Homilies on the Gospel of Matthew

Homiliae in Matthaeum · Εἰς τὸ κατὰ Ματθαῖον εὐαγγέλιον ὁμιλίαι

Reading pages: 1.1–1.5 · 1.8–2.5 · 3.1–4.1 · 4.2–4.8 · 4.9–4.14 · 5.1–6.1 · 6.2–6.6 · 6.8 · 7.1–7.7 · 8.1–8.5 · 9.1–9.6 · 10.1–10.7 · 11.1–11.6 · 11.7–11.8 · 12.1–13.1 · 13.2–13.5 · 14.1–15.1 · 15.2–15.6 · 15.7–16.1 · 16.2–16.3 · 16.6–16.9 · 16.11–17.4 · 17.5–17.7 · 18.1–18.6 · 19.1–19.3 · 19.6–19.11 · 20.1–20.6 · 21.1–21.4 · 22.1–22.6 · 23.1–23.4 · 23.6–23.9 · 24.1–24.4 · 25.1–26.1 · 26.2–26.5 · 26.7 · 27.1–27.4 · 28.1–28.4 · 29.1–29.3 · 30.1–30.3 · 31.1–32.1 · 32.2–32.7 · 32.8–33.5 · 33.6–33.11 · 34.1–34.5 · 35.1–35.4 · 35.5 · 36.1–37.1 · 37.2–37.6 · 37.7–38.4 · 39.1–39.4 · 40.1–40.5 · 41.1 · 42.1–42.4 · 43.1–43.5 · 44.1–44.5 · 45.1–45.3 · 46.1–46.4 · 47.1–48.1 · 48.2–48.7 · 49.1–49.6 · 50.1–50.4 · 51.1–51.6 · 52.1–52.5 · 53.1–53.3 · 54.1–54.6 · 55.1–55.5 · 55.6–56.4 · 56.5–56.6 · 57.1–57.5 · 58.1–58.5 · 59.1–59.5 · 59.6–60.3 · 61.1–61.5 · 62.1–62.5 · 63.1–63.4 · 64.1–64.5 · 65.1–65.5 · 65.6–66.5 · 67.1–67.5 · 68.1–68.4 · 69.1–69.4 · 70.1–70.4 · 71.1–71.4 · 72.1–72.4 · 73.1–73.4 · 74.1–74.4 · 75.1–75.5 · 76.1–76.5 · 77.1–77.4 · 77.6–78.2 · 79.1–79.4 · 80.1–80.3 · 81.1–81.5 · 82.1–82.6 · 83.1–83.3 · 84.1–84.4 · 85.1–85.4 · 86.1–86.3 · 87.1–87.4 · 88.1–88.3 · 89.1–89.2 · 90.1–90.4

1.1Chrysostom opens his series: the Scriptures are a second-best remedy for hearts no longer written on by the Spirit; he contrasts Sinai with Pentecost, explains why Matthew's book is called a gospel, why there are four evangelists, and why their minor differences confirm their truth.
1.4The Gospels' harmony on essentials is proved by their reception throughout the world, in contrast with the contradictory philosophers and Plato's and Zeno's ideal states, which Chrysostom calls demonic inventions against nature.
1.5Christian teaching is loftier and simpler than the philosophers' (virginity, the double love command), and its commonwealth is heavenly; Chrysostom then lists the questions raised by Matthew's genealogy and urges his hearers to attend as eagerly as they do at the theater.
1.8Closing exhortation of Homily 1: as hearers know worldly rulers and affairs, they should learn the laws of the heavenly city, entering Matthew's Gospel as its gate with reverent silence.
2.1Homily 2 opens with Matt 1:1: hearers must prepare to enter the Gospel more purely than Israel prepared at Sinai, for it shows Christ's victory; the divine generation is beyond telling.
2.2The earthly birth of the Son of God from a virgin and from David and Abraham is a pledge that humans may become children of God; the double birth and the baptism join old and new; the name Jesus means Savior.
2.3Joshua is a type of Jesus; Matthew calls his book 'the book of the generation' because the incarnation is the sum of the dispensation; he names David before Abraham because David was better known; Mary's Davidic descent is shown from Luke 1:27.
2.4Joseph's Davidic genealogy proves Mary's, because the law forbade marrying outside one's tribe and family and Joseph was righteous; women's genealogies were not customary; Chrysostom summarizes and urges hearers to meditate on what they hear.
2.5Moral exhortation: worldly cares cloud the soul like smoke; Christians know theater songs but not psalms; lay people need Scripture more than monks; hearing God's word reforms, as it reformed the Corinthians and David.
3.1A second, more mystical reason for Joseph's genealogy: the virgin birth was veiled at first to protect Mary from being stoned as an adulteress and to avoid offending the Jews; then the question why Judah's brothers are named.
3.2Matthew omits Esau's line because the Arab peoples have no share in Israel; he names Tamar to show that Christ was not ashamed of our sins and to humble Jewish pride in ancestry; the patriarchs born of slave women show that only virtue counts.
3.3The birth of Perez and Zerah (Gen 38:27–30) is a riddle: Zerah's withdrawn hand figures the church's way of life, shown in Abraham's time, withdrawn under the law, and then revealed whole; the law is the 'fence'.
3.4The foreign and sinful women in the genealogy show that Christ came as physician and bridegroom of a church that had played the harlot, as Ruth figures; moral exhortation on humility, forgetting one's good deeds, and David's meekness toward Shimei and Saul.
4.1Matthew's three groups of fourteen show Israel unimproved under every form of government; Chrysostom explains the count, why Mark and Luke differ, why the Gospel has no prophetic heading, and why miracles were given at certain times, including signs under Julian in his own day.
4.2Matthew counts generations from Abraham and David to the exile to Christ to fit prophecy; he introduces the virgin birth carefully; the manner of the Spirit's work is not to be pried into, though Christ truly took flesh from Mary; Joseph's righteousness and the angel's timing are explained.
4.5The angel told Mary before the conception, lest she despair, and Joseph after his suspicion, so that the angel's knowledge of his secret thoughts would prove the message divine; Matthew and Luke do not conflict.
4.6The angel reassures Joseph gently, calls Mary his wife, entrusts her to his keeping, reveals that the child is of the Spirit, and gives Joseph a father's office of naming the child without making him the father.
4.7The name Jesus, given from heaven, promises salvation from sins, which only God can give; moral section: the baptized must be recognizable by their life, but many live like the unbaptized, at races and theaters.
4.8Chrysostom rebukes Christians whose vices make them like beasts and demons; they examine their hair in a mirror but not their souls, though Scripture and the lives of the saints are a spiritual mirror; one who tames lions should tame his own anger.
4.9Anger is a beast within that must be tamed; its remedy is the blood of Christ received with confidence, the hearing of Scripture, and almsgiving; the passions enslave as completely as Paul served Christ; vainglory is self-defeating.
4.10Seeking glory brings ridicule, as Nebuchadnezzar's image did; the three youths, captives with nothing, outshone the king by philosophy alone and answered him briefly and without insult at the furnace.
4.11The three youths served God from love, not for reward, and prayed for their whole people; today the golden image is mammon, and Christians should prefer the furnace of poverty to its worship, as Lazarus did, rather than face the furnace of sin.
4.14Closing exhortation of Homily 4: almsgiving is the dew that joins us to the poor in their furnace and quenches the fire of hell; the poor who give thanks are like the three youths; despising the world makes one worthier than the world.
5.1Homily 5 opens with Matt 1:22–23: Chrysostom urges hearers to go home after the assembly and recall the sermon with their families, devoting one day a week to it, so that the teaching is not swept away.
5.2Matthew's 'all this took place' marks the fulfillment of Isa 7:14; the angel refers Joseph to Isaiah; 'Emmanuel' names what the event revealed, as Isa 8:3 and 1:26 show; against Jewish objections, the Septuagint's 'virgin' is more credible than later translations' 'young woman'.
5.3Scripture uses 'young woman' for virgins, and a sign must be extraordinary; Joseph obeys; 'until' in Matt 1:25 does not imply later relations, for Mary remained a virgin; the 'brothers' of Jesus were so called as Joseph was called husband; James's later sanctity proves the resurrection.
5.4James and the Lord's kinsmen gained nothing from kinship until they showed virtue; the prayers of saints avail only if we repent, as Scripture's examples show (Moses, Samuel, Jeremiah, Noah, Job, Daniel, Abraham); God prefers to give grace to us directly.
5.5Closing exhortation of Homily 5: the saints' prayers do not replace our own effort; almsgiving, even from ill-gotten gain, is lending to God at a higher interest; usury is condemned as cruelty disguised as kindness.
6.1Homily 6 opens with Matt 2:1–2: Chrysostom rejects the claim that the star confirms astrology, and lists the puzzles of the magi's journey on any merely human account.
6.2The magi's behavior is inexplicable on human terms; the star was no ordinary star but an invisible power in the form of a star, as its north-to-south course, daytime brightness, appearing and hiding, and descent over the child show.
6.3The star was given to leave the Jews without excuse and to call the Gentiles by what was familiar to the magi, as God condescended to the Philistine diviners; God moved the magi without forcing their will; Jerusalem's alarm showed sluggishness and envy.
6.5Moral section of Homily 6: Christians are cold where Paul and the first believers burned; the spiritual fire produces compunction and tears that unite us to God, as with the sinful woman and Hannah, provided they are not for display.
6.6Christ wept but never laughed; we will give account for every sin, so dissipation is folly; frivolity comes from the devil, who built the theaters; spectators who applaud blasphemous and lewd mimes are more guilty than the actors and dishonor marriage.
6.8Closing exhortation of Homily 6: the theater's mimed adulteries and naked performers corrupt spectators and households; nakedness began with disobedience; Chrysostom wounds his hearers deliberately to heal them.
7.1Homily 7 opens with Matt 2:4–5: the Jews and the magi teach each other; the scribes omit the end of Micah's prophecy to flatter Herod; the forty days in Bethlehem and the events Luke records left the Jews without excuse, before Christ was revealed again at the Jordan.
7.2Micah's prophecy fits Christ, not Zerubbabel; early testimonies speak of his benefits, later ones of his divinity; Herod's secret inquiry was folly; the star appeared long before the birth and hid so that the magi would ask the Jews.
