In illud Quatenus uni ex his fecistis mihi fecistis

Gregory, Bishop of Nyssa, On the Saying, "Inasmuch as you have done it to one of these, you have done it to me." I am still at the spectacle of the fearful epiphany of the king which the Gospel describes; my soul still cowers in terror at the words, gazing as if it somehow sees the heavenly king himself, as the text says, fearfully enthroned upon the throne of glory; and that magnificent throne, whatever the throne may be that contains in itself the uncontainable; and those infinite myriads of angels standing in a circle around the king; and the great and fearful king himself, bending down from his ineffable glory toward human nature, gathering to himself every race of men from the time men came to be up to that fearful epiphany, and bringing judgment upon each according to the worth of their lives, granting to those who lived with a right choice the right-hand side, as it is said, and allotting to the left-handed and rejected the vote corresponding to their lives, addressing to each, to the former that sweet and good voice, "Come, you blessed ones," and to the latter the dreadful and fearful threat, "Go, you accursed ones.

Thus my soul, disposed to fear at the reading, as if I were actually present at the events themselves and perceiving none of those present, the mind grants no leisure to look at anything else among the matters set before us for examination and contemplation by the discourse. And yet these are not small matters nor worthy of slight inquiry: to know how he who is always present comes. For behold, he says, I am with you all the days; and if it is believed that he is now with us, how does he promise that he will come as if not present? For if we live and move and have our being in him, as the apostle says, there is no means by which he who encompasses all things can locally separate those held within him, so that either he is not now present to those contained within him, or that he might be expected to be present at some later time. And what is the seat of the bodiless one, and the circumscription of the uncontainable in the throne, and all such things, as greater than the present occasion, I will defer. But so that we may not be thrust into the order of the rejected, I will turn the discourse to this, as I am able, for the common benefit. For I am greatly, brothers, greatly terrified by the threat, and I do not deny the passion of my soul. I would wish that you also not be contemptuous of fears; for blessed is he who trembles at everything through reverence. But he who despises a thing will be despised by it, says the word of wisdom somewhere. Therefore, before the hour of evils, let us take care not to experience the grievous things. What is the deliverance from the fearful things? To choose this path of life which the discourse has now pointed out to us, the truly fresh and living path.

What is the way? I was hungry, I was thirsty, I was a stranger, and naked, and weak, and in prison; to the extent that you did to one of these, you did to me. And because of this he says, Come, the blessed of my father. What do we learn through these things? That blessing is the care for the commandments, and curse is the negligence toward the commandments. Let us love blessing and flee curse. For it is in our power to choose or not to choose each according to our authority; for toward whatever we incline with our zeal, in that we shall be. Therefore, let us appropriate the Lord of blessing, who accounts to himself the zeal concerning those in need; and especially now, when the commandment has abundant material in the present life, and many are those in need of necessities, and many also have their bodies wasted away from evil sickness. Therefore, let us accomplish the good promise for ourselves through zeal concerning these people; I speak clearly thus concerning those disfigured by grievous disease: for as much as the sickness is greater in their case, so much evidently is the blessing greater for those who accomplish the laborious part of the commandment.

What then must be done? Not to oppose the ordinance of the Spirit; and this is not to estrange oneself from those who share in the nature, nor to imitate those who were accused in the Gospel—I mean the priest and the Levite—who passed by unsympathetically that one in need of mercy, whom the narrative says was left half-dead by the robbers. For if those were culpable for not turning back to the wounds swelling on his naked body, how are we blameless when we imitate the culpable? And yet, what was there so great to behold in the one who had fallen among the robbers, as is the spectacle in those who have been seized by the disease? You see a man, through the evil sickness, being transformed into the shape of a quadruped, taking up sticks in his palms instead of a hoof and claws, placing a strange footprint on human paths. Who would recognize from the footprint that a man had imprinted such marks in his gait? A man, who is upright in form, who looks to the sky, who has hands from nature for the service of works—this one bends to the earth and becomes a quadruped and falls little short of being irrational; with a thick and hoarse breath, violently roaring from within the bowels, or rather, if one must dare to say, becoming more wretched than the irrational animals. For the latter, for the most part, preserve the character from birth to the end, and none of them has been changed by such a misfortune into some other character. But this one appears as something else, not the usual animal, as if the nature had been altered.

