Works and Almsgiving

The Holy Spirit speaks in the divine Scriptures and says: By almsdeeds and faith sins are purged. Not, of course, those sins which had been contracted before, for those are purged by the blood of Christ and by sanctification. Again He says elsewhere: As water extinguishes fire, so almsgiving extinguishes sin. Here also it is shown and proved that, just as the fire of Gehenna is extinguished by the washing of saving water, so also the flame of sins is quenched by almsdeeds and righteous works. And because remission of sins is given once in Baptism, continual and unceasing good work, imitating the likeness of Baptism, again bestows the indulgence of God. This the Lord also teaches in the Gospel. For when His disciples were censured for eating without first washing their hands, He answered and said: He who made what is within also made what is without.

But give alms, and behold all things are clean to you: teaching and showing, that is, that it is not the hands that must be washed, but the heart, and that the defilements within must be removed rather than those without; but that he who has cleansed what is within has also cleansed what is without, and that with the mind purified, he has also begun to be clean in skin and body. Moreover, warning and showing whence we can be clean and purified, He added that alms must be given. He who is merciful teaches and admonishes that mercy be shown; and because He seeks to save those whom He redeemed at a great price, He teaches that those who have been defiled after the grace of Baptism can be purified again.

Let us therefore acknowledge, dearest brethren, the wholesome gift of divine indulgence, and for the cleansing and purging of our sins—since we cannot be without some wound of conscience—let us heal our wounds with spiritual remedies. And let no one flatter himself so regarding a pure and spotless heart that, trusting in his own innocence, he thinks no medicine need be applied to his wounds, since it is written: Who shall boast that he has a clean heart, or who shall boast that he is clean from sins? And again John sets down and says in his Epistle: If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. But if no one can be without sin, and whoever says he is blameless is either proud or foolish, how necessary, how gracious is the divine clemency, which, knowing that those who have been healed do not lack certain wounds thereafter, has given saving remedies for the healing and curing of wounds anew!

Never, finally, most beloved brethren, has the divine admonition ceased and been silent, but in the holy Scriptures, both old and new, the people of God have always and everywhere been urged to works of mercy; and with the Holy Spirit singing and exhorting, whoever is instructed in the hope of the heavenly kingdom is commanded to give alms. God commands and enjoins Isaiah: Cry out, He says, with strength, and spare not. Lift up your voice like a trumpet, and announce to my people their sins and to the house of Jacob their transgressions.

And when He had commanded that their sins be reproached to them, and had set forth their transgressions with the full force of indignation, and had said that they could not make satisfaction for their offences even if they used prayers and supplications and fasts, nor appease the wrath of God even if they rolled in sackcloth and ashes, yet in the final part, showing that God can be appeased by almsdeeds alone, He added saying: Break your bread for the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house. If you see one naked, clothe him, and do not despise those of your own household. Then shall your light break forth in due season, and your garments shall rise up quickly, and justice shall go before you, and the glory of God shall surround you. Then you shall cry out, and God shall hear you. While you are yet speaking He shall say: Behold, I am here.

Remedies for propitiating God have been given in the very words of God; divine teachings have instructed sinners what they ought to do; that God is satisfied by righteous works, that sins are purged by the merits of mercy. And we read in Solomon: Shut up almsgiving in the heart of the poor, and this shall pray for you against all evil. And again: He who stops his ears so as not to hear the weak, he himself shall call upon God, and there shall be none to hear him.

For he who is not himself merciful will not be able to merit the mercy of the Lord, nor will he obtain anything from divine goodness in his prayers who has not been humane toward the prayer of the poor. This the Holy Spirit likewise declares and proves in the Psalms, saying: Blessed is he who understands concerning the needy and the poor; in the evil day the Lord shall deliver him. Mindful of these precepts, Daniel, when king Nebuchadnezzar was troubled and agitated by an adverse dream, gave a remedy for averting evils and obtaining divine help, saying: Therefore, O king, let my counsel be pleasing to you, and redeem your sins with almsdeeds and your iniquities with mercies to the poor, and God will be merciful to your sins. The king, not heeding him, suffered the adversities and afflictions he had seen; which he could have escaped and avoided, had he redeemed his sins with almsdeeds.