7.4The star led the magi to the very child and stood over him, confirming their faith; their gifts refute Marcion (Christ truly in the flesh) and Paul of Samosata (not a mere man); the magi's precedence over the Jews foreshadowed the Gentiles' faith.
7.5Moral section of Homily 7: Christians should leave worldly ways as the magi left Persia; unworthy communicants are like Herod; we should offer gold to Christ in the poor, sick, and imprisoned, yet many will not cross a street to church but run to the theater.
7.6Preferring the theater's naked swimming women to the eucharistic 'spring' is spiritual shipwreck, worse than Pharaoh's drowning; spectators sin by desire even without the act; Chrysostom sends men to learn from their wives, and even from the ant.
7.7Closing exhortation of Homily 7: Christ's command against lustful looking binds married laymen as much as monks; husbands owe their wives the same chastity they demand of them; Chrysostom threatens a sharper sermon until the theater is abandoned.
8.1Homily 8 opens with Matt 2:11–14: the magi, moved by the star and inner illumination, worshiped a poor child as God with symbolic gifts; they and Joseph obeyed without questioning; Christ fled rather than show his power, lest his incarnation seem unreal.
8.2God's deceiving of Herod, like his despoiling of Egypt, displays his power; the flight to Egypt fulfills Hos 11:1, signals the conversion of Egypt and Babylon, and teaches that spiritual service brings trials; God alternates joys and dangers; prophecy often finds fulfillment in later persons.
8.4Hos 11:1 is truly fulfilled in Christ, the natural Son, not in idolatrous Israel; Christ's stay in Egypt sanctified it, and now the Egyptian desert, once the home of sorcery, shines with monks and virgins, women contending as bravely as men.
8.5Closing exhortation of Homily 8: Egypt, once worshiping cats and onions, now has monks who work with their hands to feed the poor and shame wealthy Christians; Antony's Life proves the truth of the faith; no birthplace or ancestry excuses us from virtue.
9.1Homily 9 opens with Matt 2:16: Herod's rage against the innocents; Chrysostom answers those who charge God with injustice by comparing the guards killed after Peter's escape: the cause was the tyrant's cruelty, not Christ.
9.2No one is truly wronged: injustice suffered is reckoned for remission of sins or for reward, as with David and Lazarus; the innocents lost nothing and God would not have taken them had they been destined for greatness; Herod's dreadful death; Jer 31:15 shows God foreknew; God permits without causing, and works through opposites.
9.4Archelaus's reign explains the move to Nazareth; Chrysostom harmonizes Matthew with Luke (the return to Nazareth after the purification came before the flight); 'he shall be called a Nazarene' comes from lost prophetic books; Christ's lowly origins rebuke human pride.
9.5Earthly homeland and noble descent count for nothing, as Scripture shows (the patriarchs seeking a better country; Samuel's and Moses' sons; Esau; Israel); only virtue matters; wealth, which bars the way to heaven, should be despised, as the rich man's poverty in Hades shows.
9.6Closing exhortation of Homily 9: hoarded wealth invites famine, murder, and plots; love of mammon enslaves and blinds, as with the foolish virgins and Judas; only love of heaven frees us from it.
10.1Homily 10 opens with Matt 3:1–2: 'in those days' is an indefinite phrase; Christ was baptized at thirty after fulfilling the whole law; John's baptism did not remit sins but led the self-righteous Jews to acknowledge their sins and seek Christ's remission, and gathered crowds to witness his manifestation.
10.3John came from the wilderness as Isaiah foretold, preparing the way rather than giving remission; Luke's fuller quotation of Isa 40 figures the humbling of the proud, the ease of grace, and salvation for all flesh; Matthew adds the detail of John's dress.
10.4John's ascetic life in the wilderness from childhood recalled Elijah and anticipated freedom from the curse; his hair garment taught detachment, unlike the vain Cynic philosophers; his belt was the dress of active saints; Christ praised his rejection of soft clothing.
10.5If John, the greatest of the prophets, lived so austerely, our luxury is inexcusable; his preaching of heaven, not of earthly wars, drew all Judea to confession; now is the time of confession for catechumens and baptized alike, for the judgment is near.
10.6The end comes when the Gospel has been preached to all, as testimony against unbelievers; we must wake from present dreams and repent by doing the opposite of our sins; peace with God must be pursued by cutting off anger and excess.
10.7Closing exhortation of Homily 10: persevere in prayer, for God delays and permits trials to draw us to himself, as parents frighten wandering children back to their arms; the saints shone in trials; bear afflictions with thanksgiving.
11.1Homily 11 opens with Matt 3:7: the Pharisees came to John with hostile intent and did not truly believe; John, knowing their hearts, rebuked their pride in ancestry, mixing praise with rebuke, and first spoke to them of the wrath to come.
11.4'Brood of vipers' fits their parricidal history; John demands fruits of repentance and forbids trust in Abraham, since God can raise children from stones as from Sarah's womb; the axe at the root threatens without despair; bearing fruit needs only the will, and Christ's baptism with the Spirit and fire gives every grace.
11.5John speaks of fire to recall Israel's theophanies; he first names the gift of the Spirit, then the Lamb who takes away sin; to keep the hearers from slackness he adds the winnowing fork and unquenchable fire, and the fulfilled promise of the Spirit guarantees the threatened judgment.
11.6The Spirit's visible gift makes the coming judgment credible; baptism is not enough without virtue, for after baptism the winnowing fork divides believers; John spoke of the Spirit rather than miracles because that gift includes all the blessings and points to what could not yet be seen.
11.7While on the threshing floor we can still change from chaff to wheat; humility, not display, survives the fire; almsgiving escapes the unquenchable fire, and faith without life will not save; Chrysostom laments that hearers carry home blank tablets, letting the devil overwrite his teaching.
11.8Closing exhortation of Homily 11: learn virtue like children learning letters, one at a time, beginning at home with not swearing and not insulting, practicing with one's wife and household and imposing penances on oneself, until virtue becomes second nature.
12.1Homily 12 opens with Matt 3:13–16: the Master comes to be baptized by the servant; John, who called him the sinless Lamb, protests; Christ's 'it is fitting now to fulfill all righteousness' means completing the whole law so as to lift its curse.
12.2The opened heavens, the descending Spirit, and the voice showed that Christ, not John, was the beloved Son; unbelief despite such signs is no charge against God, as Isaiah's vineyard song shows; the visible signs at the beginning teach that at every baptism heaven opens and the Spirit comes.
12.3The Spirit appeared as a dove for gentleness and to recall the dove of the flood, bringing adoption instead of an olive leaf; it took a form, not a nature, so is not inferior to Christ; Christian baptism, unlike John's, gives the Spirit and makes us sons of God, so we must live as citizens of heaven and store our treasure there.
12.5Closing exhortation of Homily 12: Christians who build mansions and buy estates contradict their claim to be bound for heaven and confirm pagans in worldliness; as salt and light they will be judged for others' ruin; love of money must be broken.
13.1Christ is led by the Spirit into the wilderness after his baptism to teach the baptized that temptation follows grace, that it should not be sought, and that fasting is the weapon against the devil.
13.2Christ fasts forty days, no more, to avoid making the incarnation incredible, and answers the devil’s first temptation, which played on his hunger and flattered him as Son of God, with Scripture.
13.3Christ refuses the second temptation, exposing the devil’s misuse of the psalm, and dismisses him at the third when he claims the kingdoms of the world as his own.
13.4The three temptations sum up all temptation (belly, vainglory, greed), the devil works also through people, and as with Job he uses both wealth and poverty, but is overcome by refusing him in deed as well as word.
13.5The faithful must reject harmful counsel even from those closest to them, and the reality of future judgment is defended against those who live for the present, from the demons’ confessions, God’s justice, and his providence.
14.1Christ withdraws to Galilee after John’s arrest, teaching us not to rush into danger, fulfils Isaiah’s prophecy of light for Galilee of the Gentiles, and begins preaching only after John has borne his witness.
14.2The call of Peter and Andrew by the sea is a second call after John’s account, and their immediate obedience, faith, and honest poverty are held up as examples.
14.3As God has always confirmed a new way of life with signs, Christ confirms his preaching with healings, and his hearers are urged to seek from him the healing of the soul, which is the root of bodily ills.
14.4The sinner must feel and confess his sins before the judgment while there is time, and the rich in particular are shown to be prisoners bound by the love of money.
15.1Christ withdraws to the mountain to teach, speaking to the disciples but for all, and begins with the blessedness of the poor in spirit, that is, those who humble themselves by choice.
15.2Humility is the foundation of the new life because pride is the root of all evil; then those who mourn for sin, the meek, and those who hunger for righteousness are called blessed, with rewards both present and to come.
15.4The beatitudes on those who hunger for righteousness, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, and the persecuted are expounded, with the greatness of their rewards.
15.5Being ill spoken of is blessed only when it is false and for Christ’s sake; all the beatitudes lead to the kingdom; the disciples are consoled by the prophets’ example, and slander is shown to be harder to bear than danger.
15.6The beatitudes form a golden chain leading to endurance under slander, and the disciples are called the salt of the earth because the salvation of the whole world will depend on their virtue.
15.7Salt that loses its savor is worthless, so teachers must not fear slander but hypocrisy, and as the light of the world they cannot be hidden and must live so that God is glorified.
15.8Virtue cannot be hidden and will be admired even by those who slander it, and Christians are urged to live so that no one has a just reason to speak ill of them, as Nebuchadnezzar came to praise the three youths.
15.9Christians must shine by their lives, avoid the greed and vainglory that bring reproach on the faith, look to God as debtor for their alms, make peace between those who quarrel in public, and forgive their debtors.
16.1Christ declares that he has not come to destroy the law or the prophets in order to forestall the suspicion that his higher commands abolished the old law, just as he mixed humble words and prayers with acts of authority.
16.2Christ left the boldest statements about his divinity and creative work to his disciples out of condescension to his hearers, and he fulfilled the prophets by his deeds and the law by keeping it and by enabling believers to fulfil it through faith.
16.3The new commandments intensify and fulfil the old law rather than abolish it; the Old Testament is good and akin to the New, though less perfect, and Christ, legislating with his own authority, begins with anger as the root of murder.
