4th Sunday of Matthew--July 5, 2009

The Reading is from the Epistle of Holy Apostle Paul to the Romans (6:18-23)

Brother and Sisters,
having been set free from sin, you have become slaves of righteousness. I am speaking in human terms, because of your natural limitations. For just as you once yielded your members to impurity and to greater and greater iniquity, so now yield your members to righteousness for sanctification.

When you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. But then what return did you get from the things of which you are now ashamed? The end of those things is death. But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the return you get is sanctification and its end, eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

From the Commentary of St. John Chrysostom on the Epistle to the Romans (Homily 11)

Now what does Paul say is the cause of all the evils? the love of money. for the "love of money is the root of all evils." (1 Tim. 6:10). From this come fightings, and enmities and wars; from this emulations and railings and suspicions, and insults; from this murders and thefts, and violations of sepulchers. through this, not cities and countries only, but roads and habitable and inhabitable parts, and mountains and groves and hills, and, in a word, all places are filled with blood and murder. And not even from the sea has this evil withdrawn, but even there also with great fury has it revelled, since pirates beset it on all sides, thus devising a new mode of robbery. Through this have th elaws of nature been subverted, and the claims of relationship set aside, and the laws of piety itself broken through. For the slavery of money has armed, not against the living only, but even against the departed as well, the right hands of such men. And at death even, they make no truce with them, but bursting open the sepulchers, they put forth their impious hands even against dead bodies, and not even him that has let go of life will they allow to be let go from their plotting...

For this evil it is, this assuredly, which fills all places with blood and murder, this lights up the flame of hell, this makes cities as wretchedly off as a wilderness, even much worse. for those that beset the high roads, one can easily be on one's guard against, as not always on the attack. But they who in the midst of cities imitate them are so much the worse than they, in that these are harder to guard against, and dare to do openly what the others do with secrecy. for those laws, which have been made with a view to stopping their iniquity, they draw even into alliance and fill the cities with this kind of murders and pollutions. Is it not murder, I ask, and worse than murder, to hand the poor man over to famine and to cast him into prison, and to expose him not to famine only but to torture too, and to countless acts of insolence?

For even if you do not do these things yourself to him, yet you are the occasion of their being done, you do them more than the ministers who execute them. The murderer plunges his sword into a man at once, and after giving him pain for a short time, he does not carry the torture any farther. But do you who by your calumnies, by your harassings, by your plottings, make light darkness to him, and set him upon desiring death ten thousand times over, consider how many deaths you perpetrate instead of one only? And what is worse than all, you plunder and are grasping, not impelled to it by poverty, without any hunger to necessitate you, but that your horse's bridle may be spattered over with gold enough, or the ceiling of your house, or the capitals of your columns. And what hell is there that this conduct would not deserve, when it is a brother, and one that has shared with yourself in blessings unutterable, and has been so highly honored by the Lord, whom you, in order that you may deck out stones and floor, and the bodies of animals with neither reason nor perception of these ornaments, are casting into countless calamities? And your dog is well attended too, while man, or rather Christ, for the sake of the hound, and all these things I have named, is straitened with extreme hunger. What can be worse than such confusion? What more grievous than such lawlessness as this? What streams of fire will be enough for such a soul?

He that was made in the Image of God stands in unseemly plight, through your inhumanity; but the faces of the mules that draw your wife glisten with gold in abundance, as do the skins and woods which compose that canopy. And if it is a seat that is to be made, or a footstool, they are all made of gold and silver. But the member of Christ for whom also he came here from heaven, and she his precious blood, does not even enjoy the food that is necessary for him, owing to your greediness. But the couches are mantled with silver on every side, while the bodies of the saints are deprived even of necessary clothing. And to you Christ is less precious than anything else, servants or mules or couch or chair or footstool...

