Homilies on the Gospel of Matthew 19.1–19.3

“Take heed not to do your almsgiving before men, to be seen by them.” He now banishes the most tyrannical passion of all, the frenzy and madness for vainglory that arises in those who do right. For at the beginning he said nothing about it; for it was superfluous, before persuading men to do any of their duties, to teach how they must do and pursue them. But when he had led them into philosophy, then he also cleans out the ruin that springs up beside it. For this disease is not born at random, but when we have achieved many of the things commanded. So he had first to plant virtue, and then to remove the passion that injures its fruit. And see where he begins: from fasting and prayer and almsgiving. For in these good deeds above all it is accustomed to make its home. The Pharisee, at any rate, was puffed up from here, saying, “I fast twice a week, I give tithes of …” … making it a display. For since no one else was present, he displayed himself to the tax collector, saying, “I am not like the rest of men, nor like this tax collector.” And see how he began, as though speaking of some wild beast hard to detect and clever at stealing upon one who is not very wakeful: “For take heed,” he says, “of your almsgiving.” So Paul too says to the Philippians, “Beware of the dogs.” For the beast creeps in secretly and blows everything away without a sound, and carries off unperceived all that is within. Since, then, he had spoken much about almsgiving, and had brought God into the middle, who makes his sun rise on the evil and the good, and had urged them to it on every side and persuaded them to flourish in the abundance of their giving, he now removes all that troubles this fair olive tree. That is why he says, “Take heed not to do your almsgiving before men.” For the almsgiving spoken of before is God’s. And having said, “not to do it before men,” he added, “to be seen by them.” And it seems that the same thing is said a second time; but if one attends precisely, it is not the same, but this is one thing and that another, and it has great safety and unspeakable care and forbearance. For it is possible for one who does it before men not to do it to be seen; and again for one who does not do it before them to do it to be seen. That is why he punishes and crowns not simply what is done, but the intention. For if this precision had not been added, it would have made many more hesitant about giving alms, because it is not always possible everywhere to do it unobserved. That is why, freeing you from this necessity, he defines both the loss and the reward not by the outcome of the thing but by the purpose of the doer. For so that you may not say, “What do I suffer if another sees?” he says, “It is not this I seek, but your mind and the manner of what is done.” For he wants to set the soul right and free it from every disease.

Having, then, forbidden doing it for display, and taught the loss that follows, doing it vainly and for nothing, he again raises their spirits by reminding them of the Father and of heaven, so as to strike them not only by the loss but also to shame them by the memory of the one who begot them. “For you have no reward,” he says, “with your Father who is in heaven.” And he did not stop here, but goes on further, producing great aversion by other means too. For as above he put the tax collectors and Gentiles, shaming the imitators by the quality of the persons, so here he puts the hypocrites. “When, then, you give alms,” he says, “do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do.” Not that they had trumpets; but he wants to show their great madness by the wording of this metaphor, mocking them and exposing them in this way. And he rightly called them hypocrites. For the mask was of almsgiving, but the mind of cruelty and inhumanity. For they do it not for the sake of showing mercy to their neighbors, but to enjoy glory themselves; which was the height of cruelty, when another is perishing of hunger, to seek honor and not relieve his misfortune. So it is not giving alms but giving it as one ought, and for this reason, that is sought.

