as our traveling companion with this grace that is ministered by us for the glory of the Lord and our readiness, avoiding this, that anyone should blame us in this abundance that is ministered by us. For we provide for what is good not only before God but also before men." In these words it appears how much he wanted it to be not only the care of the holy congregations to minister necessities to God's holy servants, giving counsel on this because it profited those who did it more than those for whom they did it (for something else profited the latter, namely, to use this service of their brothers toward them in a holy way, and not to serve God for this reason, nor to take these things except to supply need, not to feed laziness), but also the blessed apostle says his own care in this ministry, which was now being sent through Titus, was so great that he mentions for this reason a companion of his travels appointed by the churches, a man of God of good report, "whose praise," he says, "in the gospel is through all the churches." And he says that this man was appointed his companion so that he might avoid the reproaches of men, lest without the witness of saints associated in this ministry he should be thought by the weak and ungodly to take for himself and turn into his own pocket what he was receiving to supply the needs of the saints, to be carried by him or distributed to the needy.

And a little later he says: "For concerning the ministry that is done for the saints, it is superfluous for me to write to you. For I know your readiness of mind, about which I boast of you to the Macedonians, that Achaia has been ready since last year; and your zeal has stirred up very many. But I have sent the brothers so that our boasting about you may not be made empty in this respect, so that, as I said, you may be ready; lest, if Macedonians come with me and find you unready, we be put to shame, not to say you, in this matter. So I thought it necessary to ask the brothers to go on ahead to you and arrange in advance this blessing of yours promised long ago, so that it may be ready as a blessing, not as greed. This, however: he who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and he who sows in blessing will also reap in blessing. Each as he has purposed in his heart, not out of sadness or out of necessity; for God loves a cheerful giver. And God is able to make all grace abound in you, so that always having all sufficiency in everything you may abound in every good work (as it is written: He scattered, he gave to the poor, his righteousness remains forever; and he who supplies seed to the sower will also supply bread for food and will multiply your sowing and increase the growing fruits of your righteousness), so that, being enriched in everything for all simplicity, which works through us thanksgiving to God; for the ministry of this service not only supplies what the saints lack, but also makes it abound through the thanksgiving of many to God, glorifying God through the proof of this ministry for the obedience of your confession to the gospel of Christ and for the simplicity of your fellowship toward them and toward all, and in their prayer for you, as they long for you because of the surpassing grace of God in you. Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift." With what richness of holy joy the apostle was filled while he speaks of the mutual supplying of the need of Christ's provincials, on the one side in carnal things toward those, on the other in spiritual things toward these, so that he cried out, and as it were brought up from a feast of holy joys, saying: "Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift!"

Just as, then, the apostle, or rather the Spirit of God possessing, filling, and moving his heart, did not cease to exhort the faithful who had such means that nothing should be lacking to the needs of the servants of God who wished to hold a loftier degree of holiness in the church, so as to cut all the bonds of worldly hope and dedicate a free mind to the divine warfare, so they too ought to obey his precepts: to have compassion on the weak, and, not bound by love of private property, to labor with their own hands for the common good, and to obey their superiors without murmuring, so that what those who labor and work at something to get their living by are judged to lack, because of the bodily infirmities of some and because of church occupations or the learning of saving doctrine, may be supplied from the offerings of good believers.

For I want to know what those who are unwilling to work bodily do, and to what they devote their time. "To prayers," they say, "and psalms and reading and the word of God." A holy life indeed, and praiseworthy for the sweetness of Christ; but if we are not to be called away from these, then neither must we eat, nor must food itself be prepared daily so that it can be served and taken. But if the very necessity of weakness compels the servants of God to find time for these things at certain intervals, why do we not also allot some portions of time to observing the apostolic precepts? For one prayer of an obedient man is heard sooner than ten thousand of one who is contemptuous. And they can easily sing divine songs even while working with their hands, and comfort their very labor as with a divine rowing song. Or do we not know to what vanities, and often even to what indecencies of theatrical plays, all workmen give their hearts and tongues, while their hands do not leave their work? What, then, prevents a servant of God, while working with his hands, from meditating on the law of the Lord and singing to the name of the Lord Most High? Provided, of course, that he has times set apart for learning the things he may recall by memory. For this reason too those good works of the faithful in supplying necessities ought not to be lacking, so that the hours given to training the mind, in which those bodily works cannot be done, may not oppress them with want. But those who say they devote themselves to reading, do they not find there what the apostle commanded? What perversity is this, then, to be unwilling to obey reading while wishing to devote oneself to it, and, in order that what is good may be read the longer, to be unwilling to do what is read? For who does not know that each person makes progress the more quickly in reading good things, the more quickly he does what he reads?

