St. John Chrysostom as a preacher of philanthropy and almsgiving

The greatest evil of the ancient world was the gross inequality in the distribution of earthly goods between different classes of the population. The formidable social problem, attempts to resolve which even now shake the foundations of states, today does not have even a hundredth part of the severity with which it was distinguished in ancient times, when humanity did not yet have the all-conciliating principle of Christian love, but lived entirely by its own selfish interests and when everyone, not having a higher hope, directed all his strength to accumulate wealth for himself on earth. Practical materialism was the main driving lever of ancient humanity, and if the Jews, upon their exodus from Egypt, poured themselves a golden calf in order to worship it, then in this regard, they, so to speak, only unwittingly and accidentally showed an inclination towards that idolatry that was committed by all the peoples of the ancient pagan world, who saw in the golden calf (in its symbolic meaning) the main meaning of their earthly life. Hence the merciless struggle between individuals, classes and entire nations, and it is enough to look at the history of the peoples of the ancient world to be convinced that their very wars had as their main goal the accumulation of wealth and, moreover, at the expense of others. But if in relation to peoples this thirst for the accumulation of wealth was still covered with plausible pretexts - patriotism, heroism, then in the relationship of individuals and classes it appeared in all its directness and shamelessness - as crude predation, not constrained by any considerations of humanity. In this fierce struggle for earthly goods, some of course emerged victorious, others fell, and the victorious chariot mercilessly crushed all those exhausted in the unequal struggle. Long before the birth of Christ in Rome, where human truth, thanks to the highly developed legal sense of the people, should have found its highest realization, social struggle led to blatant extremes of wealth and poverty, and this social inequality more than once shook the politically powerful organism of the state. All sorts of legislative and political measures were taken to eliminate this terrible evil, but everything turned out to be useless and the evil continued to grow until it finally undermined the very foundations of the ancient world, which collapsed mainly precisely because the divine law of love was trampled upon and the law of boundless egoism was put in its place. With the founding of Christianity the picture was bound to change. True, Christianity did not interfere in social relations, and Christ Himself, at the request of a selfish or even offended heir, who asked Him to force his intractable brother to the proper division of the inheritance, removed this matter from himself, saying: “Who made Me a judge?” But the strength of Christianity did not lie at all in its external legal decrees, but in that internal principle that lay at the very basis of its existence. And this principle was precisely the principle of love, exactly the opposite of the principle of egoism by which the ancient world lived, and it inevitably had to have the opposite effect. The strength of the principle of love proclaimed by Christianity lies in the fact that for its action it does not need any external rules and legal regulations, because it acts on its own, spontaneously - just as leaven acts, fermenting all the dough. Just as there is no need (in the normal state of things) to establish rules forcing a mother to nourish and cherish her child, because she herself, without any rules, according to a natural feeling that stands above any prescriptions, nourishes and cherishes him, and this feeling is maternal love, so the Church of Christ, without any external legal regulations, introduced into society that love that drove out all selfishness and burned all the thorns of social injustice in relationships between people. That is why Christianity, by the force of love, brought as much truth into the external social relations of people as Rome was unable to bring with all the forces and measures of its legal genius. But the principle is another matter and its implementation is another matter. While the flame of Christian love burned brightly, under its all-melting power all the icy mountains of social inequality melted, and in primitive Christian communities even the highest manifestation of brotherly love, namely the form of communication of estates, found application. But as the net of Christian “fishers of men” captured more and more space in the world’s sea and not only good but also bad fish fell into it, the original ideal had to be lowered, and subsequently, when the world was officially declared Christian, regardless of the system of internal dignity and conviction, this lowering of the ideal had to be reflected in even more sad forms. The pagan world again began to invade the church with its untruths and its egoism, and this, of necessity, had to be reflected in social relations. The former simplicity of these relations disappeared, divisions into rich and poor reappeared in the church itself, and with this division all the extremes inseparable from it appeared - on the one hand, limitless luxury, and on the other, blatant selfishness. Since, in addition, in the 4th century the world was still only half Christian, and the other half remained in the darkness of paganism, this further strengthened the influence of the pagan principle, so for example. in Constantinople and Antioch, places of service of St. John Chrysostom, social inequality manifested itself in the forms of outrageous extremes. But if paganism with its principles of selfishness sought to reintroduce the same chaos into social relations from which the ancient world perished, then on the other hand Christianity did not lose its strength and put forward from its midst figures who, embodying the deepest spirit of love, tirelessly labored through good deeds in order to bring this spirit into the everyday relationships of people and through this revive the world. Many great fathers and teachers of the church worked in this field, but the one who worked most of all was that golden-mouthed teacher, who was, as it were, the embodiment of love itself and lived exclusively for the good of people. We will outline his attitude to wealth and poverty, and especially to alms, as the main means of eliminating social injustice, in this article 1. Both in Antioch and in Constantinople, where the ministry of St. I. Chrysostom, before him in all horror unfolded that very picture of social inequality, which by its very existence cried out to the sky. Thanks to their favorable trade position, both of these cities were famous for their wealth, the pomp and splendor of their buildings, and the luxury of life. Countless rich people, possessing enormous means, were drowning in luxury and were sophisticated in finding new and new ways of pleasing their pampered flesh. Many of them had not one, but several luxurious palaces and country villas, and since you can only live in one place at a time, most of these houses were empty, serving only as proof of the arrogant vanity of the rich; and where the hosts were, celebrations were gradually held, at which all the sweets that could be invented by the inventive genius of gluttony were served. The houses were crowded with slaves, the number of which among some rich people reached several thousand, and who fulfilled all the whims of their master and mistress. In the luxury of clothes, the rich knew no bounds; they ordered the most expensive materials from afar, often paying insane amounts of money for them, and women also decorated themselves with all kinds of necklaces and bracelets, so that some courtesans were hung with so much jewelry that they would be enough to feed more than one family for several years. But next to this wealth and the luxury they generated, there was another picture - blatant poverty and misery. While the rich had several luxurious houses empty, serving only as a place of residence for some beloved dog or monkey, surrounded by the care of dozens of slaves, at the very gates of these luxurious houses, often in cold and hunger, the unfortunate poor huddled, who had no other shelter than the vault of heaven, and who had nowhere to lay their heads. While the rich spent huge sums of money with insane extravagance to order luxurious wines from distant countries to delight their pampered bellies or to obtain “fine” fabrics, which were intended not for clothing (because they were thin to the point of transparency), but for the vanity of satisfying the demands of a whimsical fashion, the poor did not have even a piece of bread to satisfy the pangs of hunger or dirty rags to cover their nudity. In a word, the profound parable of the rich man and Lazarus was repeated on a wide social scale. At the sight of these flagrant extremes, even a simple sense of truth could not help but be indignant. It is clear what feelings must have filled the soul of one who looked at all relationships from a higher point of view, who himself constantly lived in the realm of the Christian ideal and, with his deepest faith in the dominance of the highest Truth reigning in the world, longed to see its implementation on earth. As a lawyer by training, Chrysostom was of course familiar with the laws of socio-economic development and knew that such extremes in socio-economic terms constitute an inevitable consequence of the imperfection and sinfulness of man himself, so that they could be completely eliminated only by radically changing human nature with its shortcomings and passions, i.e., in essence, this matter stands above all the possibilities of the human mind. It is not for nothing that the greatest minds of antiquity in their ideal “republics”, like Plato or Aristotle, could not rise above that social order in which the well-being of a few citizens is based on the slavery of a mass of powerless people, that is, based on the recognition of the fatal law of social inequality. This law of the ancient world was abolished by the Redeemer of mankind, who, having redeemed everyone with his priceless blood from sin, damnation and death, thereby restored the original equality on the basis of spiritual freedom and brotherly love. But this spiritual equality