Homilies on Acts 35.1–35.3

[Lemma] “On the sabbath day we went outside the … to the river, where we supposed there was a place of prayer; and we sat down and spoke to the women who had come together. And a certain … named Lydia, … God, heard us; the Lord opened her heart to pay attention to what was said by Paul.” (Acts 16:13–14)

See Paul again living as a Jew, both in the time and in the manner. “Where there was thought to be,” it says, “a place of prayer.” For they prayed not only where there was a synagogue, but also outside, as if setting apart some place, since the Jews were more bodily-minded. “On the sabbath day,” when it was likely that a crowd too would gather. “And … of Thyatira, a worshiper of God, heard us; and the Lord opened her heart to pay attention to what was said by Paul.” See again the freedom from pride. She was a woman, and a lowly one, as is clear from her trade; but see her true philosophy. For first the writer bears witness of her to this, that she worshiped God; then, that she invited the apostles. “And when she was baptized, she and her household, she urged us, saying, ‘My lords, if you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come into my house and stay.’ And she prevailed upon us.” “And when she was baptized,” it says, “she and her household.” Consider how she persuaded them all; then see her good sense, how she puts the apostles to shame, how full of humility her words are, how full of wisdom. “If you have judged me,” she says, “to be faithful to the Lord.” Nothing is more persuasive. Whom would these words not have softened? She did not simply ask, did not simply entreat, did not leave them free to choose, but pressed them hard; for this is the meaning of “she prevailed upon us,” that is, by these words. See how at once she bears fruit, and counts the calling a great gain. That you judged me faithful, she means, is clear from your having entrusted me with such mysteries; you would not have entrusted them to me if you had not judged me such. And she did not dare to invite them before this, but only when she had been baptized; making it plain by this that she could not have persuaded them otherwise. And why did Paul and his companions not wish it, but refused, so that they had to be pressed? Either to call her forth to greater eagerness; or because Christ said, “Into whatever city you enter, inquire who in it is worthy, and stay there.” So they did everything by design. “And it happened, as we were going to the place of prayer, that a slave girl having a spirit of divination met us, who brought her masters much gain by fortune-telling. She … ‘These men are servants of the Most High God, who proclaim to us the way of salvation.’” Why did the demon too utter these things, and why did Paul stop it? The one acted maliciously, the other wisely; for he did not wish to make it worthy of belief. For if Paul had accepted its testimony, it would have deceived many even of the believers, as having been accepted by him; that is why it endures saying things against itself, so that it may establish things in its own favor; it too uses condescension, but for destruction. At first, then, Paul did not accept it, but spurned it, not wishing to rush into signs without need; but when it kept doing this for many days, and showed what it was about, saying, “These men are servants of the Most High God, who proclaim to us the way of salvation,” then he ordered it to come out. “But Paul, being greatly annoyed, turned and said to the spirit, ‘I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her.’ And it came out that very hour. But when her masters saw that their hope of gain had gone out, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace before the rulers; and bringing them to the magistrates, they said, ‘These men … being …, and they proclaim customs which it is not lawful for us to accept or practice, being Romans.’” Everywhere money is the cause of evils. Oh, the cruelty of the pagans! They wanted the girl to be possessed by a demon, so as to make money. “Having seized,” it says, “Paul and Silas, they said, ‘These men are disturbing our city.’” By doing what? Why then did you not drag them off before this? “Being Jews,” they say; so much was the name in bad repute. “And they proclaim customs which it is not lawful for us to accept or practice, being Romans.” They turned the matter into a charge of treason. “And the crowd joined in attacking them.” Oh, the senselessness! They did not examine them, they did not give them a hearing; and yet, when such a miracle had taken place, they ought to have worshiped them, ought to have held them as saviors and benefactors. For if you wanted money, why, when you had found such wealth, did you not run to it? Being able to drive out demons makes them more illustrious than the demons’ obeying them. See: there were signs, and the love of money prevailed over them. “And the magistrates tore off their garments and ordered them to be beaten with rods; and when they had laid many blows on them … to keep them safely.” Paul, then, did everything, both the miracles and the teaching; but Silas too shares in the dangers. What is “Paul, being greatly annoyed”? Seeing, he means, the villainy of the demon, as he himself says elsewhere, “For we are not ignorant of his designs.” Why did they not say, “They drove out the demon,” “They committed impiety against a god,” but turned to treason? That would have been a defeat for them. So too in the case of Christ they said, “We have no king but Caesar,” and, “Everyone who makes himself a king opposes Caesar.” “And they threw them,” it says, “into prison.” Great was their anger. “Having received such a charge, he put them into the inner prison and fastened their feet in the stocks.” See: he too in turn threw them into the inner prison, and this too by design. For since a great miracle was going to happen … The place outside the city is judged suitable for hearing, free from temptations and dangers. See how the writer of the history is not ashamed to list their trades. Since it was a day of rest, they paid more attention to what was said; and the city of the Philippians was not a large one. Learning these things, let us too be ashamed of no one. Peter stays with a tanner, Paul with a seller of purple: where is pride? So we need God, to open the heart; and God opens the hearts that are willing; for one may also see hearts that are blinded. But let us look at what was said from the beginning. “A woman,” it says, “a seller of purple, whose heart the Lord opened to pay attention to what was said by Paul.” The opening, then, was God’s; the paying attention was hers; so that it was both divine and human. “And when she was baptized”: she is baptized, and receives the apostles with such great entreaty, greater than Abraham’s. And she named no other proof than that by which she was saved; she did not say, “If you judged me a great woman,” or “a pious one” …

