Sermons to the People 36.1–37.4

The holy Scripture that was just read in your ears has prompted us (or rather God, who commands us to speak to you, has prompted us through it) to inquire with you and examine what it is and what it means, what was read: “There are some who pretend to be rich, having nothing; and there are some who humble themselves, though they are rich.” For it must not be supposed, nor believed at all, that holy Scripture took care to admonish us about the riches by which the proud are puffed up (I mean these visible and earthly ones), either so that we should think much of them or so that we should fear not having them. For what good does it do a man, someone says, who pretends to seem rich when he has nothing? Scripture has marked this man and rebuked him. But neither is the man much to be admired or imitated or highly esteemed whom it seems to have put in a place of praise, if you understand temporal and earthly riches. “And there are some,” it says, “who humble themselves, though they are rich.” The one rightly displeases us who, having nothing, pretends to be rich. What then? Does this one please us who, being rich, humbles himself? Perhaps he pleases because he humbles himself; yet he does not please because he is rich.

Let us accept this too, then: it is not unseemly, nor dishonorable, nor useless, that the holy Scriptures wished to commend humble rich people to us. For there is nothing so much to be feared in riches as pride. Indeed the apostle Paul admonishes Timothy of this: “Command,” he says, “the rich of this world not to be proud.” For he did not dread riches, but the disease of riches. And the great disease of riches is pride. For it is a great spirit that is not tempted by this disease in the midst of riches: a spirit greater than its riches, which conquers them not by coveting them but by despising them. Great, then, is the rich man who does not think himself great because he is rich; but whoever thinks himself great for that reason is proud and needy: he resounds in the flesh and begs in the heart; he is puffed up, not full. If you see two wineskins, one full and the other blown up with air, both are the same size, but they are not equally full. If you look, you are deceived; if you weigh, you will find out: the full one is hard to move; the one blown up with air is quickly carried away.

“Command,” then, he says, “the rich of this world.” He would not add “of this world” unless there were also rich people not of this world. Who are the rich not of this world? Those whose prince and head is the one of whom it is said, “He became poor for you, though he was rich.” But if he alone were rich, what good would it have done? See what follows: “so that by his poverty you might be made rich.” I think that Christ’s poverty brought us not money but righteousness. And where did his poverty come from? From his becoming mortal. True riches, then, are immortality; for there is true abundance where there is no want. Because we could not become immortal unless Christ had been made mortal for us, therefore he became poor, though he was rich. And he did not say, “He became poor, though he had been rich,” but “He became poor, though he was rich”: he took on poverty and did not lose his riches. Rich within, poor without; God hidden in riches, man appearing in poverty. See his riches: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God; he was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him.” What is richer than he through whom all things were made? A rich man can have gold; he cannot create it. When these riches of his had been set before us, see his poverty: “And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us.” By this poverty of his we have been made rich: because by his blood, which flowed from his flesh (for the Word became flesh to dwell among us), the sackcloth of our sins was torn. Through that blood we threw off the rags of iniquity, so that we might be clothed with the robe of immortality.

