Homiliae

A homily of our father among the saints Asterius, bishop of Amaseia, from the Gospel according to Luke, on the rich man and on Lazarus. Our God and Savior does not train people only by negative and doctrinal decrees, so that they hate vice and love virtue, but he also hands down the clear lessons of good conduct through vivid examples, drawing us on by deeds together with words to the understanding of the good and God-loving life. Thus indeed now also, having forewarned us in many places through prophetic and evangelical mouths, and not only through his own voice, to turn away from arrogant and haughty wealth, and to love a humane disposition and poverty with righteousness, in order that he might make the counsel of the good more certain, he confirms his word by practical examples and writes in his narrative the rich man and the poor man, and shows the one's honor-loving enjoyment and the other's afflicted life, and what end the life of both came to, so that by considering the truth through the practices of others we might become prudent judges of our own. There was a certain man who was rich and clothed himself in purple and fine linen. By two brief names the word mocks and ridicules the flabby and immoderate extravagance of those who are badly rich. For the color of purple is costly and elaborate; the use of fine linen is not necessary.

But for those who choose a life of good citizenship and simplicity, it is proper and dear to them to measure the use of necessities by their need, and to flee the rabble of vain vainglory and the manifold manner of living as the mother of vice. And so that we may understand more clearly the power of this very thing that is said, let the first use of garments be discerned, to what extent and by what bounds and sober rules it is to be received and encompassed. What then does the law of the righteous say? God created the sheep with a fleece easy to shear and abounding in wool; take this, shear it, and give the material to the weaving craft; make for yourself a tunic and a cloak, so that you may escape the misery of winter and the harm of the blazing ray. But if you also have need of lighter clothing in the season of summer, God has given the use of linen for a broader enjoyment; and it is very easy for you to obtain from there a seemly covering that both clothes and refreshes by its lightness. And enjoying these things, confess gratitude to the Creator, because he not only made us, but also took thought for our safety with regard to living.

But if, abandoning the sheep and the wool and the necessary provision of the Creator of all things, and living a life of excess in vain fancies and reckless desires, you seek after fine linen and gather the threads of Persian worms, and weave a web of spider's silk, airy and profitless, and going to the purple-dyer pay lavish wages, so that having hunted the murex from the sea you may smear your garment with the blood of the creature—this is the mark of a man who is mad with excess, who misuses his possessions, having nowhere to pour out what is superfluous. And for this reason such a man is rightly scourged, accused by the Gospel as a fool and a womanish man, adorning himself with the ornaments of wretched girls. Others again are lovers of the same vanity in their disposition; or rather, having practiced wickedness to a greater degree, they did not stop the boundaries of their foolish conceit even at the things that have been said, but invented some empty and elaborate weaving, which by the intertwining of the warp with the woof imitates the power of painting and stamps the shapes of all living creatures on their robes, and they fashion for themselves and for their women and children a flowery garment embroidered with countless figures—playing, no longer in earnest—misusing life against the excess of wealth, not using it, legislating in opposition to Paul and fighting against the God-inspired voices, not in letters but in deeds. For the things that he renounced in word, these men hold fast and ratify in deeds. When, therefore, they appear having put them on, they are seen by those who meet them like painted walls.

And indeed children also stand around them, smiling at one another and pointing with their fingers at the depiction on their garments; and they walk along following them, not withdrawing for a long time. There are lions and leopards, bears and bulls and dogs; woods and rocks, and men slaying wild beasts, and all the pursuit of painting imitating nature. For it was necessary, it seems, that not only their walls and houses be adorned, but now also their tunics and the cloaks worn over them. And as many men and women of the wealthy as are more devout, having gathered up the Gospel story, handed it over to the weavers; I mean Christ himself with all his disciples, and each of the wonders as the narrative has it. You will see the marriage of Galilee and the water-jars; the paralytic carrying his bed on his shoulders; the blind man healed by the clay; the woman with the flow of blood taking hold of the fringe; the sinful woman falling at the feet of Jesus; Lazarus returning from the tomb to life. And in doing these things they think they are being pious and are clothing themselves in garments pleasing to God. But if they accept my advice, let them sell those things and honor the living images of God. Do not paint Christ—for the one humility of his incarnation, which he willingly accepted for our sake, is enough for him—but carrying the incorporeal Word noetically in your soul, bear him about. Do not have the paralytic on your garments, but seek out the sick man who lies ill. Do not weave the woman with the flow of blood continually, but have mercy on a widow in distress.

Do not intently watch the sinful woman kneeling before the Lord, but rather, crushed by your own transgressions, pour out tears frequently. Do not sketch Lazarus being raised from the dead, but prepare a good defense for your own resurrection. Do not carry the blind man around on your clothing, but comfort the living man who has been deprived of sight with good deeds. Do not paint the baskets of leftovers, but feed the hungry. Do not carry on your garments the water jars that he filled in Cana of Galilee, but give drink to the thirsty. For these purposes the proud garment of the rich man benefited us, nor indeed should we overlook what follows. For to the purple and the fine linen he added the daily feasting in splendor; and both belong altogether to one disposition—to take pride in the useless vanity of garments and to serve the belly and the throat in luxury. Luxury, then, is a thing hostile to a life that loves virtue, since it reveals slackness and dissipation, immoderate enjoyment and a slavish habit. And when spoken of, the thing appears to be one; but when examined in detail and accused, it has its constitution from a varied and greater and many-headed evil. For luxury could not exist unless increased by many materials. But it is impossible to heap up the materials of wealth without sin, except if, in rare cases, it should happen to someone, as with Job, both to be abundantly rich and to live strictly according to justice. The luxurious man must first have a costly house, adorned with mosaic and stones and gold like a bride; and suited to the changes of the seasons of the year.

For what is sought is a warm, sunlit place for winter, turned toward the midday sun, but open to the north—a summer place, so that it may be cooled by the light and cold northern breezes. After this there is need of costly clothing to dress the benches, the couches, the mats, the doors. For among them even inanimate things are carefully clothed, while the poor are pitiably stripped. Add to these next and reckon the silver among the vessels, the gold, the lavish purchase of birds from Phasis, of Phoenician wine, which the vineyards of Tyre pour out in abundance and at great price for the rich; and every other preparation for luxury, which it belongs to those who enjoy them carefully to name. For luxury, increasing day by day toward greater extravagance, now even pours Indian spices into their dishes, and the perfumers serve the cooks more than the physicians do. From this consider the bodyguard-like multitude of the table: table-setters, cup-bearers, stewards, and the male and female musicians who lead them, dancing girls, flute-players, jesters, flatterers, parasites, the attendant rabble of vanity. That these things may be acquired, how many poor are wronged! How many orphans are beaten with fists! How many widows weep! How many, violently torn apart, hasten to the noose! But the soul of such people, as if having tasted some water of Lethe, altogether forgets itself—who it is and to whom it is joined, and that this union will one day be dissolved and it will dwell again with the body that has been rebuilt.

When the fitting time came and the inexorable command of union with the body was drawing her away, a reckoning of the life that had been lived entered in, and a useless repentance, coming after the need. For repentance benefits then, when the one changing his mind has the power of correction; but when the capacity to set things right has been removed, grief is worthless and regret is vain. Now there was a certain poor man named Lazarus. The account does not simply describe a poor man deprived of expenditure and of the necessities of need, but one also held fast by a painful illness and with his body wasting away, homeless, without a hearth, uncared for, cast down at the gate of the rich man. And very carefully in the narrative he dramatizes the poor man's misfortunes at the end, in order to pillory the cruelty of the one who shows no mercy. For the man who feels nothing pitiable or sympathetic at hunger and disease is an irrational beast, badly formed into the shape of a man, falsifying his nature by his choice; or rather he is more unsympathetic even than the beasts themselves, if indeed when a pig is slaughtered the pigs are drawn to a certain painful sensation and squeal distressfully at the newly flowing blood; and the oxen stand around the killing of the bull, signaling the pain with a passionate bellowing. And flocks of cranes, when one of their companions falls into snares, fly around the one caught and fill the air with a kind of mournful cry, seeking their kin and companion. But a man—the rational and gentle animal, taught goodness according to the likeness of God—to care so little for his kindred in the painful assaults of misfortune!

So there lay the much-suffering and thankless poor man, without feet—for otherwise he would have fled the accursed and arrogant man, changing to another place instead of the gate that slew strangers and was closed to the poor—deprived of his hands and not even having a palm to stretch out in begging, his very organs of speech blocked up, and emitting a certain hoarse and rough sound from his chest, simply mutilated in all his limbs, a remnant of a grievous disease, a pitiable example of human weakness. But nevertheless not even so great a catalogue of misfortunes inclined the proud man to visit him; he passed by the man as though a stone, committing sin without excuse. For when accused he could not say those common and fair-seeming things: I did not know, I was not aware; the beggar pleading escaped my notice—he who lay before the gate as a spectacle for those entering and going out, so that he might make the condemnation of the arrogant man inexcusable. He desired even the crumbs of the table and did not obtain even these; but the one was bursting with satiety, while the other was wasting away from want. It was good, then, and just to set that Canaanite woman, the Phoenician, as a teacher over the man-hating rich man, saying those things that are written: O accursed and arrogant man, even the little dogs eat from the crumbs that fall from the table of their masters; but you did not deem your brother, your own kin, worthy of this gift? But the dogs were carefully fed, the guardians separately, the hunting dogs apart;

And they were deemed worthy of a roof and a bed, and they had attendants assigned to them with zeal, while the image of God lay cast on the ground, neglected and trampled—the image which the master craftsman and creator of all things molded with his own hand, if Moses is trustworthy for establishing the origin of human beings. If, then, the account of Lazarus had ended at this point and the nature of things stood so that our life were defined by the unevenness of this present life, I would have uttered great cries of indignation, that we who were created with equal honor live so unequally with those of the same race. But since what remains is good to hear, having groaned over what has passed, O poor man, be of good cheer in what follows, having learned of the blessed enjoyment of your fellow poor man. For you will find the exact tribunal of a righteous judge, in which the one who lived in pleasure groans and the one who toiled revels; and each receives the recompense due to his worth. And it came to pass that the poor man died and was carried by the angels into the bosom of Abraham. Do you see the ministers of the righteous poor man and the servants of his departure? For angels escorted him, looking upon him with calm and gentleness and by their appearance foretelling the care and rest that awaited him. And having been carried, he was placed in the bosoms of the patriarch, which also provides an occasion for perplexity to those who pleasantly examine the depths of the Scriptures. For if every righteous person at death were carried to the same place, the bosom would be something great and stretched out to infinity, if indeed it were going to be able to contain the whole multitude of the saints.

But if this is entirely impossible—for a bosom, when hollowed out, scarcely contains one man, and with difficulty two infants—a certain contemplation awaits us, leading us by the image of the perceptible bosom to some intelligible transaction. For what is it that is said? Abraham, it says, receives those who have lived a well-ordered life. Tell me, then, O inspired Luke—for I will speak to you as though you were present and visible—why, when there were many righteous men and men older than Abraham, did you assign this honor to the younger, passing over Enoch, Noah, and anyone else who in his life followed these? But perhaps I understand your meaning, and my thoughts do not fall outside the mark. For since Abraham was a servant of Christ, and he especially among men received the appearances of Christ, and the mystery of the Trinity was sufficiently depicted for us in this old man's tent, when he received the three angels as traveling men, and simply put, from many mystical enigmas this man became familiar to God, who in later times clothed himself in flesh and through this human veil clearly conversed with men—for this reason he says that his bosom is like a fair harbor and a calm resting place of the righteous. For in Christ is the salvation of us all, and the hope and expectation of the age to come, for him who sprang from the flesh of Abraham according to human succession. And it seems to me that the honor given to the old man in this discourse has its reference to the Savior, who is both judge and rewarder of virtue, and with his healing voice

calling the righteous and saying, "Come, you who are blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you." And it came to pass that the poor man died. The meaning concerning the poor man is twofold: the one indicating the lack of necessities, the other the modesty and the lowliness of character. Let not him, therefore, who is destitute of material things and poor in silver, but clad in the pitiable cloak, claim as his own the praise of virtue, nor let him think that his destitution will suffice for salvation. For it is not the one who is poor by necessity that is praised, but the one who of his own free choice is moderate in disposition that is admired. Since for those who are simply destitute but have a character untaught or incapable of uprightness, poverty by necessity becomes a provision for many evil daring deeds. And I have seen all those house-breakers and slave-dealers, and moreover robbers and thieves and the murderers themselves, whenever they came before a magistrate's court, as poor men, unknown, homeless, without a hearth. So that from this it is evident that Scripture now calls blessed that poor man who with a philosophic soul bears his toils, enduring nobly against the circumstances of life and doing nothing evil, so that he might gratify the flesh with the enjoyment of luxury. Whom the Lord also describes more clearly in the first of the beatitudes, saying, "Blessed are the poor in spirit." Neither, then, is every poor man righteous, but only the one such as Lazarus, nor is every rich man condemned, but only the one living with such a disposition as he who was the contemporary of Lazarus had.

And the witnesses of this through the experience of life are plain to see. For what was richer than the divine Job? Yet all the same, his exceedingly great prosperity neither estranged the man from righteousness nor, to put it in a word, exiled him from virtue. And what was poorer than the Iscariot? Yet he gained nothing from his poverty toward salvation, but though he lived together with the eleven poor and philosophic men, and with the Lord himself, who for our sake freely became poor, he was carried away by the wickedness of his own choice into love of money, and from that source he also contrived the betrayal. And it is worth wisely examining the burial of each of the dead men. For the poor man, when he had fallen asleep, had angels as his guards and attendants, leading him with good hope to the place of rest; but the rich man, it says, died and was buried. For nothing is so fitting as to use the scriptural expression itself, which sufficiently interprets through a single word the dishonorable dissolution of the rich man. For the sinner, when he comes to his end, is truly buried, being earthly in body and earthly also in soul, and having dragged down that soul's natural dignity to matter through the sympathy of the flesh, leaving behind no good memorial of his own life, but covered over by dishonorable forgetfulness and meeting the death of grazing animals. For the grave holds the body, and Hades the soul—two dark prisons dividing the punishment of the wicked creature. And who would not blame the wretched man for his folly?

