Homilies on Matthew, Homily 21

“No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will hold to one and despise the other.” Do you see how He gradually draws us away from the things of this world, develops His teaching about voluntary poverty at greater length, and tears down the power of greed? For He was not satisfied with His earlier sayings, many and great as they were, but adds still more, increasingly alarming ones. For what could be more alarming than what He now says, if our riches will cause us to fall away from serving Christ? Or what could be more desirable, if by despising wealth we will perfect our affection for Him and our love? For I now repeat what I keep saying: He presses His hearers to obey His sayings in both ways, through the benefits and through the harm, much like an excellent physician who points out both the disease that results from neglect and the good health that results from obedience. See, for instance, what kind of gain He shows this to be, and how He establishes its benefit by showing their deliverance from the opposite evils. Thus He says, “Wealth harms you not only by arming robbers against you, or by darkening your mind to the utmost degree, but also by driving you out of God’s service and making you captive to lifeless riches. It harms you in both ways: by making you slaves to what you ought to command, and by driving you out of the service of God, whom you must serve above all else.” For just as elsewhere He showed that the harm was twofold—both storing up treasure here, “where moths destroy,” and failing to store it up there, where its protection cannot be breached—so here too He shows that the loss is twofold: it both draws us away from God and subjects us to mammon. But He does not state this directly. Instead, He first establishes it through general considerations, saying, “No one can serve two masters.” Here He means two who give opposite commands, since otherwise they would not even be two. Thus, “the multitude of those who believed were of one heart and of one soul,” although they were divided into many bodies; their unity of purpose made the many one. Then, to give this greater force, He says, “Far from serving, he will even hate and detest.” “For either he will hate the one,” He says, “and love the other, or else he will hold to the one and despise the other.” It does seem as though He has said the same thing twice. Yet He did not choose this wording without a purpose, but to show that changing for the better is easy. I mean, so that you will not say, “I have been made a slave once and for all; I have been brought under the tyranny of wealth,” He shows that it is possible to change sides, and that just as someone can pass from the first to the second, so someone can pass from the second to the first. 2. So, as you see, He has spoken in general terms to persuade the hearer to judge His words impartially and reach a verdict based on the very nature of the things themselves. Once He has secured the hearer’s agreement, then, and only then, He reveals His meaning. Thus He immediately adds, “You cannot serve God and mammon.” Let us shudder at the thought of what we have brought Christ to say: to place the name of gold alongside the name of God. But if this is shocking, it is much more shocking that we do this in our actions, preferring the tyranny of gold to the fear of God. “What then? Was this not possible among the people of ancient times?” Certainly not. “How, then,” someone says, “did Abraham and Job earn such praise?” Do not tell me about those who are rich, but about those who serve riches. Job too was rich, but he did not serve mammon. He possessed it and ruled over it; he was its master, not its slave. He therefore held all those things as though he were managing someone else’s property, not only refusing to extort anything from others, but even giving his own possessions to those in need. What is more, when he had them, they gave him no joy, as he himself declared: “If I so much as rejoiced when my wealth grew great.” That is why he did not grieve when it was gone. But the rich today are not like him. Instead, they are worse off than any slave, paying tribute, as it were, to some cruel tyrant. Their mind is like a citadel occupied by the love of money, which sends them commands full of every kind of wickedness from there each day, and no one disobeys. So do not split hairs like this. God has declared and pronounced once and for all that these two kinds of service cannot agree. So do not say, “It is possible.” When one master commands you to plunder by force, and the other to give up your possessions; one to be chaste, and the other to engage in sexual immorality; one to be drunk and live in luxury, and the other to keep your belly under control; one, again, to despise the things of this world, and the other to cling to the present; one to admire marble, walls, and roofs, and the other to scorn these things and honor self-restraint—how can they possibly agree? Now He calls mammon “a master” here, not because of its own nature, but because of the misery of those who bow beneath it. In the same way, He calls “the belly a god,” not because such a mistress has any dignity, but because of the misery of those enslaved to it. This is worse than any punishment and, even before punishment comes, is enough in itself to punish the person caught in it. For what condemned criminals could be as miserable as those who have God as their Lord, yet desert His gentle rule for this cruel tyranny, even though their action brings so much harm in this life too? Indeed, the loss they suffer by doing this is beyond words: lawsuits, harassment, conflicts, exhausting work, and blindness of soul. More painful than all of these, they fall away from the highest blessings; for being God’s servant is just such a blessing. 