… but what? “Faithful to the Lord”: if to the Lord, much more to you, unless you dispute it. And she did not say, “With me,” but, “Stay in my house,” to show that she did this with great eagerness. Truly … is the woman. Tell me, what is this demon? A god, it says, a Python; it is called so from the place. Do you see that Apollo is a demon? And since it wished to cast them into temptations, so as to provoke them the more …

O foul and utterly foul one! If, then, you know that they proclaim a way of salvation, why do you not depart of your own accord? But what Simon wanted when he said, “Give me this, so that anyone on whom I lay my hands may receive the Holy Spirit,” this demon too was doing: since it saw them in high repute, it plays the hypocrite here too; in this way it expected to be left in the body, if it proclaimed the same things. But if from a man “praise is not fitting in the mouth of a sinner,” much less from a demon; if Christ does not receive testimony from men, not even from John, much less from a demon. For preaching belongs not to men but to the Holy Spirit. Since, then, they acted with bluster, shouting, they thought to overawe by the outcry, saying, “These men are disturbing our city.” What do you say? Do you believe the demon? Why not here too? It says, “servants of the Most High God”; you say, “They are disturbing our city.” It says, “They proclaim to us a way of salvation”; you say, “They hand down to us customs which it is not lawful to accept.” See them not even heeding the demon, but looking to one thing, the love of money. “And they dragged them,” it says, “into the marketplace before the rulers; and the crowd joined in attacking them.” See them neither answering nor defending themselves, so that they may become worthy of a greater miracle. “For when I am weak,” he says, “then I am strong.” “My grace is sufficient for you; for my power is made perfect in weakness.” So they ought to have been admired for their gentleness too. The stricter the guard, the more splendid the miracle. Perhaps the magistrates did this wishing to cut short the uprising. When they saw the crowd pressing on, they wished for the moment to check its anger by the beating, and by throwing them into prison and ordering that they be kept safely, they wanted to hear the case later. “And he fastened them,” it says, “in the stocks,” as one might say, “in the nervus.”

How many tears does our present state deserve? They suffered all that they suffered, but we live in luxury, we live in the theaters. That is why we are perishing and being drowned, seeking ease everywhere, and not bearing to be grieved for Christ’s sake even so far as a reproach, not even so far as a word. Let us continually remind ourselves of these things, I beg you: how much they suffered, how much they endured, how they were not troubled, how they were not scandalized. They were doing God’s work, and they suffered these things. They did not say, “Why do we preach this, and God does not stand by us?” But this too benefited them, and, quite apart from God’s help, by its very nature made them more vigorous, stronger, undaunted. “Affliction,” it says, “produces endurance.” Let us not, then, seek the soft and dissolute life. For as here the good is twofold, that men become strong and that the rewards are great, so there the evil is twofold, that they become softer, and that it is for nothing good, but even for evil. For nothing could be more useless than a man who spends all his time in ease and luxury. “For a man untested,” it says, “is also unapproved”; unapproved not in the contests only, but in all other things too. Ease is a useless thing; and even for luxury itself nothing is so unsuitable as luxury; for it cloys. Neither the pleasure of food is so great, nor that of ease, but everything fades and flows away. Let us not, then, seek this. For if we will consider who lives more pleasantly, the one who toils and endures hardship, or the one who lives in luxury, we will find it is the former. For first, the body of the man in luxury is itself enfeebled and flabby; then the senses of the body are not clear or healthy, but slack and soft; and when they are not, not even the pleasure of health is felt. Which horse is useful, the pampered or the exercised? Which ship, the one that sails or the one that lies idle? Which water, the running or the standing? Which iron, that which is in use or that which is not worked? Does not the one shine and look like silver, while the other is rusted, useless everywhere, and losing something of its own substance? Something like this happens to the idle soul too: a kind of rust spreads over it and eats away its brightness and everything else. With what, then, might one scour away this rust? With the whetstone of afflictions; these make the soul useful and fit for everything. For how, tell me, will it be able to cut through the passions, if its edge has been blunted and bends back like lead? How will it wound the devil? And to whom is a man who cultivates fat not disagreeable? I do not say this about those who are so by nature, but about those who have made their bodies such by luxury, those who are lean by nature.