But if someone has to give a discourse, and it so occupies him that he has no time to work with his hands, can everyone in the monastery do this, either expound the divine readings to the brothers who come to them from another way of life or argue profitably about some questions? When, then, not all can, why do all want to be at leisure under this pretext? And yet even if all could, they ought to do it in turn, not only so that the rest would not be taken from necessary works, but also because it is enough for one to speak while many listen. Then again, how would the apostle himself have had time to work with his hands, unless he set fixed times for giving out the word of God? For God did not want this hidden from us either. For holy Scripture has not kept silent both of what craft he was a workman and at what times he was free to dispense the gospel. For when the day of departure pressed on him while he was at Troas, even on the first day of the week, when the brothers had gathered to break bread, so great was the attention and so necessary the discussion that the discourse was drawn out until midnight, as if it had slipped their minds that it was not a fast day on that day. But when he was to stay in some place and argued daily, who would doubt that he had hours assigned to this duty? For when he was at Athens, because he had found there most eager inquirers into things, it is written of him thus: "So he argued with the Jews in the synagogue and with the gentiles in the streets, in the market place, every day, with all who were there." For not in the synagogue every day, where the custom was to preach on the sabbath, but "in the market place," it says, "every day," certainly on account of the eager interests of the Athenians. For it goes on: "And some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers conversed with him." And a little after it says: "Now the Athenians and the strangers staying there spent their time in nothing else than telling or hearing something new." Let us suppose that the apostle did not work on all those days that he was at Athens; for this reason too his need was supplied from Macedonia, as he says in the second letter to the Corinthians. And yet he could have worked at other hours and at night, for he was so strong in mind and body. But when he had left Athens, let us see what Scripture says. "He argued," it says, "in the synagogue every sabbath"; this at Corinth. At Troas, then, where the discourse was drawn out until midnight by the necessity of his imminent departure, it was the first day of the week, which is called the Lord's day; from which we understand that he was not with Jews but with Christians, since the narrator himself also says that they had gathered to break bread. And this is the best management: that all things be done in order, distributed at their own times, lest, entangled in turbulent confusions, they disturb the human mind.

There too it is said what the apostle worked at. "After this," it says, "he left Athens and came to Corinth. And having found a certain Jew named Aquila, a native of Pontus, recently come from Italy, with Priscilla his wife, because Claudius had ordered all the Jews to leave Rome, he went to them, and because they were of the same craft he stayed with them, doing work; for they were tentmakers." If they try to interpret this allegorically, they show how much progress they make in the church's writings, to which they boast of devoting themselves. And certainly the things said above, "Is it only I and Barnabas who do not have the right not to work?" and, "We have not used this right," and, "though we could have been a burden to you as apostles of Christ," and, "working night and day, so as not to burden any of you," and, "The Lord ordained that those who proclaim the gospel should live by the gospel; but I have used none of these things," and the rest of this kind, let them either expound them otherwise, or, if they are pressed by the most brilliant light of truth, let them understand and obey; or, if they either will not or cannot obey, let them at least confess that those who are willing are better, and those who are also able are happier. For it is one thing to allege a real weakness of body or to put forward a false one, and another to be so deceived and so to deceive that, on top of it, greater righteousness seems to be among the servants of God for the very reason that laziness has been able to reign among the ignorant. For one who shows a real weakness of body is to be treated humanely; one who puts forward a false one and cannot be convicted is to be left to God. Yet neither of them sets up a ruinous rule, because a good servant of God both serves his brother who is plainly weak and, when he believes one who deceives, because he does not think him bad, does not imitate him so as to be bad; and if he does not believe him, he thinks him deceitful, and nonetheless does not imitate him. But as for the one who says, "This is true righteousness, that by doing no bodily work we imitate the birds of the sky, since whoever does any such work acts against the gospel," whoever is weak in mind and hears and believes this is to be mourned, not because he is so at leisure, but because he so errs.

Here another question arises. For perhaps someone may say: "What then? Did the other apostles and the brothers of the Lord and Cephas sin because they did not work? Or did they bring a hindrance to the gospel, since blessed Paul said that he did not use this right so as not to give any hindrance to the gospel of Christ? For if they sinned because they did not work, then they had not received the right not to work, that is, to live by the gospel. But if they had received this right, by the Lord's ordaining that those who proclaimed the gospel should live by the gospel, and saying, 'The worker is worthy of his food' (a right which Paul, spending something more, was unwilling to use), then they certainly did not sin. If they did not sin, they gave no hindrance. For it is not no sin to hinder the gospel. And if this is so," they say, "it is open to us too either to use or not to use this right."

I would solve this question briefly if I said, as I would say justly, that the apostle must be believed. For he knew why in the churches of the gentiles the gospel should not be carried about as something for sale, not blaming his fellow apostles but distinguishing his own ministry; because, without doubt at the prompting of the Holy Spirit, they had so divided the provinces for preaching the gospel among themselves that Paul and Barnabas should go to the gentiles, and they to the circumcision. But that he commanded this to those who did not have such a right, the many things already said make plain. These brothers of ours, however, rashly claim for themselves, as I judge, that they have such a right. For if they are evangelists, I admit, they have it; if they are ministers of the altar, dispensers of the sacraments, they do not so much claim this right for themselves as plainly assert it as theirs.

