Commentaria in Deuteronomium
Twelfth. Alms affords great comfort to the dying. Tobias xii: “Alms delivereth from death, and it is that which maketh to find mercy.” Psalm xl, 2: “Blessed is he that understandeth concerning the needy and the poor: the Lord will deliver him in the evil day.” “Those are not a man’s goods,” says St. Ambrose, “which he cannot carry with him: mercy alone is the companion of the dead.” Hence it delivers from hell. Tobias iv, 8: “According to thy ability be merciful: for thou storest up to thyself a good reward for the day of necessity.” See the parable of Barlaam concerning the two friends who forsake a man in death, but the third, namely virtue and alms, defends him; in Damascene. Nay, alms recalled Tabitha from death, Acts chap. ix, vers. 40, says St. Cyprian, On Works and Alms.
Thirteenth. Alms builds everlasting tabernacles in heaven.
This is plain by the example of Peter the Publican, which is found in the Life of St. John the Almoner, and of another which St. Gregory recounts, book iv Dialogues, xxxvi. Hence St. Leo, sermon 6 On the Fast of the Tenth Month: “A temporal gift,” he says, “passes into an eternal reward; and thy traffic is heaven; give bread, and receive paradise; give small things, and receive great; give mortal things, and receive immortal.” Alms in heaven, then, is as a steward, who assigns to each his place and crown according to his merits. For it is written: “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.” Hence Peter Chrysologus, sermon 8 On Fasting and Alms: “The hand of the poor,” he says, “is the bosom of Abraham, where whatever the poor man receives he straightway lays up. The treasure of heaven is the hand of the poor: what it receives, lest it perish on earth, it lays up in heaven. Give, therefore, O man, earth to the poor, that thou mayest receive heaven; give a coin, that thou mayest receive a kingdom; give a crumb, that thou mayest receive the whole.”
Fourteenth. It is more blessed to give than to receive, says Christ.
Hence in giving all nature provides us with an example. The heavens give light and influence, fire gives heat, the air gives the breath by which we breathe, the earth gives so many fruits, the sea so many fish, animals give wool and flesh. The eternal Father gives his nature to the Son: the Father and the Son give the same to the Holy Ghost: the Son gave himself to us in the manger and on the cross, and daily gives himself in the Blessed Sacrament. It will be most shameful, therefore, if we, who daily receive so many things from all creatures and from God, do not learn also to bestow on those who have not what we can.
Fifteenth. Alms is given to the poor man, but Christ reckons it given to himself. “I was hungry,” he says, “and you gave me to eat,” etc. Christ, who is rich in heaven, willed to hunger in the poor: and dost thou hesitate, O man, to give to a man, when thou knowest that thou givest to Christ!
Sixteenth. Alms makes riches holy: whence follows vers. 13: “I have taken that which was sanctified.” Holy is the gold with which captives are redeemed, holy the silver which is given to orphans and widows. Hence commonly we call works of mercy works of piety: and in Hebrew chasid, that is, pious, is called he who is merciful.
Seventeenth. Alms brings help to prayer. “Most effectual to move God is the petition which works of piety support,” says St. Leo, sermon 10 On the Fast of the Tenth Month. Tobias chap. iv, vers. 7: “Turn not away thy face from any poor person: for so it shall come to pass that the face of the Lord shall not be turned from thee.” St. Augustine on Psalm xlii: “Wouldst thou,” he says, “have thy prayer fly to God, make it two wings, fasting and alms.” Hence the Angel says to Tobias, chap. xii, vers. 8: “Prayer is good with fasting and alms.”
We are all God’s beggars. What are riches but alms given by God to the rich? Let them, therefore, likewise give a part of them to the poor. “We are God’s beggars; that God may acknowledge his beggars, let us acknowledge ours. What face hast thou in begging of the Lord thy God, who dost not acknowledge thy equal!” says St. Augustine, sermon 5 On the Words of the Lord.