All good believers, then, are rich. Let no one despise himself, poor in his storeroom, rich in his conscience. The man rich in conscience sleeps more securely on the ground than the rich man in purple. There no malignant anxiety wakes him, his heart pricked by crime. Keep in your heart the riches that the poverty of the Lord your God has conferred on you. Rather, take him as your guardian: so that what he gave may not perish from your heart, let him who gave it keep it. All good believers, then, are rich, but not rich of this world. Indeed they do not feel their riches themselves; they will feel them later. The root is alive, but in winter even a green tree looks like a dry one. For in wintertime both the tree that is dry and the tree that flourishes are bare of the honor of leaves and empty of the honor of fruit. Summer will come and will tell the trees apart: the living root puts out leaves and is filled with fruit; the dry tree will remain empty in summer as in winter. So for the one a barn is prepared, to the other the axe is put, so that it may be cut down and thrown into the fire. So it is with our summer, the coming of Christ: our winter is Christ’s hiddenness, our summer Christ’s revelation. Indeed the apostle addresses the good and faithful trees in this way: “For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.” Dead, certainly, but dead in appearance, alive in the root. But notice the coming summertime, how he continues: “But when Christ your life appears, then you too will appear with him in glory.” These are rich, but not of this world. Yet the rich of this world are not despised either. He won them too by his poverty, who, though he was rich, became poor for us. For if he had despised them and had not wished to have them among the saints, the apostle would not, as I was saying, have commanded Timothy that he too should command: “Command,” he says, “the rich of this world not to be proud.” Among those who are rich in faith there are some rich of this world. Command them, because they too have become members of that poor man. Command them what you fear in them from riches: “not to be proud, nor to hope in the uncertainty of riches.” For the rich man grows proud because he hopes in the uncertainty of riches. For if he wisely considered the uncertainty of riches, he would never be proud but would always fear: the richer he was, the more anxious he would become, even with regard to this life, not only that one. For many poor people have been more secure in these upheavals of the world, while many have been sought out and seized because of their riches. Many have lamented having had what they could by no means always have. Many have regretted not accepting the advice of their Lord, who said, “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume, and where thieves break in and steal; but store up for yourselves treasure in heaven.” I do not tell you to lose your goods, but to move them. For many would not do this, and grieved that they had not obeyed, when not only did they lose their goods but because of them perished themselves. “Command,” then, “the rich of this world not to be proud,” and there will happen in them what we heard in the proverb of Solomon: “There are some who humble themselves, though they are rich.” This can happen even with regard to these temporal riches. Let the rich man be humble; let him rejoice more because he is a Christian than because he is rich. Let him not be puffed up or lifted up; let him look on his poor brother; let him not disdain to be called the brother of a poor man. For however rich he may be, Christ is richer, who willed those to be his brothers for whom he shed his blood.

Yet so that the rich might not say they did not know what to do with their riches, he admonished Timothy to guide them by counsel too, not only to restrain them by command. When he had said, “nor to hope in the uncertainty of riches,” lest they think they had lost hope, he added, “but in the living God, who provides us with everything abundantly to enjoy”: temporal things to use, eternal things to enjoy. But what are they to do with their riches? “Let them be rich in good works,” he says; “let them give readily.” Let riches be of use for this, that you have no difficulty in giving. For the poor man wants to and cannot; the rich man wants to and can. “Let them give readily, let them share, let them store up for themselves a good foundation for the future, so that they may lay hold of the true life.” For this life is false. Deceived by the falseness of this life, that man in purple and fine linen despised the poor man lying covered with sores before his door. But the poor man, licked by dogs, was acquiring for himself an eternal treasure in Abraham’s bosom, if not by abundant means, yet by a devout and rich will. But that rich man, who seemed great to himself in purple and fine linen, died and was buried in hell. And what did he find? Eternal thirst, unfailing flames. Fire took the place of purple and fine linen: he burned in a garment that he could not take off. Instead of banquets, dryness, and the longing for a drop from the poor man’s finger, as the poor man had longed for crumbs from the rich man’s table. But the poor man’s want passed; the rich man’s punishment remains. Let the rich of this world attend to this and not be proud. “Let them give readily, let them share; let them store up for themselves a good foundation for the future”, where the truly rich are, but not of this world, “so that they may lay hold of the true life.”

Perhaps, then, divine Scripture gave this warning, where it says, “There are some who pretend to be rich, having nothing,” because of the proud in rags. For if a proud rich man is scarcely to be borne, who would bear a proud poor man? Better, then, are those who humble themselves though they are rich. Yet Scripture testifies that it is speaking of other riches; for it went on to add, “The redemption of a man’s soul is his riches; but the poor man does not bear threats.” We must understand a poor man by some other poverty, and a rich man by some other riches. For they are more deeply rich who are rich in heart, full of courage, rich in devotion, abounding in love; they are rich within themselves, inwardly rich. But there are some who pretend to be rich when they are poor: they seem just to themselves when they are unjust. For we ought to understand those riches, since Scripture has disclosed what it meant: “The redemption of a man’s soul is his riches.” Understand, it says, what riches I am commending to you. Because I said, “There are some who pretend to be rich, having nothing; and there are some who humble themselves though they are rich,” you were thinking of those temporal, earthly, and visible riches; but I do not mean those, but the ones I go on to point out: “The redemption of a man’s soul is his riches.” So those who do not have the redemption of the soul, because they are unjust, and pretend to seem just, because they are hypocrites, are the ones of whom it says, “There are some who pretend to be rich, having nothing”: they want to seem just, though in the storeroom of their conscience they do not have the gold of righteousness. And there are those who are full, the humbler the richer they are; of whom it is said, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