If at least they had something in this world by which they could easily sustain this life without a trade, which, when converted to God, they distributed to the needy, then their weakness should be both believed and borne. For such people, having been brought up not better, as many think, but, which is the truth, more softly, are generally unable to bear the labor of bodily work. There were perhaps many such at Jerusalem. For it is also written that they sold their estates and laid the prices of them at the feet of the apostles, to be distributed to each as there was need. Because they were found near at hand and were useful to the gentiles, who were being called from far off from the worship of idols, according to what was said, "Out of Zion will go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem," the apostle called Christians from among the gentiles their debtors. "They are their debtors," he says, and he added why: "For if the gentiles have shared in their spiritual things, they ought also to minister to them in carnal things." But now there come to this profession of the service of God, for the most part, people both from the condition of slaves, or freedmen, or those freed by their masters for this purpose or about to be freed, and from country life, and from the practice of crafts and common labor, brought up the more happily, surely, the more hardily. If they were not admitted, it would be a grave fault; for many of that number have proved truly great and worthy of imitation. For this is why "God chose the weak things of the world to put to shame the strong; and he chose the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise; and the base things of the world and the things that are not, as though they were, so that the things that are might be brought to nothing, so that no flesh might boast before God." This devout and holy thought, then, causes even such to be admitted who bring no proof of a life changed for the better. For it is not apparent whether they have come with the purpose of serving God, or whether, fleeing a poor and laborious life, they wanted to be fed and clothed without work, and, moreover, honored by those by whom they used to be despised and trodden down. Such people, then, since they cannot excuse themselves from working on grounds of bodily weakness (for they are refuted by the habit of their past life), cover themselves with the shade of a bad discipline, so as to scheme to pervert the apostolic precepts from a badly understood gospel: truly "birds of the sky," but by raising themselves on high through pride; and "grass of the field," but by thinking carnally.

For there has happened to them what the same apostle says must be guarded against in undisciplined younger widows: "For at the same time they learn to be idle; and not only idle, but also busybodies and talkative, saying things they should not." He said this of bad women; what we grieve and lament also in bad men, who, against the very one in whose letters we read these things, idly and talkatively say things they should not. And those among them who have come to the holy warfare with the purpose of pleasing him who enlisted them, being so vigorous in bodily strength and sound in health that they can not only be instructed but also work, according to the apostle, are taken up by the idle and corrupt talk of these people, which through their inexperienced novitiate they cannot judge, and are changed by a pestilent contagion into the same fault: not only not imitating the obedience of the saints who work in quietness, and of other monasteries living under a most wholesome discipline according to the apostolic rule, but even insulting their betters, proclaiming laziness as the preserver of the gospel and accusing mercy as its betrayer. For one who takes thought for the good reputation of the servants of God works far more mercifully toward the souls of the weak than one who breaks bread for the hungry works toward the bodies of the needy. Would that these men who want to keep their hands free would keep their tongues free too! For they would not invite so many to imitate them if they set before them examples not only lazy but also silent.

But now they recite the gospel of Christ against the apostle of Christ. For so wonderful are the works of the lazy that they want to hinder by the gospel what the apostle commanded and did precisely so that the gospel itself would not be hindered. And yet, if we compel them to live by the very words of the gospel according to their understanding, they will be the first to try to persuade us that they are not to be understood as they understand them. For certainly they say they ought not to work because the birds of the sky neither sow nor reap, which the Lord gave us as a likeness so that we should not think about such necessities. Why then do they not attend to what follows? For it was not only said that they do not sow or reap, but it was added: "nor do they gather into storehouses." Now apothecae, or barns, can be called, word for word, repositories. Why then do these men want to have idle hands and full repositories? Why do they store away and keep what they take from the labors of others, from which to bring out something daily? Why, finally, do they grind and cook? For birds do not do this. Or if they find people whom they can persuade to do this work too, bringing them food prepared day by day, at least they bring water for themselves from springs, or draw it from cisterns or wells and store it: birds do not do this. But if this pleases them, let good believers and most devoted provincials of the eternal King also strive to serve his bravest soldiers even in these things, so that they are not forced even to fill their own water, if they have now surpassed by a new degree of righteousness even those who were then at Jerusalem. For when a famine was threatening, foretold by the prophets who were then, good believers sent grain from Greece to them, from which, I believe, they made bread for themselves, or at least had it made: which birds do not do. But if, as I had begun to say, these men have now passed even those by some degree of righteousness, and in all things that belong to getting through this life they act just as birds do, let them show us men serving birds as they want to be served themselves, except birds that are caught and shut up, which are not trusted lest they fly away and not return; and yet these would rather enjoy freedom and take from the fields as much as is enough than take what is set out and prepared by men.