Having, then, mocked them sufficiently and attacked them so as to put the hearer to shame too, he again corrects the mind sick with such things; and having said how one must not do it, he shows in turn how one must do it. How then must one do it? “Do not let your left hand know,” he says, “what your right hand is doing.” Here again he does not hint at hands, but has put it hyperbolically. “For if it is possible,” he says, “not to know even yourself, let this be your earnest aim, if it is possible to escape the notice even of the very hands that serve.” Not, as some say, that we must hide it from perverse men; for here he commanded that it escape the notice of all. Then consider too how great the reward is. For having spoken of the punishment from that source, he shows also the honor from this, pushing them from both sides and leading them to lofty teachings. For he persuades them to know that God is present everywhere, and that our affairs do not stop at the present life, but a more fearful court will receive us from here, and the accounts of all our deeds, and honors and punishments; and that no one doing anything, small or great, will escape notice, even if he seems to escape the notice of men. For all these things he hinted at when he said, “Your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly,” setting up for him a great and august theater, and granting him with great abundance the very thing he desires. “For what do you want?” he says. “Is it not to have some spectators of what is done? See, then, you have them: not angels nor archangels, but the God of all.” And if you desire to have men as spectators too, he does not deprive you of this desire either, at the fitting time, but grants it to you with even greater excess. For now, if you display yourself, you will be able to display yourself to ten or twenty or a hundred men only; but if you are eager now to escape notice, then God himself will proclaim you, with the whole world present. So above all, if you want men to see your good deeds, hide them now, so that then all may behold them with greater honor, God making them manifest and exalting them and proclaiming them before all. For now those who see you will even condemn you as vainglorious; but seeing you crowned, not only will they not condemn you, but all will even admire you. When, then, it is possible both to receive a reward and to reap greater admiration by waiting a little time, consider what folly it is to lose both of these, asking the reward from God, and, while God is watching, calling men to the display of what is done. For if one must make a display, one ought to make it to the Father before all; and especially when the Father is master both of crowning and of penalizing. And yet even if there were no penalty, the one who desires glory ought not to give up this theater and exchange it for that of men. For who is so wretched as, when the king is hastening to come to the spectacle of his good deeds, to let him go and fill his theater with the poor and the beggars? That is why he commands not only not to make a display, but even to be eager to escape notice. For it is not the same not to be eager to appear and to be eager to escape notice.

“And when you pray,” he says, “you shall not be like the hypocrites; for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and at the corners of the streets. Truly I say to you, they have their reward. But you, when you pray, go into your inner room, and having shut your door, pray to your Father who is in secret.” Again he calls these too hypocrites, and very rightly; because, pretending to pray to God, they look around at men, wearing the bearing not of suppliants but of ridiculous men. For the one who is going to make supplication, leaving all, looks to him alone who has the power to grant the request. But if you leave him and go about wandering and casting your eyes everywhere, you will go away with empty hands. For this is what you yourself wanted. That is why he did not say that such men will receive no reward, but that they “have” it; that is, that they will receive it, but from those from whom they themselves desire it. For God does not want this; he himself wished to give the recompense from himself; but they, seeking it from men, would no longer have a right to receive from him for whom they have done nothing. But consider, I beg you, God’s love for mankind, that he promises to give a reward even for the good things he asks of us. Having, then, discredited those who do not use the thing fittingly, both by the place and by the disposition, and having shown them to be very ridiculous, he brings in the best manner of prayer, and again gives the reward, saying, “Go into your inner room.”

“What then,” someone says, “must we not pray in church?” Very much so, but with such a mind. For everywhere God seeks the aim of what is done. For even if you go into your inner room and shut the door and do it for display, the doors are of no use to you. See, at any rate, how precise a qualification he has set here too, saying, “that they may be seen by men.” So even if you shut the doors, he wants you, before shutting the doors, to achieve this: to shut the doors of the mind too. For it is good to be free of vainglory everywhere, but above all in prayer. For if even without this we wander and are carried about, if we enter with this disease too, when shall we hear what we ourselves are saying? And if we who make the request and the entreaty do not hear, how do we expect God to hear? But nevertheless there are some who, after such and so many commands, behave so unseemly in prayer that, even when their body is hidden, they make themselves known to all by their voice, bawling like a rabble, and making themselves ridiculous by their bearing and their voice. Do you not see that in the marketplace too, if someone comes up doing such things and begging with shouting, he will scare off the one he is entreating; but if he comes quietly and with fitting bearing, then he draws the one who is able to grant the favor the more? Let us not, then, make our prayers by the posture of the body or the shouting of the voice, but by the eagerness of the mind; nor with noise and din and for display, so as even to drive away those near us, but with all gentleness and contrition of mind and inward tears. “But you are pained in soul, and cannot help crying out?” And yet it belongs to one greatly pained to pray and entreat in this way, as I said. For Moses too was pained, and prayed in this way, and was heard; that is why God said to him, “Why do you cry to me?” And Hannah again, though her voice was not heard, accomplished all she wished, because her heart was crying out. And Abel prayed not only when silent but even when dead, and his blood sent forth a voice clearer than a trumpet. Groan, then, you too, like that holy man; I do not forbid it. “Rend,” as the prophet commanded, “your heart, and not your garments.” Call on God from the depths; “for out of the depths,” it says, “I have cried to you, O Lord.” Draw up your voice from below, from the heart; make your prayer a mystery. Do you not see that in palaces too all tumult is out of the way, and great silence on every side? You too, then, entering as into a palace, not those on earth but those much more awesome than these, those in the heavens, show great decorum. For you are a fellow dancer with angels, a partner of archangels, and you sing with the seraphim. And all these companies show great good order, singing with great awe that mystical song and the sacred hymns to the King of all, God. Mingle yourself with them, then, when you pray, and emulate their mystical order. For you are not praying to men, but to God, who is present everywhere, who hears even before the voice, who knows the secrets of the mind. If you pray so, you will receive a great reward. “For your Father,” he says, “who sees in secret will reward you openly.” He did not say, “will give you as a favor,” but “will reward you.” For he has made himself your debtor, and has honored you with great honor from this too. For since he is invisible, he wants your prayer too to be such.