Why then do you seek riches that flatter human, fleshly eyes? Gold shines, but faith shines more. Choose what you ought to have in your heart. Be full within, where God sees your riches and man does not. Yet you ought not to despise what you have within because man does not see it. Do you want to see that even in the eyes of the wicked faith shines more than gold? How does even a greedy master praise a faithful slave? He says that nothing is more precious than he; indeed he declares that he is altogether beyond price. “I have a slave,” he says, “who is beyond price.” Do you expect to hear why? Perhaps he dances well, or is an excellent cook? No: listen to the inward praise. “Nothing,” he says, “is more faithful.” Your faithful slave pleases you, man, and you do not want to be a faithful slave to your God? You notice that you have a slave; notice that you also have a Lord. Your slave you could buy, not create; your Lord both created you by his word and redeemed you by his blood. If you have become cheap in your own eyes, recall the price; if you have forgotten even this, read the Gospel, your deed of purchase. You love faithfulness in your slave, and does your Lord not look for it in his? Render what you demand. What you rejoice to have rendered to you by an inferior, render to your superior. You love a slave who faithfully guards your gold: do not despise the Lord who mercifully guards your heart. All, then, have eyes to praise faithfulness, but when they demand that it be rendered to them. For when it is demanded of them, they shut their eyes; they do not want to see how beautiful it is. Or perhaps, by foolish madness, they do not want to render it lest they lose it, as someone is afraid to repay money, since when he has repaid it he will not have it. Faith is not rendered like that: it is both rendered and kept. Wonderful to say: indeed, if it is not rendered, it is not had.

“The redemption of a man’s soul is his riches.” Rightly did God mock that most foolish rich man, to warn us not to imitate such things: the man whose land, yielding abundantly, troubled him more by its plenty than want could have done. For he thought within himself, saying, “What shall I do? Where shall I gather my produce?” And after much turmoil and distress, at last he seemed to himself to have found a plan; but a vain plan. For this plan was found not by prudence but by avarice. “I will pull down,” he says, “my old, smaller barns, and build new, larger ones, and I will fill them; and I will say to my soul: Soul, you have many goods; eat your fill and enjoy yourself.” God said to him, “Fool”: in what you think yourself wise, fool, what did you say? “I say to my soul, You have many goods, eat your fill.” “This night your soul will be taken from you; these things that you have prepared, whose will they be?” “For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world but suffers the loss of his soul?” Therefore, “The redemption of a man’s soul is his riches.” That vain and foolish man did not have these riches. For he did not redeem his soul by alms; he stored up produce that would perish. He was storing up, I say, perishable produce, himself about to perish, giving nothing to the Lord to whom he was about to depart. What face will he have at that judgment, when he begins to hear, “I was hungry, and you did not give me to eat”? For he wanted to sate his soul with superfluous and excessive feasts, and in his great pride he despised the many empty bellies of the poor. He did not know that the bellies of the poor were safer than his barns. For what he stored in those barns of his might perhaps be carried off by thieves; but if he had stored it in the bellies of the poor, it would be digested on earth, but kept more safely in heaven. So: “The redemption of a man’s soul is his riches.”

And what follows? “But the poor man does not bear threats.” The poor man, that is, one empty of righteousness, not having within him the fullness of the spirit, the ornaments of the spirit, the spiritual furnishings, and all that is not seen with the eyes but discerned all the more by the mind: not having these within, he does not bear threats. When some powerful man has said to him, “Say this word against my enemy, give false testimony, so that I may crush and subdue the man I want to,” perhaps he resists: “I won’t do it; I won’t bring sin on myself.” He refuses only until the rich man begins to threaten. But because he is poor, he does not bear threats. What does “he is poor” mean? He does not have the inner riches which the martyrs had, who for the truth and faith of Christ despised all the threats of the world. They lost nothing from the heart; and how much did they find in heaven? The poor man, then, does not bear threats. He cannot say to the rich man who is forcing him to give false testimony to someone’s injury, “I will not do it.” He has nothing within with which to answer; he is not made solid by an inner treasure: he is not one to speak, because he has nothing to speak from. He is not one to say, “What will you do to me, you who threaten? At most you will take what I have: you take what I am going to leave behind; you take what I might perhaps lose while I live even if you did not take it. From my inner chest I lose nothing. When you threaten to take what I have, you really want to take what I have within. But can you take that away and keep it? If by threatening you took away my faith, I would lose it and you would not have it. So I do not do what you urge, and I do not care what you threaten. But by raging you can even drive me from my homeland. You would have harmed me if you drove me to a place where I could not find my God. Perhaps you will even be able to kill me. When the house of flesh falls, I, its inhabitant, depart unharmed, and I will go out without fear to him to whom I keep faith, and I will fear you no more. For see what you threaten so that I may give false testimony: you threaten death, but of the body. I fear him more who said, ‘The mouth that lies kills the soul.’” The man full and rich within with these riches gives answers like these, or better ones, to the one who threatens. “But the poor man does not bear threats.”