The sun has risen, it has sent out its bright rays everywhere, it has roused each man to his work: the farmer takes his mattock and goes out, the smith his hammer, and each craftsman his proper tool, and you will find each handling his own instruments; the woman her distaff or her weaving; but he, like a pig, goes out at once, from early morning, to the pasture of his belly, seeking how he may prepare a costly table. And yet it belongs to the irrational animals alone to feed from early morning, since they are useful for nothing but to be slaughtered; and even those of them that carry burdens and do work go out to their work while it is still night. But this man rises from his bed when the sun has filled the marketplace and all have had their fill of their own work; he gets up stretching himself, truly like a fattened hog, having spent the best part of the day in darkness. Then he sits a long time on his bed, often not even able to come to himself after the evening’s drunkenness, having spent the greater part of the time in this. Then he adorns himself and goes out, a spectacle of indecency, with nothing of a man about him, but everything of a beast in human form: his eyes moist, his mouth reeking of wine, his wretched soul as if laid out on a couch by the stale wine poured into him without measure, carrying about the bulk of his flesh like an elephant. Then he comes and sits about in public places, and says and does such things that it would be better for him to be still asleep than awake. If bad news comes …; if good, he is more foolish than any child; his face is full of yawning. He lies open to all who wish to do him harm, if not to men, then to the passions; anger easily rouses such a man, and desire, and envy, and everything. All flatter him, all court him, making his soul softer than it is; and every day he goes on, taking on more of the disease. If he falls into some crisis of affairs, he becomes ashes and dust, and his silk garments are of no help to him. These things have been said by us not idly, but so that we may teach that no one should live idly or aimlessly. For idleness and luxury are unfit for work, fit only for vanity, for pleasure. How will not all condemn such a man, his household, his friends and kinsmen? And who will not justly say, “This man is a burden on the earth; such a man has come into the world for nothing”; or rather not for nothing, but to the hurt of his own head, to his own ruin, to the harm of others?

Let us see, then, what is pleasanter to the soul; for this is what is being asked: leisure and doing nothing? And what could be more disagreeable than a man who has nothing to do? What more wretched, what more miserable? Is it not worse than countless chains to yawn and gape all the time, sitting in the marketplace and watching the passers-by? For the soul, having a nature that is always in motion, cannot bear to be still. God made this living being active, and working is according to its nature, being idle against nature. Let us not judge things by those who are sick, but let us make trial of the thing itself. Nothing is more wretched than leisure, nothing than idleness. That is why God put us under the necessity of working. For idleness harms everything; even the very members of the body are harmed somehow by idleness. For the eye too, if it does not do its own work, and the mouth and the stomach and every member one could name, falls into the worst disease; but nothing so much as the soul. And as idleness is an evil, so too is work that is not fitting. For just as one who does not eat harms his teeth, and if he eats what is not fitting sets them on edge, so too here: whether a man does not work, or works at what is not fitting, he loses his own strength. So let us be eager to flee both, idleness and a work that is worse than idleness. And what is this? Greed, anger, envy, the rest of the passions. In these let us pursue idleness, so that we may attain the good things promised us, by the grace and love for humankind of our Lord Jesus Christ, with whom to the Father together with the Holy Spirit be glory, might, honor, now and always and to the ages of ages. Amen.