Homilies and Sermons 6.0–7.1

[Homily on the words] of the Gospel, "I will pull down my barns and build larger ones," and on greed.

Temptations are of two kinds. Either afflictions test hearts like gold in a furnace, proving their genuineness through endurance; or often the very prosperity of life becomes a trial for many. For it is equally hard to keep the soul from being humbled in difficult circumstances and to keep it from being lifted up to insolence in brilliant ones. An example of the first kind of temptation is the great Job, the invincible athlete, who received the whole violence of the devil, like a rushing torrent, with unshaken heart and unswerving thoughts, and showed himself as much greater than his temptations as the bouts the enemy had brought against him seemed great and hard to escape. Of the temptations that come with prosperity there are other examples, and also this rich man who has just been read to us, who had wealth already and hoped for more; for God, the lover of mankind, did not condemn him from the beginning for the ingratitude of his ways, but always [added further wealth] to what he had, [to see] whether, having once produced satiety in him, he might call his soul out to fellowship and gentleness. "The land of a rich man," it says, "brought forth plentifully, and he reasoned within himself: What shall I do? I will pull down my barns and build larger ones." Why then did the land of a man who was going to do no good with the plenty bring forth plentifully? That God's long-suffering might appear the more, since his kindness extends even to such people. "For he sends rain on the just and the unjust, and makes his sun rise on the evil and the good." But such goodness of God brings greater [punishment] on those … He sent rain on the land farmed by grasping hands; he gave the sun to warm the seeds and multiply the fruits through fertility.

Such, then, were the things from God: the suitability of the earth, favorable weather, and the other things by which farming naturally prospers. And what were the things from the man? Harshness of character, misanthropy, unwillingness to share. These he showed in return to his benefactor. He did not remember our common nature; he did not think he ought to distribute his surplus to the needy; he took no account of the commandment: "Do not hold back from doing good to the needy," and "Let not almsgiving and faithfulness forsake you," and "Break your bread to the hungry." And all the prophets and all the teachers crying aloud went unheard. His barns were bursting, too narrow for the quantity stored, but his miserly heart was not filled. Always adding the new to the old, and increasing his abundance by additions every year, he fell into this helpless impasse: through greed he would not let the old produce go, and because of its quantity he had no room to receive the new. That is why his plans are fruitless and his worries without resource. "What shall I do?" Who would not pity a man so besieged? Wretched in his plenty, pitiable for the goods he has, more pitiable for those he expects. For the earth does not bring him revenues; it grows groans for him. It does not gather a harvest of fruits for him, but cares, griefs and terrible helplessness. He laments like the poor. Will not the man hard pressed by poverty utter this very word: "What shall I do? Where shall I get food? Where clothing?" These things the rich man too says. He is pained in heart, eaten away by worry. For what gladdens others wastes away the greedy man. He does not rejoice that everything inside is full; rather his overflowing wealth pierces his soul, [lest perhaps, spilling over from his storehouses] and peeping out to those outside, it become an occasion of some good to [the needy].

His passion of soul seems to me to resemble that of gluttons, who would rather burst from greed than share their leftovers with the needy. Understand, man, who gave to you. Remember yourself: who you are, what you are managing, from whom you received it, why you were preferred to many. You have become the servant of a good God, the steward of your fellow servants. Do not think that everything was prepared for your belly. Take counsel about what is in your hands as about another's property; … it gladdens you for a little time, then it will flow away and be gone, and you will be asked for an exact account of it. But you keep everything shut up behind doors and bolts, and having sealed it up, you lie awake with worry and take counsel with yourself, using a fool, yourself, as counsellor. "What shall I do?" It was easy to say: "I will fill the souls of the hungry; I will open the barns and call all the needy. I will imitate Joseph in proclaiming generosity; I will utter a large-hearted cry: All you who lack bread, come to me; each of you share in the grace God has given, enough for each, as from public springs." But you are not such a man. How could you be? You begrudge people the enjoyment of it, and having convened a wicked council in your soul, you consider not how to give each what he needs, but how, having taken in everything, you may deprive everyone of the benefit of it. Those who demanded his soul stood by, and he was conversing with his soul about food. That very night he was taken, and he was imagining enjoyment for many years. He was allowed to make all his plans and to make his mind plain, so that he might receive a sentence worthy of his choice.