Accordingly, these in turn will be surpassed by another, loftier degree of righteousness by those who so arrange themselves as to go out daily into the fields as if to pasture, pick what they find at the time, and return with their hunger allayed. But certainly, because of the guardians of the fields, how good it would be if the Lord deigned to bestow wings too, so that the servants of God found in other people's fields would not be seized as thieves but chased off like starlings! As it is, he will imitate a bird as far as he can whom the hunter cannot catch. But suppose all allow the servants of God to go out into their fields when they like and to depart from there safe and refreshed; as it was commanded the people of Israel by the law that no one should seize a thief in his fields unless he wanted to carry something away with him; for anyone who touched nothing but what he ate they were to let go free and unpunished. That is why, when the Lord's disciples plucked ears of grain, the Jews brought a charge about the sabbath rather than about theft. But what will be done about those seasons of the year when no food that can be eaten at once is found in the fields? Whoever tries to carry something home to prepare for himself by cooking will hear from the gospel, according to their understanding: "Put it down; for birds do not do this."

But let us grant this too: that throughout the whole year something can be found in the fields, from a tree or from plants or from any roots, that can be taken as food uncooked; or at least that so much exercise of the body is applied that things that need cooking do no harm even if taken raw, and that one can go out to forage even in any harshness of winter; and so it may come about that nothing is carried off to be prepared, nothing stored for tomorrow. Those will not be able to keep this who separate themselves from the sight of men for many days, and, giving access to no one, shut themselves in, living in great intentness of prayer. For these are accustomed to shut in with them food, very simple indeed and very cheap, but enough for those days in which they have determined to be seen by no one: which birds do not do. And the exercise of these men in so wonderful a continence, since they have the leisure to do these things and set themselves forth for imitation not with proud elation but with merciful holiness, I not only do not censure, but cannot praise as much as it deserves. What, though, shall we say of them, according to these men's understanding of the gospel words? Or perhaps the holier they are, the more unlike birds they are, because unless they store up food for themselves for many days, they will not be able to shut themselves in as they do? And certainly they hear with us: "Do not, then, be anxious about tomorrow."

Therefore, to put it briefly, let these men who, by a perverse understanding of the gospel, try to pervert such plain apostolic precepts either not be anxious about tomorrow, like the birds of the sky, or obey the apostle, like beloved sons; rather, let them do both, because both agree. For Paul, the servant of Christ Jesus, would not give counsel contrary to his Lord. For we say this openly to them: if you so understand the birds of the sky in the gospel that you are unwilling to provide food and covering by working with your own hands, then store up nothing for tomorrow either, just as the birds of the sky store up nothing. But if it can be not contrary to the gospel to store up something for tomorrow, where it is said, "Look at the birds of the sky, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into storehouses," then it can also be not contrary to the gospel, nor to the likeness of the birds of the sky, to get through this life of the flesh by the labor of bodily work.

For if they are pressed from the gospel to store up nothing for tomorrow, they answer most rightly: "Why then did the Lord himself have a purse, in which to store the money collected? Why was grain sent to the holy fathers so long before, when a famine threatened? Why did the apostles so provide necessities for the needs of the saints, lest they lack in the future, that most blessed Paul wrote to the Corinthians in his letter: 'Now concerning the collections for the saints, as I directed the churches of Galatia, so do you also. On the first day of the week let each of you put aside at home, storing up whatever pleases him, so that collections may not be made when I come. And when I arrive, I will send those whom you approve with letters to carry your gift to Jerusalem. And if it is fitting that I go too, they will go with me.'" These and many other things they bring forward most abundantly and most truly. To whom we answer: "You see, then, that although the Lord said, 'Do not be anxious about tomorrow,' you are not forced by these words to reserve nothing for tomorrow. Why then do you say that you are forced by the same words to be idle? Why are the birds of the sky not an example to you for reserving nothing, and yet you want them to be an example for working at nothing?"