The angel Raphael also bears like witness, and urges that almsgiving be done willingly and abundantly, saying: Prayer with fasting and almsgiving is good: because almsgiving delivers from death, and it purges sins. He shows that our prayers and fasts can avail little unless they are aided by almsdeeds, that supplications alone have little power to obtain, unless they are satisfied by the addition of deeds and works. The Angel reveals and makes manifest and confirms that our petitions are made effectual by almsdeeds, that life is redeemed from dangers by almsdeeds, that souls are freed from death by almsdeeds.

Nor do we set forth these things, dearest brethren, without confirming by the testimony of truth what the angel Raphael said: the proof of the deed is set down in the Acts of the Apostles, and it has been found by the evidence of an accomplished and fulfilled event that souls are freed by almsdeeds not only from the second death, but from the first. Tabitha, greatly devoted to righteous works and the giving of alms, when she had fallen ill and died, Peter was summoned to the lifeless body: and when he had come promptly with apostolic kindness, the widows stood around him weeping and entreating, showing the cloaks and tunics and all those garments which they had previously received, pleading not with their own voices on behalf of the deceased, but with her own works. Peter perceived that what was thus asked could be obtained, and that the help of Christ would not be wanting to the widows who were pleading, since He Himself had been clothed in the widows.

And so, when he had knelt and prayed, a worthy advocate for the widows and the poor, having carried their entrusted prayers to the Lord, he turned to the body which already lay washed upon a bier, and said: Tabitha, arise in the name of Jesus Christ. Nor did He fail Peter in bringing help at once, who in the Gospel had said that whatever was asked in His name would be given. And so death is suspended and the spirit is restored, and, while all marveled and were astonished, the revived body is animated back to the light of this world. So great was the power of the merits of mercy, so great the efficacy of righteous works! She who had bestowed upon the laboring widows the means of living merited to be called back to life at the petition of the widows.

And so in the Gospel the Lord, teacher of our life and master of eternal salvation, giving life to the people of believers and providing for the living in eternity, among His divine commandments and heavenly precepts commands and enjoins nothing more frequently than that we persist in giving alms, and not cling to earthly possessions, but rather lay up heavenly treasures. Sell, He says, your goods, and give alms. And again: Do not lay up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break through and steal. But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break through nor steal. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. And when He wished to show one who had observed the law as perfect and complete, He said: If you wish to be perfect, go and sell all that you have, and give to the poor, and you shall have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.

Likewise in another place He says that the merchant of heavenly grace and the purchaser of eternal salvation, having sold all his goods, ought to buy with the value of his patrimony the precious pearl, that is, eternal life precious through the blood of Christ: The kingdom of heaven, He says, is like a merchant seeking good pearls. But when he found a precious pearl, he went and sold all that he had, and bought it.

Finally He calls those the sons of Abraham whom He sees as workers in helping and feeding the poor. For when Zacchaeus had said: Behold, half of my goods I give to the poor, and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I restore it fourfold, Jesus answered and said that salvation had come to that house that day, because he also is a son of Abraham. For if Abraham believed God and it was reckoned to him as righteousness, surely he who gives alms according to the commandment of God believes God, and he who holds the truth of faith keeps the fear of God; but he who keeps the fear of God thinks of God in his mercies toward the poor. For he works for this reason, because he believes, because he knows that the things foretold in the words of God are true, and that the holy Scripture cannot lie; that unfruitful trees, that is, barren men, are cut down and cast into the fire, but that the merciful are called to the kingdom.

He also in another place calls the faithful workers and fruitful, but denies faith to the unfruitful and barren, saying: If you have not been faithful in the unjust mammon, who will trust you with what is true? And if you have not been faithful in what belongs to another, who will give you what is your own?

If you fear and dread that, should you begin to work very generously, your patrimony being exhausted by lavish giving, you might perhaps be reduced to want, be in this matter fearless, be secure; that cannot be exhausted from which expenditure is made for the uses of Christ, from which heavenly work is performed. Nor do I pledge this to you on my own authority, but I promise it on the faith of the holy Scriptures and the authority of the divine promise. The Holy Spirit speaks through Solomon and says: He who gives to the poor shall never be in want; but he who turns away his eye shall be in great poverty; showing that the merciful and those who work cannot be in want, but rather that the sparing and unfruitful come afterward to destitution.