could retain its influence on real life as long as the ideal proclaimed by Christianity retained its original vital character, as long as it served as a real law of life, to which, out of the inner need of a renewed spirit, everyone obeyed not only voluntarily, but also with love. This was the ideal state of the original Christian community, when “all who believed were together and had everything in common” (Acts 2:14); but then, when the ardor of the initial enthusiasm in faith began to cool, at the same time the ideal itself inevitably declined, and with the spread of Christianity throughout the world, all those sinful inclinations and passions began to penetrate again among Christians, which again led to complete division in socio-economic terms. And this inequality was all the more terrible because it stood in striking contradiction with the original ideal and in it found its exposure as a completely abnormal state and inconsistent with the spirit of Christianity. From this it becomes clear how such a great bearer of the Christian ideal as St. should have treated such a phenomenon. John Chrysostom. During his service in Antochya as a deacon, he had every opportunity to become closely acquainted with the glaring extremes of wealth and poverty, especially when he often had to see how next to a wretched hut, where he, as a deacon, visited some distressed family with cold and hungry children, stood the luxurious palace of a rich man, who insanely lavished countless riches on the most exquisite sweets and luxurious clothes, or even on decorating those ponies on which his favorite courtesan went out for a ride. It is not surprising that not only such extremes in general, but even wealth itself, used with such madness, could not arouse sympathy in a clergyman, before whose mental gaze the Christian ideal was constantly presented. That is why, if poverty and the misery associated with it aroused in him ardent sympathy, expressed in tireless deeds of charity, then, on the other hand, wealth with its excesses aroused indignation and condemnation in him. He directly found such a state abnormal, anti-Christian, and saw its origin in the darkest sources. Considering the origin of enormous wealth, he came to the conclusion that the basis of all such wealth was injustice, deception or violence. “Tell me,” he said in a conversation on 1 Timothy, “what is the source of your wealth? From whom did you receive it, and from whom did the one who gave it to you receive it? Can you, going back through several generations, show that its acquisition is righteous? This can't be true. Its root and origin will be injustice. Why? Because God did not create one rich and another poor in the beginning. And subsequently He did not take and show to one the treasures of gold, and refused to others the right to seek it; but He left the land free for everyone” 2. How did these enormous riches actually come about, if not at the expense of the small and poor? They are the fruit of greed and greed, two of the most terrible and outrageous vices.” Do you know how people get rich in general? Through various small tricks and deceptions, with which small traders and artisans begin, and then directly through broad calculations on the poverty of people,” as Chrysostom showed with the example of a rich man who grieved that his calculations for a bad harvest did not come true and thus the huge reserves of grain he had made, in order to sell them at the highest possible price to the hungry, turned out to be in vain 3. They then enrich themselves with the help of usury, which took such shameful forms that civil law prohibited senators from resorting to such a false source of profit 4 . They further make money at the expense of unfortunate widows and orphans, whose property is stolen by various imaginary benefactors, taking advantage of their helplessness or inexperience. And the richest people are usually the most insatiable. They are also the most inexorable creditors, who, as Chrysostom knew from the experience of his law practice, constantly initiate litigation and ruin little people 5 . In view of such views, St. I. Chrysostom on the origin of wealth, it is not surprising that at times words come out of his mouth that may seem harsh and have forced some researchers to equate him in this regard with such demagogues as the Gracchi, and to see in his views similarities with the later views of Rousseau and thinkers like him. But to argue this way means not to understand at all the very source from which Chrysostom’s views came, and the goal to which he strove. We must not forget for a moment that he was the strictest bearer of the Christian ideal with its ideas of love and brotherhood, and that the purpose of his preaching was to establish this ideal in the present life, which had deviated far from it. Then it will become clear that Chrysostom in this regard took exactly the same point of view as other church fathers, such as for example. St. Ambrose of Milan, who also expressed thoughts reminiscent of the original ideal of Christians of the apostolic age. But this does not mean that they were some kind of utopians who denied the right to property. They preached the very doctrine which is held by the Church, and the Church clearly expressed its view of the sacred right of property when it condemned the Apotactites and the monk Eustathius, who demanded the complete renunciation of their wealth from the rich and denied hope of salvation to those who had estates here on earth. Therefore, put St. I. Chrysostom on the same level as the agitators in the Gracchi family means not understanding either the gospel or the teachings of the Church of Christ, from which he did not deviate one iota. On the contrary, it was precisely the desire to translate this teaching into actual life that aroused in him true pastoral grief over the discrepancy between the ideal and reality, which in his time presented a truly sad picture. Usury, theft of provinces, shameful extortion - this was the real source of the formation of the enormous wealth of the then magnates and plutocracy, and these riches, as ill-gotten, were ill-used. Agriculture, trade, free labor were in a desperate state; peasants, colonists, workers almost died of hunger; beggary assumed ominous proportions; the attacks of the barbarians caused devastation, further increasing hunger and misery, and in view of this general misery, the relatively fortunate few, having seized almost all the lands of the empire into their hands, squandered huge sums on orgies, on revelries and on courtesans - on insane luxury as senseless as it was immoral - hanging their horses with gold and precious trinkets, decorating even the roofs of their houses with gold and silver stars - in a word, madly squandering money and at the same time treating their debtors and the poor with rude heartlessness. In this regard, all the great fathers and teachers of the church spoke with equal indignation - except St. I. Chrysostom, St. Ambrose and Blessed Jerome, St. Basil the Great and Asterius. Is it surprising that at the sight of such a shameful spectacle of senseless wastefulness - on the one hand, and blatant misery - on the other, from the chests of these great exponents of the religion of love, exclamations of sharp indignation and condemnation of the cruel excesses of pride, selfishness and predation burst out from time to time! Turning away from such a terrible reality, they loved to find refuge in the ideal, to be transported, so to speak, to a primeval Eden, in which everything breathed innocence, love and bliss - to return to the first days of nascent Christianity, when believers had one heart and all lived together in prayer and love - until the oblivion of the very rights of property. It is also not surprising that these great saints, seeing no other means for realizing the Christian ideal in the sad reality surrounding them, directly pointed to monasteries as the only places where the world with its passions and untruths could not invade, where brotherly love reigned, where there were neither rich nor poor, the very concepts of mine and yours were excluded, and where therefore the Christian ideal found its only refuge. Seeing this blessed state in the monasteries, the saints involuntarily think about what happiness it would be for all mankind if this state could be extended to all mankind, because it would change the entire face of the earth, return paradise to earth and, giving all goods into the common possession of all people, would restore lost happiness on earth. But from these pious dreams to the crazy theories of popular agitators, who usually try to destroy what exists without a clear concept of how and what can be created on the ruins of what was destroyed, there is an infinite distance. As soon as an innovator comes forward, who would put poverty into debt for everyone, who would question the right of property, these same great bearers of the Christian ideal will be the first to come out in defense of the social order and will courageously overthrow all this crazy nonsense. So, hardly anyone is stronger than St. I. Chrysostom rebelled against any encroachment on someone else's property, no matter what pretext this encroachment was covered with. There is nothing, he said, more shameful than theft 6; he is condemned by both divine and human laws 7 ; nothing, not even alms itself, can make up for it 8; the very offerings coming from this unclean source are unworthy of being brought to the altar 9 . Elsewhere he exclaims: “You are embarrassed when you see rich and poor on earth, and take the opportunity to accuse God of injustice. On the contrary, I say that the inequality between us in condition is one of the proofs of His Providence. If there were no poor, you would have no sailors, no pilots, no workers, no blacksmiths, no bakers. Who would engage in any mechanical trade? Everything would be confusion and disorder. Poverty is a great teacher of people: it encourages and forces them to work and engage in crafts. If we were all rich, we would all fall asleep in laziness; the economy of the world would be shaken and society could not exist 10. He expresses this idea about the need for inequality based on wealth even more clearly in the 34th conversation on the first letter to the Corinthians, where, with his characteristic vividness of imagination, he confirms his thought with a clear example. “Let