Someone will say: "What then does it profit a servant of God to leave the former activities he had in the world and turn to this spiritual life and warfare, if he must still carry on business like a workman?" As if it could easily be explained in words how much it profits, what the Lord said to the rich man seeking counsel for gaining eternal life, that he should, if he wished to be perfect, sell what he had, distribute it to the needs of the poor, and follow him! Or has anyone followed the Lord with so unencumbered a course as he who says, "I did not run in vain nor labor in vain"? Yet he both commanded and did these works. So great an authority ought to have sufficed for us who are taught and instructed, both for leaving former possessions and for working with our hands. But we too, helped by the Lord himself, can perhaps somehow come to know what it profits servants of God, even while working in this way, to have left their former business. For if someone turns to this life from being rich and is hindered by no bodily weakness, are we so lacking in the taste of Christ as not to understand how great a swelling of former pride is healed, when, the superfluities by which the mind was once ruinously puffed up having been cut away, the lowliness even of a workman is by no means refused for the modest things that remain naturally necessary for this life? But if he turns to this life from poverty, let him not think he is doing what he used to do, if, from the love of increasing his private property, however small, he has passed, seeking no longer his own things but those of Jesus Christ, to the love of a common life, to live in the society of those who have one soul and one heart in God, so that no one calls anything his own, but they have all things in common. For if the ancient leaders of this earthly commonwealth are usually praised in the most brilliant eloquence of their writers because they so put the common good of the whole people of their city before their private affairs that one of them, a triumphant general after Africa was subdued, did not have anything to give his daughter on her marriage, unless she were given a dowry from the public treasury by decree of the senate: in what spirit ought a citizen of that eternal city, the heavenly Jerusalem, to be in his commonwealth, if not so as to put in common with his brother that very thing which he works for with his own hands, and, if anything is lacking to him, to supply it from the common store, saying with him whose precept and example he has followed, "as having nothing and possessing all things"?

Therefore even those who have left or distributed wealth, whether great or of any kind, and have chosen with devout and wholesome humility to be numbered among Christ's poor, if they are so strong in body and free from church occupations (although, since they bring so great a proof of their mind and have contributed either a great deal or not a little from what they had to the needs of the same society, the common property itself and brotherly love owe them in return the sustaining of their life), nevertheless, if they too work with their hands, so as to take away the excuse from the lazy who come from a humbler and therefore more exercised life, they act much more mercifully than when they divided all their goods among the needy. If they are unwilling to do this, indeed, who would dare to compel them? Yet works must be found for them in the monastery, even if freer from bodily labor, but to be cared for by watchful administration, so that they too do not eat their bread, since it has now become common, for nothing. Nor need we consider in which monasteries, or in what place, anyone spent what he had on needy brothers. For all Christians form one commonwealth. And so whoever has spent necessities on Christians anywhere, wherever he himself also receives what is necessary for him, he receives from what is Christ's; because wherever he himself gave to such, who received it but Christ? But those who were getting through life by bodily labor outside this holy society, from whose number more come to the monasteries, because in the human race itself they are more numerous, if they are unwilling to work, neither let them eat. For the rich are not humbled to godliness in the Christian warfare so that the poor may be lifted up to pride. For it is by no means fitting that in that life where senators become laborers, workmen should become idle; and that where those who were lords of estates come, leaving their luxuries, peasants should be delicate.

"But the Lord says: Do not be anxious for your life, what you will eat, nor for your body, what you will put on." Rightly, since he had said above: "You cannot serve God and mammon." For one who preaches the gospel in order to have something to eat and something to wear thinks he is serving both God, because he preaches the gospel, and mammon, because he preaches for the sake of these necessities; which the Lord says cannot be done. And so one who preaches the gospel for these things is shown to be serving not God but mammon, even if God uses him, in a way he himself does not know, for the advancement of others. For to this sentence he adds, saying: "Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious for your life, what you will eat, nor for your body, what you will put on"; not so that they should not provide these things, as far as necessity requires, from whatever source they honorably can, but so that they should not look to these things and do for their sake whatever they are commanded to do in preaching the gospel. For the intention for which something is done he calls the eye; hence a little above he was speaking so as to come down to this, and said: "The lamp of your body is your eye. If your eye is single, your whole body will be full of light; but if your eye is evil, your whole body will be full of darkness"; that is, your deeds will be such as your intention in doing them is. And in order to come to this, he had given commandment above about almsgiving, saying: "Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where rust and moth destroy and where thieves dig through and steal; but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, where thieves do not dig through and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." Then he added, "The lamp of your body is your eye," so that those who give alms may not give them with the intention of either wishing to please men or seeking to be repaid on earth for what they do. Hence the apostle too, when he instructed Timothy that the rich should be admonished, said: "Let them give readily, let them share, let them store up for themselves a good foundation for the future, so that they may lay hold of the true life." Since, then, the Lord directed the eye of those who give alms toward the future life and the heavenly reward, so that their deeds themselves may be full of light when the eye is single (for to that final recompense applies what he says elsewhere: "Whoever receives you receives me; and whoever receives me receives him who sent me. Whoever receives a prophet in the name of a prophet will receive a prophet's reward; and whoever receives a righteous man in the name of a righteous man will receive a righteous man's reward. And whoever gives one of these least ones even a cup of cold water to drink in the name of a disciple, truly I tell you, his reward will not perish"), then, lest perhaps, when the eye of those who spend necessities on the needy, on prophets, on the righteous, and on the Lord's disciples had been corrected, the eye of those for whom this was done should be corrupted, so that they would want to serve as soldiers of Christ in order to receive these things, he says: "No one can serve two masters"; and a little after, "You cannot serve God and mammon"; and at once he joined to it: "Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious for your life, what you will eat, nor for your body, what you will put on."

