John 5:44Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

There is nothing worse than vainglory. It was this, above all, that destroyed the Jews. For this reason Christ said to them: “How can you believe, when you receive glory from one another, and do not seek the glory that comes from the only God?”

Vainglory brings destruction, and it also provokes great ridicule. Even before the punishment to come, it brings countless evils upon us here. If you wish to know this, let us not yet touch upon heaven, from which vainglory casts us down, nor Gehenna, into which it hurls us. Let us consider everything it produces here.

What can be more harmful, more shameful, and more burdensome than vainglory? That this sickness causes losses is proved by useless and vain expenses on theaters, racecourses, and other equally needless entertainments. Such are the building of magnificent and splendid houses, and every other superfluous construction, which cannot even be described now.

Everyone knows that a wasteful man, a lover of splendor, and one suffering from the disease of vainglory, necessarily becomes a plunderer and a lover of gain. To feed this beast, he lays his hands on another’s possessions.

And why speak of possessions? This fire consumes not only money, but souls. It prepares not only present death, but future death as well. Vainglory is the mother of Gehenna. It powerfully kindles the fire of Hades and the venomous worm.

Everyone knows that it extends its dominion even over the dead. What can be worse than this? All other passions cease with death. Vainglory continues its work even after death and strives to display its nature upon the dead body.

When the dying are anxious that magnificent monuments be set up for them, on which all their property must be spent, they try to display extraordinary splendor even in the tomb. While alive, they insulted beggars who approached them for one obol or a piece of bread. Yet when dying, they prepare abundant food for the worm. What dominion will you find more tyrannical than this sickness?

From this same evil is born impure love. Many are drawn into adultery not by beauty of face, nor by lust for union, but by the desire to boast: I seduced such a woman and drew her into fornication.

Need I speak of the other vices that grow from this? I would rather be a slave to a multitude of barbarians than to one vainglory. Barbarians do not command captives to do what vainglory commands those subject to it.

“Be the servant of all,” it says, “whether they are more distinguished than you or lower. Do not care for the soul. Do not care for virtue. Laugh at freedom. Sacrifice your salvation. If you do any good, do it not to please God, but to be seen by men, so that you may receive a crown from them. If you give alms or fast, endure the labor, but try to destroy the profit.” What could be more inhuman than such demands?

From this also arise envy, arrogance, and love of money, the mother of all evils. Crowds of slaves, barbarians dressed in gold, parasites, flatterers, silver-plated carriages, and much else even more ridiculous, are used neither for pleasure nor for benefit, but only from vainglory.

“Yes,” you say, “everyone knows that this passion is evil. But how are we to escape it? That is what must be said.” Chiefly, if you fully persuade yourself that this sickness is grievous, you will have made the best beginning toward correction. For the sick man immediately seeks a physician as soon as he knows that he is sick.

If you seek another way to escape the evil that comes from it, keep your eyes continually on God and be satisfied with the glory that comes from Him. If you notice that this passion is stirring you and urging you to tell your brethren about your merits, first consider that no benefit will come to you from this account. Quench the absurd passion and say to your soul: “For so long you were tormented by the desire to tell of your merits. You could not keep silence, but proclaimed them to everyone. What benefit have you gained from this? None at all. The harm is very great for everyone, namely the loss of everything you gathered with great toil.”

After this, consider that the judgment and verdict of the people are mistaken, and they quickly vanish. Those very people who speak well of you afterward condemn you. They call you vainglorious, ambitious, and addicted to human praise. But God does not act so. When He sees that you love His glory, then He will especially praise you, marvel at you, and proclaim you.

Man does not act so. He considers you not free, but a slave. Often, by pleasing you with false praise made of empty words, he usually steals the true reward from you. He subjects you to himself more than a purchased slave.

Masters have slaves so that they may obey what is commanded. But you serve even without commands. You do not even wait to hear anything from them. As soon as you learn how you can please them, you do everything, even if they have not commanded it.

Of what Gehenna, then, shall we be worthy? We delight wicked men and serve them before they command, but we do not listen to God at all, though He commands and exhorts us every day.

If you love glory and praises, avoid human praise, and then you will acquire glory. Turn away from the approval of men, and then you will receive many praises from God and from men. We ourselves usually glorify most of all the man who despises glory. We usually praise and admire the man who counts praises and admiration as nothing. If we act so, much more does the God of all.

