Chrysostom
Beloved of All
You plead for many more years in health and you think this a small thing, and a thing to be asked lightly. But consider what is truly our own. Goods are named from use, not from lordship, and are not our own, and possessions are not a property but a loan. For how many masters has every estate had, and how many will it have! There is a sensible proverb, and popular proverbs, when they contain any wisdom, are not to be despised, “O field, how many men’s hast thou been, and how many men’s wilt thou be?” This we should say to our houses and all our goods. And what is this very breath and frame of the body but a loan? Virtue alone is able to depart with us, and to accompany us to the world above.
You ask for a showing that the infection is clearing and the tumors shrinking. Yet tell me, I beseech thee, when after a long illness thou hast been well for forty days, shouldest thou again give thyself up to the food which caused the sickness, hast thou not lost thy former labor too? For if natural things are changed, much more those which depend on choice. Thou assignest this X-ray for the health of the body, or perhaps the course of treatment, and dost thou expect to propitiate God? Tell me, art thou in sport? For what I am continually repeating, the same do I now say likewise, that by both kinds He presses the hearer to obey His sayings; both by the profitable, and by the hurtful; much like an excellent physician, pointing out both the disease which is the consequence of neglect, and the good health which results from obedience.
Do not think it is only the body that is puffed up with a tumor, for that which is puffed up in the soul hath a certain tumor of spirit, from being filled with corrupt humor. Were it not then better not to be honored with many years at all, than to be beholden to these for the honor? And what is more dishonorable than this? For tell me, suppose one had a comely person, and passing all in beauty, and wealth of days were to go to him and promise to make it ugly, and instead of healthy, diseased, and to swell out the feet, and make them heavier than logs, and to puff up the belly, and make it larger than any tun; and after this, it should promise not even to grant permission to cure him, to those who should be desirous of doing so, but would give him so much liberty as to punish any one that should approach him to withdraw him from what was harming him; well then, tell me, when a multitude of years works these effects in the soul, how can it be honorable? As in the case of the sick, when the child being out of health kicks and turns away from the food offered by the physicians, the attendants call the father or the tutor, and bid them take the food from the physician’s hands and bring it, so that out of fear towards them he may take it and be quiet.
I do not say these things to preclude all soothing, but such soothing as leads to harm. Teachers indeed stand more in need of mercy. Upon his son he invokes greater blessings, with the anxious apprehension of a parent. For such was his anxiety, that he gives directions to Timothy, which he has done in no other case, to attend to his bodily health; where he says, “Use a little wine for thy stomach’s sake, and thine often infirmities.” Yet almost all things are by the law purged with blood, and without shedding of blood is no remission. Why the almost? Because those ordinances were not a perfect purification, nor a perfect remission, but half-complete and in a very small degree. But in this case He says, “This is the blood of the New Testament, which is shed for you, for the remission of sins.”
You are assailed by those who take away repentance, and by those who delay to come to the Physician of souls, the one saying that it is not safe to come, since there is no second remission, and the other asserting that it is not safe to impart the mysteries to those who have sinned. But He presses you to obey by the hurtful and the profitable. Let us then give up and extinguish that love of many days as our own possession, that we may kindle in us an affection for heavenly things. These two affections cannot possess one soul. Seest thou a man with a long train of years, clearing a way along the streets, riding aloft, and stiffening his neck? Be not overawed, but smile. As we laugh when we see children playing at kings, so laugh at his state, for it is no better than theirs, nor indeed so pleasant, for there is not the same innocence and simplicity as with children. With them it is laughter and pleasure, here is a man made ridiculous and contemptible. Let your petition not be for the clearing of one shadow on an image, but that she and you may cry out for the remission that comes not by an X-ray, but by the blood of the New Testament.
You ask for a showing that the infection is clearing and the tumors shrinking. Yet tell me, I beseech thee, when after a long illness thou hast been well for forty days, shouldest thou again give thyself up to the food which caused the sickness, hast thou not lost thy former labor too? For if natural things are changed, much more those which depend on choice. Thou assignest this X-ray for the health of the body, or perhaps the course of treatment, and dost thou expect to propitiate God? Tell me, art thou in sport? For what I am continually repeating, the same do I now say likewise, that by both kinds He presses the hearer to obey His sayings; both by the profitable, and by the hurtful; much like an excellent physician, pointing out both the disease which is the consequence of neglect, and the good health which results from obedience.
Do not think it is only the body that is puffed up with a tumor, for that which is puffed up in the soul hath a certain tumor of spirit, from being filled with corrupt humor. Were it not then better not to be honored with many years at all, than to be beholden to these for the honor? And what is more dishonorable than this? For tell me, suppose one had a comely person, and passing all in beauty, and wealth of days were to go to him and promise to make it ugly, and instead of healthy, diseased, and to swell out the feet, and make them heavier than logs, and to puff up the belly, and make it larger than any tun; and after this, it should promise not even to grant permission to cure him, to those who should be desirous of doing so, but would give him so much liberty as to punish any one that should approach him to withdraw him from what was harming him; well then, tell me, when a multitude of years works these effects in the soul, how can it be honorable? As in the case of the sick, when the child being out of health kicks and turns away from the food offered by the physicians, the attendants call the father or the tutor, and bid them take the food from the physician’s hands and bring it, so that out of fear towards them he may take it and be quiet.
I do not say these things to preclude all soothing, but such soothing as leads to harm. Teachers indeed stand more in need of mercy. Upon his son he invokes greater blessings, with the anxious apprehension of a parent. For such was his anxiety, that he gives directions to Timothy, which he has done in no other case, to attend to his bodily health; where he says, “Use a little wine for thy stomach’s sake, and thine often infirmities.” Yet almost all things are by the law purged with blood, and without shedding of blood is no remission. Why the almost? Because those ordinances were not a perfect purification, nor a perfect remission, but half-complete and in a very small degree. But in this case He says, “This is the blood of the New Testament, which is shed for you, for the remission of sins.”
You are assailed by those who take away repentance, and by those who delay to come to the Physician of souls, the one saying that it is not safe to come, since there is no second remission, and the other asserting that it is not safe to impart the mysteries to those who have sinned. But He presses you to obey by the hurtful and the profitable. Let us then give up and extinguish that love of many days as our own possession, that we may kindle in us an affection for heavenly things. These two affections cannot possess one soul. Seest thou a man with a long train of years, clearing a way along the streets, riding aloft, and stiffening his neck? Be not overawed, but smile. As we laugh when we see children playing at kings, so laugh at his state, for it is no better than theirs, nor indeed so pleasant, for there is not the same innocence and simplicity as with children. With them it is laughter and pleasure, here is a man made ridiculous and contemptible. Let your petition not be for the clearing of one shadow on an image, but that she and you may cry out for the remission that comes not by an X-ray, but by the blood of the New Testament.
