Homilies on 2 Timothy 7.1–7.4

“But know this, that in the last days difficult times will come. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boasters, arrogant, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, [ungrateful … having a form of godliness but having denied] its power. Avoid these also. For among them are those who creep into houses and take captive silly women laden with sins, led away by various desires and pleasures, always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.” In the former letter he said, “The Spirit says expressly that in later times some will depart from the faith”; and again in another place in that same letter he foretells something of the kind that will happen later. And here again he does the same, saying, “But know this, that in the later times difficult times will come.” And he shows this not only from the later times but also from those already past: “Just as Jannes and Jambres,” he says, “opposed Moses.” And again from reasoning: “In a great house there are not only vessels of gold and silver.” Why does he do this? So that Timothy may not be troubled, nor any of us, when there are wicked men. If there were such in Moses' time, he says, and there will be such later, it is no wonder that there are such in our time too. “In the later times difficult times will come.” He does not say this to blame the days or the times, but the people who will be living then. For we too are accustomed to call times evil or not evil from what happens in them through human agency. And at once he sets down the cause of all the evils, the root and the spring from which all the others are born: arrogant contempt. Whoever is caught by this passion does not look even to his own interests. For when someone does not look to his neighbour's interests, when he neglects them, how will he look to his own? For as one who looks to his neighbour's interests will place his own well among them, so one who despises his neighbour's will disregard his own too. For if we are members of one another, our neighbour's salvation is not his alone but belongs to the rest of the body as well; and our neighbour's harm does not stop with him alone, but racks all the rest with pain. If we are a building, whatever part suffers damage harms the rest too; but if it is solid, it can help bear up the rest. So it is in the church too: have you disregarded your brother? You have wronged yourself. How? Your own member has suffered no small harm. For if the one who does not share his money goes off to hell, the one who sees his brother in danger in more necessary things and does not stretch out a hand will suffer this much more, inasmuch as the loss concerns greater things. “For people will be,” he says, “lovers of self.” The lover of self is the one who least of all loves himself; it is rather the lover of his brother who loves himself. From this comes love of money. For self-love, destructive and petty as it is, contracts love, which is broad and poured out everywhere, and gathers it into a narrow space. “Lovers of money.” From this boasting is born, from boasting arrogance, from arrogance blasphemy, from blasphemy madness and disobedience. For one who exalts himself against human beings readily does so against God too. This is how sins are born: often they climb up from below. One who is reverent toward human beings is much more so toward God; one who is considerate toward his fellow servants is much more so toward the Master; but one who despises his fellow servants will go on step by step and despise God himself. Let us not, then, despise one another; for this is an evil teaching, which teaches us to despise God. Indeed, in this very thing we despise God, when we despise one another, since he has commanded us to show great zeal for one another. But I will also, if you wish, make this plain in another way, from examples. Cain despised his brother; at once he despised God too. How did he despise him? See how insolently he answers God: “Am I my brother's keeper?” Esau in turn despised his brother, and he despised God. That is why God said, “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.” That is why Paul too says, “that no one be sexually immoral or profane like Esau.” Joseph's brothers despised him; they despised God too. The Israelites despised Moses; that is why they despised God too. So too the sons of Eli despised the people; they despised God too. Would you like to see it from the opposite side as well? Abraham spared his kinsman; he also obeyed God; this is clear from his obedience in the case of his son Isaac, and from all his other virtue. Again, Abel, being gentle toward his brother, was reverent toward God too. Let us not, then, despise one another, so that we may not learn to despise God; let us honour one another, so that we may learn to honour God too. One who is bold against human beings becomes bold against God too. And when love of money and self-love and madness come together in the same person, what is still lacking for complete destruction? Everything is corrupted, and a great flood of the mire of sins pours in. “Ungrateful,” he says. For how will the lover of money be grateful? To whom will he be grateful? To no one: he thinks everyone an enemy, since he wants to take what belongs to all. Even if you empty out your whole fortune for him, he is not grateful to you; he is vexed that you did not have much and make him master of much. Even if you make him master of the world, he is not grateful to you; for he thinks he has received nothing. This man's desire is insatiable. For his desire comes from a disease; and such are the desires of diseases.

