Homilies on Titus 4.5

For if Paul requires this of one who is being drawn into the church, saying, “For if someone does not know how to manage his own household, how will he care for the church of God?”, then one who comes to rule must first be excellent at managing a household. Joseph governed the prison not as a prison but as a household. He lightened everyone's misfortunes and cared for those thrown in as for his own members, not only inquiring into their misfortunes and consoling them, but if he saw anyone deep in thought, he went up to him and learned the cause, unable to bear even the sight of someone downcast without first freeing him from his dejection; and yet no one has shown such affection even toward his own children. It was from these things, at any rate, that the beginning of his good fortune came. For what comes from us must be there first, and then what comes from God. That he showed such consideration and care is clear: “He saw,” it says, “the eunuchs who had been thrown in by Pharaoh, the chief cupbearer and the chief baker, and said, ‘Why are your faces gloomy today?’” And not only from this, but also from what they did, one can learn the man's virtue. For they did not spurn him as being themselves the king's servants, nor rebuff him because they were in despondency, but they disclosed all their affairs to him as to a true brother who knew how to share their pain. I have said all this because, whether he is in slavery, in captivity, in prison, or under the very earth, nothing will be able to overcome the virtuous man. I have said these things to the household servants: that even if they have wild beasts for masters, like the Egyptian, even if they have cruel ones, like the chief jailer, they will be able to win them over, even if they are Greeks, as those were, or anything else. Nothing is sweeter, nothing more pleasant than gentleness and mildness and obedience; such a man is welcome to all. Such people are not ashamed of slavery, nor do they flee poverty, nor sickness and suffering; for virtue rules everything and overcomes everything. And if the thing has so much strength among slaves, how much more among the free? Let us, then, practise these things, slaves and free, women and men; so we shall be beloved by both men and God, and among men not only by the virtuous but also by the wicked, and by them most of all; for they are the ones who most honour and respect virtue. For as those under rule fear gentle rulers most, so the licentious fear the virtuous, knowing what they themselves have fallen from. Since, then, the fruit of virtue is so great, let us pursue it, let us follow after it. If we hold to it, nothing will be terrible to us; everything will be easy, everything simple; even if we pass through fire or through water, everything yields and gives way to virtue, even death itself. Let us, then, strive for it, so that we may obtain the good things to come, in Christ Jesus our Lord. “For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all people, training us that, denying ungodliness and worldly desires, we should live soberly and righteously and godly in the present age, awaiting the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people of his own, zealous for good works.” 1. Having required great virtue of the household servants (for it is a great thing to adorn the teaching of God our Saviour in everything, and to give the masters no handle, not even in the smallest matter), he adds also the just reason why servants ought to be such. What is it? “For the grace of God,” he says, “has appeared, bringing salvation.” Those who have God for their teacher, how could they not with good reason be such as I have just described, when they have found release from such great sins? For you know that, among other things, this too shames and humbles the soul in no ordinary way: that though it is liable for countless sins, it does not pay the penalty but receives pardon and countless good things. For tell me, if someone took a servant who had offended countless times and did not stretch him out to be flogged, but granted him pardon for those offences, demanded an account of him only for the future, bade him be on his guard so as not to fall into the same faults, and honoured him with great gifts—whom do you think such kindness would not shame, when he heard of it? But do not think that grace stops at the forgiveness of past sins; it also secures us for the future; for this too belongs to grace. For if God were never going to punish us when we keep doing evil, the thing would no longer be grace but an incitement to ruin and corruption. “For the grace of God has appeared,” he says, “training us that, denying ungodliness and worldly desires, we should live soberly and righteously and godly in the present age, awaiting the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ.” See how he sets virtue together with the prizes. And this too belongs to grace: freeing us from worldly things and leading us up to heaven. He shows two appearings here; for there are two: the first of grace, the second of recompense and justice. “That, denying,” he says, “ungodliness and worldly desires.” See, here is the foundation of all virtue. He did not say, “that we should flee,” but “that, denying.” Denial shows great separation, great hatred, great aversion: with the same disposition and zeal with which they turned away from idols, let them turn away from wickedness itself and from worldly desires, he says. For these too are idols—worldly desire, and greed, which he calls idolatry; and whatever serves us only for the present life is a worldly desire; everything that perishes along with the present life is worldly desire. Let us, then, have nothing to do with these. Christ came so that we might deny ungodliness … and worldly desires, the defiled life. “[That we should live sober]ly and righteously and godly in the present age.” Do you see that, as I always say, self-control is not only abstaining from sexual immorality but also being free of the other passions? So the lover of money is not self-controlled either. For as the one is a