us imagine two cities, one of which consists exclusively of rich people, and the other also exclusively of poor people. Let's compare these cities. Is it possible for a city of the rich to exist? It turns out that if the city of the poor is able to exist on its own, then the city of the rich will feel the need for food.” “Indeed, in this city of the rich there will be no factory worker, no builder, no carpenter, no shoemaker, no baker, no farmer, no mechanic, no ropemaker, or any other artisans. After all, who among the rich would want to engage in these crafts, when we see that even those very people who practice them, having become rich, cannot endure the difficulties caused by these works any longer? How will such a city exist? The rich man, you answer, giving money, will buy with it everything he needs from the poor. But in this case, it means that he will not exist by himself, which is proven by his need for others. But how will the rich build houses? Will they really buy this too? The very nature of things does not allow this. Therefore they will have to invite craftsmen from there and break the law that we first decreed by founding such a city in which there should not be a single poor person. And so necessity itself invites us to introduce them against our will. From here it is obvious that without the poor it is impossible for a city to exist, since if this city continued to exclude such people, it would cease to exist and perish. It is clear that he is not able to support himself unless he gathers the poor who, as a kind of preservers, would live in him. “But let us also look at the city of the poor, whether it finds itself in a similar predicament, being deprived of the rich.” And first of all, let us properly understand the essence of wealth. What might wealth consist of? In gold, silver, precious stones, in clothes of silk, purple and embroidered with gold. And now, knowing what wealth consists of, let us remove it from the city of the poor, and since we want the city to consist exclusively of the poor, then let no gold be shown there, and if you wish, then not even silver or silver vessels. So what? Will such a city and its inhabitants live in need, tell me? Not at all. Suppose first that we need to settle down; for this you do not need gold, silver, or pearls, but you need skill, hands, and not just any hands at all, but calloused ones with calloused fingers - you need great strength, wood and stones. Suppose then that you need to straighten your clothes; again, here neither gold nor silver is needed, but, as before, skill, hands and working women are required. What if you need to cultivate or dig the ground? Who is needed here - the rich or the poor? It is obvious to everyone that they are poor. And when we also need to forge iron, or do something similar, then again it is precisely such people that we need most. So, why might a city of the rich be useful? There's no point other than tearing down this city. For if the common people enter into it, and the wise (I call those who do not need anything superfluous) fall to the desire for gold and jewelry, indulging in laziness and luxury, they will destroy everything from now on” 11. Thus, in everyday life, the poor essentially have more stability and security in their existence, because they are more adapted to the struggle for existence. But even in the sense of enjoying life, they have not only equality, but also an advantage over the rich. Although wealth and poverty in themselves are indifferent and everything depends on how they are used, yet in some cases poverty brings more happiness than wealth. St. I. Chrysostom often points out the insecurity and vicissitudes of fate, vividly depicts the torment of a rich miser; often in what idyllic colors he depicts the simple, close to nature life of the 6ed villagers! The poor have fewer worries and are exposed to fewer dangers. He sleeps a much more pleasant sleep. Preferable to wealth, poverty strengthens the body, corrects the soul and is the mother of wisdom. And is the poor man as deprived of joy as many people think? “What can I say about the sun,” Chrysostom exclaims in one place, “about this brilliant and fiery luminary that delights our eyes? Doesn't it constitute a source of pleasure common to everyone - rich and poor? What can we say about the crown that the stars make up in the firmament? What can I say about the moon? Do they not belong to everyone equally? But besides that – wonderful! - We, the poor, use them better than the rich. They, most often, mired in drunkenness, spend their lives alternately in riotous feasts, then in the heavy sleep that follows them, and do not even notice these sublime sights; they do not leave their home and live in the shadows. The position of the poor, on the other hand, is such that no other class of people enjoys so completely the beauties of nature. The air in the village is cleaner than in the city. Travelers and farmers enjoy this luxury more than the inhabitants of the city, artisans more than those who are drunk all day long” 12. It is clear how much such speeches contributed, so to speak, to the pacification of the hearts of the poor, who saw that they were not at all as disadvantaged as they thought, and even had their own advantages over the rich. Their feelings, irritated by the harsh reality, softened, and they humbly relied on the unsearchable paths of God's Providence. From the conversations of their loving protector, who so ardently advocated for them, they learned not to envy the rich, not to curse the darlings of this world, but to bless and meekly endure the share of poverty. After all, this state is sanctified and ennobled by the examples of the greatest men. The prophets Elijah and Elisha, the Forerunner of Christ John the Baptist, all the apostles lived in poverty and preferred it; Jesus Christ himself ennobled and sanctified it, and it, without humiliating the Christian in the least, even serves as a crown of glory for him. And therefore poverty should be tolerated with gratitude and should even be desirable. In themselves, wealth and poverty thus constitute neither good nor evil, and in some respects poverty even has its advantages. But all evil depends on the fact that poverty has a tendency to subjugate the poor to the rich, to make the former dependent on the latter, and the rich, taking advantage of this, in oblivion of any sense of humanity and brotherhood, become tyrants for the poor, turning into wolves, plundering defenseless lambs. From this side, the opposition between wealth and poverty directly constitutes a social evil, and St. John Chrysostom did not remain silent in denouncing him. It cannot be denied that he treated rich and poor differently. Just as he became tender and loving when he spoke of the poor, expressing to them the sweetest consolations, so his voice rose to peals of thunderous anger when he addressed those whom he considered the offenders and oppressors of the poor. Occasionally, only he portrayed a kind rich man, “who pays the debts of the unfortunate, visits prisoners” 13; but how often he portrays bad and evil rich people! It is enough to read his famous conversations on the parable of the rich man and Lazarus - this most remarkable example of the great interpretative art of the saint - to be convinced of the extent of the sympathy of St. father leaned towards Lazarus and how the rich man’s heartlessness aroused in him righteous anger, which had a significant influence on the general coloring of his concepts about the rich 14 . It is not surprising that rich people more than once expressed their dissatisfaction with the preacher and grumbled, reproaching him for being partial to the poor. Responding to these reproaches, he said: “I am accused of attacking the rich; But don’t they themselves constantly (attack) the poor? No, I am not attacking the rich, but those who abuse their wealth. I will not stop repeating: I blame not the rich man, but the robber. But a rich man is another thing, a robber is another thing; wealth is another matter, greed is another matter. Distinguish between what should not be confused. Are you rich? - I'm not stopping you. Are you a robber? - I convict you of a crime. Is what you own yours? So much the better - you have the right to use it. But what if you appropriated someone else's property? - I won’t keep silent. Do you want to stone me? I am ready to give my blood if only this will prevent you from committing a crime. What do I need hatred and attacks for? Only one thing occupies me: the success of my listeners. If you are the enemy of the poor, I blame you; but understand that the cruelty of a rich man is more disastrous for himself than for a poor man” 15. Already in the last years of his archpastorship, when the anger of his enemies weaved the crown of thorns of martyrdom on his head, he also said: “They say to me: won’t you stop attacking the rich? Again anathemas against the rich!” And I will answer you; Your cruelty towards the poor is showing itself again! You do not cease to offend the poor - and I do not cease to reproach and blame you. And it’s not you I’m chasing, but the wolf. If you're not a wolf, I'm not chasing you. If you become a wolf, then blame yourself. I'm not against the rich, know that; on the contrary, I am for the rich. I don’t attack them, but I want to heal their illness” 16. How great the saint’s boldness was in protecting the poor from the predatory encroachment of the rich and powerful of this world is shown by the famous incident of how he did not hesitate to reproach and even deprive the Queen Eudokia herself of the right to join the church for appropriating the vineyard of a defenseless widow. To a certain extent, socio-economic inequality is thus not only not evil in itself, but is a social necessity, the sharp sides of which can be softened by the power of law and legality, by limiting the extreme development of the greed of the rich and powerful of this world. But life is never kept within the limits of rights and, due to the very depravity of human nature, finally leads to that social evil, which is called beggary, that is, a state in which a person or even an entire class is deprived of any opportunity to earn food for himself through productive labor and in this regard he can only rely on the mercy of God and the kindness of people. Various misfortunes, orphanhood, fears - all this contributes