16.6Forbidding anger safeguards the law against murder; against the Manichees the law of an eye for an eye is shown to be an act of mercy and both covenants to have one lawgiver; anger is permitted only for others’ good, and even small insults are forbidden.
16.8Small insults lead to enmity and murder, so Christ graduates the punishments for anger, “raca”, and “fool” to protect love, which God values above all and whose loss roots every wickedness.
16.9Christ puts reconciliation with a brother before the offering of a gift at the altar, applies this to prayer and alms, and urges settling with an adversary quickly before the matter reaches the judge.
16.11The adversary is taken to be an earthly opponent and the threat of court and prison a deterrent from present things; virtue becomes light when done for Christ, who fights with us, as with the three youths in the furnace.
17.1Christ extends the commandment against adultery to the lustful look, which kindles desire and leads to the deed, while permitting a chaste looking and love for one’s own wife; the warning applies equally to women who make themselves objects of desire.
17.3Plucking out the offending eye means cutting off friends or relatives who lead us into sin, which serves both parties; the theater is condemned, and the next lemma on divorce is introduced.
17.4The Mosaic certificate of divorce was a concession to prevent worse crimes; Christ, having removed anger, forbids putting away a wife except for sexual immorality, makes the man who does so responsible for her adultery, and closes remarriage to the woman put away; he then turns to oaths.
17.5Christ forbids oaths by heaven, earth, Jerusalem, or one’s head because all belong to God, rejects excuses of compulsion, and teaches that the oath was a concession to past weakness, as weaning shows that the breast, once good, is outgrown.
17.6The concessions of the old law were not from the devil but a form of nurture now outgrown, as the same act can be good or bad according to time and purpose; Christians must exceed the old righteousness, though many fall short of it.
17.7The habit of swearing can be overcome easily by practice and the watchfulness of one’s household; Chrysostom refuses applause in place of obedience, threatens to bar persistent swearers from the mysteries, and warns by the example of Eli.
18.1The law of retaliation was a wise concession that restrained violence, but Christ, transferring blame to the evil one, teaches us to overcome evil by suffering it and to offer the other cheek.
18.2Bearing a blow and yielding the cloak in a lawsuit disarm the aggressor and win him over, and the one who lives so will not be left naked.
18.3Going naked for virtue is no shame; yielding more than is demanded teaches the aggressor philosophy; the second mile, giving and lending, and love of enemies lead step by step to the summit of virtue.
18.4Love and prayer for enemies are the ninth and highest step of a ladder of virtue whose reward is likeness to God; Christ’s own forgiveness on the cross makes it possible, and the angry man is to be pitied as one sick, while the whole sermon is shown to uproot anger, desire, and greed.
18.6Praying for persecutors crowns the commands; Christ uses the rewards more than threats, shaming his hearers by comparison with tax collectors and Gentiles, and Christians are urged to greet their enemies first.
19.1Christ forbids almsgiving done to be seen, judging the intention rather than the outward act, and mocks the hypocrites who trumpet their alms while seeking their own glory.
19.2Alms are to be given in such secrecy that the left hand does not know, with God as spectator and future rewarder before the world; the hypocrites who pray in public to be seen already have their reward.
19.3Prayer in church must also be free of display and noise, joining the angels’ worship; then the Lord’s Prayer is expounded: God as common Father, the hallowing of his name by our lives, the longing for his kingdom, his will done on earth as in heaven, bread for the day, and the forgiveness of sins after baptism.
19.6Forgiveness of others is singled out after the prayer because it makes us masters of our own judgment; the last petitions are expounded, the devil being the evil one and God the King to whom all power belongs; and the hearers are made aware of the many sins they commit even in church.
19.11Forgiving enemies is the easiest way to the remission of sins, while praying against them insults God and turns the tongue into a beast’s teeth; Chrysostom rebukes the noise of his congregation during the reading of Scripture and urges reconciliation.
20.1Christ forbids fasting for show, which some Christians outdo the hypocrites in by feigning fasts; anointing the head means hiding the fast, as Christ himself fasted unseen, and the actor’s glory lasts only while the theater sits.
20.2One who does virtue for spectators insults virtue itself; then, having uprooted vainglory, the root of avarice, Christ gradually teaches contempt for money, warning against treasure on earth exposed to moth and thieves.
20.3Treasure on earth is lost to moth and thieves and enslaves the heart; the single eye that lights the body stands for the mind, which avarice blinds, darkening the whole life.
20.4Avarice enslaves the mind, a worse fate than prison, and robs the rich of the very pleasure and security they seek; darkened by it, they fear imaginary dangers and are soft in everything except the service of money.
20.5The rich, like rope dancers, dare everything for money and nothing for virtue, blinded doubly; the love of money is not true desire but slavery, and the only safe treasure is one deposited in heaven, which is also a seed bearing deathless fruit.
20.6Men labor for an earthly future they will not enjoy yet complain of waiting for heavenly reward; the end is near, as the signs show and the days of Noah and Sodom warn, so oil must be gathered now.
21.1No one can serve God and mammon, which enslaves its lovers as Job, its master, was not enslaved; then Christ shows that freedom from anxiety is possible, from God’s gift of life and body and from the birds, who are fed without care.
21.4Many still live the apostolic life of complete renunciation, but Chrysostom asks his hearers for now only to give up greed and luxury and to give alms generously, as a first step toward the summit.
22.1The lilies, mere grass thrown into the oven, are clothed more gloriously than Solomon, so God will much more clothe those he values above all creation; the Father who made human nature needy knows its needs and will provide, and anxiety for these things is the mark of the Gentiles.
22.3Anxiety gains nothing, since God provides; we must seek the kingdom first and the rest is added; tomorrow’s trouble is not to be added to today’s; delay of judgment should be used for repentance, as Manasseh’s case shows.
22.5No sin is beyond the power of repentance and Christ’s grace, but God saves only the willing; persistent prayer, like that of the Syrophoenician woman, the importunate friend, the widow, and the prodigal son, is never refused.
22.6God’s love is roused by the smallest spark of repentance and pours out its gifts to those who ask continually, so Christians, though sinning daily, should never despair but always come to him in prayer.
23.1Chrysostom explains that “judge not” does not forbid reproof and correction, which Scripture commands, but forbids those full of great sins from harshly condemning others for small ones.
23.2Correcting a sinner is right if done as a physician, not an enemy; Christ calls the harsh judge who ignores his own great sins a hypocrite.
23.3The dogs and swine are the incurably impious and licentious, to whom sacred teaching is not to be exposed, which is why the mysteries are celebrated behind shut doors; Christ then turns to prayer.
23.4Christ makes his commands easy by adding persevering prayer for the right things, sums up virtue in the golden rule, and shows that even the narrow way is easy because it passes and ends in life.
23.6Calling the way narrow makes us watchful; the false prophets are hypocrites of corrupt life wearing a mask of virtue, and are to be guarded against.
23.7The false prophets are known by their fruits, since a bad man bears no good fruit while he remains bad; the loss of the kingdom is a punishment worse than hell itself.
23.8No loss is so great as falling from the glory of Christ; at the judgment he will mention not his countless benefits but only the sin, showing his gentleness even then.
23.9The pursuits of this life are children’s games with a punishment attached; the almsgiver and the patient man are shown to be far greater than the rich man and the man in power.
24.1Christ requires doing the Father’s will, not only professing faith, and quietly reveals himself as the judge who will reject even those who worked miracles without a good life.
24.4Gifts and miracles do not save without a good life, since God has given them even to the unworthy; the one who does Christ’s words stands like a house on the rock, safe from all storms, while wickedness is weak even when it holds power.
25.1The crowds marvel at Christ’s authority, which he confirms by cleansing the leper with “I will” and a touch; sending him to the priest honors the law, and the homily closes on thanksgiving, the Eucharist, and humility.
26.1Christ offers of his own accord to go to the centurion’s house so that the man’s faith and humility may be revealed; as with the leper, he confirms the centurion’s belief in his authority by marveling at it.
26.2Unlike Martha, the centurion believed Christ acts by his own authority, and is rewarded with the kingdom; Chrysostom harmonizes Matthew and Luke, explaining the elders’ embassy as Jewish flattery.
26.3The two Gospel accounts complement each other; the centurion, though a man of rank, humbly asks only for a word, and is honored with the kingdom, while the leper too was praised in his own way.
26.4The centurion grasped that Christ commands death and life as a master commands soldiers; his faith becomes a prophecy of the Gentiles entering the kingdom while the sons of the kingdom are cast out.
26.5No one standing should be confident and no one fallen despair, against the Manichaean claim that wickedness cannot change; David’s adultery and murder are set out in full to show the greatness of his recovery.
26.7David is admirable because, after so grave a fall late in a glorious life, he rose at once and repented so fully that God honored him even after death; his example should produce fear, not carelessness.
27.1Christ heals Peter’s mother-in-law at once and completely in the humble house of a fisherman, then heals many in the evening, fulfilling Isaiah’s word that he took our infirmities.
27.2Most diseases spring from sin; Christ sends the crowds away to avoid display, and answers the scribe who would follow him for gain by exposing his purpose without shaming him.
27.3Christ everywhere answers the purpose behind a request; he forbids the disciple to go and bury his father because nothing may come before heavenly things, and the dead, an unbeliever, would not lack burial.
27.4Nothing is to be put before spiritual things; the sinner living in luxury is a corpse worse than the dead, and his friends must bring him to Jesus as Lazarus’s sisters did, until he is raised.
28.1Christ takes only the disciples into the storm to train them; he sleeps so that their fear may make them feel the miracle, rebukes their little faith before calming the sea, and the calm reveals him as God.
28.2Christ calms the sea as Master, not as servant like Moses; the demons, tormented by his presence, proclaim his Godhead, and Chrysostom refutes the belief that the souls of the dead become demons.
28.3The souls of the dead do not wander on earth but are led away to await the judgment; Christ let the demons enter the swine to show their malice, the limits God sets on them, and his own power.
28.4The licentious and the covetous are worse than the demoniacs among the tombs; the covetous man, a monster in his desires, can be freed only by seeing how his greed brings him loss even in money.
29.1In healing the paralytic Christ first forgives his sins and then reveals the scribes’ secret thoughts, proving by deeds what they themselves said belongs to God alone, and so showing his equality with the Father.