Then he tells the very words of the prayer as well. “And when you pray,” he says, “do not babble, as the Gentiles do.” For when he was speaking about almsgiving, he removed only the ruin from vainglory and added nothing more, nor did he say from what one must give alms, for example from just labors and not from robbery or covetousness; for this was fully agreed among all. And he had cleared this away beforehand above, when he called blessed those who hunger for righteousness. But in the case of prayer he adds something more, not babbling. And as there he mocks the hypocrites, so here the Gentiles, everywhere shaming the hearer above all by the meanness of the persons. For since this above all bites and touches most people, to seem to resemble outcast men, he turns them away from it from this side, calling babbling here idle talk; for example, when we ask God for unfitting things, power and glory and getting the better of enemies and abundance of money, and in a word things that do not concern us at all. “For he knows,” he says, “what you need.” Besides this he seems to me to be commanding here not to make our prayers long either; long not in time, but in the number and length of the words. For we must persevere asking for the same things; “continuing steadfastly in prayer,” it says. And he himself, through that example of the widow who bent the pitiless and cruel ruler by the continuance of her pleading, and that of the friend who came at an untimely hour of the night and raised the sleeper from his bed, not because of friendship but because of persistence, legislated nothing other than that all should plead with him continually; he does not, however, bid us come to him composing a prayer of countless lines and simply recite it. For this he hinted at when he said, “They think that they will be heard for their much speaking. For he knows,” he says, “what you need.”

“And if he knows,” someone says, “what we need, why must we pray?” Not to instruct him, but to bend him; to become familiar with him by the continuance of your pleading; to be humbled; to be reminded of [your sins]. “For your Father knows what you need before you ask him.” “Pray, then, like this,” he says: “Our Father who art in heaven.” See how at once he raised up the hearer and reminded him of all the benefit at the very beginning. For he who calls God Father has confessed by this one title forgiveness of sins, removal of punishment, righteousness, sanctification, redemption, adoption, inheritance, brotherhood with the Only-begotten, and the bestowal of the Spirit. For it is not possible to call God Father without having attained all those good things. Doubly, then, he rouses their spirit, both by the dignity of the one called upon and by the greatness of the benefits they have enjoyed. And when he says, “in heaven,” he says this not to shut God up there, but to lead the one who prays away from the earth and to fix him on the high places and the dwellings above. And he teaches us to make our prayer common on behalf of our brothers. For he does not say, “My Father who art in heaven,” but “Our Father,” offering the petitions on behalf of the common body, and nowhere looking to one’s own interest but everywhere to one’s neighbor’s. And by this he both removes enmity, and quells pride, and casts out envy, and brings in love, the mother of all good things, and banishes the inequality of human affairs, and shows great equality of honor between the king and the poor man, if indeed we all share in the greatest and most necessary things. For what harm comes from kinship below, when by that above we are all joined together, and no one has anything more than another, neither the rich than the poor, nor the master than the slave, nor the ruler than the ruled, nor the king than the soldier, nor the philosopher than the barbarian, nor the wise than the unlearned? For he has bestowed one nobility on all, deigning to be called Father of all alike.

Having, then, reminded us of this nobility and of the gift from above and of the equality of honor with our brothers and of love, and having drawn us away from the earth and fixed us on the heavens, let us see what he bids us ask next. Indeed the very word is enough to instill the teaching of all virtue. For he who has called God Father, and a common Father, would rightly show such a way of life as not to appear unworthy of this nobility, and would show zeal equal to the gift. However, he is not content with this, but adds another petition, saying, “Hallowed be thy name.” Worthy of one who calls God Father is the prayer to ask nothing before the Father’s glory, but to count all things second to his praise. For “hallowed be” means “glorified be.” For he has his own glory complete, and remaining always the same; but he bids the one who prays to ask that he be glorified through our life too. This is what he said earlier as well: “Let your light shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven.” For the seraphim too, glorifying him, said thus: “Holy, holy, holy.” So “hallowed be” means “glorified be.” “Grant us,” he says, “to live so purely that through us all may glorify you.” This again belongs to perfect philosophy, to offer to all so blameless a life that each of those who see it gives the praise for it to the Master.