to the formation of the social evil of beggary, and evil is so inevitable in the conditions of our imperfect social order that there has never been such a brilliant legislator whose thought would dare to rise above the consciousness of the inevitability of this evil, and the Divine Savior of the world Himself said: “you always have the poor with you.” People who, for one reason or another, are thrown out of the rut of correct social life by the movement of the social mechanism and plunged into a state of beggary, are obviously unhappy; but in ancient times their misery was even more severe due to the fact that antiquity did not know those forms of organized charity that have been developed in modern times. The life of the poor in ancient times was a terrible disaster and starvation produced a bountiful harvest among them. The world, ossified in its selfishness, looked indifferently at this terrible disaster, and the parable of the heartless rich man, carefreely having fun while the sick beggar Lazarus lay at the gates of his house, receiving relief from the dogs rather than from their cruel master, presents a vivid picture of the situation of the beggars in ancient times. But if this is how the sons of this world treated this poor, destitute brethren, then the great preachers of the Church of Christ had a completely different attitude. They were deeply imbued with the commandment of Christ and love for neighbors in general and for the unfortunate in particular, and they remembered the great conversation about how in these poor people Christ Himself hungers and thirsts for the poor, testing the strength of our love for mankind. And so they tirelessly raised their voices in favor of almsgiving to the poor brethren, and one of the greatest preachers of almsgiving, as the main means of showing Christian love, was St. John Chrysostom. He, more than anyone else, worked hard to explain the idea that if there is a real force capable of counterbalancing egoism and maintaining balance in the social order, then this is precisely charity or almsgiving, as the best fruit of Christian philanthropy. Just as the wondrous course of the stars is supported by the force of gravity, the cosmos by the affinity of its constituent elements, so the same role in human relations is played by philanthropy or almsgiving. It does not threaten property, does not absorb individuality, does not suppress activity; it is neither theft, nor coercion, nor humiliation, but pure love, which does not puff up the mind, but brings hearts together. It is based on a law contained in a few words: “Love your neighbor as yourself - for the sake of the love of God.” And indeed, among the church fathers of the 4th century there is no one who worked harder to preach philanthropy towards the poor than St. John Chrysostom. He is truly an inspired and tireless apostle of alms. It is rare to find a conversation in which he does not glorify this “queen of virtue,” and one cannot help but be surprised at the amazing variety of thoughts and images that the idea of ​​alms evokes in him. In one conversation with the Antiochians, he puts the Apostle John as a model of an almsgiver, with whom he himself, but according to him, has nothing in common except the name. In fact, he had more in common with him: he was distinguished by the same spirit of love and almsgiving with which tradition characterizes the beloved disciple of the Lord Christ. But let us move on to an exact presentation of the teachings of the great saint on alms based on his own creations. Always a patron of the poor, the toiling and the burdened, he was once especially struck by the horror of the picture of poverty and distress that opened before him in his city, and under the impression of this picture, when he came to church, he delivered a whole conversation about “alms,” which he directly began with an image of the misery he had seen and a call for its relief. This is what he said at the beginning of his conversation “On Alms”: “I appeared before you today with a righteous intercession, useful and honorable for you: it was not another who authorized me to do it, but the poor living in our city, not with words, not with voices or the opinion of the public council, but with their pitiful and most sorrowful appearance. Walking through the square and through the streets, and hastening to your meeting, I saw many people lying in the middle of the road, some without arms, others without eyes, others covered with scabs and wounds and especially exposing those members that should be covered because of the pus on them, and I considered it extremely inhuman not to tell your love about them, especially when, in addition to what has been said (i.e. the pitiful situation of the poor) the very time of year prompts us to do this. True, we need to talk about alms at all times, because we ourselves have a great need for the mercy of the Lord who created us; but especially (this is necessary) at the present time, when there is such a great cold. In summer, the poor receive great relief from the season itself: then they can safely walk naked, because the sun's rays serve for them instead of clothing; they can sit right on the pavement and spend their nights peacefully in the open air; They have no such need either for shoes, or for wine, or for a large amount of food, but are content with water from springs, and are satisfied - some with the cheapest vegetables, others with a small amount of dry seeds, since the very time of the year offers them a ready-made meal. And no less than this, there is then another relief for them - in the convenience of doing work; Builders of houses, cultivators of the land, and sailors on the seas especially need their assistance. What fields, houses and other sources of income are for the rich, so are their own bodies for the poor, and all their income comes from their own hands, and from nowhere else. Thus, in the summer they receive some relief, but in the winter there is a great war and a double siege against them on all sides, because inside hunger eats up their wombs, from outside the cold compresses and makes their body numb. Therefore (in winter) they need more food, and warmer clothing, and a roof and a bed, and shoes, and much more; and what’s worse is that they don’t have the opportunity to do work because the time of year doesn’t allow it. So, when they have the greatest need for necessities, and on top of that there is no work, because no one hires them, the unfortunate ones, or invites them into service, so we, in return for those who hire, will use the hands of mercy, taking as an example in this matter Paul, the true patron and trustee of the poor 17 . This tone taken by St. I. Chrysostom in a conversation directly devoted to the issue of the situation of the poor and wretched, is then supported in all his creations. Helping the poor, alms, these are the favorite objects of the loving saint, and he returns to them at every opportunity. “No other moralist, rightly says such a subtle critic as Villemain, no other speaker of the modern department has ever achieved such amazing liveliness and inexhaustible abundance (of images and thoughts) that Chrysostom is distinguished in this regard. No one has ever been better able to arouse in a person sympathy for the misery of man, or to touch the heart to excite him to charity and virtue” 18. But for him it was not just a feeling of natural goodness, a more or less prudent outburst of kindness, striving to arouse a similar feeling in the soul of a rich man. No, the great saint powerfully acts on the mind, striving to develop or confirm the conviction that love for mankind is the fundamental duty of every Christian, a necessary condition for his salvation, so that doing good is required of him as much for his own good as for the good of the poor, and to neglect this sacred duty would be the same as being wickedly hardened towards Jesus Christ himself, to deprive oneself of the ineffable benefits of redemption. It would be almost impossible to convey all those passages in which the great saint develops his thoughts on charity to the poor and on almsgiving. This would mean reproducing a good quarter of all his creations. Therefore, we will limit ourselves to only the most outstanding places 19. He first praises almsgiving and explains its importance and superiority among other virtues. And his favorite object evokes in his soul a whole swarm of images and thoughts, so that the saint is not only a preacher, but also an inspired poet. “Alms,” he says, “make people like God. Nothing can compare to its power. This is the greatest of virtues. To those who love her, she gives the closest place next to the king, and of course rightly, because virginity, fasting, repentance serve only those who observe them, and alms extend to all members of Jesus Christ... She is the mother of love for mankind - that love that is the best adornment of Christianity, the sign by which true disciples of the Gospel are recognized; she is the great healing of our sins, a ladder placed between heaven and earth, a link that holds together the various parts of the body of the Lord" 20 . “It is a great and valuable deed when a person gives alms. This gift of alms means more than the gift of raising the dead. To feed Jesus Christ when He is hungry, does this not mean more than to draw a person from the grave in the name of Jesus Christ? In the first case, you give to God, in the second, you receive from Him. And the reward is promised not to those who receive, but to those who give” 21. “Give to the poor,” he says in another place, and with this your Judge will be appeased. Repentance without alms is dead, or at least it has no wings, cannot fly high.” “To give alms is to do the best of trade turnovers: here they buy cheap in order to sell high; for what could be cheaper than a piece of bread or some ordinary clothes? Meanwhile, by giving them to your neighbor, you are selling them to God. The one who gives the loan wants to have collateral, security. But where is the poor man's collateral? He has nothing. Where is his security? “He is naked and has no confidence.” Therefore, God, seeing the poor man in danger because of his beggary and the rich man because of his hardness of heart, stands between them: to the poor He offers Himself as security, to the rich as a pledge. You do not want to lend to this man, He says, because of his