Augustine, Sermones 35-45 (Classis I, de Scripturis: de Proverbiis, Ecclesiastico, Isaia)

let us implore, to Him let us groan. Let our prayers not be for worldly things that pass by, transitory, and vanishing like vapour; but let our prayers be for the fulfilling of righteousness itself, and for sanctification for the name of God; not for overcoming a neighbour, but for overcoming lust; not for healing the flesh, but for taming avarice. Let our prayers be about these things: let them help us within as we struggle, that they may crown us as we conquer.

Sermon 41. On what is written in Ecclesiasticus 22:28, Keep faith with your neighbour in his poverty, that you may also enjoy his good things.

1. Faith is to be kept with a friend in his poverty. While the divine Scriptures were being read, about all of whose sayings we are not able to speak now, I noticed one saying, very brief in its number of words but very ample in the weight of its sense, from which I have chosen, with the Lord's help, to serve this great expectation of Your Charity according to the modesty of our powers, and to minister to you from the Lord's storeroom, from which I too live along with you. This, then, is the saying of which I speak: Keep faith with your neighbour in his poverty, that you may also enjoy his good things. Let us take it first as it seems to sound simply, as all can understand it, even those who search into none of the more hidden things of the divine Scriptures. Keep faith, it says, with your neighbour in his poverty, that you may also enjoy his good things. It is true, says the one who has heard it simply: when a friend is poor, faith is not to be broken with him; one must stay with him, and friendship must not be changed because his means have changed; but faith must be kept, with the will made firm. For if my friend was a friend when he was rich, and when he is poor is not a friend, then it was not he who was my friend, but his gold. But if my friend was the man himself, then whether the gold remains or the gold departs, he is who he was: why, then, should he not now be a friend, who, even if he has lost his treasure, has not lost his spirit? If I were buying a horse, I would perhaps not despise it bare, with its trappings and saddle-cloth removed; and did my friend please me when clothed, and displease me when stripped? Rightly, then, does the divine Scripture enjoin, altogether wholesomely and most fittingly for the ways of men, Keep faith with your neighbour in his poverty.

2. In what hope faith is to be kept with a poor friend. — That you may also enjoy his good things. What then? Coming to the latter part of this saying, shall we have such a thought about a friend that we say to ourselves: One must stay with him and keep faith with him in his poverty, so that we may also enjoy his good things? For he who is now poor will be rich, and he will not admit you to his riches, you who in your pride once disdained his poverty. Keep faith with him, therefore, even when he is poor, that you may also enjoy his good things when there have accrued to him riches,

tiae, and that you may rejoice with him in them. Possess faith with him: he is poor, but he has a great possession, faith. You who were making ready with him and wished to possess land, if he had land, which you would both possess together, how much more firmly do you possess faith with him? For perhaps your friend is such that some wicked man could take his possession from him: will he be able to take away faith? What, then, does That you may also enjoy his goods mean? Surely that from a poor man he may become rich, and you will enjoy his riches, because you did not spurn his poverty.

3. Not in the hope of a temporal happiness that is to come to him. The former part of this saying, according to this popular understanding, pleases me; the latter, however, I confess, offends me. For if you remain with a friend in his poverty for this reason, that when he has become rich you may enjoy his riches, you still love not the friend, but something else in the friend. Faith and hope are two good friends, and greater than these is charity. There remain, says the Apostle, these three, faith, hope and charity; but the greater of these is charity: pursue charity (1 Cor. 13:13; 14:1). So I question the friend about his friend. Tell me, I beg you, do you possess faith with this man in his poverty? Certainly, he says: for I heard this in holy Scripture, and I commended it to my heart, and laid it up in my memory; gladly I recall it, more gladly I do it. For I heard the holy word, Possess faith with your neighbour in his poverty. And I say: Why do you do this? Is it on account of what follows, That you may also enjoy his goods? What, then, do you expect? That when, he says, he has become rich and goods have come to him, he may admit me to his good things, because I did not disdain his ills. Bear with me, then, as I question you a little further. What if this man, with whom, poor as he is, you possess faith, will never be rich? What if he is going to be poor until death? Does faith perish because hope has been deceived? Because you will not be able to possess gold with a rich man, will you regret having possessed faith with a poor man? If he has human sense, nay, if he has a sense of the truth, he will be troubled by this question, and will say to me, You speak the truth. It is a good thing to possess faith with one's neighbour; but if you say, Faith is possessed with a poor neighbour in hope, that we may come to his riches, that we may have a share in them with him; then without doubt, when this poor man has died and the riches that were hoped for have not come, we shall regret all that good, and what we milked well we shall pour out badly. You see, then, that this saying must be searched out more deeply, not as it can be understood in the common way, but as it was set down by divine authority, to intimate, to enjoin, to command to us something great, where our hope is not deceived, lest we regret having possessed faith. You will not be able to arrive at our meaning of the saying in this way.