When he was on earth, he was exulting, boasting, looking down on all who lived with him and were of the same race, and all but calling those he met ants and worms, and bursting with empty conceit over his short-lived glory. But when he was torn from this life and, like a slave deserving the lash, was stripped of the goods of others, over which in his folly he thought he was master, he is brought down into a humility that counterbalances his arrogance, and, casting before him the laments of a wailing old woman, he calls in vain and to no avail upon the patriarch, saying: "Father Abraham, have mercy on me and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am in agony in this flame," seeking mercy which he did not give when he had the power to do good ready at hand; and deeming Lazarus worthy to come to him as a helper against the fire; and praying that the leper might moisten his finger with a little water. Such are the follies of those who love the body; this is the end of those who love wealth and pleasure. And it befits the prudent man who takes thought for the future, having regarded the parable as a kind of preventive medicine against disease, to flee the experience of similar evils, cultivating compassion and love for humanity as the cause of the life to come. For our discourse has set forth its admonition dramatically, in the persons of specific individuals, so that, instructed vividly and by direct demonstration in the law of good conduct, we may never despise the precepts of Scripture as though they only frighten us with words and do not actually bring the threat to punishment.

For I know that most people, lured by such suspicions, grant themselves unhindered license to sin. But we are taught the very opposite by the Scripture set before us—that no pardon lightens the punishment of the judgment there, nor does any benevolence lessen the appointed penalty, if indeed we must establish the argument by the words of the patriarch. For though he was entreated many times by the rich man and heard countless pitiful cries, he was neither softened by his lamentations nor delivered from his pain the man who was bitterly scourged, but with stern resolve he ratified the just judgment, saying that God has allotted to each according to his desert: and to you, who lived in luxury and reveled in the misfortunes of others, the penalty of your transgression was imposed in the things you suffer; but to him there, who toiled and was trampled upon and endured the bitterness of life in the flesh, a sweet and gladdening condition was apportioned here. Moreover, he says that there is a great gulf, which prevents their intercourse with one another and separates those who are punished from those who are honored, so that both may dwell clearly apart from each other, having an unconfused enjoyment of goods and evils. I think that the sensible parable is a riddle of intelligible contemplation. For let us not suppose that a trench was actually dug there by the angels, such as the no-man's-lands of enemies are in camps, but Luke, sketching for us the separation by which those who lived according to virtue and those who lived otherwise are separated from one another, set before us the image of the gulf.

Isaiah also seals this understanding of ours, saying something like this: "Is the hand of the Lord not strong to save, or has he made his ear heavy so as not to hear? But your sins stand between you and between God."

2. From the same author, a homily from the Gospel according to Luke, on the steward of unrighteousness. I have often said to you in my discourse that a certain fabricated and false notion, having fallen into people's minds, multiplies sins and diminishes the good things that each of us ought to practice in our own conduct of life. This notion is the belief that all things we have in the use of life we possess as lords and masters. And for the sake of this supposition we fiercely contend and fight and go to law over them, and we cling to them to the utmost as though they were exceptional possessions. But the truth is not so, but quite the opposite. For all things we have received are not our own; nor indeed were we settled in this life as authors and lords, as though in our own house, but we are led as sojourners and strangers and migrants where we do not wish and when we did not expect. And we are deprived of our possessions, whenever it seems good to the Lord of the property. Therefore the affair of this perishable

of life; and the one who is glorious today is tomorrow pitiable, worthy of compassion and help; the one now wealthy and abounding in the materials of wealth is shortly afterward poor, not even having bread at home to set before himself for life. And in this especially our God surpasses mortal beings, in that he is always the same and remains in the same state and possesses life and glory and power as something that cannot be taken away. From where, then, did I come to this beginning of my discourse, or is it perhaps already familiar to those who have understanding and love learning? Luke, having fashioned a parable for us, has just been read, in which he depicts the steward of another's property being pressed and distressed, because he heard from the master of the money and the possessions, as from one who strikes and spends lavishly: Give the account of your stewardship and step down; for I will not endure that you revel in my goods as though they were your own. And this is not the explanation of something that happened, but the fashioning of a parable, educating those who are overshadowed by the words toward moral virtue. Know, then, each one, that you are a steward of another's property, and having cast away from your soul the pride of authority, take up the lowliness and reverence of one who is accountable and a steward, always awaiting your master and with fear writing up the account of your defense. For you are a sojourner, having received pardon for a brief and passing use. But if you doubt concerning things that are known, learn from what happens and be instructed by experience, the truthful teacher. You possess a field, either having received it from your fathers or having become its owner through some transaction. Reckon it up, then, in your memory and count, if you can, all those before you who have held it.

Apply your mind also to the time to come, and consider how many will be masters of it after you. Tell me, whose is the ownership, and to which class does it belong in a preeminent way—to those who have had it, to those who have it now, or to those who will have it? For if someone were to gather all people together by a device, those who have possessed it will be found more numerous than the clods of earth. Rather, if you wish to see precisely what our life resembles, remember whether at some time in the summer season, while traveling on the road, you saw a spreading tree, extending far in breadth and length, sufficient in its shade to fulfill the need of a house. Delighted with it, you went under it, and as long as it was possible, you remained there. But when it was necessary to set out again, and while you were deliberating about your departure, another traveler arrived. And you were loading up your baggage, while he was setting down his own and at once took over all your things—the bed, the fire, the shade of the tree, the water flowing nearby. And he took hold of the reclining place, while you took to walking. He too was refreshed, and then he left it; and the one tree in a single day became, perhaps, a brief lodging for ten strangers; and what had become everyone's belonged to the one who was truly its owner. In this way also the possessions of this present life delight many and nourish them, while ownership belongs to God alone, who has a life imperishable and indestructible. You have seen also an inn, at which you certainly stopped while traveling; and you received from there many things while carrying nothing—a bed, a table, cups, a platter, and other vessels of every kind.

Before he has yet come to use it to sufficiency, another arrives, panting, covered in dust, pressing upon you and driving you out of the inn and seeking others' goods as though they were his own. Such is our life, brothers, and if any of what has been said is rather commonplace. But I marvel at those who say, "My property," and, "My house," how by a vain grasp they appropriate to themselves things that do not belong to them, and with three deceptive elements embrace what is another's. For just as no one has the masks of the wonder-workers as his own possession, but all the actors of the dramas put them on, so the earth and the materials from it are passed from one to another like garments. Is anything, tell me, more powerful than a kingdom? But nevertheless search the palaces; seek the royal robes; you will find that these are sufficient, which have clothed the bodies of many kings. Likewise also the crowns and the brooches and the belts—all an unstable inheritance, a common use passing from those who are on the way to those who remain. And what of the tent of the rank of the prefects, the silver carriage, the golden reed? Do these not always have the prefect and never the same one, except for a little while each? For just as the bier receives different bodies at different times, so also the symbols of offices exchange those who use them. Hence also the apostle cried out to us with very many voices instructive of this thought: For the fashion of this world passes away; and, As having nothing and possessing all things; and, Those who use as not misusing. For all these things tend to one goal, that we ought to live as those whose life is for a day, awaiting the signal of our departure.

And so that you may learn precisely that you are subject to laws and to master's rules, according to which you ought to live exactly, understand this first from yourself: that both your body and your soul are in every respect subject to the commandments of virtue, and you are not even master of yourself; but you ought to govern both word and deed and every motion of your life. You received a body from the Creator, composed of many parts and administered by five senses for the needs of life. And not even these are free and autonomous, but each one is a slave of laws. And the eye is the first to hear: observe nature and contemplate what is good to see—the sun, illuminating the whole inhabited world; the moon, lighting up the gloomy and dark night; the other stars, furnishing us light from themselves, not much indeed nor sufficient, yet gleaming with the beauty they have received. Contemplate the earth, adorned with plants of every kind and herbs; the sea spread out like a smooth plain, when it is fixed into clear calm. For these and such things make use of sight; but the other spectacles, as many as through the eyes bring harm upon the soul, flee and run past and put a covering upon yourself, so that you may not see. For it is better to darken the sense, when it provides the cause of the works of darkness. For this reason yesterday the Lord said to us through Matthew: Everyone who looks at a woman to desire her has already committed adultery with her in his heart; and it is better to cut it out, when it looks at disorderly and harmful things. Hearing also has commandments that hinder evil listening.

For it is necessary that the ear, whenever it hears certain good things, be open and through itself transmit to the soul the perception of profitable words. But if some companion of vice and a plague and a destroyer, approaching it, is about to pour in the mire of sin, one must flee from him as from a venomous beast. Let the tongue also be sober along with the mouth; let it speak just things; and let it abstain from forbidden things—from revilings, slanders, unjust accusation, evil-speaking against brothers, blasphemy against God; and let it utter whatever is of good omen, whatever is pious, whatever contains counsel toward good deeds; and let every man say the words of the sacred psalmist: I said, I will guard my ways, that I may not sin with my tongue; and, With their tongues they dealt deceitfully; and, Why do you boast in evil, O mighty one in iniquity? All the day long your tongue devised injustice; like a sharpened razor you wrought deceit. Let the mouth taste of profitable things. Let the nose also be sober, not always smelling luxury, nor drawing up to the head the fragrant vapors of costly perfumes. For Isaiah is a vehement accuser of such things. Let the hand also remember the commandments, so that it does not touch all things without restraint. Let it be stretched out for almsgiving, not for plunder; let it keep its own things, not gather the things of others; let it touch sluggish and afflicted bodies through good visitation, not those that are sleek and given over to fornications. The word has shown us that we ourselves are not masters of ourselves, but stewards. For everything subject to laws and ordinances is a slave and obedient to the lawgiver. If

But if the parts of our body are not free to exercise authority, but are regulated for their activities by a master's will, what could one say to those who think they possess gold and silver and land and other things without accountability? Nothing is yours, O man. You are a slave, and what is yours belongs to the Lord. For a slave does not have a free peculium. For you were brought naked into this light; you received what you have according to the law of your Lord—either having inherited from a father, since God so ordained—"For parents," it says, "shall divide the spoils for their children"—or having acquired wealth from marriage, and marriage and what pertains to it has been ordained by God, or from trade and farming and other pretexts, with God cooperating toward those ends. Behold, then, it has been shown that you received what is not yours. Let us see, then, for the rest, what has been commanded you and what sort of stewardship is required in those matters. Give to the hungry, clothe the naked, care for the afflicted, do not overlook the poor man, the one cast out at the crossroads. Do not be anxious about yourself, nor worry how you will live on the morrow. And if, it says, you do these things, you will be honored by the lawgiver; but if you disobey the commandment, you will be punished bitterly. These things I do not see as belonging to free will or to one living with authority, but on the contrary, the many and continuous commandments show me a man strongly ruled and subject to masterly laws and required to render the regulated conduct of life as a debt.

But how is it that we, who have a life that cannot be reckoned, overlook the wretched and the poor perishing in their misfortunes, while we spend lavishly on vanities, feeding a multitude of prodigal flatterers and dragging along bands of miserable parasites; and again scattering our wealth on beast-fighters and wild beasts, and in horse-breeding sparing nothing of what we have, and once more lavishing our substance on wonder-workers and mimes and the rest of the destructive sort! And we suffer a vain thing and near to madness. For where the expense brings countless gain and immortal salvation, we hold our silver tightly, so that not even a few obols fall from our hand; but where the spending belongs to sinners and is the cause of ten thousand punishments and of the very punishment through fire, we run of our own accord. And our lavishness anticipates the request; and having opened all the doors, we let our wealth go forth to those outside. But this disposition is not that of slaves awaiting their master, but of prodigal youths, revellers, and the dissolute. But if you wish, O hearer, to see the fear of a steward administering what has been entrusted with prudent reverence, unroll the book of David; seek those words where the man who busies himself with the appointed limit of his own end says to God: Make known to me, Lord, my end and the number of my days, what it is, that I may know what I lack.

You see how, as in a picture, the disposition of the man who prayed is contemplated by the discourse—that he is thoroughly fearful and foresees the future and awaits the judgment and busies himself with the appointed time, so that the signal of his departure may not overtake him unprepared; and he seeks, having reasoned it out, to discern what is the deficiency of his sojourning, so that he may hasten to fill it up before the one who leads him out comes. For truly the death of each one of us is an image of a steward, if we compare the particulars of each with one another—what the dying man suffers, and what the one cast out of his stewardship endures. For in like manner the one who dies hands over the administration to others, as the steward hands over the keys; that one is cast out of a field, this one out of the whole world as though it were a single plot. The steward withdraws with emotion from his own labors—vineyards, gardens, houses, as it were; what then do you think the dying man also suffers? Does he not bewail his possessions? Does he not piteously look around upon his substance, being torn from it against his will after so great an attachment, far from his treasures and storehouses? And when he arrives at the place allotted to him, hearing, "Render the

the account of your stewardship, show how you listened to the commandments, how you conducted yourself toward your fellow servants, whether kindly and humanely or the opposite—harshly and tyrannically—striking, pummeling, defrauding them of the allowance of almsgiving. And if he is able to propitiate the master by showing himself a good servant, well and good; but if the opposite, there are no longer there scourges by rods, nor the dark mill and iron fetters, but unquenchable fire and eternal darkness never illumined by light, and the gnashing of teeth, which the Gospel clearly foretold to us. If, then, he never casts out the things here as alien, revel in the world and let pleasure flow unhindered through every sense. But if these things shall be accomplished, even though we enjoy them not for long, let us fear, brothers, the departure from here and live in the time of our sojourning as the Lord commanded; let us not be led away as prisoners with debts, but let us journey free and bringing with us a conscience full of boldness, bearing the books of our conduct of life free from condemnation. That rich man was a bad steward of the life here, whose land bore well, since in the abundance of his fruits the man devised nothing good, but opening the desire of his belly and the broad and capacious bosoms of greed, he allotted everything to his own enjoyment, saying: I will pull down my barns and build greater ones, and I will say to my soul: You have many good things laid up; rest, eat, drink, be merry; and while he was yet speaking, the one who leads away stood by. There came a fearful fellow servant to lead him away by force from his stewardship.