poverty; in that case, lend it to Me, because of My wealth. - Be, he says, trustworthy: Give me a loan. How do you benefit when you lend to others? Don’t you get one for a hundred if you are looking for legal interest 22; and if you enrich yourself with your greed, you will reap double and bitter unjust fruit. But I reward your passion for enrichment with great reward. You are looking for a hundred times less, but I give you a hundred times more. But since an honest debtor usually determines a term and appoints a day for payment, then listen to when and where the one who borrowed from you through a beggar will repay your debt. When the Son of Man sits on the throne of His glory, and sets the sheep at His right hand, and the goats at His left, and speaks to those on His right hand (here pay attention to how honestly the debtor acts towards the lender, with what great gratitude he repays the borrower); Come, blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world? For what? Because you are hungry, and you have eaten enough to eat; You became thirsty and drank Me; I was naked and dressed. And this, mind you, is surprising: He does not mention any other virtue except acts of alms. Although he could say: come blessed, because you lived chastely, because you maintained virginity, chose the gospel life, but he is silent about this, not because it is unworthy of mention, but because these virtues are lower than mercy. “So, let’s lend God mercy.” Let us lend, so that, as I said earlier, we will find Him a debtor, and not a judge, because the debtor is ashamed of the lender, is ashamed and shows him respect” 23. “Do you have an obol? 24 Buy heaven, not because heaven is cheap, but because the Lord loves mankind. Don't you have an obol? Bring me a cup of cold water. Give bread and take heaven; give little and take great; give mortal and take immortal; give the perishable and take the imperishable. If there were a fair and food supplies were sold cheaply and in large quantities, and a lot could be purchased for a small price, would you not sell off your property and, leaving everything aside, would you not take part in this trade? - Give to the poor, and let you yourself be silent, thousands of lips will speak in your defense, because alms will rise up in your defense; almsgiving is the ransom of the soul" 25. “Almsgiving is the most beautiful and honorable of occupations; without effort and with one simple action she will arrange for us in heaven, if we want it, a bright and permanent home 26 . It is a pure sacrifice and one of the most perfect that a person can offer to God: the poor man is the altar, the rich man is the high priest 27 . Giving alms is better than being a king and wearing a diadem 28; more reliable than the most devoted friendship; to the one who does it, almsgiving brings pleasant and holy joy. Its power is this: when it comes even to sinners, it breaks their bonds, drives out darkness from them, extinguishes the fire under their feet, kills the worm that should eat them; the doors of heaven open before her. When the queen enters her palace, no guard asks her who she is or where she comes from, but everyone bows their foreheads as she passes; so is almsgiving, for it truly is a queen, making a person like God. Like a golden dove, with pleasant, touching eyes, she constantly turns her gaze upward. She is the golden-winged virgin, constantly standing at the throne of God, and when we are judged, she suddenly flies in and saves us from punishment, covering us with her wings. Nothing distinguishes a Christian more than almsgiving. And unbelievers are never more surprised by anything about us than by the fact that we give alms.”29 Having sung this highly poetic, truly enthusiastic hymn to the “Queen of Virtues,” Teacher Chrysostom then proceeds to further explain her meaning and greatness. The Preacher of Chrysostom does not limit himself to the glorification of alms: he clarifies our duty to it, deriving it at the same time from the very commandment of love for mankind, which embraces all other commandments, from the personal benefit of the rich man, for whom it constitutes the surest means of appeasing God, from the love that a Christian should have for his Savior, who became poor for our sake, who has compassion for the poor, who hungers and thirsts in the face the poor, as well as from the basic laws of society itself established by Providence. In vain, he repeats along with other church fathers, you keep the commandments and fulfill the most sublime virtues: without love for mankind, everything is in vain. In vain do you zealously call upon heaven, adding prayers to prayers: prayer does not ascend to heaven except in the accompaniment of alms. The poor, he often says, need the rich less than the rich need them. They are medicine for the soul. Through them, wealth becomes a means of achieving morality, gold opens the gates to heaven, we accumulate treasures, although apparently we become poorer. They are excellent intercessors for us before Jesus Christ. How often and with what zeal did St. Chrysostom reveals these thoughts by interpreting the words of the Gospel: “make friends for yourself with the riches of this world” or the words of St. ap. Paul: “don’t forget love.” With what amazing eloquence he speaks, explaining how the Savior himself stretches out his hand to us for alms in the face of the poor. “Neither Jesus Christ,” he exclaims, nor those who are from Jesus Christ, turn us away from the affairs of this world, but like snakes, vipers and pigs, we wallow in the mud; how are we better than these animals, when we, having such great examples before our eyes, always remain inclined to the ground, without raising our gaze to the sky? God gave up his Son (for you), and you do not give even a piece of bread to this Son, who was betrayed and slain for you? The Father without hesitation gave Him up for you, although He was truly His Son, and you leave Him to die of hunger, although even what you would give Him comes from Him, and you would give it for your own benefit. Can there be greater wickedness than this? He was crucified for you, He died for you, He suffers hunger for you; you would give Him only what belongs to Him and, moreover, for your own benefit, and you refuse to give it? Are they not harder than stone who, carried away by so many impulses to be good, continue to persist in this diabolical inhumanity? For Jesus Christ it is not enough that He died on a shameful tree: He wants to be poor, naked, a stranger, He wants to be a prisoner and sick, in order to gain you at least with this. If you, He says, do not respond to My love, then take pity on My poverty. If you are insensitive to My poverty, do not be so to My illnesses and My prison. If the calamities that I suffer cannot soften your heart, consider how little I require and do not refuse. I do not demand from you any excessive generosity, but only bread, shelter, consolation in a few words. If you are still merciless, then become more humane when you think about the kingdom of heaven, about the rewards that I promise. If all this does not affect you, then take pity at the sight of Me naked, remembering My nakedness on the cross. I was naked, and naked even now; I was a prisoner, and I still am. Let this or that state affect your soul. For your sake I endured hunger, and I still endure it now. I thirsted on Calvary, and I thirst in the faces of the poor, so that My past and present disasters would attract you to Me and have mercy on you for the sake of your own salvation. At least you owe Me a thousand blessings. I do not demand a debt from you, but I offer you a crown: I promise you heaven for a modest alms. I do not tell you: deliver Me from poverty, give me your riches, although I am poor, it is for your sake; I ask you only for a little bread, clothing, and help in my misery. Being a prisoner, I do not ask you to break My chains, but to visit the one who is bound for your sake; I will be content with this good deed, for which I promise you heaven. I have broken your chains, the heaviest of chains; in exchange for this, it is enough for Me if you come to visit Me in prison. I could have crowned you without all this, but I want to be your debtor, so that when you receive the crown, you have the satisfaction that you deserve it. That is why, having the opportunity to feed Myself, I beg for Myself food. That is why I stand at your door, reach out my hand and ask you to help Me, for I love you. I love the table, as is the custom among friends; I lay aside My glory to receive My bread from you; I will say before the whole earth, I will proclaim to all people that it is you who have satisfied My hunger. We are ashamed to live at the expense of others; we hide the benefit that we have received. Jesus Christ, on the contrary, loves us so much that even when we secretly give alms, He proclaims it everywhere with great praise and is not ashamed to say that He was naked and we clothed Him, was hungry and we fed Him.”30 These enthusiastic words of Chrysostom, the preacher of alms, caused thunderous applause from the listeners. But the preacher doesn't need these applause. “Why do I,” he exclaims, “need these screams and all this noise? I ask only one thing from you - an example of good deeds, your attentiveness, proven by deeds. This will be my praise and my gain! This is what is better for me than the most beautiful diadem. Let us try to get this diadem from the hands of the poor." 31 It would be difficult to use even more eloquence in favor of the cause of philanthropy and almsgiving to the poor, but St. Chrysostom goes even further. Almsgiving, in his opinion, is not only a commandment of the Gospel: it is a requirement of the social law. Together with other great church fathers - St. Ambrose of Milan, St. Basil the Great, St. Cyprian, blessed He teaches by Jerome and many other fathers and teachers that a rich man is a steward rather than a master of his wealth, and that to turn it exclusively to his own personal benefit, without any concern for his neighbors in need, would mean a criminal evasion of duty on his part and would be theft 32 . Of course, this expression must be understood exactly as only it can be understood - in a moral sense. Without a doubt, according to St. John Chrysostom, like other church fathers, the human race is one big family, whose common father is God, who gave it the land