Homilies on 1 Timothy 12.4

For tell me, where does your wealth come from? From whom did you receive it? And he, from whom? From his grandfather, he says, from his father. Will you be able, then, by going far back through the family, to show that the acquisition was just? You could not; its beginning and root must have come from some injustice. Why? Because in the beginning God did not make one man rich and another poor; nor, when he brought them into being, did he show one man many treasures of gold and deny the other the chance to look for them; he left the same earth to all. How is it, then, when the earth is common, that you have so many acres, while your neighbor has not even a clod of earth? My father handed it down to me, he says. And from whom did he receive it? From his ancestors. But going back you must eventually find the beginning. Jacob became rich, but he received his riches as wages for his labors. However, I will not be exact about these things; let the wealth be just and free from all robbery. You are not answerable for what your father got by greed; you have what came from robbery, but you did not rob. Grant even that you have gold that welled up from the earth; what then? Is wealth good on that account? Not at all. But neither is it bad, he says. If he is not greedy, it is not bad, provided he shares with those in need; but if he does not share, it is bad and treacherous. As long as he does no evil, someone says, he is not evil, even if he does no good. Very well. But is not this evil, to have the Master’s goods for oneself alone, to enjoy alone what is common? Is not “the earth the Lord’s, and its fullness”? If, then, our goods belong to our common Master, they belong also to our fellow servants; for all the Master’s things are common.

Do we not see this arrangement in great households too? For example, the ration of grain is given to all equally, for it comes out of the master’s storehouses; the master’s house is open to all. The emperor’s things too are all common: the cities, the marketplaces, the colonnades are common to all; we all share in them equally. See God’s arrangement. He made some things common, so that by them at least he might put the human race to shame: the air, the sun, water, the earth, the sky, the sea, light, the stars; he distributes everything equally, as among brothers. He fashioned the same eyes for all, the same body, the same soul, a like constitution in all; all are from the earth, all from one man, all in the same house. But none of these things has put us to shame. He made other things common too, such as baths, cities, marketplaces, colonnades. And see how over common things there is no fighting, but all is peaceful. But when someone tries to snatch something away and make it his own, then strife comes in, as though nature itself were indignant that, while God gathers us together from every side, we are eager to divide ourselves and tear ourselves apart by appropriating things and saying “yours” and “mine,” that cold word. Then comes fighting, then unpleasantness. Where this is absent, no fighting or contention arises. So common possession rather than private has been allotted to us, and is according to nature. Why does no one ever go to law over a marketplace? Is it not because it is common to all? But over a house, over money, we see everyone going to law. The necessary things are set before us in common; yet we do not keep things common even in the smallest matters. And yet he gave us those things for this very reason, that we might learn from them to hold these too in common; but not even so do we learn.

But, as I said, how can the man who has wealth be good? It is not possible; he is good if he shares it with others. When he does not have it, then he is good; when he gives it to others, then he is good; but as long as he keeps it, he cannot be good. Is this, then, a good thing, which when held shows people to be wicked, and when got rid of shows them good? So having money is not a good; rather, not having it makes one appear good. So wealth is not a good. And if, when you could take it, you do not take it, again you are good. If, then, we are good when, having it, we share it with others, or when it is offered and we do not take it, but are not good if we take it or acquire it, how could wealth be a good? Do not call it a good, then. The reason you do not have it is that you think it a good, that you are excited about it. Purify your mind, keep your judgment exact, and then you will be good; learn what the true goods are. What are they? Virtue and love for humankind: these are goods, not wealth. By this rule, if you are merciful, the more merciful you are, the better you are, and are thought to be; but if you are rich, no longer. Let us become good in this way, then, so that we may both be good and obtain the good things to come, in Jesus Christ, with whom to the Father, together with the Holy Spirit, be glory, power, honor, now and always, and to the ages of ages.

[Homily 13] “Command and teach these things. Let no one despise your youth, but be an example to the believers in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith, in purity. Until I come, attend to the reading, to exhortation, to teaching. Do not neglect the gift that is in you, which was given you through prophecy with the laying on of hands of the [presbytery].”