[3] May you not suffer that. For it was written so that we might flee resemblance to him. Imitate the earth, man; bear fruit as it does; do not show yourself worse than lifeless soil. It nourished its fruits not for its own enjoyment but for your service; but whatever fruit of beneficence you show, you gather it for yourself, because the graces of good works return to those who give. You have given to the hungry, and what was given becomes yours, coming back with increase. As grain that falls into the earth becomes profit to the one who cast it, so bread thrown to the hungry yields abundant benefit later. Let the end of your farming, then, be the beginning of heavenly sowing: "Sow for yourselves," it says, "for righteousness." Why then are you distressed? Why do you torment yourself, striving to shut up your wealth in clay and bricks? [A good name is] better [than great wealth]. If you admire money for the honor it brings, consider how much more it contributes to glory to be called the father of countless children than to have countless staters in a purse. The money you will leave here even if you do not wish it; but the honor won by good works you will carry with you to the Master, when a whole people, standing round you before the common Judge, calls you nourisher and benefactor and all the names of generosity. Do you not see those who [squander] their wealth in the theaters on boxers and mimes and men who fight wild beasts, whom one would loathe even to look at, for the sake of a brief honor and the shouts and applause of the populace? And are you mean about expenses, when you are about to attain such great glory? God will be the one who receives you, angels will acclaim you, all men from the creation will call you blessed; eternal glory, a crown of righteousness, the kingdom of heaven will be your prizes for managing these perishable things. You care for none of these, disregarding what is hoped for in your eagerness for what is present. Come, then, distribute your wealth in various ways, being generous and splendid in spending on those in need. Let it be said of you too: "He scattered, he gave to the poor; his righteousness endures for ever." Do not be one who sells dear and is cursed by the people. Do not wait for a famine for the sake of gold, nor for common want for the sake of private abundance. Do not become a trader in human misfortunes; do not make God's wrath an occasion for amassing money. Do not irritate the wounds of those afflicted by scourges. You look at the gold, but you do not look at your brother; you recognize the stamp on a coin and distinguish the counterfeit from the genuine, but you utterly ignore your brother in his need. … And you do not reckon that the groaning of the needy follows you.

[4] How shall I set before your eyes the sufferings of the poor man? He looks round his house and sees that he has no gold and never will have; his utensils and clothing are such as the possessions of the poor are, all worth a few obols. What then? Finally he turns his eyes to his children, to take them to the market and find there a respite from death. Consider here the battle between the constraint of hunger and a father's affection. Hunger threatens the most pitiable death; nature pulls back, urging him to die with his children. Often he rushes forward, often he is checked; at last he is overcome, forced by need, necessary and inexorable. And what does the father deliberate? "Which shall I sell first? Which will the grain dealer look on with pleasure? Shall I go to the eldest? But I respect his rights as firstborn. The youngest, then? But I pity his age, which does not perceive misfortunes. This one keeps the clear likeness of his parents; that one is apt for learning. Alas, the helplessness! What will become of me? Which of them shall I strike? What wild beast's soul shall I take on? How shall I forget nature? If I hold on to all of them, I shall see them all consumed by suffering. If I sell one, … how shall I look at the rest, already become suspect to them for faithlessness? How shall I live in the house, having made myself childless? How shall I come to the table, which has its plenty from such a cause?" And he comes with countless tears to sell the dearest of his children; but you are not moved by his suffering; you take no account of nature. Hunger grips the wretch, but you put him off and dissemble, making his misfortune longer. He offers his own flesh and blood as the price of food, and your hand not only does not grow numb at receiving payment from such misfortunes, but you even haggle for more, and strive to take much and give less, making the wretch's misfortune heavier on every side. Tears do not move you to pity; groans do not soften your heart; you are unbending and implacable. You see gold everywhere, you imagine gold; it is your dream when you sleep and your thought when you are awake. As those deranged by madness do not see things as they are but the images produced by their passion, so your soul, possessed by love of money, sees everything as gold, everything as silver. You would rather see gold than the sun. You pray that everything might be changed into the nature of gold, and indeed you contrive it as far as you can.