lover of bodies, so the other is a lover of money; or rather the latter is the more licentious, inasmuch as he has no such force driving him. For the charioteer who would most rightly be called lacking in control is not the one who cannot hold back a rough and hard-mouthed horse, but the one who cannot master a gentler, quieter one. “What?” someone says. “Is the desire for money less than the desire for bodies?” It is plain to everyone, and it is shown from many sides. First, the desire for bodies arose by necessity; and what arose by necessity is clearly overcome only with great labour, since it has been sown in our nature. Second, the ancients made little account of money but much of women, for the sake of chastity; no one would blame a man who has intercourse with his wife according to the law until old age, but everyone blames one who makes money. And many of the outside philosophers despised money, but not women; so much more tyrannical is that desire than this. But since our words are addressed to the church, let us bring our examples not from outsiders but from the Scriptures. About money this blessed man lays down something almost in the form of a command, saying, “Having food and clothing, with these we shall be content”; but about women, “Do not deprive one another, except perhaps by agreement”; and again, “Come together again.” And you can often see him making laws about lawful intercourse. He lets them enjoy this desire, and enter a second marriage, and he takes great care over the matter, and nowhere punishes for it; but the one who desires money he condemns everywhere. And Christ gave orders about money in many places, so that we might flee the ruin that comes from it; but about abstaining from a wife, not so. Hear what he says about money: “Unless someone renounces all his possessions.” Nowhere did he say, “Unless someone renounces a wife”; for he knows how great a tyranny he has implanted. And this blessed man says, “Marriage is honourable, and the marriage bed undefiled.” Nowhere does he call the care of money honourable, but the opposite: “But those who wish to be rich fall into temptation and a snare and [many foolish] desires.” He did not say, “to be greedy,” but “to be rich.” And so that you may learn it from common notions too, I must bring forward this argument. One who has once been entirely deprived of money will no longer be troubled by the desire for it; for nothing makes one desire money so much as having money. But with the desire for bodies it is not so: many, even after being made eunuchs, did not cast out the fire that troubled them within; for the desire is seated in other organs, set deep within our nature. Why, then, have we said these things? Because the greedy are worse than those who commit sexual immorality, inasmuch as they are troubled by a lesser desire; or rather, the thing does not even come from desire, but from slackness. For here the desire is so natural that even if a man does not come near a woman, nature does its own work; but there nothing of the kind happens. (And about virgins what does he say? “I have no command of the Lord”; and again, “Come together.”) “And godly,” he says, “we should live in the present age.” And what is the hope? What is the prize of the labours? “Awaiting,” he says, “the blessed hope and appearing.” Truly nothing is more blessed, nothing more enviable than that; words cannot set it out; for the good things then surpass the mind. “Awaiting,” he says, “the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Saviour.” Where are those who say that the Son is less than the Father? “Of our great God,” he says, “and Saviour.” He who saved us when we were enemies, what will he not do then, when he takes us approved? “Of the great God,” he says. When he says “great” of God, he does not mean great relatively, but great absolutely; with qualifications he would not be great, since that would be relative. If he were great relatively, it would be by comparison, and he would not be great by nature; but as it is, he is incomparably great. “Who gave himself for us,” he says, “to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people of his own,” that is, chosen, having nothing in common with the rest. “Zealous for good works.” Do you see that what comes from us is needed too? Not simply of works, but “zealous,” that is, going to virtue itself with great eagerness and with fitting vehemence. To free those who were weighed down by evils and incurably sick belonged to his love for humankind; but what follows belongs both to us and to him. “Speak these things and exhort and rebuke with all authority.” “Speak these things and exhort.” Do you see how he commands Timothy and says, “Reprove, rebuke, exhort,” but here, “Speak these things and exhort and rebuke with all authority”? Since the character of these people was harsher, he bids him rebuke sharply and with all authority. For there are things of this kind: to despise money, to be gentle and the like, one must persuade by exhorting; but the adulterer, the man who uses prostitutes, the greedy man, one must lead to what is better by command; and the one who practises augury, who takes omens, who does other such things, not simply by command but “with all authority.” Do you see how he wishes him to give these commands with authority and much power? “Let no one [despise you. Remind them to be submissive] to rulers and authorities, to obey, to be ready for every good work, to speak evil of no one.” What then? Not even of those who do evil? Not even to revile them? “But to be ready for every good work, to speak evil of no one.” Let us hear the exhortation: “to speak evil of no one,” he says. Our mouth must be clean of reviling. For if the revilings are true, it is not for us to say them, but for the judge to examine them: “Why do you judge your brother?” he says; and if they are not true, see how great the fire is. Hear the robber saying to the other robber, “For we too are under the same condemnation”: we run the same race. If you reproach others, you will quickly fall into the same faults yourself. That is why this blessed