29.3Christ heals soul and body and does not rebuke the slow crowds; so we must correct blasphemers and enemies of the truth with gentleness, as God himself does, and not with anger.
30.1Christ calls Matthew straight from the tax office at the moment he knew he would obey; the evangelists’ frankness about their lowly trades and the shame of the cross shows that they wrote for truth, not display.
30.2Christ dines with Matthew and the tax collectors to heal them, as a physician bears with the sick; he answers the Pharisees from common reason and from Scripture, “I desire mercy and not sacrifice.”
30.3Christ answers the Pharisees and John’s disciples on fasting with gentleness, calling himself the bridegroom and sparing the weak disciples heavy commands; so too a husband should correct a wife fond of cosmetics little by little and gently.
31.1The ruler of the synagogue asks Christ to come and lay his hand on his dead daughter; on the way the woman with the flow of blood, ashamed of her uncleanness, is healed by touching his garment, and Christ brings her into the open for her sake and for the ruler’s.
31.2Christ delays so that the girl’s death may be certain and her raising undeniable; he praises the woman’s faith, and at the ruler’s house he calls death sleep, teaching the disciples not to fear it.
31.3Christ raises the girl with her parents as witnesses and has her fed, proving both death and resurrection; Christians must therefore not mourn their dead like pagans, still less hire pagan mourners, for death is sleep and a calm harbor.
31.4Excessive mourning shames the dead, scandalizes unbelievers and contradicts the prayers offered for the departed; the property of the dead should be given in alms on their behalf, and Christ’s death and resurrection forbid lament.
31.5The dead child has been freed from the evils of life and will be received back in glory; the bereaved, and the widow, are to bear their loss with philosophy, as having returned a deposit to God.
32.1Christ heals the two blind men privately after drawing from them a confession of his power and lordship, and charges them to silence; he then frees a mute demoniac, and the crowds declare that nothing like it was ever seen in Israel.
32.2The Pharisees’ slander is self-refuting, for Christ does what no demon would; moved by compassion he sends the Twelve to the lost sheep of Israel, empowered to heal, to preach the kingdom, and to take nothing, since the laborer deserves his food.
32.4The apostles are to stay only with the worthy and not move from house to house, to give their peace as a blessing, and to go without possessions, so that their virtue may commend them even before their signs.
32.6The peace the apostles brought is given now by the one who presides in church; the congregation must receive it and the preacher’s words with attention and love, not with chatter and secret slander.
32.7The church has become a marketplace of chatter; Chrysostom asks for love, since all share one table and one cup, and teaches that God stopped the signs because virtue, not miracles, is the true proof and health of the soul.
32.8Virtue is greater than miracles, as Paul and Christ teach; the Christian who turns to almsgiving, leaves the theater, guards his eyes and sings psalms works the true signs.
32.10The closing doxology of the homily.
33.1Having freed the apostles from care, Christ foretells their sufferings and sends them as sheep among wolves, to conquer by gentleness and innocence through the power of the one who sends them.
33.2Christ shows his power by sending the apostles as sheep and doves, joining serpent-like wisdom that guards the faith to dove-like innocence that never retaliates; he foretells councils, kings, and family betrayals, and consoles them with his name, the Spirit, and endurance to the end.
33.4The pagan philosophers and generals are nothing beside the twelve fishermen, who conquered the world and the demons by suffering and changed their enemies; in the mission some things are Christ’s gift and some the apostles’ own virtue.
33.5Christ requires endurance to the end; the apostles, accused before tyrants as destroyers of the world, overcame by endurance, while Christians now, under pious emperors and in peace, grow soft.
33.6Christians must train in peace like athletes so as to be ready for persecution; Job, trained in contempt of wealth, care for his children and chastity, bore not only his visible losses but also harder unseen trials.
33.7If people now, with all the hopes of the Gospel, despair over the loss of a little gold, Job’s endurance deserves countless crowns.
33.11Job, resisting even his wife’s pitiful pleading, was not less than the apostles, for he suffered without knowing that it was for God’s sake; Christians who live under grace should imitate his courage and gentleness.
34.1Christ allows the apostles to flee persecution in this first mission, promising that he will overtake them before they have gone through the cities of Israel, and so gives them a breathing space after his warnings.
34.4Christ consoles the apostles against slander by his own sharing in it and by the promise that time will reveal the truth; he bids them preach boldly, fear only him who can destroy soul and body, trust his providence, and confess him; the corruption of bodies after death is shown to be a benefit.
34.5If bodies did not decay the cities would be full of corpses and no one would care for the soul; true beauty belongs to the soul, which colors the body even in life, and is the beauty Christians should seek.
35.1Chrysostom explains Christ’s “sword” and the division of families (Matt 10:34–38) as the cutting off of the diseased part so that heaven may be joined to the better, and shows that the Old Testament teaches the same.
35.2Christ asks his disciples to hate even their own lives and promises rich rewards to those who receive them, even for a cup of cold water; Chrysostom then rebukes those who give to entertainers but abuse the poor as idle.
35.4Paul’s “if anyone will not work, let him not eat” was addressed to the idle, not to the givers, who are told not to grow weary in doing good; the poor should not be insulted for their importunity.
35.5Chrysostom shows that the rich, who rage at servants over a small delay, are more shameless than the poor, and urges that alms be given gently, even in person, since God himself sends the poor.
36.1Chrysostom shows that John the Baptist, who had borne such clear witness to Christ, cannot have asked “Are you he who comes?” out of doubt, and begins to explain that the question was for his jealous disciples.
36.2John sent his jealous disciples to learn from Christ’s works who he was; Chrysostom rejects the view that John did not know of the passion or of a preaching in Hades, insists that there is no repentance after death, and warns his hearers who partake of the mysteries unworthily.
37.1Christ defends John before the crowds, who might suspect him of fickleness after his question: John was no reed shaken by the wind nor a man softened by luxury, as the wilderness, his clothing and his prison show.
37.2Christ shows John to be more than a prophet, the messenger riding nearest the King, the greatest of those born of women; yet, so that John may not be preferred to him, he adds that the “less,” meaning himself, is greater in the kingdom of heaven.
37.3Christ is not a mere man as John is; John is the Elijah who was to come, and the parable of the children in the marketplace shows that John’s austerity and Christ’s eating with sinners were two ways toward the same end.
37.4The Jews found fault both with John’s fasting and with Christ’s eating and drinking, so wisdom is justified; Christ then reproaches Chorazin, Bethsaida and Capernaum as worse than Tyre, Sidon and Sodom.
37.5The threat against the cities applies also to Christians who shut their doors to strangers and their ears to the apostles; Chrysostom begins his attack on the theater, whose shameful songs defile the ears of the soul.
37.6Chrysostom describes the lewdness of the theater and argues that it overturns marriages, makes adulterers and stirs up riots, so that those who attend it, not those who would close it, overturn the city.
37.7The theater breeds sorcery, licentiousness and the ruin of others, for which spectators share the blame; Christians should find their pleasure in gardens, martyrs’ shrines, wife and children, and flee the theater as Joseph fled Potiphar’s wife.
38.1Chrysostom lists the ways Christ has drawn the people to faith, and explains his thanksgiving that the Father hid these things from the wise and revealed them to babes as joy for those who believed, not at the loss of others.
38.2Christ explains that all things are delivered to him by the Father and that he alone knows the Father as the Father knows him; he then calls the weary to his kind yoke and light burden, which is lighter than the burden of sin.
38.4Virtue’s yoke is light, as the joy of the voluntarily poor and of the martyrs shows, while covetousness, anger and love of the body weigh the soul down; Chrysostom urges his hearers to take up Christ’s yoke.
39.1Christ defends his hungry disciples who plucked grain on the sabbath by the example of David eating the loaves of the presentation, which the priest gave him.
39.2Christ’s second answer, that the priests in the temple profane the sabbath and are guiltless, shows that the law itself sets the sabbath aside, so that what the disciples did is no sin at all.
39.4The priests are guiltless by law, and Christ, Lord of the temple and of the sabbath, is greater; the sabbath trained Israel for a time, but Christians keep a spiritual feast continually and should strive beyond what is commanded.
40.1Christ heals the withered hand on the sabbath, answering the Pharisees’ hostile question with the example of the sheep in the pit; Chrysostom reviews how he defended each breach of the sabbath, while the Pharisees only grow worse.
40.2The Pharisees’ envy drives them to plot against Christ, who withdraws in meekness as Isaiah foretold; when he heals the blind and dumb demoniac they call it the work of Beelzebul, and Chrysostom begins a moral discourse on envy, the worst of vices.
40.4Envy harms the envious, not the envied, as Cain, Esau and Joseph’s brothers show; Chrysostom rebukes envy in the church, and shows that honors, authority and popular repute are dangers rather than goods to be envied.
40.5The man of popular repute is enslaved to as many masters as the crowd has heads, and pleasure harms the soul more than grief; Christians should flee the glory of the many for the glory that abides.
41.1Christ refutes the charge that he casts out demons by Beelzebul with four answers (the divided kingdom, the exorcisms of their own sons, the binding of the strong man, and “he who is not with me is against me”), then explains why blasphemy against the Spirit is unpardonable; Chrysostom urges his hearers to judge and condemn their own sins now.
42.1Christ answers the Pharisees with the parable of the tree and its fruit: they cannot fault his works yet slander him; their evil words, like those of a brood of vipers, flow from the abundance of an evil heart.
42.2Every idle word will be judged, and we are judged by our own words, not by others’ words about us; Chrysostom shows from David and Saul and from Jacob and Laban that to suffer wrong makes one stronger, and to do wrong weaker.
42.3When David wronged Uriah he became weak, and Joab’s just vengeance brought him only evils; Chrysostom forbids speaking evil of others even truthfully, and urges each to judge his own soul daily before the tribunal of conscience.
42.4Each night, alone on his bed, a Christian should judge his own thoughts and deeds; instead we let evil thoughts defile the soul like adulterers, though even the easy parts of virtue, such as not speaking evil, cost no toil.
43.1When the scribes and Pharisees ask for a sign after so many signs, Christ calls them an evil and adulterous generation and promises only the sign of Jonah, hinting at his resurrection and at the ruin that would come on Jerusalem.
