Дарования Божии

We cannot earn anything from God on our own, but we receive everything freely from His generous hand. He, as the Good and Rich One in mercy, seeing our poverty and misery, opens the treasures of His goodness and gives us everything freely. His nature is such that it cannot help but do good. You see that a person who has someone else’s wealth, which is his due, is not proud of it, does not call himself rich, does not boast about it. This is what we should do if we have God’s gifts: consider them not our own, but as if they were strangers; not to be proud of them, but to use them for the glory of God - for they come from God - and for our benefit and our neighbor, for which they were entrusted to us. Let wealth, intelligence, wisdom and so on be for our benefit and that of our neighbor, not for our praise, but for the glory and praise of the One from whom we came, for just as He, by His mercy, gave them to us, so, because of our ingratitude, He can take them away from us as His own. Then we will truly know how poor, poor, wretched, naked we are and have nothing of our own except sin. By depriving his neighbor of bodily goods, [the stingy rich man] deprives himself of spiritual fruit, does not fulfill God’s commandments, is ill with pride and unmercifulness, and thus, by not showing mercy to his neighbor, closes the doors of God’s mercy for himself. On the contrary, a generous rich man, like a strong stomach, is content with wealth for the glory of God, thanking God, and is content with others for the glory of the same God, and thus brings spiritual benefit to himself while bringing physical benefit to others. Keep this in mind also about other gifts given to us by God: if we give them to our neighbors, then they bring us benefit, and if we don’t give them, then they harm us - not on their own, but because of us, because we do not use them as we should, and not for what we should. Just as burning your neighbor’s things is an abuse of fire, which is given to us for cooking, warming rooms, etc.; we abuse the sword to kill our brother, although the sword was designed to protect the fatherland; we abuse the tongue for slander, slander, and foul language, although the tongue was given to us to communicate the advice of our hearts and to praise God; We abuse our hands for theft, beating, although they were given to us for doing and helping ourselves and our neighbors, and so on. Thus, a person can use God’s gifts for evil, and therefore to the detriment of himself and his neighbor.