man exhorts, saying, “Let whoever thinks he stands take heed lest he fall.” “[Not quarrelsome, gentle,] showing all meekness toward all people,” both Greeks and Jews, both the wicked and the evil. There he frightens them with the future, saying, “Let whoever thinks he stands take heed lest he fall”; but here he shames them not with the future but with the past, doing the same thing through what he adds: “For we too were once foolish”; as he does in writing to the Galatians: “When we were children, we were enslaved under the elements of the world.” So do not reproach anyone, he says; for you too were such. “For we too were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, enslaved to various desires and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hateful, hating one another.” So we must be gentle toward all such people. For one who was formerly such and has been set free ought not to reproach such people, but to pray and to give thanks to him who gave both himself and them release from their former evils. Let no one boast; for all have sinned. When, then, you wish to reproach someone because you yourself are doing right, think of your former life and of the uncertainty of the future, and rein in your anger. For even if you have lived virtuously from your earliest age, you would still have many sins; and if you do not, as you think, consider that this has come about not from your own virtue but from God's grace; for if he had not called your forebears, you too would be disobedient. See how he has gone through every kind of wickedness. Did not God do countless things through the prophets, through all …, and we were led astray? “But when the kindness and the love for humankind of God our Saviour appeared”—how?—“not by works of righteousness which we had done, but according to his mercy he saved us, through the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit.” Ah, how deeply we were immersed in wickedness, so that we could not be cleansed but needed to be born again! For this is what regeneration is. For as with a house in a rotten state, no one puts a prop under it or patches the old building, but pulls it down to its foundations and so raises it up anew and renews it, so he too did: he did not repair us but built us anew from the ground up; for this is what “and renewal of the Holy Spirit” means: he made us new from the beginning. How? Through the Spirit. And again, showing this in another way, he adds, “which he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Saviour.” So much mercy did we need. “So that, having been justified by his grace”—again by grace, not as a debt—“we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.” This is at once an exhortation to humility and a hope for the future. For if he saved those who were so despaired of that they had to be born from above, saved by grace, having nothing good, much more will he do this in the future. 4. For nothing was worse than human savagery before the coming of Christ. All were disposed toward one another like enemies and foes; fathers slaughtered their own children, and mothers raged against their children; nothing stood firm, neither the natural law nor the written law, but everything had been overturned: continual adulteries, murders, and things worse than murders, thefts (one of the outside writers says that the thing even seemed to be a virtue; and naturally, since they worshipped such a god), continual oracles commanding that this man and that be put to death. Shall I tell you something of that time? Androgeos, the son of Minos, came to Athens, won at wrestling, paid the penalty and was killed. So Apollo, curing evil with evil, ordered twice seven children to be led away to atone for him. What could be more cruel than this tyranny? And this was done; and a man who came to put an end to the demon's madness slaughtered those children, because the deceit was strong among them; but when they rose up and defended themselves, it was done no longer. If, then, the thing was being done justly, it ought not to have been stopped; but if unjustly—as indeed it was unjustly—it ought not to have been commanded even at the beginning … continual and one after another, in city, in village, in household. They practised pederasty; and among them one philosopher made a law that a slave might neither practise pederasty nor rub himself with oil in the gymnasium, as though the thing were virtuous and highly honoured. That is why people stood openly in brothels doing this. And if one went through all their affairs, one would find plainly that they outraged nature itself, and no one prevented it; their dramas are all full of these things: adulteries, licentiousness, corruption. Defiled all-night festivals took place, and women were invited to the spectacle. What defilement! At night, in the theatre, there was an all-night festival, and a virgin sat among raving young men and a drunken crowd. The darkness was the festival, and so were the abominable deeds they performed. That is why he says, “For we too were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, enslaved to various desires and pleasures.” So-and-so fell in love with his stepmother, they say, and such a woman with her stepson, and hanged herself. As for the love of boys, which they are accustomed to call “paidika,” it is not even possible to speak of it. But what? Do you wish to see marriages with mothers? This too is found among them; and the terrible thing is that it happened through ignorance, and their god did not prevent it, but overlooked nature being outraged, and that among famous men. And if those who ought to have clung to virtue, if for no other reason at least because of the opinion of the many, were carried so headlong into wickedness, what is it likely that the many, who live in obscurity, did? What is more varied than this pleasure? So-and-so's wife fell in love with so-and-so; with the adulterer's help she slaughtered her husband on his return. Most of you perhaps know the story. The son of the murdered man killed the adulterer and slew her too as a victim; afterwards he too went mad and was