Likewise the blessed apostle Paul, full of the grace of the Lord's inspiration, says: He who ministers seed to the sower shall also provide bread for eating, and shall multiply your sowing, and shall increase the growth of the fruits of your righteousness, that in all things you may be enriched. And again: The administration of this office shall not only supply what is lacking to the saints, but shall also abound through much thanksgiving to God; because, while thanksgiving is directed to God for our almsgivings and works by the prayer of the poor, the estate of the one who works is heaped up by the recompense of God. And the Lord in the Gospel, even then considering the hearts of such men, and with foreknowing voice declaring to the faithless and unbelieving, bears witness and says: Be not anxious, saying: What shall we eat, or what shall we drink, or with what shall we be clothed? For the nations seek all these things. But your Father knows that you have need of all these things.

Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. He says that all things are added and given to those who seek the kingdom and righteousness of God. For the Lord says that those who have worked in his Church shall be admitted to receive the kingdom when the day of judgment comes.

You fear lest your patrimony perhaps fail if you begin to give generously from it, and you do not know, wretched man, that while you fear lest your household goods fail, life itself and salvation fail; and while you take heed lest anything of your possessions be diminished, you do not look to the fact that you yourself are diminished, being a lover of mammon rather than of your own soul; so that, while you fear lest you lose your patrimony for your own sake, you yourself perish for the sake of your patrimony. And therefore the Apostle rightly cries out and says: We brought nothing into this world, and truly we can carry nothing out. Having therefore food and covering, let us be content with these. But those who wish to become rich fall into temptation and into a snare and into many harmful desires, which plunge a man into destruction and ruin. For the root of all evils is covetousness: which some pursuing have made shipwreck of the faith, and have pierced themselves with many sorrows.

You fear lest your patrimony perhaps fail if you begin to give generously from it. For when has it ever happened that the supports of life could be lacking to the just, since it is written: The Lord will not kill the soul of the just with hunger? Elias is fed in the wilderness with ravens ministering to him, and for Daniel, shut up in the den by the king's command as prey for lions, a meal is provided by divine arrangement; and do you fear lest food be lacking to you who work and seek to merit the Lord, when he himself in the Gospel, to the reproach of those whose mind is wavering and whose faith is small, bears witness and says: Behold the birds of the air, for they neither sow, nor reap, nor gather into barns, and your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of much more value than they?

God feeds the birds, and daily food is provided for the sparrows; and those who have no perception of anything divine lack neither drink nor food: do you think that anything will be lacking to you who are a Christian, a servant of God, devoted to good works, dear to your Lord?

Unless perhaps you think that he who feeds Christ is not himself fed by Christ, or that earthly things will be lacking to those to whom heavenly and divine things are granted. Whence comes this unbelieving thought? Whence this impious and sacrilegious meditation? What does a faithless heart do in the house of faith? Why is one who does not believe in Christ at all called and named a Christian? The name of Pharisee suits you better. For when the Lord in the Gospel was discoursing about almsgiving, and faithfully and wholesomely forewarning us to make for ourselves friends from earthly gains by provident generosity, who might afterward receive us into eternal tabernacles, the Scripture added after this, saying: But all the Pharisees, who were very covetous, heard these things, and they derided him.

Such as we now see certain persons in the Church, whose closed ears and blinded hearts admit no light from spiritual and salutary admonitions; at whom we ought not to marvel that they despise the servant in his discourses, when we see the Lord himself despised by such persons.

Why do you applaud yourself in these foolish and stupid thoughts, as though you were held back from works by fear and anxiety about the future? Why do you put forward certain shadows and phantoms of vain excuse? Confess rather what is true; and because you cannot deceive those who know, bring forth the secret and hidden things of your mind. The darkness of barrenness has besieged your soul, and, the light of truth having withdrawn from it, a deep and profound fog of avarice has blinded your carnal heart. You are the captive and slave of your money, you are bound with the chains and fetters of covetousness, and you whom Christ had already loosed are bound again. You keep your money, which when kept does not keep you. You heap up your patrimony, which burdens you with its own weight; nor do you remember what God answered to the rich man boasting with foolish exultation of the abundance of his overflowing fruits: Fool, he said, this night your soul is required of you.