When God praises and glorifies you, who can be happier than you? Indeed, the difference between heavenly and human glory is as great as the difference between glory and dishonor. Rather, it is far greater, even infinitely so.

If human glory is incomparable with anything, shameful and ugly, consider how vile it will appear when we compare it with heavenly glory. As a prostitute on the roof gives herself to everyone, so do the slaves of vainglory. Rather, they are even more vile than prostitutes. Prostitutes often reject some of those who love them, but you offer yourself to everyone, to fugitives, robbers, and swindlers.

Through such persons and others like them you arrange spectacles that excite praise. Each one of them, taken by himself, is worth nothing even in your own opinion. Yet when they are gathered together, you prefer them to your own salvation. By this you show that you are more dishonorable than each of them.

How are you not more dishonorable, since you need their praises and are not satisfied with yourself unless you acquire glory from others?

Besides all this, tell me, do you not understand that, when you are famous and known to all, you have countless accusers if you sin? If you remain unknown, you will be safe.

“Yes,” you say, “but countless people also admire my merits.” Yet this is precisely the misfortune. The disease of vainglory harms you not only when you sin, but also when you show merits. In the one case it exposes you to countless reproaches. In the other it deprives you of the whole reward.

It is destructive and full of every dishonor to love glory in civic affairs. But when the same passion takes possession of you in spiritual matters, what defense remains for you? You are unwilling to render God the same honor that you yourself demand from your household.

The slave looks into his master’s eyes. The hired man watches the employer who must give the wage. The disciple looks to the teacher. With you everything is the opposite. You have left God, your Master who hired you, and you look to your brethren. Yet you know that God will remember your merits afterward, while man remembers only in the present.

A spectacle has been prepared for you in heaven, but you gather spectators on earth. The wrestler expects approval where he struggles. But you struggle for the things above and are anxious to receive the reward below. What can be worse than such madness?

Let us, if you wish, also examine the crowns themselves. One is made of arrogance, another of envy toward another. One is made of mockery and flattery, another of money, and another of servile submission.

When children play, they place wreaths of grass on one another. Often, after crowning someone in such a way that he himself does not notice, they laugh at him from behind. So now those who praise you often laugh among themselves, after placing grass upon you.

Would that it were only grass. Their crown causes us great harm and destroys all our merits. Therefore, after considering its worthlessness, flee the harm.

How many people, in your opinion, must praise you? A hundred people, or twice, three times, or four times as many? If you wish, ten times or a hundred times as many? Let there be, if you like, two, four, or ten thousand applauding. They are no different from cawing crows.

If you imagine the spectacle of the angels, those applauding will appear more insignificant than worms. Their approval will be weaker than a spider’s web, smoke, or a dream. Next, Gal 6:14. Homily 17 on Romans.

He calls God "alone" in contrast to the gods of the nations, not placing Himself outside the honor of the "Only One." For, as we have often said, the fullness of the holy and consubstantial Trinity ascends into the one nature and glory of the Godhead.

He is torn away from love, because he cares only for himself and gives nothing of his possessions to neighbors in need.

Through this he appears altogether as a kind of monstrosity, composed of many opposites and hostile to God, to men, and to the beasts.

This glory is not visible now, but it will be revealed on the last day.

"We are now children of God," says the Apostle, "but it has not yet been revealed what we shall be. We know only that, when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, because we shall see Him as He is" (1 Jn 3:2).

But vain love of glory does not allow the poor man to attain that true glory. I say love of glory, not the glory of this world.

For it is one thing to have glory and honor in this world, and another to desire and seek glory and honor.

Many true Christians and saints can have, and do have, glory in this world. Yet they do not seek it. Rather, they flee from it.

Love of glory is a sign of attachment to the world, and this must be removed from the Christian heart.

But if you search Scripture without hindrance, it itself will convict you before God. Moses, in whom you hope, wrote directly of Me, and he, not I, will accuse you before My Father."

The Evangelist tells us nothing here about the consequences of this discourse.

But from what follows we see that at the next Passover the Lord could not go to Jerusalem. Even one and a half years after this discourse, the Jerusalem Pharisees still remembered it and sought Jesus' life.

Jn 7:21-23 speaks directly about one work: the healing of the whole man on the Sabbath, that is, both in body and soul; 5:14.