And what is the benefit of pleasure-loving counsel? These things were written with animation for our admonition. But what is the experience of life? Does it not cry out every day through deeds, showing us the man who is healthy in the middle of the day dead before the rising of evening, and the man who is strong in the evening not reaching the morning ray, and another ceasing to live in the midst of eating? Who is so foolish as not to see how every day, one at one time and another at another, we are removed from the stewardship here below? But the good and faithful servant, who has confidence in his own administration, holds this mind as Paul held it. For though the Lord was not pressing him, he was hastening toward him and longed for his departure and willingly declined the stewardship, saying in one place: Wretched man that I am, who will rescue me from this body of death? and again: For me it is good to depart and be with Christ. But the earthly-minded man, truly akin to clods, bewails such things in his helplessness at the removal, like this man of the parable: What shall I do, since my master is taking the stewardship away from me? I am not able to dig; I am ashamed to beg. The grief is that of an idle and pleasure-loving man. For to lament at one's departure is a proof of having clung to the place and of bewailing the passionate pleasures of the flesh, while to be unable for work is the accusation of an idle and slack life. For if he had a habit of industriousness, he would not have feared digging.

But if we take the parable allegorically in its spiritual sense, after the departure from here there is no time either for working or for begging. And for this reason let no one say, "I am not able to dig." For even if one is able, no one permits it. This present life holds the cultivation of the commandments; the life to come holds the enjoyment. So if you have worked nothing here, the vineyards remain and you are concerned about digging in vain; nor will you benefit yourself at all by begging. And of this a clear example has been handed down to us in the foolish virgins: who, having come into want of oil, shamelessly asked the wise ones; but they gained nothing, but were turned away empty-handed—the word showing that no one uses another's oil at the coming of the bridegroom, that is, another's

good deed for his own enjoyment. For each one is clothed in his own manner of life as in a garment, whether bright and honorable or base and like the beggar's cloak. And to strip it off is not possible, nor to exchange it and change it for another, nor to adorn and beautify oneself from a loan or a borrowing in the time of judgment. But each one remains such as he is in truth, whether poor in good things or rich. And these things are so far. But what should we say about the forgiveness of debts, which the steward of unrighteousness devised, procuring for himself consolation for his evils from his fellow servants? For it is not easy to transform the written account into a fitting allegory. But what has occurred to me after much consideration is this:

All we human beings, as many of us as procure for ourselves the relief that is to come by giving or forgiving what belongs to others, gain a profit of our own. By "what belongs to others" I mean what belongs to the Master. For nothing is ours; all things are possessions of his dominion. Whenever, then, someone, perceiving his end and his departure from here, lightens the burden of his sins by good deeds—either by forgiving debtors their debts or by supplying the poor with abundance, giving what belongs to the Master—he acquires many friends who will testify on his behalf before the Judge to his goodness and, through their testimony, prepare for him a lodging of refreshment. Those who have been well treated are said to testify before the Judge—not by voices, as though instructing one who is ignorant, but because the deed done toward them excludes the guilty from punishment. For in the same way that the blood of Abel was said to cry out to God, so too the good work will be said to testify on behalf of the one who has done rightly in Christ Jesus our Lord, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.

3. By the same author, Against Greed. Men who are Christians and men who are partakers of the heavenly calling: you, the rural populace, and all of you who have come out from the cities and gathered together in concord for the present festival—for I embrace you all in a general proclamation—did each of you, then, cast a thought into his mind, and did he see and consider for what purpose we have assembled? And for what reason are martyrs honored with the construction of splendid houses and with these yearly gatherings, and looking to what goal did our fathers legislate what is now seen and leave the law strong for those who came after? Or is it clear even to one who has but slightly sharpened his mind, that these things were ordained for us by zeal for piety, and that these festivals are gathered as common schools of souls—so that, honoring the martyrs, we might imitate the martyrs' endurance for piety; so that, lending our ear to the teachers who assemble, we might learn some good thing which we did not know a short time before, either the security of a doctrine or the solution of a perplexing Scripture, or some word that corrects the condition of our morals? But you, it seems to me, having let go your care for virtue and forgotten your zeal for the soul, have transferred your whole concern to the rabble of mammon and the busyness of the marketplaces—some of you trafficking yourselves, others gaping after what belongs to others and recounting those who quarrel over wares, how they cheapen one another's goods. But transfer your desire, I urge you, to the church; abandon greed, the marketplace, the mad frenzy.

Turn away from her as an unseemly courtesan who smiles on the crowd, adorned with borrowed materials and with the flowers of the drug-seller. Desire instead this divine and modest woman, clothed with propriety, looking with a grave and steady gaze. For thus Solomon says in the book of Proverbs: Do not forsake her, and she will hold fast to you. Desire her, and she will keep you. Do not pass by in contempt, nor for this reason think the things set before us at this table are without honor, because you may obtain possession of them for free; but rather desire them all the more, because we do not sit as hucksters carrying a balance or a scale; we seek one profit, the salvation of the disciple. There was read to us from the Acts the speech of Paul to Festus and Agrippa, of Paul the faithful apostle and wise orator. You surely saw, hearer, if you applied your mind, how he does not betray the truth out of cowardice, and how, tempering his courtesy toward Agrippa with boldness, he softens the harsh judgment toward goodness, as if charming wild beasts by his handling of the word. Zachariah also prophesied today, opening for us the door of the great mysteries of the Only-Begotten through the stone that has the seven eyes, through the golden lampstand on which are the seven lamps and the two branches of the olive trees. Many are the Scriptures that follow, possessing the rich treasure of benefit, which I wished to go through all of them and show you the abundance of the spiritual festival. But the promise of the previous day presses me to the payment of the debt.

For when we began to attack greed with many accusations, since we did not succeed in stripping bare its vanity, we deferred the exposure of the accusation to the present day. Listen, then, and become fair-minded judges of the truth, since you are judging not for anyone else but for your own salvation, and you bring all the condemning votes against the one who is liable, each of you driving it out of your own soul as though out of a house or a city. Greed, then, is not only to be mad after silver along with other possessions and to wish to join to what is present the things that are not, but, to speak more generally, to wish to have more than what is owed and allotted in every matter. And indeed the devil was the first to suffer this transgression, being an archangel and appointed to the most beautiful life and order, but the foolish-minded one, having conceived tyranny and rebellion against the Godhead—then he was cast down and fell into this air around the earth, a wicked neighbor to our life. At any rate he did not obtain what he pursued, the Godhead, and he lost what he possessed, the rank of archangel—an unfaithful servant who by his gradual acts of daring went out into a robber; a dog from the myth among the Greeks, both deprived of the meat and not grasping the shadow—for how could it?—since the thing is incomprehensible. After him, the first man, lured to pleasure by forbidden food, lost immortality, as Esau later lost the birthright for a mess of pottage. And these languages and the many voices of men—the love of having more brought them into life.

For those who were puffed up beyond measure by human prosperity, and expected that heaven would be accessible to them, and in their vanity were building a ridiculous tower for the ascent to it—these men made humans who spoke the same language speak different tongues; and seeking more than they had, they themselves were confounded and left the human race to toil in hearing meaningless sounds and in the search for interpretations. And what of Pharaoh? From where did he fall into diverse and manifold plagues? Was it not because of greed and because he wished to be lord over a foreign people that in no way belonged to his kingdom? And for this reason, by not releasing those who were not his own, he destroyed his own—some in the plague of the firstborn, others in the pursuit at the sea. For I pass over rivers turned to blood, and the countless generation of frogs, and the ruin of the locust, and the eruption of boils, and the death of the cattle, and all the affliction with which Egypt was condemned because of the greed of its ruler. Elsewhere again I have learned that the end of sin is leprosy suddenly poured over the greedy man. And recall with me, if anyone is a lover of learning and a eager hearer of the mighty deeds of Elisha, how Naaman the Syrian was cleansed of his leprosy by bathing in the Jordan, and how the affliction passed over to Gehazi the servant, a greedy and unphilosophical young man, who sold the spiritual gift and the free healing of his teacher. From where did Absalom become a parricide, the hot-headed and reckless young man of the gentle father? Was it not because he sought the inheritance of the kingdom before the time, and rushed upon what belonged to another as a plunderer?

What was it, then, that cast Judas out from the roll of the disciples and made him a traitor instead of an apostle? Was it not the money-box first mismanaged, and then the acquisition of dishonorable gain? Why do the Acts of the Apostles make a tragedy of Ananias and Sapphira? Was it not because they became thieves of their own property and sacrilegious robbers of their own dedicated offerings? The day will perhaps fail me before I can enumerate the servants of greed. But leaving aside the old history, let us examine the experience that follows upon life: what a beast greed is known to be, and how hard to escape from whatever it seizes—flourishing always and never withering, growing old together with those it has captured, and staying with them to the end. The lustful man and lover of bodies, even if he rages long with his desires, either by coming himself to the age of old age, or by seeing the object of his longing grown old and having lost its bloom, finds a cessation of the disease. The glutton also withdraws from pleasure-seeking, either when satiety has filled him or when his digestive parts have weakened and put an end to his strained appetite. The lover of glory, having vaunted himself in many distinctions, ceases from making a show. But the disease of greed is an evil hard to escape.

And just as this ivy, the flourishing and evergreen plant, creeping up the trees that grow beside it, winds itself strongly about the wood of whatever it has seized, and does not withdraw whether they are still sound or have withered, unless someone cuts through its coils with iron as one would a serpent's—so too is it not easy to set free the soul of such a man, whether the body be young or already wasting away, unless a sober-minded reason comes upon it like a sword and cuts through the disease. The covetous man is disagreeable to his own household, burdensome to his servants, useless to his friends, hard of access to strangers, troublesome to his neighbors, a wretched companion to his wife, a stingy and petty-minded rearer of his children, a bad overseer of himself, anxious by night, harried by day, talking to himself like the deranged or the delirious; prospering in all things yet groaning as though in want, not enjoying what is present and seeking what is absent, not using his own possessions but casting an envious eye on those of others. Many-flocked is the herd of such a man, crowding the pens in which it is shut up, covering the plains in which it grazes; and if a fat sheep of his neighbor is seen, he abandons his own flock and sits down in his desire upon that one sheep that belongs to another. The same holds for oxen, likewise for horses, and no differently for land. He confines his whole house and has nothing in use; for the insatiable man cannot be one who enjoys his goods, but his house is like a tomb. For behold, tombs too are often full of silver and gold, but their materials have no users. The body is not fed, no profit is found for the soul.

For almsgiving does not prosper from the right hand. Let one of those who have been caught beforehand by this disease teach me what is the end of their toil. And I know many, having come to recognize it by experience, that even in sicknesses they love money more than health; and if the physician, by means of some inexpensive material, suggests the manner of treatment, such as through celery or thyme or dill, whose supply is without expense, they obey the advice compliantly; but if mention is made of some drug of the kind that is varied and compounded of many ingredients, and they are ordered to go to the druggist or the perfumer's shop, they would sooner give up their soul than loosen their purse. For being earthly in their mindset, they consider the acquisition of earthly materials to be life. Common prosperities grieve them greatly, but adversities gladden them. They pray that the ordinances of unbearable taxes may come upon them, so that they may increase their silver with interest; they desire to see those oppressed by lenders, so that they may acquire the field or the vessel or the animal cheaply, cast off by necessity. And they continually look up to heaven, like the philosophers, those who ponder things on high, not seeking the rising of a star, nor peering about to see which house holds one of the planets, but busying themselves with the condition of the air, whether the signs appearing beforehand promise an influx of rains or a drought. And if they see something difficult expected by the many, they rejoice in the affliction of others. They gather everything into their treasuries, sealing it securely and safeguarding it with double bolts; measuring without cease, they reckon it up.

While the greedy man is busy with such a hope and for the time being is rich in a dream, in the shadow-sketching of his thoughts, if a deep cloud comes upon him, he is afraid as though he were about to be in danger. If drops of rain sprinkle the earth, he begins to weep a little; and if a rain comes that is sufficient to heal the drought, the matter becomes complete mourning. He goes about henceforth, scrutinizing everything with everyone concerning the wheat, as though a son were in danger—what remedy, what device, so that it may suffice for a long time, so that it may escape the affliction of the moths. And if he perceives a heatwave, like physicians he fans himself as he divides and cools the grain, toiling he sits by it, at midday he devises a shelter, at night he strips away the shadows, so that he may be fanned by the night breezes. While he is enduring these miseries, the poor man stands by him, seeking from the endangered wheat, and he does not give; or if he gives, he grants sparingly and, half-dead, clings exceedingly to the wheat. Do not, then, toil endlessly and be vexed, such a man, I beseech you. For the luxurious greedy man is worthy of pity, the one who bounds his life by the belly and the other pleasures, thinking this the end of humanity. But the petty and small-minded man has no measure of wretchedness, taking what belongs to the many and not giving it to himself, and leading to no completion of his zeal. For who does not know that none of the things that come to be, except the virtues, comes to be for its own sake, but we do one thing in order to accomplish another? No one sails the sea for the very sake of sailing, nor does the farmer, for the very sake of farming, live together with his toils.

But it is clear that both endure hardships, the one so that he may receive the produce of the land, the other so that he may obtain the wealth of maritime trade. But tell me, what is your own goal? That you may gather? And what kind of end is this, to look upon useless material heaped up? It pleases me, he says, and so does the sight of it. Then pursue your own disease in another way. For it is possible to give rest to your desire even with the possessions of others. If the gleam of silver delights you, sit beside the silversmiths and gaze at the thick and shining radiance, or else occupy the market stalls and take pleasure in the varied vessels, dishes and pitchers; for the sight is free for you and unimpeded. Look also at the money-testers at the banks, feeling and counting the coins continually; or rather, persuaded by good advice, change your mind. For the correction is easy, since greed is not a necessity of nature but an impulse of the will, which it is not hard for those who consider what is advantageous to change. Look up with your reason to the time that follows, when you will not exist, when a little earth will hold your body spread out insensible; and a slab of a few spans will cover the remains. Where then is the wealth and the treasures gathered? Who is the

as heir of what is left behind? For that man will not by any means be your successor whom you expect. If you leave children, perhaps they will be beaten with fists, and a covetous man of your own character will drive them out of their father's house while they weep. And if, being childless, you pass the inheritance on to one of your friends, do not trust in your will as in an unchangeable law, as in a matter beyond dispute and strong. A little effort makes the document invalid. Or do you not see those who continually contend in the courts against wills, how by various devices they circumvent them, putting forward lawyers skilled in the laws as their advocates, bringing in clever orators as helpers, feeding false witnesses, corrupting judges? And for this reason, from what you see while living, learn about the things that will come after you for your children. If you have wealth justly, use it for what is needful, like the blessed Job; if unjustly, return it to the masters who were wronged, like a captive taken from war—either the same amount you received or with an addition, like Zacchaeus. If you do not have it, do not acquire it wickedly. For sin will follow you as a bitter provision as you travel the necessary journey; but the enjoyment of what was acquired will be left to those you do not know. And then you will marvel at David saying: He stores up and does not know for whom he will gather them. And you will recognize also the rich man, the counterpart of Lazarus, the one recently read to us from the Gospels—not a myth composed to cause astonishment, but an exact type handed down of what is to come. The fine linen rotted, the kingdom passed to another, the luxuries were abolished.