“Thy kingdom come.” And this again is the word of a grateful son: not to be nailed to visible things, nor to think the present things anything great, but to hasten to the Father and to long for the things to come; which comes from a good conscience and a soul freed from earthly affairs. This at any rate Paul too longed for every day; that is why he said, “We ourselves too, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan, awaiting adoption, the redemption of our body.” For he who has this love can neither be puffed up by the good things of this life nor humbled by the painful ones, but, as one dwelling in heaven itself, he has been freed from both kinds of unevenness.

“Thy will be done, as in heaven, so on earth.” Do you see the excellent sequence? For he bade us long for the things to come and hasten to that departure; and until this happens, while we are living here, to be eager meanwhile to show the same way of life as those above. “For we must long for the heavens,” he says, “and the things in the heavens; however, even before heaven he bade us make the earth heaven, and while living on it, as though conducting ourselves there, to do and say everything so as to entreat the Master about these things too.” For nothing prevents you from [emulating] the precision of the powers above because you dwell on earth; but it is possible even while living here to do everything as one already above. What he means, then, is this: as there everything is done without hindrance, and the angels do not obey in some things and disobey in others, but in everything yield and are persuaded (“for they are mighty in strength,” it says, “doing his word”), so grant to us men too not to do your will by halves, but to fulfill everything as you will. Do you see how he taught us to be modest too, showing that virtue is not of our zeal only but also of the grace from above? And again he commanded each of us who pray to take upon himself the care of the whole world. For he did not say, “Thy will be done in me,” or “in us,” but everywhere on earth, so that error may be destroyed and truth planted, all vice cast out and virtue return, and heaven no longer differ from [earth] in this respect. “For if this should come about,” he says, “the things below will not differ from those above, even if they differ in nature, since the earth will show us other angels.”

“Give us this day our daily bread.” What is “daily bread”? That which is for the day. For since he said, “Thy will be done as in heaven, so on earth,” and he was speaking to men clothed with flesh and subject to the necessity of nature, and unable to have the same freedom from passion as the angels, he bids the commands to be performed by us as they too fulfill them, but he also condescends at last to the weakness of nature. “For I demand,” he says, “so great a precision of life, but not freedom from passion; for the tyranny of nature does not permit it, since it needs necessary food.” But see, I beg you, how even in bodily things there is much that is spiritual. For he bade us make our prayer not for money, nor for luxury, nor for costly garments, nor for anything else of the kind, but only for bread, and for bread for the day, so as not to be anxious about tomorrow. That is why he added, “daily bread,” that is, for the day. And he was not content even with this word, but added another after it, saying, “Give us this day,” so that we may not wear ourselves out further with the care of the following day. For why do you endure anxiety about a day whose span you do not know if you will see? This he commanded at more length as he went on, saying, “Do not be anxious about tomorrow.” And he wants us on every side to be unencumbered and winged, yielding to nature only as much as the necessity of need demands of us.

Then, since it happens that we sin even after the washing of regeneration, showing here too his great love for mankind, he bids us approach the God who loves mankind about the forgiveness of sins, and say thus: “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.” Do you see the excess of love for mankind? After the removal of so many evils and the unspeakable greatness of the gift, he again deems those who sin worthy of pardon. For that this prayer belongs to the faithful, both the laws of the church teach and the opening of the prayer. For the uninitiated could not call God Father. If, then, the prayer belongs to the faithful, and they pray asking that their sins be forgiven them, it is clear that the gain of repentance has not been taken away even after the washing. For if he had not wanted to show this, he would not have legislated praying for it. And he who both reminds us of sins, and bids us ask forgiveness, and teaches how we may obtain forgiveness, and makes the road easy in this way, clearly knowing and showing that even after the washing it is possible to wash away our offenses, brought in this law of supplication: by reminding us of our sins persuading us to be modest; by bidding us forgive others freeing us from all grudge-bearing; and by promising in return for this to pardon us too, holding out kind hopes and teaching us to reflect on the unspeakable love of God for mankind.