43.2The three days in the heart of the earth prove a real death against Marcion’s denial of the passion; the Ninevites will condemn this generation, for Christ is greater than Jonah in every respect.
43.3The queen of the south will also condemn this generation; the parable of the returning unclean spirit foretells worse calamities for the Jews after AD 70, and warns baptized Christians who relapse; Chrysostom describes the fire of Gehenna and rejects the comfort of being punished with many.
43.5Chrysostom defends preaching about Gehenna as a healing, urges his hearers to live so that pagans see the kingdom in them, and insists that marriage, children, work and city life are no obstacle to virtue.
44.1Christ’s answer to those who told him his mother and brothers were outside does not deny his mother but corrects the vainglory with which they called him away from his teaching, and teaches that kinship with him profits nothing without doing God’s will.
44.2True kinship with Christ, open to men and women alike, is to do the Father’s will, which is more than to have borne him; Christ then goes out and sits by the sea to teach the crowds in parables.
44.3The sower is Christ, who came out to us by taking flesh and sows the word without distinction; the loss of most of the seed comes from the hearers, who, unlike soil, can change; the ways of destruction are various.
44.4We are responsible for the loss of the word, for it is not wealth but the deceitfulness of wealth that chokes it; the good ground bears different measures of fruit, and salvation needs attentive hearing, courage and contempt of riches together.
44.5Luxury is a thorn that chokes the soul and ruins the body more than care does; the throat was made for singing to God and prayer, not for gluttony, and the abused belly punishes the whole body.
45.1Christ tells the disciples that to them it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom; this is a gift, but it does not take away free will, for the others are blind by their own choice, as Isaiah foretold.
45.2Christ’s words show that those who turn can be healed and that sin is not of nature; the disciples are blessed beyond the prophets; the parable allows a hundred, sixty or thirtyfold, so that each can give to Christ in the poor what he can.
45.3Giving a cup of cold water to the poor is like serving Christ as a priest; since Christ asks so little in return for so much, those who neglect the needy deserve the fire prepared for the devil.
46.1The parable of the tares concerns heretics, whom the devil sows beside the truth while the guardians sleep; the master forbids the servants to pull them up, for heretics must not be killed.
46.2The tares are not to be uprooted, so that saints may not be killed with them and so that some may still become wheat, though heretics may be restrained; the mustard seed and the leaven show that the small band of disciples will transform the world.
46.3The apostles were great not because of their signs but because of their contempt for money, glory and worldly affairs; John, Elijah, Job, David and the patriarchs shone by their life, and signs without virtue harm.
46.4Signs exist for the sake of a good life, which is the greater thing; fasting is good but last in the choir of virtues, while love and almsgiving surpass even virginity and make one equal to the apostles.
47.1Christ spoke to the crowds only in parables, as the psalm foretold, to rouse them to ask; the disciples ask privately about the tares, and he explains it as the end of the age, when the angels will gather the wicked out of his kingdom.
47.2Harvest and sowing name different things; the treasure and the pearl teach that the preaching must be preferred to everything, and the net warns that faith without a good life does not save; the scribe of the kingdom brings out old and new, and Chrysostom draws the members of virtue, whose head is humility.
47.4Matthew himself, humble, merciful and courageous, is an image of virtue; almsgiving, the heart of virtue, is necessary for salvation, while hoarded wealth rots the soul and the voluntarily poor are rich beyond kings.
48.1In his own country Christ teaches but does few signs, so as not to increase their envy and condemnation; his townsmen despise him for his humble family, and he answers gently that a prophet is not honored in his own country.
48.2Herod hears of Jesus and, from fear and vanity, thinks him the beheaded John risen; the evangelist recounts John’s imprisonment for rebuking Herod’s marriage to Herodias and his murder at the birthday banquet after the girl’s dance.
48.3Chrysostom explains the law of levirate marriage, which permitted marrying a brother’s widow only when he had died childless, so that Herod’s marriage to his brother’s wife who had a child was unlawful; he condemns the satanic banquet, the dancing at weddings and Herodias as the architect of the murder.
48.4Herodias asks for John’s head on a platter so as to silence his tongue; God permits the murder, crowning John and consoling all who suffer unjustly; Chrysostom warns against rash oaths and shows how sexual immorality breeds murder.
48.5Herodias’ murder only exposed her sin, which is hidden not by further sin but by repentance; the evangelist tells the story without abuse, teaching us not to revile sinners; Chrysostom condemns the banquets of his own day, with their dancers and ill-gotten luxury.
48.6Christ hungers and thirsts in the poor while the rich feast; Chrysostom rebukes those who spend their goods on parasites and buffoons rather than on Christ, who will be gentle as judge to those who share their table with him.
48.7The poor should be fed for love and for Christ’s sake, not for the amusement of their insults; Chrysostom urges the rich to make their table companions helpers in good works and readers of Scripture, so that the house becomes a church.
49.1Christ withdraws after John’s death, heals the crowds that follow him, and leads the slow disciples step by step toward the feeding of the five thousand.
49.2Christ looks up to heaven to show that he is from the Father, multiplies existing bread to refute Marcion and Mani, and the homily turns to almsgiving as the true craft of the rich and against useless luxury such as ornate shoes.
49.5Chrysostom ridicules young men who sew silk into their shoes while Christ goes hungry in the poor, calling the fashion effeminate, cruel, and a device of the devil to turn their eyes from heaven.
49.6Love of finery makes young men petty, greedy, cruel to the poor and vainglorious; Chrysostom asks fathers to train them in small things and prays that the young may be chaste like Joseph.
50.1Christ withdraws to pray in solitude and leaves the disciples in the storm to train their endurance, then comes walking on the sea and lets the fervent Peter walk to him.
50.2Peter sinks through little faith though he is near Christ, the disciples confess Jesus as Son of God, the sick of Gennesaret are healed by touching his fringe, and Chrysostom urges approaching Christ’s body in the Eucharist with faith and a pure heart.
50.3Christ himself gives the Eucharist through the priest as at the Last Supper, so communicants must be free of robbery and enmity, and he is honored not by golden vessels bought by injustice but by care for the poor, who are his body.
50.4Gifts to adorn churches are acceptable, but almsgiving must come first, since Christ hungry, naked and imprisoned in the poor is a truer temple, and almsgiving cleanses sin and opens heaven.
51.1The Jerusalem scribes, guardians of human traditions, accuse the disciples of eating with unwashed hands; Christ answers not by defending the act but by turning on them a greater charge, that their tradition voids God’s command to honor parents.
51.2Christ exposes the Corban practice, by which sons robbed their parents in the name of an offering, as a tradition contrary to God’s law, confirms the charge from Isaiah, and only then, after many proofs of his Godhead, turns to the question of foods.
51.3Christ sets aside the food laws gently, from the nature of things, defends God’s law against the Pharisees’ traditions (against the Manichaean reading of the uprooted plant), rebukes the offended disciples, and teaches that defilement comes from the heart; Chrysostom applies this to worshipers who wash hands but not souls.
51.5One who would not pray with filthy hands should not pray with a tongue soiled by insult and anger; Chrysostom urges that the tongue be cleansed by repentance, bridled, and adorned with gentleness, before approaching the awesome God.
51.6No one can be wronged except by himself: the robber harms himself as a fevered man harms himself by snatching water, so the robbed should pray for the robber, and all should flee love of money, a madness worse than a madman’s sword.
52.1After freeing the disciples from the food laws Christ goes toward Gentile territory, where the Canaanite woman, from a nation once cast out, comes out of her borders and pleads for her daughter, and he at first does not answer her.
52.2The Canaanite woman, rebuffed by silence and called a little dog, turns Christ’s words into her plea with humility and faith, and Christ, who delayed in order to reveal her virtue, praises her great faith and heals her daughter.
52.3The woman’s persistence succeeds where the apostles failed; Christ heals the crowds on the mountain at once to leave the ungrateful without excuse, and Chrysostom resumes his teaching that almsgiving is the best of all crafts.
52.4Every other craft depends on many others, but almsgiving needs only the will, as the widow’s two mites show, and it builds heavenly dwellings, outlasts death, pleads for us before Christ, and holds human life together.
52.5God planted mercy in nature itself, so that mercy is what makes a man a man and like God; but alms given from robbery heal nothing, for the robber must restore many times over, and offering the goods of the poor is like killing a son before his father.
53.1Christ prepares the feeding of the four thousand by stating his own compassion and questioning the disciples, who, though still slow, are rising by degrees; the evangelists honestly record their own failings.
53.2The four thousand are fed with a different number of remnants so the disciples will remember both miracles; Christ refuses the Pharisees a sign from heaven, explaining that his first coming is as physician and the heavenly signs are kept for his coming as judge.
53.3Christ refuses heavenly signs to those who would not believe the lesser ones, rebukes the disciples’ anxiety over bread so as to free them from the food laws, and Chrysostom teaches that every life mixes grief and joy, and that only virtue and a good conscience give lasting joy, especially at death.
54.1At Caesarea Philippi Christ draws from the disciples, beyond the people’s opinions, Peter’s confession that he is the Christ, the Son of the living God, which the Father revealed; he names Peter the rock of the church’s faith and promises him the keys, gifts that show the Son’s equality with the Father.
54.3Christ forbids the disciples to proclaim him as the Christ until after the cross and resurrection, since the faith of the many would otherwise be shaken; Peter, though granted the revelation of the Son, does not yet understand the passion and tries to prevent it.
54.4Christ calls Peter Satan for opposing the passion, which is fitting to him; Chrysostom urges Christians never to be ashamed of the cross, present in baptism, Eucharist and ordination, to sign themselves with it in faith, since it routs demons and will shine at Christ’s coming.
54.5The cross, which saved the world and routs demons, is the Christian’s boast before scoffing pagans; as soldiers of a King who is near to all, Christians can draw near to him by justice and almsgiving, which Isaiah 58 promises he will answer at once.
54.6God’s commands to the merciful are easy, and the prize of Isaiah’s promised “early light” unfolds into all the joys of heaven and deliverance from Gehenna, so no sacrifice should keep us from showing mercy.
55.1After rebuking Peter, Christ teaches that his followers too must be ready to die, but without compulsion: following him means freely denying oneself, as one disowns a stranger, and not sparing the body in trials.