The sin committed by those people traveled along with him, remaining like a shadow that follows a walking body. And for this reason, after the extravagance of his banquets and his luxurious table, he seeks a drop of water dripping from a leper's finger; and he calls the poor man to heal his punishment—the man who perhaps no longer even had hands when he was thrown down at the gate; for otherwise he would have driven off the dogs that licked his wounds. And he longs to join Lazarus, who is seen from the opposite side, and is separated by the middle by the pit or the chasm—not that some pit had truly been dug or a trench made, as one can see the space between battle lines in camps, but the passage, I think, indicates the obstacle of sins, which walled off the passage to the righteous man for the one condemned. And the prophet Isaiah seals my interpretation, addressing a foolish people harshly and saying: Is the hand of the Lord not strong to save? Or has he made his ear heavy so as not to hear? But your sins separate between you and between God. And if sins are known to separate people from God, nothing would be more sinful than covetousness, which even by the truthful voice of Paul, the herald of truth, is called idolatry and the root and mother of all evils. For from where were those who were once of the portion of Christians and partakers of the mysteries drawn to the worship of demons? Was it not out of love for acquiring many things and becoming masters of what belongs to others?

Taking promises from the godless and impious—whether of a life of office or of wealth from the imperial treasuries—they changed their religion like a garment, swiftly. The things of earlier times our memory and hearing have preserved and taught us. But there are also things that our own life has handed down through experience. For when that emperor, who suddenly put off the mask of the Christian and, stripping bare the comic drama he had long played beneath, both shamelessly sacrificed to demons himself and set out many inducements for those willing to do so, how many left the church and ran to the altars? And how many, having welcomed the bait of honors, swallowed the hook of transgression along with him? Branded men roam about the cities, hated, pointed at with the finger—these too are betrayers of Christ for a little silver, exiles from the roll of Christians as Judas was from the apostles, recognized by the name of the transgressor as horses are by their brands, drawn only into the most grievous of all sins and straightway following the mystagogue of profane and foul impiety. Thus, then, according to the apostle, covetousness becomes idolatry and is the root of all evils, generating from itself countless wickednesses.

For as those who search out gold from the bosom of the earth say that the gold-bearing earth lies heaped up at its very beginning and most sovereign origin, and from there, like certain veins, extends from this side and that over a long distance and branches out in many directions, as it were, at the very roots of the trees that are threaded through from the trunk, so here too, seeing many offshoots bound together by one root, greed, I find them all connected. And indeed the account has found no unsuitable illustration from gold for greed. From this I see the parricide daring to lay hands on the head that gave him birth, ashamed neither of the gray hair nor of the paternal dignity, but burdened by the old man's continued life. For seeing everything in the house in abundance and not having authority over what he sees, but desiring to be master of both them and the property, he is constrained by his father's authority. And at first he is silent and keeps the disease in the depths; but in time, having increased his desire and been filled in his soul, he suddenly bursts forth in wickedness, like waters from pipes. And for the rest he is unbearable to the old man, all but driving him to the tombs while he is still healthy and walking. If he mounts the horse lightly, he marvels exceedingly; if he partakes of food more vigorously, he grumbles; if in the morning he rouses the servants to their duties, he is vexed at the old man's wakefulness and strength.

But if he should make a gift of some of his treasures or set a slave free from servitude, then indeed, then he is called a fool and a madman, one who has overstepped the bounds of life, a plunderer of others' goods, and he is reviled with every kind of blasphemy, being accused: why did he not die quickly? This is your fruit, O filthy greed. Receiving its goads from you, the child becomes an enemy of the one who begot him. You fill the earth with robbers and murderers, the sea with wreckers, the cities with tumults, the courts with false witnesses, sycophants, traitors, advocates, and judges who lean there, wherever you drag them down. Greed, mother of inequality, pitiless, hating mankind, most savage. Because of her the life of men is full of disorder; and some, from satiety, are nauseated, spewing forth the excess of their possessions like insatiable food, while others, pressed by famine and want, are in danger. Some lie beneath roofs embroidered with gold and inhabit their houses like small cities, adorned with baths and varied chambers and colonnades extending to the greatest length and every kind of luxury; others do not have the shelter of two beams, but when they cannot survive in the open air, they flee to the furnaces of the baths, or encountering inhospitable bath attendants, digging through the dung like pigs, they contrive for themselves the necessary warmth. And man, that creature of equal honor, has such a difference of livelihood from those of his own kind—no other thing than greed introducing this disorder and inequality.

One man is disfigured by his naked limbs, while another, to have clothing beyond counting, dresses his walls in purple panels. The poor man lacks bread to break on a wooden table, while the luxurious man, having driven a silver table out to its full width, delights his soul with the gleaming of the material. And how much more just it would have been for the one to feast, content with the rest of his luxury, and for the honor of the table to be the luxury of the poor! Another, aged and unable to walk, or lame from some injury, does not possess a donkey, the necessary vehicle for his need; and another, because of their multitude, does not know his herds of horses. One lacks oil to light his lamp; and another is rich in lampstands alone. One has been cast down on the ground, and the man who is rich to no purpose is radiant all around with the ornament of his couch, which has silver spheres and chains instead of cords. These are the results of insatiable greed. For if he had not introduced inequality into life, these heights and hollows of unevenness would not exist, nor would the varied misfortunes have made our life unpleasant and full of tears. From this, men have lost their natural friendship for one another, and they sharpen iron and muster battle lines and, like some wild beasts, join together with one another in great savagery. And how could one even explain the things that follow these? Strong walls are shaken down by siege engines, and cities are captured, and women are led away, and children are enslaved; the earth is cut and ravaged, and trees are warred against as though they were men who had done wrong; and there is great slaughter of those in their prime, and streams of blood flow from wretched bodies.

But wealth is the prize of the defeated for the conquerors. On top of these things come the laments of widowhood, the tears of orphans mourning both their fathers and their freedom at once; and he who was formerly master of great wealth begs for a piece of bread, stretching out his right hand; and he who had many slaves as weavers and houses full of clothing, wrapped in rags, serves as a slave, carrying water under compulsion and scraping the dung from the stable and ministering in shameful services—and countless other evils besides, which it is impossible to encompass all at once. But the beginning and cause and root of all these things is the desire for more, an unjust love of others' possessions. And if anyone cut out this passion from men, nothing would prevent deep peace from dwelling in our life, and wars and tumults from being banished from among men, and all from returning to natural affection and friendship. For this reason our Lord also, through his commandments, carefully heals this disease, at one time declaring: You cannot serve God and mammon; at another time pronouncing that rich man wretched, who was about to die the next day and was prefiguring for himself the long-lasting enjoyment of luxury; and elsewhere teaching that that man is perfect who, having yielded up all that he has to those in need, will desert to the possessionless philosophy, the mother of virtue and its companion in dress. But it seems to me that I hear even those who by habit say such things, though they are silent, speaking to their teachers: And how shall we live out our life, if the acquisition of money is neglected? And how shall we meet our needs? How will a loan be discharged?

But how will a loan be given to the one who seeks it, if we all become destitute through your advice? The word is that of an unbeliever, the voice of a fool, of one who does not know that we have God as our master, the steward of life, who from himself supplies to the living creature he made the things that are useful and the necessary provisions of food and the need of coverings. For the providence of God encompasses his own works; and the misfortune of poverty has never held captive the one who is rich in faith. Having brought forward one of the divine oracles as sufficient proof of what is set before us, I will, as I think, provide adequate testimony. In the history of the Kingdoms a certain woman is recorded, a widow, heavily burdened by the misfortune of her solitude. A money-loving and man-hating creditor was besieging her, taking away as a pledge her sons, whom the mother had as her only ones in place of everything. And when the matter had reduced her to helplessness and no one of those who had gold took pity, she came to the one who had love for humanity and faith. This was Elisha the prophet, a man without possession of earthly materials and abounding in incorporeal wealth; a philosopher from among plowmen, without a house, without a hearth, having one garment; having recently inherited,

But when he received the inheritance, a cheap sheepskin and an invisible blessing of the fiery chariot that had fallen. Yet he did not send the supplication away ineffective, nor did he despair of help, since what was sought was not present, nor did he speak some ignoble and faithless words, as one of the many: And from where is there silver for me, so as to discharge the debt? But just as the best physician, when medicines are not at hand, by unexpected devices found the cure for the disease, he also says, What is there with you in the house, woman? Remember if there happens to be even a little something inside. For no one is so poor as to be altogether master of nothing. And when she said that there was a jar and a little remnant of oil in it, he said, Prepare for me a multitude of vessels. And she prepared them, and he through her filled them and the debt was discharged to the creditor; and the woman departed, having found a resource out of resourcelessness. For that very little oil, which she said she had, in the presence of the prophet, gushed forth from the unexpected and filled all the little jars that had been prepared; and then the flow stopped when there was no longer a vessel to receive it; and the grace was measured to the need. Truly that was oil which no plant bore as fruit, but the mercies of God cultivated. Buy this knowledge, if you can, you who are from the rising of the sun even to its setting, kings, rulers, rich men. You who are wise in the wisdom of this world, acquire the gift of the prophet from the ploughmen, which remained inseparable for the one who received it. For the possessions of your zeal have ten thousand dangers of destruction lying close at hand.

robbers breaking through walls, tyrants seizing by force, and sycophants plotting, the sea sinking men beneath the deep and the earth torn apart by its chasms. Let the right hand of God, then, be hope and a treasury for men—the hand that led the people of Egypt out and in a desert land supplied the abundance of good things; the hand that brought Habakkuk to Daniel, and saved Ishmael when he was cast out from his mother's embrace, and provided for those in every generation, and finally multiplied five barley loaves as if an boundless field of grain, so that the one loaf might fill the stomachs of a thousand hungry men and even leave a basket of remnants. To our God be the glory unto the ages of ages. Amen.

4. Of the same Asterius, a discourse of accusation against the festival of the Kalends. Two festivals ran together on the same day, yesterday's and the present one, not harmonious and sisterly, but quite the opposite—hostile and opposed to one another. For the one belongs to the outside rabble, gathering much of Mammon's silver and drawing in the rest of the huckstering, both the marketplace trade and the illiberal; but the other belongs to the holy and true religion, teaching the kinship with God and the virtue of the purified life. Since, then, many, preferring the luxury and idleness that come from vanity, have abandoned the assembly in the church, come, let us drive away the foolish and harmful pleasure by the word of our souls, as one might drive away a frenzy that in laughing and playing leads death along. And I would be right to emulate Solomon in the handling of my discourse.

For he too, advising the young to keep themselves safely from the snares of licentiousness, so that he might make his admonition effective and active, personifies licentiousness as a condemned woman; and exposing all her vice, he thus shows her worthy of hatred to those who are enticed. Therefore I too, having shown by my discourse the vanity of the human festival, will attempt to turn its lovers away from their misguided zeal. This, then, is the ordinance and law of a public festival: first, that the purpose of the assembly be clear; then, that the gladness be common to all, and not that one part rejoice while the remainder passes its time in grief and dejection. For this is characteristic of war rather than of a festival, since of necessity the victors parade in triumph over their victory, while the defeated weep over their misfortune. But in these days, first, it is unclear for what reasons the assembly is held. For many myths are told, mutually contradictory, and nothing true. Then I see few rejoicing, but the many distressed, even if they overshadow their grief with a seemly difference; and all things are full of confusion and turmoil, and the crowd pushes itself on at random. It is a commemoration and gladness of the year. What gladness, O man? First, when I consider the character of the gathering, what it is, and how suspect and unfriendly! With a feeble and thin voice the greeting proceeds from the lips; then follows a kiss, a prelude to the catch, and the mouth is kissed, but the coin is loved; the form is of affection, but the deed is of greed.

But where there is pure and guileless friendship, the acts of kindness are without pay and without gain. At any rate, gold is carried about everywhere in abundance and is given, but a just and seemly pretext for the receipt there neither is nor is spoken of. There is no marriage, so that someone might invoke the generosity of a proud bridegroom. I cannot call the expenditure almsgiving; for no poor man is released from misfortune. No one could call what takes place a contract; for they exchange nothing with one another, the multitude. And to call it a gift—not even to the extent that it is just—where necessity is yoked together with the giving. What, then, shall we call either the festival or the things spent at it? I for my part do not find it. But tell us, you who are zealous for it: give an account, as we do of the true festivals according to God. We celebrate a birthday, because at this time God showed us the manifestations of God in the flesh. We hold a festival of lights, because by the forgiveness of sins we are led, as it were from some dark prison of our former life, to the bright and blameless life. We are adorned again and rejoice and go in procession on the day of the resurrection; for it declares to us incorruption and our transformation to the better. Thus we celebrate these festivals, thus those that follow; and reason leads the way in every human affair; but where cause and purpose are absent, this is nonsense and drivel. O the absurdity! All go about with mouths agape, hoping for things from one another. Those who give are grieved, those who receive do not keep it. For the receipt passes over to others, and he who has received from one who is liable gives to the greater.

The gold of this day is unstable, like the ball of those at play, swiftly sent by me to the other. And it is a strange manner of gift-bearing and service, having the contribution of necessity that cannot be refused. For the greater and glorious man importunes, the lesser asks, and all are moved by degrees toward the bosoms of those who excel. And what happens in the confluence of waters, this one may now see. For there too a slender stream flowing down mingles its currents with the one after it and greater; and that one is covered again by the more flooding one, and many very slender streams gathered together become an addition to a neighboring river; this one again to another greater, and another to another, until the last settles the water in the depth and breadth of the sea. This is a falsely named festival, full of burdensomeness; for the procession is burdensome and the staying within is not without annoyance. For the local beggars and the wonder-workers of the orchestra, dividing themselves into ranks and companies, trouble every house; and ostensibly they applaud and clap, but they remain at the gates of the tax-collectors more strenuously, until the man within, worn out,

Being besieged, he surrenders the silver that he has and that which he does not possess. Coming in turn to the doors, they succeed one another, and until late evening there is no relief from the evil, but a faction takes over from a faction, a shout from a shout, a loss from a loss. This best of festivals becomes a cause of loans for men, and of interest-bearing ones at that: a starting-point of poverty, the beginning of misfortunes. And if someone, because of the unreliability of his property, does not even have a lender at hand, he is dragged off as one who has fallen short of the imperial taxes, he weeps as one whose property has been confiscated, he wails as one who has fallen in with robbers, he is guarded, he is scourged. And if there is some small thing in the house for the sustenance of a wife and wretched children, he gives it up; and he sits starving with his whole family at the bright festival. A new law of a bad custom, that unpleasantness be celebrated as a festival and the destitution of men be called a public assembly. This day teaches even little children and the simple and naive to be lovers of silver, and prepares them to exchange house for house and to offer new gifts, fruits of the season nailed down with silver. And the giving is a repayment of double, and the hucksterly and illiberal begins from here to be stamped upon the tender minds of the young. But how does this day dispose the sacred and most excellent farmers! It makes the city something to be fled and untrodden for them; and they run away from it more than hares from nets. For those who are found are scourged, are treated with drunken insolence, lose what is in their hands, are warred upon in peace, are mocked, are made a comedy in words and deeds.