And what follows about the birds of the sky and the lilies of the field he says for this purpose, that no one may think God does not care for the necessities of his servants, since his most wise providence reaches even to creating and governing these things. For it is not that he does not also feed and clothe those who work with their hands. But lest they twist the Christian warfare to the purpose of acquiring these things, the Lord forewarns his servants of this: that in that ministry which is owed to his sacrament we should think not of these things, but of his kingdom and righteousness; and all these things will be added to us, whether we work with our hands, or are hindered by weakness of body, or are so taken up by the occupation of the warfare itself that we can do nothing else. For it is not the case that, because God said, "Call upon me in the day of trouble, and I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me," the apostle therefore ought not to have fled and been let down through the wall in a basket to escape the hands of his persecutor, but should rather have waited to be seized, so that God might deliver him as he did the three young men from the midst of the fire. Or for this reason the Lord ought not to have said, "If they persecute you in one city, flee to another," because he himself said, "Whatever you ask in my name will be given you." So, just as, if anyone put a question of this kind to Christ's disciples as they fled persecution, why they did not rather stand and, calling on God, be rescued by his wonders, as Daniel from the lions and Peter from his chains, they would answer that they ought not to tempt God, but that he would do such things, if he willed, when they themselves had nothing they could do; but when he had put flight in their power, even if they are freed through it, they are freed by none but him: so too, if anyone raises from the gospel the question of the birds of the sky, which neither sow nor reap nor gather into storehouses, and of the lilies of the field, which neither toil nor spin, to servants of God who have the time and strength to get their living with their own hands, by the example and precept of the apostle, they will easily answer: "If we too, through some weakness or occupation, cannot work, he will feed and clothe us as he does the birds and the lilies, which do no work of this kind; but when we can, we ought not to tempt our God, because this very ability we have by his gift, and when we live by it, we live by his bounty who has bestowed the ability. And so we are not anxious about these necessities, because when we can do these things, he feeds and clothes us by whom men are fed and clothed; but when we cannot do them, the same one feeds and clothes us by whom the birds are fed and the lilies clothed, since we are worth more than they. Therefore in this warfare of ours we do not think about tomorrow either, because it is not for these temporal things, to which tomorrow belongs, but for those eternal things, where it is always today, that we have enlisted with him, so that, entangled in no worldly affairs, we may please him."

Since these things are so, allow me a little, holy brother (for the Lord gives me great confidence through you), to address those very sons and brothers of ours whom I know you are in labor with, together with us, with such love, until the apostolic discipline is formed in them. O servants of God, soldiers of Christ, do you so ignore the snares of the most cunning enemy, who, desiring in every way to cloud with his stenches your good reputation, so good an aroma of Christ, lest good souls say, "We will run after the fragrance of your ointments," and so escape his snares, has scattered everywhere so many hypocrites in the habit of monks, going round the provinces, sent nowhere, fixed nowhere, standing nowhere, settled nowhere? Some peddle limbs of martyrs, if indeed of martyrs; others enlarge their fringes and phylacteries; others lie that they have heard that their parents or kinsfolk are living in this or that region and that they are going to them. And all ask, all demand either the expenses of a profitable poverty or the price of a feigned holiness; while meanwhile, wherever they are caught in their evil deeds or become known in any way, under the general name of monks your way of life is blasphemed, so good, so holy, which in Christ's name we desire to spring up throughout all Africa, as through other lands. Are you not, then, inflamed with zeal for God? Does not your heart grow hot within you, and in your meditation a fire blaze up, so that you pursue their evil works with good works, so as to cut off from them the pretext for the shameful trafficking by which your reputation is harmed and a stumbling block is put before the weak? Have pity, then, and have compassion, and show men that you seek not an easy living in idleness, but the kingdom of God through the narrow and strait life of this profession. You have the same reason that the apostle had: to cut off the pretext from those who seek a pretext, so that those who are choked by their stenches may be refreshed by your good fragrance.