Let us be rich, then, and fear to be poor. Let us seek to have our heart filled with riches by him who is truly rich. And if perhaps any of you enters into his heart and does not find these riches there, let him knock at the rich man’s door; let him become a devout beggar before his door, so that by his gift he may be filled and rich. And truly, my brothers, we ought to confess our poverty and our neediness to the Lord our God. The tax collector confessed it, who did not even dare to lift his eyes to heaven. For the sinful man had no substance with which to lift up his eyes. He considered his emptiness; but he recognized the Lord’s fullness; he knew that he had come thirsty to the fountain. He showed his dry throat; he knocked devoutly at the breasts so that they might fill him. “Lord,” he says, beating his breast and casting his eyes down to the ground, “be merciful to me a sinner.” I say that he was already rich in some measure when he thought and asked these things. For if he had still been poor in every way, from where did he bring out the gems of this confession? Yet he went down from the temple more abundant and fuller, justified. But that Pharisee went up to pray, and asked for nothing. “They went up,” it says, “to the temple to pray.” This one asks; that one does not ask. But from what does that one pray? “There are some who think themselves rich, having nothing.” “Lord,” he says, “I thank you that I am not like other men, unjust, robbers, adulterers, as is this tax collector too. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I possess.” He boasted; but this is swelling, not fullness. He thought himself rich, having nothing; the other knew himself to be poor, already having something. To say nothing else, he had the devotion of confession itself. And both went down. “But the tax collector,” he says, “was justified rather than the Pharisee: because everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.”

He who has made this day honored in his saints will grant us that the weakness of our voice may be equal to your attention. I have said this so that you may be good enough to help me with your silence: for the spirit is willing toward you, but the flesh is weak. And the spirit itself, whatever joys it may have conceived from the Scripture of God, is in labor and seeks to give birth in your ears and minds: provide in yourselves a nest for the turtledove. For in Scripture too the turtledove is commended for seeking a nest for itself where it may lay its young. And this that we are holding in our hands, the Scripture that you see, commends to us for inquiry and praise a certain woman of whom you heard a little while ago when it was read: a great woman, with a great husband, the husband who found her lost and adorned her when he had found her. Of her, following the course of the reading that you see me holding, I shall say a few things, as time allows, such as the Lord may suggest. For it is the day of the martyrs, and so the mother of the martyrs is all the more to be praised. Who this woman is you understood already as I was speaking beforehand; see that you recognize her as I read too. Every hearer now, as is plain enough from your response, is saying in his heart, “It must be the Church.” Confirm that thought. For what other mother of martyrs could there be? She it is; what you have understood is so: the woman of whom we want to say something is the Church. For it would not be fitting for us to speak of any other woman. It is true that in the reading of the passion of the martyrs we heard of women of whom we might fittingly speak; but we do not pass them over when we praise their mother.