3. Now that He has taught in every way, as you see, the benefit of despising riches—for preserving the riches themselves, for the soul’s pleasure, for gaining self-control, and for securing godliness—He goes on to establish that this command can be practiced. For this is especially characteristic of the best lawgiving: not only to command what is beneficial, but also to make it possible. So He goes on to say, “Do not be anxious about your soul, what you will eat.” He does this so that they will not say, “What then? If we throw everything away, how will we be able to live?” In what follows, He addresses this objection at just the right moment. For just as the words would have seemed burdensome if He had begun by saying, “Do not be anxious,” so now, after He has shown the harm that comes from greed, His instruction is easy to accept. That is why even now He did not simply say, “Do not be anxious,” but gave the reason before issuing this command. After saying, “You cannot serve God and mammon,” He added, “Therefore I say to you, do not be anxious.” “Therefore”—why? Because of the loss beyond words. For the harm you suffer does not concern riches alone; the wound strikes your most vital parts and brings about the destruction of your salvation, driving you away from God, who made you, cares for you, and loves you. “Therefore I say to you, do not be anxious.” So, after He has shown that the harm is beyond words, then, and only then, He makes the command stricter. He not only tells us to give up what we have, but forbids us to be anxious even about our necessary food, saying, “Do not be anxious about your soul, what you will eat.” Not because the soul needs food, for it is incorporeal, but because He spoke in the customary way. For although it does not need food, it cannot continue to remain in the body unless the body is fed. And He does not simply make this statement; here too He offers arguments, some based on what we already have and some on other examples. From what we already have, He argues this way: “Is not the soul more than food, and the body more than clothing?” How, then, will He who has given the greater thing fail to give the lesser? How will He who formed the flesh that is fed fail to provide its food? That is why He did not simply say, “Do not be anxious about what you will eat,” or “what you will wear,” but “about the body” and “about the soul.” For He was going to draw His proofs from these, developing His argument through comparison. Now He has given the soul once and for all, and it remains as it is; but the body grows every day. So, pointing out both these things—the immortality of the one and the frailty of the other—He goes on to say, “Which of you can add one cubit to his height?” Thus, saying no more about the soul, since it does not grow, He spoke only about the body. In this way He also makes clear that food does not make it grow, but God’s providence does. Paul also made this point in other ways when he said, “So then, neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but God who gives the growth.” This, then, is how He urges us on the basis of what we already have. He also uses examples from other things, saying, “Look at the birds of the air.” Thus, so that no one will say, “We do good by being anxious,” He argues against anxiety both from what is greater and from what is less: from the greater, i.e. the soul and the body; from the less, i.e. the birds. For if He gives so much care to things far inferior to you, how will He fail to provide for you? This is what He says. He spoke to them this way because they were still an ordinary crowd. But He did not speak this way to the devil. How did He speak? “Man will not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes out of the mouth of God.” Here, however, He mentions the birds in a way that puts His hearers deeply to shame, something very valuable when giving instruction. 4. Yet some of the ungodly have reached such a height of madness that they even attack His illustration. They say it was inappropriate for someone strengthening moral principles to use natural advantages as incentives toward that end. For, they add, these animals have this by nature. What, then, should we say to this? That even if it is theirs by nature, it may be possible for us too to attain it by choice. For He did not say, “Look at how the birds fly,” which would be impossible for a human being. He said that they are fed without being anxious, something we too can easily achieve if we are willing. Those who have put it into practice have proved this. So we should greatly admire our Lawgiver’s thoughtfulness. He could have drawn His illustration from human beings and spoken of Moses, Elijah, John, and others like them who were free from anxiety. Instead, to touch His hearers more deeply, He mentioned creatures without reason. For if He had spoken of those righteous men, His hearers could have said, “We have not yet become like them.” But by passing them over in silence and bringing forward the birds of the air, He has taken away every excuse. Here too He follows the old law. For the old covenant likewise sends us to the bee, the ant, the turtledove, and the swallow. It is also a great honor that we can accomplish by an act of choice the same things those animals possess by nature. If, then, He takes such great care of creatures that exist