Did they lose everything they had? Did they also lose faith? Did they also lose piety? Did they also lose the good of the inner man, who is rich before God (1 Pet 3:4)? All these are the riches of the Christian. Possessing them, the Apostle said: "There is great gain in piety with contentment. For we brought nothing into the world, and it is clear that we can carry nothing out of it. Having food and clothing, let us be content with these. But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation and a snare and into many foolish and harmful desires, which plunge men into calamity and destruction. For the love of money is the root of all evils. By desiring it, some have strayed from the faith and pierced themselves with many sorrows" (1 Tim 6:6-10).
Therefore those whose earthly riches perished during this devastation, if they regarded those riches as this outwardly poor but inwardly rich man taught, could say what Job said when he was grievously tried but not conquered: "Naked I came out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away. As it pleased the Lord, so it has come to pass. Blessed be the name of the Lord" (Job 1:21).
As a good servant, he considered the fulfillment of the Lord's will to be his greatest wealth. By following it, he became rich in mind. He was not grieved at losing during life those things that he would have had to lose together with death.
Those weaker ones who, though they did not prefer earthly goods to Christ, were nevertheless attached to them with a certain passion, felt in losing them how much they had sinned by loving them. For they suffered to the same extent that they had pierced themselves with sorrows, as was said in the apostolic words mentioned above.
They needed the lesson of experience to be added, because they had long neglected the lesson given in words. For when the Apostle said, "But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation," and so on (1 Tim 6:9), he was certainly condemning attachment to riches, not riches themselves. In another place he gives this command: "Charge the rich in this present age not to be high-minded, nor to hope in uncertain riches, but in the living God, who gives us all things richly to enjoy. Let them do good, be rich in good works, be generous and ready to share, laying up for themselves a treasure, a good foundation for the future, that they may lay hold of eternal life" (1 Tim 6:17-19).
Those who used their wealth in this way covered their insignificant losses with great gains. They rejoiced more that, by freely distributing, they had preserved more securely than they were saddened that, by fearfully hoarding, they had lost more easily. What could perish on earth was what they had regretted handing over on earth.
But those who accepted the counsel of their Lord, who says, "Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal. But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also" (Mt 6:19-21), learned by experience in the hour of distress how prudently they had acted by not neglecting the counsel of the most truthful Teacher and the most faithful and unconquerable Guardian of their treasure.
If many rejoiced that they had their riches in places where the enemy did not happen to come, how much more surely and peacefully could those rejoice who, according to God's counsel, had transferred their riches to a place where the enemy can never penetrate?
Therefore our Paulinus, bishop of Nola, who voluntarily became the poorest from being rich, yet most abundant in holiness, was detained by the barbarians when they devastated Nola. As we later learned from him, he prayed in his heart: "Lord, let them not torture me by trying to find out where the gold and silver are. You know where they are."
He had everything in that place where He who had foretold these calamities now befalling the world had urged him to hide and store it. Therefore whoever obeyed the admonition of his Lord about where and how treasures should be gathered did not lose even earthly riches in the barbarian invasion. But whoever had to repent for not obeying learned how such things should be handled, if not from the prior instruction of wisdom, then from subsequent experience.
But, they say, some good Christians were tortured so that they would hand over their possessions to the enemies. Yet they could neither hand over nor lose the good that made them good. And if they preferred to be tortured rather than hand over the mammon of unrighteousness, then they were not good. Those who suffered so much for gold received a lesson about how much they ought to suffer for Christ.
They learned that they should love Him who will enrich with eternal blessedness those who suffer for Him, and not gold and silver. To suffer for these was foolish. They could be hidden only by resorting to falsehood, and had to be handed over if one spoke the truth. For under torture no one lost Christ by confessing Him, but no one preserved gold except by denying it. Therefore the tortures could be very useful. They taught men to love the incorruptible good instead of those goods for love of which their owners were tortured without any benefit to themselves.
But some, they say, even those who had nothing to hand over, were tortured because they were not believed. It is not impossible that these desired to have possessions and were poor against their will. Such people had to be shown that not property, but attachment to property, is worthy of such torments.
But if, setting their hopes on a better life, they had no hidden gold and silver here, though I do not know whether it happened that any such person was tortured, yet if it did happen, then undoubtedly those who confessed holy poverty under torture confessed Christ. Therefore, even if one of them did not deserve the enemies' trust, he could not, as a confessor of holy poverty, suffer tortures without a heavenly reward.
They also say that many Christians were exhausted by prolonged hunger. But the good faithful, enduring this piously, turned even this to their benefit. For those whom hunger killed, it freed from the evils of this life, just as bodily illness frees them. Those whom it did not kill, it taught to live more moderately and to fast longer.
THEOSIS