Consider whose members you are; look to whose children you are. “A strong woman who will find?” The strength of the woman suits the day of the martyrs. For unless that woman were strong, her members would have failed in their suffering. “A strong woman who will find?” It is difficult to find her; or rather, it is difficult not to know her. Is she not the city on a mountain that cannot be hidden? Why then was it said, “Who will find?”, when it should have been said, “Who will not find?” But you see the city set on a mountain: yet so that she might be set on a mountain, she who had perished was found. Now that she has been made illustrious, who does not see her? When she lay hidden, who would have found her? For she is the city, and she is that one sheep which the shepherd sought when it was lost and, finding it, carried back rejoicing on his shoulders. That shepherd is the mountain; the sheep on his shoulders is the city on the mountain. It is easy for you to see her set on the mountain: when would you have found her, when she lay hidden in the brambles, in the thorns, that is, of her own sins? To have looked for her there is a great thing; to have found her there is wonderful. This difficult finding of her is commended when it is said, “A strong woman who will find?” “Who,” because it is one; not because there is not even one. So it was said of her husband himself, the lion of the tribe of Judah, of whom the prophet foretold, “You went up, lying down”: on the cross, surely. “You went up” is the cross; “lying down” is death. For what is “You went up,” if not what is written, “And they crucified him”? Hence he himself says, “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life.” What is “lying down”? “And bowing his head he gave up the spirit.” When it had been said there, “You went up, lying down,” it went on, “You slept like a lion.” “You slept like a lion”: you did not flee like a fox. What is “You slept like a lion”? By power, not by necessity. And when it had said, “You slept like a lion,” it went on, “Who will raise him up?” “Who will raise him?”: not that no one will, but which of men? For none but God, who raised him from the dead and gave him the name that is above every name. He also raised himself; hence he says, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” And now, when you hear, “A strong woman who will find?”, do not think it is said of a Church that lies hidden, but of her who has been found by one, so that she should be hidden from no one. Let her be described, then, praised, commended, to be loved by all of us as a mother: for she is the wife of one. “A strong woman who will find?” Who does not see this woman, so strong? But now found, now eminent, now conspicuous, now glorious, now adorned, now shining; now, to put it briefly, spread throughout the whole world.

“But she who is such is more precious than precious stones.” What great thing is it that this woman is more precious than precious stones? If you think only of human avarice, if precious stones are taken in the literal sense, what great thing is it that the Church is found more precious than any stones? There is no such comparison; but there are precious stones in her. These stones are so precious that they are called living. There are, then, precious stones adorning her; but she herself is more precious. I want to commend something to your Charity, as far as I grasp it, as far as you grasp it, as far as I fear and you ought to fear, about these precious stones. There are in the Church precious stones, and there always have been: learned men, abounding in knowledge and eloquence and all instruction in the Law. These are certainly precious stones; but some of their number have strayed from the adornment of this woman. As far as doctrine and eloquence go, by which he shone, Cyprian was a precious stone; but he remained in her adornment. Donatus was a precious stone; but he sprang out of the setting of the ornament. The one who remained wished to be loved in her; the one who was knocked out of it sought a name for himself apart from her. The one, remaining with her, gathered for her; the other, springing away, desired not to gather but to scatter. Bad sons, why do you follow a precious stone knocked out of the adornment of this woman? You answer me, “What then? Do you understand as he did? Or do you speak as he did? Or are you as learned as he?” Let him be a man of understanding: “Good understanding belongs to all who act on it.” Let him be learned, let him be instructed in the liberal disciplines and the mysteries of the Law: he is a precious stone; go back from him to her: “She is more precious than precious stones.” A precious stone, if it is not in the adornment of this woman, lies in darkness. A precious stone, wherever it lies, lies in darkness: it needed to remain in the adornment of this woman and be in the setting of her ornament. But I would say with confidence: precious stones are so called because they are worth a high price; he who does not have charity has now become cheap, has lost his price. Let him boast of his learning, let him boast of his tongue: let him hear the appraiser of the true stones of this matron; let him hear, I say, a certain craftsman who inspects the ornament. Why does he boast of his tongue, now not a precious but a cheap stone? “If I speak with the tongues of men,” he says, “and of angels, but have not charity, I have become sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal.” That stone is a cymbal: it no longer shines, but tinkles. So learn to appraise stones, merchants of the kingdom of heaven: let no stone please you except the adornment of this woman. She who is more precious than precious stones is herself the value of her ornament.

“The heart of her husband trusts in her.” He certainly trusts, and he has taught us to trust. For he commended the Church to the ends of the earth, through all nations, from sea to sea. If she did not persevere to the end, the heart of her husband would not trust in her. “The heart of her husband trusts in her”: he trusts with foreknowledge; he who trusts cannot be deceived. It was not said, “The heart of her sons trusts in her”: for her little sons could be deceived; no lie deceives his heart. It is true, then, that he trusts. “She who is such will not lack spoils.” Not that she does not seek spoils and so will not lack them, but that she will abound in many. “She who is such will not lack spoils.” She despoils the world from every side, spread everywhere; she seizes trophies from the devil everywhere. For her husband promised her this, the one to whom he says in another psalm, “I rejoice at your words, as one who finds much spoil.” How can she lack spoils, who seizes from everywhere, draws in from everywhere, gains from everywhere?