But if you are shocked at hearing this, stand apart from doing it, and then the words spoken will not harm you. Stand apart and cease from this madness. For plain madness it is, such eagerness about these things. Therefore letting go of these things, let us look up, late as it is, toward heaven, and let us call to mind the day which is coming, let us contemplate that awful tribunal, and the exact accounts, and the incorruptible sentence. Let us consider that God, who sees all these things, sends no lightning from heaven; and yet what is done deserves not thunderbolts merely...

Pondering all this then, let us be awestruck with the greatness of his love toward man, and let us return to that noble origin which belongs to us, since at present certainly we are in no better plight than the creatures without reason, but even in a much worse one. For they love their relatives, and need but the community of nature to cause affection towards each other. but you who besides nature have countless causes to draw yourself together and attach yourself to the your own members; being honored with the Word, partaking in one religion, sharing in countless blessings; you have acquired a wilder nature than they, by displaying so much carefulness about profitless things, and leaving the Temples of God to perish in hunger and nakedness, and often surrounding them also with a thousand evils...

Have you not heard the Apostles say, that they who first received the word sold both "houses and lands" (Acts 4:34), that they might support the brothers and sisters? but you plunder both houses and lands, that you may adorn a horse, or wood-work, or skins, or walls, or a pavement. And what is worse is that it is not men only, but women too are afflicted with this madness, and urge their husbands to these empty sort of pains, by forcing them to lay out their money upon anything rather than the necessary things.

And if anyone accuse them of this, they are practiced with a defence, itself loaded with much to be accused. For both the one and the other are done at once, says one. What say you? are you not afraid to utter such a thing, and to set the same store by horses and mules and couches and footstools, as by Christ who is hungering? Or rather not even comparing them at all, but giving the larger share to these, and to him meting out with difficulty a scant share? Do you not know that all things belong to him, both you and yours? Do you not know that he fashioned your body, as well as gave you a soul, and apportioned you the whole world? but you are not for giving a little recompense to him. But if you rent out a little hut, you require the rent with the utmost rigor, and though reaping the whole of his creation, and dwelling in so wide a world, you do not have the courage to lay down even a little rent, but have given up yourself and all that you have to vainglory...

The horse is no better above his natural excellence for having this ornament, neither is the person mounted on him, for sometimes he is even held in less esteem because of it; since many neglect the rider and turn their eyes to the horse's ornaments, and to the attendants behind and in front, and to the fan-bearers. But the man who is lackeyed by these, they hate and turn their heads from him as a common enemy.

But this does not happen when you adorn your soul, for then men and angels and the Lord of angels all weave for you a crown. And so, if you are in love with glory, stand part form the things which you are now doing, and show your taste not in your house, but in your soul, that you may become brilliant and conspicuous. For now nothing can be more cheap than you are, with your soul unfurnished, and but the handsomeness of your house for a screen...

For if a person were to leave your wife to be clad in rags and to be neglected, and clothed your maid-servant with brilliant dresses, you would not bear it meekly, but would be exasperated and say that it was insulting in the extreme. Reason then in this way about your soul. When you display your taste in walls, then, and pavement and furniture and other thins of this kind, and do not give liberally in alms or practice the other parts of a religious life, you do nothing less than this, or rather what is worse than this by far. For the difference between servant and mistress is nothing, but between soul and flesh is a great disparity. But if it be so with the flesh, much more is it with a house or a couch or a footstool. What kind of excuse then do you deserve, who put silver on all these, but have no regard for flesh, though it be covered with filthy rags, squalid, hungry and full of wounds, torn by hounds unnumbered (Luke 16:20, 21); and after all this you fancy that you shall get glory by displaying your taste in externals which are wound around you? And this is the very height of frenzy, that while you are ridiculed, reproached, disgraced, dishonored, and falling into the severest punishment, you are still vain concerning these things! Therefore, I beseech you, laying all this to heart, let us become sober-minded, late as it is, and become our own masters, and transfer this adorning from outward things to our souls. for so it will abide safe from spoiling, and will make us equal to the angels, and will entertain us with unchanging good...