for hereditary possession. On the one hand, between people, as between members of the same family, there is a reciprocity of needs and services, so that no one can do without the help of others and no one can be alien to others. On the other hand, if the Heavenly Father deigns that the common inheritance be unevenly distributed among us, then this is in order to enable those most benefited to participate in the work of Providence and direct benefits to where they are particularly needed. Thus, the division of humanity into separate peoples, the distribution of land between owners finds a counterbalance to itself: in philanthropy, which, despite all the differences in origin and condition, should gradually lead everyone to unity. And the whole tone of Christianity, with its commandment of love, with its teaching about the redemption of all mankind by the sinless blood of Jesus Christ, is directed towards the establishment of this very unity, sealed by the idea of ​​the most perfect unity between God the Father and God the Son, as God says. The Redeemer prayed in the gravest hour of his mental anguish, exclaiming: “Father, I ask that they may all be one, as We are one.” Unity not only in origin, but unity in spirit and heart, unity in love for mankind, unity in Jesus Christ, who is the embodiment of love - this is the goal of Christianity - and the means to achieve it within the limits of human possibility is the desire of all members of the Christian church for the good of everyone in need through alms, which is an important manifestation of brotherly love. Philanthropy, communication of souls - this is also social communication; they put everything into this great treasury and everyone draws from it - both the poor and the rich; everyone lives by it, and the one who, due to his egoism, avoids this great communication is equally an enemy of God, society and himself. But philanthropy, imposing duties on everyone, does not create any personal rights for anyone. The salvation of the rich man is conditioned by the good use of wealth, and the salvation of the poor man by the good use of his poverty, and just as one must sanctify his wealth by alms, so another must sanctify his poverty by trusting in the mercy of God. To teach the poor, deprived of earthly goods, to love their nakedness for St. I. Chrysostom seemed to be as important as teaching the rich not to become attached to earthly goods and to serve humanity. But in the face of blatant abnormalities in the social structure of his semi-Christian time, in the face of the terrible misery of the proletariat of his day, he often raised his voice to stern tones of indignation and denunciation of this untruth. What cannot be achieved with a simple feeling of pity, he tries to achieve through the power of logical conviction, and every now and then he reminded his listeners that wealth in the hands of the rich is only a deposit entrusted to him for storage under the condition of demand for an account of its true Christian use 33. This does not mean, of course, that property, in his view, was not a definite, inalienable right, or that he rebelled against the fundamental basis of the social system, which rested on the right of property. More than once he showed in action how sacred this fundamental right of community life was in his eyes, when he, for example. in defense of the property of the poor widow, he did not stop short of a stern reproach to Queen Eudoxia herself. He only wanted to instill in the rich man the conviction that his wealth, no matter how completely it belongs to him by right of ownership, does not fulfill its deepest purpose when it ceases to be a source of benefits to the needy - that purpose which is silently determined by the deities. The very right of property is provided by providence at its initial establishment, so that neglect of this condition means opposition to the highest law of God, failure to fulfill an assumed obligation and, in a certain sense, theft. This deepest purpose of property finds expression in almsgiving. But if it constitutes the duty of the rich man, this does not mean that it gives a certain right to the poor man, and the highest owner, the Lord of heaven and earth, reserved for Himself the right to establish the conditions for the true use of wealth. Translating the language of St. AND. Chrysostom in ordinary terms, one could say that property according to it is a kind of hereditary and inalienable lease, secured by the family of the one who legally acquired it, but under certain conditions - providing assistance to suffering members of society, so that alms are like the rent that the owner is obliged to pay for his use of the property of the divine Owner, and evasion of this obligation is not only cruelty towards the distressed brothers, but also a crime before God, an encroachment on the very essence of property, the moral meaning of which is undermined by our violation of an obligation, although such an encroachment for which no one on earth - neither individuals nor society - can prosecute, because the only full-fledged judge in this matter is God himself, as the highest Owner of this property 34. “Do not give from your property,” says St. John Chrysostom, there is abduction - theft. Maybe my words seem surprising to you; but don't be surprised. I will present you with evidence from the divine Scriptures that not only to steal someone else’s property, but also not to give what is yours to others means theft, and covetousness, and taking away. What kind of evidence is this? Reproaching the Jews, God through the prophet says: the land has brought forth its fruits, and you have not brought tithes; what was stolen from the poor is in your houses (Mal.3:10). Since you, so to speak, did not give the usual offerings, you stole the property of the poor. With these words, he inspires the rich that they own the property of the poor, even if they received their father’s inheritance, or even if they collected wealth in some other way. And in another place he says: “Do not deprive the poor of life” (Sir. 4:1), and the one who deprives takes away someone else’s, because taking away is what we call when we take and keep someone else’s from ourselves. So from this we learn that when we do not give alms, we will be punished equally with the kidnappers. These are the Lord's possessions, wherever we gather them from; and if we give from them to the poor, we will gain great wealth. God allowed you to have more than others, not so that you would spend on fornication, and drunkenness, and satiety, and expensive clothing, and on other luxury items, but so that you would give to those in need. Like a treasurer who has received royal money, if he does not distribute it to whom he was ordered, but spends it at his own whim, he is subject to punishment and death; so the rich man is, as it were, a receiver of money to be distributed to the poor, having received the command to distribute it to the needy among his fellow servants; therefore, if he spends on himself anything beyond the necessary needs, he will be subject to the most severe responsibility; because his property does not belong to himself, but to his fellow servants. Let us take care of property as if it were someone else’s, so that it becomes ours. How can you take care of it like someone else’s? If we spend it not on unnecessary needs, and not only our own, but also give it into the hands of the poor; if you are rich, but spend beyond your needs, then you will give an account of the money entrusted to you. This also happens in the houses of nobles; many entrust their treasures to their servants; and those who have received take care of what is entrusted to them and do not abuse the treasures, but distribute them to whom and when the master commands. Do the same, for you did not receive and receive more than others so that you could spend it for one, but so that you could be a good steward for others too.”35 The truth of these provisions is reflected in full force when the rich and the poor go to that country where fair retribution is prepared for everyone - according to the deeds of each. This is depicted with amazing clarity in the afterlife fate of the gospel rich man and Lazarus. “They were about to die. The rich man died and was buried; Lazarus also departed; I won’t say: he died; because the death of the rich man was really death and burial, and the death of the poor man was a departure and death for the better, a transition from the field of struggle to rewards, from the sea to the harbour, from battle to triumph, from exploits to the crown. They both went to where objects have their true appearance; the theater closed and the masks were removed. At the local theater, curtains are used at midday, and many appear on stage in a strange form and with masks on their faces, retelling an old fable and talking about some business; another appears to be a philosopher without being a philosopher; another is a king, without being a king, but only having the appearance of a king - according to the content of the fable; another - a doctor, not knowing how to handle a tree, but only wearing a doctor's dress; another is a slave, being free; another teacher, without even knowing how to read and write; are not represented by what they really are, but what they really are is not shown; someone who is not a doctor at all is shown to be a doctor; the one who has such a hairstyle only on a mask is shown to be a philosopher; He who wears only the dress of a warrior is shown to be a warrior; but no matter how deceptive the appearance of the mask is, it does not change the nature whose reality it distorts; the masks are kept on while the revelers are sitting (in the theatre); but when evening comes, the theater closes and everyone leaves, then the masks are thrown off, and whoever seemed like a king in the theater turns out to be a coppersmith outside; the masks have been dropped, the deception has passed, the truth has been revealed; and turns out to be a slave outside the theater, who seemed free inside; inside (the theater), as I said, there is deception, and outside there is truth; evening came, the spectacle ended - and the truth was revealed. So it is in life and in death. The present is theater; the objects here are deceptive appearances, and wealth and poverty, and power and subordination, and the like; and when that day ends, night comes for sinners, and