Whose then shall those things be which you have prepared? Why do you alone brood over your riches? Why do you heap up the burden of your patrimony to your own punishment, so that the richer you have been in the world, the poorer you become before God? Divide your revenues with the Lord your God, share your fruits with Christ, make Christ a partaker of your earthly possessions, so that he also may make you a co-heir with himself of the heavenly kingdoms.

You err and are deceived, whoever you are who believes yourself rich in the world. Hear in the Apocalypse the voice of your Lord rebuking such men with just reproaches: You say, he says, I am rich, and have grown wealthy, and have need of nothing; and you do not know that you are wretched and pitiable, and poor, and blind, and naked. I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire, that you may be rich; and a white garment, that you may be clothed, and that the shame of your nakedness may not appear in you, and anoint your eyes with eye-salve that you may see. You therefore who are wealthy and rich, buy from Christ gold refined by fire, so that, your impurities being melted away as by fire, you may be able to be pure gold, if you are cleansed by almsgiving and righteous work.

Buy for yourself a white garment, so that you who had been naked after the manner of Adam and were hideous in your deformity before, may be clothed with the bright garment of Christ. And you who as a matron in the Church of Christ are wealthy and rich, anoint your eyes, not with the antimony of the devil, but with the eye-salve of Christ; so that you may be able to attain to seeing God, while you merit God both by works and by conduct.

But such as you are, you cannot even work in the Church. For the eyes of the poor and needy are not seen by your eyes, covered over with the darkness of blackness and shrouded in night. You are wealthy and rich, and you believe yourself to be celebrating the Lord's day, you who take no account at all of the corban, who come to the Lord's table without a sacrifice, who take a portion of the sacrifice which a poor person has offered. Look in the Gospel at the widow mindful of the heavenly commandments, working amid the very pressures and straits of poverty, casting into the treasury the two mites which alone she had; whom when the Lord had observed and seen, examining her work not by her patrimony but by her spirit, and considering not how much but from how much she had given, he answered and said: Truly I say to you that this widow has cast more than all into the gifts of God.

For all these have cast into the gifts of God out of what was abundant to them, but she out of her poverty has cast in all the livelihood she had. Most blessed and glorious woman, who even before the day of judgment merited to be praised by the voice of the Judge. Let the rich be ashamed of their barrenness and faithlessness. A widow, and a widow poor in possessions, is found rich in work. And whereas all things that are given are credited to orphans and widows, she gives who ought to have received; so that we may know what punishment awaits the barren rich man, when by this very example even the poor ought to work.

And that we may understand that these works are given to God and that whoever does these things merits the Lord, Christ calls those things the gifts of God, and signifies that the widow cast two farthings into the gifts of God, so that it may be more and more manifest that he who has mercy on the poor lends to God.

But neither should that consideration hold back and recall a Christian from good and righteous works, that someone thinks he can excuse himself by the benefit of his children, since in spiritual expenditures we ought to think of Christ, who has professed that he receives, and we should prefer not our fellow-servants to our children but the Lord, he himself instructing and admonishing: He who loves, he says, father or mother above me is not worthy of me; and he who loves son or daughter above me is not worthy of me. Likewise in Deuteronomy, for the strengthening of faith and the love of God, like things are written: Those who say to their father or mother, I have not known you, and have not acknowledged their sons, these have kept your precepts, and have observed your covenant. For if we love God with our whole heart, we ought not to prefer either parents or children to God.

Which also John sets down in his Epistle, that the love of God is not in those whom we see unwilling to work for the poor: He who has the substance of the world, he says, and sees his brother in want, and shuts up his bowels, how does the love of God abide in him? For if God lends at interest through almsgiving to the poor, and when it is given to the least it is given to Christ, there is no reason for anyone to prefer earthly things to heavenly, nor to set human things before divine.