His hands take over the function of his feet, his knees become supports, while the feet and ankles, which are naturally meant for walking, either waste away entirely or are dragged along uselessly like some external appendage, attached by chance. Seeing a human being in such a condition, do you not feel shame at your kinship? Do you not pity your fellow creature, but instead loathe the misfortune and hate the suppliant, fleeing his approach as if it were the attack of some wild beast? Yet you ought to reflect gratefully that an angel touches you, and though incorporeal and immaterial, did not abhor one mingled with flesh and blood. But why do I speak of angels? The Lord of the angels himself, the king of heavenly blessedness, became human for your sake and put on this foul and filthy little body, along with the soul bound within it, in order to heal your sufferings through his own touch. Yet you, who are the same in nature as the one who has fallen ill, flee from your fellow kind. No, brother, let not this evil counsel please you. Know who you are and about whom you are deliberating: that it is about human beings, a human being, possessing nothing special in yourself beyond the common nature. Do not prejudge the future; for in condemning the affliction as it appears for now in another’s body, you pronounce an indefinite sentence against the whole nature; and you too share in that nature equally with all others. Therefore, let the argument be about a common matter. Why, then, does no pity for what is seen enter you? You see people wandering like nomads, scattered as if for grazing in need of food; tattered rags stitched together—this is their clothing.

A staff in their hands—this is their weapon, this their vehicle. Not even is it held by fingers, but bound to the palms by some kind of clasps. A tattered wallet, and a scrap of bread, spoiled by mold and decay. Their hearth, their home, their bed of straw, their couch, their storeroom, their table—the whole equipment of their life is the wallet. Then do you not consider who it is that exists in these circumstances? That it is a human being, one made in the image of God, one appointed to rule over the earth, one who has the service of irrational animals subject to him. This person has come to such a degree of misfortune and change that what appears is ambiguous, bearing on himself clearly the marks neither of a human being nor of any other animal. If you compare him to a human being, the human character denies the deformity; if you turn your comparison to irrational animals, not even they accept the likeness of what appears. Only such people, looking only to themselves and herding together with one another because of the similarity of their affliction—people who become abominable to everyone else, but by necessity do not abominate one another—for being excluded from everywhere, they become a people of their own, flowing together towards each other. Do you see these joyless dancers, this mournful and gloomy chorus? How they parade their own misfortunes? How they make a spectacle of nature behaving unseemly in themselves, like some wonder-workers displaying their manifold infirmities to those who gather?

Poets of mournful melodies, inventors of gloomy tales, composers of those wicked songs, actors of this new and unfortunate tragedy, not using the sufferings of others for their tragedies, but filling the stage with their own evils. What postures! What narratives! And what do we hear them say? How were they cast off by those who gave them birth for no wrongdoing? How are they driven from cities, driven from common assemblies, from festivals and public gatherings, like some murderers or parricides condemned to perpetual exile—or rather, far more unfortunate than those, since murderers, at least, can live among men elsewhere after moving, while these alone of all are shut out from everywhere, declared some kind of common enemies, deemed worthy of not a single roof, not a common table, not the use of utensils. And this is not yet the terrible thing. But not even springs flow for them in common with other men, nor are rivers trusted not to draw up some of the pollution of their sickness. If a dog laps the water with its bloodthirsty tongue, the water was not considered abominable because of the beast; if the sick man approaches the water, the water is immediately condemned because of the man. These things they recount, these things they lament, for this reason the wretches throw themselves of necessity before men, becoming suppliants of every chance passerby. Often I have wept at this gloomy spectacle, often I have been vexed at nature itself, and now at the memory I am confounded. I saw a pitiful suffering, I saw a sight full of tears.

