Homilies on the Gospel of Matthew 35.5

“But nothing,” someone says, “is more impudent than a poor man.” Why, I beseech you? Because he runs after you and cries out? Do you wish then that I show that we are more shameless than they, and exceedingly impudent? Remember now, I pray you, in the season of the fast, how often, when the table was set in the evening, and you called the servant who waited on you, because he walked rather slowly you overturned everything, kicking, insulting, reviling, for a small delay only; and that though you knew well that even if not at once, yet a little later you would enjoy your food. Then yourself, who become a wild beast over nothing, you do not call shameless; but the poor man, who fears and trembles for greater things (for his whole fear is not of delay but of famine), him you will call bold and impudent and shameless and every most shameful name? And how is this not the extreme of shamelessness? But we do not consider these things; for this reason we think them burdensome. Since if we examined our own things and compared them with theirs, we would not have thought them troublesome. Do not then be a bitter judge. For even if you were free of all sins, not even so did the law of God permit you to become a strict examiner of the faults of others. For if the Pharisee perished for this, what defense shall we obtain? If he does not permit those who have done well to examine bitterly the things of others, much less those who have stumbled. Let us not then be cruel, nor harsh, nor without natural affection, nor implacable, nor worse than wild beasts. For I know many who have come to such brutality that through a little sloth they overlook people starving, and say these words: “No servant is with me now; we are far from home; no banker is known to me.” O the cruelty! You promised the greater thing, and you do not accomplish the less? So that you may not walk a little, he is wasting away with hunger? O the insolence! O the pride! For if you had to walk ten stades, ought you to have shrunk from it? Do you not consider that so the reward becomes greater for you? For when you give, you receive a reward for what is given only; but when you also walk yourself, a recompense for this too is laid up for you again. For this is why we admire the patriarch too, that he himself ran to the herd and snatched the calf, and that though he had three hundred and eighteen servants born in his house. But now some are so filled with pride as to do these things through servants and not to be ashamed. “But do you command me to accomplish these things by myself?” he says. “And how shall I not seem vainglorious?” And yet now too you do this through another kind of vainglory, being ashamed to be seen talking with a poor man. But I am not at all exacting about these things; only give, whether you wish to do it by yourself or through another; and do not accuse, do not strike, do not revile. For the one who comes to you needs medicines, not wounds; mercy, not a sword. For tell me, if someone struck by a stone and wounded on the head, leaving all others, ran to your knees streaming with blood, would you have struck him with another stone and added another wound? I for one do not think so; rather you would have tried to set right even that one. Why then do you do the opposite with the poor? Do you not know how much a word can both raise up and cast down? “For a word,” it says, “is better than a gift.” Do you not consider that you are thrusting the sword against yourself, and receiving a more grievous wound, when that man, after being reviled, goes away in silence, groaning and shedding many tears? For he is sent to you by God. Consider then, when you insult him, where you pass the insult on to, when God sends him to you and commands you to give, and you not only do not give, but even insult him when he comes. And if you do not know the excess of the absurdity, consider it in the case of men, and then you will know well the greatness of the sin. For if your servant, ordered by you to go to another servant who held your money and to receive it, not only came back with empty hands, but also insulted, what would you not have done to the one who insulted him? How great a penalty would you not have exacted, since you yourself would then be the one insulted? Reckon this in the case of God too; for he himself sends the poor to us, and it is his things that we give, if indeed we give. But if, besides not giving, we also send them away insulted, consider how many thunderbolts, how many lightnings the thing we do deserves. Reckoning all these things, then, let us both bridle the tongue and cast out inhumanity, and stretch out the hand to almsgiving, and comfort those in need not with money only but also with words, so that we may both escape the punishment for reviling and inherit the kingdom that comes from blessing and almsgiving, by the grace and love for humanity of our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory and the might to the ages of ages. Amen.