day for the righteous; when the theater will close, when the deceptive appearances will be discarded; when each will be judged by his own deeds - not with his wealth, not with his power, not with his honors and power, but each with his own deeds - both the ruler and the king, and the woman and the man; when (the Judge) asks us about life and good deeds, and not about the importance of titles, not about the low state of poverty, not about the high state of arrogance (and says): Give Me deeds, even though you were a slave, better than those of a free man; although you were a woman, more courageous than a man; when deceptive appearances will be discarded; then both the rich and the poor will be revealed. And how here, at the end of the theater, one of those sitting above, seeing a coppersmith in the theater philosopher, says: oh! wasn't this guy in the theater a philosopher? and now I see him as a coppersmith. Wasn't this the king there? but here I see him as some kind of low person. Wasn't this rich man there? and here I see him poor; so it will be there too... So this rich man became poor, or better yet, he was poor even when he was rich. For what does it profit a man if he has what belongs to others and does not have his own? What does it profit a man to acquire money and not acquire virtue? I have, you say, fruitful land. What is it? But you do not have a fruitful soul. Do you have slaves? But you have no virtue! Do you have clothes? But I did not acquire piety! You have someone else’s, but you don’t have your own. If someone entrusted you with a pledge, could I call you rich? No way. Why? Because you own someone else's; because it is a pledge; and oh, if only this were only a pledge, and not an addition to your punishment!” 36. With all the amazing variety of preaching explanations and reasoning, they are all based on the same idea. The earth belongs to God, He is its supreme owner. Even if He deigned for people to divide it among themselves and from the heights of Sinai recognized the right of ownership by decreeing the commandment: Thou shalt not steal, however, the truth remains immutable that in His eyes the legal owner of any part of the land is only an assignee, a tenant. The condition of this right of solicitation is the demand for assistance to the poor. The Supreme Owner of everything and everyone assigns a part of the rich man's estate to help the poor, and without creating from here the rights of the latter, He makes it the duty of the former. To give alms means to fulfill this duty, or to pay a debt to the Supreme Lord; to evade this duty means not to repay one’s debt, to be an unfaithful bailiff, not because the poor man could demand at least an ovol from the rich man’s estate, or that almsgiving is something other than alms in the proper sense of the word, as voluntary alms, but because the rich man owes God what he gives to the poor; By not repaying this debt, he thereby violates the rights of God. Under various forms of expression, Saint Chrysostom constantly expresses this thought, reminding the rich man that he has received an honorable commission from above to be a benefactor of his brothers, to be the overseer of the Provider himself on earth. And is it really offensive for a rich man to call him God’s steward, the manager of His benefits? And since we quickly pass through this earth and cannot take anything with us from this world. If he is left behind, except for his nakedness, then truly what property can be most reliable, if not temporary custody? God, giving us His benefits as a means for philanthropy, will punish the selfish use of these benefits as opposition to His highest intention and as a criminal evasion of true Duty. It is clear that such constantly and persistently developed thoughts about the obligatory relations of rich people to the poor could not but arouse discontent, and even protests from the hard-hearted rich, who involuntarily felt disloyalty to their duty. Therefore, they tried to justify themselves and even objected to the preacher that the poor themselves do not always deserve sympathy as much as Chrysostom’s teacher demands it for them. Thus, to justify themselves, the hard-hearted rich said that the poor do not deserve sympathy due to their unworthy behavior, that their moral ulcers are even worse than their physical ones. They disgrace their poverty, sanctified by the Lord Jesus Christ himself, with laziness, riotousness, gluttony, vagrancy, contempt for the laws of God and the most vile vices. One could see how they, lying at the doors of churches, in squares, in public galleries, pretended to suffer terribly from illnesses that in reality did not exist, exposed wounds on their legs that they had deliberately inflicted on themselves, indulged in the most vile tricks and tricks, and even produced artificial deformities, blinded their own children, in order through them to arouse pity in people and persuade them to beg. In these accusations, of course, there was a lot of bitter truth, because indeed beggary, both now and especially in ancient times, produced its bitter fruits in lowering the morality of the people. The great defender of the poor, St. John Chrysostom himself repeatedly denounced this depravity of the poor. But he looked deeper at the matter, and clearly saw that the very depravity of the poor is only a reflection of the depravity of the rich, is the fruit of their selfishness and hard-heartedness. First of all, the very desire to rummage through the conscience of a poor man in order to find some vices and shortcomings in his life, rather than help him, testifies to the insincerity of the disposition towards alms. Meanwhile, the saint says, a true benefactor “must not examine the life of the poor, but help poverty and satisfy need. The poor have only one excuse - lack and need; don’t ask him anything else; but if he, even if he was the most vicious of all, needs the necessary food, we will satisfy his hunger. Christ also commanded to do this: Be ye, He said, like your Father who is in heaven, as the sun shines on the evil and on the good, and rains on the righteous and on the unjust (Matthew 5:45). Mercy is a harbor for those in need, and the harbor receives all those who are shipwrecked and saves them from danger; whether evil or good, or whoever they are, those who are in danger, she takes them into her arms. So you, seeing a person who has been shipwrecked by poverty on earth, do not condemn or demand an account, but deliver him from misfortune. Why are you taking on extra work? God has freed you from all care and worry. How much would many people talk and be indignant if God commanded to first accurately examine life, find out the behavior and actions of everyone, and then give alms? And now we are freed from any such difficulty. Why do we bring unnecessary worries upon ourselves? Another is a judge, another is a giver of alms. This is why alms are called that way because we give it to the unworthy. Paul also exhorts us to do the same: let us do good, he says, and let us not be cold toward everyone, especially toward those who are with us in the faith (Gal. 6:9–10). If we begin to question and investigate about the unworthy, then the worthy ones will not soon come across to us; and if we give to the unworthy, then those who are worthy and like all of them will fall into our hands, as happened with blessed Abraham, who, without asking or inquiring about those passing by, was once honored to receive angels. Let us also imitate him, and with him his descendant Job; for this one too imitated the generosity of his ancestor with all precision, and therefore said: my door is open to everyone who comes (Job 31:32); It was not open for such and such, but closed for another, but for everyone in general it was open. So, I exhort you, we will do the same, without exploring anything beyond what is necessary. The dignity of the poor is one need; no matter who comes to us with her, we will not explore anything further; because we give not to the right, but to man, and we pity him not for virtue, but for misfortune, so that we ourselves may attract great mercy from the Lord, so that we ourselves, unworthy, may be honored with His love for mankind. If we begin to look for and examine the virtues in our fellow servants, then God will do the same with us; and in trying to demand an account from our equal slaves, we ourselves will lose our highest love for mankind. For therefore, says the Lord, judge with judgment, you will be judged” (Matthew 7:2) 37. Since the rich with particular persistence cited the outrageous laziness and pretense of the poor as justification for themselves, Chrysostom, in turn, especially dwelled on this subject. He, of course, did not approve of food in this regard, but at the same time he eloquently showed that such an objection in no way undermines the very duty of almsgiving. “This unfortunate man,” you say, is pretending that he is cold and sick. “And you are not afraid that thunder will strike you at the very moment you pronounce this word?” I'm burning with indignation. Excuse me. You, who give your belly everything it wants, you who are fat and obese, who continue your orgies until the very night, stretching out on soft carpets - do you really think that God will leave such abuse of his gifts unpunished? Wine was not given to us to get drunk with it, or foodstuffs to satisfy our gluttony. From this poor man, this unfortunate man, whose condition is no better than that of a dead man, you demand a strict account of his behavior and you yourself are not afraid of the terrible judgment seat of Jesus Christ. After all, if a poor man pretends, he is prompted to do so by his terrible situation, by your hardness of heart, which makes this pretense necessary, by your rudeness, which cannot be penetrated. Indeed, what kind of person, not prompted by need, would humiliate himself like that for a piece of bread? His pretense exposes your inhumanity. Perhaps precisely because you have already seen his prayers, his sighs, his tears, his cries, and he, walking all day from door to door, did not receive the food he needed so as not to die - perhaps that is why he resorted to these tricks, which constitutes humiliation more for you than for him. He is truly pathetic that he has come to such a necessity; but we ourselves brought him to this position, we ourselves deserve countless punishments. If we were more