The man with a fever can never be satisfied, but, always drunk with desire, is never filled; he is always thirsty. So too the man who is mad for money never knows how to fill up his desire; and since he is never filled, however much you pour out for him, he will not be grateful to you. He would be grateful only to the one who had given him as much as he wants; but no one will be able to do this, for what he wants has no measure; so he will be grateful to no one. Nothing is so ungrateful as a lover of money; nothing so insensible as one greedy for wealth. He is the enemy of the whole world; he is vexed that there are human beings; for he wants everything to be full of emptiness, so that he may have everyone's possessions himself. And he imagines many such things. “If there were an earthquake in the city,” he says, “and everyone were buried, and I alone were left, so as to take everyone's goods, if that were possible! If a plague came and destroyed everyone but left the gold! If there were a sinking of the land, a flood from the sea!” And he devises countless such things: nothing good, but he prays for earthquakes and thunderbolts and wars and plagues and all such things to happen. Tell me, you wretched and miserable man, more slavish than any slave: if everything were gold, would you not have perished among the gold, destroyed by hunger? If an earthquake came … of this destructive desire; for if there were no human being on the earth, the means of life would not have been provided for you. For let us suppose that all the people in the world were utterly wiped out, and then their gold and silver somehow passed to you of its own accord (for they imagine foolish and impossible things), and their wealth, the gold, the silver, the silk garments, the gold-embroidered things, all came into your hands of their own accord: what is the gain? That is just how death would most surely seize you, with no …, no farmers, wild beasts grazing over the land, demons terrifying your soul. Even now many demons hold it; but then they would have struck you with terror and destroyed you at once. “But that is not what I wanted,” he says; “I wanted there to be farmers and bakers too.” But they too would consume. “But I did not want them to consume.” So insatiable is this desire. What could be more ridiculous than these things? Do you see how helpless the case is? He wants to have many people to serve him, and he is pained that they share in food, as diminishing his fortune. What then, tell me? Do you want people to be made of stone? All this is a mockery: waves and squall and storm and towering seas, and great turmoil in the soul; he is always hungry, always thirsty. Tell me, shall we not pity this man and weep for him? In the body such a thing is the most grievous punishment, called boulimia by the physicians, when someone gorges himself on much and is not freed from hunger; and shall we not weep for this same passion in the soul? For love of money is a boulimia of the soul, which is filled with much but never stops, but is always racked by desire. If it were necessary to drink hellebore, or to undergo something ten thousand times heavier than that, in order to be freed from this passion, ought one not to accept it eagerly? There is no quantity of money that can fill that insatiable belly. Shall we not, then, be ashamed, if some are so mad about money, while we do not show even a small fraction of that love toward God, but God becomes less honoured by us than silver? For silver people endure sleeplessness and travels and dangers one after another, and hatred and plots and everything; but for God we will not bear even to let out a bare word, nor to incur hostility; if we ought to defend someone who is oppressed, we shrink from the enmity of the powerful and from the dangers, and we betray the one who is wronged; and having received power from God to help, we lose it because we do not wish to be hated or to make enemies. And at once the many put forward this saying: “Be loved without cause; do not be hated without cause.” But is this being hated without cause? What is better than this hatred? For hatred on God's account is much better than friendship on God's account. When we are loved on God's account, we are debtors for the honour; but when we are hated, he is our debtor for the reward. However much the lovers of money love gold, they know no measure in their love; but we, if we do some small thing, think we have accomplished everything. As those love gold, we do not love God—no, not a small fraction of that. Great is the charge against them, that they have such madness for gold; great is our condemnation, that we are not so mad for God; but the honour that they pay to earth (for mined gold is earth), we do not pay to the Master of all.

Let us look at their madness and be ashamed. For what does it help if we are not on fire for gold, when we do not seek God earnestly either? For here people despise wife and children and property and even their own safety, and that without knowing that they will increase their property; for often in the midst of their hopes they have given up their life too and departed, having laboured in vain. But we, though we know that we shall obtain what we long for if we love him as we ought, do not love even so, but have let everything grow cold: our love for our neighbour, our love for God; and our love for God because of our love for our neighbour. For it is not possible, it is not possible, for a man who does not know how to love to have anything noble or a manly spirit. For the foundation of all good things is nothing other than love. “On this,” he says, “hang the law and the prophets.” For as fire, when it gets into a wood, usually clears everything away, so too the warmth of love, wherever it falls, removes and cuts out everything that damages the divine seed, and makes the ground clean to receive the seeds. Where there is love, all evils are removed: there is no love of money, the root of all evils; there is no boasting—for why would anyone boast against his friend? Nothing makes one so humble as love. For we perform the services of household slaves for our friends and are not ashamed, but are even grateful to them for this slavery; we do not spare our money, and often not even our bodies; for people have even risked danger for the one they love. There is no envy, nor slander, where there is genuine friendship; for not only do we not slander our friends, but we even silence those who slander them. All is calm, all gentle; not a trace of fighting and rivalry appears; all is full of peace. “For love,” he says, “is the fulfilling of the law”; nothing unpleasant comes with it. How so? Because the sins themselves—greed, robbery, envy, slander, madness, perjury, falsehood—are all dissolved when love is present. For perjurers perjure themselves because they want to rob; but no one would rob the one he loves; he would rather give up his own goods to the beloved, for we are more grateful in doing so than if we were receiving from him. All of you who have had friends know this—friends, I mean, not as far as the name goes, nor by a mere form of address, but if anyone has loved as one ought to love, if anyone has been bound to someone. And if some do not know it, let them learn from those who do. Now I will tell you of a wonderful friendship from the Scriptures. Jonathan, the son of Saul, loved David, “and his soul was bound to him,” it says; so much so that David, lamenting him, said, “Your love fell upon me like the love of women. You were wounded to death for me.” What then? Did Jonathan envy him? By no means, though he had reason to envy. How? He saw from events that the kingdom was coming to David, and yet he felt nothing of the kind; he did not say, “This is the man who will deprive me of my father's kingdom,” but helped to secure the rule for him, and did not spare his father for his friend's sake. But let no one think him undutiful to his father; for he did not wrong his father, but checked his plots and his injustices. He spared him rather than wronged him; he did not let him be carried away into an unjust murder. He was willing even to die many times for David. He did not accuse him, but even silenced his father; he did not envy him, but even helped to build up his rule; he shared with him not only his money but also safety. Why do I say money? He even laid down his life for him. He did not defer to his own father for his friend's sake, since the one was attempting unjust deeds, while the other was conscious of nothing of the kind. So that friendship went with justice. Such, then, was Jonathan. Let us now look at David. He had no opportunity to repay the favours; for Jonathan [died before] David's reign, and before the one who received the kindness came to the kingdom, the one who did the kindness perished. What then? In what was possible and allowed, let us see how the righteous man showed his friendship. “[Very] lovely [you were] to me … to me.” Was this all? This too was no small thing; but he also [took care of] that man's son and grandson, [repaying] the father's kindness, and he went on keeping and guarding them as though they were the offspring of a son. Such friendship I wish all of you to have, both toward the living and toward the departed.

