Skip to main content
Advent Ember Day Sermons by Pope Leo the Great
Be steadfast, Christian
giver: give what you may receive, sow what you may reap, scatter what
you may gather. Fear not to spend, sigh not over the doubtfulness of the
gain. Your substance grows when it is wisely dispensed. Set your heart
on the profits due to mercy, and traffic in eternal gains. Your Recompenser wishes you to be munificent, and He who gives that you may have, commands you to spend, saying, Give, and it shall be given to you.
You must thankfully embrace the conditions of this promise. For
although you have nothing that you did not receive, yet you cannot fail
to have what you give. He therefore that loves money, and wishes to
multiply his wealth by immoderate profits, should rather practise this holy usury
and grow rich by such money-lending, in order not to catch men hampered
with difficulties, and by treacherous assistance entangle them in debts
which they can never pay, but to be His creditor and His money-lender,
who says, Give, and it shall be given to you,
and with what measure ye measure, it shall be measured again to you Luke 6:38 .
... if he were considerate of his own soul,
he would trust his good to Him, who is both the proper Surety for the
poor and the generous Repayer of loans....
And so, dearly beloved, do ye who with the whole heart have put your trust in the Lord's promises, flee from this unclean leprosy of avarice, and use God's gift piously and wisely. And since you rejoice
in His bounty, take heed that you have those who may share in your
joys. For many lack what you have in plenty, and some men's needs afford
you opportunity for imitating the Divine goodness, so that through you
the Divine benefits may be transferred to others also, and that by being
wise stewards of your temporal goods, you may acquire eternal riches.
But there are three things which most belong to religious actions, namely prayer, fasting, and almsgiving, in the exercising of which while every time is accepted, yet that ought to be more zealously observed, which we have received as hallowed by tradition from the apostles:
even as this tenth month brings round again to us the opportunity when
according to the ancient practice we may give more diligent heed to
those three things of which I have spoken. For by prayer we seek to propitiate God, by fasting we extinguish the lusts of the flesh, by alms we redeem our sins:
and at the same time God's image is throughout renewed in us, if we are
always ready to praise Him, unfailingly intent on our purification and
unceasingly active in cherishing our neighbour. This threefold round of
duty, dearly beloved, brings all other virtues into action: it attains to God's image and likeness and unites us inseparably with the Holy Spirit. Because in prayer faith remains steadfast, in fastings
life remains innocent, in almsgiving the mind remains kind. On
Wednesday and Friday therefore let us fast: and on Saturday let us keep
vigil with the most blessed Apostle Peter, who will deign to aid our
supplications and fast and alms with his own prayers through our Lord Jesus Christ, who with the Father and the Holy Ghost lives and reigns for ever and ever. Amen.
As therefore we ought to give God thanks for the hope of future happiness towards which we run by faith, because He raises us up to a perception of the happiness
in store for us, so for those things also which we receive in the
course of every year, God should be honoured and praised, who having
from the beginning given fertility to the earth and laid down laws
of bearing fruit for every germ and seed, will never forsake his own
decrees but will as Creator ever continue His kind administration of the
things that He has made. Whatever therefore the cornfields, the
vineyards and the olive groves have borne for man's purposes, all this
God in His bounteous goodness has produced: for under the varying
condition of the elements He has mercifully aided the uncertain toils of
the husbandmen so that wind, and rain, cold and heat, day and night
might serve our needs. For men's methods would not have sufficed to give
effect to their works, had not God given the increase to their wonted
plantings and waterings. And hence it is but godly and just that we too
should help others with that which the Heavenly Father has mercifully
bestowed on us. For there are full many, who have no fields, no
vineyards, no olive-groves, whose wants we must provide out of the store
which God has given, that they too with us may bless God for the richness of the earth and rejoice
at its possessors having received things which they have shared also
with the poor and the stranger. That garner is blessed and most worthy
that all fruits should increase manifold in it, from which the hunger of
the needy and the weak is satisfied from which the wants of the
stranger are relieved, from which the desire of the sick is gratified.
For these men God has in His justice
permitted to be afflicted with various troubles, that He might both
crown the wretched for their patience and the merciful for their
loving-kindness.
Since therefore all vices are destroyed by self-restraint, and whatever avarice thirsts for, pride strives for, luxury lusts after, is overcome by the solid force of this virtue, who can fail to understand the aid which is given us by fastings?
For therein we are bidden to restrain ourselves, not only in food, but
also in all carnal desires. Otherwise it is lost labour to endure hunger
and yet not put away wrong wishes; to afflict oneself by curtailing
food, and yet not to flee from sinful
thoughts. That is a carnal, not a spiritual fast, where the body only
is stinted, and those things persisted in, which are more harmful than
all delights. What profit is it to the soul
to act outwardly as mistress and inwardly to be a captive and a slave,
to issue orders to the limbs and to lose the right to her own liberty?
That soul for
the most part (and deservedly) meets with rebellion in her servant,
which does not pay to God the service that is due. When the body
therefore fasts from food, let the mind fast from vices, and pass judgment upon all earthly cares and desires according to the law of its King
Comments
Post a Comment