lie dead on the roads, passed by men; or rather, no longer men, but the wretched remnants of what were once men, needing some tokens and marks to be believed. For they cannot be recognized as men by the characters of nature; alone among all, hating themselves, alone cursing their birthday; for they naturally hate that day which began for them such a life. Men who are ashamed even to name themselves by the common appellation, lest by the community of the name they should insult the common nature through themselves; always living with wailings, having an unceasing subject for lamentations. For as long as they look at themselves, they always have occasions for mourning, at a loss whether to lament more the parts of the body that no longer exist or those that remain; how many the disease has consumed or how many are left for the disease; that they see such things in themselves or that they cannot even see, their sight having been darkened in the affliction; that they have such things to tell about themselves or that they cannot even tell of their sufferings, their voice having been taken away by the affliction; that they use such food or that they cannot even receive that easily, the corruption of the parts around the mouth hindering eating because of the disease; that they suffer the misfortunes of the dead while still conscious, or that they are also deprived of their senses.

Their senses have been taken away. For where among them is sight? Where is smell? Where is touch? Where are the rest of the sense organs, which the decay gradually consumes as the disease spreads? For these reasons they wander through all places, like irrational animals moving to more abundant pasture, carrying their misfortune as a provision for their trade in food, and offering the disease to all instead of a supplication, and needing guides because of their weakness, and supporting one another because of their destitution. For each being weak by himself, they become a support to the other, using each other's limbs in place of those that are lacking. For they do not appear singly, but even their misery has some wisdom in the contrivance of life, in that they wish to be seen together. For each being pitiable by himself, in order to make people more sympathetic, they become an addition of suffering to one another, contributing their evil to the common collection, each gathering pity for themselves through some different calamity. One extends mutilated hands, another displays an inflamed belly, another a disfigured face, and another a rotting leg, and each, having bared whatever part of the body happens to be affected, shows the disease in that part.

What then? Is it enough to have done no wrong against the law of nature to such an extent, merely to declaim the sufferings of nature and to embellish the disease with speech and to be moved by the memory? Or do we also need some deed that demonstrates sympathy and brotherly love toward such persons? For what shadow-paintings are to real things, that words divorced from deeds are. For the Lord says that salvation is not in speaking, but in doing the works of salvation. Therefore we must take up the commandment concerning them. For let no one say that it is sufficient to supply food to those who have been settled far away somewhere on the edge of our life; for such a notion does not contain any display of pity and sympathy, but is a plausible device for completely banishing people from our life. Then are we not ashamed of our own life, if we make pigs and dogs housemates? The hunter often does not keep his puppy from his own bed. The farmer knows how to greet the calf with a kiss. And this is not yet much, but the traveler washes the donkey's feet with his own hands, lays his hand on its wounds, cleans away the dung, and tends to its bed; shall we then make our fellow human and fellow tribesman more dishonored than even these irrational animals? Not this, not this, brothers; let this verdict against people not be confirmed.

It is fitting to remember who we are and about whom we are deliberating: that we are humans deliberating about humans, having nothing peculiar beyond the common nature in ourselves. There is one entrance into life for all; one manner of living for all, eating and drinking; the activity of living is of like kind; the constitution of bodies is one, and the end of life is one; every composite thing comes to dissolution; none of the things that stand together have a fixed constitution, our body being stretched around the breath for a little while like a bubble; then we are extinguished, leaving no trace of this temporary breath behind in life. Memorials are in stelae and stones and inscriptions, and not even these endure forever. Therefore, considering these things in yourself, do not be high-minded, as the apostle says, but fear; it is uncertain whether you are not legislating harshness for yourself. Do you flee, tell me, from the one who has fallen ill? What charge do you have? That the moisture in him has been corrupted and some putrid humor has been sown into the blood, the moisture of the black bile having been poured in? For these things one may hear from physicians who discourse on the nature of the passions. What injustice then does the person commit, if the nature, being a fluid and unstable substance,