55.2Taking up the cross means being ready daily for a shameful death, and following Christ means suffering for his sake with every virtue; Christ demands this not from harshness but from love, as a father does not spare his son and a general does not keep his soldiers idle.
55.3To save one’s life wrongly is to lose it beyond recovery, for neither the whole world nor any kingdom can buy back a lost soul, as no wealth can cure an incurable body; so all our zeal belongs to the soul.
55.4Those who toil for wealth while neglecting the soul are like slaves in the mines; Christ’s coming in the Father’s glory shows the Son’s one glory and essence with the Father, and his judgment, rewarding each by his deeds, should make us repent more than the Ninevites.
55.5Chrysostom praises the desert monks, who end their one frugal meal with a thanksgiving hymn that recalls the judgment, quotes the hymn, and explains each phrase as teaching trust in God, love for all, spiritual joy and abundance in good works.
55.6The monks’ hymn ends and begins again in doxology like Paul’s letters, thanks God even for food against the Manichaeans, asks for the Spirit and to escape shame at the judgment; Christians in cities and households, like the apostles’ converts and the married prophets, can share their wisdom.
56.1To strengthen the disciples facing death, Christ shows the three leading apostles the glory of his kingdom at the Transfiguration; Moses and Elijah appear to show the difference between servants and Master, and that he neither broke the law nor wrongly claimed equality with the Father.
56.2Moses and Elijah also show Christ’s lordship over the dead and the living, speak of his passion as glory, and model the boldness, poverty and self-sacrifice the apostles must surpass; Peter, still afraid of the passion, wishes to stay on the safe mountain.
56.3Peter’s offer of three tents shows his love for Christ but also his fear and confusion; the Father’s voice from the bright cloud singles out Christ alone as the beloved Son, equal to him and of one will, whom the disciples must obey even when he goes to the cross.
56.4The disciples fell before the glory on the mountain, and Christ bade them keep silence until the resurrection, after which the Spirit and the signs would confirm their preaching; at his second coming he will appear in far greater glory as judge, and only deeds will count.
56.5God asks not hard labors but easy obedience: release from unjust loans and help for the poor; Chrysostom denounces Christians who lend at interest, trading on the poverty of others, and urges them to lend instead to God, who repays a hundredfold.
56.6The poor man’s gratitude for a loan at interest is forced, like Abraham’s yielding of his wife; interest is forbidden by Scripture and despised even by Roman law for senators, it ruins lender and borrower alike, and alms paid from it are unacceptable to God.
57.1Christ resolves the scribes’ teaching that Elijah must come first by distinguishing his two comings: John, called Elijah for sharing his ministry, preceded the first, and Elijah the Tishbite will come before the second, fearful coming to turn the Jews to faith.
57.2Christ pairs each foretelling of his passion with miracles and with John’s fate to console the disciples; he heals the moonstruck boy whom the disciples could not heal, exposing the father’s weak faith and teaching that faith the size of a mustard seed can move mountains.
57.4Fasting joined to prayer drives out demons, gives wings to the soul, and frees from avarice; luxury and drunkenness, the devil’s favorite tools, turn men into worse than swine, yet the fault is in the drunkard, not in God’s gift of wine.
57.5Wine was given for gladness and health, as Paul’s counsel to Timothy shows, but drunkenness makes men worse than animals, wrecks soul and body like a storm-tossed ship, and shuts them out of the kingdom of God.
58.1Christ again foretells his passion and the grieved disciples do not yet grasp the resurrection; asked for the temple tax, he shows Peter that as the King’s own Son he is exempt, yet pays it by a miracle so as not to give offense.
58.2By making the sea pay the tax Christ shows himself Lord of nature and honors Peter, whose humility Mark’s silence shows; when the disciples, jealous of Peter, ask who is greatest, Christ sets a child before them as the pattern of humility needed to enter the kingdom.
58.3The child is a pattern of natural virtue, refuting the Manichaeans; receiving the humble is receiving Christ, and harming them deserves worse than drowning with a millstone; arrogance, the devil’s captivity, makes men pride themselves even on their ancestry, whether noble or humble, though every lineage contains both.
58.4Lineage is an empty name, since every family mixes the humble and the illustrious, and war, sickness and death make no distinction; true nobility is the freedom of soul of John the Baptist and Elijah, whereas the courtier with wealth and rank is more a slave than the slave of a slave, surrounded by masters and rivals.
58.5Worldly honors make masters into enemies and rivals, while among Christians each member shares the joys and griefs of the others; the glory of office adds nothing to body or soul but breeds vice, and only the one freed from passions is truly free and royal.
59.1Christ laments those who cause stumbling because, though he became man to heal them, they remained sick; the necessity of stumbling blocks is foreknowledge, not compulsion, and no one perishes by them except through his own carelessness, as Adam shows.
59.2God did not make Adam or anyone wicked; we ourselves show that sin comes from choice when we blame others only for what they could control, and since men change from good to bad and back, wickedness is not of nature; evil is neither from God nor unbegotten.
59.3Evil is not unbegotten, a blasphemous doctrine, but comes from our willing to disobey God, as everyone’s alternating virtue and vice shows; our blaming and praising of others prove that no one is wicked by necessity, and the “woe” falls only on those wicked by choice.
59.4Cutting off the hand or eye means cutting off harmful friends, which shows that wickedness is of the will; Christ commands honor for the humble, whose angels see the Father’s face, and teaches by the parable of the lost sheep that the Father wills none of them to perish.
59.5Since God rejoices over one lost sheep and did not spare his Son, Christians must spare no effort to save even the humblest brother, like soldiers who fight for their comrades, instead of forming friendships on every ground but piety.
59.6We must not call a brother wicked or give up on him after two warnings, since God never stops exhorting us; Chrysostom rebukes parents who care for possessions rather than the souls of their households, leave their sons unbridled instead of marrying them early to keep them pure, and educate them only for money.
60.1Christ teaches the wronged to reprove the offender privately, then before two or three, then before the church, seeking his healing rather than revenge, and binds the incorrigible; he promises that those who agree in prayer will be heard, though prayer fails when it asks what is harmful, seeks vengeance, or comes from the unrepentant.
60.3Christ’s promise to be among two or three gathered in his name shows him as giver equal with the Father, but it requires friendship whose chief ground is Christ; worldly friendships break under injury, while love for Christ’s sake, like his love for his enemies and executioners, never fails.
61.1On Peter’s question about forgiving seven times, Chrysostom explains “seventy times seven” as limitless forgiveness, introduces the parable of the unforgiving servant, and begins to list God’s benefits to show how great our debt to him is.
61.2Chrysostom lists God’s benefits and then the daily sins of soldiers, tradesmen and landowners, and explains why the king threatened the debtor with sale and then forgave him the whole debt.
61.4The forgiven servant’s cruelty to his fellow servant revokes his own pardon; bearing a grudge is a sword against oneself, and God will not be called the Father of the unforgiving.
61.5Chrysostom urges his hearers to forgive from the heart: the one who wrongs us only harms himself, and Christ, Joseph, Moses, Paul and Stephen show how to love and pray for enemies.
62.1On the Pharisees’ question about divorce, Chrysostom explains Christ’s appeal to creation (one man joined to one woman, one flesh), his answer about Moses’ concession to hardness of heart, the disciples’ objection, and the saying about eunuchs, which he applies to voluntary virginity and not to bodily mutilation.
62.4Chrysostom explains “those to whom it is given” as help given to the willing, then turns to Christ’s blessing of the children, praising the child’s guilelessness, and contrasts Saul’s malice with David’s simplicity.
62.5Saul’s envy ruined him while David’s gentleness spared his persecutor; the love of glory defeats itself and makes a man a slave, so Christians should lay aside such passions and love virtue.
63.1Chrysostom defends the rich young man from the charge of deceit, though calling him a lover of money, and explains “No one is good but God” as a contrast between human goodness and God’s, not a denial of Christ’s goodness.
63.4Christ leads the rich young man up by stages, sets the prize of heavenly treasure before the command to sell all, and teaches that the love of money, which grows by what it gets, can be cured only by giving it up.
64.1On Peter’s “we have left everything,” Chrysostom says Peter asked on behalf of the poor, and explains the promise of twelve thrones by God’s rule in Jeremiah that promises and threats depend on the hearer’s conduct, so that Judas is excluded.
64.4The thrones mean sharing Christ’s glory and condemning unbelieving Israel; leaving wife means preferring godliness, not breaking marriages; the parable of the laborers teaches that late converts can receive the full reward, while faith without a worthy life and even one neglected virtue can shut one out of heaven.
64.5Chrysostom urges almsgiving as the oil that strengthens the soul, and tells his hearers to look to Christ and the saints, not to the rich who give nothing, and to judge themselves rather than others.
65.1Before going up to Jerusalem Christ again predicts his Passion privately to the Twelve; Chrysostom explains why he repeated it, why he told the crowds only obscurely, and how the disciples could both grieve and not understand.
65.2The sons of Zebedee, thinking the kingdom was about to appear, ask for the first seats; Christ turns them from honors to the cup and baptism of suffering, foretelling their martyrdom.
65.3Christ answers that the seats at his right and left are given not by favor but to those whose works make them worthy, since the throne at the Father’s right belongs to the Son alone; he rebukes the ten’s indignation by contrasting Gentile rulers with his own example of service unto death.
65.5True height belongs to the humble, who are free of the passions and honored by choice, while the boaster, who despises men yet craves their honor, is low and easily caught like a bird that flies on the ground.
65.6The devil fell by pride and Pharaoh was humbled by it, while the humble, like Abraham, stand with the angels and are loved by God and men; pride brought mortality on the first man, humility gains what we lack.
66.1The two blind men near Jericho persevere against rebuke and are healed; Christ then sends for the donkey and colt, fulfilling Zechariah and entering Jerusalem openly now that the Passion is near.
66.2The owners’ yielding of the donkey and Christ’s humble mount foreshadow the call of the Gentiles and teach simplicity of life; turning to his hearers, Chrysostom rebukes their stinginess toward Christ in the poor and shows that Antioch’s rich could easily feed all its poor.
66.4Even giving from a tenth of their revenues would let the rich of Antioch feed the poor; they pay the emperor’s taxes under compulsion and should pay God’s first, since the poor are an army praying against the demons on their behalf.