[5] What device do you not set in motion for gold? Grain becomes gold for you, wine is congealed into gold, wool is turned into gold for you; every trade, every contrivance brings you gold. … and there is no satiety, and no end of desire is found. We often let greedy children stuff themselves without stint with what they crave, so that excessive satiety may produce aversion; but the greedy man is not so: the more he is filled, the more he desires. "If wealth flows in, do not set your heart on it." … what does it do to you? It breaks the barriers; and indeed now, forcibly held in and flooding, it pulls down the rich man's barns, his storehouses, like an invading enemy. But will he build larger ones? It is uncertain whether he will not hand them over pulled down to the man after him. For he himself would sooner be snatched away than they would be raised according to his greedy plan. He, then, has the end that follows from his wicked plans. But you, if you listen to me, will open wide all the doors of your storehouses and give your wealth abundant outlets; as a great river goes over fertile land through countless channels, so you yourselves let your wealth divide by various roads into the houses of the poor. Wells that are drained flow better; and of wealth, what stands still is useless, but what moves and passes on is of common benefit and fruitful. O how great is the praise of those who are helped, which you should not despise! How great the reward from the just Judge, which you should not disbelieve! Let the example of the condemned rich man meet you everywhere: guarding what he already had and anxious about what he hoped for, uncertain whether he would live tomorrow, he sinned today against tomorrow. The suppliant had not yet come, and he showed his savagery in advance; he had not gathered the fruits, and already he had the judgment for greed. The earth greeted him with its produce: showing deep [clusters] on the vines, offering the olive teeming with fruit, promising all the luxury of orchard fruits; but he was ungracious and unfruitful, not yet possessing it and already begrudging those in need. And yet how many dangers there are before the harvest is brought in! Hail has broken it down, scorching heat has snatched it from the very hands, and water pouring unseasonably from the clouds [has spoiled] the fruits. Do you not pray to the Lord that the gift may be brought to completion? Instead, by anticipating it, you make yourself unworthy to receive what has been shown … your words are tested in heaven. That is why the answers come to you from there. And what does he say? "Soul, you have many goods laid up; eat, drink, be merry every day." What folly! If you had a pig's soul, what other good news would you have brought it than this? Are you so brutish, so ignorant of the goods of the soul, as to entertain it with the food of the flesh, and to send on to the soul what the privy receives? If it has virtue, if it is full of good works, if it is close to God, it has many goods; let it rejoice with the soul's noble joy. But since you set your mind on earthly things, and have your belly as your god, and are wholly fleshly, enslaved to the passions, hear the name that suits you, which no man gave you but the Lord himself: "[Fool,] this night they demand your soul from you; and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?" The mockery of folly is greater than eternal punishment.

[6?] For what does he plan, who in a little while is to be snatched away? "I will pull down my barns and build larger ones." Well done, I would say to him. For the storehouses of injustice deserve to be pulled down. Raze with your own hands what you built wickedly. Break up the granaries from which no one ever went away comforted. Destroy every house that guards greed; take off the roofs, pull down the walls, show the mouldy grain to the sun, bring the imprisoned wealth out of prison, lead in triumph the dark lairs of Mammon. "I will pull down my barns and build larger ones." And if you fill these too, what will you think of then? Will you pull down again and build again? And what is more foolish than to toil endlessly, building with zeal and pulling down with zeal? You have, if you will, the houses of the poor as storehouses. "Store up for yourself treasure in heaven." What is laid up there moths do not devour, rot does not consume, thieves do not steal. "But I will share with those in need when I have filled the second barns." You have fixed long years of life for yourself. Take care that the one who presses on with the appointed day does not forestall you. For the promise is not a proof of kindness but of wickedness. For you promise not in order to give afterwards, but to put off the present. Indeed, what hinders the sharing? Is the needy man not here? Are the barns not full? Is the reward not ready? Is the commandment not clear? The hungry man wastes away … and you put off almsgiving to tomorrow. "[Do not say,] Come back, and tomorrow I will give; for you do not know what the coming day will bring forth." What commandments you disregard, having stopped up your ears with love of money! How grateful you ought to be to your benefactor, cheerful and brightened by the honor, that you do not trouble others' doors but others throng to yours! But as it is you are downcast and hard to approach, avoiding meetings in case you should have to give even a little … "I have nothing, and I will not give, for I am poor." You are poor indeed, and lacking every good: poor in love of mankind, poor in faith toward God, poor in eternal hope. Make your brothers sharers in your grain; give today to the needy what will rot tomorrow. The worst form of greed is not to share even perishable things with the needy.

[7] "Whom do I wrong," he says, "by keeping what is my own?" What things, tell me, are your own? Where did you get them and bring them into life? It is as if someone who had taken a seat in a theater should then keep out those who come in, judging his own what is set out for the common use of all. Such are the rich. Having seized first what is common, they make it their own because they got there first. For if each took what met his own need and left the surplus to the one in need, no one would be rich and no one needy. Did you not come naked from the womb? Will you not return naked to the earth? Where do your present goods come from? If you say from chance, you are godless, not recognizing the Creator nor thanking the giver; but if you admit they are from God, tell us the reason for which you received them. Is God unjust, distributing the means of life to us unequally? Why are you rich and he poor? Surely it is so that you may receive the reward of kindness and faithful stewardship, and he be honored with the great prizes of endurance. But you, taking everything into the insatiable bosom of greed, think you wrong no one while you deprive so many? Who is the greedy man? The one who does not rest in what suffices. Who is the robber? The one who takes what belongs to each. Are you not greedy? Are you not a robber, making your own what you received for stewardship? Shall the man who strips one who is clothed be called a clothes-thief, and is the man who does not clothe the naked when he can do so worthy of any other name? The bread you hold back belongs to the hungry; the cloak you keep in your chests belongs to the naked; the shoe rotting in your house belongs to the barefoot; the silver you have buried belongs to the one in need. So …