We do not bind heavy burdens and lay them on your shoulders, which we are unwilling to touch with a finger. Inquire and learn the labors of our occupations, and in some of us also the weaknesses of our bodies, and the custom now established in the churches we serve, which do not allow us to find time for those works to which we exhort you. For although we can say, "Who ever serves as a soldier at his own expense? Who plants a vineyard and does not eat of its fruit? Who tends a flock and does not get some of the milk of the flock?", yet I call the Lord Jesus, in whose name I say these things without fear, as witness upon my soul, that as far as my own convenience is concerned, I would much rather work at something with my hands each day at fixed hours, as is established in well-ordered monasteries, and have the other hours free for reading and praying or doing something with the divine writings, than endure the most turbulent perplexities of other people's cases about worldly affairs, either to be settled by judging or cut short by intervening. With these troubles the same apostle burdened us, not by his own choice, surely, but by that of him who spoke through him; yet we do not read that he himself endured them. For the travels of his apostleship were of another kind. Nor did he say, "If, then, you have worldly cases, bring them to us, or appoint us to judge," but, "Those who are of least account in the church, set these," he says. "I say this to your shame. Is there not among you anyone wise who can judge between his brother? But brother goes to law with brother, and that before unbelievers?" So he wanted the wise believers and saints who were settled in places, not those who traveled here and there for the gospel, to be the examiners of such affairs. Hence it is never written of him that he at any time gave his time to such things, from which we cannot excuse ourselves, even if we are of least account, because he wanted even these to be set, if wise men were lacking, rather than that the affairs of Christians should be brought into the public court. Yet we undertake this labor not without the Lord's consolation, for the hope of eternal life, so that we may bear fruit with patience. For we are servants of his church, and especially of its weaker members, whatever members we may be in the same body. I pass over other countless church cares, which perhaps no one believes except one who has experienced them. So we do not bind heavy burdens and lay them on your shoulders, which we do not touch with a finger, since if we could do so while keeping the account of our office (he sees who tests our hearts), we would rather do these things that we exhort you to do than those we are forced to do. Certainly, for all, both you and us, laboring according to our rank and office, the way is narrow in labor and hardship; and yet for us rejoicing in hope his yoke is easy and his burden light, who has called us to rest, who first made the passage from the valley of weeping, where he himself was not without afflictions. If you are our brothers, if our sons, if we are your fellow servants, or rather your servants in Christ, hear what we admonish, acknowledge what we command, take what we dispense. But if we are Pharisees, binding heavy burdens and laying them on your shoulders, do what we say, even if you disapprove of what we do. But to us it is a very small thing to be judged by you or by any human day. With how true a love we care for you, let him see who has given what we may offer to his eyes to see. Finally, think what you will of us: the apostle Paul commands and beseeches you in the Lord that you work in quietness, that is, quietly and obediently ordered, and eat your own bread. Nor, I think, do you believe anything evil of him; and you have believed in him who speaks through him.

These things, my dearest brother Aurelius, venerable in the heart of Christ, I have not delayed to write on the work of monks, as far as he who commanded me through you to do it has granted that I could, taking care above all that good brothers who obey the apostolic precepts should not be called even betrayers of the gospel by the lazy and disobedient; so that those who do not work may at least not doubt that those who work are to be preferred to themselves. For the rest, who can bear that stubborn men who resist the most wholesome admonitions of the apostle should be not tolerated as weaker but even proclaimed as holier, so that monasteries founded on sounder teaching are corrupted by a double enticement, the dissolute license of leisure and the false name of holiness? Let our other brothers and sons, then, who have been accustomed to favor such people and to defend this presumption through ignorance, know that they above all need correction, so that those people may be corrected; not so that they grow weary of doing good. Certainly, in that they readily and eagerly supply necessities to the servants of God, we not only do not blame them but embrace them most sweetly; only let them not, by a perverse mercy, harm those people's future life more than they help their present one.

For the sin is less if "the sinner is not praised in the desires of his soul, and he who has done iniquity is not blessed." But what is more iniquitous than to want to be obeyed by inferiors and to be unwilling to obey superiors? The apostle, I mean, not us; so far as even to let their hair grow long, on which he did not want there to be any dispute at all, saying: "But if anyone wants to be contentious, we have no such custom, nor do the churches of God. But this I command"; that is, that the cleverness of one arguing should not be sought, but the authority of one commanding attended to. For what is the point, I ask, of wearing long hair so openly against the apostle's precepts? Must one be so at leisure that not even barbers work? Or, because they say they imitate the birds of the gospel, are they afraid of being plucked, as it were, lest they be unable to fly? I hesitate to say more about this fault because of certain long-haired brothers, whom we revere for many things, indeed almost everything, apart from this. But the more we love them in Christ, the more anxiously we admonish them. For we do not fear that their humility will reject our admonition, since we too wish to be admonished by such people where we perhaps stumble or stray. This, then, we admonish such holy men: not to be moved by the foolish arguments of empty people, and not to imitate in this perversity those from whom they are far different in everything else. For those who carry about a hypocrisy for sale fear that a shorn holiness may be held cheaper than a long-haired one, so that, namely, one who sees them may think of those ancients of whom we read, Samuel and the others, who did not cut their hair. Nor do they consider what difference there is between that prophetic veil and this revelation of the gospel, of which the apostle says, "When you have passed over to Christ, the veil will be taken away." For what the veil set between the face of Moses and the sight of the people of Israel signifies, the hair of the saints also signified in those times. For the same apostle also says that hair is given for a veil; by his authority these men are pressed. For he says openly: "If a man has long hair, it is a dishonor to him." "That very dishonor," they say, "we take on because of our sins," putting forward for this purpose the shade of a feigned humility, so as to display under it a pride for sale; as if the apostle taught pride when he says, "Every man who prays or prophesies with his head veiled dishonors his head," and, "A man ought not to veil his head, since he is the image and glory of God." So he who says "ought not" perhaps does not know how to teach humility! But if in the time of the gospel these men seek, for humility's sake, this dishonor which was a sacrament in the time of prophecy, let them cut their hair and veil their head with sackcloth. But then there will not be that saleable appearance, because Samson was veiled not by sackcloth but by his hair.