Let the women hear (for it was chiefly for this reason that I said “toward the departed”): those who enter second marriages and corrupt the bed of the dead man, they who loved their first husband. I do not say these things to forbid second marriage, nor to call it licentious; for Paul does not allow me, putting a bridle on my mouth and saying to the women, “But if she marries, she has not sinned.” But let us look at what follows as well: “But she is happier if she remains as she is.” This is much better than that. Why? For many reasons. For if not marrying at all is better than marrying, much more is this better than that. “But some,” someone says, “could not bear widowhood and fell into calamities.” That is because they did not know what widowhood is. Widowhood is not this, simply not entering a second marriage, just as virginity is not simply being unmarried. What is it then? As there it is decorum and devotion, so here it is living alone, persevering in prayers, being free from luxury and self-indulgence … If, while remaining a widow, you were to keep the same pomp, the same display, the same dress that you had while your husband was alive, it is better to marry; for intercourse is not evil, but restless meddling is. You, however, do not do what is not evil, while you persist in what is not indifferent but liable to censure. That is why they turned aside after Satan: because they did not know how to be widows well. Do you wish to learn what a widow is, and what the dignity of a widow is? Hear Paul saying, “If she has washed [the saints' feet], if she has relieved the afflicted, if she has devoted herself to every good work.” For when, after your husband's death, you are surrounded with a great mass of wealth, it is no wonder that you cannot bear widowhood. Transfer this wealth, then, to heaven, and the burden of widowhood will be bearable to you. “What then,” she says, “if I have children, heirs of their father's estate?” Train them too to despise money; transfer what is yours to heaven, allotting to them as much as is sufficient; train them too to be above money. “What then,” she says, “if a crowd of slaves streams around me? If there is a swarm of business, gold, silver? How shall I be able to guard it all, when I need a husband's protection?” This is an excuse and a pretext; and this is clear from many things. For if you do not desire money, and do not wish to make what you have more, the burden is light for you; acquiring is much more burdensome than guarding. If, then, you cut out this one thing, the acquiring, and supply the needy from what is there, God will hold his hand over you as a shield; and if you truly say these things as guardian of the orphans' inheritance, and do not hold it out of love of money under this pretext, he who searches the hearts knows how to make their wealth secure, he himself who commanded you to bring up children. For it is not possible, it is not possible, for a house rooted in almsgiving to suffer anything terrible; and even if it suffers for a time, it will end in good. This will be more to the whole house than shield and spear. Hear what the devil says about Job: “Have you not fenced in his inner and outer possessions?” Why? Hear Job himself saying, “I was an eye to the blind,” he says, “a foot to the lame, a father to the orphans.” As one who does not cut himself off from the calamities of others will never suffer anything in misfortunes of his own, since he learns in sharing their pain, so one who will not bear the grief that comes from sympathy will come to know all these things in his own affairs. And as in the body, when the foot is festering, the hand, if it does not feel for it and cleanse the wound and apply a remedy and wash off the discharge, will suffer the same in its own misfortunes, and the hand that would not serve another while it was free of the disease will itself become subject to it (for the evil will creep from there and come to it too, and its concern will no longer be about service but about healing and release), so too here: one who will not suffer with others will himself be pained. “You have fenced in,” he says, “his inner and outer possessions,” and I dare not approach. “But he suffered terrible things,” someone says. But those terrible things became the cause of many good things: his property was doubled, his reward was greater, his righteousness more, his crowns brilliant, his prizes shining; both his spiritual and his worldly goods increased. He lost children? But he received others—not the same ones, but others in their place—and those he kept safe for the resurrection. If he had received the same ones back, the number would have been less for him; but as it is, God gave others in their place, and he will present those too at the resurrection. All this came to him from his readiness to give alms. Let us do the same, so that we may obtain the same good things, by the grace and love for humankind of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.