Some matters need teaching, others command. If you command where you ought to teach, you will be ridiculous; and if you teach where you ought to command, you suffer the same. I mean this: about not being wicked one should not teach but command, and forbid it with greater authority; not Judaizing needs a command. But if you say that one ought to empty out one’s possessions, that one ought to keep virginity, if you discuss the faith, here there is need of teaching. That is why Paul sets down both: “Command and teach,” he says. For example, if someone wears amulets or anything else of the kind, when people do these things knowing them to be wicked, a command alone is needed; when they do them unknowingly, teaching. “Let no one despise your youth,” he says. Do you see that the priest must also command and act with authority, and not only teach? For youth has somehow become a thing despised through common prejudice; that is why he says, “Let no one despise you”: the teacher must not be despised. Where then, someone says, is gentleness? Where meekness, if he is not to be despised? In what concerns himself, let him be despised and bear it; for so teaching succeeds, through patience. But in what concerns others, not so; that is not gentleness but coldness. If he avenges the insults against himself, the abuse, the plots, you would rightly blame him; but for the salvation of others, give commands and take care with authority. Here there is no longer need of gentleness, but of authority, so that he may not do harm to the common good. He means either this or that: let no one despise you because of your youth; for as long as you show a life that outweighs it, no one will despise you for your age, but will rather admire you. That is why he goes on to say, “But be an example to the believers in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith, in purity, showing yourself in all things a pattern of good works.” That is, be yourself the archetype of the life, set forth like an image, like a living law, like a rule and standard of good living. The teacher must be such. “In speech,” so as to speak with ease; “in conduct, in love, in faith, in purity” that is upright, in self-control.

“Until I come, attend to the reading, to exhortation, to teaching.” He commands Timothy to attend to reading. Let us all listen and be taught not to neglect the study of the divine Scriptures. See again, “until I come,” he says. See how he comforts him; for it was likely that Timothy, left as it were an orphan by Paul’s absence, needed such comfort. [Attend] to the reading of the divine Scriptures, to exhortation of one another, to teaching of all. “Do not neglect the gift that is in you, which was given you through prophecy.” Here he calls teaching “prophecy.” “With the laying on of hands of the presbytery.” He does not speak here of presbyters, but of bishops; for presbyters would not ordain a bishop. “Practice these things, be wholly in them.” See how often he urges him about the same things, wishing to show that above all the teacher must be earnest about these. “Keep close watch on yourself,” he says, “and on the teaching; persist in them.” That is, attend to yourself, and teach the rest too. “For by doing this you will save both yourself and your hearers.” Well did he say “yourself” too; for one who is nourished on the words of teaching first reaps the benefit himself, since in exhorting others he also pierces his own heart. These things were said not to Timothy only, but to all. And if he gives such advice to one who raised the dead, what shall we say? Christ too hints at the duty of teachers, saying, “The kingdom of heaven is like a householder who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old.” And again blessed Paul, urging the same, says, “that through endurance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.” And he himself did this more than anyone, schooled in the ancestral law at the feet of Gamaliel, so that afterward too he would naturally attend to reading; for one who urges this on others would first have urged it on himself. You see him, at any rate, constantly using the testimonies of the prophets and looking closely into what is in them. Then does Paul attend to reading (for one gains no small benefit from the Scriptures), while we are slack and listen carelessly? What punishment would we not deserve? “So that your progress,” he says, “may be evident to all.” Do you see that he wanted him to become great and admirable in this too? That is why he spoke so, showing that Timothy still needed it. What does “that your progress may be evident to all” mean? Not in life only, he says, but also in the word of teaching.