Now, how lamentably ridiculous, if it can be said, is what they have again found for the defense of their hair! "The apostle," they say, "forbade a man to have long hair; but those who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven are no longer men." O singular madness! Rightly does one who says this arm himself with the counsel of abominable ungodliness against the plain proclamations of holy Scripture, persevere in a crooked path, and try to bring in a pestilent doctrine; for he is not the blessed man who has not walked in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stood in the way of sinners, nor sat in the seat of pestilence. For if he meditated on the law of God day and night, he would find there the apostle Paul himself, who, certainly professing the highest chastity, says, "I would that all men were as I myself am," and yet shows himself to be a man not only by living so but also by speaking so. For he says: "When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I thought as a child, I reasoned as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things." But why should I mention the apostle, when those who say these things do not know what to think even of our Lord and Savior himself? For of whom else is it said: "until we all attain to the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the age of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed and carried about by every wind of doctrine, in the trickery of men, in craftiness for the scheming of error"? With this trickery these men deceive the ignorant; with this craftiness and the schemes of the enemy they themselves are carried about, and in their own carrying about they try in a way to spin round the minds of the weak who cling to them, so that together they do not know where they are. For they have heard or read what is written, "As many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ, where there is neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor free, neither male nor female," and they do not understand that this was said with respect to the desire of carnal sex, because in the inner man, where we are renewed in the newness of our mind, there is no sex of this kind. So let them not deny that they are men because they do nothing with the male sex. For married Christians, who do this, are certainly not Christians in respect of what they have in common with other non-Christians and with the very beasts. For it is one thing that is either granted to weakness or paid to mortal propagation, and another that is sealed by a faithful profession for laying hold of incorruptible and eternal life. So what is commanded to men about not veiling the head is figured in the body indeed, but is enacted in the mind, where the image and glory of God is. The words themselves show it. "A man," he says, "ought not to veil his head, since he is the image and glory of God." And where this image is, he himself declares when he says: "Do not lie to one another, stripping off the old man with his deeds; put on the new, who is renewed in the knowledge of God according to the image of him who created him." Who would doubt that this renewal takes place in the mind? But let even one who doubts hear a plainer statement. For admonishing the same things he says in another place: "As the truth is in Jesus, put off, according to your former way of life, the old man, who is corrupted according to the desires of deceit; and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and put on the new man, who has been created according to God." What then? Do women not have this renewal of mind, where the image of God is? Who would say this? But by the sex of their body they do not signify it; that is why they are commanded to be veiled. For by the very fact that they are women they signify that part which can be called the part of desire, over which the mind rules, the mind itself being subject to its God, when life is lived most rightly and in most orderly fashion. So what in one human being is mind and desire (the one rules, the other is ruled; the one governs, the other is subject), this is figured in two human beings, man and woman, according to the sex of the body. Speaking of this sacrament, the apostle says that the man ought not to be veiled, but the woman ought to be. For the mind is advanced to higher things the more gloriously, the more carefully desire is restrained from lower things, until the whole human being, with this body too, now mortal and frail, is clothed with incorruption and immortality in the final resurrection, and death is swallowed up in victory.

Therefore let those who are unwilling to do what is right at least stop teaching what is perverse. But those whom we rebuke in this discourse are others; as for those who give offense and disturb the church by this one fault of their hair, let grow against the apostolic precept (for while some, unwilling to think anything bad of them, are forced to twist the plain words of the apostle into a perverse meaning, and others prefer to defend the sound understanding of the Scriptures rather than flatter any men, most bitter and most dangerous disputes arise between the weaker and the stronger brothers; and if those men perhaps knew this, they would without doubt correct this too, whose other qualities we admire and love): those, then, we do not rebuke, but ask and beseech, by the divinity and humanity of Christ and by the love of the Holy Spirit, that they no longer put this stumbling block before the weak, for whom Christ died, and increase the pain and torment of our heart, when we think how much more readily bad men can imitate this evil to deceive people, when they see it in those whom, for so many other good things, we honor with the due services of Christian love. But if, after this admonition, or rather entreaty, of ours, they think they must persist in it, we shall do nothing else but grieve and groan. Let them know this; it is enough: if they are servants of God, let them have pity; if they do not have pity, I do not wish to say anything harsher. All these things, then, in which I have perhaps been more talkative than your occupations and mine would wish, make known, if you approve, to our brothers and sons for whose sake you deigned to lay this burden on me; but if anything seems to need withdrawing or correcting, let me know by your blessedness's reply.