Thus from this time the Jerusalem Pharisees began to persecute Jesus as their most dangerous enemy. From this one may conclude that soon after that discourse the Lord was compelled to leave Jerusalem, which was hostile to Him.

Yet the seed of divine teaching undoubtedly did not remain wholly without fruit even then.

The more attentive and impartial hearers of the Lord, such as Nicodemus, received in these instructions new light for understanding the divine person of the Savior.

Since the Lord is speaking about the true Messiah and false ones, glory here means the glorification of the Messiah by God. Therefore the Lord's words have this more particular meaning.

With such a perverse direction, you cannot believe in Me as the Messiah. You do not seek for the Messiah to be glorified by God, nor do you understand such glorification.

You need, or can understand, only that glorification of the Messiah by which he is glorified by men, by you. In turn, he will glorify you.

This will happen when there is mutual self-glorification and self-praise. But know this: such a messiah, whom you will glorify and who will glorify you in your present corruption and perverted aspirations, is a false messiah.

He has come in his own name. You will receive him, because he will suit your perverted taste, but he will be a false messiah.

"From the only God": the Jews were proud that they alone on earth worshiped the one true God.

The Lord gives them to understand that, by preferring glory from one another to glory from this one God, they dishonor the true God.

Therefore He who preached self-denial and promised neither honors nor fame, but the world's persecutions, could not please such men. Jesus seemed to them an object of stumbling; 1 Cor 1:23.

"If another comes in his own name, him you will receive." "Another will come in his own name," not sent by the heavenly Father, without any marks of a heavenly envoy, and with obvious marks of one seeking his own interests. "Him you will receive."

Why? Because he will flatter human passions and prejudices. He will promise an earthly kingdom, cherished in the dreams of earthly souls.

Since the coming of Christ, more than sixty false messiahs have appeared among the Jews, and they received each one with delight and triumph.

Yet another christ will appear: Antichrist. As the heavenly Father was revealed in Christ, so in Antichrist Satan will be revealed with false miracles; 2 Thess 2:9-10.

They will receive him also, before all others, as their messiah. Thus the ancient Fathers thought about the Jews, Irenaeus 5.25, Chrysostom, Ambrose, and others, pointing to these words of the Savior.

Therefore a prophet who comes in his own name, speaks pleasing words to the people, flatters them, and promises them earthly greatness, was received with joy from Isaiah's and Jeremiah's times even to the Lord's coming.

Among such false prophets one must also count those teachers of Israel who opposed the Lord.

This is what the Lord points out to the Jews, recalling in His words the whole past of this people, down to the day of His coming.

As a people, the Jews were always inclined to bow before rumor, earthly glory, and the opinion of the majority.

Moses had already pointed this out and restrained them from it, saying to them by God's command: "You shall not follow a multitude to do evil"; Ex 23:2.

Yet this aspect of the people's weakness never reached such development as after the captivity. Then the teachers of the people presented themselves to the crowd as absolutely infallible and supported one another.

They did this to secure for their class authority over the people.

Under such conditions, could they believe? "How can you believe, who receive glory from one another, and do not seek the glory that comes from the only God?"

Glory from God is inward blessedness. This glory does not give earthly joys.

Could the glory of the apostles, martyrs, and confessors attract these hardened souls, for whom religion itself was only an instrument for earthly ends?

But one must look more deeply into this state of soul of the Jews, whom the Lord Himself called "hypocrites" in the fullest sense of the word; Mt 7:5, 15:7, 23:13, Mk 7:6, 12:15, Lk 12:1, 56, and many others.

The hypocrisy of the Jews reached such a point that many of them hid from themselves their atheism and complete indifference to inward religious life.

The Pharisee who thanked God that he was not like other men, Lk 18:11, and the teachers of Israel who taught that one might fail to honor one's parents by making a gift to the temple, Mk 7:11, are examples.

So are the Sadducees, who with an ironic smile tempted the Lord about marriage in the life beyond the grave; Mt 20:23-28, Mk 12:20.

Could they understand the life of the soul in eternity?

They knew the law, and with petty casuistry kept accounts with God. They taught and themselves believed that, if they could not be convicted of literal failure to observe the ritual law, they were righteous before God.

Above all, they were righteous before men. But they had forgotten the weightier matters of the law: "judgment, mercy, and faith"; Mt 23:23.