“[Do not rebuke an older man].” Does he now mean the rank of presbyter? I do not think so, but any elderly man. What then if he needs correction? Do not rebuke him, he says, but treat him as you would a father. “Older women as mothers, younger men as brothers, younger women as sisters, in all purity.” The very nature of the thing, I mean being reproved, is burdensome, and especially when it happens to an old man; and if it comes from a young man too, the forwardness is threefold. So he softens it by the manner and the gentleness. It is possible to reprove without giving offense, if one is willing to practice it; it needs much wisdom, but it is possible. “Younger men as brothers,” he says. Why did he give this advice here too? Hinting again at the boldness that belongs to that age. Here too, then, the thing must be softened by gentleness. “Younger women,” he says, “as sisters,” and he added, “in all purity.” Do not speak to me only of the sin of intercourse, he says; give no occasion even for suspicion. Since conversations with younger women hardly escape suspicion, and yet the bishop must hold them, he adds “in all purity,” showing that he ought to hold his conversations with them in all purity. What do you say, tell me? Do you give these commands to Timothy? Yes, he says; through him I speak to the whole world. And if he gives these commands to Timothy, let each of the rest consider what he ought to be, giving neither suspicion nor the shadow of a pretext to those who wish to slander.

“Honor widows who are truly widows.” Why does he say nothing about virginity, and not say “Honor virgins”? Because, it seems to me, either there were none yet at that time, or they had fallen away. “For some,” he says, “have already turned aside after Satan.” “Honor widows who are truly widows,” he says. So it is possible to have no husband and yet not be a widow. Just as what makes a virgin a virgin is not merely not having had intercourse in marriage, but many other things are needed too, blamelessness and constant devotion, so what makes a widow is not simply being bereft of a husband, but patient endurance with self-control and withdrawal from everything. He urges that such widows be honored, and rightly; for, being left alone, they need much honor. They have no husbands to protect them; and widowhood is thought shameful and ill-omened by most people. That is why he wants the widow to enjoy much honor from the priest; and not only for this reason, but because she is worthy of it.

“But if a widow has children or grandchildren, let them first learn to show piety toward their own household and to make some return to their parents.” See Paul’s good sense, how often he exhorts on the basis of human reasoning. For he did not set down here anything great and lofty, but what a good conscience requires: “and to make some return,” he says, “to their parents.” How? For their upbringing, their nurture. That is: you enjoyed much care; they have departed; you could not repay them, for you did not beget them or bring them up; repay in their descendants, pay the debt through the children. “Let them first learn,” he says, “to show piety toward their own household.” Here he means doing good, in a simpler sense. Then, to raise it higher, he added, “For this is acceptable before God.” Since he had said, “those who are truly widows,” he says who is truly a widow: “She who is truly a widow and left alone has set her hope on God and continues in supplications and prayers night and day; but she who is self-indulgent is dead while she lives.” If any woman, even while in widowhood, has not taken up a worldly life, she is truly a widow; she who hopes in God as she ought, who gives herself to supplication and perseveres night and day, she is a widow. Not that the one who has children is not a widow, for he admires her too, the one who brings up her children as she ought; but he means the one who has no children, that is, who is left alone. Then he comforts her for having no children, saying that this above all is being a widow, when she is deprived not only of the comfort of a husband but also of that of children; for she has God instead of all. She is not inferior for lacking children; what she lacks through the absence of children she makes up through the comfort of God. What he says is this: Do not grieve when you hear that one must bring up children, as though your rank were lessened because you have none; you are truly a widow.