Our best prophets are filled with outrage, the guileless creatures, the simple images of God, the faithful servants of our life in freedom. Thus then do those in office, thus the poor, thus children, thus country folk. Some labor, some murmur, and some learn things that it is not good to know. But let us consider how even the armed soldiers are benefited by this festival. They are fined in money and offer as the wage of a single offense the provisioning of war. They are harmed in character and morals. For they learn illiberality, the practices of stage performers, the relaxation and softness of morals, mockery against the laws and the authority of which they were appointed guardians. For they lampoon and deride the highest authority, mounting a chariot as on a stage, electing fabricated spear-bearers, and publicly performing the deeds of those shaved for the cudgel. And these are the more dignified parts of the procession. But the rest, how could one speak of them? Does not the champion, the man lion-like in his fury, the man wondrous to behold by his own after his arming and fearsome to his enemies, uncover himself and act like a woman? And he lets his tunic down to the ankles and wraps the belt around his breast and uses a woman's sandal and puts on his head the krobylos, as is the custom for women; and he carries the distaff full of wool and with his right hand draws down the thread, the hand that once carried the trophy; and changing the tension of his soul, he speaks in a sharper and womanish voice. These are the good things of the festival; these are the benefits of the public feast today.

And those who have climbed to the very summit of human offices, the much-talked-of consuls, squander their wealth in vanity, scattering heaps of money to the barrenness of righteousness and the fruit of sin; whose folly is as conspicuous as their throne is high. For having trodden many human thrones and administered the greatest offices of the kingdom, they take without stint the most from everyone: some seizing the rations of poor soldiers, others often selling justice and truth, and others draining the unspeakable wealth of the royal treasuries and eagerly gathering it from every quarter; sparing no gain, neither shameful nor unjust; and provoking God, they now sit in state, and shortly after distribute gold to charioteers and

to wretched flute-players and mimes and dancers and effeminates and prostitute women who offer their body for sale to the executioner; and again to foul beast-fighters and desperate men and to the beasts themselves. For it is evident that gold feeds even the beasts, buying flesh for some and barley-cake for others. And all these things they lavish for a single ambition, that the names of these very transactions may be inscribed in public records. O the folly! O the blindness! God promises to inscribe the names of those who feed the poor in living books, immortal, incorruptible, which moth does not destroy and time does not erase; and do you not long for those letters, nor give any thought to the blessed promise, nor seek to be inscribed in the memory of God? For this is the living book.

But you consider it a great thing to be recorded by the notaries and to be talked about by those who buy slaves and to be applauded by flattering commoners, a poor judge of the usefulness of things, a foolish assessor of what is advantageous. Give to the maimed beggar and not to the loose musician; show favor to the widow before the prostitute, to the woman who sits solemnly at home before the public woman. Look carefully for where a holy virgin sings to God, and hate the shameless female singer who hunts the licentious with her song before their eyes; relieve the orphan, cancel a poor man's debt, and you will see glory that endures forever. You pour out a multitude of purses for shameful jesting and disorderly laughter, not knowing how many tears of the poor you are lavishing, from which your wealth was gathered; how many were bound, how many were scourged, how many came near to the noose and the rope, so that today the dancers might receive it. And what is the end? Vanity. After all things, a small tomb, a garment of a few obols wrapping the little body, forgetfulness soon after, the necessary passion of time, covering over all that was earnestly pursued; upon these things, the judgment of God and the inexorable punishment of evil choice. Where are the consuls? Count those of yesterday and the day before. Was not one beheaded like the criminals, falling upon the massed movement of an armed multitude? And was he not paraded after death more than when, carried on the chariot, he exulted in his rank? And another, after a generalship, having obtained this same honor, perished wretchedly in the farthest parts of Egypt and Libya, fleeing the penalty of condemnation, then dying in the sands, since the whole country through which he was escaping was waterless and uninhabited?

But what should we say of the man who came from the ranks of generals and consuls, now living likewise in the land of Colchis and preserved by the kindness of the barbarians there? And that man from the ranks of prefects, who, as he thought, was invincible and lion-like in spirit—what a downfall of life succeeded him! For first he saw his own son beheaded; then he himself received the sentence of death, and when the rope had already been brought to his mouth, royal clemency prevented the executioner from carrying it out. Having lived a little while in pains and misfortunes, the old man, lingering on in the awareness of his evils, departed from life in dishonor, finding this to be the end of his great consulate. And how did the man of the past year think greater things than the giants, being disputed over by women and men? He fled the rods of masters, he desired the rods of consuls; he acquired land such that it is not easy even to describe; but he was buried in as much as the merciful man apportioned to him. Is it not, then, according to the wise Ecclesiastes, that all such things are vanity of vanities, and that honors are phantoms of unsubstantial dreams, delighting for a little while, then passing by, blooming and withering? Let us, therefore, having stopped the discourse at this point, send up glory to the Savior.

5. A homily of the same Asterius, from the Gospel according to Matthew, on the text: "Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause?" A fair pair of days for Christians and lovers of toil are these two, I mean the Sabbath and the Lord's Day, which time, rolling them around, brings about each week. For like mothers or nurses of the church they gather the people together and set the priests, their teachers, in the front seat; and they win over both the disciples and the teachers to the care of souls. For me, then, the word of yesterday's day still resounds, and the things that were labored over sit deep in my memory. I see the cross being fixed by the prophecy of Isaiah, and the garments of the Lord dyed with blood like those of the treader of the winepress, and the Savior carrying the reward ready in his right hand. And I behold Solomon making the scales and the weights exact for us, as far as he can. And from the Gospel I pity the debtor, who did not share with his fellow servant the kindness that he had received from his master, but by his folly and hardness renewed his own misfortune. For with these headings we labored on the day that has passed, as you all know, you who have not treated the hearing as a side matter. But today again there are many things for us, and all beautiful, whatever the Spirit has set down on the table that is seen. But I fixed my mind on the Pharisees, both the babblers and the tempters, and I greatly pitied them for the wickedness of their ways, in that they were attempting to outwit the very fountain of wisdom with their own questions.

and they were failing in their attempt, since the divinity of the Only-Begotten always turned their questions to the opposite. Concerning which, it seems to me, Isaiah also spoke prophetically, saying: "Turning the wise backward and making their counsel foolish, and establishing the words of his child"; and again David: "With their tongues they dealt deceitfully; judge them, O God; let them fall from their counsels." Nevertheless, thanks be to them, even though they are enemies, because they stirred up wisdom for an answer, so that it might leave to us, his servants, a written record of the learning of profitable things. For behold, marriage is being regulated, a matter that is the chief thing of human life, and precise boundaries are being legislated for its constitution and its dissolution. Let the two orders hear these things with great eagerness, so that the women's quarters may be taught their own duties and the men's quarters may be benefited in the things that excel. "Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause?" This is the Hebrews' problem. I, before others, look to the aim of the question.

For since the race of women is more easily inclined to be persuaded, and was more drawn both to the mighty working of miracles and to the assent and faith of the divinity of Christ, so indeed also at the last, when the murderers in their intent were dragging the Lord to the cross, the multitude of women both bewailed the suffering and, following the Savior, wept piteously, so that they might contrive some offense and ill will for him against the company of women through their deceitful question. They themselves, as they thought, set up the snares and the nooses made of words; but the Lord, seeing by the power of his divinity the wickedness of what was being contrived, and at the same time establishing in the world the things that are loving toward humanity, and making their ambush vain, brings forward an answer that speaks in defense of the women, sending away the Pharisees as empty wolves, who gaped in vain at the question. This very creation, he says, shows its purpose to be union and not dissolution; and the first giver of the bride is the Creator, who joined the first-formed human beings with the marriage bond, and gave to them

For those who come together afterward, the sequence of living together is unavoidable, which it is fitting to honor as the law of God. And those who have been joined to one another are no longer two, but one flesh; so what God has joined together, let no man separate. These things were said to the Pharisees then; but hear them now, you who traffic in these things and change wives as easily as garments; you who often and readily set up bridal chambers as workshops for a festival; you who marry wealth and trade in women; you who are provoked a little and immediately write the bill of divorce; you who leave behind many widows while still alive. Be persuaded that marriage is broken only by death and adultery. For it is not as in the case of courtesans, where a small number of days tests the union and seeks only pleasure, that things are with those who are married by law and ordinance; but quite the opposite, O man: there becomes a certain single union of both body and soul, so that character is mingled with character and flesh is bound to flesh in a certain way. How then do you cut it apart without feeling? How do you depart easily and without pain, having taken as a partner of life—not as a servant for a few days—the sister and wife? A sister according to the account of formation and creation, for you came into being from one cause, the earth, and the same material; and a wife through the union of marriage, through the law of marriage. What bond, then, will you break, bound as you are by both law and nature? And how will you set aside the agreements you made at your marriage? And what kind do you think I mean?

Was it not for the dowry written down here, when you put your own hand to the document, sealing what was being completed? For those things too are strong and have sufficient security; yet I refer myself to the voice of Adam: This is flesh from my flesh and bone from my bones; this one shall be called my woman. This voice is not preserved in writing in vain, but it is the common confession of human beings, set forth through the one person of this first man for the common multitude of women who are joined to men by law. And do not wonder if, from what one man said, another is held accountable. For all things that happened in the beginning concerning the first-formed parents became the nature of the succeeding race. If, then, the woman who is dismissed in vain takes the book of the creation of the world and drags you before the judge—the same judge and witness—tell me, what will you say? How will you erase your own voice, which you made before God, of which Moses the servant of God became the recorder instead of a cheap notary? God gave the woman to Adam without father and without mother, and for this reason, as a good guardian, he secured the orphan; but now daughters strongly use the rights of the mother against senseless and faithless husbands, so that contempt of your wife is impossible for you from every side, bound as you are by both the ancient divine laws and the new human ones. Let the usefulness of the woman for life also persuade you. She is a limb, she is a helper; a co-worker for the conduct of life, for the generation of children; a helper in sickness, a consolation in afflictions, a guardian of the hearth, a treasure of possessions.

Grieving the same things, rejoicing in the same things; possessing their wealth in common, if it be present; managing wretched poverty, resourcefully and steadfastly holding out against the pains that come from it, enduring the toil of child-rearing because of her living together with you. But if ever a crisis of circumstances overtakes him, once submerged he disappears; and those considered friends, measuring friendship by the season of prosperity, withdraw in times of danger; slaves flee both the master and the disasters together. What remains, then, is the woman, the limb of the ailing part and both slave of the evils and of her husband's care, wiping away the tear; healing the wound, if he be scourged; following him when he is led to prison; and if someone allows her to enter in with him, she gladly shares the confinement; but if this too is prevented, she stays at the doors of the prison, like a little dog accustomed to its master. I have known a woman who both cut off her hair and put on men's clothing, and this of a manly sort, so that she might not be separated from her husband as he fled and hid. And seeming to be a slave, she truly serves her longing; and this life she continued for many years, exchanging place for place and desert for desert. Such a woman we find the wife of the most steadfast Job to be as well. For all had abandoned that man too, and the flatterers had flowed away together with his wealth, and his friends had measured friendship by the season of prosperity. And if ever they did come, their presence was a reproach and not a visitation; an addition to the misfortune, not a consolation. Therefore indeed all those comforters of evils railed against him.

She alone, once so distinguished, sat with her husband on the dung-heap, scraping off the ichor and drawing out the worms from his wounds. Thus she was a partner in his life, not a companion of his prosperity; an inseparable friend, not a flatterer of pleasures; the only good remnant of every felicity and of all dearest kin. Therefore it was from the utmost and excessive love for her husband that she fell into the sin of blasphemy, so that her husband might not be punished long, nor see him in unceasing pains, advising him to speak some blasphemous word against God and to undergo a swift death. For she no longer reckoned her own misfortune, that of widowhood; she cared for one thing only, how her husband might escape a life not worth living. These things, together with her fresh experience and the memory of former things, teach the mocker of marriage. What then would the one liable to the accusation say to these things? What plausible defense of his own fickleness could he put forward? Wretched, he says, and worthy of hatred is the woman's character, and her tongue reckless, and her manner not housekeeping, and her management not well-ordered. So be it; let it be granted. For the present I am persuaded and accept it, as judges not very exact in hearing, but easily dragged along by the assaults of accusers. But you, tell me: when you were first led in marriage, did you not know that you were joining yourself to a human being? And has anyone who hears of a human being not immediately seen at least the small sin that follows? For freedom from blame belongs to God alone. But do you yourself not sin? Do you not give griefs to your wife by your manner? Are you innocent of every transgression and do you keep the ordinance of living together undefiled?

