THEOSISJohn Chrysostom
"Who has taken them captive to his will." He rightly said, "who has taken them captive," because they are still swimming in error.
Notice how he teaches humility of mind. He did not say, perhaps you will be able, but, "whether God may grant them to be delivered." If anything happens, everything belongs to the Lord.
You plant, you water, but He sows and orders the bearing of fruit. Therefore let us not think that we ourselves have persuaded anyone, even if we have persuaded him.
"Who has taken them captive," he says, "to his will." This must be understood not only of doctrine, but also of life. For the will of God is that we live righteously.
Some are in the snare of the devil by their way of life. Of such people also we must not despair.
"That they may be delivered," he says, "from the snare of the devil, who has taken them captive to his will." The words "whether God may grant" express great longsuffering. Not to fulfill the will of God means to be in the devil's snare.
As a sparrow is in the power of the one who set the snare, even if it is caught not with its whole body but only by one part, such as a foot, so are we in the power of the devil.
This is so even if we are not wholly caught by him, both in faith and in life, but only in life. "Not everyone who says to Me, Lord, Lord, shall enter the Kingdom of Heaven," says Christ.
And again: "I do not know you; depart from Me, you workers of lawlessness" (Mt 7:21, 23). Do you see that faith brings us no profit if the Master does not know us?
The same was said to the virgins: "I do not know you" (Mt 25:12). What profit was there for them from virginity and many struggles, if the Master does not know them?
In many places we find that people in no way condemned for faith are punished only for a vicious life. Conversely, people sometimes in no way condemned for life perish for wrong doctrine, because the two are mutually bound together.
Do you see that we are in the devil's snare when we do not fulfill the will of God? Not only for an entire life, but often even for a single vice, people are cast into Gehenna, if they have no other good works equal to it.
Thus the virgins were condemned not for fornication, adultery, envy, enmity, drunkenness, or wrong faith, but for lack of oil. That is, they were condemned because they did not practice almsgiving. This is precisely what the oil means.
Those condemned ones to whom it was said, "Depart from Me, you cursed, into the eternal fire," were likewise accused not of anything of this kind, but because they did not feed Christ.
Do you see that even one lack of mercy can cast a man into the fire of Gehenna? Tell me, of what use will a man be who does not give alms?
Do you fast every day? Those virgins also fasted, yet they gained no profit from it. Do you pray? But what is this? Without almsgiving, even prayer is fruitless.
Without it all things are unclean, all things useless. Without it, the greater part of virtue is lost. "He who does not love his brother," says the Apostle, "has not known God" (1 Jn 3:10; 4:8).
How, then, do you love him if you do not wish to share with him even something from these small and worthless goods?
Tell me, do you preserve chastity? Why? Is it because you fear torments? No, but because you are so by nature.
If you preserved chastity from fear of torments, overcoming such an impulse and such force of nature, then you would be far more able to give alms.
For it is not the same thing to restrain the passion for riches and the passion for bodily pleasures. The latter is much more difficult. Why? Because the latter is a natural pleasure, sown and planted in our body.
The passion for riches is not such. Mercy and compassion are what can make us like God. When we do not have this, we have nothing.
The Lord did not say, if you fast, you will be like your Father. He did not say, if you preserve virginity, or if you pray, you will be like your Father.
None of these things belongs to God, and God does nothing of this kind. But what does He say? "Be merciful, as your Father who is in heaven is merciful" (Lk 6:36).
This is God's work. If you do not have this, what do you have? "I desire mercy," He says, "and not sacrifice" (Hos 6:6).
God created heaven, created the earth and the sea. These works are great and worthy of His wisdom. But He has attached the human race to Himself by nothing so much as by mercy and love for mankind.
This too is the work of His wisdom, power, and goodness. Yet far greater is the fact that He became a servant. Is it not for this reason that we marvel at Him more?
Is it not for this reason that we reverence Him more? And nothing disposes God toward us so much as mercy. All the prophets speak of this constantly and at length.
When I speak of mercy, I do not mean mercy joined to covetousness. That is not mercy. The root of a thornbush never produces olive oil, but the root of an olive tree does.
In exactly the same way, neither the root of covetousness, nor of injustice, nor of plunder gives birth to mercy. Do not dishonor almsgiving. Do not give everyone occasion to reproach it.
If you plunder in order to do good, nothing can be worse than such almsgiving. When it comes from plunder, it is not almsgiving. It is a kind of cruelty and savagery. It is an insult to God.
If Cain so insulted God by offering the least important part of his own possessions as sacrifice, how will the man insult Him who offers what belongs to another?
An offering is nothing other than a sacrifice. It is purification, not defilement. You do not dare to pray with dirty hands. Do you not then consider it fearful to bring God the filth and impurity of plunder?
You do not allow your hands to remain in dirt and uncleanness, but first cleanse them and only then bring an offering. Yet that dirt is no crime, while the other is worthy of condemnation and reproach.