“But she who is self-indulgent.” Since many who have children choose widowhood not to cut off the occasions of worldly living, but rather to kindle them, so as to do everything with greater independence and give themselves over more to worldly desires, he says, “But she who is self-indulgent is dead while she lives.” What do you say? Is a widow not to live in self-indulgence? No, he says. If, then, even when age and nature are weak, self-indulgence is not necessary, but procures death, eternal death, what would men who live in self-indulgence say? Rightly does he say, “she who is self-indulgent is dead while she lives.” So that you may learn this, let us see what is the work of the living and what of the dead, and where we shall place her. The living do the works of life, of the life to come, the true life. What belongs to the life to come, with which we ought to be occupied all our time? Hear Christ saying: “Come, 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.” The living do not differ from the dead in this alone, in seeing the sun and breathing the air; that is not what we mean, but in doing some good; for if this is absent, they will be no better than the dead. And so that you may learn this, hear how it is possible to live even having died: “God,” he says, “is not the God of the dead, but of the living.” But this, someone says, is again a riddle. Then let us solve both. A person is dead while living when he lives in self-indulgence. How? He lives for the belly alone, and not at all with the other senses: he does not see what he ought to see, does not hear what he ought to hear, does not say what he ought to say, does not do the works of the living. Just as one stretched out on a bed with his eyes closed and sealed perceives nothing that exists, so too this man; or rather not so, but much worse. For that one is equally without perception of good things and of evil; but this man perceives only those, the evil things, while toward the good he is as motionless as the one lying there. So he too is dead. Nothing of the life to come moves him; but drunkenness takes him into its bosom as into a dark and gloomy pit, a cave full of much uncleanness, and makes him spend all his time in darkness, like the dead. When he spends all his time partly at breakfast and partly drunk, is he not in darkness? Is he not dead? And even at dawn, when he seems sober, he does not have a clean sobriety, because the evening’s wine has not yet been emptied out and drained away, and he is strongly gripped by desire for the next, and spends the afternoon and midday in revels, the whole night in deep sleep, and most of the morning too. Shall we count this man, tell me, among the living?

What could one say of the great storm that luxury pours into the soul and into the body? Just as continual and unbroken cloud never lets a sunbeam shine through, so the vapors of luxury and wine seize the brain as if it were a crag, set a dense cloud there, and never let reason stretch itself out, holding the drunkard in deep darkness. How great do you think the storm within must be for the one who does these things? When a torrent has burst … and the water has leaped over the thresholds of the workshops, we see the inhabitants using buckets and sponges and devising many other things to bail it out, so that it may not rot the foundations and make all the furnishings useless; so too the soul, when it is flooded by much luxury: the thoughts within are in turmoil, and, no longer able to empty what has already gathered, since more comes in again, a great storm arises. Do not look at the cheerful, grinning face, but examine what is within, and you will see it full of much gloom; and if it were possible to draw out the soul and set it before the eyes of the body, you would see its wretchedness. For the more the body is fattened and thickened, the more the soul is emaciated and weakened; and the more the one is pampered, the more the other is buried. Just as with the pupil of the eye, if the coats lying over it are thick, it cannot send out its power of sight and gaze steadily, since its beam is beaten back by the thickness, and darkness often results, so too the body, when it is constantly fattened, is naturally wrapped in much thickness. [But the dead, you say, rot and decay,] and much discharge flows from them. So too one can see in the self-indulgent woman the flux, the phlegm, …; what is shameful to say I pass over. So great is the tyranny of luxury that it makes them endure what we cannot bear even to speak of. Do you still ask, then, how the whole body runs to waste on every side? But she eats and drinks? This is no proof of human life, since the irrational animals too eat and drink. When the soul lies dead, what is the use of eating and drinking? Just as, when a body lies dead, a beautiful garment thrown over it does no good, so a beautiful body wrapped around a dead soul profits nothing. When her talk is always about cooks, table-setters, and bakers, and never about anything godly, is she not dead?

Let us see what a human being is. Those outside say: a rational, mortal animal, receptive of mind and knowledge. But let us not take our definition from them. From where, then? From the divine Scripture. Where, then, has Scripture set out a definition of man? Hear it saying: “There was a man righteous, true, God-fearing, keeping away from every evil thing.” This is a man. And again another says: “A man is a great thing, and a merciful man is precious.” Those who are not such, even if they share in mind, even if they are ten thousand times receptive of knowledge, Scripture does not call men, but dogs, horses, vipers, snakes, foxes, wolves, and anything more dishonorable than these beasts. If this is a man, the self-indulgent person is not a man. How could he be, when he cares for none of these things? Self-indulgence and sobriety cannot come together; each destroys the other. Even those outside say: “A fat belly does not beget a subtle mind.” Scripture also calls men soulless: “My Spirit shall not remain in these men, because they are flesh.” Yet they had a soul; but since they carried it about dead, he called them flesh. Just as we say of virtuous people, even though they have a body, “He is wholly soul, wholly spirit,” so of those who are not such we say the opposite. So Paul too said, “You are not in the flesh,” since they did not do the works of the flesh. So the self-indulgent are not in the soul, nor in the spirit. “But she who is self-indulgent.” … you women who spend all your time in revels and drinking, who overlook the poor as they waste away and die of hunger, while you are continually dying of luxury. You cause two deaths, that of the afflicted and your own, both from excess. If you mixed your surfeit with their want, you would produce two lives. Why do you burst your belly with surfeit? Why waste away the poor man’s with want? The one you fatten beyond measure; the other you dry up beyond measure.