So that widow, in the third book of Kings, when, in drought and famine, having consumed everything, she had made from the small amount of meal and oil that remained a cake baked under the ashes, after it was consumed she was about to die with her children. Elijah came upon her and asked that food be given to him first to eat; then, from what remained, that she and her sons might eat. Nor did she hesitate to comply, nor did the mother, in hunger and want, set her sons before Elijah. Rather, what is pleasing to God is done in the sight of God; what was asked is offered promptly and willingly; nor is a portion given from abundance, but everything from a little, and while the children are hungry another is fed first, and in penury and famine food is not thought of before mercy; so that, while in a saving work bodily life is held in contempt, the soul may be preserved spiritually.

Elijah therefore, bearing the figure of Christ, and showing that He repays each one in turn for mercy, answered and said: Thus says the Lord: The barrel of meal shall not fail, and the cruse of oil shall not diminish until the day that the Lord gives rain upon the earth. According to the faithfulness of the divine promise, what the widow had provided was multiplied and heaped up, and as just works and the merits of mercy took on increase and growth, the vessels of meal and oil were filled. Nor did the mother take from her children what she gave to Elijah, but rather conferred upon her children what she did with kindness and piety.

And she did not yet know Christ, had not yet heard His precepts, had not been redeemed by His cross and passion, and was repaying food and drink in place of blood; so that from this it may appear how greatly he sins in the Church who, setting himself and his children before Christ, keeps his riches and does not share his abundant patrimony with the poverty of the needy.

But indeed many children are in the household, and the number of your offspring holds you back from devoting yourself generously to good works. Yet for this very reason you ought to work the more, because you are the father of many pledges. There are more for whom you may entreat the Lord; the sins of many must be redeemed, the consciences of many must be purged, the souls of many must be freed. As in this secular life, in feeding and sustaining one's offspring, the greater the number the greater the expense, so also in the spiritual and heavenly life, the more abundant the number of offspring, the greater must be the expenditure of works. So also Job offered numerous sacrifices for his children; as great as was the number of offspring in the household, so great a number of victims was given to God. And since what is sinned in the sight of God cannot daily be lacking, daily sacrifices were not lacking, by which sins could be wiped away.

The divine Scripture attests, saying: Job, a true and just man, had seven sons and three daughters, and he cleansed them offering sacrifices to God for them according to their number, and for their sins one calf. If therefore you truly love your children, if you show them the full and fatherly sweetness of love, you ought to work the more, so that you may commend your children to God by righteous action.

And do not think, together with your children, of the father who is both temporal and weak, but of that Father who is the eternal and steadfast Father of spiritual children. Assign to Him your resources which you keep for your heirs. Let Him be the guardian of your children, let Him be their curator, let Him be their protector with divine majesty against all worldly injuries. A patrimony entrusted to God neither the state seizes, nor the treasury invades, nor any forensic calumny overturns. An inheritance is placed in safety which is kept under God's guardianship. This is to provide for dear pledges in the future, this is to consult for future heirs with fatherly piety, according to the faith of Holy Scripture saying: I was young, and now am old, and I have not seen the just forsaken, nor his seed begging bread. All the day he is merciful and lends, and his seed is in blessing. And again: He who walks without reproach in justice shall leave blessed children after him.

You are therefore a transgressor and a betrayer as a father, unless you faithfully consult for your children, unless you look to their preservation with religious and true piety. You who strive for an earthly rather than a heavenly patrimony, to commend your children to the devil rather than to Christ, sin doubly and commit a twofold and double crime: both that you do not prepare for your children the help of God the Father, and that you teach your children to love patrimony more than Christ.

Be rather such a father to your children as Tobias was. Give to your offspring useful and salutary precepts such as he gave to his son; charge your children with what he also charged his son, saying: And now, my son, I charge you, serve God in truth, and do before Him what is pleasing to Him; and charge your children that they do justice and almsgiving, and that they be mindful of God, and bless His name at all times. And again: All the days of your life, my dearest son, keep God in mind, and do not pass over His commandments. Do justice all the days of your life, and do not walk in the way of iniquity; for if you act in truth, there shall be respect for your works. From your substance give alms, and do not turn your face away from any poor man. So shall it come to pass that the face of God shall not be turned away from you. As you have, my son, so do.