This form of sickness has slipped in; and do you not see that even in healthy bodies, a person who is otherwise well is often afflicted with a blister or a carbuncle or some such condition, when the moist substance in the part is heated beyond due measure and consequently suffers inflammation, redness, and a purulent corruption? What then? Do we war against the ailing part of the flesh? On the contrary, we turn the whole healthy part of the body to the treatment of the diseased part. So the affliction is not abominable. For otherwise, if a part of ourselves were in pain, the healthy part would be alienated from the care of the suffering part. But what is the cause that makes us shrink from such things? What is it? It is not fearing the threat of the one who said, "Go from me into the eternal fire"; for as long as you have not done this for one of these, he says, you have not done it for me. For if they thought these things were so, they would not have had such an opinion about the sick as to thrust them away from themselves and consider the care of the wretched a defilement of our life. Therefore, if we consider the one who made the promise trustworthy, we must take hold of the commandments, without which it is not possible to be deemed worthy of what is hoped for. A stranger, naked, lacking food, weak, confined, and all this he is to you, just as it is foretold in the Gospel. A wanderer and naked he goes about, and being sick he is in need of necessities because of the poverty that follows the affliction.

For he who has neither anything of his own nor is able to become a hired laborer is necessarily altogether without the means of livelihood, and is a prisoner bound by his sickness. Therefore you have the whole fullness of the commandments fulfilled in these things, and the Lord of all himself becomes indebted to you through your philanthropy toward this one. Why then do you strive against your own life? For to be unwilling to have the God of all as your housemate is nothing other than to become strong against yourself. For just as he is brought in through the commandment, so he is separated through harshness. "Take up," he says, "my yoke upon you"; and by "yoke" he means the labor of the commandments. Let us obey the one who commands; let us become the beast of burden of Christ, binding ourselves with the yokes of love. Let us not shake off such a yoke; it is good, it is light, it does not chafe the neck of the one who submits to it, but smooths it. "Let us sow for blessings," says the apostle, "so that we may also reap for blessings." The ear of grain from such sowing will sprout abundantly; the field of the Lord's commandments is deep; the produce of blessings is high. Do you wish to learn to what height the growth of the produce extends? It touches the very heights of the heavens; for whatever you do in these matters, you bear fruit for the heavenly treasuries. Do not despair of what is said, nor consider the friendship of such persons contemptible. The hand is maimed, but it is not weak for alliance; the foot is disabled, but it is not prevented from running toward God; the eye has been put out, but it sees through the soul the good things that are unseen.

Do not, therefore, consider the ugliness of the body. Wait a little, and you will see what is more incredible than any wonder. For what has happened to the fluid nature does not remain forever. But when the soul is freed from its entanglement with the perishable and earthly, then it is adorned with its own beauty. And here is proof: that luxurious rich man did not abhor the hand of the beggar after this life, but deemed it worthy that the once-putrid finger of the beggar should become the servant of a drop of water for him, desiring to lick up with his own tongue the moisture around the beggar's finger. He would not have desired this if he had seen the repulsiveness of the body in the character of the soul. How many things was the rich man likely to recant in vain in the change of his life? How many times to call the poor man blessed for his hardship in this life? How many times to blame his own lot, as having been allotted to wealth to the detriment of his soul? And if it were possible to live again, in what sort of life

If it were possible to come into being again, would it be among those who are prosperous in this life or among those who are unfortunate? But it is not unclear that they would have preferred the lot of the unfortunate. For one of the dead deems it worthy to become a messenger to the brothers, so that they too, not harmed by the arrogance of wealth, might not be carried down into the same chasm of Hades, slipping on the smoothness of pleasure, in the luxury of the flesh. Why, then, are we not disciplined by such narratives? Why do we not engage in the noble commerce that the divine apostle advises? "Your surplus," he says, "for their deficiency," so that the excess of their relief in the subsequent life might also suffice for our salvation. If, therefore, we wish to receive something good, let us first provide it; if we wish to be relieved afterwards, let us give rest now; if we wish to be received by them into the eternal tents, let us now receive them into our own; if we wish to be healed of the wounds of sins, let us do this ourselves for the bodies of those who have been afflicted. For blessed are the merciful, because they themselves will be shown mercy. But perhaps someone will say that the commandment is good for later, but now they shrink from some sharing and communion in the suffering, and think they should flee from approaching such persons for fear of suffering something undesirable. These are words, pretexts, fictions, and fair-seeming coverings for negligence regarding the commandments of God. But the truth is not so; for there is no fear underlying the work of the commandment. Let no one treat evil with evil.