4. This very thing is shown by the story of Lazarus and the rich man. Fellowship with the poor man in eternal happiness is not to be hoped for by the rich man who has spurned him here. Consider, then, that poor man Lazarus lying before the gate of the rich man. This poor man was wretchedly sick: nor even

held the health of his body, which is the patrimony of the poor. He was also covered with sores; the dogs licked his sores. Now there was in that house a rich man, who was clothed in purple and fine linen, and feasted splendidly every day, and was unwilling to possess faith in common with the poor man. Rightly did the Lord Jesus, the lover and giver of faith, pay more heed to faith itself in the poor man than to gold and delights in the rich man: He paid more heed to the poor man's possession than to the rich man's pride. For this reason He named that poor man, but judged that the other's name should be passed over in silence. There was, He says, a certain rich man, who was clothed in purple and fine linen, and feasted splendidly every day: but a certain poor man named Lazarus. Does it not seem to you that He was reading aloud from a book, in which He found the poor man's name written but did not find the rich man's? For that book was of the living and the just, not of the proud and the wicked. That rich man was named by men, the poor man was passed over in silence: the Lord, on the contrary, named the poor man and passed over the rich man in silence. So that rich man refused to possess faith in common with the poor man. Both died. It happened that the needy man died and was carried away by angels into Abraham's bosom. The rich man died, and was buried (for perhaps he was not even buried): and when he was among those below, as we read, in torments, he lifted up his eyes from afar; and he saw the poor man in Abraham's bosom, whom he had despised before his gate. He could not have rest in common with the man with whom he had refused to have faith in common. Father Abraham, he says, send Lazarus, that he may dip his finger in water and let it drip on my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame. The answer was: Remember, son, that you received your good things in your life, and Lazarus evil things: now therefore he is at rest here, but you are tormented. And besides all this, there is a great chasm between us and you, and no one can cross from us to you, nor pass over from you to us. He saw mercy denied to himself, because he had denied it. He saw that it was true: Judgement without mercy to him who has not shown mercy (Jas. 2:13). And he who refused in his own time to have pity on the poor man took pity on his brothers too late. Send therefore, he says, Lazarus: I have five brothers there; let him tell them what is done here, lest they too come into this place of torments. And against this the answer was: If they do not want to come into this place of torments, they have Moses and the Prophets; let them hear them. He used to mock the Prophets, together, of course, with his brothers: for I believe, nay I do not doubt, that when talking with those brothers of his about the Prophets, who urged what is good, forbade what is evil, threatened future torments and promised future rewards, he mocked all these things, saying with his brothers: What life after death? What remembrance has rottenness? What feeling have ashes? All are carried there and buried; who has been heard of returning from there? Recalling these words of his, he therefore wanted Lazarus to go back to his brothers, so that they would no longer say, Who has returned from there? And to this a fitting and worthy answer was given. For this man seems to have been a Jew, and for that reason to have said, Father Abraham. Therefore the answer was most excellent and appropriate: If Moses and

the Prophets, they do not listen, neither, if someone should rise from the dead, will they be persuaded (Luke 16:19–31). It was fulfilled in the Jews, because they did not listen to Moses and the Prophets, nor did they believe Christ when He rose again. Had He not foretold this to them beforehand: If you believed Moses, you would believe Me also (John 5:46).