If you have abundant substance, give alms more abundantly from it; if you have little, share even from that little. And do not fear when you give alms; for you lay up a good reward for yourself against the day of necessity, because alms deliver from death, and suffer not to go into hell. Alms is a good gift for all who give it before the most high God.

What a gift it is, dearest brethren, whose presentation is celebrated with God as spectator! If in the games of the nations it seems great and glorious to have proconsuls or emperors present, and the preparation and expense among those who give games is greater so that they may please those of higher rank, how much more illustrious and great is the glory of a gift that has God and Christ as spectators! How much more abundant the preparation and how much greater the expense must be displayed there, where the Powers of heaven assemble for the spectacle, where all the Angels assemble, where from the giver of games not a chariot-race or a consulship is sought, but eternal life is bestowed, nor is the vain and fleeting favor of the crowd sought after, but the perpetual reward of the heavenly kingdom is received!

And, so that the slothful and barren and those who, through love of money, do nothing toward the fruit of salvation may be the more ashamed, so that the blush of their disgrace and baseness may strike their sordid conscience the more, let each one set before his eyes the devil with his servants, that is, with the people of perdition and death, springing forth into the midst, challenging the people of Christ, with Christ Himself present and judging, by the test of comparison, saying: "I for those whom you see with me neither received blows, nor endured scourgings, nor bore a cross, nor shed blood, nor redeemed my household at the price of passion and gore; and neither do I promise them a heavenly kingdom, nor do I call them back to paradise with immortality restored; and yet how precious, how great, how sought with excessive and prolonged toil, with most costly preparations, are the gifts they procure for me; with their goods either pledged or sold in the procurement of the games; and unless the presentation turns out honorably, they are driven out with insults and hissing, and sometimes are nearly stoned by the fury of the populace.

Show me, O Christ, such givers of games among yours, those rich men, those abounding in copious wealth, whether in the Church, with you presiding and watching, they put on a gift of this kind, with their goods pledged or sold, or rather with their possessions transferred, changed for the better into heavenly treasures. In these games of mine, fleeting and earthly, no one is fed, no one is clothed, no one is sustained by the comfort of any food or drink. Everything perishes amid the frenzy of the giver and the delusion of the spectator, in the prodigal and foolish vanity of pleasures that disappoint. There, in your poor, you are clothed and fed, you promise eternal life to those who work; and scarcely do your people match mine who perish, they who are honored by you with divine rewards and heavenly prizes."

What answer shall we make to these things, dearest brethren? By what reasoning do we defend, by what excuse do we cleanse, the minds of the rich covered over with sacrilegious barrenness and a certain night of darkness, who are lesser than the servants of the devil, so that we repay not even in small things to Christ the return for the price of His passion and blood? He gave us commandments, He instructed us what His servants ought to do, He promised a reward to those who work, and threatened punishment to the barren, He set forth His sentence, He foretold beforehand what He would judge.

What excuse can there be for one who ceases, what defense for one who is barren, except that when the servant does not do what is commanded, the Lord will do what He threatens, who also says: When the Son of man shall come in His glory, and all the Angels with Him, then shall He sit upon the throne of His glory: and all nations shall be gathered before Him, and He shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd separateth the sheep from the goats, and He shall set the sheep on His right hand, but the goats on His left. Then shall the king say to them that shall be on His right hand: Come, ye blessed of my Father, receive the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.

For I was hungry, and you gave me to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave me to drink; I was a stranger, and you took me in; naked, and you covered me; I was sick, and you visited me; I was in prison, and you came to me. Then shall the just answer Him, saying: Lord, when did we see thee hungry and fed thee, thirsty and gave thee drink? When did we see thee a stranger and took thee in, naked and covered thee? Or when did we see thee sick and in prison, and came to thee? Then the king answering shall say to them: Amen I say to you, as long as you did it to one of these my least brethren, you did it to me. Then He shall say to them also that shall be on His left hand: Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire which my Father hath prepared for the devil and his angels.