O how many drunken fits of yours your wife perhaps endured! How many ready insults and indecent words did she put up with! How many of your failings are passed over in silence, because your wife did not make them public! She endured you even when you were angry to no purpose and boiling over with rage; and she, a free woman and your equal in honor, kept silent like a slave bought from the slave-market. And when you failed to provide the necessities for the conduct of life, whether through poverty or stinginess, she did not reproach you in her distress; nor indeed, when you once came from a banquet drunk and out of your senses, did she cast you off in hatred of the drunkenness, but received you with human forgiveness and led you by the hand—you, her punisher—and tended your head as it swam with the fumes of wine; and she guided you to the marriage bed, alone sympathizing with you, while the servants laughed and mocked the frenzy of your drunkenness. But you go about the streets on trivial pretexts, making a tragic display of your wife, so that you may procure for yourself forgiveness for your hasty divorce. Hard is the mind of such men, beast-like and implacable, having its birth, as the saying goes, from an oak or from a rock. For having erased the memory of all things together, they cut themselves off without feeling. But who cuts off a diseased limb instead of healing it, and that when no dangerous affliction has set in, but one that has much and easy hope of cure? A blister has appeared on the hand—let us treat it carefully; an inflammation has troubled the foot—let us reduce the swelling with a remedy

Let us restrain ourselves. But if we set aside the physicians' examination and occupy ourselves with the knife and the scalpel, cutting away each of the things that cause pain, then before we have lived even a little time of life we shall have mutilated ourselves in all our limbs. But not so, O men; let there be some remembrance also of the limbs; let the care given by your wives shame you into it. However much you may be provoked, if you set the pangs of a single childbirth against your complaints, you will find that the assault of the things that cause pain is overcome. Let your reckoning bring into the midst also the good things of her goodwill: the healing of illnesses, the sharing of misfortunes, the tears shed for a husband's sake by some women, the leaving of their parents and their ancestral home and following a stranger, the selling of some of their own possessions so as to buy back their husband from outrage and harassment. Let all these things train you toward the right disposition and become a bond of affection, rousing and holding together the soul that slips easily, like some rather unsound house. And let mercy prevail, and let not habit and the long companionship of time be trampled underfoot, which makes even the irrational animals hold inseparably to one another. For I have seen with emotion an ox lowing because, having strayed from its herd-mates, it was left alone, and a sheep bleating in a glen and running over the mountains until it joins the flock from which it was separated while grazing. And a goat, suffering this same thing, even if it runs through many flocks of goats and reaches them, does not stop before it finds its accustomed companion and its own goatherd.

Let us not, then, we who are rational be found less affectionate toward friendship than the irrational creatures, nor let us judge a wife to be of less honor than some fellow traveler or one who has been made a friend in a short time for a slight pretext. Do you see how even on the highway people who have met one another, or who have entered under the same roof of an inn or a spreading tree that shaded the noon in summer, make their chance meeting an occasion of genuine affection? And even if they come to the road that divides them, they do not part from one another without feeling, but they stand and shed a few tears, gazing intently at each other, and each gives tokens of remembrance to carry away; and having gone forward a little they turn back again and call out, and each prays for the other things that are auspicious; and a short time thus mixes a most keen friendship, so that their departure becomes hard to break off and forced? But you are so contemptuous toward the partner of your life as toward a fallen vessel or a cheap cloak forgotten on a journey or one of the Maltese puppies that has withdrawn from the house? And where is the disposition formed in the beginning? Where is the rest upon one bed, the yoking together by law, the power of much and long companionship, which both reason holds to be transformed even into nature, and experience has shown? You have broken through all things more easily than Samson the cords of the foreigners. And yet the prudent man and guardian of affection does not easily forget his wife even when she has departed from life, but he warms the children as a common deposit of the mother and of nature, and in them he seems to behold the one who has gone away.

For one child preserves the likeness of his mother's voice, another draws much of her character, another has been fashioned in his disposition to resemble the woman who bore him; and thus the father, having many living and vivid images of his wife, stamps upon himself an undying remembrance of his life with her, and for this reason entertains no lustful thought: he does not today heap up the tomb and after a little time prepare the bridal chamber; nor after tears and groans does he hasten again to the wedding dance; nor does he exchange the black and mourning garment for a bridal robe; nor does he bring a second wife into the warm bed of the departed; nor does he give his children a stepmother, that hateful name. But he imitates the irrational and natural dignity of the turtle-doves. For that bird, they say, when separated from its mate, loves a perpetual widowhood and is the opposite of the dove in its readiness for many matings. Up to this point let the man be assailed by frequent accusations, and let the charges of his unreasonableness wound him more thickly than snowflakes. But if he should allege a charge of adultery and offer such a defense for the separation, I will immediately transfer my advocacy to the side of the wronged man, and having prepared my argument against the adulteress, I will stand by the man as a good ally instead of an enemy, praising him who fled the plotter, who cut the bond by which he had been bound to the asp or the viper. For the Maker of all things is the first to grant him forgiveness, since he grieves justly and fittingly drives the disease from his house and his hearth.

For marriage is constituted for the sake of these two things, affection and the procreation of children, neither of which is preserved with adultery. For affection is not present when one's goodwill has turned away toward another; and the beauty of procreation is destroyed when the children are confounded. But the things that lead to this sin have been spoken of in another discourse with due measure. But both these parts of marriage—do you practice self-control, the unbreakable bond of marriages. For where this is honored, peace and longing must necessarily be present, since no common and bastard desire sharpens the soul, but it casts out lawful and just affection. This law of self-control has been ordained by God not only for women but also for men. But those who pay heed to the lawgivers of this life leave to men an unaccountable license for fornication; they are harsh judges and teachers of the modesty of women, while they themselves madly rush upon many bodies without restraint, physicians of others, as the proverb says, teeming with countless wounds. And if anyone reproaches them for these transgressions, they put forward a refined and playful defense. For men, they say, even if they have intercourse with very many women, do no harm to the household; but women, by the very things in which they sin, bring foreign heirs into their houses and families. But let these sophists and inventors of a deranged mind hear that they too overturn other households and houses. For the women with whom they consort are certainly either daughters or wives of certain men.

And in every way it will be found either that marriage is being plotted against or that a father is being wronged—a father who begot and raised her and hoped to have her a virgin for the bridal chamber and the marriage bed, but was deprived of every good expectation by the robbers of chastity. If he is a father, let the licentious man recognize the passion of a father who fails of his hope; if he is a husband, let him picture to himself the man who is wronged. For indeed it is altogether well that each man judge the affairs of others as he would wish another to judge for him. But if some, attending to the laws of the Romans, think fornication to be without guilt, they are deceived by a dreadful deception, not knowing that God legislates in one way and men decree in another. Hear the will of Moses, proclaiming the will of God and uttering bitter sentences against fornicators. Hear Paul saying: God will judge fornicators and adulterers. But the others will not suffice for your salvation in the time of recompense, but trembling and sweating they will be consumed. Plato will appear to you foolish and uneducated, that sophist of laws, and that heavy-toned one will be lowly, and the authority of him who legislated against all will be abolished, when they see the partners in vice dragged away, to whom they themselves wickedly granted license. And certainly those who did not restrain others first turned the sin back upon themselves and will be found liable to a double accusation—both of what they themselves did and of what they allowed others to do licentiously. Therefore let those who wish to live with modest wives as much as possible make their own character the teacher of their housemates, so that they may have from their own household a good example of zeal.

6. A discourse of Asterius, bishop of Amaseia, on the prophet Daniel and on Susanna. The grace of the Spirit, ever overflowing with the wealth of its gift, is not idle in its own workings whenever and in whomever it wishes to display them. For like a river filled with waters that leap up unto life, in a manner contrary to these visible and earthly waters, it has the outpourings of its energy supplied. For the stream does not fail in it as sometimes in those, nor does it admit ascents and descents as they do, nor does it encompass this part and that part as those do, but it is always sufficient both in abundance and for all; and flowing down to those who partake of its fullness, it nonetheless remains filled, but even so, having grace in abundance, it does not know how to be distributed and divided according to age. For it does not know how to measure immeasurable things by the bulk of bodies, but comes together and appears through the nobility and purity of the soul. And for this reason now it accompanies Samuel, still fed on fresh milk, and now it takes David from the flocks of his own sheep, singling him out from his brothers, in whose eyes he seemed overlooked because of the imperfection of his age. Another it perfects with anointing from the plough, and after those, the one now set before us as our subject, the blessed and truly wise Daniel, still tender and altogether young, it appoints at once judge of elders and prophet.

He who, even though he had been a work of that heavy captivity and had Babylon as the land that carried him away, and seemed inglorious because of his youth's incompleteness and without boldness of speech because he had been involved in so many evils—yet, because he bore virtue with him and had been grounded in philosophy from his earliest growth, and was stout in mind and grave, in the very flower of his age he was shown to be a reproof and a judge of those aged and settled men. But, if it seems good, let us bring our discourse back a little to the beginning and see how lofty and blessed a thing it is to be dear to God. When the city of Jerusalem had been utterly taken in war by the Assyrians, the peoples of the Hebrews at that time were led away to Babylon. The blessed Daniel was also among the multitude of the captive youths and was led away into the enemy's land, a boy easily despised, a small and far-off appendage of an afflicted people, having no occasion to appear among his own people, nor being reckoned by the enemy as any notable gain of war—unseen, inglorious because of his age, because of his misfortune; seen only by the one who sees well. For God alone saw the pure soul of the young man, like some pearl set in the shells of the sea or gold existing in the hollows of the earth; like a comely bride covered by the curtains of the bridal chamber. But when the fitting time came and it was necessary that the hidden one appear, that the unseen become known, that the despised become looked upon, that the one hidden in the darkness of misfortune shine forth, a little visitation of the Spirit came, and the lowly one became higher than all.

Wise is he who does not divide his mouth; a reproof of hidden things; a judge of judges is the uneducated man; seated on a high throne is he who had never yet even become a servant of courts; the young man avenging chastity that was slandered, turning back a people that was led astray, recalling a vote of a whole city that was wrongly carried. For you have just heard the reading and are surely held in your soul by wonder. And I too, setting aside the things of the other books—as many as the psalms melodiously sang to us profitably with pleasure, as many as the apostle counseled, as many as the Lord legislated with authority in the gospels—have inclined to this history. Since I see two youths prospering, the one in judging, the other in being judged; and Daniel applauded for his votes, and Susanna crowned for the victory of her chastity. Come then, if it seems good, you lovers of noble things and of virtue, let us renew the ancient judgment in memory; with ancient chastity let us cut off the licentiousness that is young in the present, exposing a boyish old age and marveling at a youth grown gray. O vile elders and rulers of the people, needing ten thousand tutors for correction, plotters against those joined by the law of marriage, ambushers of chastity, devisers of deceit, swift inventors of slander! You were the ones judging fornication with your lips and condemning adultery; physicians of others yet full of the disease; whitewashed tombs filled within with uncleanness and beautifying the outward appearance.

You who are lofty and seated in front of the judgment seats, when you chose to live licentiously, creeping among the shaggy plants and the bushes. Then the introducer of transgressions and counselor of evils laughed as he saw you, how those at the head of the people, the picked and chosen men, were dragged along the ground like housebreakers or robbers, so that you might gaze on a licentious spectacle; and you hid among the bushes like foxes, which from their native and shaded places lie in wait for the domestic birds and leap suddenly upon them as they graze. O the like-natured wickedness, which the destroyer of human souls has practiced from beginning to end! In paradise was the first fall of the lofty man; in paradise even now the elders, worked upon by the serpent, fall from their original glory, and instead of judges they become condemned, strangers to life and workers of sin. But here he prevailed over men, yet he was defeated by the woman, and the lightness of the first man did not find it in the Babylonian maiden. And one might well say that Babylon is not confusion because of Susanna, but a keeping of the commandments of God, a guard of chastity, a city of a manly woman, a place of triumphal festival. Her I bring, having removed the intervening times, by the likeness of her virtue, to Joseph the world; and I set the modest woman beside the temperate man, the friend of God beside the child of Israel. One and the same crown, the crown for chastity, I place upon both; and I cast the defeated beneath the feet of the victors.

To Joseph, the unchaste Egyptian woman, the mistress of the free slave; to Susanna, the dishonorable elders. I set these as tutors of chastity: the one of the youth of women, the other of the youth of men; lamps of the inhabited world, flowers of the resurrection, judges of adulterers, guardians of lawful marriages. For now let us occupy our account with the sacred woman alone; for now Joseph the chaste is an episode and an appendage of chastity. For since the elders, as they thought, had the hunt within their nets, and they rushed in from the ambush as about to seize her at once, they did not find the best hind timid, but resisting both them and the dragon who is the cause of things that come to be; and the hind is a snake-killing animal; and well did the account find the image of the animal: they urged, she was not heard; they threatened, she did not cower. Henceforth the wretched lovers are at a loss and are held by the two greatest things, failure of desire and fear of exposure. The foul heads stitch together slander and devise another evil as a release from the evil, and they prepare murder as a veil for adultery. For a sinner, when he falls into beginnings of offenses, draws on the subsequent lawless deeds as if by a rope attached to the beginning. And good things are productive of good things, and like things of base things.

Therefore even now murder sprouts as the fruit of adultery, and a council sits in haste as if over some great wrong of the woman, and the crowd is stirred up, having as its spectacle the woman on trial. The accusers and the judges are the same men; and hoary old age, playing the false accuser, was deemed trustworthy, and youth, falsely accused, was condemned out of the prevailing suspicion. And the people, inflamed and suffering what a people is wont to suffer from a reckless impulse, were indignant in their delusion and were carried along with the impulse of the elders; the parents of the woman on trial were lamenting, her husband bewailed the calamity, the children were wailing, clinging on this side and that to their mother in her peril, and the family was covered with shame. But those fine judges, the allies of chastity, ordered her who was modestly covered with a garment—for even in the confusion of evils she had not forgotten herself, possessing as she did the habit of modesty—to be stripped of her decent covering, so that in the court of adultery they might commit adultery, resting their shameful desire upon the sight of the woman on trial; and they laid their hands upon her head, which was the symbol of condemnation, defiling a pure body—the unchaste men—by their touch, and they harangued their lie even against her, those fine champions of the truth. But when the people had been led on and the vote had been cast and the punishment was near, then the falsely accused woman looked up to the judge of judges; she brought the case on appeal from men to God, she invoked the tribunal that cannot be deceived, and the truth did not delay. Rise up for me, then, O blessed Daniel, even now in this discourse, as you were roused then by the Spirit;

Say also yourself, "I am innocent of the blood of this woman," as Pilate later did against the raving Hebrews. Dissolve the people before the tribunal; give a beginning to the trial that was carried out wickedly; set the falsely named judges to be judged; let the order of the leaders be reversed, and let the woman behold the elders, as she herself a little before was a spectacle of the city. Judge, O captive, the citizens; the stranger, the natives; the young, the old. Lend a holy mouth to the Spirit, for you do not have unclean lips, as Isaiah says in belittling himself; nor do you need one of the Seraphim and the cleansing coal. Receive wisely the falsely named judges, lest they also, in agreement with your questions, leap upon the woman as in a garden. For let us understand wisely what kind of beginning the words of the thrice-blessed child also have: "You who have grown old in evil days; now your sins have come, which you did previously, condemning the innocent and releasing the guilty." O the wonder and the great freedom of the Spirit! For where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. For you see how he does not hold back even in his opening words, but having looked intently into the depth of the conscience and seeing the souls of the elders as storehouses of sins, he does not seek witnesses and proofs; but he calls them out insultingly and grievously, since the prophet has the sentence written on his breast. And as far as it depended on him, he would not even have said anything, but would have sent them to punishment without delay.