Therefore let us care not only that we pray and offer with clean hands, but also that what is offered be clean. Otherwise it will be ridiculous, as if someone washed a tray and filled it with unclean gifts.
Would this not be amusing and ridiculous? Let the hands be clean. They will be clean when we wash them not only with water, but first with righteousness. This is what cleanses the hands.
If we are full of injustice, then even if you wash your hands a thousand times, there will be no profit. "Wash yourselves," says the prophet, "make yourselves clean" (Is 1:16).
And what then? Did he add, go to the springs, go to the baths, to the pools and rivers? No. But what did he say? "Remove the evil of your deeds from before My eyes." This is what "make yourselves clean" means.
This is what delivers from impurity. This is true purity. Bodily purity does not bring great profit, but purity of soul gives us boldness before God.
The former can be possessed by adulterers, thieves, murderers, pleasure-seekers, the dissolute, fornicators, and prostitutes, especially the latter. They care for bodily cleanliness more than all, constantly anointing themselves with perfume and "adorning their tomb."
For "you are like whitewashed tombs" (Mt 23:27). Their body is a tomb, within which lies a dead soul. They too can have this sort of purity, but they cannot have inner purity.
It is no great thing if you wash the body. This is a Jewish cleansing, empty and useless, if there is no inner cleansing.
Suppose someone suffers from rottenness or wounds within, and let him wash his body. What profit will there be, and what consequence?
If someone with a rotten wound in the body can gain no profit from washing and cleansing the surface, what profit can we gain from bodily purity when the rottenness is in the soul? None.
Our prayers must be pure. But prayers cannot be pure when they flow from an unclean soul. Nothing makes the soul so unclean as covetousness and plunder.
Yet there are people who commit thousands of evil deeds by day, and in the evening, having washed, enter the church and stretch out their hands with great boldness, as though they had been freed from all uncleanness in the washing water.
If this were truly so, then washing every day would be very useful. If this were truly so, if the bath made a man clean and delivered him from sins, I too would visit it constantly.
This is amusing and ridiculous. These are jokes and children's games. God turns away not from bodily uncleanness, but from uncleanness of soul. Hear what He says: "Blessed are the pure in heart."
Pure in body? No, but "pure in heart, for they shall see God" (Mt 5:8). And what does the prophet say? "Create in me a clean heart, O God" (Ps 50:12).
And again: "Wash the evil from your heart" (Jer 4:14). Do you see how small and useless all this is?
It is a great good to have a habit of good deeds. When the soul has acquired a habit, it does not abandon it and does not decide to approach prayer before it has fulfilled its customary work.
For example, we have become accustomed to wash and only then pray. So, if we have not washed, we do not do this. We would sooner not pray than do so with unwashed hands, as if we feared offending God and suffering a reproach of conscience.
If such a small habit has such force that it is invariably fulfilled every day, then by accustoming ourselves to almsgiving we would do a good work. We should set as a constant rule never to enter the house of prayer with empty hands.
Great is the power of habit in both good and evil deeds. It draws us by itself, without any labor on our part. Many have the habit of constantly making the sign of the cross upon themselves.
They no longer need anyone to remind them of this. Often, while the mind wanders somewhere else, the hand, moved by habit as by a living teacher, rises by itself to make this sign.
Some have trained themselves not to swear, so that they will not do it either willingly or unwillingly. Let us also acquire for ourselves the habit of giving alms. What labors would not be worth undertaking to acquire this medicine?
Indeed, tell me, if there were no consolation in almsgiving, how bitterly would we weep, having committed many sins and made ourselves worthy of punishment?
Would we not say: we would give everything if sins could be cleansed by money. We would not spare our possessions if the wrath of God could be averted by money.
If we act this way in illness, and at death say, if only it were possible to buy oneself off from death, we would give all our possessions, then this is far more necessary here.
But see what the love of God for mankind is like. He gave you the possibility of buying yourself off not from temporal death, but from eternal death.
Buy, He says, not this brief life, but that eternal life. I sell you that one, not this one, and I do not deceive you.
If you take this life, you take nothing. I know that the other life is important.
Traders and sellers of provisions do not act this way. They permit themselves to deceive whomever they wish, and give little for much. But God does not act so. He gives much more for little.
Tell me, if you came to a merchant before whom two stones lay, one cheap and the other precious, worth great wealth, and if you gave the price for the small one and received the great one, would you condemn the merchant?
Of course not. On the contrary, you would marvel at him. So here also two lives are set before us, temporal and eternal. God sells them. He sells us the latter, not the former.
Shall we then grieve, like foolish children, that we receive the more precious one? But can eternal life be bought with money, you say? Yes, when we give what is ours and not what belongs to another, when we do not plunder others.
But it is already mine, you say. No. What has been plundered is not yours, but belongs to the one from whom it was plundered. It is another's, even if you were called its owner a thousand times.
When you receive something as a pledge, then while the one who entrusted it to you is absent, it is not yours, though it lies in your possession.