[8] "Fine words," he says, "but gold is finer." Just as with those who talk to the licentious about chastity: when the harlot is spoken against, they are inflamed by the very mention to their desires. How shall I set before your eyes the sufferings of the poor man, so that you may know from what groans you are laying up treasure for yourself? O how valuable that word will seem to you on the day of judgment: "Come, you blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food; I was thirsty and you gave me drink; I was naked and you clothed me." And what shuddering, sweat and darkness will pour round you as you hear the sentence: "Depart from me, you cursed, into the outer darkness prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me no food; I was thirsty and you gave me no drink; I was naked and you did not clothe me." For there it is not the robber who is accused, but the one who did not share who is condemned. I have said what I thought would profit you. For you, if you are persuaded, the good things stored in the promises are plain; if you disobey, the threat is written, whose experience I pray you may escape, adopting a better mind, so that your own wealth may become your ransom, and you may go to the heavenly goods prepared, by the grace of him who called us all into his own kingdom, to whom be glory and might for ever and ever. Amen.

We spoke recently too about this young man, and the diligent listener surely remembers what was examined then: first, that he is not the same as the lawyer in Luke. For the lawyer was a tempter, asking his questions ironically; but this man asked soundly, though he did not accept the answer obediently. For he would not have gone away grieving at such answers of the Lord if he had con- -temptuously put his questions to him. So his character appeared to us as mixed: in one way the account shows him praiseworthy, in another most wretched and altogether desperate. To recognize the true teacher, and passing by the arrogance of the Pharisees, the conceit of the lawyers and the crowd of scribes, to give this title to the only true and good teacher: that was what was praised in him. And to show that he thought it worth care how he might inherit eternal life: that too is acceptable. But what finally convicts his whole purpose, as looking not to what is truly good but to what pleases the many, is this: having learned saving lessons from the true teacher, he did not [take] the teachings [to heart], but went away dejected, darkened by the passion of love of wealth. This exposes the inconsistency of his ways and his discord with himself. You call him teacher, and do not do what disciples do? You confess him good, and pass over what he gives? And yet the good one is plainly a giver of good things. You ask about eternal life, and are convicted of being wholly attached to the enjoyment of the present life. What hard or heavy or excessive word did the teacher propose to you? "Sell your possessions and give to the poor." If he had set before you the labors of farming, or the dangers of trade, or the other hardships that belong to those who make money, you would have had reason to grieve, vexed at the command. But if he [promises you life] by so easy a road, which has no labor or sweat, you do not rejoice at the ease of salvation, but go away pained in soul and mourning, and make useless for yourself all your earlier labors. For if, as you say, you have not murdered, nor committed adultery, nor stolen, nor borne false witness against anyone, you make your zeal about these things fruitless by not adding what is lacking, through which alone you will be able to enter the kingdom of God.

And if a physician promised to correct mutilations of your limbs, whether natural or from sickness, would you not be glad to hear it? But when the great physician of souls wishes to make you perfect where you are lacking in the most vital things, do you not accept the grace, but mourn and look gloomy? It is plain that you are far from that commandment and have borne false witness about yourself, that you have "loved your neighbor as yourself." For see, the Lord's command convicts you of falling far short of true love. For if what you affirmed were true, that you had kept the commandment of love from your youth and given each as much as yourself, where did this abundance of money come from? For care of the needy consumes wealth: each receives a little for his necessary care, but all together divide up what one has and spend it on themselves. So one who loves his neighbor as himself possesses nothing more than his neighbor; yet you appear to have many possessions. Where did these come from? Is it not plain that you prefer your own enjoyment to the relief of the many? So the more you abound in wealth, the more you fall short in love. Otherwise you would long since have practised parting with your money, if money is dearer to you than the members of your body, and parting with it grieves you like an amputation … If you had given your bread to the hungry, if your door had been open to every stranger, if you had become a father of orphans, if you had suffered with every helpless person, what money would you now be grieving over? How would you have been vexed at laying aside what remained, having long practised distributing it to the needy? Then again, at a fair no one grieves at parting with what he has and acquiring what he lacks; rather, the cheaper he buys what is precious, the more he rejoices, as if he had made a splendid bargain. But you grieve at giving gold and silver and possessions, that is, at handing over stones and dust, in order to acquire the blessed life.