Alms fights before God for the almsgiver, that God may bring him help. Ecclesiasticus chap. xxix, vers. 15: “Shut up alms in the heart of the poor, and it shall obtain help for thee against all evil. Better than the shield of the mighty and the spear against thine enemy it shall fight.” And chap. iii, vers. 34: “God is a provider for him who showeth favour: he remembereth him afterwards, and in the time of his fall he shall find a sure stay”; and chap. xvii, vers. 18: “The alms of a man is as a signet with him, and shall preserve the grace of a man as the apple of the eye.” As a signet is carried on the finger, and is before the eyes of a man, so alms is always before the eyes of God, and God will preserve the grace of a man, that is, the benefit conferred on the poor, as the apple of the eye, that is, as a most dear thing.
Alms is the proper virtue of illustrious Saints, and is a sign of God’s predestination. “Put ye on,” says Paul, Colossians iii, 12, “as the elect of God, holy and beloved, the bowels of mercy.”
St. Francis was so liberal toward the poor that he was accused by his father of prodigality before the Bishop, and of his own accord stripped himself of his goods: and this was the first foundation of his sanctity.
Serapion also gave away his garment and went half-naked: being asked why, he showed the book of the Gospels: “Behold,” he said, “him who has stripped me,” and at last gave away the very book also.
St. Catherine of Siena gave to a poor beggar a silver cross, having nothing else. Christ, appearing to her by night, said that he would show that cross publicly on the day of judgment, in sign of her piety: as he also appeared to St. Martin clothed in the garment with which he had covered a poor man.
St. John the Almoner was a sea of alms: and the more he gave, the more he received. He used to call the poor his lords, because they could bring him help, lest he be shut out from the kingdom of God. Hence St. Francis said to his brethren not to blush to beg, because they bestowed greater things than they received, and enriched the givers more copiously; and he added that this was a noble prodigality, which for bread rendered divine love, as if one should give ten gold pieces for bread: and therefore the Mendicant Orders were instituted by divine counsel at that time when charity had grown cold, that on this occasion men might grow rich in divine charity.
St. Louis, king of France, always admitted the poor to his table, and furnished them with royal fare, thinking that in them he had Christ as his guest. Again, with his own hand he dispensed money to them and others.
saying that they were his soldiers, who defended the kingdom, and that he therefore paid them their wages.
he says, I do not remember to have read of anyone dying an evil death who gladly performed works of charity. For he has many intercessors, and it is impossible that the prayers of many should not be heard.” The author of the sermon to the brethren in the desert, among St. Augustine’s, sermon 44: “Mercy alone,” he says, “leads man to God; mercy alone leads God to man: I have never seen a pious man end by an evil death.”
Lastly, alms is as a golden chain of noble Saints and sons of God, says St. Chrysostom, nay Solomon, Proverbs chap. iii, 3, when he says: “Let not mercy and truth leave thee: put them about thy neck, and thou shalt find grace and good understanding before God and men.”
13. I HAVE TAKEN THAT WHICH WAS SANCTIFIED.—For “I have taken,” read with the Roman editions, “I have taken away.” For the Hebrew is biarti, that is, I have brought out, I have taken away. So the Septuagint, Chaldee, Vatablus and others; as if to say: From my house I have taken away and brought forth, O Lord, these third tithes, which thou didst command to be sanctified, that is, set apart, and offered to thee in the poor. Whence follows: “And have given it to the Levite, and the stranger, and the fatherless, and the widow.”
in my calamity, or poverty, or pressed by want, I have not eaten of these third tithes), NOR SEPARATED THEM IN ANY UNCLEANNESS,—that is, I have not used them for unclean things, as namely to give them to harlots, dogs or beasts of burden; as if to say: These tithes, as holy, whole and untouched, I have set apart and given to God, that is, to the poor in his name.
15. LOOK FROM THY SANCTUARY.—In Hebrew: look from the habitation of thy holiness, from heaven itself. Vers. 15.
19. AND TO MAKE THEE HIGHER THAN ALL NATIONS WHICH HE HATH CREATED, TO HIS OWN PRAISE, AND NAME (that is, fame), AND GLORY.—For in so many and so various nations, and things created by himself, God shows his infinite wisdom in ordering, and his immense power in creating, and his immense love in communicating to them his being and his goods, so that all rightly ought to rise from these to the praise and glorification of God. So Abulensis.