driven by the Furies; then this same madman went off and slaughtered another man and takes his wife. What is worse than these misfortunes? I tell these stories from the outside writers so as to persuade the Greeks how many evils held the world. But, if you wish, let us show it from our own writings too. “They sacrificed,” it says, “their sons and their daughters to demons.” And again, the inhabitants of Sodom perished for no other reason than that they raged after boys. And again, at the very beginning of Christ's coming, did not the king's daughter dance in the middle of the banquet among drunken men? Did she not ask for murder, the head of the prophet, as the price of her dancing? “Who shall tell the mighty deeds of the Lord?” “Hateful,” he says, “hating one another.” For when we have sown all the pleasures in the soul, it is altogether inevitable that much hatred arises. Why? Because where love is not joined with virtue, … no one wrongs anyone. See also what Paul says: “Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate men, nor men who lie with males, nor the greedy, nor revilers, nor drunkards will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you.” Do you see how every kind of wickedness prevailed, and how thick the fog was, and how justice was corrupted? For if those who enjoyed prophecy, and saw so many evils happening both among their enemies and among themselves, nevertheless did not hold back but committed countless novelties, what would the others do? Again, one of the outsiders ordered naked virgins to wrestle in the sight of men. May many blessings be yours, for you cannot even bear to hear the word; but their philosophers were not ashamed of the thing itself. And another philosopher, their chief, both leads women out to war and bids them be held in common, like a procurer and a pimp. “Passing our days in malice and envy,” he says. For if those among them who practised philosophy made such laws, what are we to say of those who did not? If those with deep beards and wearing the philosopher's cloak say such things, what are we to say of the others? Woman was not made for this, man, to be set before all in common. O you who overturn everything, who have intercourse with males as with females, and lead females out to war as men! For this is the work of the devil: to confuse and overturn everything, and to shake and move the boundaries set from the beginning, which God set in nature. For to the woman God gave only the care of the house, to the man the conduct of public affairs; but you bring the head down to the feet and raise the feet up to the head. You arm women, and are you not ashamed? And why do I speak of these things? They bring on stage a woman who even killed her own children, and they are not ashamed or abashed to cast such abominable stories into people's ears. “But when the kindness,” he says, “and the love for humankind of God our Saviour appeared, not by works of righteousness which we had done, but according to his mercy he saved us through the [washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy] Spirit, which he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Saviour, so that, having been justified [by his grace, we might become heirs] according to the hope of eternal life.” What does “according to the hope” mean? That is, as we have hoped, so we shall enjoy; or that “you are already heirs.” “The saying is faithful.” Since he had spoken of things to come and not yet present, he added what makes them trustworthy. These things are true, he says, and clear from what has already happened. For he who freed us from such great lawlessness and such great evils will clearly also give us a share in what is to come, if only we remain in grace; for everything comes from the same care. 5. Let us, then, give thanks to God, and reproach the others in nothing; rather let us pray for them, let us counsel them …; for they are the sick. And those who are eager for the health of the sick bear everything and do everything, even if they accomplish nothing, so that they may not blame themselves for having been negligent. Or do you not know that often, when the doctor has despaired of a sick man, one of the relatives says to him, “Apply treatment once more and leave nothing undone, so that I may blame myself for nothing, … so that I may have nothing to accuse myself of”? Do you not see how much care relatives take of their friends? How much they do for this, both entreating doctors and constantly sitting by them? Let us at least imitate these—and yet our concern is not for things of equal worth … As it is, when a child is sick in body, one would not refuse even to undertake a long journey to cure the disease; but when the soul is in a bad state, no one takes any account of it; we are careless, and look on while our children and wives and we ourselves are caught by this grievous disease. But afterwards we come to perceive it. Consider how shameful and how very ridiculous it is to say afterwards, “We did not expect, we did not think this would happen.” It is not only shameful but also dangerous. For if in the present life it is the mark of fools not to foresee the future, much more so with regard to the life to come, when we now hear many people counselling us and telling us what we must and must not do. Let us, then, hold fast to that hope; let us take care of our salvation; let us entreat God in all things to stretch out his hand to us. How long shall we be slack? How long negligent? How long shall we despise ourselves and our fellow servants? He has poured out on us richly the grace of the Spirit. Let us, then, consider how great a grace he has shown toward us, and let us too show as great a zeal—or rather, as great is not possible, but at least a lesser one. For if even after this grace we are insensible, our punishment will be greater. “If I had not come,” he says, “and spoken to them, they would not have sin; but now they have no excuse.” But may it never be possible to say this of us; may we all be counted worthy of the good things promised to those who love him, in Christ Jesus our Lord, and so on.