For how many can be seen, from youth until old age, devoting their leisure to the care of these [the sick] and yet not dimming in any way the natural good condition of the body through such zeal? For it is not even likely that this should happen. But since some diseases—such as pestilential outbreaks and all those of that sort which depend on an external cause, when they arise from corruption of air or water—are suspected by the many of passing from those already infected to those who approach them (though even there, I think, the affection does not implant the illness in the healthy person by transmission, but the common visitation brings about the similarity of the ailment), the disease acquired a reputation as passing from those already infected to the rest. Here, however, since the construction of such an affection is constituted from within, and the blood undergoes a certain corruption from the admixture of destructive humors, the affection is confined to the sufferer. And that this is so, one may also learn from this: does any sharing of the better condition pass from the healthy to the sick, even if they attend very assiduously to their care? This does not happen. So it is likewise likely that, conversely, the affection does not pass from the sick to the healthy. If, then, the profit of the commandment is so great that the kingdom of heaven is prepared through it, and no harm accrues to the body of the one who tends, what is it that prevents the commandment of love from being effective? But you say it is burdensome to force oneself, when one’s habit naturally abhors such things in the many? Well said.

I agree with the argument that it is laborious. But what other thing accomplished according to virtue will you show to be without labor? The divine law has ordained many sweats and labors for the hopes of heaven, and has pointed out to men the difficult road to life, narrowing it from all sides with the more toilsome and rougher pursuits. For narrow and compressed, it says, is the road that leads to life. What then? Shall we neglect that hope of goods because it is not possible to acquire them with ease? Let us ask youth whether self-control does not seem laborious, or whether using desires licentiously is not much more desirable than a temperate way of life. Shall we therefore cling to what is pleasant and easy, and shrink from the roughness of virtue? Does this not seem to the lawgiver of life, who forbade the broad, downward, and spacious road in life? Enter, he says, through the narrow and compressed gate. Therefore let us consider this too as one of the things accomplished through labor: to bring the commandment, estranged from life, into habit, and to cure the natural aversion of the healthy by persistence in the matter. For habit is powerful, able to produce a certain pleasure even in things that seem more difficult through persistence. Let no one say, then, that it is laborious, but that what is accomplished is beneficial to those who pursue it. And since the gain is great, one must despise the labor for the sake of the gain. What is at first laborious will become pleasant over time through habit.

If it is necessary to add this as well to what has been said, that even in this very life sympathy toward the unfortunate is beneficial to those who are healthy; for a collection of mercy stored up in advance amid the misfortunes of others is good for those who have understanding. Since all humanity is governed by one nature and no one has in himself any sure pledge of continuous good fortune, it is fitting always to remember the evangelical precept that advises us to do to others what we wish them to do to us. Therefore, while you are sailing well, reach out a hand to the shipwrecked person. The sea is common, the surge is common, the turmoil of the waves is common; reefs, shoals, rocks, and the other evils of life's shipwreck provide equal fear to those who sail. While you are unaffected, while you sail through the sea of life without danger, do not pass by the one who has stumbled without mercy. Who is your guarantor of continuous fair sailing? You have not yet put into the harbor of rest, you have not yet stood outside the waves, your life has not yet been set on solid ground. You are still carried through the open sea of life. As you show yourself to the unfortunate one, so you will prepare your fellow sailors for yourself. But may we all arrive at the harbor of rest, having fair weather for the present voyage of life by the Holy Spirit. May the work through the commandments and the rudder of love be with us; guided by these, may we reach the land of promise, in which is the great city, whose craftsman and creator is our God, to whom are glory and power for ever and ever. Amen.