Consider what becomes of food, where it goes and what it turns into. Do you not find it unpleasant even to hear? Why then are you so eager to store up more of it? The excess of luxury is nothing but an increase of dung. Nature has its measures, and what goes beyond them no longer becomes nourishment but ruin and …. That is why it is called nourishment (trophē): not that we may destroy the body, but that we may nourish it. That is why, I think, food is also excreted in this way, so that we may not be lovers of luxury. If this were not so, if food did not turn into what is useless and did not harm the body, we would not stop devouring one another. If the belly took in as much as we wished, digested it all, and passed it on to the body, you would see countless wars and battles. For if even now, when part is excreted as dung and part becomes useless and spurious blood and phlegm, we are nevertheless given up to luxury, and often consume whole estates at a single table, what would we not have done if this were not the end of luxury? The more we live in luxury, the more we fill ourselves with foulness, like wineskins, … so as to offend even the brains of those outside: gloomy vapors rise from every part of the body as it rots within. If those outside find this so offensive, what do you think the brain within suffers, constantly struck by these vapors? What of the channels of the blood, boiling and blocked? What of those reservoirs, the liver and the spleen? What of the very sewers of the dung? And the grievous thing is that we take care of the sewers of dung in the city, so that they may not be blocked and send the dung back up, and we do everything for this, clearing them with poles and dragging them with mattocks; but the sewers of our own belly we do not clean out; we block and pack them; and when the dung rises upward, where the king himself is seated, I mean the brain, we take no care. That is why we do everything not as people who have a well-ordered king, but as an unclean dog. That is why God set those members far off, so that the brain might receive no harm from them. But we do not allow it; we ruin everything by excess.

What might one say of the other evils? Block the channels of the sewers, and you will see a plague born at once. Then if the stench that strikes from outside produces a plague, does not that within, blocked on every side by the closeness of the body and having nowhere to be dispersed, produce countless diseases in body and soul? And the terrible thing is that many complain against God, saying, What is this? He has decreed that we carry dung about; and they themselves increase the dung. God decreed it for this reason, so that even so he might free them from luxury, so that even so he might persuade them not to be nailed to worldly things. But you will not stop living in luxury even so; as far as the throat, as far as the time at table (or rather, the pleasure does not last even that long), you persist in luxury. Does not the pleasure run past the tongue and the throat at once, and is it not extinguished? The sensation is in the tasting; after that there is none, but much discomfort, the stomach either not digesting or doing so with great difficulty. Rightly, then, did he say, “she who is self-indulgent is dead while she lives.” There is nothing good to hear or say of the self-indulgent soul: it is full of rashness, flattery, ignorance, anger, and irritability, full of all evils and empty of the opposite goods.

That is why he says, “Command these things too, so that they may be above reproach.” Do you see that the matter is one of legislation? He does not leave it to choice: command them, he says, not to live in luxury, as though it were an acknowledged evil, as though it were neither possible nor permitted for one who lives in luxury to partake of the mysteries. “Command these things too, so that they may be above reproach,” he says. Do you see that the thing is reckoned among sins? For what lies in one’s choice, even if one does not do it, does not prevent one from being above reproach. Let us, then, obey Paul and command too that self-indulgent widows be kept off the list of widows. If a soldier who gives himself to baths, theaters, and business is judged a deserter, much more so widows. Let us not seek ease here, so that we may find it there; let us not live in luxury here, so that there we may enjoy the true luxury, the true delight, which brings forth no evil and holds countless good things; may we all obtain them, in Jesus Christ, with whom to the Father, together with the Holy Spirit, be glory, power, honor, now and always, and to the ages of ages. Amen.