for our sake, He will take much greater care of us; if He cares for the servants, much more for the master. That is why He said, “Look at the birds,” and did not say, “For they do not deal or trade,” since these were among the things strictly forbidden. What did He say instead? “They do not sow or reap.” “What then?” someone says. “Must we not sow?” He did not say, “We must not sow,” but “We must not be anxious.” Nor did He say that we should not work, but that we should not have a petty mindset or torment ourselves with worries. For He also told us to eat, but without “being anxious.” David too laid the foundation for this lesson long ago, speaking in these enigmatic words: “You open Your hand and fill every living thing with bounty”; and again, “To Him who gives the beasts their food, and the young ravens that call upon Him.” “Who, then,” someone may say, “has been free from anxiety?” Have you not heard how many righteous people I have cited? Do you not see Jacob among them, leaving his father’s house with nothing at all? Do you not hear him praying and saying, “If the Lord gives me bread to eat and clothing to wear”? These were not the words of someone consumed by anxiety, but of someone seeking everything from God. The apostles also attained this: they gave everything away and were free from anxiety. So did the “five thousand” and the “three thousand.” 5. But if, on hearing such lofty words, you cannot bring yourself to break free of these oppressive bonds, consider how useless anxiety is, and so put an end to your worry. For “Which of you by being anxious” (He says) “can add one cubit to his height?” Do you see how He has used what is obvious to make clear what is obscure? Thus He says, “Just as you cannot add even the smallest amount to your body by being anxious, neither can you gather food that way, however much you may think otherwise.” From this it is clear that God’s providence accomplishes everything, rather than our diligence, even where we seem to be doing the work. So, if He were to abandon us, no worry, anxiety, hard work, or anything else like it would ever amount to anything; everything would come to nothing. So let us not suppose His commands are impossible, for even now many people carry them out faithfully. If you do not know of them, that is no wonder, since Elijah too supposed he was alone, but was told, “I have kept seven thousand men for Myself.” This makes it clear that even now many people live the apostolic life, just like the “three thousand” and the “five thousand” then. If we do not believe it, that is not because no one is living well, but because we are far from doing so ourselves. A drunkard would not easily believe that anyone exists who does not even taste water (yet many hermits in our time have achieved this). Someone who has sex with countless women would not believe it is easy to live in virginity; someone who extorts other people’s property would not believe a person could readily give up even his own. In the same way, those who melt themselves down each day with countless anxieties will not easily accept this. As for the fact that many have attained this, we could demonstrate it from people who have practiced this self-denial even in our own generation. But for you, just now, it is enough to learn not to covet, to learn that giving alms is good, and to know that you must share what you have. For if you faithfully do these things, beloved, you will quickly move on to those others as well. 6. For now, then, let us give up our excessive luxury, accept moderation, and learn to obtain everything we are to have through honest work. For even blessed John, when speaking with tax collectors and soldiers, instructed them “to be content with their wages.” Although he was eager to lead them toward a different and higher degree of self-control, he spoke of lesser things because they were still unprepared for this. For if he had mentioned things higher than these, they would have failed to take them up and would have fallen away from the others too. For this very reason, we too are training you in the lesser duties. Yes, for we know that the burden of voluntary poverty is still too great for you, and heaven is no farther from earth than such self-denial is from you. So let us take hold of even the lowest commandments, for even this gives us considerable encouragement. And yet some among the pagans have achieved even this, though not in the right spirit, and have stripped themselves of all their possessions. Still, in your case we are content if you give alms generously, for we will soon reach those other duties too if we advance in this way. But if we fail to do even this much, what favor will we deserve, when we are commanded to surpass those under the old law, yet prove inferior to the philosophers among the pagans? What will we say when, although we ought to be angels and sons of God, we do not even fully uphold our humanity? For plundering and coveting come from the ferocity of wild beasts, not human gentleness. Indeed, those who seize their neighbors’ possessions are worse than wild beasts. For beasts act this way by nature, but we have been honored with reason and yet sink into this unnatural depravity. What leniency will we receive? So, considering the standards of the discipline set before us, let us press on at least to the middle stage, so that we may both escape the punishment to come and, advancing step by step, reach the very summit of all good things. May we all attain these through the grace and love for humanity of our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.