5. The rich man, despiser of the poor man, wretched once his life was ended. So that rich man remained without help, his temporal delights ended, in eternal punishments. He did not do just things; he heard what he deserved. Remember that you received your good things in your life. So this life which you see is not yours: You received your good things. So these things which you sigh for, longing, from afar, are not yours. Where are the words of the rich, and of those who flatter the rich, when they see someone overflowing with temporal delights, abounding on earth, seizing earth and heaping it up, and drawing to himself the lead by which he is to be sunk? For a great weight brought that rich man down to the infernal regions, and a heavy burden pressed him down to the depths. For he had not heard, Come to Me, you who labour and are burdened. My yoke is gentle, and My burden is light (Matt. 11:28–29). The burden of Christ is wings. On these wings that poor man flew into the bosom of Abraham. The rich man, then, was unwilling to hear this. For he listened to the tongues of flatterers. By these tongues he was made deaf against the Prophets: the tongues of those who praise wrongly and say, You alone are, you alone live. Therefore, You received your good things in your life. For these you reckoned your good things; others you did not believe in, did not hope for: you received those in your life. For you thought that alone to be your life, when you hoped for nothing to come after death, feared nothing sad. You received, therefore, your good things in your life, but Lazarus evil things. He did not say, His; but, evil things, which men think [evil], which men fear, which men avoid as a great matter. Here Lazarus received evil things. Your good things he did not then receive: yet he did not lose them. But just as His was not added, so neither was this added, In his life. For his life was another, which he was hoping for in the bosom of Abraham. For here he was dead, here he was not living: he was dead by that death of which the Apostle speaks, For you are dead, and your life is hidden with Christ in God (Col. 3:3). The poor man bore temporal evils. But God was deferring his good things, not taking them away. Why then, rich man, do you desire among those below what you did not hope for when you were enjoying riches? Are you not that man who, despising the poor man, used to mock Moses the prophet? So you were unwilling to keep faith with your neighbour in his poverty; are you now to enjoy his good things? You mocked him when you heard, Keep faith with your neighbour in his poverty, so that you may also enjoy his good things to the full. Now you see his good things far off, and you do not possess them with him. For those good things were to come, to come invisibly. For when they were not seen, they were to be believed, lest, when they are seen, there should remain for you the ability to grieve and the inability to hold them.

6. The friendship of the poor is to be acquired by alms. The mammon of iniquity. So, brethren, as far as it seems to me, this saying has been clarified. For it is to be understood in a Christian way by Christians; and let us not keep faith with a poor neighbour in such a way that riches to come to him

we may hope for in a temporal way, and that we should keep our faith so as to possess them with him. Not so at all, not so. But how, except according to the precept of our Lord: Make for yourselves friends of the mammon of iniquity, so that they too may receive you into eternal tabernacles (Luke 16:9)? For there are poor people here who have no tabernacles, in which they themselves might receive us. Make them friends of the mammon of iniquity, that is, from the gains which iniquity calls gains. For there are gains which justice calls gains: these are in the treasuries of God. Do not despise the poor, who have nowhere to return to, who have nowhere to go in. They have somewhere to go in, they have tabernacles, and eternal ones at that. They have a place into which you will wish in vain to be received, like that rich man, if you do not now receive them into yours: for, He who receives a just man in the name of a just man shall receive the reward of a just man; he who receives a prophet in the name of a prophet shall receive the reward of a prophet; and whoever gives to one of these my least ones a cup of cold water only in the name of a disciple, amen I say to you, he shall not lose his reward (Matt. 10:41–42). He also possesses faith with his neighbour in his poverty; therefore he shall fully enjoy his good things.

7. Faith in Christ Who is poor. Your Lord too says to you, He Who, though He was rich, became poor: He explains this saying to you better and more solidly. For perhaps, concerning that poor man whom you have taken into your house, your mind doubts somewhat and hesitates whether he is a truthful man, or perhaps a deceitful pretender, a hypocrite: your mind wavers in performing mercy, since you cannot look into the heart. Do it even with a bad man, so that you may also reach the good one. He who feared that his good seeds might fall on the roads, among thorns, on stones, being too lazy to sow in winter, went hungry in summer. Nevertheless your Lord, about Whom you surely have no doubt if you are a Christian, says to you: For your sake I became poor, though I was rich. Who, though He was in the form of God (what is richer than that form?), did not consider it robbery to be equal with God; but emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant (what is richer than the form of God? what is poorer than the form of a servant?), made in the likeness of men, and found in appearance as a man: He humbled Himself, becoming obedient unto death, even the death of the cross (Phil. 2:6–8). Add further: He thirsted on the cross, He received a drink, not from one who pitied Him, but from one who mocked Him; and the fountain of life drank vinegar in death. Do not scorn, do not despise, do not say: So my God was made man? So my God was killed, was crucified? Yes, plainly, so it is, He was crucified. His poverty is commended to you. He was far from you: He drew near to you by poverty. Possess faith with your neighbour in his poverty. Surely here this saying nowhere wavers, nowhere is it obscure. In place of the name of neighbour, take the name of Christ, and take it humbly. For being humble you are fitted to the humble One; being humble you desire what is high: take it humbly, and understand the neighbour. For the Lord is near to those who have crushed their heart: so that you may say in your prayer, as a neighbour, as our brother, so did I please (Ps. 34:14). So there is one word which the Prophet added, naming the neighbour; for prophetic speech had to be covered to some extent with the veil of a mystery, so that it might be sought the more eagerly,