66.5Almsgiving is a tax God collects gently and transfers to heaven as a loan to himself, a better inheritance for one’s children than money, since the giver keeps it too.
67.1Chrysostom treats the cleansing of the temple as a second cleansing, explains the children’s praise as a sign of Christ’s power and a type of the Gentiles, and says the barren fig tree was cursed to show the disciples his power to punish.
67.2Christ meets the question about his authority with the question about John’s baptism, and by the parable of the two sons makes the Jewish leaders condemn themselves; Chrysostom then tells of a famous actress of his own day who became a model of repentance and asceticism.
67.4Neither the sinner should despair nor the virtuous grow careless, since Scripture shows great reversals (Manasseh, Solomon, Judas, Matthew, Paul, Simon), and Christ still bids the paralytic of sin rise and take up his bed.
67.5The labor of repentance and virtue is short and its reward eternal and partly enjoyed even now, while worldly labor brings uncertain, late and short-lived fruit.
68.1In the parable of the wicked tenants Chrysostom sees God’s long care for Israel, their killing of the prophets and of the Son, the unity of the God of both Testaments, and the coming call of the Gentiles; “perhaps they will respect my son” shows what they ought to have done, not ignorance in God.
68.2Chrysostom harmonizes Matthew and Luke on who pronounced the verdict, explains the rejected stone as Christ rejected by Israel’s teachers, the two destructions of falling on it and being crushed, and the leaders’ blindness from love of power and glory.
68.3Contrasting the theater’s bitter pleasures with the monks’ life, Chrysostom describes the monks of the mountains, free of care, like Adam before the fall and like the angels, rising before dawn to sing hymns and pray for a good defense at the judgment, then working for the poor.
68.4Chrysostom contrasts the theater’s choir of harlots, which inflames desire and ruins homes, with the monks’ choir of psalmody, their study of Scripture and their pure speech, and urges his hearers to visit the monks at once and to entrust their affairs to God.
69.1Chrysostom compares the parable of the marriage feast with that of the tenants: it shows God inviting the Jews even after the Son’s death, their excuses and murders, the destruction of Jerusalem under Vespasian and Titus, and the call of the Gentiles, the Jews having been addressed first.
69.2The parable shows the call widened to all comers, but warns believers too: the wedding garment is a life kept clean after the grace of the call, and the man without it is cast into darkness; Chrysostom urges his hearers to adorn the soul rather than the body.
69.3The desert monks wear the true wedding garment and live like soldiers encamped against the devil, with tents in place of houses and a simple table of bread, water and fruit that angels visit.
69.4The monks’ life of mutual service, untroubled evenings and heavenly conversation shows them equal to the angels, while worldly Christians are worse than ants or beasts; Chrysostom urges his hearers to go to the monks and put on the clean garment.
70.1The Pharisees and Herodians, hoping to make Christ either a rebel against Caesar or an enemy of the people, flatter him and ask about the tax; Christ exposes their hypocrisy, showing he knows their secret intent.
70.2Christ answers the tax question from the coin itself, rendering to Caesar what does not harm godliness and to God what is God’s; he then refutes the Sadducees’ story of the seven brothers from Scripture and God’s power, and Chrysostom turns to the monks who already live like the angels, having slain the desires of the belly.
70.4Chrysostom contrasts the monks’ simple table, where the desires of the belly and of lust lie dead, with the luxurious, unjust and degrading banquets of the rich, and urges his hearers to visit the monks and learn their peace.
71.1Christ answers the lawyer with the two great commandments, praises his confession of the one God without denying his own Godhead, and by the question about David’s son proclaims himself Lord; Chrysostom then attacks vainglory, especially in almsgiving, which robs the treasure in heaven.
71.4Almsgiving is a mystery to be done behind closed doors, as the church’s prayers for the possessed, the penitents and the faithful are all prayers for mercy; display defeats even the glory it seeks.
72.1Christ bids the people obey the scribes and Pharisees who sit on Moses’ seat but not imitate their works; Chrysostom explains that “all” means the moral law, that the teachers’ office is to be respected though they are corrupt, and that their hypocrisy and harshness make their guilt greater.
72.2The Pharisees’ vainglory shows in their love of display: broad phylacteries, large fringes, first seats and greetings; Chrysostom explains these customs and laments the evils that love of precedence has brought on the churches.
72.3Christ forbids the disciples to be called Rabbi, father or leader, since God is the true teacher and father and Christ the one leader (which shows the Father and the Son share these titles); humility is the cure, and Chrysostom finds it among the monks, who serve one another with one table and no “mine and yours.”
72.4Among the monks one soul of love removes all ground for pride: they compete to serve, care for the sick and the poor, and are kept humble by manual work and solitude; Chrysostom urges his hearers, who have the examples of Scripture and of living saints, to visit them often.
73.1Chrysostom expounds Christ’s woes on the scribes and Pharisees: devouring widows’ houses under cover of prayer, shutting others out of the kingdom, making proselytes worse than themselves, tithing herbs while neglecting justice, mercy and faith, and cleaning only the outside of the cup.
73.2The gnat and the camel show that bodily purifications are trifles beside mercy, judgment and faith, which cleanse the soul; Christ does not reimpose the legal observances but shows them superfluous, and the image of whitewashed tombs fits many Christians too.
73.3Christians who are temples of God become tombs when they harbor evil desires; Chrysostom rebukes men who come to church to gaze at women and boys, recalls that the partitions between men and women were added only later, and contrasts the women of the apostolic age with those of his own day.
73.4Chrysostom rebukes Christian women for vanity and both spouses for neglecting each other’s virtue, condemns marriages contracted for money, urges men to seek a pious wife rather than a rich one, and rejects the proverb that pleasure is worth choking for, citing Sirach and Proverbs.
74.1Christ’s woe on those who build the prophets’ tombs exposes their pretended condemnation of their fathers: by killing him and his messengers they will fill up their fathers’ measure, and because they learned nothing from earlier punishments their own will be the heaviest.
74.3Christ’s lament over Jerusalem is that of a rejected lover who has tried again and again to gather her; the desolation of her house and the fulfillment of his other predictions guarantee his second coming, when repentance will come too late.
74.4As we spare no expense on sick servants, we should bring our sick souls to the spiritual physicians—Paul, the evangelists, the prophets, Christ—whose remedies for the fever of covetousness (contentment, treasure in heaven, sharing with the needy) cost nothing and make us richer.
75.1Christ foretells the total destruction of the temple and, answering the disciples’ question, warns first of deceivers, the Jewish war and persecutions, assuring them that the gospel will be preached in the whole world before the end of Jerusalem, which the abomination spoken of by Daniel will signal.
75.3The apostles’ success in preaching amid the Jewish war, universal hatred and every kind of danger, like untrained sailors overcoming a fleet in a storm, shows Christ’s power; Josephus records the calamities Christ foretold.
75.4Rehearsing the many kinds of war foretold, all overcome by the preaching, Chrysostom refutes astrological fate, urges honest ignorance over false theories, and explains that God gives wealth to some and only permits it to others until the judgment.
75.5Prosperity in sin increases punishment, as David’s case shows; the same sin, such as sexual immorality, is punished differently according to time, office, wealth, baptism, knowledge, warnings received, place and kind, so that God’s judgment is exact.
76.1The flight from Judea and the unequaled tribulation refer to the Roman siege of Jerusalem, which Josephus, a Jew and no believer, describes as surpassing every calamity, a wrath Chrysostom ascribes to the crime of the cross; the days were cut short lest all the Jews perish.
76.2The days were cut short for the believers among the Jews, and the end of the temple hinted at the end of the law; turning to his second coming, Christ warns against false christs and the Antichrist and describes his sudden, universal appearing, the darkened heavens, the sign of the cross that will convict his crucifiers, and the gathering of the elect.
76.4The angels gather the risen saints and the clouds catch them up; Chrysostom laments that the parables that follow threaten us with the loss of heaven for want of a little effort, and urges his hearers to give to Christ what they must lose anyway, since he repays more than any borrower.
76.5Christ offers himself to us for everything—adornment, armor, food, home, kinship—while worldly glory ends in bones and dust and only our sins survive to be judged; the sufferings of some in this life prove a judgment to come for those who escape here.
77.1The fig tree shows that the coming will follow close upon the tribulation; “this generation” is that of the believers, which nothing will destroy; and Christ’s saying that the Son does not know the day is meant to stop the disciples’ curiosity, not to confess ignorance, since he made the ages and knows the Father.
77.2Claiming to know God’s essence while denying the Son knowledge of the day is absurd; Christ withholds the day for our good, and the examples of Noah, of those taken and left, and of the thief show that he will come suddenly upon a world at ease, so that we must always be ready.
77.3Christ hides the hour of the end and of each death so that we may always be ready; the parable of the faithful and wise servant, whose questions no more prove ignorance than God’s questions in Scripture, applies to teachers, rulers and the rich, who must administer what they have faithfully and wisely for others.
77.4The wicked servant’s “my master delays” comes from his wickedness, not from the hidden day; the rich are stewards of what belongs to the poor and will be punished, like the servant, for spending it on luxury; virtues that benefit one’s neighbor, above all love, surpass those that benefit only oneself.
77.6Love that serves one’s neighbor surpasses even martyrdom, as Paul’s choice to remain and Christ’s charge to Peter show; every husband and wife has a flock to feed, and almsgiving gives prayer and fasting their power, so that no one is saved who does not seek the common good.
78.1The parables of the virgins and the talents, like that of the servants, urge help to one’s neighbor; the foolish virgins, though they mastered the stronger passion, were overcome by the love of money and found no oil when the bridegroom came, because the poor who sell it are found only in this life.
78.2Oil can be bought only from the poor in this life; the foolish virgins’ late eagerness avails as little as the rich man’s in Hades; the parable of the talents condemns those who do not use their gifts for others; and our tongue, which receives the Lord’s flesh, should be made like Christ’s by gentleness and meekness, not like the devil’s by curses and insults.
79.1In the last judgment, set before the whole world, the sheep are distinguished from the goats by their fruitfulness in mercy; the condemned are without excuse, since the requests were light, the one asking was Christ himself in the poor, and every believer in need is his brother.