But to persuade the foolish people and the frivolous judges, who gave judgment for the city of the accusers and not for the truth, he brings the test of the questioning to them separately and convicts the lie by their discordant answer; and having brought forth the judgment, he does not hand them over to the public executioners as liable, but calls punitive angels against them. For to such a degree was the dignity of the saints increased that they have invisible powers ministering to them. What follows for the vile elders? The trial was set in motion; and they departed, paying the penalty for their old lawless deeds and their new sin through death; and all Babylon had the marvel of what had happened on their lips and hymned God with praises, who had made public the knowledge of hidden deeds. And Helcias was renewed, rejoicing on behalf of his daughter; Joachim sang the song of victory, a festival for his wife;

and the children, genuine offspring of the modest woman, with smiling faces skipped about their mother, and the tearful mourning was changed into gladness. But you, the people of Christ, having heard a most pious and soul-profiting history, do not let your hearing pass by indifferently, but make the word a discipline and training of your life. Women, emulate Susanna; guard chastity for your husbands as she did for her own; she chose rather to suffer and be in danger than to defile her life with adultery. Adultery provokes God to anger, shames a husband, destroys houses and homes, makes children of doubtful parentage. Elders, hate such old men; rulers, fear the end of lawless judges.

Young men, imitate the young man of your own age, so that when each age has thus been formed according to the pattern of good things, the whole fullness of the church may become holy and approved in Christ Jesus our Savior, to whom belong glory, might, and honor, with the Father who shares his rule and with his all-holy and life-giving Spirit, now and always and unto the ages of ages. Amen.

7. A homily of Asterius, bishop of Amaseia, on the man blind from birth. We have just heard John, the son of thunder—or rather, the Holy Spirit, who made the fisherman and craftsman a writer and recorder of truly divine and lofty subjects. For he expounded to us the Lord's long and extended discourse, through which he taught the disobedient and hard-of-hearing people the knowledge of God the Father and the Son, leading their thoughts away from the Hebrew notion of a single principle, opening to them the door of grace from the legal tradition, and gently leading them from the old covenant to the new, as from the wilderness of old to the rich and fruitful land. But although he was showing in various ways his own existence also, that he is from before the ages and always united with the Father, and was crying out plainly to the deaf: Before Abraham was, I am—yet they, neither learning the power of the word nor refuting by any knowledgeable objection what they did not accept, resorted to stones instead of words; and from afar they bared their murderous hands for bloodshed against the cross.

But he who had determined everywhere to be patient with the insolent and blasphemous people eluded their anger and uproar, not fleeing basely but in a divine manner. He stood in their midst, yet though he was handled he was not seen, and though he was pressed against those inflamed he was not visible; but they stood speechless, murderous in intent, yet unable to find against whom they would fulfill their anger—like inexperienced hunters who, when they have startled the game before the time, and the deer has run under some thicket and escaped unseen, wander aimlessly through the glen carrying their nets as a useless burden and dragging their hounds along in vain. And I, though in other respects a worthless servant, at least have not forgotten this, that I am a servant and that it was fitting for me to rise up on behalf of the Master against the insolent. Therefore I will cry out to the Hebrews as though they were present today and were being driven by their madness: Throw stones, you polluted ones, at your Benefactor? For who gave you drink from the rock? Throw stones at him who made your life wretched by tablets of stone? Throw stones at the chosen and precious stone which Isaiah foretold to you? Throw stones at the spiritual stone that was torn from the unhewn rock without human hand, as the inspired Daniel taught you? Throw stones at the cornerstone that joins the two

the walls that hold together the New and the Old Testament? For even if you do not believe, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham, that is, to gather for Christ a people for his own possession, taken from the Gentiles and the uncircumcised, for which Abraham also received the promise, when God said to him, that in you all the nations will be blessed. For by his ineffable foreknowledge God, seeing the future, allotted to the founder of the faith all those who would later believe, assigning them to the rank of children. For from that time he observed the faction of the Hebrews and saw the stones and numbered the falsely named sons among the disowned. But since by his word he proclaimed the truth to them and did not persuade them to be pious, though standing present he was hidden, and though appearing he was not seen, so that by such a wonderworking of his he might draw them to agreement that he was both God and God older than Abraham. Hear then, he says, you who are truly blind and foolish: Who is this, who is both present with you and not seen? Or perhaps that one who also spoke to Moses and was not seen? For even then fire and bush were seen, both voiceless; but nevertheless a voice was heard and a word taught and the future was safely foretold. And those who have understanding must recognize the person from the kinship of the deeds. But since the Hebrews were so unreasonably and foolishly disposed, our Lord and Savior, like some physician both diligent and wise, when the disease did not yield to the first attempt, employs another manner of treatment.

He wishes to heal a man blind in mind, who was found so by chance, having suffered blindness not from some injury or accident, but from a defect of nature, brought forth thus from the womb into life. When he saw the man, he stood still and was ready to heal him—a healing beyond human reason and skill. For medicine and the theory that belongs to it undertake the study of those diseases which arise later in certain circumstances, after nature has completed the living being and brought it into the light; but it does not promise a cure for a defect that has been formed together with the body. Nor, indeed, does it promise a cure for all afflictions that occur afterward. And of this the mutilated among men are witnesses, whose loss of limbs no physician has repaired. Therefore the disciples also, pitying the affliction and seeing a man who had never tasted the fairest pleasure of light, inquired into the cause of the affliction and asked the Lord—not very knowledgeably—whether it was from his own sin or through the transgressions of his parents that such a man was brought into life. But the question is objectionable on both sides: for neither would the child have been condemned on account of the fathers, since God does not punish one for another; nor indeed did he pay the penalty for his own transgressions, since he was born blind. For no one is a sinner before birth. The question, then, is not very sound; but let us consider how the Truth, our Lord, answered the question.

For this affliction, he says, O disciples, is not a recompense for sins, but a preparation for the coming dispensation, so that the man who until then was considered ordinary might accomplish things beyond man, and the Creator of all things, after the first creation, might find even now occasions for creating, and from particular things might confirm the universal, and the hard and intractable people might be persuaded to worship, casting away their stones. Let eyes that do not see be enlightened, then, so that the sun of righteousness may shine upon the souls of the senseless. Let a wondrous thing come to be, and let eyes be created, so that those in revolt may learn that the one called the son of Joseph, if he were truly a craftsman's child, could repair a broken stool, or join together pieces of wood parted from their fit, or prop up a shattered beam, or smooth the roughness of planks, or in general do those things that a craftsman father, according to the principle of the trade, teaches his child; but a part of man, and the most beautiful part, the eye, which is especially fashioned by nature with labor, another could not have made, unless indeed he who has authority over the first principle of nature. And if anyone wishes to apply his mind closely to the human limbs, in this part of the body especially will he behold the almighty and manifold wisdom of God, who in the small compass of a limb has displayed so great a generosity of art.

For first, a certain grace has been poured over it, and it is, so to speak, most delicate and fleshless, possessing the solid within the tender and the firm within the soft, and it is tinged with various colors. At any rate, its middle has the outline of black, and this not uniform throughout, but bound together by certain varied circles—its center and middle having the deeper shade, while the outer circumference gradually fades into a more golden hue. Outside this, white is wrapped around, gleaming and translucent, not possessing its whiteness unmixed, but made in a certain crystalline and translucent form. Red lies around the pupil, so that it might blend its grace with the white and black. In addition to these, it is so translucent and smooth in its density that it forms images of the shapes of those who approach, and, as it were, an exact mirror, imprints the features of those conversing with it; for which reason indeed the very middle of its circle, the center, is called the pupil, always showing a human form to the one looking directly at it. For just as it is impossible for one looking into a mirror not immediately to shadow his own features upon the material, so too is it impossible for a man standing face to face not to imprint his own form upon the eye. At any rate, when men look at one another, they become mirrors of one another. The eye, then, is worthy of wonder among created things. For this, as I see it, interprets God, accurately comprehending all creation and from its working pointing out the craftsman; this interprets to the soul the invisible things from the visible.

Through this I have knowledge of the sun, and I have learned the order of the heaven and have beheld the beauty of the stars, and the substance of the earth and the nature of the sea, the difference of seeds and the variety of plants and the varied dyeing of colors, the gloom of darkness and the brightness of light, and simply all things whatsoever God, having created them, praised. For if the eye did not exist, creation would have grown old without a witness, with no one beholding the wisdom in it and the power of God preserved. Therefore for the sake of this wondrous construction of sights, eyes were created even now, self-formed, so that we might put away the petty thoughts that arise in us from the flesh concerning the Only-Begotten, casting out from the soul every petty and lowly supposition by the great workmanship of the things that come to be; and that we might recognize that the blessed light and beauty of the Godhead received an earthen vessel, ministering to us the brightness as lamps do. But the Lord accomplishes the healing wholly by himself and does not use word alone for the working—he who by command established the whole order of the universe, who by two brief words healed the paralytic—but with mouth and hands and much other forethought he now heals the blindness, so that through deeds he might implant firm faith in the unbelieving. He spits on the ground and with the saliva makes clay, using the earth for this purpose for the healing, so that he might show that from that dust, from which the whole living being was formed in the beginning, the remaining part is now also fashioned.

By spittle he takes up and holds together what has been scattered and unjoined, so that he may clearly show us that by the power of his mouth the Word set all things right. For by the word the heavens were established, and by the breath of his mouth all their power. Perhaps for this reason too

he heals by spitting, in order to prick to fear those who a little later would insult him with spittings; and yet he did not put to shame the boldness of the madmen, but he who accomplished such things through spittle was spat upon many times. By this first act he hints at the creative power, and by commanding the man to wash in the pool of Siloam he shows us the salvation that comes through water, which the one who was sent (Siloam) bestowed on all. For then we see well, when we are cleansed by the mystic water; then the light of grace shines around us, when the power of baptism washes away the filth of sins and their stains. And all of us who are washed at the command of Siloam see the spiritual light, which enlightens every man coming into the world. O the wonder and the great working! The man who a little before was blind went away from the pool, his face adorned with the addition of eyes, seeing accurately toward the sun's ray. The matter astonished the neighbors and acquaintances. The new manner of healing disturbed life; the man walked about the city seeing, in order that he might be seen by all as a new and paradoxical work wrought by Jesus who was born in Bethlehem, that little infant who was wrapped in swaddling clothes in the manger.

For these are the things that made the Jews disbelieve in the divinity. Therefore, O foolish and dull-hearted, apply your reasoning to the men of old from the beginning. Beginning from Adam, search out all who came after, whether you find what has now happened also done among others, whether you find a life that has an example of such healing; and again, to mock my Lord, you bring forward the son of the carpenter, whose brothers you know, whose house you know. Count up all his lowly circumstances, contend, pour out great dishonor upon us. But if neither any man did any such thing nor has life any such account, then condemn your own ignorance and look up at last to the truth. Wash also in Siloam, that you may not die in your blindness. But, as it seems, nothing of this sort happened among them. No word taught them, no deed instructed them, no working of wonders shamed them; but everything to the contrary, through their stubborn ignorance, they attempted in countless ways to destroy and mock; but their malice turned back upon themselves. For the more they disbelieved and eagerly sought to overturn by questioning, the more the truth was confirmed; and they suffered the same as those beasts which, struck by someone and not yet having received the whole point in their belly, by their rush and eagerness against the man drive the whole iron into themselves. First curiosity: whether this man himself, the blind man, and not another in his place, was shown;

This the man was clearly testifying and crying out, clearly proclaiming the sequence of the cure—that clay had been smeared on as the remedy for blindness, and that the pool, washing away the clay, had granted sight. The neighbors busied themselves with these things and learned; the Pharisees inquired and were not convinced. A second device for invalidating what had happened was brought into play: the attempt to show that it was not the Christ who worked the cure. But when the man cried out that it was the Savior, and by his confession and proclamation repaid the grace and made the benefactor publicly known, they were stopped in their mouths, dizzy in mind, having nothing they could do; so they run back again to the inquiry into the affliction, and whether he was blind from birth—this they busy themselves with, and they summon the man's parents and become exact examiners of each detail, not in order to confirm what was done, but so that they might find some way to overturn the marvel and, fabricating some false scheme, turn back the believing crowd from its impulse. O excess of wickedness!

To fight against the truth and not to worship the one who does these things, but to mock the benefactor; not to marvel at the power, but to try to belittle the deeds. Be persuaded even by the parents, O Pharisees, that the man was born with his blindness; and again run back to the blind man, being fully assured a second and third time by him concerning your wicked schemes and plots. But whenever you fail in the first attempt, proceed to the second; whenever in the second, to the third; whenever in the third, to the next in order. You turn about in the courses of a mischievous fox, and everywhere the nets of the truth have surrounded you; and the escape from the wonderful thing is not to be escaped. Nevertheless you neglect no entanglement, weaving the web of a spider, plotting in varied ways, but weakly and to no purpose. Yours is an inherited disease. Like children of faithless fathers. Such were those men also in character concerning the wonders in Egypt. They were saved from wars in a novel way and beyond hope, and yet they disbelieved the one giving them salvation; they were fed with nourishment surpassing nature and were more ungrateful than those who were starving; they received manna sent from heaven and longed for the stench of the Egyptian garlic and onions.

By a pillar of cloud the day was overshadowed, so that they might not suffer distress from the heat of the sun's ray, and by a pillar of fire they were illuminated in the night, receiving another new luminary beside the moon, chosen out; and as though they enjoyed no divine working, they thus sought new and lofty gods, exacting it so that Moses, detained a little on the mountain in the giving of the law, might prolong his return. You are truly heirs of their folly, neither loving the law nor hating grace, needing not the oversight of a rod of nut-wood but of iron. You see a man who came into the light, yet in darkness until far advanced in age continued inactive in his eyes, guided by others' eyes, sitting daily before the temple, making public his misfortune, so that he might draw many to pity, having the city as witness of his suffering, seeing now and healed quickly, not by the compounding of various drugs, nor by cuttings of iron, but by clay alone, and that made through saliva; and how do you not marvel, are you not astonished, do you not fall to the ground and worship the one who from the earth created eyes, and revere the divine working? But you are torn apart by envy and are jealous of God as a rival craftsman, as craftsmen of a craftsman, as kinsmen of one of equal honor.

