On the Work of Monks 1–12

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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