For I was hungry, and you gave me not to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave me not to drink; I was a stranger, and you took me not in; naked, and you covered me not; sick and in prison, and you did not visit me. Then they also shall answer Him, saying: Lord, when did we see thee hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to thee? Then He shall answer them: Amen I say to you, as long as you did it not to one of these least, neither did you do it to me. And these shall go into everlasting burning, but the just into life everlasting. What greater thing could Christ have said to us? How could He more powerfully provoke the works of our justice and mercy, than by saying that whatever is bestowed upon the needy and the poor is bestowed upon Himself, and by saying that He is offended unless it be bestowed upon the needy and the poor?

So that he who is not moved by regard for a brother in the Church may at least be moved by contemplation of Christ, and he who does not think of his fellow-servant in toil and want may yet think of the Lord as present in that very one whom he despises.

And therefore, dearest brethren, whose fear toward God is ready, and whose mind, having now spurned and trampled upon the world, is raised up toward things above and divine, let us with full faith, devout mind, and continual work render service to the Lord by meriting His favor. Let us give to Christ earthly garments, being about to receive heavenly raiment: let us give worldly food and drink, being about to come with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob to the heavenly banquet. Let us not reap sparingly; let us sow abundantly. Let us, while there is time, take thought for our eternal security and salvation, as the Apostle Paul admonishes and says: Therefore, whilst we have time, let us work good to all men, but especially to those who are of the household of the faith. And in doing good let us not fail; for in due time we shall reap.

Let us consider, most beloved brethren, what the people of believers did under the Apostles, when in those very beginnings the mind was vigorous with greater virtues, when the Faith of believers was still fervent with the new warmth of faith. Then they sold their homes and estates, and freely and generously offered to the Apostles the sum to be distributed to the poor, selling and disposing of their earthly patrimony, transferring their resources thither where they might gather the fruit of an eternal possession, purchasing there houses where they might begin to dwell forever. Such then was the abundance in works as was the harmony in love, as we read in the Acts of the Apostles: But the multitude of them that believed were of one soul and one mind: neither was there any distinction among them, nor did any of them say that any of the things which he possessed was his own, but all things were common unto them.

This is truly to become sons of God by spiritual birth, this is to imitate by the heavenly law the equity of God the Father. For whatever belongs to God is common in our use, nor is anyone shut out from His benefits and gifts, so that all the human race may equally enjoy the divine goodness and bounty. Thus equally does the day give light, the sun shine, the rain water, the wind blow; and sleep is one for those who sleep, and the splendor of the stars and of the moon is common. By which example of equality, he who as a possessor on earth shares his revenues and fruits with the brotherhood, being common and just through free gifts, is an imitator of God the Father.

How great, dearest brethren, will be the glory of those who work, how grand and surpassing the joy, when the Lord shall begin to review His people, and, bestowing the promised rewards according to our merits and works, shall give heavenly things for earthly, everlasting for temporal, great things for small, shall present us to the Father, to whom He restored us by His sanctification, shall grant us eternity and immortality, unto which He repaired us by the quickening of His blood, shall make us return again to paradise, shall open the kingdoms of heaven by the faith and truth of His promise! Let these things be firmly fixed in our minds, let them be understood with full faith, let them be loved with the whole heart, let them be redeemed by the magnanimity of unceasing works.

A noble and divine thing, dearest brethren, is the saving work, a great consolation of believers, a wholesome defense of our security, a fortification of hope, a protection of faith, a remedy of sin, a thing placed in the power of him who does it, a thing both great and easy, without the peril of persecution, the crown of peace, a true and greatest gift of God, necessary for the weak, glorious for the strong, whereby the Christian, aided, bears the grace of the Spirit, merits Christ as judge, reckons God as his debtor. To this palm of saving works let us run willingly and readily, let us all run in the contest of justice with God and Christ looking on; and since we have already begun to be greater than the age and the world, let us not slow our course by any desire of the age and the world.

If the day of our departure or of persecution shall find us unencumbered, swift, and running in this contest of work, the Lord will nowhere be wanting to our merits for the reward. To those who conquer in peace He will give a white crown for their works; in persecution He will double it with a purple one for their suffering.