And when you encounter the ancient books, as many as were written for the ordering of the people, and as many as clearly teach the reigns of the kings and the history concerning them, receive what is said about each one obediently, so as to consider Moses almost a god, and to marvel exceedingly at Elisha, and to hymn his teacher the Tishbite; and all the saints in each generation who were energized by God and accomplished great and celebrated deeds, raise up in honors as equal to angels; and do not wrangle about the ancients, nor set aside the interpretation of the fathers, and this though men are by nature not very easily led to faith in what they hear; but the things which you have seen with your own eyes, and which it is possible to touch with your fingers and to grasp accurately by sense—these you disbelieve and at the same time wickedly and senselessly treat with contempt, trampling on prophecies and overturning the fulfillment of the predictions. For the things now seen in experience Isaiah long ago taught beforehand through his words: Behold, our God renders judgment and will render it; he himself will come and save us. Then the eyes of the blind will be opened and the ears of the deaf will hear; then the lame will leap like a deer and the tongue of the stammerer will be clear. These are not the words of Peter and John,

Nor are these the words of some recent and suspect persons, so that you might suspect a flattering eulogy and reject the truth, but they are the words of your own prophecy, if you recognize the Tekoite, the son of Amos, a prophet and the child of a prophet, an Israelite by race, the sum of the conduct according to the law. To God be glory, power, honor, now and always and unto the ages of ages. Amen.

8. Encomium of Asterius, bishop of Amasea, on the holy and chief apostles Peter and Paul. All these customary honors of the martyrs, performed according to the law, are sacred festivals and everlasting pillars of those who have acted manfully according to God; in them the presidents of the churches, whenever they arrive at speaking, comparing their own powers against the greatness of the subjects, immediately in their prefaces flee to indulgence and excuse, and say that they diminish the magnificence of the matters by the smallness of their speech. But if those men, when about to praise each one of the martyrs, give up before the praise and with a bright voice confess their own weakness, who would I become today, I who have the teachers of the martyrs set before me for eulogy, the genuine and first disciples of Christ, the fathers of the churches, the only trustworthy heralds of the gospel, those who spoke with God and received the voice from God in their ears?

Yet let us not, because the word is exceedingly lofty and the undertaking difficult of attainment, embrace idle and inactive silence, like cowards and men unacquainted with the sea, who, giving up at the mere sight of the sea, cannot endure even to set foot at first upon the ship, nor for the sake of trial to sail a little way around the shores. But having entrusted the undertaking to those thrice-blessed men themselves, for whose sake we have come together today, let us attempt to furnish what lies in our power for the joy of others. For I know that as much will be sought as is owed to those great and divine men, but only as much as can be found among us who are poor. I wished, then, that a small portion of that grace might be supplied to me today, of which each of these saints partook—the one teaching the disobedient in Jerusalem, the other reaching the Areopagus in Athens and turning back those who were superstitious from the polytheistic error, showing them Christ and proclaiming the mystery of true piety. For thus we would have shown ourselves to accomplish something of what lies before us and not to fall far short of its greatness. But since the great gifts of the Spirit belong to the great, and I am unworthy to be enriched with such graces, I will add my poverty with my eagerness for you, as Elisha added the vegetables with the flour, not altogether deprived of the honor of preferring the good. And let none of you who are to hear suppose that I, having chosen the eulogy of noble men, will follow the laws of the wisdom from outside.

For we are not producing flattery by means of some contrived art, but we are eager to set before you the virtue of God-loving souls together with the truth. Therefore lineage will be passed over in silence, and the illustriousness of fathers will not trouble our discourse. Flesh and blood will not inherit the kingdom of God. Nor will we honor the citizens of heaven on the basis of things earthly and worldly, but quite the contrary: the obscure life of fathers, vulgar crafts, and the reproach that is called poverty—these will be remembered in our praises. For the glory of Christians according to our Gospel is humility. But I, observing also the praises of outsiders, severely censure them, because, wishing to extol whomever they choose, since they have nothing exceptional to say that is good, they sit idly at tombs and trouble those who lie there to no purpose, and they make the dead an ornament of the living; through which they call upon the departed, confessing that those whom they praise have no good in them. And besides this, if it were acknowledged that those descended from illustrious fathers are themselves also good, and that virtue is inherited as a kind of nature, it would perhaps be timely to make some mention of parents; but since the difference of pursuits proves the successions of lineage false to a greater degree—for the son of the philosopher becomes prodigal and the son of the pleasure-lover becomes a philosopher—it is vain labor to remember great-grandfathers, when one ought to demonstrate, if indeed one has any achievements of virtue. And that this is so, it is not possible to learn by inquiring from elsewhere, but from our sacred Scripture itself, which has a manifold and varied benefit.

We know fully that priest, that elder, the foster-father and teacher of the great Samuel; but being himself most excellent profited his sons nothing—and that too though they were reared by him who begot them and learned day by day the ordinances of the priesthood. Again, Timothy—I mean the apostle, the noble whelp of Paul—was of impious fathers, and yet he did not follow the mind of his parents as though it were some nature; but reasoning rightly he hated their impiety, deserted to the holy ordinance of piety, and appeared a sweet fruit from a bitter root. The company of mules and the offspring of a sheep. Thus Absalom, a mad young man of a gentle father, and as well known for his recklessness as his father for his goodness—or rather, if one must speak more truly, surpassing by a great measure the virtue of him who begot him by his wickedness. And in general, if anyone will apply his mind to such oppositions of children to their fathers, he will find countless good men from bad and wicked from the best. And very reasonably so. For if nature and not character wrought virtue or vice, there would not be the two, but one would prevail exclusively. Let Peter then be called the son of Jonah; whose son this Jonah is matters nothing to me. For I glorify the begetter from the deeds of the son, and beginning from below I send glory upward, just as lamps at night illumine the ceilings from the floor.

Isaiah therefore says in prophecy that the Father placed the Son as the cornerstone, showing that the whole constitution of the world has that one as its seat and foundation. And the Only-begotten again, as he says in the Gospels, names Peter the foundation of the church: You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church. For truly this one first, like some great and mighty stone, was cast into the hollow of this world, or into the valley of weeping, as David says, so that having borne all Christians built upon him he might lead them up to the height which is the dwelling-place of our hope. Paul also calls Christ a foundation, saying: No one can lay a foundation other than the one that is laid, which is Jesus Christ. And by a like calling our Savior also adorned his first disciple, naming him a rock of faith. Through Peter, therefore, the foundation of the churches is preserved unshaken and unwavering, having become a genuine and faithful guide into piety. Because of the building of the righteous man we stand rooted, we Christians from the rising of the sun even to its setting. But when many temptations were stirred up since the gospel was proclaimed, and ten thousand tyrants, and before them the devil, wished to shake us and cast us down to the ground together with our very foundations, the

Rivers, as the saving Word says, like winter torrents, and fierce winds of diabolical spirits assailed, and violent rains of those persecuting Christians burst down, and nothing stronger was seen than the fortress according to God, since by the holy hands of the first of the apostles the building of faith was constructed. And these things came about because of one word of the blessing of him who named the evangelist a rock. Let us see, if it seems good, how Peter was building: not with stones and bricks, nor with the other earthly materials, but with words and deeds which were wrought in him by the Spirit. Therefore, when God and our Savior had ascended into the heavens, when he had the cloud as his chariot while the apostles looked on, this man took up the teaching of the gospel; and before all the partners of the episcopate, opening his mouth, he took courage against the peoples raging against piety and appeared a wise public speaker in the midst of the nations and of Israel—while men were sharpening their teeth and being filled with rage, if anyone should name Jesus. So that what was said by the prophecy concerning the Lord fits very well also for Peter: Many dogs have encircled me; fat bulls have surrounded me. But nevertheless, boiling in the Spirit and keeping blameless the commandment that said to him, Feed my lambs, he stood before a crowd mixed from ten thousand nations and cried out: Men of Judea and all who dwell in Jerusalem. And so that we may not be long-winded, stringing together the whole speech, he calls to mind the oracles of Joel prophesying the coming of the Spirit:

From there he moves on to David and, setting before them the fifteenth psalm, confirms the resurrection; and having brought his whole discourse to a close with wisdom of words and the testimony of the law, he straightway drew his hearers to him—not ten, not a hundred, not three or five times that number, but three thousand men, the fullness of a church, a whole people sufficient to strike terror into the hostile, by whom they were suddenly broken apart. O warm and fiery drug of persuasion, swiftly touching the souls as with a cautery! O theological wisdom that covered over all human wisdom! What do you say, you who crown Demosthenes among orators and extol Socrates among philosophers? For Demosthenes, the great and much-renowned master of rhetoric, was so far from persuading his hearers of the things he wished that he was even banished from the city by them; and Socrates, for all his many speeches to the Athenians and his wise discourses, found as their end the hemlock, put to death by the chorus of his disciples—so far was he from the power of persuading. But Peter the fisherman, the craftsman, the unlearned man, one whom anyone who wishes to disparage him might call whatever he likes, in a single assault of speech hunted three thousand men and firmly converted them—and that though they were resentful and in revolt and did not at first allow him even to open his mouth.

But when the order of the Christians had come to growth and considerable advancement, since in addition to rational teachings and exhortations he also provided a wonderful experience of practical power, having raised up whole the lame man from the foregates of the temple—that lame man who had suffered the disease from his mother's womb by a defect of nature—and all the people had rushed together to the sanctuary, drawn by the report of the great deed to the spectacle, and all were gazing intently at the man, struck with amazement at the miracle; and the mouths of the enemies of Christ were stopped up, and the cross was henceforth a trophy of victory, not a reproach. Again the uneducated man, the worker of the vulgar craft, begins a second speech, saying to them: O men, if what has happened seems to you worthy of wonder and of divine power, worship the healer of the lame man, Jesus, whom you struck and, finally boiling over with rage, lifted up on the wood. This is he, and he lives; and as was often told you, having risen from the dead he reigns over all. So that

Now therefore, taking to yourselves repentance for the sins you have committed, come to him and be enlightened, as your father David says. For if you are sons of the prophets and disciples of Moses, do not dishonor the grace of your forefathers by paying heed to false speakers, but wisely examining what was proclaimed beforehand by them, receive in your souls the Savior of your race. For this is he whom Moses also promised would be raised up as a prophet for you. Having gone through these things and the like before the people, he departed, adding as many others to the three thousand. Such was he in speaking publicly with boldness on behalf of the gospel's initiation—eager, undaunted, prudent, a courage to his own and a cowardice to his opponents. But since it was not this alone that was earnestly pursued by the noblest teacher of piety—to make the people of God numerous—but far more that the disciples live strictly according to the laws given, and he saw that Ananias, that thief of his own fruits and strange sacrilegist, was about to implant a wicked habit of sin among the Christians, he cut him off sharply from the church—not being harsh and murderous in intent, but healing the sin with a view to benefit.

For since the people were newly converted and recently established, having but lately received the gospel laws out of Greek and Jewish indifference, he reasonably thought that his disciples needed not only admonition by words but also some practical fear. For somehow men are accustomed, in whatever way they are regulated at the beginnings of their pursuits, to keep that habit to the end. And for this reason, having convicted the sin, he immediately brought death as the punishment—not using a sword, nor handing him over to the executioner, but then especially displaying the power of Christ in the manner of the death. For he only accused, and the accused man fell down and breathed his last. But how great this is and how much reverence it produced in the church, we do not need to learn. For two things were accomplished in one: both that our Savior should be believed to be God, and that the teacher of his laws should be seen to have angels attending him, readily working toward the apostle's will. He wished to benefit the lame man, and grace did not delay; he willed to punish the sacrilegious man, and the punishment was present. These things are sufficient to astound stony souls and to persuade them firmly that the words spoken by Peter were not deceit, but that God was with him and the mystery he proclaimed was holy and true. And this too it is necessary to note, that the sign for punishment and death was performed once by the apostle because of need, so that to those who choose evil there might be given the demonstration of the punitive power.

But the works of his benefactions and healings he performed daily and continually, and such ease and grace of healing was present in him that none of the sick who came forward departed disappointed of his hope, but went away to his house sound and healthy. And every place in Jerusalem where Peter appeared spoke of Christ; and the multitude had crowds of sick people following, and a daily spectacle of wonder from a mixed populace, some gathering so that they might be delivered from the evils that afflicted them, others so that they might behold those being healed. Thus indeed that wonderful thing concerning the apostle has also been recorded, which was said of no other, that the relatives and household members of the sick brought them on beds publicly, so that as Peter came, even his shadow might overshadow some of them. This, then, is already greater than the Lord's own wonders, and the servant is praised above the Master. And perhaps in this sign the prophecy is fulfilled which the Savior made to his disciples: Amen, amen I say to you: He who believes in me, the works that I do, he also will do, and greater than these will he do. But when I say this,

I do not compare the servant with the Master. Far be it! That is the thought of a madman. But because God, displaying his own power through his own servants, enriched none of the disciples with his own gifts as he did Peter, but set him before all, exalting him with gifts from above; and just as he became the first disciple in the order of the times, so too he was shown greater than his brothers in the experience of affairs by the power of the Spirit. He was called first and obeyed quickly; found by the shores in the turbulent place of the world, he who is always resounded by the waves of human tossing, he has the unceasing sound crying out around the beaches. First among Christians he despised worldly materials, and overlooking all things at his feet he transferred himself to things intelligible and beyond the world. And perhaps one of those who call that thrice-blessed man poor and obscure will say: For what did he set aside? And what did he acquire? Everything that he had, O man; and to each man what he possesses is great; and that too is wealth, which he has while possessing nothing. Equal before God appears both the one who set aside his chariots and the one who despised his donkey. For what the four-horse chariot is to the rich man, that the cheap donkey is to the poor man. A philosopher likewise is both the one who left behind the silver table adorned with histories and the one who left the cheap wooden one; likewise the one who left the populous village and the one who left the small garden, the one who left the gold-embroidered garment and the one who left the worn-out tunic. For God does not judge the giver and lover of mankind by the quantity and quality of the things given, but accepts the intention of the one who gives.