79.2The blessed are judged by comparison with their fellow servants and receive a kingdom prepared for them from the beginning, the cursed a fire prepared not for them but for the devil, so that both the justice of the sentence and the grace of the reward appear; Christ then foretells his passion at the Passover.
79.3Christ softened the news of his betrayal by joining it to the Passover; the many chief priests show the decay of the Jewish order, and their plot proceeds from anger and blindness; Christ’s love for his crucifiers, whom he made sons of God, should shame us out of envy and revenge.
79.4Mindful of our own debts, we should hasten to forgive and even grieve with those who suffer, as God wills; reconciliation is to be sought first, grudges lead to death, and no wicked man can harm one who lives by Christian philosophy.
80.1The woman who anointed Christ at Bethany, emboldened by his staying with a healed leper, came not for bodily healing but to honor him; he accepted her offering against the disciples’ objection, linked it to his burial, and foretold that it would be told throughout the world.
80.2The woman’s deed is sung throughout the world while the exploits of kings are forgotten; Christ protected her budding faith, as we should not overturn gifts already offered to the church, though gifts not yet made should go to the poor; at that very moment Judas, one of the twelve, went to sell his Master, as the evangelists frankly record.
80.3Judas, though taught daily by Christ, sold him for a little money because he let the love of money grow through carelessness; this unnatural passion makes a man useless and wretched even as a king, while the virtuous poor man, whom no one can harm, is truly rich.
81.1Christ kept the Passover to show that he did not oppose the law, sent the disciples to an unknown host as a sign of his power, and at the table disclosed the betrayal, first indefinitely to give Judas room for repentance, then by the sign of the dish.
81.2Christ’s gentle rebuke of the traitor teaches forbearance; Judas is guilty because he acted from wickedness, though Christ’s wisdom turned his crime to our salvation, and no one is wicked by necessity; the love of money that blinded him is a madness worse than demon possession.
81.4The covetous go about the city naked of virtue, unashamed because so many are like them; they live in a moral desert, are themselves tombs carrying dead souls, wound themselves with cares, and at the judgment will be punished in every parable of Christ.
81.5Right belief does not save the covetous, who are hated even by their own kind; love of money, unlike other passions, cannot be blamed on bodily temperament; life is a sea with a different storm at each age, and only those who resist the passions at each stage reach harbor with spiritual cargo.
82.1Judas partook of the mysteries unchanged; Christ instituted the Eucharist at the Passover, the type giving way to the truth, as the memorial of his death for the forgiveness of sins—a memorial that refutes those who deny his passion—and after foretelling the disciples’ flight promised to meet them in Galilee.
82.3Peter’s confident contradiction was cured by being left to fall, which teaches that virtue needs both human effort and grace; as we trust Christ’s word against our reasoning, so in the Eucharist we trust “this is my body” against our senses, and must approach it with purity and fervor, since Christ himself still consecrates it and feeds us with his own flesh and blood.
82.6Chrysostom charges the deacons who distribute the Eucharist to keep known sinners from the table, whatever their rank, since the unworthy communicant is worse than the possessed, and declares he would rather give his life than give the Lord’s blood to the unworthy, while urging that such sinners be corrected and brought back.
83.1In Gethsemane Christ prays apart, rebukes Peter and the sleeping disciples for their weakness, and by his sorrow, sweat and repeated prayer shows the truth of his humanity, while his “not as I will, but as you will” teaches us to follow God even when nature resists.
83.2Christ went to meet his betrayer to show that his passion was voluntary; Judas’s kiss, trading on his Master’s gentleness, shows the frenzy of covetousness, which tyrannizes even more than lust, while the money it hoards is neither enjoyed nor secure, and only poverty is beyond the reach of every plotter.
83.3The lover of money is grieved by all and finds no pleasure in what he hoards, while the luxurious are slaves of many passions; wealth darkens the mind, and the true adornment of a house is not costly furniture but almsgiving and prayer, which bring Christ in, as with Zacchaeus, Matthew and Cornelius.
84.1Peter’s sword-stroke, rebuked and undone by a miracle of healing, shows the disciples’ zeal and Christ’s gentleness; he had let them carry swords only as a sign of the coming betrayal, and he declines the legions of angels so that the Scriptures may be fulfilled, speaking in lowly terms to suit their fear.
84.2Christ reminds his captors that he taught openly and could not have been taken unwilling; the Sanhedrin, forgoing even the Passover, stages a sham trial, and the high priest forces a verdict of blasphemy, while their public condemnation of him only made the truth of his death plainer; so too defeat borne nobly is the true victory.
84.4The Christian conquers not by doing evil but by suffering it, as martyrs and saints did and as Joseph did when, silent and imprisoned, he overcame both his brothers and the Egyptian woman, a type of Christ condemned in silence.
85.1The mockery of Christ, struck and spat upon and challenged to prophesy, which the evangelists record without shame as his glory and ours; then Peter’s threefold denial before a servant girl, which Mark, Peter’s disciple, reports most exactly.
85.2Mark’s second cock-crow agrees with Matthew; Judas repented only when his sin was complete, and his suicide, the devil’s work, condemns the priests, who in turn are troubled only after the crucifixion, while their “See to it yourself” convicts them.
85.4By disowning Judas’s silver yet pressing on to the crucifixion the priests convicted themselves, and the Field of Blood proclaimed their guilt; alms from plunder insult Christ, and because the faithful do not give, the church has been forced to hold property, turning bishops and priests into estate managers instead of servants of the poor.
86.1Before Pilate Christ, accused of claiming to be king, acknowledges only a heavenly kingship and is otherwise silent; Pilate, impressed and warned by his wife’s dream, tries to release him under the feast-day custom, but is weak, while the chief priests persuade the crowd to ask for Barabbas.
86.2Pilate tries to save Christ by offering him under the feast-day custom, but the crowd, corrupted by the priests, prefers a notorious murderer and calls his blood on themselves and their children; yet Christ did not ratify that curse, but received those of them who repented, while Pilate, weak, scourged him and handed him over.
86.3Passions once admitted are hard to expel, and the devil leads men from small sins to great ones—as with Saul, Cain and Judas—then to despair, and also deceives under a guise of piety, as when wives refuse their husbands for the sake of continence, or men abhor foods or grieve immoderately; Scripture arms us against each of these ways.
87.1The soldiers’ mockery shows the devil at work in them all; Christ was outraged in every part of his body, and the Jewish leaders took every part of his death on themselves; yet the church reads this account aloud to everyone at the Paschal vigil, and Christ is worshiped for stooping so low.
87.4The division of the garments, the vinegar and the taunts at the cross complete Christ’s humiliation, yet the robber confesses him; remembering this and sealing the breast with the cross quenches anger, since insult harms only the insulter, flattery is more dangerous than abuse, and only our own conscience can disgrace us.
88.1The darkness at midday, lasting three hours and so no eclipse, was the promised sign of Jonah and a sign of God’s wrath, given when the mockers had had their fill; Christ’s Hebrew cry from the Psalm shows his honor for the Father, and his loud cry at death shows that he laid down his life by his own authority.
88.2The raising of the saints, the split rocks and the torn veil showed Christ’s power and wrath, and that the way into the true sanctuary was opening, while the centurion and the crowd were moved; the women who stayed to the end, and Joseph who dared to bury him in his own new tomb, show a courage the disciples lacked.
88.3The women’s courage shames men who will not feed Christ in the poor, though to tend the poor on his word alone is a greater proof of reverence than to have fed him in person; Chrysostom will not stop preaching almsgiving while the congregation’s sins leave it unfit to fight Jews, pagans and heretics, and he rebukes the worldly talk that turns the church into a stable.
89.1The leaders’ request for a sealed tomb unwittingly attests Christ’s death, burial and resurrection; the evangelist hides nothing of their slander, and fearful, unlearned, poor and scattered disciples could neither have stolen the body nor invented and preached a resurrection that had not happened.
89.2Christ rose within the three days while his enemies guarded the tomb, so that their precautions proved the resurrection; the angel and then Christ himself send the women, the first witnesses, to the disciples. We may still hold his feet in the mysteries, but women who load themselves with gold while the poor go hungry cannot.
90.1The guards, shaken by the earthquake, became unimpeachable witnesses, and the bribe they took for the story of a theft only confirms the empty tomb: frightened, poor disciples could neither have rolled away the sealed stone nor slipped past so many guards, and would have struck on the first, unguarded night if at all.
90.2The grave cloths left in the myrrh, the bribe and the admission that the body was gone all confirm the resurrection; in Galilee the risen Christ sends the disciples to baptize all nations with the promise of his presence to the end. His commands are easy; it is the love of money, not poverty, that enslaves, and poverty is a safe harbor and a school of self-command.
90.4Poverty is a beautiful maiden and avarice a monster: the saints shone in poverty, its eye and mouth are pure, and the insults and hunger of the poor are shared by Paul and by Christ; Peter was blessed not for healing the lame but for leaving his money, and the hearers should at least spend on the needy and seek no more than they need.

About this work

Author: John Chrysostom
Attribution: authentic · Universally accepted as Chrysostom's; preached at Antioch and taken down by stenographers (so the text is the transcript, not a revised edition).
Standing: Honoured by the Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant traditions. Honoured as a saint or in a church calendar by: Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant.
Older English translation: Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, series 1, vol. 10 (1888) (public domain, at CCEL; for comparison: our translation is made from the original first and checked against it afterwards)
Date: ca. 390 (approximate) · Usually placed in Antioch about 390, before Chrysostom became bishop of Constantinople in 398; some argue for Constantinople.
Written at: Antioch, Syria (probable)
Language: Greek
Genre: homily
Reference system: homily.section (90 homilies; sections numbered within each homily as in Migne PG 57-58; where the numeral is lost in the scans the text sits inside the preceding section)
SBL abbreviation: Hom. Matt.Not yet checked
Clavis: CPG 4424 (not yet checked)
Text from: Frederick Field, ed., Joannis Chrysostomi Homiliae in Matthaeum, 3 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1839), vols. 1-2 (Printed edition in the public domain; OCR transcription of public-domain page images)
Critical editions: J.-P. Migne, ed., Patrologia Graeca 57-58 (Paris, 1862) (cited, not reproduced)

Homilies on the Gospel of Matthew

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About this work