accessible to pity, would he have reached such baseness? What am I talking about nakedness and shivering from the cold? There are still things a hundred times more terrible! Some fathers were forced to blind their children at full age in order to touch us even with the sight of such deep misery. To all other disasters they added this, the most deplorable of all, in order to get a piece of bread from you, considering the deprivation of light, this heavenly ray that all people enjoy, to be a lesser evil than constantly fighting hunger, the most terrible of deaths. Since you have no pity for poverty, and even enjoy misfortunes, they satisfy your insatiable desire, and both for themselves and for you, thereby kindle the strongest fire in Gehenna. That all this is happening through your fault is irrefutable proof. Other poor people, more vain, more proud, prefer to endure anything rather than hunger, and having learned from experience that all requests are useless, they indulge in the worst kind of quackery: you can see how they gnaw the leather of old shoes, drive nails into their heads, plunge naked into icy water, and generally indulge in a thousand other even more absurd and wild antics in order to attract attention to themselves. And you laugh, you applaud such low antics, and the humiliation of human nature is a spectacle, there is entertainment for you! Would even a cruel demon do more than this? You willingly give money to encourage these basenesses. To the poor man who asks you with humility, begs you with God, you don’t even deign to answer, you don’t look at him, you push him away with offensive words. You say to such a person should not live: is it permissible for such creatures to breathe air, to see the sun? “And so your hand, closed to pity, opens to reward baseness, so that you could be called an agonophete, 38 rewarding those satanic games in which the funny competes with the shameful. Truly, about you and about all those who encourage such abominations, who do not give anything except for the worst, it should be said: do they deserve to live, to enjoy the heavenly light - people who insult both nature and the Creator equally? When God says: do alms and I will give you My kingdom, you remain deaf; when the devil presents you with a head pierced with nails, you immediately become generous. And after that you still ask me: why does Gehenna exist? Better ask why there is only Gehenna” 39. It would be difficult to find more reasons in favor of giving alms to the poor. But Chrysostom is inexhaustible in this regard. The word truly flows like a golden stream from his lips, as soon as his thought touches on the question of the situation of the poor and the injustice with which the heartless rich treat them. It is necessary to help the poor, he says, if only because “the poor man is the same person as you,” he has the same soul and the same Lord, you partake of the same mysteries, are called to the same heaven, and he also has a great dignity - poverty, the need for necessary food. So you do not spare your money for those who delight you with pipes and zithers in winter and harm you with idle talk; and when a poor man asks you for the bread he needs, you subject him to insults, reproach him for laziness, not thinking that you yourself are lazy, and yet God does not deny you his blessings. Don't tell me you're doing business; show me that you are doing something useful. Taking care of your well-being, multiplying your money, managing your affairs, this is not what God requires of you. He wants alms, prayer, protection of the oppressed, many things that we spend our whole lives forgetting. Meanwhile, He does not say: since you live in idleness, I will not shine the sun on you; Because you do nothing that is necessary, I will extinguish the moon, make the earth barren, dry up the springs, and withhold the rain. No, He squanders His treasures even on the lazy, even on the wicked. Often seeing a poor person, you tell me: I am choking with vexation at the sight of this young healthy man who, having nothing, wants to feed himself without working - this is probably a runaway slave and a criminal. You yourself should make such reproaches. What am I saying? Let the person you condemn freely speak about you, and he will tell you with even greater right: I am choking with annoyance at the sight of how, in full health, you spend your life in laziness, in apostasy from the commandments of God and, having run away from your Lord and gone to another country, you wander in a tavern, get drunk, steal, and destroy the happiness of others. You accuse me of idleness; I accuse you of your wickedness, of your lies and perjury, of deceit and predation. “But saying this,” continued the Preacher Chrysostom, I do not think to encourage laziness, for it is the teacher of all evil. I want everyone to work, but I also want you to be neither cruel nor inhumane. Having discussed all this, let us bridle our tongue and put aside inhumanity, let us stretch out our hand to give alms, and not only with money, but also with words, let us help those in need, so that we may avoid punishment for slander and inherit the kingdom for blessing and alms.”40 So, the meaning of alms, as the queen of virtues, is clarified by Chrysostom with inimitable completeness and strength. Now the question arises: how to practice this virtue? Does it really consist only in primitive alms to everyone in need - in that form, which in modern times is subject to censure, since it does not achieve its goal and even increases the very beggary against which it is directed, or did the great preacher of alms offer other forms of service to the “Queen of Virtues”? We postpone the explanation of this interesting question until the next book. See Un reformateur de la societé chretienne au IV siécle. Par Aimé Puech, p. 46 et seq.; Histoire de S. Jean Chrysostome, in 1 volume. Oeures completes, p. 201 et seq., Opera Omnia in ed. Minya, as well as the first two volumes of the “Complete Works of St. I. Chrysostom" in Russian translation. On 1 Thess.X, and on 1 Corinth. XXXIX. On ev. Matt. LVI. Usury especially aroused the sacred indignation of Chrysostom, and he prohibits it without any restrictions. By usury, he, like other church fathers, does not mean charging only excessive growth, but growth itself in general, whatever it may be. He mentions and directly condemns the charging of growth at one percent per month, or 12% per annum. True, this percentage is very significant in our time, but in ancient times it was considered the most common when borrowing. On the attitude of the church fathers to usury, see Funck, Geschichte des kirchlichen Zinsverbotes, where it is shown that the church fathers condemned any collection of interest in general. For these conversations, see Volume I of The Complete Works of St. I. Chrysostom" in Russian translation. St. Petersburg 1895 Conversation on Eutropius, 3 (printed in Volume III of the Complete Collection) Conversation on the words of David (in Volume III of the “Full Collection”) See Discourse on Alms in Volume III of the Complete Collection of the Works of St. I. Chrysostom" in Russian translation. Villemain, Tableau de l'eloquence chretienne, Chrysostome. For a selection of them, see Oeuvres Completes, t. I, p. 203 et seq. Not sent. To Titus, Bes. VI. For one hundred drachmas, one drachma per month was the legal interest in ancient times, i.e. 12% per annum. See Conversations on Repentance, Demon. VII, 7, in “Complete Collection of the Works of St. I. Chrysostom" vol. II, p. 372 et seq. The smallest coin, a penny. On Repentance vol. II, 2, pp. 324, 325. On Evang. Matthew Bes. LII, 4 et seq. On the last Hebrews xxxii. 7. On the last To Romans, demon. XV, at Art. 39 (Min Vol. IX, Art. 547, 48). For the opinions of the fathers and teachers of the church, in this regard, see the following works: St. Cypriana, De oper. Et eleemos. St. Basil the Great in a conversation about wealth, as well as in a conversation about greed (Paris. Edition 1638, t. I, p. 337, 328); bl. Augustine in Ps. 147, n. 12; St. Gregory the Theologian, Orat. XIV; St. Asteria, demon. About Lazar; bl. Jerome, Epp. 49 and 54; St. Gregory of Nyssa, O poor man. and charitable. Orat. I. See conversations 1 and 2 about Lazarus in volume I of The Complete Works of St. I. Zlastoust." This idea has been repeatedly developed by the newest Christian preachers, and for example. Bourdalou said directly: “The wealth you own is not yours in the proper sense; In relation to God, you are only their guardians and stewards; you will have to give an account of them on that day; by virtue of the necessary obligation of alms, you stand in an obligatory relationship to the poor.” And in another place he says: “God is the supreme owner of your estates, He is the master, even the unconditionally true Owner, and in comparison with Him you, in the best sense, are only stewards and bailiffs: both reason and faith testify to this. And if your estates belong to God by right of dominion, then you are obliged to pay tribute to Him, to give an account, and since this property belongs to Him, then He should enjoy its fruits. What is God doing? He assigns this tribute and these fruits to support the poor, that is, instead of demanding this tribute for Himself, which would not correspond to His greatness, He demands it through the poor. Just as alms in relation to the poor is a duty of philanthropy and mercy, in relation to God it is a duty of dependence and submission. The rich man who refuses alms to the poor is a rebellious slave who refuses tribute to his master, an arrogant vassal who, in a spirit of rebellion, does not want to recognize his master,” See Bourdaloue, Sermons for Thursday of the 2nd week of Lent, part 2; on the 1st Friday led. post. part 1. See the second word about Lazarus (4 and 5) in Volume I of the Complete Collection, pp. 796 and 797. See VI demon. about Lazarus, 5 and 8, “Complete Collection” I vol. pp. 847, 851 and 852. See II demon. about Lazarus, in “Complete. Meetings" vol. I, pp. 797 et seq. Agonothet (ἄγωνοθἐτης) – manager of public games, judge and distributor of prizes at games among the Greeks. But mostly rich people were chosen for this position, generous in encouraging such games. On 1st last. to Cor. demon XXI, 3, 5, 6. (in the edition of Minya IX, vol. 175–178). On ev. Matthew, demon. XXXV, 3 – 5 (in Min, vol. VII, art. 409 – 12).